OSX Leopard

Everybody and their mother is posting about the new features premiered at WWDC for OSX Leopard. From the user's perspective, there are a couple nifty interface upgrades. The desktop looks a little nicer (now with a reflective dock) and there are some new ways of organizing clutter (stacks and spaces). Lifehacker has a pretty good roundup posted as a gallery.

What interests me is the new Finder. People have been asking for a better file browser since OSX came out. The fact that you can't preview an image in the file browser without resorting to column view (and even then, the preview is pretty darn small) is an annoyance to me, and one of the few places Windows actually beat out OSX. There are a few replacement file browsers you can download / try for OSX, but they all looked horribly cluttered to me.

But the new Finder fixes all my problems with it. Thumbnail views in normal browsing mode, and as a replacement for the Filmstrip view in Windows, it has coverflow. Not sure if I'll ever use it, but it sure looks pretty. This will let me manage photos a lot easier than resorting to the slow-loading iPhoto. The new sidebar, which has quick-access smart folders for files modified in the last few days, looks very useful as well.

So, I might actually be buying Leopard. Partially to play with Core Animation (as soon as I think of a good mac application to code), partially for iLife '07, and mostly for basic, quick usability improvements.

Part of the reason I switched to OSX was for the constant eye candy. Visual snacks make using the OS just a bit more fun, and with as much time as I spend on the computer, that's pretty important. It's good to see Apple won't be giving up on that any time soon.