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One of the things with having something in your possession is that you get to test it out, find out what its features are, and then, you can make a better judgment about it. (That's why I bought all three versions of the new iPods back in September. Which reminds me...). The same is true for me having, "dissed" Leopard at its outset, but am now shooting myself for doing so.

(Though, I'll have to get back to you after I attempt to migrate my files and applications and what not from my previous 15-inch PowerBook to this one, and see what happens there! I'll probably be literally shooting myself in the foot with predictable problems there. But granted, any migration, even when I did Panther to Tiger, is a pain in the early stages).

In the short nine days I've had this big cat in my care, one of my favorite things is the new interface. Not a whole lot different from previous incarnations of Mac OS X, but it's definitely cleaner, sharper, and more attractive. And that's not just because of this high-res screen!

The new Dock is absolutely amazing. I get a kick out of moving windows along the edge and seeing its reflection (how on earth did they do that? oh yes, only Apple!) on the bottom. Speaking of bottom, I don't hide it anymore. I hated that option before, because it reminded me so much of Windows' ugly taskbar. I always had it hidden (the Dock). Now I keep it in full view.

Nothing else out there currently stacks up to, well, the new Stacks feature. One of those things that I first thought of as, "whoop dee doo" but when you see it / use it in action, it's just another one of those Apple innovations that make you wonder what you were doing before that.

Another thing I like, maybe in my old age (yeah, right!) is the new list feature. If you didn't notice, it is striped in such a way that differentiates each line from the other, making it easier to read and see what you have in a folder, especially if you've got tons of stuff in there.

Of course, if you've got a lot of stuff? Apple's got that, covered, with the new Cover Flow, now no longer just for iTunes, but for the whole Mac OS. Before, "nay," now? "Yay!" Very useful!! I know I'll like Spaces because I've used a similar third party program--VirtueDesktops--in Tiger.

Remember that I've only had less than 10 days to play with Leopard in-depth, and I'm already sold. There are 300+ new features in version 10.5 and I've only played with the basics. "Add a new Mac to your Mac" means so much more to me because I do have a new Mac with that new Mac underneath its hood!

And being described as "The next big things" and having "Rock-solid foundations" are exactly why Apple made a mistake in comparing Mac OS X to Windows Vista because it's built from the ground up, and to say it's "Vista 2.0" would mean that Leopard is improving upon a failure. Face it, Tiger is not a failure. Apple is not a failure. Apple is not Microsoft. Plus... ?

Microsoft will never be Apple, Inc. But to give them credit, I actually do like the Windows Vista interface in comparison to anything Microsoft's ever put out prior to that. Smells like Tiger? Maybe. Looks like Tiger? A little. A copycat or clone? Never.

I, for one thing, take back my initial opinion of Leopard. As I live with my new "pets," both the Mac and the OS, I will still be using Tiger on at least one machine, because as I said, I still have a need for Classic (and I'm not going to run Mac OS 9 in native mode). One reason I never jumped onto the Intel-based Mac bandwagon, and the reason for buying another "new" PowerBook G4!

Plus, in fairness to Redmond and Cupertino alike, Tiger wasn't stable when it was first released but took some time to work out its finicky feline issues. As did Jaguar and Panther before it. In time, Leopard will straighten out its fur, and by that time, we'll be talking about the next major release of OS X. (To where we'll be saying--stealing?--that now defunct ad campaign of, "Wow.")

Apple isn't lying when they say, "Leopard is the most impressive Mac OS X version yet."

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