06 November 2006
Mac OS X Leopard's Clean Desktop
For those who haven't looked at a Mac in a while, Leopard may be a surprise.
Looking at the desktop it looks like a cross between the KDE and Gnome desktops with some features of each. From Gnome it includes something similar to the menu bar (usually) across the top of the desktop. From KDE it includes the quick launch and taskbar across the bottom of the desktop.
From most *nix desktops, it includes the ability to have multiple desktops, but it improves on this by allowing multiple desktops to be displayed at the same time. This does greatly reduce the size of the applications on the desktops, but it does help if you are working on two applications at the same time. Many MS Windows users may say that this is no different than having two windows open side-by-side, but there is a big difference when you can have all your applications organized on different desktops. It makes for a lot cleaner workspace and improves productivity when you just change desktops and can go back with everything being in exactly the same place. With the Mac's added feature of being able to bring multiple desktops up at the same time, it adds more usability for when you need to do too many things in too many desktops for other methods to be useful.
Leopard features other applications as well, such as a backup application automatically backs up the computer without any user involvement, but I will let those who are interested look at them on their own. The desktop is the most interesting and useful aspect of the system, while the rest is just added bonuses. with an unfriendly desktop it doesn't really matter what applications are running on the system, it is still difficult to use.
Looking at the desktop it looks like a cross between the KDE and Gnome desktops with some features of each. From Gnome it includes something similar to the menu bar (usually) across the top of the desktop. From KDE it includes the quick launch and taskbar across the bottom of the desktop.
From most *nix desktops, it includes the ability to have multiple desktops, but it improves on this by allowing multiple desktops to be displayed at the same time. This does greatly reduce the size of the applications on the desktops, but it does help if you are working on two applications at the same time. Many MS Windows users may say that this is no different than having two windows open side-by-side, but there is a big difference when you can have all your applications organized on different desktops. It makes for a lot cleaner workspace and improves productivity when you just change desktops and can go back with everything being in exactly the same place. With the Mac's added feature of being able to bring multiple desktops up at the same time, it adds more usability for when you need to do too many things in too many desktops for other methods to be useful.
Leopard features other applications as well, such as a backup application automatically backs up the computer without any user involvement, but I will let those who are interested look at them on their own. The desktop is the most interesting and useful aspect of the system, while the rest is just added bonuses. with an unfriendly desktop it doesn't really matter what applications are running on the system, it is still difficult to use.
