Dock:    I love the look of the new dock but it goes much further than just a nice 3D look.   Stacks is a great feature.   The “fan” looks great but personally I prefer the “grid” look as it is more practical especially if you have an Applications stack set up.   The downloads folder on the dock is also another great addition.  It took me a moment after I first downloaded a file as my default location was the desktop so I was wondering where it had gone but then I remembered watching the introduction video on Apples website last week.

Mail:    Only recently I began looking at RSS readers and now with Leopard Mail has a built in RSS reader.  I had been using Safari with a dedicated section on the bookmarks bar but this allows you to manage your RSS’s much better.   I won’t say it’s the best on the market but it is a new move for Apples Mail app.   Also the tasks function is a handy addition (I use Outlook in my work environment) so I find being able to do similar things on Mail fantastic.

Safari:    I haven’t noticed any major change here yet other than the ability to create your own widgets directly from within Safari.  It is interesting but I’m not sure what my uses for it will be yet.   The one downside of the new Safari is that Inquisitor does not work.   I have found a hack on the web but haven’t tried it out yet.   As I’m writing this I went to find the link to that hack and found that there is now an updated version of Inquisitor and low and behold it is compatible with Leopard. Download from here Inquisitor.

Time Machine:    This is where my frustration begins with the new OS.   I have been excited about this feature since I first heard about it.   I heard that you would need an external hard drive to use it.   Not a problem as I use that for my media files.   What we weren’t told however is that when you go to set up time machine it looks to erase the data on your external hard drive first.   Now my external hard drive is larger than that in my Macbook Pro so I have nowhere to move my data.   Therefore Time Machine is useless to me unless I purchase a second external drive.  I’m sure someone will find a work around.   Maybe partitioning the external drive may work.  I haven’t looked at that yet.

Spaces:    I love using spaces.   I have four separate desktops set up (you are allowed up to 16 which could get difficult to keep track of I find 4 enough).   One I use for iTunes and Quicktime, one for Mail and Safari, one for iWork and one for iLife.   You can move windows between spaces and switch spaces with ease (I use active corners to switch).

Parental Controls:    As I do not have any young children I have not really looked too closely at setting up this function however it seems like a good feature for anyone worried about what their child is doing online.   It allows you to limit computer time to a fixed amount per week split between weekend and weekdays.  It also allows you to set a time during the day when the user can access the computer.   You can restrict Mail and iChat and view a log of websites visited.  So if you are worried about your child’s use of the family computer then check out Parental Controls.

iSight and iChat:    The new backgrounds effects feature in both iSight and iChat is a source of much fun but make sure you are using it against a reasonably blank background with no one passing back and fourth behind you as it will spoil the experience.   I haven’t tried out the share screen function in iChat yet but I like the concept behind it.   I’ll update when I get a chance to check it out.   I am the only one of my buddies who has a .mac account and being from Ireland no one there uses AIM either.   I hope iChat gets and update for gmail.