Leopard: The Little Things

After a weekend with the GM of Leopard, I’m still amazed at how polished it is. Big features like Time Machine and Quick Look are easy to appreciate. But it’s the little things that I’ve come to love about Leopard. Among them:

Send SMS from iChat. Is your friend unavailable via IM? Do you know their cell phone number? Shoot them an SMS from iChat. iChat also makes it really easy to turn on SMS forwarding for your AIM account, so when you are offline, all of your IMs will be redirected to your cell phone. Neat.

Screen Sharing. Sure, VNC and Remote Desktop have long been options. But with Screen Sharing in Leopard, Apple has made it ridiculously easy to share another computers screen. Additionally, it is fast and scales very well to smaller monitors. It even has options that aren’t present in VNC, like the ability to see both screens on a dual screen monitor. Screen Sharing via iChat will become the new way to fix your friends computer from a long distance.

Maps in Address Book. Right click on any address in your address book, select “Map Of” and Safari launches with a Google map of that addresss. Nifty.

The iCal icon now displays the correct date. I repeat – the iCal icon now displays the correct date. Hallelujah!

Variables in Automator. Want to use Automator create zip files with your computers name and the current date? With Variables you can. This, along with “Watch Me Do”, elevates Automator to a serious production tool.

Adjustable grid spacing in the Finder. Wow, it’s like it’s 1999 all over again!

“Arrange By” returns to the contextual menu in the Finder. Again, a feature that was last seen in OS 9 circa 1999.

The ability to disable the Finder warning when changing file extensions.

An easily accessible list of all installed System Updates is now in the Software Update preference pane. Fewer trips to the console is always a good thing.

I could go on and on. Leopard is one heavily polished cat.

Category: Opinion