I’m buying ASAP, too, but I don’t really see much in Leopard that will make me more efficient, or more productive as a Mac user. What a “productivity enhancement” means is something that saves time, reduces aggravation, reduces steps to get something done, and so on. Since most of what we do as Mac users are in various Mac applications or utilities, and not in OS X itself, there’s probably not much to be gained.

I’m inclined to agree with Wil. Almost. Actual productivity enhancements don’t come easily, and even changes from Jaguar, to Panther, to Tiger were not sufficient to make me 50% more productive.

That said, I urge everyone to check out the Leopard “guided tour” video on the Apple site. Yes, it makes your mouth water, but it also shows how Leopard can be much easier to use than Tiger, especially in Finder operations, but elsewhere, too.

Between you and me, I don’t know what else Apple could do for the next iteration of OS X beyond Leopard, but we’ll find out in a couple of years. In the meantime, only a week to go and the fun begins.

Here are the little things that I believe Leopard will help me improve my efficiency at least -15.

iCal

Massive improvements.  1st iCal now has an API for 3rd parties called Calendar Store for read/write access.  Today’s PIM basically have to open iCal for you just write new calendar data.  The inline editing and offline calendaring features will be important to me as well.  I’m loving this

Mail

I like the systemwide To-Dos but I really like the return of Data Detectors. I’m always receving emails from peope with invites that should be recognized and easily turned into iCal events or addresses and phone numbers that should be added to Addressbook with a few clicks.  Building your calendar and contactacs databases should be easy and Mail takes a step forward here thankfully.

Spotlight

I’m not a huge Spotlight user now but I use it whener I feel like it’ll help me out versus zipping through my folder structure.  With Leopard we have Boolean logic in Spotlight, better performance and parenthesis syntax.  Spotlight has grown up and at the right time as well because with Leopard I’m moving to more of a flat file structure.  All my documents from pages to keynote to PDF will get tossed into the Documents folder.  I will then create and maintain a phalanx of Smart Folders that give me access to all the documents I need.  This is the power of metadata and the improved Spotlight will allow this to be as pain free as possible.

Automator

I purposely avoided using Automator in Tiger.  It showed a lot of promise but it also showed that it was a 1st generation product.  Now I’m ready to dig in to Automator and see how I can utilize it to improve my efficiency for repetitive tasks. The Workflow variables and workflow looping are really key improvements.  I’m hoping the recorder works well for at least simple automatic functions.  I may also consider purchasing Hazel 2.0 from Noodlesoft.

Quicklook

A lot of people don’t care for Quicklook but I love it.  The ability to preview files without having to launch the application is great.  I have so many PDF and picture files that aren’t appropriately named that I want to be able to whiz through and rename or delete.  The Multi Select is going to be huge.  Select a group of files and there’s your slideshow.

These are things that I can see personally benefitting “me” and making me a more efficient computer user.  They’re not super sexy but the results I expect them to bring are.  Other than this there are a lot of creature comforts in Leopard that I’m looking forward to that don’t necessarily improve the bottom line in efficiency but will make computing more enjoyable and that’s an efficiency gain unto itself.

Yep, I gotta hang with murchison on this one. Productivity enhancements of even 5% are hard to come by in any form we might recognize as providing them, but many people regarded Exposé as chintzy eye candy. I am not a huge user of Exposé, but my wife could not go without it. I use Dashboard for a host of quick lookup tasks that I can complete in less time than it takes to load a browser, much less the pages and logins necessary to gather the data I need.

Heck, let’s even look at the ability in Safari 3 to make those little widgets for viewing fragments of pages. I can see whole developing pages with modular components (as some ISPs now offer for users) that are compact, just so Mac users can have access to key information the site aggregates in ways that go beyond RSS.

