• The grey Apple logo now remains on screen during the entire boot sequence and also got a subtle emboss to it. Also, no more blue while booting.
• It usually takes my iMac a few seconds after I hit Cmd+Opt+Eject to fall asleep. That hasn’t changed, but what has changed is that it now immediately turns off the display. The extra visual feedback it provides is nice.
• The grey top area of windows now has a very subtle grainy texture to it.
• The bottom corners of windows are now rounded.
• Quick Look now also works on stacks in the Dock. Simply hover over any item and hit space.
• Speaking of Quick Look, it now uses a light grey window instead of the HUD display. Also, click and hold or right-click the Open with [Application] button to open the file with a different application.
• Right-click a file → Open with → App Store... to search the App Store for compatible applications.
• The huge 512×512 pixels icons introduced in OS X Leopard are apparently still not huge enough. Some apps, including Launchpad and App Store, now have icons measuring 1024×1024 pixels.
• Almost everything is now 64 bits, including the kernel and even iTunes.
• The Special Characters applet got a face lift.
• The dictionary popup also received a face lift.
• DigitalColor Meter no longer displays hexadecimal values, which kinda sucks.
• No more Front Row.
• Safari’s content area can be resized horizontally even in full screen mode.
• Safari now has WebGL support and a “Do Not Track” feature, but they’re apparently still in beta. Both options are located in the Develop menu and off by default.

There’s probably much, much more I haven’t discovered yet. Apple seems to have touched everything in this release.

Anyway, it looks like this:

SimpleGradient Growl style

If you like the minimalistic design and would like to use it yourself, then go ahead and download it.

Be sure to check out my other Growl style.

Apple iMac

Right upon arrival, I replaced the memory (I already bought two strips of 2 GiB prior to ordering the iMac itself), so it now has a spacious 4 GiB available. After the first boot, I installed all available updates and my most used applications. I’m now in the process of making all the settings and customizations that were not synced through my MobileMe account, and Time Machine is making its initial backup. When that’s complete, I’ll proceed with installing all other apps that now run on my MacBook.

When all that is done, and I have my iMac pretty much as my MacBook is now, I’ll probably reformat the latter and give it a fresh OS X install. At which point it can finally be what it was meant to be from the start: a portable secondary computer.

After 2 days of playing around with it, all I can say is: Incredible! Not only is it notably faster than Tiger (Leopard’s predecessor), its new features are simply fantastic. Of course, I’ve used things like backup software (Time Machine) and virtual desktops (Spaces) before, but somehow, Apple always manages to implement things just a little more streamlined and polished than the rest.

I’m very happy, and Leopard once again remembers me why I love OS X so much.

All this playing around resulted in an all new Growl style. It’s inspired by the semi-transparent toolboxes found in some OS X software (iLife for instance), therefore I named it ToolBox. And this is what it looks like:

ToolBox Growl style

So you want it too, eh? Well, you’re in luck, you can download it right here!

Download

Oh, and it works best with opacity set around 90%.

Those vague vertical lines in the screenshot are probably an artifact from OS X making the screenshot. They are not there in reality. The images used for the background are fully opaque (except for the corners) and are made transparent by using the “opacity” CSS property with a value spplied by Growl (and ultimately you through the preference pane).

Be sure to check out my other Growl style.