Michael Gartenberg, a vice president at Jupiter Research, wrote that in his opinion Apple’s Leopard redefines what personal computing looks like at Computerworld on Wednesday.
Instead of providing a rundown of Leopard’s new features, which has been done elsewhere, Mr. Gartenberg sat back and took a 30,000 ft view.
After the installs on several Macs, Mr. Gartenberg noted, “Boot times were quick, and system sleep and resume worked flawlessly on the MacBooks I used for testing. On a variety of G5 and Intel-based Macs, I had no performance or stability issues, even when I upgraded from Leopard’s predecessor, Tiger, instead of performing a clean update. In only one instance did a system freeze. That’s a level of stability I haven’t achieved with any machine running any other operating system.”
In addition, the noted researcher stated his opinion that, “Apple once again has redefined what personal computing looks like.”
The little things that set Leopard apart from Tiger were also described and appreciated. Leopard iChat “runs rings around what’s available for other systems,” he noted. Vista has “widgets,” but they don’t compare to Leopard’s ease of use. Mail’s ToDo list amplified what he was already doing with his e-mail.
While Mr. Gartenberg expected that while most IT shops will stick with Windows, Macs with Leopard and Boot Camp [have a] “host of refined productivity features and rock-solid stability” that will, with no cost penalty compared to a PCs, gain converts.