Am running the new Mac OS Leopard at the moment. Nik wanted to camp Machines at 6pm on Saturday but we got there late en route to dinner. After playing with it for 24 hours, all I can say is that it hits all the right spots with me. Especially how it affects my work. Features I am crazy about:

Coverflow/Quicklook

Previews almost all files ala iTunes coverflow in good quality thumbnails. Opens a multipage, browsable file (if the file, like a PDF, has more than one page) in Quicklook with a space bar tap. Previews video files. What I am loving about this is that it’s previewing my 100MB files as fast as the 80KB ones. This means I no longer have to wait for the proper app to load it to preview, especially say when I’m working on a 10 page 1GB-sized spread mostly consisting of 100MB TIFFs. It’s taking me so much faster to find things without having to wait for the load, at any one time I have over 1000 image files in my ‘Pending’ directory. I don’t even need to launch Preview now.

Mail

Forget the fun new templates, the highlight is that Quicklook has been integrated into Mail as well, making previewing attachments too easy.

Time Machine

Great for heavy users. Working on 10 magazines me and my team go through a gazillion files a week. Some times we have up to 10 different versions on client work. Everyone has horror stories of overwriting a file by accident, deleting important things without knowing etc - being able to access something saved yesterday, or last hour would be ultra-indispensable. Especially with a network backup utility, if we set this up in the office it means we will never lose any work again. Not just our files but the entire state of the machine, including mail. Time Machine is nuts. It’s great how Apple is encouraging backup.

Spaces/Expose

Have been previously using Desktop Manager, which is essentially the exact same thing as Spaces with a different UI. Can’t live without Desktop Manager, and now that Spaces is OS integrated, can’t live without it either. I’m likely to have Mail, Safari, Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Acrobat, Adium, iTunes, Word, Excel, Transmit and a bunch of finder windows open at the same time. If I didn’t have Expose and virtual desktops it would kill me to find anything. Expose works with Spaces as well, the drag and drop utility is too awesome.

iChat is pretty awesome, especially how you can take over someone’s screen and work remotely. Don’t foresee me using this much though when the need arises it is definitely handy. Spotlight has been reworked as well. The best part is that my Mac is running faster now post-Leopard. Unbelievable.

What my desktop now looks like:

My order of a cute red laptop arrived today from Dell. I was a tad skeptical about ordering online from them at first, especially when I can just walk into the IT centre at MV or Low Yat and just buy one on the spot instead of waiting 5-7 business days for one to be delivered to me. But I had no time to go to town, and I found the idea of being able to customise a laptop online to out of the box strangely appealing. So when I got an email saying there was a worldwide shortage of LCD screens for my particular model and delivery would be extended to October 17th I was not surprised - I have zero faith in online delivery times. 23 days from order date? No way. So I decided to cancel my order via customer service and pick one up from Sony/HP instead.

Lo and behold, a lovely girl called Joanne replied my email 20 minutes later and said that the order would be able to be delivered on time, today, with all my customised specs. No delay.

I’m quite happy with the new merlot-red, metallic matte finish (OK lah, that part only cosmetic I know, but I love red) Inspiron I’m blogging from now. They had an offer that upgraded RAM to 2GB for free, so it’s pretty decent as well. But what was that email about LCD screen shortage, I don’t get. It’s enough to lose a potential customer, especially a first-time one like me, almost immediately.

But anyway, they delivered on time, in the end that’s all that matters and exactly the way I expected it so it wasn’t so bad after all.

Less than 10 minutes out of the box and I’m online. Not bad. Configuration was fuss free and uncomplicated. I requested a clean install of Vista, with almost nothing else (except Norton) and I’m quite happy there wasn’t a gazillion popups greeting me at startup. But that’s also how long it took me to realise how much I dislike Vista. The UI just isn’t as instinctive as OS X, and there are so many words on the startup menu that I had to take a moment to read them all. Vista was just too frilly for my tastes. I missed the OS X dock almost immediately. I found the screen much more ‘cooler’ than what I’m used to and the keyboard a bit of a nightmare. But I suppose you need to get used to that. I don’t like noisy keyboards - my MBP has a ’silencer’ silicon sheet to keep out the dirt but it also pads the sound of my nails hitting the keys. Also not liking the huge gaps between keys on the Dell, not sure how I’ll clean that later on, and I find the media buttons on laptops annoying to look at because I’ve never had to use them, not even on my previous Compaq.

Not actually comparing the two. I guess just being on a PC after so long (maybe 6-8 months?) just made me realise why I don’t miss it much. And before you think I’m switching back to a PC, the new laptop is actually for mom.. :) I don’t think I can handle her tinkering away on my MBP! OMG?!

But I have to admit if the iBooks were cheaper I would have gotten her a Mac instead. Yes, good luck to me teaching my parents how to work the device ;)

I finally installed Skype. When I clicked on the test call while simultaneously trying to hook up my gaming headphones/mic… it went into playback and I could hear myself fidgeting about. Another test call without my gaming headphones confirmed that my MBP has a mic somewhere. After almost a year using my MBP I never realised I had a built-in mic. Where the heck is it, and how do I hook that up to TS and Vent? I feel so blonde :P

Due to the amazing amount of spam comments I get.. I’ve now turned on moderation.

If you haven’t had a comment published before, I will have to approve it before it shows up. Once it does, commenting with the same name/email works instantly.

Got this site from Lynn some time ago. My Heritage lets you upload your pictures and match it to celebs via their facial recognition engine. Not. Quite. Accurate. LOL.