Jay Reding.com

Being the hardcore Mac nerd that I am, I of course had Leopard pre-ordered, and have now had the chance to play around with it a bit. The bottom line is this: Leopard is a worthy upgrade. Nothing revolutionary, but it doesn’t have to be. Many of the biggest changes are under the hood. I haven’t yet played with all the features yet, and I’ll update this review as I have a chance to see how they work.

Installing Leopard

Insert DVD, click on a handful of prompts, and wait. I decided to live on the edge a bit and not do the whole “Archive and Install” routine that I did on the Tiger upgrade, installing Leopard without backing up my old system files. So far, it seems like a backup isn’t necessary—but your mileage may vary.

The longest part of the install process seemed to be verifying that the DVD didn’t have any errors. The actual install went quite fast on my machine (a first-gen Intel iMac). I would suggest going into the settings and removing things like extra language packs (I don’t need to use Portuguese language files, thanks…) and the extra printer drivers unless you have a need for them. The size of the printer drivers is obscene, over 1GB. Unless you know that you’ll be connecting a bunch of different printers, it makes sense to ditch those and save yourself a few hundred megs of space.

The intro movie is just gorgeous, keeping with the space theme that pops up in Leopard—it’s a really nice introduction to the system.

One caveat: after the install Spotlight reindexes the drive, which causes some annoying stuttering. It’s a bit irritating, but the same thing happened with the Tiger upgrade. It would be nice if there was an option on launch to index right away or wait until something like 3a.m. when it won’t get in the way.

The Desktop

The Good: Spotlight is much improved. It’s still not quite as good as a third-party launcher like Quicksilver, but it’s definitely improved. It now indexes network shares, and seems to be just as speedy as it was in Tiger.

iCal is much, much improved. The interface is much cleaner (taking some visual cues from the iPhone). iCal is one of the apps I end up using the most, and it’s nice to see that Apple has given it some much-needed attention. Now that it has its own Calendar Server behind it, perhaps Apple can start making some serious inroads into the business market? I know I would much rather invest in an office full of Macs with OS X Server than pay through the nose for a Microsoft solution right now. For large corporations the switch is difficult. For something like a small business or law firm, going with Macs would make things like setting up a network so much easier.

Safari 3 is very speedy, and my favorite browser, even above Firefox. The Leopard version seems just as speedy and so far seems less flaky than it was on Tiger.

The new version of Mail is gorgeous, useful, and generally speedy. Now that GMail supports IMAP, all my accounts are in one place and searchable with Spotlight. What’s really nice is that Mail can see an address or an event in a mail message and with one click import that into iCal, my Address Book, or show the location in Google Maps. That is one of those little timesavers that makes a huge difference in your personal workflow.

People familiar with iTunes know Cover Flow, which lets you scroll through a 3D representation of your album covers. Leopard allows that for general files now too. In some cases, it’s useless. For large directories of oddly-named images it’s absolutely brilliant.

The Bad: The visual look of the desktop is a little darker, although not nearly as dark as Vista. The new folder icons are pretty bad, however. Mac OS X has been progressively more restrained from the bright white pinstripes in 10.0. As much as I like dark themes, I’m not quite sure that the new look works. The default wallpaper is just too dark to match with the darker theme—but with a lighter wallpaper the increased contrast makes everything look better. I know complaining about the default wallpaper seems pretty pendantic, but given that every little impression counts it would be nice to see Apple include something brighter. (Like what happened to the cool leaf wallpaper from the beta versions? Fortunately, you can still the beta wallpaper here.)

I’m also not a fan of the semi-transparent menubar either.

Space is also somewhat of a letdown. I love virtual desktops, and I use them all the time on Ubuntu, but Spaces just doesn’t seem as fluid as the Compiz version I use on Ubuntu 7.10—and my Ubuntu machine is significantly less power than my iMac. Spaces isn’t a bad feature, and it works as an implementation of the virtual desktop idea, but Compiz actually does it better. To see an open source application beat Apple at a user interface design is a bit of an existential shock…

Under The Hood

There are a lot of nice technical additions to Leopard. At the same time, Leopard doesn’t feel noticeably slower than Tiger. OS X upgrades tend to get faster over time, and while Leopard doesn’t feel noticeably faster, it’s not like Vista, which seems downright sluggish and unresponsive. Other than the stutters caused by Spotlight updates, Leopard feels just as responsive as one would expect OS X to be.

There are some nice frameworks for application developers to take advantage of, and there has apparently been some work at restructuring the code. Leopard is fully UNIX compliant now, which means absolutely nothing to those who don’t fondly remember their first pocket protector, but it does prove that Leopard has gotten some work under the hood to bring it into the UNIX fold.

