Looking Forward to Leopard

At first I was underwhelmed by Mac OS X Leopard. Then, just like some of my favorite albums, it began to grow on me. The more I looked, the more I thought yes, I will use that!. I preordered a family pack this morning and am eager for it to arrive. Here's the features I'm most looking forward to.

• Stacks - These look brilliant. I like to keep things on the desktop, but I like things clean too. This is the answer. I also love that stacks make use of so many of the principles from The Laws of Simplicity. Hide and Reduce for starters.


• Coverflow in Finder - An interface for previews that looks like it will actually work.


• Updated sidebar in Finder - Hide and show categories. iTunes like - nice


• Easier file sharing on the network - This isn't as easy in Tiger as it should be. I have lots of problems getting my machines to talk to each other. Half the time I use .mac as a shared drive or I send the files over Bluetooth.


• Spotlight across shared computers - Nice, this will help find that document that I thought I made on the MacBook, but it was really on the iMac.


• Create your own search to put in the sidebar - I'd kill for this at work


• Path bar - I try to not care about directories, but I still do


• Back to my mac - There are all sorts of remote access tools available today. I hope this works better than all of them and requires no additional mucking on my part.


• Time machine - Specifically Spotlight in Time machine. Backup that I don't have to think about. The only problem is that my clean desktop will get another external drive. The funny part is that Time machine has an icon in the dock. Dear me I hope I don't need quick access to this feature.


• iChat theater


• New Automator actions


• Front row looks like Apple TV


• Tabbed terminal - Tabs are nice, but I want them to blow the tabs out in Expose so it is easier to find the terminal I want.

There are some things I'm not looking forward to...

• Transparency in menu bar - I throw up a little bit everytime I see a Vista screenshot with those annoying titlebars.


• Spaces - In my dumb terminal days, I'd use screen all the time. At home I just really don't work that way anymore. Expose meets my needs. If it didn't, I'd love spaces.


• iChat backgrounds - I doubt I'll ever use these. Kids and teens might love them.

* The fun Leopard image is from Elmer's Friends by David McKee