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Mircosoft took 5 whole years to develop their next operating system, Windows Vista, which was released in 2006, 5 years after their previous OS, Windows XP. In the early stages of development, Microsoft made some pretty bold promises, yet even with repeated delays, the final product failed to deliver on many of those promises. While Microsoft’s been busy delaying the release of its next OS, Apple has been chugging along just nicely. Since the first version of OS X was released back in 2001 (Cheetah), Apple has come a long way and released version 10.5, Leopard, last October.

For those who aren’t familiar with Apple’s Operating Systems, 10.5 marks the fifth update to the original OS X, meaning that in the time Microsoft took to release a single OS, Apple released 4 of them (from 2001 to 2006), and this fifth update definitely delivers. Granted, while Apple boasts that Leopard has more than 300 new features as compared to the previous iteration of OS X, Tiger, you definitely won’t see that many improvements immediately. However, you’ll “feel” the improvements made the more you use it because they’re hidden throughout the entire OS. For example Safari 3, Apple’s own internet browser, is included in Leopard which has several new enhancements, most importantly it’s been given a huge boost in terms of performance which many avid web surfers (like me) will appreciate. Other improvements have also been made to the browser that will take me forever to list here.

The Finder (ie OS X’s version of explorer for those who don’t know) has been given a huge facelift as well, giving a completely different look and feel. They’ve even included Coverflow in the Finder so you can scroll through your documents like you previously would with your albums in iTunes. By itself, Coverflow is nothing more than eye candy. Coupled with Quick Look however, it becomes a very powerful tool which can be used to quickly search for documents, especially when you’ve forgotten the name of the document. If you do remember the name however, all you have to do is hit Command+Space to open up Spotlight and search for the title of the file (Spotlight even searches WITHIN the file, meaning you instantly search through the contents of ALL your documents, including pdf, word documents, powerpoint slides and even the metadata of pictures or movies) and have the results instantly show up. And when I say “instantly”, I’m not exaggerating. If you search for a file and it doesn’t turn up in the results in at most 5 seconds, the file doesn’t exist on your hard drive. This feature has been around since Tiger, but I never bothered to use it then since it was quite buggy and sluggish, not only not instantly showing you the results, but even slowing down your Mac. It seems like Apple finally responded to everyone’s feedback and improved Spotlight in Leopard by leaps and bounds so that it really does work as advertised now. On the whole, the Finder’s new look will take some time to get used to, but it works just fine.

It would be impossible for me to provide a full review of Leopard here because it would take up at least a few thousand words if I were to really delve into the numerous improvements made. Where would I start? The new Front Row menu; Boot Camp; new enhancements to Photo Booth; Spaces (virtual desktops); Time Machine (backup utility), etc. What I would like to point out though is how Apple is trying it’s best to support older Macs with Leopard despite there being so many new features being added as can be seen from Engadget’s experiment. This unlike Windows Vista’s requirements, whose are so steep that even some brand new laptops being released have trouble supporting it. While not every single new feature will work in Leopard on older Macs (as Engadget’s test has shown), it beats having to buy a brand new computer just to run the latest OS.

All in all, Leopard still isn’t the perfect OS, there’re still points in time when you’d wish some small issue could be tweaked to your liking. However, as compared to Tiger, it really is a much better OS from my experience. It’s a lot more stable and snappy, unlike Tiger which would begin to feel sluggish after some time. Still, the US$129 price tag (PC Connection is selling it at a discount price of $109.95) might turn some people off for what seems like a pretty similar OS, but for those of you who can afford it, I’d dare say it’s well worth the price.

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