Customer Reviews

Apple Mac OS X Version 10.5.6 Leopard [5-User Family Pack]

5 star:		(63)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

The OS comes in a very small package with a little manual. Install took 45 minutes to confirm that the CD was in good condition, 45 more to install. This review is not going to be full of technical jargon... instead a brief first impression from a long time Mac user (circa 1984 Mac 512Ke vintage). For the technicals, go to Apple, read geeky blogs. For the rest of us, I'll try to keep it more straight-forward. They claim 300 changes... here are what I think are some of the more interesting ones... apologies for the length of the review, relative to the number of changes claimed, a moderate length to this review. Updated December 09, 2007 to reflect new experiences.

Pro:
-Time machine! OK, back up programs are available, but how many of them are sold versus the number of macs out there? This program is native, created by Apple for Apple. All I did was plug in a hard drive and Leopard asked if I wanted to make this my back-up drive for Leopard. I clicked yes, and that was it, all set up. It begins back up once the computer is left on and idle. The first takes a very long time, hours, subsequent back ups are hourly, however only files that have changed are saved, preserving storage space and computing power. Time machine looks like any open folder window when it gets down to it... like you went back in time and browsed around (hence the name). Similar to "snapshot" for those Windows XP users out there.
-Install was very easy. Boot machine, insert CD, restart with CD. The computer verified that the CD is in good condition (a lengthy process of about 45 minutes that you can skip but which is recommended). The rest of the install takes about 45 more minutes, but it is basically all automated. It's a Mac, it's so clever that it's easy. Apple does what computers promised to do... automate smartly.
-Price is very reasonable relative to other operating systems (e.g. Vista)
-This OS includes the release version of Boot Camp. I've not used it yet as I have Parallels, but I like how Apple has included this feature... sometimes it's just best to get along as even programs offered on both platforms are just different enough to be annoying. So if you are using PowerPoint at work on a PC, you can use it at home on your Mac acting like a PC... thank you Apple.
-The new "you can see the content of folders in the dock bar" feature is handy, especially if you have many projects going and you dump a lot of picture files into them. They call this new feature "stacks" and it works really well.
-I find that movies too now give you a preview icon which is great.
-New OS did not trash my preferences, such as my Son's photo on the desktop... very plug and play
-Safari web browser is appears somewhat faster, perhaps 1x faster to load a page but I didn't really notice that much difference as I was using another browser up to this point
-The widget-maker is really interesting... I made my first widget of a stock I follow, in about 30 seconds. This was really great. I expect future versions of the feature to add more punch (e.g. the ability to add a title bar to your new widget, improved ability to make very small widgets, ability to use arrow keys to get the widget just right, ability to resize the widget once made instead of deleting and starting all over, etc.), but is still great as is.
-When I have multiple windows open I notice a slight shadow to help me identify which one is active, or on top. Apple continues to impress with their ability to tune into subtle usability features that are so obvious that they have been overlooked. Wonderful (although I would love a darker shadow, and perhaps a bold frame around the window too).
-The Apple web site offers a very nice 9-10 minute introduction. Check it out, it's worth it (trust me).
-Cover Flow is AWESOME! If you are familiar with flipping through album art on the new iPhone or iPods, you'll recognize the power of this feature right away. For those who've been on the sidelines, let me catch you up. There's icon view. There's list view. There's also a column view that's less popular. And there's now cover flow. Much like iTunes, you can flip through files like albums in a juke box, or turning pages in a picture book. The Mac lets you see the first page, so you don't get just a dumb icon, or even a tiny picture, you get a nice big image. It's nothing short of amazing. Cover flow does more (like you can play a video in cover flow without exiting the program or launching a player, fast and convenient), but again, this is a simpler version for the rest of us.
-A further extension of file management is Quick Look. You can sort of open files without launching a program. It's designed to be a time-saver for the person with a lot of files.
-Spaces. OK, this might be a little hard to describe. Essentially, are you someone who like to have 10 programs running at one time? If so, Spaces is ideal for you. You can open say a few photos in one space, a publishing program and Photoshop in another. You can toggle back and forth between the spaces and the effect is a less cluttered environment. It's neat.
-Mail. THere's many new things here, most small. However, for those setting up a mail account for the first time, say on Yahoo or "another popular website", you enter your email address, password, and click OK. Leopard finds it and sets it up. This blows me away. Forever are gone are the days of entering POP and SMTP data, which I guess wasn't terribly bad, but again, this is 2007. Computers are supposed to be more intuitve, not less right? Mac delivers yet again.
-I didn't mention the Notes and To Do features in Mail, which are excellent adds. Example of what these are: I often send myself an email so that I have a note: Well, instead of sending a mail to myself, which can, if hung up take a minute or an hour to return to me, I can write myself a note which sits in my inbox. I can add attachments like an email. I can also turn a note into a "To do", assigning a due date and getting a check box to check when it has been completed. Anywhere I can access my email, I can also get my notes. Weird and wonderful! To do events sync to iCal (which also syncs to my iPhone)... excellent.
-Email contacts, addresses, phone numbers can be added to existing contacts, or a new contact with a couple clicks. This is very handy for the busy professional.
-The teleconferencing features of iChat makes presentations really personal and also allows you to share desktops. I won't use this at home, and I can only dream of this at work when working remotely with our team/my boss in the UK. Words don't do this feature justice.
-My existing programs seem to work ok. I did get a minor error with Parallels (see Cons section for more), but all other programs tried functioned fine.

