Winner of our recent “What’s your fa.vo.rit poll gave us the new mac finder as reader’s favorite new application in Leopard. With good reason. The new finder is faster, more intuitive and 100% more useful than the previous version.

Cover flow allows you to flip through the contents of your computer with a screen not unlike the iTunes cover art browser, a la 1970’s jukebox. It takes a lot to impress me, and I’m impressed. Preview photos, flip through document pages without opening them, even play a video in the winder window; all effortlessly and considerably faster than with Tiger.

Combined with a new version of spotlight, finding those long-forgotten files is no longer an issue. I can only speak for myself, but I have collected a huge array of files over the last few months and finding them with Tiger could be a chore. Leopard may not be a massive upgrade, but it’s far superior to Tiger.

You can, if you wish, go “old school” and use the more traditional hierarchical view. Even with this there is massive improvements. Photo and movie previews load quickly and accurately. And once again, you can play videos and flip through multi page documents, although it’s rather hard to read any pages of a document without a magnifying glass.

Apple have certainly upped the ante with Leopard and it’s my fa.vo.rit app so far.

Apple’s new operating system, 10.5 or “Leopard,” continues to surprise me. None of the new features is particularly well advertised or explained, but my current favorite has got to be “Spaces.”

I like to keep a lot of windows open and active at the same time. Even with two monitors, it’s a challenge to keep them from getting in the way of each other. If I have five browsers open (I use Firefox, Safari, Camino and IE7 in a Windows environment) along with PhotoShop, Word and a couple of FTP programs all at the same time, I can hardly see the forest for the trees.

That’s where I am finding “Spaces” incredibly useful. Spaces allows you to selectively have some of your open windows hidden, and switch between sets of open windows without having to go through all the others. It’s almost like having four desktops at the same time, and being able to effortlessly switch between them. Here are some screen shots of my normal working environment:

Even with Expose it still looks a mess. Here is an example of “Spaces” where I have placed the windows for each job in to a different desktop. I can now switch between them at the click of a button. The mess becomes much easier to navigate through. Leopard may not be quite ready yet, but this feature is incredible.

It’s not yet completely intuitive either, but I think once I get the hang of it this will be my most used new app.

In contrast to my last Leopard post, “Five reasons NOT to upgrade to Leopard,” it’s only fair to offer the other side of the coin. As I said, I already have a love/hate relationship with Apple’s new OS, and have now spent a little more time with it, so here are five reasons to upgrade immediately.

1. The Finder. With Tiger, many’s the time I have sat in frustration as the finder locked up looking through large folders, seemingly unable to cope with that much information. Not with leopard. Apple has completely rewritten the finder application and it’s now one of the fastest, best-looking file managers ever – bar none. Quicklook allows you to scroll through the contents of a folder with a stunning preview of what the files’ contents are. Photos, movies, text documents, everything is shown as a quick preview. The view is good enough to read text on a word.doc or see the opening frame of a movie or a photo preview. Absolutely amazing.

2. Time machine. Minimal fuss, work or trouble to have full backups at the click of a mouse button. This is currently my favorite feature. The interface is like looking down a time tunnel, which a series of FULL backups spreading out into the distance.

3. Spaces. This new desktop management system allows an almost inconceivable amount of windows to be open at the same time, switching effortlessly between several desktops. A major time saver for fools such as myself who tend to have way too many windows open at the same time.

4. Spotlight. Spotlight actually works now. WooHoo, throw in a few Boolean search terms and you really get a decent response. Way to go Apple.

5. Screen sharing. Connected to another mac, it is possible to “share” screens with someone, so rather than telling them what you are doing, you can actually show them. I have tried this long distance and it works a treat.

Installing Apple’s new operating system, 10.5.0 or Leopard, should be a painless experience. “Should,” being the operative word. It seems that Apple have managed to bend time with their new application, “Time Machine,” because the phrase, “Less than one minute remaining,” lasts a damn sight longer than a minute.

Let me be the first to put my hand up and say, “OK, I should have backed up first.” In my defense, I have used Apple computers for years, have upgraded successfully all the way from 9.1 through to Tiger and NEVER had a problem.

The Leopard install did not go well. The first obstacle I came across was, on inserting the disc, there was only one option available to me: “Erase and Install.” No, I do not want to erase ALL the information on my computer. Why on earth would I want to do that? OK, no problem, I will back out of the installer, save the information I need to keep and start again. Right?

Wrong. Hit the restart button, pick the disc I want to start from (my original hard drive)- Nothing – Just Apple’s version of the blue screen of death. Hmmmmm, that can’t be right, OK, I’ll just restart.

No go. The computer starts to boot up, then dies. OK, no problem, I’ll start in safe mode. No I won’t – same thing, dies on startup. OK I’ll try starting up with the c button held down. Great, it started. Not great, my only option is to erase the disc and install from scratch again. I do not want to do that. Not only that, but the disc utility is telling me that the hard drive cannot be un-mounted, so I can’t do any repair work on it.

OK, no problem, I’ll take the disc out and try again. Reboot with the track pad button held down. Nope. OH SHIT, I’m starting to get worried now. It won’t reboot in any mode, I can’t get the disc out and I’m miles from the nearest Apple store, I am in France and seriously doubt my ability to explain to the bored technician what the problem is in French. I see myself lamely pointing at my MacBook Pro, shrugging helplessly and offering a large pile of money saying, “S’il vous plait.” It is now one ‘o’ clock in the morning and Mark is not a happy bunny.

I’m getting desperate by this time. I have already wasted a good three hours when I should have been working. So, I decide to look at my options. They seem slim. I can’t restart, I can’t get the disc out and I do not want to erase all my data.

Aha, I say to myself, I can install Leopard on my external hard drive, recover the data from my MacBook Pro’s hard drive, erase the disc, install Leopard on the MacBook and migrate the data back. A solution. After four more hours looking at this screen the problem was finally solved.

If you are thinking of upgrading to leopard in the near future, unless you own a real time machine, I suggest doing it this way until Apple get their act together. In my next post I will take a look at the more positive aspects of Apple’s new OS. Leopard. In the meantime, here’s a quick look at my new desktop. Thank God for the migration Assistant. In the meantime, Mr. Apple, you owe me 7 hours work. You know where to send the check.