Leopard first impressions - Hands on with the feature complete beta

One of my friends was at the WWDC and the lucky blighter has a copy of Mac OS X 10.5 codenamed Leopard (no matter how much I begged he wasn't making me a copy), and he brought his MacBook round today and I got to stroke the big bad cat for myself.

Right, first of all even if you were a little underwhelmed by the WWDC announcements and keynote you will like Leopard.
I've spent just over two hours with it today and it's an awesome system (I'm typing this on Leopard now in my last few moments with it).

People concerned about the new menu bar have nothing to worry about, it's actually much less distracting than the old one.
The new dock is nice, and again it's not as obtrusive as I thought it would be, although it is easier to accidentally drag applications off the dock.

Features>

1) Time Machine...
This is AWESOME, I didn't realise just how powerful it was until I tried it out. I hooked my friends system up to my hub with all my drives on and my MacBook in target disk mode and time machine detected my disks and I could choose whether or not to add them to the back up.

The UI is so simple it's scary and I tried many times to trash, empty trash & restore various items and it caught it all.

2) Spaces...
Great idea although I'd have liked to see it integrated a little better with dual screen set-ups so that I could keep various items on each screen as a space of it's own rather than each space including both screens, but that's not a big deal.

3) Finder...
I was sceptical about the new finder but it was needless, the new Finder is rock solid and very, very easy to use with other computers on your network.
This is a huge improvement, I was one of the few who didn't have a problem with the Finder, but after seeing this I'm glad Apple finally did FTFF.

4) Stacks...
Brilliant. Just brilliant. Again another incredibly intuitive UI addition that makes things so much simpler and easier in such a nice way. I dragged a few folders on to the dock and they instantly became stacks that pop open and close with a single click.
The downloads Stack is particularly useful and very impressive.

5) Spelling...
Now with grammar check too!
It's a little ropey still but it's not too bad and a nice addition to keep up with the competition.

6) Compatibility...
I was worried about small apps and things like my tablet software not working but I installed it and it was fine, better than fine in fact it just worked.
The only issue during installation was that System Preferences crashed I assume as it was adding the Wacom preference pane, but it did no harm to the system.

7) Quick Look...
Useful if you're wading through pictures and video and can't be bothered to open every one to find the one you're after. It's a nice feature, it's not a killer app, but it's a welcome addition to the OS.

8) Mail...
Most importantly in my opinion, the mail account setup is now far better.
One of the biggest complaints I had about Mail was the way it handled setting up new accounts, this has been smoothed over now and made more intuitive.
The set-up aside, the Mail.app is a very nice improvement over the old version. Notes and To Do I can see being very useful to me too as I always have Mail open and it could be more convenient than Stickies for me.

9) Address Book...
Not a major App but one I want to like more than I do, this version is nicer, it's not a lot different but the small changes and interface lift make it all that bit easier to use and more enjoyable to spend time with.

10) Candy for the eyes and the ears...
Right, the last bit and the most important for me. Leopard is way nicer to spend time with, the small changes such as new screen savers, desktop backgrounds, dock, menu bar, icons, the system wide UI etc. make it a pleasure to use.
Accessibility is better as well if you're partially sighted as there is a new more human voice in the speech section that is actually quite pleasant to listen to.
The new Dashboard feature where you can hit a button in Safari, drag over a section of a web page and make your own widget is pretty damn cool too and yet another killer dashboard app.

In Closing...

Leopard does need a polish still, it's a little buggy so I wouldn't be comfortable installing it on my machine just yet, but by the time it hits the shops less than 4 months time it'll be a great system and a joy to use, the speed of the system even now is quite stunning.

I thoroughly enjoyed my 2 hours with it today and almost didn't want to give it back, but I settled for stealing the new desktop backgrounds instead to remind me it's coming. ;o)

I for one can't wait for it to be released.