The upcoming Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard”… will be very handy when it stops crashing.

I can give few specifics, though I’m not tied by any formal non-disclosure agreement. Let’s just say I don’t wish to discuss why I know what I know, and leave it at that.

Small LAN users (home network, small business) who frequently share files between computers will appreciate the new Finder. Ditto those who like to search visually for files; the new “Flow” view is great for pictures and movies. I can see “Quick Look” eventually becoming one of those little Mac OS perks I can’t remember how I lived without.

What else… I haven’t tried a whole lot of applications yet… but I’m open to requests. Some of the fancy new features in iChat seem to be… “missing” from the beta I’m using, for example “Backdrops”. Mail has some very fancy new features (notes, to-dos) but the built-in activity viewer (an optional, and somewhat buried, separate window in 10.4 Tiger) is reason enough for me to upgrade. Safari is snappy, bla bla bla exciting new features, but… (and this is a big but, think J. Lo, and then add a dozen Krispy Kremes a day for a year and a week) as 10.5 does away with Input Manager (yeah, whatever that means) that means no more Inquisitor, one of the main reasons to use Safari in the first place. I may have to rethink this whole early adopter thing.

Incidentally, it’s running on a Dual 1.25GHz G4, no troubles with performance (stability, that’s another story).

Now, what else would you like to know?

I know I haven’t updated in some time; I’ve been avoiding the internet until I was pretty sure the Chocolate Rain thing was over.