Last time we talked about installing Mac OS 10.5 “Leopard”.  This week we pick up after the trademark Apple “bwong” startup sound, signaling our formerly “Tiger” based Mac being born anew as a “Leopard”.

The first thing you notice is the new default desktop image – a nebula somewhere in a distant galaxy.  Exactly what this has to do with a Leopard, I don’t know.  Anyway, the next thing you notice is the Menu Bar at the top of the display is semitransparent, letting some of the desktop image bleed through.  The new Dock is also semitransparent and gains a 3D, reflective look.  Tiger’s  small black triangles below the icons for active applications are replaced by bright blue dots.

Leopard also unifies the look of open application windows with a consistent brushed metal theme.  The active window (the one you’re working in) casts a deeper shadow than those in the background.  Background windows also become “lighter” when not in use, making it easy to distinguish active windows when many applications are open at the same time.  It’s pleasing to the eye and effective

One of the most common maladies that computer users suffer from is “cluttered desktop syndrome”, or “CDS”.  CDS has risen to epidemic proportions with the rise of the internet, as people download programs, images, PDF files – you name it.  Leopard combats CDS with a new feature called “Stacks”.  A Stack is a Dock item that gives you fast access to a folder full of files.  Leopard has two ready-made Stacks in the Dock – the Downloads and Documents folders in your Home directory.  Let’s say you download a PDF file from a web site.  Safari is set to deposit that file in your Downloads folder, which is linked to the Downloads Stack in the Dock.  Click the Downloads icon in the Dock, and icons representing the contents of the Downloads folder fan upwards (or appear in an opaque grid).  Move your pointer up to one of the icons, click on it, and that file opens in the application it requires.  The most recent downloaded files appear in the bottom of the fan (or grid), making it easy to get them later.

You can create your own Stacks by simply dragging any folder into the Dock.  For example, you could drop your Applications folder into the Dock and launch your applications from the resulting Stack.  Fast.  Easy. Effective.

Finder windows are also revamped in Leopard.  They look a lot like iTunes now, with a Sidebar down the left side.  Sidebar items are grouped into four categories: devices (like your Mac’s hard drive and attached external drives), places (subfolders of your Home folder like Movies, Music, Pictures), shared computers (others on your home network, or, if you’re on the road, your home Mac through a feature called Back to My Mac, which we’ll cover in detail another time), and smart searches (to let you click one button to see All Images, Movies or Documents on your Mac, or files you worked on Today, Yesterday, or in the Past Week).  No, there’s no “Tomorrow” search, but I’m sure Apple’s working on it.

In addition to the Icon, List, and Columns views in Finder windows, Leopard adds the “Cover Flow” view, where you can flip through your documents like you flip through cover art in iTunes.  Stop on a document and hit the Space Bar, and you invoke “Quick Look” – possibly my favorite feature in Leopard.

Oh look – we’re nearly out of time.  Next time, we take a longer look at Quick Look and get really “Spacey