Con:
-Boot Camp requires reboot to run Windows
-Changed the icons some, which is not a big deal, but which was unnecessary
-With all this advanced file-sharing capability in iChat, I am concerned that a guest could inadvertently open sensitive files or emails. I get confidential materials sometimes, and I have little means of limiting access. It's too open and I'd love some locking features, both in iChat and in case I walk away from my Mac and someone decides to have some fun.
- Parallels has become unstable and won't launch. A free patch fomr the Parallels website (build "5582") fixed the crash on launch issue, however an IP conflict gotten originally still persists. This IP error does not seem to cause any issues as far as I can tell, it is just a nuisance.

Bottom line: Highly recommended. Sleek, smart, and straight-forward. The review title says it all, however there are obviously many reasons to buy, including staying current with the OS so that you have access to future releases and features.

Each new major release of an operating system (OS) has to make a splash. We all expect to be wowed. We expect and demand that we are shown new whiz-bang features and enhancements. For example, Microsoft's Vista has lots of whiz-bang features when compared to the steady and stalwart Windows XP. But since Vista's debut, the afterglow has faded. ANd now, the 'whiz' is the sound of people flocking back to XP and the 'bang' is the sound of people's heads hitting their keyboards from the frustration of wrestling with their computer's operating system.

Enter Mac OS 10.X:
10.1 - not a great debut. 10.2 was admittedly undercooked. 10.3 was getting there. And 10.4 finally delivered on the promise of the Mac OS in the modern age.

So with OS 10.5 - where's the whiz-bang? Ah, as they say the devil is in the details. 10.5 won't jump up and clamor for your attention out of the box. It's new features are to be lauded, but the real benefits here are in the easy way that 10.5 builds on the solid foundation of 10.4 and delivers as the best Mac OS to date.

I won't go into massive detail about each new feature, you can just check out the product info or peruse [...] for the sales pitch. Suffice to say that the additions and enhancements are indeed very cool. And perhaps more importantly worth the cost of the upgrade.

Instead of belaboring the fine points of each nook and cranny and application, I am going to touch on how impressed I am with the way that Apple has worked to ensure the continuance of a good thing.

10.5 is certainly evolutionary. The departure from Tiger is not drastic. But this is a good thing. Unlike the jolt of moving from XP to Vista - the transition from Tiger to Leopard can be best defined as "refined". At each turn there are subtle enhancements and features that may not trumpet for attention but work to take the "interference" out of using a computer. You can expect Leopard to work as advertised. Simple in its promise, but steadfast in its mission: 'it just works'.

During the past couple of years, more and more people have moved to Apple systems for the first time. With more people hopping on board, I'm glad to see that OS 10.5 is a mature refinement to an already fine OS. More than anything, I'm encouraged that this new version allows me and my family to actually use our computers with minimal interference from the OS.

So where's the whiz-bang? It's in getting an easy to learn, easy to use, and as-powerful-as-you-need-it operating system perfect for use in your home.

On a final note - this review is for the 5-user family pack. It is hard to beat the idea of getting the best OS on the block for $40 a computer. In my case, to upgrade each system averaged out to $67. And there is no strange upgrade path to follow. Each version of leopard is the same. No Leopard home, or business, or ultimate or penultimate. Just leopard. Everything you need, when you need it. No strange add-ons or deluxe editions needed.

For those interested - I have Leopard running on a 12" Powerbook G4 (1.25Ghz - And it will run - trust me), a MacBook and a Core2Duo iMac. Leopard is running well on all of these systems. It took about 45mins-1hr per system to upgrade.

