Well, the last guide seemed to be well received and it will hopefully be either left up, or integrated into this one, but for now I am working on a new guide for OS X 10.5.n Leopard. I am still working on it since I have just now basically explored most of the OS, enough that I feel confident to write a guide for it.
What's New in Leopard?
Well, gosh there sure are a lot of new things, I'm not going to lie. I am not going to bore you with a run down of all 300 plus new features in Leopard, especially since Apple counts them in the most complimentary light possible, so a lot of those 300+ features are incredibly little things that no one else would bother to mention. Apple is in fact, King of Now With Hat (Simpson's episode with Lisa Lionheart), and so I sort take all this in stride.
So anyway, the major things (for me and most users I think) would have to be
CoverFlow: Scoff all you like, but trust me, set it to CoverFlow your pictures folder, and you will immediately shut your mouth. You have already seen how nice CoverFlow looks (and works) in iTunes, and so with it in the Finder as a whole is a nice addition. I am not too fond of it for anything but pictures, and maybe movies, but honestly, that is enough.
QuickLook: My new favorite way to open files. You simply click on a file, and then thwap the space bar and a preview of the file comes on up. Sure, that sounds a little lame that way. But, now you can quickly check out a video without having to open up VLC or Quicktime, listen to a song without opening itunes, look through a PDF without opening Preview. You are starting to catch onto the awesome now, are you not? Now, extend that out beyond the regular stuff because companies can write QuickLook frameworks so you can QuickLook their things as well. In the add-ons section there are links to two QuickLook components that will let you QuickLook a ZIP archive or folder to see it?s contents.
Screen Sharing: Sure, it is nothing new, Microsoft has had Remote Desktop Connection in their OSes for years (well, the more expensive Pro and Business OSes) but this is just so well done, and so easy. You open up the Finder, and there in the sidebar will be a list of network systems. You select an OS X Leopard box (or any machine running VNC) and then hit 'Share Screen...'. After you punch in the password you immediately have a nice quality, scaled to your screen (if their screen resolution is equal to or greater than yours) VNC window. You can control their machine or watch as they do things. My friend and I do it all the time to show websites and other such things to each other. Real, real handy.
Time Machine: You have no doubt by now heard about Time Machine, and for good reason. Is this a perfect solution for everyone? No. Will it replace many people's already in place backup solutions? Absolutely not. But here is where it shines. You are working on a project for school/work, and have been doing so for the past week+. You just deleted the file by accident. This is not an issue with Time Machine however. You just fire it up, jump back to yesterday, and you have your file back as of that point. Or heck, if you are on a desktop and can do more frequent backups, you just get the file from an hour ago. Laptop users, do not despair, Time Machine tracks your changes and then will back them up en masse once you reconnect to your external. I have seen the most common recommendation is an external that is anywhere from 1.5-2x the size of your internal drive. Now, ideally, you will have a regularly done bootable copy (which Time Machine is not, you can restore from a Time Machine backup with the Leopard install disk, but that does require a clean install) that will save your bacon in the event of total drive failure, and a Time Machine backup as well to make up for any files lost between the last bootable backup and when the hard drive went down. I would hope that the next iteration of Time Machine will have a bootable backup feature, because that would really make it great.
Core Animation: This is what gives you the partially transparent menubar, the new Dock, CoverFlow, QuickLook, and a slew of other features in the OS. This is also why, although on the surface Leopard is not that different from Tiger, you do need a beefier system with Quartz compatible graphics to run it. Some call this eye candy, and that is more than likely a difference in definition since I consider eye candy to be flashy stuff and most of the stuff in Leopard is not particularly flashy... but to each their own. Core Animation also lets you do more interesting PhotoBooth and iChat backdrops.
Unified Windows: All the windows look the same now. Now more brushed metal here, grey there, and stripes in this other spot. Now, all the windows are a flat grey, with background windows being a lighter grey so they can be more easily differentiated from the foreground window. I have read articles where people were complaining about the new look, and can kind of understand that. They could have settled on a slightly more interesting looking unification, but at least they settled on something.
