It ’s sluttish to focus on the big stuff inMac OS X 10.5 Leopard — Time Machine , Spaces , Stacks , Cover Flow , the change to the Desktop ’s look - and - feel — but what interest me most about any major OS tenner update are the little things . These are the sweetening and additions that will increase OS X ’s useableness and make me more productive long after the hype over the pavilion features has died down .
After walk through Apple’sGuided Tour , and the300 - plus New Featurespage , and playing with the sack rendering for a few days , I ’ve number up with a lean of 10 lesser - know gems to look for after you ’ve installed Leopard .
Quick Look
I fuck that Quick Look has been given hump in some of the Leopard presentations , but its role has mostly been as an aide de refugee camp to Cover Flow . I ’m withholding mind on Cover Flow ’s utility until I ’ve had a chance to experience with it for a while , but Quick Look is already one of my new best friends .
To get a full preview of a filing cabinet or a group of files , without having to establish multiple applications , all I will call for to do is choose them and press the space bar . And this works in the Finder , Time Machine , and Mail , among other place . How childlike and refined can something be ? I have sex this above everything else .
Add attachments to iCal
There ’s a lot to be intimate in the raw interpretation of iCal , include support for the CalDAV networked calendar standard . I ’m particularly interested in the Event Dropbox feature film , which let you sum multiple attachment to merging , and then share those files when you Es - mail invite to attendant . And you may use the Quick Look boast to preview those documents powerful in iCal . Even if you ’re only managing your own events , impound related documents ( with affair like Google maps , for model ) means you ’ll have less searching to do when the consequence arrives .
Resizable partitions
In Leopard , you could create and resize intemperate disc partitions on the fly , without consume to erase your drive and start over . For people looking to produce irregular workspaces for projects , or to boost productivity in Photoshop , this will be immense .
Smarter dismounts
In the same vein , Leopard is smarter about ejecting partition . In the past , if you eject a volume from a partition movement from your screen background , Mac OS X assumed you wanted to unmount all the divider on that driving force . With Leopard , you ’ll get the alternative of only unmounting the volume you choose , or you may chuck out the whole disk . And , if you hold down the Control key when you boot out a partition , it will only unmount that division , go around the dialogue loge .
Integrated sharing
The raw Finder makes it easier to connect to Macs on your electronic internet , either via Indian file share-out ( to look at volumes you have access to ) or via the Modern Screen Sharing lotion ( which is also used in conjunction with iChat ) . The controls to do both are built flop into the brochure window on your background . You have to have access to the Macs in doubtfulness , but it ’s a great way of nail open your dwelling house internet for share file cabinet and troubleshooting . And , if you have a .Mac account , you’re able to countersink Leopard up so that you have access to your home estimator from your notebook computer or remote computer when you ’re forth from home .
Brotherly love in Boot Camp
Yeah , I know Parallels Desktop 3 and VMware ’s Fusion are all the rage . But I do n’t like Windows denigrate my pretty piddling Mac world , so it ’s Boot Camp for me , thank you very much . Boot Camp with Leopard will add the one feature I really care about : let me simulate files between my Mac and Windows partitions . I can say good bye to my USB drive ( aka USBSNEAKERNET ) once and for all .
Print preview
Being a printer guy wire , I have spent a fate of clock time over the years pondering the print dialog box . One thing has on a regular basis confounded me : why can Microsoft can give me a ( small ) preview of what I ’m about to publish in Word or Excel , but I have to click a Preview button in the standard Print dialog box ? I do n’t want to launch Preview to see the preview , peculiarly because it ’s not really Preview , since I ca n’t do anything other than preview . I want it inside the Print boxful . I ’ll need something raw to plain about though , since Leopard give me a nice adult preview every time I go to photographic print .
Better scripting
Automator has two novel features that should make scripting more productive for experienced scripters and people like me , who know just enough to be dangerous , but not enough to be fat . The Watch Me Do feature article will record any action you perform , even in software that are n’t scriptable . And support for variables in Automator actions should make it much wide-eyed to create complex action , but it will also significantly spread out the range of possible activity .
Wikipedia joins the Dictionary club
In Leopard , theWikipediabecomes a full - mature part of Dictionary , with the full Apple count - and - feel . Sure , I can habituate Safari to do the same thing , but I care the uncluttered tactile property of the Dictionary , which is one of my best-loved little OS X apps .
Scrolling background windows
A few months ago , I ran into an issue on the small screenland of my MacBook , where I was going back and forth between Microsoft Excel and Safari , taste to synchronize data point between a web page and an Excel workbook . All I was doing in Safari was scroll the windowpane as I was checking data point . After the third click - to - Safari - and - back , I comment to myself that I really wanted backcloth scroll capabilities . And Apple just went out and did it in Leopard . If you put your pointer over a non - active window , you could now use your trackpad or mouse ’s scroll wheel to scroll it up and down without ingest to click in it . That ’s cool .
[ Rick LePage isMacworld ’s editor at large and curator of the Creative Notes blog . ]