The Inevitable Vista Comparison

Windows Vista was like dating Jessica Simpson. Yeah, she’s pretty, but she’s also irritating as hell and prone to flake out at the slightest sign of trouble. Leopard is a much more pleasant experience. Yes, it’s had a little cosmetic surgery, some of which is a little too obvious, but at the core it’s still the same system you know and love. Yes, maybe the look is a little colder, but at the end of the day that slickness isn’t cover for a mess underneath.

Vista is designed to give control to Microsoft—if you don’t play by their rules, they quite literally lock you out of your own computer. Leopard has no serial numbers, no anti-piracy measures, and no infuriating product activation schemes. Apple treats their customers like partners—Microsoft treats their customers like criminals.

Both Leopard and Vista are incremental upgrades, but Leopard adds something to the experience, while installing Vista over XP is a definite downgrade. Furthermore, Vista adds a new learning curve for existing PC users—so if you’re thinking about getting a computer, you’re going to encounter a new learning curve anyway. You might as well have an experience where at the end of that learning curve you have a good experience rather than learning to deal with Vista’s endless frustrations and anti-consumer B.S.

The Big Picture

Leopard may be an evolutionary upgrade rather than a revolutionary one, but it does exactly what it’s supposed to do: make using a Mac a better experience. There are still a few rough edges, but nothing like the transition from XP to Vista. And unlike that transition, I feel no need to rush out and uninstall Leopard. Leopard shows that Apple is still committed to putting out a quality product, still is interested in advancing OS X as a software platform, and still has an impressive eye for detail.

Leopard is a worthy upgrade in itself, and even more it’s a good excuse for potential switchers to see why so many people have moved over to the Mac platform in the last few years. I’m certainly glad I did.

Byron Hill takes a look at why “values voters” love Mike Huckabee. He did do an amazing job at the Values Voters Summit, but ultimately the reason why Huckabee won’t win the nomination is because his appeal is largely limited to these values voters.

Huckabee’s biggest liability is that he’s not all that fiscally conservative. His record in Arkansas on taxes is mixed. His governing philosophies tend to be more about expanding the scope and reach of government rather than protecting and preserving individual rights against the state. He’s the sort of President who would be more likely to do things like regulate trans fats and other examples of nanny-state tinkering. Yes, he’s excellent on social issues, but the GOP isn’t driven entirely by social issues.

Despite Huckabee’s great performances and appeal to social conservatives, he’s still below the double digits in most polls. What that suggests is that for all the much-vaunted influence of “values voters,” they don’t have all that big an effect on Republican politics. The media loves to play up their influence because it fits with their narrative of Republicans all being closet theocrats. However, the real face of the Republican Party is much more diverse than that. Huckabee’s appeal is strong, but narrow, and ultimately that’s not enough to push him above his second-tier status.

The other issue that unites the Republican Party is the war—and Huckabee doesn’t have the foreign-policy credentials. With the specter of a nuclear-armed Iran growing more and more pressing with each passing day, the GOP is looking for someone who can lead a vigorous American foreign policy and strongly defend national interests. Mike Huckabee isn’t the sort of man who would strike fear into the heart of a madman like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Republican voters are looking for a President who can.

I think a Giuliani/Huckabee ticket is entirely likely as a way of balancing out Giuliani’s northeastern squishiness with some good old-fashioned Bible belt conservatism. I do think that Mike Huckabee is a charismatic speaker, a man of deep principles, and a great asset to the Republican Party. At the same time, he’s not Presidential material. A successful candidate has to have broad appeal with fiscal and social conservatives to win the GOP nomination. The GOP is characterized as the party of “God, guns, and gays” but that stereotype has little basis in reality. Huckabee may do well with the people who would attend a summit for self-described “values voters” but religious appeal isn’t the only value that Republicans are interested in seeing.

UPDATE: Pat Toomey of the Club for Growth says that putting Huckabee in the VP slot would be a bad idea. Granted, Huckabee’s fiscal record is pretty poor—but ultimately, the job of the modern VP is to break ties in the Senate and help the top of the ticket broaden their political appeal. In terms of formulating policy, I don’t see the next Vice President doing much—certainly not after the Cheney Vice Presidency. So long as Huckabee isn’t influencing tax policy, he would still settle the nerves of conservatives who are wary of a Giuliani Administration.

Daniel Henninger takes a look at whether the religious right can support a Giuliani candidacy. Last week, Mayor Giuliani gave a frank but powerful speech to the Values Voters Summit, one in which he was honest in pointing out the differences between himself and many of the attendees to the summit.

