Hands on Guide to Mac OS X 10.5

Mac OS X 10.5 tries to set a new standard in operating systems with an elegant user interface and new features in Mac OS X 10.5" href="http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/300.html">300 new features.

For most Mac users, the new operating system, codenamed Leopard, will not offer a revolutionary new way for them to work. But key features like Time Machine and Boot Camp will entice users to go ahead and upgrade.

A face lift for the Finder
The first thing after upgrading to the new operating system that a user will notice is the new 3D Dock with a semi-translucent bar rather than the traditional 2D Dock present in Mac OS X 10.4. The new dock allows for stacking Dock icons, which allows a user to group icons together. When you click on a stack of icons, the remaining icons stream upwards and allow you to select one. This addresses a traditional user complaint for Mac OS X that you could not organize your Dock icons and that you needed a really large screen just to fit all of the dock icons that you want.

Cover Flow and Quick Look
The Finder is what most people consider to be their Desktop on a Mac. It's how users access applications and files on their computers and Apple has added an entirely new view called Cover Flow. In addition to View by List or view by Icon, Cover Flow essentially gives you an iTunes-like interface into everything on your computer. Next comes Quick Look. Just like you can see album art for the music in your iTunes library, this feature shows you a graphical preview of documents on your computer whether they are word documents or digital videos. Quick Look allows a user to flip through a document or preview a video right from the Finder without taking the time to open a program. Apple asserts that Cover Flow and Quick Look will enable users to find their files more quickly and integrates with Spotlight,MacOS X's built in search tool that already allows you to search file contents.