 | My Thoughts on OS X 10.5 Leopard October 31, 2007 at 10:59pm in tech |
Friday night, I had the pleasure of installing Apple's new operating system, OS X 10.5 Leopard on my MacBook Pro. Leopard is Apple's answer to the ill-fated Microsoft Windows Vista, and boy does it blow Vista away. It runs smoothly, and like Tiger, has a much cleaner feel to me that does Vista or even XP. Until shortly before I got my iBook in April 2006, I was a pretty big Mac basher. I got my iBook and that all changed. I now use my MacBook Pro as my primary machine despite the fact that I have a pretty powerful Desktop. But enough background, here are my thoughts on Leopard so far. My first taste of Leopard left me with somewhat of a sour note. There apparently is an issue with doing a direct upgrade from Tiger to Leopard where after restarting post-install users get a "blue screen of death". This isn't quite the same as Windows' BSOD; all you see is a blue screen with a mouse cursor and it hangs there what seems like infinitely. Not exactly the best experience, but it made me do what I wanted to do but felt too lazy to do initially...reformat and start from scratch. Fortunately I was smart and backed up my files that I needed. *****Let that be a warning to everyone. When you are performing an upgrade of an operating system (be it OS X, Windows, Linux, etc) back up your files FIRST.****** I'm not quite sure what the issue is/was behind the blue screen, but, while seemingly major, it was to me, only a minor hiccup. I ended up starting from scratch and the remainder of the setup went very smoothly. Initial Impressions 
The first thing I noticed was that the default wallpaper was not the blue waves (I don't know how else to describe them) that were seen with OS X 10.3 & 10.4. Something else that changed is also the dock. I've heard some people call Leopard's dock "ugly". Personally I kind of like it but I guess to each their own. Something new in Leopard are the stacks. 
These stacks allow you to put a folder in the dock and when clicked on, brings up a "stack" that shows any files or folders located in that folder. What I did was simply create a folder for my games (yes OS X has games) and you can see what it does when I click on it. It may not seem like much, but it can be used for convenience and make things easier to access. A New Look for Finder 
Anyone who's used a mac before knows what Finder is. It is Mac's file explorer. Generally, Finder looks about the same. What it does now feature is actually pretty cool. If anyone has used iTunes 7, they probably can recognize what the screenshot above shows. Finder now adds a cover flow view that will allow you to page through folders, text files, and like above, images. It's nothing incredibly revolutionary, but it does provide another way of previewing images without completely opening them. 
There is also the quick look feature which allows you to pop open files without actually opening them. This is an example of quick look on a picture I have, almost like some websites do nowadays. This might not be anything extraordinary, but definitely a nice feature that Leopard supports. Also noted is that like pictures, some video files can be viewed the same way in quick look. Tabbed Terminals 
While this may not seem like much, for those of you who do work with terminals like myself, the tabbed feature of terminal is definitely a good thing to have. Notes in Mail 
Again, this is not that big of a feature, but it still helps you keep organized within Mail.app. Final Conclusions I know I didn't touch on MANY of the things that Leopard brings to the table. Spaces (multiple desktops), Time Machine (automated backup), & some of iChat's new features are some to be mentioned. While Leopard may not bring loads of revolutionary new features to an OS, what it does bring is stability, an amazing user interface, and many nuances to help make certain tasks easier. I really do wonder if Leopard will help bring people over to Macs from Windows machines. Mac computers are very good machines, and OS X only makes them even better. Vista is bloated and the chances of really getting it to run well on older machines is a joke. Leopard on the opposite side of the fence, is said just fine on most of the older G4 and G5 Macs. Plus the cost is notably cheaper than Vista. There is only one version of OS X Leopard and it comes with all of the features. None of this 4 versions of Vista that Microsoft keeps trying to push. It's an amazing OS and in mine, and I'm sure many other people's opinion, significantly ahead of Vista. |
| 0 Comments |
| Kudos to XFX October 29, 2007 at 10:00am in thoughts |
About a year and a half ago, I bought a XFX nVidia GeForce 7900GT graphics card for my desktop. The card was great. A couple months ago, it started dying. Games would clip, the BIOS screen was all colorful, and even the simplest of graphical operations on the operating system lagged and flickered. I was like "shit" it was over a year old so I figured the warranty was out. I put in a ticket seeing if I could fix the issue. They replied saying that all I would have to do is register the card and that the warranty was still fine. I registered the card and it led me to finding out that the card probably went bad and I would have to send it back to them via RMA. For $8 I sent it back and they confirmed what I already figured. About a week later they told me that the 7900GT is no longer in stock and I had the choice between an 