Leopard dislikes

Yes sports fans, Apple is not perfect after all :)

Overall I like the updates to the new Mac OS. Apple just won't give up, however, on their .Mac failed science experience. I don't like how there are icons in my top status bar and in the finder left nav bar for .Mac: iDisk - bah. I understand what they are trying to do but seriously wish it was not visible. Unfortunately, I've not found a way of hiding it altogether, so I am constantly presented with Apple's plea for me to iWeb my iMac. Why pay $99 to get what I get free from, say, Google?

I also detest the new login screen. It's an awful new age-ish aurora sorta space looking deal. The usually stylish Apple took a turn that at least to me isn't all that tasteful with this whole space theme. Turns out, it's easy to change with a bit of a hack. In the folder System/Library/CoreServices there is a file DefaultDesktop.jpg - change that and viola! Um, it's not all that simple, however. Being a Unix filesystem it's a little tricky. You must be logged in with admin rights.

1. Find a suitable picture for the background
2. Name it DefaultDesktop.jpg in a folder other than the CoreServices - say, the desktop
3. Remove the current DefaultDesktop.jpg from CoreServices. You will need to enter your administrative password
4. Copy in the new DefaultDesktop.jpg. You will need to enter your password

You could probably do it all from a shell window as root much easier. I found that from Finder I was unable to rename files in that folder.

Finally, I was so pleased to see my local network servers and workstations appear in my finder. The bummer is that they no longer show up. And I'm back again unable to connect to the Windows machines. That's a serious downer because I was finally tempted to make this my primary personal workstation. The continued inability to seamlessly connect to the network servers really means that for me this is really just a high priced Internet kiosk.