So, about a week ago Apple released it’s 6th major release to the Mac OS X system. A few days before its release, Apple had a pre-order system set up. So, being the geek that I am, I pre-ordered. On Friday 26th, I received my package, and Apple officially started selling the OS. Upon opening the box, I was greeted with a reflective, holographic-like package. I opened the box and pulled out the Mac OS X “Leopard” 10.5 DVD and slipped the disc into my MacBook and started the installation.

The Installation said to save all of my work and press the “Restart” button within the dialog box. A few seconds later, the installation started. I selected my language and my options and the installation started. Having previously watched the Leopard installation movie from Apple’s website, I knew it would take between an hour or two to fully install and reboot the computer.

About an hour and half later, I heard my MacBook’s “chime” as it had rebooted and was loading Leopard for the first time. A minute or two later, I logged in and was greeted with a beautiful and simple UI. Leopard has to be the cleanest installation and interface ever to grace the monitors and flat-panels everywhere. And the new and improved features Leopard brings to the Mac are wonderful. iChat’s updates, along with enhanced Mail, Address Book and iCal programs are wonderfully tightened together. For example, if I were to get an innovation in my e-mail with a date and address, Mail will store the data into iCal (without opening the iCal application) and with two-clicks, I can have a map and directions to the party.

Apple has built in new generation back up utility, Time Machine. When you connect an external USB or FireWire hard drive to your Mac running Leopard, Time Machine will set it up as an external Back Up drive. The technology behind Time Machine is amazing. Time Machine does hourly back ups automatically, and at the end of the day, a daily back up, and at the end of the week, a weekly back up. But it gets better. Say you lost the big project. The project that you’ve been working on for 2 weeks and suddenly - it’s gone. Launch Time Machine, and be amazed. Simply type your search into the Spotlight search box and watch as Time Machine takes you back in time until the files are found.

But I do have my problems with Time Machine - I guess this is what happens with us “early adopters”. Time Machine requires a FireWire or USB drive to be physically connected to the computer, but what if you have a small business or a network in your house and you’re running Macs? Each desktop and laptop must have an external drive. Boy, that can be pricey for some people. Time Machine is great - don’t get me wrong, but how about adding support for network storage? That way, home users can pick up a 1TB or 2TB Network Drive, and set up each Mac to back up to that drive. Some people have moaned and complained about wireless network backups. While I would love to see the support, it’s just not practical - right now. Currently, the fastest wireless networks transfer data up to 54 Mbps - while this is great for the Internet and downloads and IMs, but have you ever tried to download a 3GB file using wireless? It’s hell. Adequate support for wireless just isn’t available yet. Until wireless data transfers can climb up to 200 Mbps to 350 Mbps, wireless won’t be fast enough. Now, Apple may add wireless Time Machine settings in about 8 to 12 months, but it won’t be fast, or practical - unless wireless specs jump up dramatically. Another issue I see about wireless backup lies with Apple’s engineering and software development, Apple may not have the security developed for large data transfers of personal and sensitive information. It’s possible they have the technology developed, but it’s just as secure as it needs to be. I’m sure we’ll see wired network settings within the next 2 or 3 months via Software Updates, but wireless won’t be available until early 2009 or version 10.5.6 - which ever comes first.

As for the other features, such as Spaces, Apple has beautifully and seamlessly taken the concept of virtual desktops - something that has been around for countless years - and packaged it into “Leopard” and made it easy to switch between desktops with a quick key-combination. Just hold the Control key and use the arrows to switch around. Or press the Control key and use the numeric keys to switch between desktops - I see this setting better used for desktops with a full keyboard and the arrow keys better for MacBooks and MacBook Pros.

Really, everything about “Leopard” gives a promising future for Apple’s next-generation OSes in future releases. Granted, “Leopard” isn’t 100% perfect, but it is an improvement over Tiger in features, and a major improvement over Panther. I was reading a news article online the other day regarding Leopard vs. Tiger - and the author stated that there wasn’t a huge speed improvement with Leopard over Tiger, and I thought to myself “Well of course not. Especially if you compare 10.4.9 or 10.4.10 against 10.5.0, because when Apple started working on Leopard, they started from the 10.4.8 baseline code and developed on top of it. Any speed improvements won’t show up until 10.5.8 - at the very latest, earliest would be 10.5.6. But that’s okay, Tiger was quick enough as is Leopard. What is important in Leopard is full 64-bit processing, and how Leopard utilizes multi-core processors and multi-threaded strings and applications. So, as long as Leopard improves it’s processing management, the better it will be, and if by improving management it becomes faster - all the better.

So, in a nut-shell, Leopard is an amazing operating system, and within 3 days Apple has already sold 2 Million copies. The future possibilities of Leopard and 10.6 are going to be very powerful and key releases for Apple - as long as it can stay ahead in development engineering over its competitor in Redmond.