Courtesy of Apple
Today Apple announced the availability of OS X 10.5.2, an update to the Leopard OS. This update contains fixes for known bugs in earlier versions of Leopard, as well as new functionality that goes a long way toward addressing some user complaints.
It's nice to see Apple listen to what its users have to say. The 10.5.2 update addresses menu bar transparency, which can now be returned to the solid style of previous OSes. The other major GUI change is the return of a hierarchical folder view in the Dock. When Apple introduced Leopard, it replaced the old-fashioned hierarchical folder view with Stacks, a feature that provides two ways to view a folder in the Dock: as a fan or as a grid display of the folder's content. While these new view options were interesting, they didn't work well for any folder that holds more than a dozen items. They also didn't allow you to drill down through nested folders to view content. The return of hierarchical folder view, now called List view, will be appreciated by many Mac users.
Other changes resolve many of the minor but annoying problems that many users had with Leopard. Airport connections are now more reliable; the general performance of Dashboard widgets has been improved; and a handful of Finder issues, as well problems with Mail, iCal, and iChat, have been resolved. A full list of changes is available on the Apple web site.
I’ve been running 10.5.2 most of the day, and I haven't had any issues so far, either with installation or with any of the glitches that were known to be present in earlier versions of Leopard. I think it's safe to say that with 10.5.2, Apple has addressed all of the important complaints about earlier versions of Leopard.
You can grab 10.5.2 from Software Update, or as a combo download from the Apple site. Be sure to back up your startup disk before you install any update.