David Pogue on Leopard
- From: doc.maramao.NOSPAM@xxxxxxxxx (Maramao)
- Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 16:41:27 +0200
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In today's Times, I reviewed Apple's latest operating system,
Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard." I noted that Apple claims to have added over
300 new features.
Trouble is, if I tried to describe them all in my 1,280-word
column, I'd have 4.3 words to describe and assess each one. I try to be
concise, but that's ridiculous.
So I focused on reviewing the features that Apple hypes the most
heavily.
But even Apple doesn't list every little change to this
multi-gigabyte mass of code...and here and there, I found useful little
tweaks that never get any press. Just as I did following my review of
Windows Vista, I've decided to take advantage of this e-newsletter to
mention a few of them.
* Find the Menu. You're floundering in some program. You're sure there's
a Page Numbering command in those menus somewhere. But there are 11
menus and 143 submenus, and you're losing patience.
In Leopard, the Help menu has a search box that appears right in the
menu bar. If you type "page numbering" (or whatever) into it, the
search-results menu lists the names of any matching menu commands. It
also opens that menu for you, and displays a big, blue, animated,
floating arrow pointing to the command you wanted. You'd have to have
your eyes closed to miss it. (This works in all programs.)
* Three-keystroke application launcher. Spotlight, the Mac's
"instant-search" feature, has always been a good way to find and open
programs entirely from the keyboard. Press Command-Space bar to open the
Search box, type the first couple letters of the program's name, wait
for the search results, and hit Command-Enter, which opens the first
item listed, which is usually the program you want.
The trouble is the "wait for the search results" part. Spotlight is not
instantaneous; if your drive is full, it can take five or six seconds
for the results menu to finish building.
But Spotlight has been rejiggered in Leopard. Now it displays the names
of matching *programs* instantaneously, before Spotlight has built the
rest of the menu of results. And a simple Enter is all that's necessary
to open the first listed result (not Command-Enter). In all, finding and
opening a certain program takes under one second.
* Menu-bar calculator. The Spotlight menu (upper-right corner of the
screen) is also a tiny pocket calculator now. Hit Command-Space, type or
paste 38*48.2-7+55, and marvel at the first result in the Spotlight
menu: 1879.6. You don't even have to fire up the Calculator.
* Dictionary lookups. The Spotlight menu also searches the Leopard
dictionary now. If you type, for example, "schadenfreude" into the
Spotlight box, the beginning of the actual definition appears right
there in the menu. Click it to open Dictionary and read the full-blown
entry. (In this example, that would be: "noun: pleasure derived by
someone from another person's misfortune.")
* Bypass the fan. As I noted in the column, I'm not totally sold on the
Stacks feature. That's where you click a folder icon on your Dock, and
rather than a complete menu of the folder's contents, you get a fan or a
grid that shows an array of the actual icons inside. Trouble is, if
there are more than 24 items in that folder (depending on your screen
size), you get only a partial list. To see the rest of the contents, you
have to click the icon that says, "35 more in Finder," which opens that
folder's actual desktop window.
There's no way to make the Dock show the complete list of folder
contents anymore; nor can you stick your hard drive's icon in the Dock
and have complete, drill-down, hierarchical access to your entire
computer, as you could before.
But here's a small consolation: if you Command-click a folder on the
Dock, you go directly to the Finder window that it represents, bypassing
the fan or the grid altogether.
* Grid spacing. Hey, grid spacing is back! A new slider lets you control
the tightness of the icon grid spacing in a window (or in all windows).
(Actually, it's not *that* new; the old Mac OS 9 had it.)
* Telltale icons. A new option in Leopard lets every icon appear as a
tiny preview of what's in it. You don't see just a generic blue Word
icon with a little W in the corner; the icon is now a thumbnail of page
1 of the actual document.
Here's a typical Apple grace note: You can tell just by looking at a PDF
file's icon whether it's longer than one page. The icon for a one-page
PDF has a curled upper-right corner. But on a multi-page PDF, only the
first page's corner curls down. And in the gap it reveals, you can see a
tiny bit of the *actual* page 2 showing.
Coming in Mac OS X 10.6 "Ocelot:" You'll be able to turn the pages of
that PDF and read the whole thing right on the icon.
(That's a joke.)
* Three more Time Machines. In the column today, I wrote at length about
Time Machine, a truly innovative (and successful) approach to automated
backup. I didn't have room to mention, though, that three of Apple's
basic programs also have Time Machine built in: iPhoto (for finding lost
photos), Address Book (for accidentally deleted contacts), and Mail
(recovering deleted e-mail).
In other words, if you want to recover certain photos, addresses or
email messages that have been deleted, you start by opening iPhoto,
Address Book, or Mail. Then click the Time Machine icon on the Dock. You
enter the starry, animated, back-in-time recovery mode that I described.
But now, each time you click the Jump Back arrow, the window before you
changes to reveal the way it looked the last time your photo library,
address book file, or e-mail stash changed. You can also drag through
the timeline on the right if you remember the date when things went
wrong.
At this point, you can select individual photos (or photo albums),
address book entries, or e-mail messages that you want to recover. When
you click the Restore button, you return to the normal Mac OS X world,
where those photos, addresses or messages are now reinstated.
* iChat. As I noted, iChat, the audio/video/typed chat program, has
received an enormous upgrade in Leopard. Here's a little tweak that
nobody ever mentions: the preference setting called "Watch for my name
in incoming messages." It alerts you any time anyone, in any of the open
chats, types your name, even if you're doing something else on the Mac.
(As in, "David, are you there? David!? DAVID!!")
--
I've always been more concerned with users. )\._.,--....,'``.
Programmers do their work but once, while /, _.. \ _\ (`._._,
users are saddled with it ever thereafter. `_.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
.
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