In the end, Giuliani did himself a huge service by being honest, refusing to pander, but still pointing out that a Giuliani presidency would lead to real and demonstrable progress on key social issues. A Hillary Clinton administration would lead to a federal policy of abortion on demand. A Rudy Giuliani administration would not. President Hillary Clinton would nominate judges who would find all sorts of new “penumbras” in the Constitution justifying yet more judicial overreach and yet more social experimentation being handed down by the bench. President Rudy Giuliani would appoint jurists to the bench with a greater sense of judicial restraint and more respect for constitutional strictures—judges in the vein of Samuel Alito and John Roberts.

Henninger makes a crucial point about the current tenor of some evangelicals in Republican politics:

In the ’60s, the left introduced the “non-negotiable demand” into our politics. It’s still with us. It’s political infantilism. In real life, the non-negotiable “demand” usually ends about age six.

Evangelical voters are a crucial bloc within the GOP. Yet if a handful of them think that by sitting out the election it will make them anything but pariahs, they’re wrong. American politics is driven by the center, and its the party that best captures the center that wins. Non-negotiable demands by minority groups doesn’t drive a party towards victory, and ultimately the only way you get your agenda passed is by actually winning elections.

However, Henninger also points out that Rudy has to be flexible as well:

Of necessity, Mr. Giuliani has to get voters on the right past this narrowed focus. Adult politics, though, runs in both directions. Rudy has to move toward them, too, and believably.

At the end of the day, I don’t think Rudy will have that big a problem with the evangelical votes. A handful of radicals will stick to their absolutist positions, but not enough to swing the election. (Most of them live in states that are already safely Republican territory as it is.) Most evangelicals will take a rational look at the candidates and see that a return to the Clinton years would be a disaster for the American family and the interests of people of faith. In many ways, Hillary Clinton is far more radical than even her husband was.

Rudy still needs to speak to people of faith in honest and forthright terms. Even among the relatively hostile audience at the Values Voters Summit, Rudy did that. Republican politics tends to be more adult than on the other side, and evangelical voters understand that their interests lie with a President who will not further the causes of abortion on demand, judicial activism, and radical social experimentation. Even if they hold their nose to vote for Rudy, the stakes are simply too high to stomach the likely alternative.

Even after the Steven Glass embarrassment, The New Republic once again faces yet another major journalistic scandal. Earlier this year they published pieces by a “Baghdad Diarist” and “Scott Thomas” that talked of how US soldiers abused Iraqis, killed dogs and insulted a woman horribly disfigured in an IED blast. His piece, entitled “Shock Troops” was designed to paint a terrible picture of how US soldiers were cracking under the horrors of war. Those in the military immediately latched on to gaping holes in the stories, such as the fact that heavy Bradley fighting vehicles couldn’t be driven in such a way as to swerve to hit things. The questions mounted as The New Republic and its editor, Franklin Foer, continued to stall.

The Baghdad Diarist was revealed to be a Pvt. Scott Beauchamp, who did serve in Iraq, but began to quickly change his story. First, he admitted that the story about the burned woman didn’t occur in Iraq, but claimed it had occurred in Kuwait. This admission itself undercut the whole point of his story that the Iraq War was turning soldiers into monsters. Beauchamp also happened to be married to a TNR staffer, Elspeth Reeve.

Now, it appears that his story is falling completely apart. An Army investigation into the matter has revealed absolutely no evidence that any of his stories were true. No other witnesses, no corroborating evidence, and findings that Beauchamp wanted to the next Hemingway and had manipulated the truth to get there.

This report, along with other evidence uncovered by Matt Drudge paints a very damning picture. Beauchamp himself doesn’t stick by his stories, and understandably doesn’t want anything more to do with the story. He doesn’t directly confess to TNR, but the Army’s Article 15 papers indicates that he has confessed and the Army has found that a preponderance of evidence supports his stories being false.

In short, TNR got hoodwinked again. They fell for someone who told them the stories that matched the biases, and they didn’t bother to check. After all, “Scott Thomas’” allegations fit their particular worldview. They had no way of knowing that his story was false since so few journalists have any military experience and tend to be lazy in checking facts. So they ran with the story, defended in from the initial attacks and dug in against their critics.

One would think that TNR would have learned from the Steven Glass scandal—but sadly, they seem to have made the same mistake again. What this means for the future of TNR is not yet known. However, their credibility has been destroyed not once, but twice now. The numerous journalistic scandals of the past few years only highlight the need for substantial reform in American journalism. The question then becomes whether or not it will take even greater collapses and scandals before professional journalists get the message.

A local reporter takes a look at the web of deceit surrounding the case of the Jena 6, a case that has been frequently used to show how racist American society has become. What the reporter finds is that the media twisted the facts, failed to get the whole story, and let the narrative of racism influence how they reported on the events in Jena:

The media got most of the basics wrong. In fact, I have never before witnessed such a disgrace in professional journalism. Myths replaced facts, and journalists abdicated their solemn duty to investigate every claim because they were seduced by a powerfully appealing but false narrative of racial injustice.

