Meow. It's Leopard.

On October 26th, Apple released it's new "baby".. the new operating system for Mac, OS 10.5 or as many people know it, Leopard. As any dedicated Apple fanatic would, I had this preorderd to ship to my door on the release date. This is the fifth major update to OS X and contains, by Apple's count, up to 300 new features... such as major changes in the OS's interface, updates to several of the OS's built in programs, and improved security. While I don't have the time to go over all 300, I'd like to touch on two of the key new features. New UI: While the new user interface isn't %100 different, there have been drastic changes, including a new dock, windows, color scheme, icons, and navigation. The new window styles take after the iTunes look many people have come to be familiar with and adore. There is a new "Quick Look" feature, that allows you to view the contents of a file, image, video, etc before even opening it. Another cool new addition was "Spaces"... which is a new way to be clutter free while working on your Mac. It lets you choose certain applications and windows for each "space", for example.. one "space" could be solely for my iTunes window, while another can house my iChat (or Adium) and Mail, and another for Photoshop, my HTML editor, and FTP program. I can tab through these spaces instead of having to have all of these windows open at once, cluttering up my monitor. Time Machine: One of the most anticipated updates to the OS is the implementation of this new backup feature called Time Machine. Not only is it automatic, but its visually stunning and incredibly easy to use. It's Apple's way of encouraging users who don't regularly back up data to start doing so. The most impressive feature of Time Machine is the way it backs your data up... instead of creating identical copies of your drive, it will track changes you make on individual files and save those changes on an hourly basis, and retreival of these backed-up files is something that an average computer user can do with ease. So far I'm extremely pleased with the new OS, and continue to find something new about that makes me go "Ooh, that's cool!" almost every day.