The Leopard 10.5.6 Update

Yesterday Apple released the next major update for OS X Leopard, 10.5.6. I’ve installed it on both of my Macs and had no troubles. In addition to security updates and bug fixes, this release significantly speeds up the process of MobileMe syncing. I now get appointments on my phone about a minute after than putting them in iCal. To be honest, the delay before (about 30 minutes) didn’t really bother me. Rob Griffiths gave an in-depth review of the changes over at Macworld. He even dug into the install file to find changes Apple didn’t mention in its release notes.

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Leopard 10.5.2 Installed. Nothing Blew Up.

In case you haven’t read yet, today Apple released Leopard 10.5.2. The update weighed in at 180mb on my Intel MacBook Pro. I spurned common sense and didn’t bother with the combo updater and instead just did the automatic update. I’ve been running it a few hours now with no problems. Apple has a long list of updates. A few of them are of note to me and deserve comment.
Back to my Mac – Adds support for more third-party routers.
I am very curious to see how much this sorts out Back to My Mac. I’ve never quite got it working and not had time to figure it out. Actually, I keep waiting for the Macbreak Tech guys to set me straight on it.
Dock – Updates Stacks with a List view option, a Folder view option, and an updated background for Grid view.
Amen! I actually have gotten used to the new system but I know this was driving a lot of people crazy.
Desktop – Addresses legibility issues with the menu bar with an option to turn off transparency in Desktop & Screen Saver preferences.
This is another one that wasn’t bothering me so much. Nevertheless, it is definitely less transparent now.
Mail – Mail now automatically disables the (unsupported) third-party plugin GrowlMail version 1.1.2 or earlier to avoid issues.
Mail has been a little wonky for me lately. I suspected Growl and turned it off but it still hasn’t been as stable as before. I’m hoping 10.5.2 fixes that. So far so good.

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Leopard Tip – Scroll Any Window

I had one of those little “Aha!” moments today. I was putting together an outline for a work project and next to it I had a Preview window with a long PDF document in it. I kept moving back and forth between the windows and activating the Preview window to scroll down the document then clicking back in OmniOutliner to resume work there. Well wouldn’t you know one time I forgot to click first in Preview AND IT DIDN’T MATTER. Yup. In Leopard you can mouse scroll (or two finger scroll on your laptop) and move through an inactive window. Try it yourself.

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AppFresh is Fully Leopard Compatible

I’ve written before about how much I love this little application that makes sure you have the most current version of your software applications. They have announced that it is now fully Leopard compliant although I must admit I used the prior version in Leopard with no problems.

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OmniFocus iPhone Dreams

Ethan Schoonover, one of the Omni folks writes …
For what it’s worth, we at Omni are all very interested in getting OmniFocus content on the iPhone (The Omni Group is pretty much 99% iPhone users, so we have a dog in this fight). Rest well assured that as soon as we have options for doing this in a way that allows reasonable functionality, we’ll be on it.
It just warms my heart. I’ve played with their sync system through Leopard Mail and some of the ingenious scripts that turn your Omnifocus list into a Safari bookmarklet that lets you see your tasks. Neither solution really blows my hair back though. Hopefully the Omni wizards will come up with something fantastic … soon.

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Leopard Renaming Tweak

One of the little improvements in Leopard that hasn’t got much press but still makes me grin is renaming files with extensions. In Tiger when you hit enter to rename a file in the finder, the entire name was highlighted, including the extension. When renaming you were forced to go through the additional four keystrokes of the period and file extension. (i.e. “.pdf”) In Leopard the OS does not highlight the period and file type extension. It just highlights the name. This makes the process faster and prevents the problem that occurred when I would previously make a mistake on the extension and cause all sorts of problems when I went to access the file in the expected application.
This is not a huge feature but it sure is nice.

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Put Recent Items in Your Doc

MacOSXHints put up an excellent article that shows you how to create a “recent items” folder in your dock. The icon is right-click sensitive and you can change it between recent applications, servers, documents, volumes, and items. I’ve been using it a few days and love it. Check it out here.

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Leopard 10.5.1 – All Installed and Nothing Blew Up!

I installed 10.5.1 on all of the Sparmerica Machines tonight and nothing exciting to repart. All the installs went well but the MacBook Pro gave me the grey screen for about five minutes which caused a bit of nerves but all is well that ends well.

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Leopard’s Spotlight Calculator

One of the nice little features in Leopard that I’m finding myself using more than I thought I would is the Spotlight calculator. Just activate Spotlight (Command+Space) and start typing in your equation. The answer is pops right up. No dashboard or loading of the calculator application. Give it a try.

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Scriviner Gets New Spots

Scrivener is one of my favorite Mac applications. I hesitate to call it a word processor because it is really more of writing tool than a simple word processor. One of these days I’m going to give it the review attention it really deserves. Nevertheless, today I’ll just report it has been updated for Leopard and looks great. Check it out.

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