Review: Can Leopard Take On Vista?

Well, one is a feline predator and the other is a view. While hardly comparable in those terms, solution providers need to consider how Apple's latest operating system stacks up in comparison to Microsoft's Windows Vista. Will Leopard finally convince solution providers to push Apple solutions instead of Microsoft? Channel Test Center decided to find out.

Just as Vista was a substantial upgrade to previous Windows operating systems, Leopard is a major alteration to the Mac OS. Like Vista, it includes updates to the integrated applications and attempted to improve its security features. Initial reports of Leopard have been fairly positive, but for this comparison Channel Test Center focused on usability features. Engineers were enthusiastic about Leopard's sheer number of features and ability to do things in fewer dialog boxes than Vista. Where there were gaps between Windows and OS X, such as in networking, Leopard has closed them, and where previous versions of OS X did something well, Leopard has jumped ahead and established itself as the king of operating systems.

First of all, a few caveats to this comparison. The Test Center did not look at installation: New York-based Tekserve provided a Macbook with Leopard preinstalled and Lenovo provided a Thinkpad X61 with Vista Business preinstalled. Since the hardware was entirely different, Test Center also did not run any performance benchmarks.

Price: Leopard is easily obtainable, since it will be preinstalled on all new Macs and the upgrade package is available starting at $129. While most PC vendors are selling pre-installed Vista machines, there are a few, such as Panasonic, that continue to offer Windows XP on some of their systems by default. Vista's upgrade packages range from $100 to $259, based on version. And there lies another difference: Unlike Vista, there's only one Leopard. Mac users don't need to scratch their heads trying to figure out which features are included in the "basic" or "business" editions.

Advantage: Leopard

Look and Feel: Mac faithful have waited over two and a half years for the upgrade to Tiger, but anyone hoping for a new look and feel will be disappointed. While there are some visual changes, Apple has focused on making existing tools work better and easier to use. In that sense, Vista is a very significant change visually, with features moving around and things being renamed.

In Leopard, the dashboard is now more transparent and the icons all have a reflection on the dashboard. While it adds to the "ooh, shiny!" element in Leopard, it's quite distracting. In previous OS X versions, an arrow indicated active applications on the dashboard. That arrow has now been replaced with a blue dot at the bottom of the application icon. Test Center engineers found the dots hard to get used to. What was wrong with the arrows? Finder has been overhauled to look more like iTunes. The new interface lets you scroll through thumbnails of images, videos, and documents. All folders use the same icon, however, so there's no way to tell what kind of files are inside the folders. Test Center engineers noted another change in folders they didn't like. In Tiger and previous versions, special folders, such as Library, Applications, Music, and Public, were easy to identify by the brightly-colored images on the folder icons. In Leopard, all the folders are darker blue icons with the images embossed. The low-contrast images make it harder to differentiate when looking at them in small sizes, such as on the Dock. Apple went a step backward in usability with the folder and icons.

As part of its attempt to overhaul the way Explorer looks and feels, Vista's icons do more than just differentiate between file types and folders. Many files have thumbnails for icons, making it visually easy to identify a file. For example, an image file's icon would be the thumbnail of the actual image in Vista. On Leopard, the same file would just have a generic JPEG icon to show that it is a JPEG file. When sifting through multiple image files, this can make a difference. Vista's folder icons also display little piles of thumbnails for a quick peek at what's inside.

Advantage: Vista

Next: Leopard makes a comeback in file management