Here's the upgrade path: Put in the DVD, walk through the the setup menu and wait for your "new" computer to restart.

Post-upgrade, all of my existing programs work. All of my files are in tact and I'm off and running with 10.5.

How's that for Whiz-bang?

A happy ending to a rocky start - At long last and sooner then I had ever expected, on 2-11-2008, Apple released the 10.5.2 update for Leopard. I eagerly downloaded and installed it and was delighted to find that the CS3 issues are resolved and in fact, it seems CS3 PS and Bridge as well as other apps I am using on Leopard seem to load much faster. Some of the other quirks other users have reported like the Mac Mail app hanging or not shutting down (and that I also experienced), now appear to be fixed as well. Finally the stability that I always had in Tiger now seems consistent as well in Leopard. At this time, I'm definitely going to keep my Leopard software rather then return it.


10.5.2 Info and installation details of the update are here at this Apple link:

[...]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
We've purchased our 3 Macs (Mac Pro, Mac Mini and MacBook) from Amazon and all had Tiger OS X installed. Tiger has been bug free on all of these system s with few updates or fixes ever being needed to be downloaded. I use Photoshop CS3/Mac on my Mac Pro. We just recently decided to give Leopard a go and purchased the 5 system family pack. I chose to use my Mac Pro as the first system for upgrade. Well, unfortunately and only after installing Leopard did I realize there exists some major issues using PS CS3 within the Leopard OS. There is a known issue with most all of the tools in CS3 when using Leopard and a lot of instability when entering numerical values for crop as well as many other CS3 tools. After seeing this and doing some web research, it seems that Adobe and Apple are working on a fix ASAP which will be in the next upcoming update for Leopard (referred to as 10.5.2). In fact I know only too late that Apple plans over 150 "fixes" to the existing bugs in its latest OS with the Photoshop CS3 being only one of them. My rating is less about the new features in Leopard and more due to having taken the plunge into what I thought would be a safe and stable new OS for the MAC only to find that the most often used piece of software I use almost daily, limps badly in the new OS. Shame Apple for releasing Leopard either too soon and perhaps without having fully tested it on some of the most often used software on the Mac, and CS2/CS3 on a Mac should have been a super high priority. We'll be returning our DVD of Leopard to Amazon and for the meantime, staying with good ol' stable Tiger until we see what owners are saying about the "fixed" issues, later this year. This is certainly no fault of Amazon's, but, buyers need to be aware of this issue, especially those who depend on using Adobe and other SW products on their Mac! By the way, all of our Macs were purchased from Amazon since they beat the best price out there and using our Amazon PRIME account, we got our systems either in 2 days with FREE shipping or in one case, overnight for just $3.99. If you routinely shop at Amazon and want free 2 day shipping from Amazon, Go PRIME! They have never failed us yet on an order and we do a lot of shopping there. Well done Amazon!

First, let me list the reasons I'm happy with my Leopard upgrade:

1. Spotlight is finally fast enough that it's usable a program launcher; it's a huge improvement. It's still not as usable and powerful as QuickSilver, but for 90% of what I need, it's now good enough that I've turned QS off.

2. TimeMachine is as fast and convenient a backup system as I have ever seen on a personal computer. We have a system like this on our expensive network-attached storage system at work, but Apple has actually has made this accessible to anyone who knows how to plug in an external disk drive.

3. I use my aging 12" Powerbook fairly heavily, and with all the applications I typically have going at once (Safari, NetNewsWire, iCal, Mail, Pages, iTerm, ...) I was used to seeing the spinning beachball under 10.4, especially when using Safari and Mail. With Leopard, even if these applications themselves aren't faster, I only rarely see the beachball anymore, and as a result they're significantly more responsive.

4. Screen sharing between my laptop and our family iMac was possible before, but it's simple and seemless in Leopard. Before, it was something I'd set up every now and again when it was especially useful - now it's always available.

There are only a couple of things I actively dislike about Leopard.

1. The colors in the new user interface are darker less colorful, and this often makes things harder to read. The labels of tabs in Safari are particularly hard to read now.

2. The new Dock (when you put it on the side of the screen) is also darker and less attractive than the old Dock, and the little glowing dots are less easy to see than the triangles the old Dock had.

3. It's more awkward to edit event information in iCal, because the side panel, where that information was previously displayed, was replaced by a popup window, that needs to be dismissed and reopened when you move from one event to the next.

There's more to say, but these are the things that most affect my day-to-day use of my Powerbook. All-in-all, it was a great upgrade for me.

