leopard posts

First introduced in Mac OS X Tiger in 2005, widgets changed the way people quickly accessed simple information on their Mac. And though Apple did not create the concept of a widget, it did present them in the best way.

With the press of a button I had access to my portfolio, my Yahoo! news, my local weather, calculators for everything, translators, you name it. Widgets were small, simple, and beautiful. They performed one function and did it exceedingly well. Widget ports created half of the first apps ported to the iPhone (think the Weather app, Calculator app, Clock app, and Stocks app).

So in honor of the widget being partially responsible for the origins of iPhone apps, I'd like to present you with my four favorite ones. I hope you'll list your favorite widgets in the comments section too.

I always thought it would be cool if you could customize the background image of the Mac's login screen. That's the image you see behind the login panel when you turn your Mac on (if you have disabled Automatic Login in System Preferences). Why? Because if I could have the login image match my desktop image it would create a more fluid transition if, when I entered my password, the login box would fade away and my desktop and all its items would seamlessly appear. Necessary? No. Cool? Heck, yeah!

Until Apple gets around to building this functionality into the OS, I'm going to show you how to do it on your own.

Step 1: Set your desktop background image. Open up 'Desktop and Screen Saver' in System Preferences and select your desired desktop image.

Update: This deal seems to be dead for now, possibly until Friday. (Apparently the TUAWlanche we set off hit the "LIMITED QUANTITIES AT THIS PRICE" limit.) We will update the post when and if it goes live again.

Later Update: It's baaaaaaaaaack. Link & code seem to be working again. Guess we didn't completely TUAWcide the deal.

For shoppers in the US, Black Friday is right around the corner. With it, of course, are lots of deals, including many that don't make you wait for Friday.

Dell is currently offering the highly Hackintoshable Mini 10v unit for just $229 shipped (it's $20 more for Bluetooth, which you have to opt out of; there are many other options configurable as you set up your unit). Here's a typical order, with the lowest end processor and free shipping.

1 Inspiron Mini 10v 
1 Intel Atom Processor N270 (1.6GHz/533Mhz FSB/512K cache) 
1 1GB DDR2 SDRAM 
1 10.1" Widescreen Display (1024x600) 
1 Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950 
1 160GB, 2.5inch, 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive 
1 Obsidian Black 
1 Wireless 802.11g (1397) Mini Card 
1 Integrated 1.3M Pixel Webcam 
1 24WHr Lithium-Ion Battery (3-cell) 
1 1Yr Ltd Warranty and Mail-In Service 
1 1Yr LoJack for Laptops Theft Protection 
Save $139 off this Dell Mini 10 ! - $139.00 
Order Subtotal: $229.00 Shipping and Handling Total: $8.00 
Shipping Discount: -$8.00 
Tax Total: $17.68 Total Amount: $246.68 

Add in a Leopard license (plus an optional Snow Leopard license on top of that) and you still have a very reasonably priced system. If you have a monitor, keyboard and mouse on hand, and the Mini 10v makes an excellent and highly affordable kids' computer to replace an older Mac system.

Note that Apple's EULA, as recently affirmed by the California courts, does prohibit you from installing the copy of Leopard you purchase on anything other than Apple hardware, meaning that you Hackintosh your system at your own risk (legal and technical).

Appearing alongside the Mac OS X 10.6.1 update, Apple released another update today: Security Update 2009-004 is out for users of Leopard and Tiger. This update patches several vulnerabilities, including the security issue with Flash that was also part of Mac OS 10.6.1.

It's available now through Software Update and is applicable for Mac OS X Leopard, Tiger (PPC and Intel) and Tiger Server (PPC and Universal).

With only a few hours more to wait until the packages start arriving and the stores start selling Snow Leopard, the reviews are beginning to pour in. To summarize: it's faster, it's (mostly) stable, yay new Finder, mostly yay new QuickTime (good thing you can still install the QuickTime 7 player), and in the words of our colleagues at Engadget: "Here's the thing about Snow Leopard, the single inescapable fact that hung over our heads as we ran our tests and took our screenshots and made our graphs: it's $30. $30!"

