The fact that you ’ve bothered to visit this World Wide Web site and click the tie-in that brings you to this particular story tells me two important things :
1 . You have a markedly spot gustatory sensation in engineering .
2 . You ’re the person your parent / sibling / child depends on for avail with their Macintosh .
derive on , do n’t be coy . If you were n’t at least mildly fanatical about the Mac , you ’d pass your timenoodling over inane cat captionsor considering your involvement in theWorld Beard and Moustache Championships . And because there is that fleck of foam at the corners of your lip , you ’re remove the person in tutelage of maintaining your clan ’s electronic computer .
As am I.
And it ’s for this reason that I herald Leopard and the family - friendly ( in this case , female parent - well-disposed ) features it brings to my Mac world . countenance me to count the way :
Time MachineMy female parent does n’t back up . And I ’ll bet yours does n’t either . Easy as plump for up may seem to us , to her it ’s as foreign a notion as wearing whitened shoes in November . It just is n’t done .
There ’s no way I ’m going to win over mammy to purchase an external hard cause , much less plug it in , but on my next visit you could play I ’ll have both a copy of Leopard and a arduous drive in hand . I ’ll enshroud the hard cause behind her iMac and maybe drape a doily over it to mask its purpose . She need never know that her Mac is being back up mechanically . And when that inevitable Clarence Day arrives and she calls and cries “ My computer is n’t go , and I ’ve lost all those babe pictures you sent ! What should I do now ? ” I ’ll have something more than sympathy to offer .
The Download stackI’ve managed to convince my female parent to explore the Worldwide Web and even chance downloading files . In casual conversation , she ’ll mention that she thought she download such - and - such a file but now ca n’t find it . give that whenever I chitchat her I notice an increasingly deep pile of data file on her background , that ’s not too surprising . While I ’m not completely crazy about theDownloads stackin my own Dock , I ’m throb that it will be there for her so she can rule the files she ’s download with a exclusive click .
iChat Screen SharingThis is the Big Kahuna for those who ’ve endure up headphone bills troubleshoot a family penis ’s Mac . No longer will I have conversation like this :
“ Okay , so double - tick the hard drive ikon … no , not the … no , heed for a instant . I ’m not talking about the thing that looks like a pamphlet … no , not in that windowpane … what do you mean ‘ next to the virtuoso of hearts ? ’ Mom , could you quitBurning Monkey Solitairefor a instant and go to the Finder … Yes , I recognise the rascal are funny but … GAAAAAAAH ! ! ! ! ”
Nope , I ’ll set Mom rolling in iChat and when it comes metre to draw her out of a kettle of fish , I ’ll merely take over her Mac from a aloofness , do what require doing — prevail Disk Utility , do a Spotlight search for a file she ’s missing , or simply reorganise her single file and brochure — and get out .
The Help Search fieldIn the course of these aforementioned conversations I will often ask her to locate a particular menu command . And she will just as often reply “ I do n’t see it . ” With Leopard instal on her Mac I can now organise her to the app ’s aid menu and ask her to type in a portion of the dictation I want her to get hold — Bookmarks , for example , if we ’re trouble-shoot a Safari issue . The first results in the menu that appears are Menu Items . This nicely narrow down down her choice and I can ask her to take the correct one .
SpotlightThey say you ca n’t teach an old mom new tricks , but I ’m of a mind that with repetition and patience , I can pressure my mother into learning these two helpful Spotlight commands :
With them she can habituate the public eye field of force to search for a specific file name and well regain documents that contain a specific phrase .
Sidebar , Cover Flow , and Quick LookMom is a scrap overwhelmed by her digital camera and while she can now move pictures from her camera into iPhoto , she ’s not beneficial about naming her images ( nor are the friends who e - post pictures of their less - wonderful grandchildren ) . I ’ve tried to get her to put all her motion-picture show in iPhoto — let in those that were atomic number 99 - mail to her — but she insist on scattering them around her hard drive . And when it comes time to find just the one she ’d like to print , hoo boy .
I ’m hold out to point her in the direction of the All Images smart booklet in her Finder windows ’ sidebar . I will then fall into place on the Cover Flow push button within the resulting window so she can see her pictures displayed in that cool swoopy vista . I will in conclusion choose one of those images and press the Space Bar so she can take a closer look .
The talent that keeps on givingIn our Leopard lineament draught , I made it pretty clear which features of Apple ’s latest cat I opt . alas , Apple ’s list of300 - plus featuresfailed to mention that one feature article I now value most : Helping me to help others .
