Leopard Geekgasm

So Apple’s scheduled to release its highly anticipated OS X update tomorrow right? Well guess what–I’ve been straddling the hype and reading pre-release reviews and previews so much over the last couple of weeks that I have splotches of semen all over my work station thanks to intense, multiple geekgasms.

Apparently the new OS X Leopard doesn’t scrimp on new features and its impressive feature set stretches farther than its semi-transparent menu bar and reflective dock as it boasts of over 300 new features(And seriously, is anyone even surprised? I mean if they released Leopard as a mere cosmetic update then they should’ve called it “Vista.” See what I did there?).

Because it’s all over the Internet and A-list bloggers can’t shut up about it, I’m pretty sure that you have an idea of what Leopard’s marquee features are; I mean I’m sure, vague as it may be, that you have an idea of what Time Machine, Stacks and Leopard’s integrated Bootcamp features can do.

But what do all these bells and whistles translate to for the normal, only-slightly-geek people like us? I mean sure the new Applescript, Dashcode and XCode 3 features may prove useful for those programmer types but for average macheads like myself, what is there to be excited about?

For me, there are three reasons.

Spaces

Back when I was still a Windows user, one of the biggest encumbrance to both my efficiency and productivity would be the fact that the Windows desktop can get overly crowded and cluttered if you go about doing enough tasks and opening enough windows. I solved this problem by using a nifty little application called Yet Another Desktop Manager (Yod’m 3d) which is a virtual desktop manager which allows users to switch between virtual desktops using a rotating cube effect.

I still have the same problem with OS X and I’ve tried a couple of virtual desktop managers but never really found anything I’d be happy with as most of them have really confusing navigation as far as switching between desktops would go.

Luckily, Leopard comes with an integrated virtual desktop manager called Spaces which allows you to create multiple workspaces, and lets you easily switch between them. Within each workspace, you place whatever application windows you desire. This is particularly useful if you want a dedicated desktop to host all your work applications, another one to host applications you use for personal projects.

The neat thing I see in spaces that I didn’t see in other Virtual Desktop Managers is that it has an Exposé-like feature; this means you can press a hotkey and a bird’s eye view of all your workspaces will appear. You can also drag and drop windows from one workspace to another.

I’m not really sure if this would appeal to everyone but for people like me who likes things organized and clutter-free, spaces is a welcome feature.

Quick Look

If you can see the files in my computer, you’d notice that my files look like they came from a piñata that just got run over by a truck. Generic filenames, duplicate files, documents in wrong directories, etc.

So you could only imagine how tedious a task looking for a particular file would be for me. I typically use Spotlight to search for the files I need but since I employ naming conventions like CHRISTMASDOCUMENT1.DOC and CHRISTMASDOCUMENT2.DOC to name my files, I have to launch applications associated to my documents and from there, check whether or not it is the document I’m looking for.

With Leopard’s new Quick Look feature, all I would need to do would be to click on a file, press the Space Bar, instantly see the file’s contents and even flip through its pages.

Time Machine

Backup utilities are a dime a dozen but what puts Leopard’s Time Machine in a league of its own is the ability to show the user what his or her computer looked like on a specific date and have the option to search for files (deleted or modified) from that date in the past and bring it to the present. It also allows users to “restore” files from a specific date in the past to their original locations as if nothing ever happened.

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