Included Apps:
iChat: Still don't have a tabbed interface, but it is close, and really, little that it has is going to convince me to switch from the all too excellent Adium, but it does have a few tricks up it's sleeve that will really make you sit up and take notice. The new backdrops and Quartz effects are quite nice, and can give you some nice goofiness to your video chats. But the real big thing for me is that they added Screen Sharing to iChat. So now, you have a great, encrypted, high quality VNC connection auto-magically tunneled betwixt you and the other user. I used it just the other night to help a guy export his Firefox bookmarks (I gave him the path exactly, still got it wrong
). On top of all that, it also has a new document sharing feature for when you are video chatting with someone. You can share a movie with your friend, and MST3K it as you watch. You can do the same with documents, pictures, even set up a slideshow if I am not mistaken.
Mail: Mail now features an RSS reader for those of you that really care about that sort of thing. But where really shines is in its ease of use, and new inter-operability with the other included apps. If you receive and email from someone, and they have something in there like 'see you at the party tonight at 8' then you can rest your mouse cursor over that line and a little box will appear. It will then let you quickly and easily add that information to iCal. Sweet, non? The same works for addresses, so you can add them to AddressBook, or map to their house. Also, setting up accounts in Mail 3.0 is a whole lot easier than in Mail 2.0 from Tiger. And that is really saying something. Let us take gmail as an example. If you were to set up your gmail account in Mail 3.0, you turn on POP in gmail?s settings, then in Mail you put in your email address and password. That?s it. It has all the other settings already taken care of for you, ain?t that nice?
Address Book: Almost the exact same as it was in Tiger, so nothing much to report here.
Boot Camp: Boot Camp is officially released with Leopard, and the main difference between it and the Tiger version is the drivers. For one thing, you no longer have to burn off a driver CD via the Boot Camp Assistant, instead they are located on your Leopard install disk. Also, the drivers are now signed, so Windows won't throw a fit when you install them. Aside from that, nothing really has changed. It is still a really nice, friendly, drive partitioner (possibly more effective now that Disk Utility lets you dynamically partition your HFS+ disks now). All the previous restrictions from Boot Camp Beta apply though, and this is now the only Apple supported way of dual-booting OS X and Windows XP or Vista.
iCal: Haven?t used it too much but here is what I know. The UI is definitely different, almost has an iPhone feel to it, which shouldn?t be too surprising since apparently the iPhone runs a variant of Leopard on it. Has even better interoperability with Mail and Address Book than its predecessor, and that is saying something. I will do some more testing with it to see if I can find any hidden gems within it.
DVD Player: A lot has been improved in DVD Player 5.0. It has a new interface for one thing, as well as a chapter bar located at the top of the screen (it hides itself automatically, mouse over to activate) so you can quickly jump to a chapter in the movie. In addition to that, it has a new control bar that hides at the bottom of the screen. On top off all the features that the old DVD Player controller had, this one also lets you more easily scrub through the DVD to find the spot that you want and also gives you some things that were ordinarily reserved for the contextual menu you got when you secondary clicked. So, the subtitles, full screen or no, that sort of stuff. And for those of you that don?t like to watch things full screen, the bottom of the window has the scrubbing controls, pretty nifty looking actually.
Safari: Safari 3.0 goes Final with Leopard, and boy is it awesome. Now, I am not going to rehash my feelings toward Firefox, but lets just say that Firefox 3 is looking good, and I am waiting for the final release. Anyway, Safari 3. Tabs are on by default now, and in Leopard it is aware of the new Downloads folder, and has that set as the download location by default. It is much more stable than the betas ever were, and in general does not slip up on any sites out there. Leopard got rid of InputManagers and SIMBL support, so those of you that had some favored plugins for Safari on Tiger will have to either wait for them to be released Leopard compatible or look for a comparable choice. I will be outlining some plugins that I find useful later which have the added benefit of being free!
TextEdit: The main difference between Tiger?s and Leopard?s is that the new TextEdit has the ability to open and save as ODT and DOCX.
Once I have the first half or so done (What's New in Leopard, Included Apps) I will post that up, and that should be complete either tomorrow night or Saturday at the latest. After that, I of course will welcome any criticisms or additions that any of you may have, and will do my best to integrate them in as I work on the next half (What's the Same, Tips and Tweaks).
I feel that my first guide lays down some pretty good groundwork (that I may still flesh out some more) which is why I may ultimately find a way to simply integrate the two.