There are undoubtedly a great range of improvements and new features in Leopard to keep us amused for a few days and incrementally improve our productivity.  But one of the core reasons for updating to Leopard is the underlying improvements and extensions that Apple has made to the developer libraries, such as Core Animation, that sit underneath all of this GUI-goodness.  Pretty soon, Apple applications will demand Leopard simply to be able to run and take advantage of these libraries.  Then you’ll need to update whether you need Spaces and Time Machine or not.  That aside, Leopard also includes an improved scheduler and better multi-core support in applications like Mail, to make overall better use of all these dual and quad core processors Apple are using now.  Why use a dual core processor, when only one of the cores is being properly used?  There also a load of other improvements to the underlying Darwin operating system.  The eye candy sells the update - but many of the key improvements are under the hood.

My answer to Ms Bambi’s excellent question is I don’t need to upgrade to OS X Leopard.  Productivity, eye candy, under the hood are nice buzz words or phrases but, the simple truth is, I want to upgrade to OS X Leopard. The little improvements to Finder and Mail are enough for me. Also, as with Camino, I simply love being on the cutting edge, don’t you ?

Great post Bambi, and as of the most recent version, 4.8.0, I too am a faithful Path Finder user .

I think what we are seeing here is the fundamental difference between the Microsoft strategy and the Apple strategy, much of it being rooted in the structure of the core code of each OS.

Ever since Windows 3.x, Microsoft has sought to promote its new versions of Windows (excepting ME) as major upgrades, when in fact the changes were more important from the perspective of the number of coding hours required to get the product out the door.

Apple, since the shift away from Mac OS 9.x, has been building out on a new foundation that is—and I challenge Microsoft apologists to find a way to counter this—far leaner than Windows. This allows Apple to make upgrades that, by version number, seem small, all the while adding those little touches that make the difference to those of us who prefer this side of the commercial OS line.

We will all upgrade, though how soon we do it will vary greatly. I would ask this question: For each new version of OS X, have you seen your productivity increase measurably?

I saw mine leap forward with the Public Beta (I still have all of my materials for it, for sentimental value). Then 10.1 gave a huge boost in performance and ease of use. The jumps to 10.2 and 10.3 were less significant for me, but 10.4 was impressive. From what I can see of 10.5, I expect to get at least as much out of it as I did from 10.4. Other have mentioned the iCal API, which, though not as widely accessible as Dashboard and Automator, will bring developers out of the woodwork to make our lives easier and productivity higher.

The key, interestingly (despite the now passing rancor over the iPhone), is that Windows has become less user-customizable as the Mac has become more so, skins and sound sets notwithstanding. We are days away from another move in that direction, and that means productivity options, key word, are opening up for us.

I plan on using Superduper to clone both drives (just in case something happens) on my G4 and Intel iMac. Then I will do an archive/install of Leopard.

Here is what I am wondering. I have a G5 iMac, which I love, and am considering upgrading to Leopard. But, as I understand it, there are a couple of features that will only work on Intel. The question is how quickly is everything going to go all Intel and leave me behind. I think my choices are a) Install Leopard, b) Buy a new Intel iMac, and c) Keep using Tiger indefinitely, and collect all the software that will run on a PowerPC and save it for posterity. Any thoughts?

Robert - 24 October 2007 02:35 PM

Here is what I am wondering. I have a G5 iMac, which I love, and am considering upgrading to Leopard. But, as I understand it, there are a couple of features that will only work on Intel. The question is how quickly is everything going to go all Intel and leave me behind. I think my choices are a) Install Leopard, b) Buy a new Intel iMac, and c) Keep using Tiger indefinitely, and collect all the software that will run on a PowerPC and save it for posterity. Any thoughts?

Well, everything Apple has already gone to Intel. PowerPC chips are dead so far as Macs are concerned, so the faster you move over to Intel Macs, the better you’ll be. It’s only money. Of course, my next door neighbor is running a 17 inch aluminum PowerBook which came with Jaguar installed, then he upgraded to Panther, then to Tiger, and now to Leopard, which should run fine for a couple of more years. In January his Mac celebrates the 5th anniversary. That’s not a bad life cycle.