Yesterday, I began talking about the general improvement of the user experience in Leopard when messing with network settings, something that we all have to do one time or another. That is, if we have any aspirations to get on the internet. Yesterday’s LFP on the AirPort Utility was for those of us who have our own AirPort base station to manage, but today, I look at the Leopard’s new treatment of connecting to networks.

Say goodbye to Internet Connect, the application from the earliest days of Mac OS X. Like the disappearance of so many other apps from the Applications folder in Leopard (has anyone seen my Sherlock?) everything related to networks have been centralized under the fully-redesigned Network system preference pane.

The left side of the Network preference pane shows an iChat-style list of every networking device available, and its status. My list contains AirPort (for wifi), Bluetooth (for dial-up via a cell phone), Built-in Ethernet, and Built-in Firewire. The latter three are not used and not connected, and show a red dot. AirPort is being used and is connected, and show a green dot. (System Preferences Help says that if a modem was plugged in, most likely via Apple’s USB modem accessory, that would show up here as well.) The right side shows only the most basic (and most important) of the settings for each device. The rest of the tabs of the rigamarole of settings has been moved conveniently under an Advanced button, which is nice because it clearly states that those settings are advanced settings that most users won’t have to worry about. The new Network settings panel is really nice because it puts only the most important controls at your fingertips, and makes it very easy to locate the status of each of your network connections.

In culmination of the posts from this weekend, although something in the new AirPort Utility caused a quirk on my base station, Apple has definitely cleaned up and polished the applications available to users for setting basic network settings, and in doing so, have made it self-explanatory to a significantly larger number of people, which is something that all Mac users, novice or pros, can benefit from.

Feature Satisfaction Rating:

Be sure to check out the other articles in the Leopard Feature Presentation, occurring throughout the month of November here on Webmacster87.info.

Tags: connection, internet, Leopard Feature Presentation, Mac OS X Leopard, management, network, review, settings, System Preferences