If you have anything you would like to me add before the first posting, please put that here.
What's New in Leopard?
Well, gosh there sure are a lot of new things, I'm not going to lie. I am not going to bore you with a run down of all 300 plus new features in Leopard, especially since Apple counts them in the most complimentary light possible, so a lot of those 300+ features are incredibly little things that no one else would bother to mention. Apple is in fact, King of Now With Hat (Simpson's episode with Lisa Lionheart), and so I sort take all this in stride.
So anyway, the major things (for me and most users I think) would have to be
CoverFlow: Scoff all you like, but trust me, set it to CoverFlow your pictures folder, and you will immediately shut your mouth. You have already seen how nice CoverFlow looks (and works) in iTunes, and so with it in the Finder as a whole is a nice addition. I am not too fond of it for anything but pictures, and maybe movies, but honestly, that is enough.
QuickLook: My new favorite way to open files. You simply click on a file, and then thwap the space bar and a preview of the file comes on up. Sure, that sounds a little lame that way. But, now you can quickly check out a video without having to open up VLC or Quicktime, listen to a song without opening itunes, look through a PDF without opening Preview. You are starting to catch onto the awesome now, are you not? Now, extend that out beyond the regular stuff because companies can write QuickLook frameworks so you can QuickLook their things as well. In the add-ons section there are links to two QuickLook components that will let you QuickLook a ZIP archive or folder to see it?s contents.
Screen Sharing: Sure, it is nothing new, Microsoft has had Remote Desktop Connection in their OSes for years (well, the more expensive Pro and Business OSes) but this is just so well done, and so easy. You open up the Finder, and there in the sidebar will be a list of network systems. You select an OS X Leopard box (or any machine running VNC) and then hit 'Share Screen...'. After you punch in the password you immediately have a nice quality, scaled to your screen (if their screen resolution is equal to or greater than yours) VNC window. You can control their machine or watch as they do things. My friend and I do it all the time to show websites and other such things to each other. Real, real handy.
Time Machine: You have no doubt by now heard about Time Machine, and for good reason. Is this a perfect solution for everyone? No. Will it replace many people's already in place backup solutions? Absolutely not. But here is where it shines. You are working on a project for school/work, and have been doing so for the past week+. You just deleted the file by accident. This is not an issue with Time Machine however. You just fire it up, jump back to yesterday, and you have your file back as of that point. Or heck, if you are on a desktop and can do more frequent backups, you just get the file from an hour ago. Laptop users, do not despair, Time Machine tracks your changes and then will back them up en masse once you reconnect to your external. I have seen the most common recommendation is an external that is anywhere from 1.5-2x the size of your internal drive. Now, ideally, you will have a regularly done bootable copy (which Time Machine is not, you can restore from a Time Machine backup with the Leopard install disk, but that does require a clean install) that will save your bacon in the event of total drive failure, and a Time Machine backup as well to make up for any files lost between the last bootable backup and when the hard drive went down. I would hope that the next iteration of Time Machine will have a bootable backup feature, because that would really make it great.
Core Animation: This is what gives you the partially transparent menubar, the new Dock, CoverFlow, QuickLook, and a slew of other features in the OS. This is also why, although on the surface Leopard is not that different from Tiger, you do need a beefier system with Quartz compatible graphics to run it. Some call this eye candy, and that is more than likely a difference in definition since I consider eye candy to be flashy stuff and most of the stuff in Leopard is not particularly flashy... but to each their own. Core Animation also lets you do more interesting PhotoBooth and iChat backdrops.
Unified Windows: All the windows look the same now. Now more brushed metal here, grey there, and stripes in this other spot. Now, all the windows are a flat grey, with background windows being a lighter grey so they can be more easily differentiated from the foreground window. I have read articles where people were complaining about the new look, and can kind of understand that. They could have settled on a slightly more interesting looking unification, but at least they settled on something.