• Uncle Walt Mossberg at AllThingsD: "Overall, I believe Snow Leopard will help keep the Mac an appealing choice for computer buyers, and I can recommend it to existing Mac owners seeking more speed and disk space, or wanting to more easily use Exchange. But I don't consider Snow Leopard a must-have upgrade for average consumers. It's more of a nice-to-have upgrade. If you're happy with Leopard, there's no reason to rush out and get Snow Leopard."
• Gizmodo's Brian Lam: "Challenging 30 years of ever more bloated software tradition, the changes here are about becoming a more effective middleware between the media and the hardware, reducing friction while becoming more useful by, well, being lighter, less visible."
• Macworld's Jason Snell: "Failing a massive makeover, then, we've got to take joy in the little gifts that Snow Leopard gives us. And there are a lot of them. I'd like to pick my favorite, but the fact is, they're all small enough that I can't really choose one. But if I could gather up the whole lot of them in my arms, I'd give them a hug."
• Ed Baig at USA Today: "In my experience, Mac OS X was already a superior operating system to Windows. With Exchange and other technologies, Snow Leopard adds bite, especially for business. But as upgrades go, this one is relatively tame."
• Wired's Brian X. Chen: "This upgrade won't deliver any radical interface changes to blow you away (not that we would want it to), but the price is more than fair for the number of performance improvements Snow Leopard delivers."
• Jason Parker at CNET: "Overall, we think that Snow Leopard did almost everything Apple says it set out to do: it refined and enhanced Leopard to make it easier to use. Though the system performs well in everyday use, many of our tests indicate it is slightly slower than the older version of Leopard in more intensive application processes. Still, we highly recommend upgrading for all the new features and Microsoft Exchange support."
• David Pogue in the NYT: "[I]f you're already running Leopard, paying the $30 for Snow Leopard is a no-brainer. You'll feel the leap forward in speed polish, and you'll keep experiencing those "oh, that's nice" moments for weeks to come. If you're running something earlier, the decision isn't as clear cut; you'll have to pay $170 and get Snow Leopard with Apple's creative-software suites -- whether you want them or not. Either way, the big story here isn't really Snow Leopard. It's the radical concept of a software update that's smaller, faster and better -- instead of bigger, slower and more bloated. May the rest of the industry take the hint."
• ...and the aforementioned Engadget review, with lots of delightful videos (captured with QuickTime X's new screencasting feature).

If you've got Snow Leopard questions, we've got answers. Throw a comment in this post, send us a tweet over at the Ask TUAW account, or visit over on the Facebook page. We're also hoping to put together a late-night Friday liveblog to take live feedback from upgraders, and then we'll be live again Sunday night for the talkcast where it will be all Snow Leopard, all the time.

Amidst the Safari and AirPort updates yesterday, Apple has released yet another update today, Security Update 2009-004. This update patches a single vulnerability affecting the BIND DNS server. It's available now through Software Update or Apple's support downloads page, and is available to download for Mac OS X Leopard, Tiger (PPC and Intel) and Tiger Server (PPC and Universal).

Apple has just released a patch to the AirPort client to remedy the wireless performance problems stemming from the recent Mac OS X update to 10.5.8. Some users had been forced to downgrade or replace the wireless-specific kernel extensions to clear up the issues.

The update, weighing in at a svelte 1.4MB, purports to solve an issue found on certain MacBooks and MacBook Pros. Affected machines suffered from significantly slower wireless network speeds while operating on battery power.

Here's the official description from tonight's Airport Client Update for MacBooks and MacBook Pros, version 1.0:

This update is recommended for some Intel-based Macintosh computers running Mac OS X 10.5.8 and addresses an issue with AirPort performance while running on battery power. It may only be installed on:

MacBook (13-inch, Late 2007)
MacBook (13-inch, Early 2008)
MacBook (13-inch, Late 2008)

MacBook Pro (15-inch, Early 2008)

MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2008)
MacBook Pro (17-inch, Late 2008)

While I do own a potentially affected MacBook Pro, I did not experience the performance issues, so I can't vouch for the update's effectiveness.

Have you installed the patch and noticed an improvement (or not)?

Welcome back to Mac 101, our series of posts aimed at novice Mac users and veterans who like the occasional refresher.

Many new Mac owners want to customize their Mac's look and feel. A simple place to begin is the desktop picture. It's easy to change and there are several options, from the images that come with the OS to freebies from the Internet and your own photos. Here's what to do (this post assumes you're using Mac OS X 10.5.x).