Biggest concern was how all the major applications would react to the new OS X, mainly MS office and CS2 software. They seem to work well, sometimes an unexpected quit here and there but not that frequent. Navigating through files has been streamlined, great for those of us who work on the computer all day. There are so many thoughtful new features with this upgrade, that when you discover each new one, it confirms that upgrading was the right choice.

I upgraded two machines from 10.4 to 10.5 (Leopard), and bottomline, I am pleased. If you already have 10.4, its ok to wait a while since 10.4 is good and quite solid, but I took the plunge and have enjoyed the nice enhancements.

Most people say do a backup and then a fresh install. That is probably the best approach, but I was innocently hopeful, and went ahead with an upgrade on both machines without backing them up. One machine (MacBook with Intel) upgraded with zero problems, and I have not had any problems with it. Very pleased. By the way, immediately after the install, there was a system update (10.5.1) that I immediately did which addressed some known some bugs. The second machine (iMac with PowerPC) installed but froze on the reboot. Thank goodness I had a second Mac to look up the problem/solution and a Firewire cable to hook up the two, remove the application enhancer file remotely, and reboot. That fixed it, and I have had only one problem in the last three weeks (a freeze).

It's the little things that make Leopard a joy. I don't mind the reflective dock, and it nicely shows what is running. The Finder windows are improved with the sidebar. Quick Look is excellent and quite productive. The Spotlight search is excellent. iChat with the screen sharing is FANTASTIC -- it paid for itself in one use, it is so easy to use, two of us edited a document together and I gave a tutorial remotely on how to use pivot tables in Excel. I've always enjoyed the Dictionary, and it is improved with Wikipedia results. It is all these little things here and there that make it an excellent OS/application/feature set...whatever it is.

OK so I was out in front of the Apple Store waiting on the release of Leopard. There were lots of geeks and very few lawyers. But speaking as a lawyer, which in this case means non-geek consumer, the wait was definitely worth it. so worth it in fact that I returned Sunday to buy a Mac Mini for my assistant and tell her we were through with all the office PCs. And three days into the new world she's very enthusiastic.

But what is about Leopard that makes me giddy? First its the refinement of overall functionality. That seems almost impossible, but its really true...my Mac is more intuitive, more flexible, and in a business environment this all enables me to be more productive. It also enables my secretary to be more productive.

So here are my thoughts on the big changes:

Spaces-The idea is radicalkeep what you use together and close at hand. I use different programs at work, at home, and on the road.Why not declutter the desktop quickly and get right to the programs you need?

Time Machine: the jury is still out because I haven't needed to restore anything.

Stacks- Very cute, but it remains to be seen if will be be more efficient thatn folders. I my be missing something here.

Quick look- Great! A quick look cuts down on desktop clutter, and keeps RAM available (I think)

Shared Desktops- I can see what my secretary has on her desktop and can solve problems quicker.

Dashboard-MNow you can create your own widgets saving whats n a screen to your dashboard. This one still is a mytery to me.

Finder-Cover Flow is the big new thing here. Its handy but sometimes feels a bit too cute.

Safari 3- Auto-click is great...all your work stuff or play stuff in one click, then they are set out in tabs, not windows.

This OS is nice and well enough designed for Intel processor machines, but for "Power-PC" processor Macs, it's a debacle. I have one of the last of the G5 iMacs (20") and it never crashed at all with Mac OS 10.4. But with 10.5, IT WILL CRASH EVERY SINGLE TIME I use iTunes. Sometimes it crashes when I'm using iTunes, and sometimes it will crash after I use that program and quit the application. It doesn't seem to matter what I do. And yes, this is a legal, registered version of the OS. And yes, I have re-installed it twice, all to no effect. Apple has some serious work to do to make this latest OS viable for their not-too-distant machines. I hear they are completely giving up on their G-Series machines with OS 10.6, so if you have 10.4, hold on to it and don't let go. Until Apple figures it out (IF they even try), users should avoid this OS.

Thanks for reading,
-CL

I bought the family pack and installed Leopard on my iMac PPC & intel MacBook. Both installations work flawlessly. I have had no problems, I upgraded to 10.5.1 through Apple software update and that fixed original problems. I highly recommend it and after all this time it still blows me away.

It worked flawlessly in 3 of my computers. It did not work on the 4th which was a 2003 Mac G4. Its speed was below the minimum speed required for Leopard. I knew about this before purchasing, so no problem for me. However, this information was not on the box.