Leopard – What Am I Missing?

My iMac G5 is running great. It is stable, apps do not crash, and basically it does a great job. So why should I update to Leopard? I bought the box. I keep hearing about Leopard and how great it is. And yes, the box is sitting right next to my computer ready to use, so what was stopping me? Oh yea, my computer is running great. But I really wanted to see Leopard in action. What is a boy to do?

Well, I had an idea. Using a cloner program, I copied my internal HD to an external fire wire drive attached to my iMac G5. I booted from the external drive to be sure it worked fine, which it did. So, I put in the Leopard DVD, rebooted and installed Leopard to the copy of my system on the external drive. The upgrade went fine, although it took a VERY long time I thought, and the computer rebooted just fine. After walking through the usual new OS start-up screens, I was ready to be amazed.

Uh, what is this? It is not so amazing so far. What happened? OK readers, I have a few questions for all of you who have updated already…

So far, I am not as impressed as I hoped to be or wanted to be, so help me out here, what am I missing?

First, it seems that some Leopard functions do not show up on an PowerPC? is this true? Where are those transparent menus that everyone has been complaining about? Do I even get a chance to complain about them at all? It seems not. So far, on my iMac G5, they look JUST like the previous menu bar, expect the blue apple in the upper left is now black in color. So my less than 2 year old G5 iMac is not good enough for this simple feature? How come? I looked for an option, but no joy there.

Spaces? Do I really care? I have used a shareware app that has done this for years and worked just fone. OK, it is now integrated, but again, so what? On my version, I could add a lot more spaces too.

Time Machine? OK, I need to play with this, but as a Retrospect users for over 10 years now, I have GREAT backup software solution. And yes, mine works automatically as well. OK, again, my solution is not built in, but I can count on one hand the number of times I had to recover an old file, and the amount of time Retrospect has taken me was no big deal. And Retrospect has a fast search for old files too. Again, do I really care?

Remote access? Well, I guess I need another Leopard to try this. But I have owned Timbuktu for years and it still works great, from PCs and Macs, and it has no trouble finding my machine when I need it.

I like the blue bars in the finder, it helps in long lists, which is how I usually look at my Finder windows. That is cool, but not $129s worth

I like the new Dock, but I agree, the blue spots kinda suck. But the reflective bar is kind of strange, and I now note that windows I drag to the bottom of the screen get pushed up away from the dock, even when I hide it. Is this a feature?

I like the Pop-up folders on the dock, but we had that in OS-9/ Remember that windows became tabs when placed at the bottom of the screen, and popped up when clicked? About time they brought that back, well, sort of! But again, this is not ground breaking.

And not to mention all the stuff that stopped working. Photoshop 7, something I have used for years now fails to launch. FruitMenu, one of my favorite add-ons for Tiger is broken, and I miss the functions it offered greatly. Several other apps are broken as well.

At this point, I am VERY happy that I can just reboot my Mac with the external disconnected and I have a stable machine again.

OK, so what am I missing please? What CAN’T I do because I am on a PowerPC that I am missing that is cool? And what must have feature have I not played with yet that will make me go WOW, now I know why I need this? Yea, it looks cool, BUT….

Thanks in advance for any and all suggestions, ideas, and feature descriptions.

-Owen-