Included Apps:
iChat: Still don't have a tabbed interface, but it is close, and really, little that it has is going to convince me to switch from the all too excellent Adium, but it does have a few tricks up it's sleeve that will really make you sit up and take notice. The new backdrops and Quartz effects are quite nice, and can give you some nice goofiness to your video chats. But the real big thing for me is that they added Screen Sharing to iChat. So now, you have a great, encrypted, high quality VNC connection auto-magically tunneled betwixt you and the other user. I used it just the other night to help a guy export his Firefox bookmarks (I gave him the path exactly, still got it wrong
). On top of all that, it also has a new document sharing feature for when you are video chatting with someone. You can share a movie with your friend, and MST3K it as you watch. You can do the same with documents, pictures, even set up a slideshow if I am not mistaken.Mail: Mail now features an RSS reader for those of you that really care about that sort of thing. But where really shines is in its ease of use, and new inter-operability with the other included apps. If you receive and email from someone, and they have something in there like 'see you at the party tonight at 8' then you can rest your mouse cursor over that line and a little box will appear. It will then let you quickly and easily add that information to iCal. Sweet, non? The same works for addresses, so you can add them to AddressBook, or map to their house. Also, setting up accounts in Mail 3.0 is a whole lot easier than in Mail 2.0 from Tiger. And that is really saying something. Let us take gmail as an example. If you were to set up your gmail account in Mail 3.0, you turn on POP in gmail?s settings, then in Mail you put in your email address and password. That?s it. It has all the other settings already taken care of for you, ain?t that nice?
Address Book: Almost the exact same as it was in Tiger, so nothing much to report here.
Boot Camp: Boot Camp is officially released with Leopard, and the main difference between it and the Tiger version is the drivers. For one thing, you no longer have to burn off a driver CD via the Boot Camp Assistant, instead they are located on your Leopard install disk. Also, the drivers are now signed, so Windows won't throw a fit when you install them. Aside from that, nothing really has changed. It is still a really nice, friendly, drive partitioner (possibly more effective now that Disk Utility lets you dynamically partition your HFS+ disks now). All the previous restrictions from Boot Camp Beta apply though, and this is now the only Apple supported way of dual-booting OS X and Windows XP or Vista.
iCal: Haven?t used it too much but here is what I know. The UI is definitely different, almost has an iPhone feel to it, which shouldn?t be too surprising since apparently the iPhone runs a variant of Leopard on it. Has even better interoperability with Mail and Address Book than its predecessor, and that is saying something. I will do some more testing with it to see if I can find any hidden gems within it.
DVD Player: A lot has been improved in DVD Player 5.0. It has a new interface for one thing, as well as a chapter bar located at the top of the screen (it hides itself automatically, mouse over to activate) so you can quickly jump to a chapter in the movie. In addition to that, it has a new control bar that hides at the bottom of the screen. On top off all the features that the old DVD Player controller had, this one also lets you more easily scrub through the DVD to find the spot that you want and also gives you some things that were ordinarily reserved for the contextual menu you got when you secondary clicked. So, the subtitles, full screen or no, that sort of stuff. And for those of you that don?t like to watch things full screen, the bottom of the window has the scrubbing controls, pretty nifty looking actually.
Safari: Safari 3.0 goes Final with Leopard, and boy is it awesome. Now, I am not going to rehash my feelings toward Firefox, but lets just say that Firefox 3 is looking good, and I am waiting for the final release. Anyway, Safari 3. Tabs are on by default now, and in Leopard it is aware of the new Downloads folder, and has that set as the download location by default. It is much more stable than the betas ever were, and in general does not slip up on any sites out there. Leopard got rid of InputManagers and SIMBL support, so those of you that had some favored plugins for Safari on Tiger will have to either wait for them to be released Leopard compatible or look for a comparable choice. I will be outlining some plugins that I find useful later which have the added benefit of being free!
TextEdit: The main difference between Tiger?s and Leopard?s is that the new TextEdit has the ability to open and save as ODT and DOCX.
Once I have the first half or so done (What's New in Leopard, Included Apps) I will post that up, and that should be complete either tomorrow night or Saturday at the latest. After that, I of course will welcome any criticisms or additions that any of you may have, and will do my best to integrate them in as I work on the next half (What's the Same, Tips and Tweaks).
I feel that my first guide lays down some pretty good groundwork (that I may still flesh out some more) which is why I may ultimately find a way to simply integrate the two.
If you have anything you would like to me add before the first posting, please put that here.
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