Latest Release from Apple is Coming October 26

By jimdiggitydog

Mac OSX Leopard is coming…

Huzzah and huzzah!

I must admit to being excited - but also somewhat guarded. I’m always a little hesitant to be the first one on the block to upgrade to the “latest and greatest,” and I’m still looking to err on the side of caution on this one.

From a business standpoint, I’ve gotta guard my assets and hedge my bets when it comes to upgrading ANYTHING. I must make sure it works, and that it works right from the moment I install it. I can’t afford a few hours of being dead in the water, let alone a few days. I want to make sure that the upgrade will play well with all my stuff - printer, external drives, software, routers, etc.

I resisted OSX for almost 2 years after it came out, because of non-native programs and what-not - but this one might be a little harder to resist. It’s sexy, there’s a lot of core updates, and it’s very interconnected, which is nice.

Mail got a big overhaul with some nifty project-management features.

For me, one of the biggest new features is the Time Machine thing. Using an external hard drive, your Mac keeps a log of the changes on your machine daily - and you can flip through folders and applications as they were a day, a week, a month ago. How many hours would that have saved me after ditching folders full of source files or catalogs of images? Sheesh!

Spaces looks promising, as it’s sort of like having unlimited numbers of monitors to keep your windows and sets of applications open and available, but without cluttering up your main monitor. Sweet!

They’re not saying how much of a resource hog it’ll be - but it’s going to have to be pretty hefty to allow for some of the features. The system itself is getting a few new underpinnings, which will be good.

But - and here’s the lesson for the day - I’m not sure about the stability (yet) and I want to remain productive, so I’ll have to put this one on the back burner for a day or three…

Staying productive is more important than bells and whistles, even if those bells and whistles are really cool and slick and could wind up saving a lot of time. As a freelancer, your billable hours have to take precedence over your desire to have the latest and greatest.

Still - somebody - quick - send me $129 and some Red Bull and a couple of days off. I’ll let you know how awesome Leopard is…