short attention span, number 34

i picked up my copy of os x leopard last night. it was your typical apple store event, which i suppose, to some extent has spoiled me, considering it’s not every store you go to that has such boundless enthusiasm for the stuff they sell. the line reached nearly to the door, but was quickly pruned by roving people with handheld checkout doohickeys. i was out of there quickly. with a free t-shirt, too.

so far, i like it. there’s no difference in speed. outside of the new ‘cover flow’ view, the finder is noticeably faster; the cover flow view not the quickest way to browse things—i couldn’t use it all the time, but for times when i do need to preview documents, it’s already proven its worth. ironically, this would be most useful at work, which brings up a somewhat interesting question of just when that might become a reality for more people. for people who deal with word and excel and pdfs every day, i’ve got to figure that at this point, it’s a demonstrably superior experience on a mac. me? i’m waiting for the long-rumored port of solidworks. but overall, what i find most interesting is that it’s all come full circle, and the finder finally feels ‘the same’ as it did in os 9. which is not to say it’s anything alike, but more that it finally feels not like an application, but the basis and root of the whole system’s experience. if that makes any sense.

spaces are cool, but i think i’ll have to train myself to use them. mail is noticeably faster. quick-look is pretty neat. the changes to xcode and interface builder are vast and awesome, enough so that i don’t even know what to do with all of them yet (i let my adc subscription lapse). haven’t used time machine yet, but i do plan to once i buy an external drive.

conveniently enough, this has been a good excuse to finally push spendthrift 3 out the door. the website’s been updated, the last bugs have been squashed, the help files have been written, and it’s ready to be released into the wild. and yes, it works in leopard.

in other news, i’m headed down to the meadowlands tonight to watch the revs take on the red bulls on the road, which should be fun, although possibly wet. they’ve been pretty lousy lately, and don’t have a great history in the first game of two-legged playoffs, but we’ll hope for the best.

charlton have also been in rubbish form lately, which makes me just as glad that they weren’t showing their match at the phoenix landing this morning.

fortunately, my own team has won two out of our last three, and played four times in the last two weeks, so i’m a bit tired, but should hopefully have another game to look forward to.

any recommendations for a good bar to watch the sox in in north jersey?