8600GTS 256MB card or I could pay an extra $150 and get the 8800GTS 320. Being that my MacBook Pro has pretty much become my primary machine, the 8600GTS would suffice and it has DirectX 10 too which was great. So I'm getting an $8 GeForce 8600GTS. I find it nice that XFX was willing to help me out in getting my hardware fixed. I know I read that in order for the warranty to be valid I have to register the card within 1 year of purchasing it. The fact that they helped me out when I was a slacker and didn't register speaks volumes on how they treat their customers...in my opinion, well. So in a couple days, I will have a brand new video card. People can say that well if it's a good company then the hardware shouldn't break/fail. I take the approach that even the best hardware fails on occasion. I've done tech support work, I know about hardware failure. What matters is how the manufacturer deals with these failures. XFX was good about making sure they got back to me in a timely fashion and fix the issue. Definitely good customer support. |
| 0 Comments |
| 3 Arsonists Arrested in Southern California, No links to Santiago Fire October 26, 2007 at 9:46pm in news |
My thoughts go out to all of those affected by the wildfires in Southern California. And the full support to any and all firefighters involved in the effort to contain the blaze. I was just reading an article that several arsonists have been arrested in Southern California. This one guy set a fire in a neighborhood and walked away. Two others were arrested on similar cases but none of the three are directly linked to the Santiago Fire that has so far burned 27,000 acres. I want to see justice severed to the arson who was responsible for that fire, I just hope that this does not become so much of a witch hunt that people aren't charged with setting the fire unless they actually set the fire. What these three did was wrong, and yes it does make them suspects for the Santiago fire, but it does not make automatically guilty. I do hope whoever did it rots in jail so long as he/she was actually the culprit. |
| 2 Comments |
| Google Gives GMail IMAP Support October 25, 2007 at 1:24pm in tech |
Google is apparently adding the long awaited, long missing feature of having GMail support IMAP. Google has since launch supported POP3, but never IMAP. The main difference between the two of them is that POP3 only has 1 way communication with GMail. While IMAP has 2-way communication. This means that POP3 just downloads the messages to your e-mail client be it Thunderbird, outlook, etc. but it doesn't communicate what you do with that message. If you delete it, it will still be there on the server, just not on your machine. IMAP can do things both ways. It keeps your online GMail and the messages in your client synchronized. You delete it on one side, it's deleted on the other too. I don't know how they're implementing it exactly or how they're gonna deal with the labels and folders, cause I'm still waiting for my account to support IMAP. Google is apparently slowly rolling it out and I guess my account just hasn't been set up yet. IMAP just might make it easier to keep my computers and various operating systems somewhat synchronized. Compared to the way I'm doing it now, it's gotta be faster, but we shall see. |
| 0 Comments |
| 6 Games I Would Like to See a Sequel For October 25, 2007 at 10:35am in gaming |
| Looking back at some of the games I've played, I came up with a short list of games I would like to see a sequel made for it.
6. Crackdown By far, Crackdown is my favorite open ended game. GTA is fun for oh I don't know the first hour maybe but then gets incredibly repetitive. While I eventually traded Crackdown in, I still had plenty of fun with it, even after the Halo 3 beta was over. 
5. Star Wars Battlefront Star Wars Battlefront was fun. Star Wars Battlefront II was even more fun with the addition of the space battles and hero/villain battles. I would like to see one come out on the next gen consoles. However I would like to see them add to the space battles. Maybe add a dogfight game mode. The space battles in Battlefront II were fun, but I felt like something was missing. The potential for this would be pretty good I think. 
4. Jedi Knight Jedi Knight III: Jedi Academy was a great addition to the Dark Forces/Jedi Knight series. I would like to see a new game come out on the next gen consoles as well. Using the force and a lightsaber is always fun. 
3. Rainbow Six This one will more than likely definitely come along eventually, if a sequel isn't already in the works for Vegas. Rainbow six is a great first person shooter that brings in strategy to how you play the game. With the features and action list of things that were introduced to Vegas like the cover system, repelling, fast rope, snake cam, etc. I would like to see what they could do with the next one. 
2. Rise of Nations This is still by far my favorite Real-Time Strategy game. I wouldn't mind seeing Rise of Nations 2 with better graphics and some more improvements on game play. Rise of Legends was sort of a sequel, but not quite. 
1. Halo With the way Halo 3 ended, it leaves the series wide open for a Halo 4 following it. It would have to start a new story arc but that shouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. Part of me is hesitant as it could end up hurting the series, but it could also be done well, maybe utilize more of what the 360 can do.  |
| 0 Comments |
 |  |  |  |