I should know. I live in Jena. My wife has taught at Jena High School for many years. And most important, I am probably the only reporter who has covered these events from the very beginning.

The reason the Jena cases have been propelled into the world spotlight is two-fold: First, because local officials did not speak publicly early on about the true events of the past year, the media simply formed their stories based on one-side’s statements – the Jena 6. Second, the media were downright lazy in their efforts to find the truth. Often, they simply reported what they’d read on blogs, which expressed only one side of the issue.

The real story of Jena and the Jena 6 is quite different from what the national media presented. It’s time to set the record straight.

This isn’t surprising. We saw the same dynamic play out with the Duke rape case, in which the media immediately accepted the narrative that the white lacrosse players were rapists and the black stripper was the victim. It plays directly into their preconceptions of a racist America. When the truth finally came out, there was no evidence of rape, the Duke players had been railroaded, and the media had misinformed the American public.

Is Jena the same way? If this reporter’s account is accurate, it certainly seems that way. The media once again came in with their preconceptions and molded their reporting around the story that they wanted to tell.

In a democracy, we cannot have a media that deliberately manipulates the facts to bring out only the story that they think is important. Such racial bias has already ruined the lives of several Duke lacrosse players, and now the same dynamic is playing out in Jena once again. Picking at the wounds of real racial animus doesn’t advance the cause of racial justice and equality in this country—and in the media’s zeal to try to shape events rather than report on them, they’ve abandoned their objectivity.

Fred Thompson has unveiled his immigration policy today, and many conservatives will find it to their liking. The immigration issue is what is sinking the McCain campaign, and by staking a firm position on this issue, it’s clear that Fred Thompson is looking to show his conservative credentials.

The plan rejects an amnesty approach, instead focusing on increased border patrols, a strategy of attrition in removing illegals, and streamlining the process for those who want to come to the country legally.

All in all, it’s the sort of plan one would expect from a candidate who is trying to appeal to the GOP base. What’s different about Thompson’s plan is that it specifically targets the “coyotes”—the smugglers who move illegals (and often drugs) across the border. Taking down the “coyote” system would help to reduce illegal crossings as well as fight crime in general. It’s a smart plan, and I’m quite surprised that other candidates haven’t made a bigger deal of it.

Thompson also supports making English the national language and allowing for preferential treatment for non-citizens joining the armed forces.

Will this kill Thompson’s chances with the Hispanic vote? A smart strategy for Thompson would be to embrace American Hispanics—those hard-working people who migrated here legally and are valuable contributors to the American experience. The common view of Hispanics is that they’re all unassimilated and they’re frequently mixed in with illegals. That increasing numbers of middle-class Hispanics exist and that they’re being pooled in with those who haven’t followed the rules creates an opening for a smart conservative candidate to reach out to those voters. Hispanics are generally socially conservative, they generally have a hard work ethic, and many of them are patriotic Americans. A wise Republican would speak to them without trying to pander and show them why a culture that closely matches theirs benefits them rather than the Democratic culture of dependency that has failed other minority groups in the country. Part of that is making sure that illegals don’t flood the job market and remove the entry-level opportunities that legal immigrants need to get started.

There’s a big difference between speaking to the needs of an ethic group and pandering to them. The first Republican to walk that right balance there could profoundly change the American political scene.

UPDATE: Ed Morrisey likes what he sees, with some caveats. I’m not so sure that attrition is such a bad strategy. For one, getting rid of all illegal immigrants in short order is not going to happen. Mass deportations are not practical, and they’d only inflame tensions. We have to set reasonable priorities, and a strategy of attrition is a reasonable solution to the problem of illegal immigration.

The TaxProf blog notes that using Princeton Review data, the University of St. Thomas in their list of the top 50 law schools in the country. No other Minnesota schools made the top 50 compilation.

It’s interesting to compare the Princeton Review data with the US News list, in which St. Thomas is in the third tier. The compilation combines scores on academic experience,
admissions selectivity, career preparation and having both accessible and interesting professors. These list inevitably come down to whatever subjective criteria that the reviewers feel is most important, but it is interesting to compare the results between the two ranking systems.

Those thinking about law school ultimately should make the choice based not on someone else’s subjective rankings, but their own personal experience. There’s no substitute for visiting a campus, sitting in on a class and experiencing the school’s climate firsthand.

UPDATE: Just to clarify, this isn’t a formal ranking, but a relative weighting of factors performed not by the Princeton Review, but by the TaxProf blog. The Princeton Review did not perform a full ranking based on all their separate criteria. I apologize for not catching my mistake earlier.