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Reader Survey: Leopard the (good) little things

Okay, we've all had a chance to play around with Leopard for a while, so I thought it was now a good time to take a step back and ask: what are the little things that you really like about Leopard? I'm not talking about the headline new features: Time Machine, Quick Look, etc. Rather, I'm interested in the little features that make Leopard a bit better than Tiger.

I want to focus on the good for this post. We'll get to the niggling Leopard annoyances in a separate post. To get us started I thought I'd throw out a few of my favorites. Remember these are not the best or most important new features in Leopard, just little things that make me glad I upgraded.
  • The Finder permissions editor. The permissions editing interface is updated and improved.
  • The Print sheet. The full print sheet with integrated preview is nicer than Tiger's
  • The network mount bug seems finally to be fixed. It used to be the case that if you lost connection to a network mount OS X could freeze up. Leopard handles this problem much more graciously.
  • The spotlight calculator. Need to do a quick calculation? Just invoke Spotlight and type in the equation.
So there are a few to get you started. What are your favorite, but often overlooked, little features in Leopard?

Okay, we've all had a chance to play around with Leopard for a while, so I thought it was now a good time to take a step back and ask: what...
 

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ahoge

Scrolling content of not focused windows, faster spotlight(not sure if it's leopard, or spotlight), menu seach, overall look of leopard...icons, colors etc

November 13 2007 at 1:12 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Butch Hauke

The Finder finally remembers column spacing between log-ins or restarts.

November 12 2007 at 9:32 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Felix

Dictionary also blended to Spotlight, here's the screenshot

November 12 2007 at 11:23 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Ben the Dog

Because I spend a lot of time editing photos and sorting them in "edited", "non-edited" and "partially edited" folders, the addition of Coverflow to finder has made working a lot faster.

I must confess, I was initially sceptical of stacks, but use it most days.

And - something that may make me the subject of some abuse - seeing as I always have my dock on the right side, I quite like the new dock (when on the side). It's nice and plain.

November 11 2007 at 8:47 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Dan

Ugh, enough with this 'New Finder' crap. It's exactly the same as it was. When Apple bring out a Finder that works *better* than Windows Explorer, I'll listen.

November 11 2007 at 6:56 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
mark

Does the Spotlight calculator know units and physical constants, like the google searchbar calculator does? Ie, can I type in G/c and get Newton's gravitational constant divided by the speed of light?

November 11 2007 at 4:59 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Fritz Laurel

Mat - I think you mean "gracefully" instead of "graciously." Unless I'm missing something.


Cheers,
FL

November 11 2007 at 4:44 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
iJason

I've noticed that the when you rename items in the finder by pressing "return" it doesn't highlight the extension.

Also noticed when doing a screen shot it gives you the pixel count.

November 11 2007 at 4:43 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
mwinterholler

Spotlight even knows pi to the 10th decimal!

November 11 2007 at 3:41 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
nick

I love quicklook. I didn't think so much of it during the demos, but actually using it it amazing. it recognizes everything-word files, images, movies, songs, EVERYTHING

another thing is: i use the "require password to wake from screensaver/sleep" feature, and before, my computer would go into screensaver and then i would hit the mouse immediately and i would have to enter in my password. in leopard, there's like a 3 second delay, so if you're actually at your computer and it goes into screensaver, you can just move the mouse and it'll return to normal without having to enter your password.

i know it doesn't sound like a big deal, but truly, it's the little things that make the difference.

November 11 2007 at 3:13 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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