Review of WWDC Mac OS X Leopard (10.5)

Wired posts an "unofficial" review of Apple's WWDC version of Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard).

With Leopard, Apple has added a thick coat of polish to an already elegant operating system. The upgraded OS isn't all glitz and glam, though. Mac's core applications have been rendered more friendly by the addition of stronger visual cues, animated actions and detailed user interface refinements.

The article describes overall improvements to Mac OS X's Finder, including its new Cover Flow view. While seemingly superfluous, the reviewer found it "extremely useful for certain applications" -- such as flipping through images. The "killer feature" of Cover Flow is the ability to quickly preview certain types of documents, such as Word documents and PDFs. Apple has also made steady improvements to Mail, iCal and iChat. The reviewer found that Time Machine required over 30 minutes to set up and also required an external drive.

Since the build I tested is a preview meant for developers, I wasn't expecting rock-solid stability. However, the new features I discovered over a couple of days were enough to win me over. When it's released for real in October, Leopard is sure to be a hit among newcomers and the Mac faithful alike.