First, my likes:
- Great evolution of it's already slick interface. As much as Vista was an entirely different UI for upgrading Windows users, Mac users would not be completely lost within the Leopard UI. There are some changes, which I will note, but many are enhancements to Finder and the existing UI.
- As much as Vista made it's GUI, gooey and somewhat goopey, Leopard is simplified and yet made the overall look of Mac OS X less globular. This has been a consistent change through each major release version of OS X.
- Firewall preferences moved to the Security System Preferences tab. Makes sense, doesn't it?
- Apple Mail - RSS feeds now available in Mail as mail messages. It's integrated the To-Do list from Apple iCal and has added a Notes feature. It's visually similar to the Notes app on the iPhone so it's not a stretch to guess that iPhones will eventually sync with Apple Mail Notes.
- Safari - Web clippings - Safari now has the ability to let you draw an area on the webpage that you can e-mail to recipients.
- Finder Dock Stacks - The Dock allows you to create a Stack, which is a folder on the Dock that shows you a preview of the folder contents, including image previews, document previews, etc. This is the replacement to the click and hold feature of folders on the Dock that used to show the folder contents in a list format.
- Finder - Cover Flow - My first impression: the Finder is now iTunes!! The left nav menu looks exactly like iTunes and Cover Flow was derived directly from iTunes. The Cover Flow view shows file previews for images and documents. It's an ingenious way of leveraging the navigation for it's popular software.
- Time Machine - Backups finally made easy and user-friendly. All you need is a USB drive and you're good to go.
- Spaces - For those familiar with Virtual Desktops, this is Apple's implementation of Virtual Desktops. It allows you to group you open apps in different desktops, all on the same desktop. It's for those of us who have/need a billion apps on the desktop at any given time.
- iCal icon on the dock FINALLY shows today's date. It only took 2 full versions.
- WAY better integration with Airport AirDisks. I no longer have to authenticate my credentials every time I access the AirDisks. I also automatically shows up in my Shared folders in the Finder. This was one of those "about time" features. Also gone is the AirDisk Utility.
- Back to My Mac - I haven't tried this featured, but it sounds intriguing. For .Mac users, it allows them to control their Leopard-based Mac at home remotely from another Leopard-based Mac.
Now my issues:
- Safari 3 rendered all my Safari plugins useless. Lame.
- Time Machine does not support Airport AirDisks any more. This was an initial feature that has dropped when Leopard dropped. Not happy. I'm expecting a $100 rebate on my Airport Extreme Base Station.
- New firewall settings are dumbed-down. No advanced settings that will allow users to specify particular ports that can be allowed through or blocked.
- Synergy no longer works. Synergy is a service that runs to allow you to share a keyboard and mouse across 2 or more computers. The best thing about Synergy was that you could share the same keyboard and mouse across different operating systems.
Overall, it's been a good experience. No upgrade problems except my Safari browser cookies got nuked during the upgrade process.