Open System Preferences from either the Apple Menu or the Dock and click Desktop & Screen Saver and then the Desktop tab. If you're in a hurry, you can also get there by right-clicking on an unoccupied area of the desktop, and choosing "Change Desktop Background." On the left you'll see several options. Click Apple Images to browse some of the images that shipped with your Mac. To set any as your Desktop picture, simply click it. The Nature, Plants, Black & White and Abstract folders also hold options from Apple. Personally, I like some of the black & whites.

If you've got iPhoto installed, you can browse your albums just as easily. Select the album on the left and click any image on the right to select it. Some of you may maintain your own folder of images. To access it from the Preference Pane, click the "+" and navigate to the photo that contains your images. Finally, you can simply drop an image into the well at the top of the Preference Pane window.

There are additional options at the bottom of the window, like changing the picture at regular intervals and disable the translucent menu bar (my personal favorite). Finally, if your image is too small, you can opt to tile or stretch it.

Now that you know how, go and grab some images. The Iconfactory, Pixlegirl Presents and Mac Desktops are good places to start looking.

The Mac OS X 10.5.8 update is now available through Software Update. Among the listed features are resolution for compatibility issues when joining AirPort networks, disappearing monitor resolutions in System Preferences, and Bluetooth reliability.

The update will also upgrade Safari to version 4.0.2, though I'm not sure if that includes those of us still on Safari 3 (I'll find out in a moment!) There are a number of other reliability and compatibility tweaks that are listed here. Security features are available here.

The update is not available through Apple's download site as of yet.

Edit (1:55 PT): I can confirm that this update does upgrade those of you still on Safari 3, like I was, to Safari 4.0.2. The combo update is also now available.

A friend of mine let me know that last night, Apple seeded Mac OS X 10.5.8 Build 9L30 to developers. Apparently, this version had only one item in the change list, that item related to an issue with waking from sleep mode when connected to external monitors.

With this one minor change, as well as the fact that the previous build was pushed to developers only five days earlier, it appears that the last version of Leopard is about to show up in Software Update. OS 10.6, Snow Leopard of course, is expected to ship towards the end of September.

TUAW wants to know when you think 10.5.8 will actually appear. Take our poll, and if none of the canned answers fit your thoughts, be sure to leave a comment.

Updated to clarify that the media browser option is in the Open dialog, not in Finder windows.

More Mac 101, our series of tips for new and novice Mac OS X users. Here's a tip that I was recently reminded of while choosing photos from a web browser for upload. Mac OS X Leopard's Finder has a handy media browser built into the open dialog box, not entirely unlike that found in the iLife suite.

Let's say you're looking for a photo to upload to Flickr or similar service. With your browser open, select Open from the File menu to invoke the Open Dialog Box. On the left hand side, select Media. Now you can browse your iPhoto library and even scrub through Events if you have iLife '09 installed. From there, select the photo you want, click Open and you've got it.

There are also a couple of tricks available that aren't immediately obvious. First, control-click (or right-click on your mouse) any neutral space in the dialog box to bring up a contextual menu with the option to switch between icon view and list view. Once in list view, the contextual menu adds options to open a file in its parent app, reveal its location in the Finder and display information columns (name, size, kind, etc.).

Additionally, hitting the space bar with an item selected highlights it, similar to Quick Look. A photo is brought to the forefront and music and movie previews are played.

It's handy, often overlooked and a great way to ensure that you've got exactly the file you want.

If there's one software company and product line that can raise the ire of even the most mellow Mac user, it's Intuit and the Quicken line of accounting software. While the company rightfully owns the market for home and business accounting software in the Windows world, their Mac products are beset with bugs, delays, and incompatibility issues.

IGG Software has announced a "Why wait another day?" rebate program to persuade frustrated Quicken Mac 2007 owners to switch to iBank 3.5 (US$59.99). If you're a Canadian or U.S. owner who purchased iBank after July 10th, 2009, and have proof of ownership (installation disc or receipt) for either the Mac or Windows versions of Quicken or Microsoft Money, sending in a mail-in rebate form will get you a $20 incentive to switch to iBank.

iBank 3.5 requires Leopard, and has a number of features that take advantage of Apple technologies. For example, you can take a picture of a receipt using your iSight camera and include that with a transaction record. MobileMe users get the advantage of automatic backups of their financial data, as well as a way to enter transactions "on the road" with the companion iBank Mobile iPhone app (US$4.99, purchased separately).

All in all, the rebate is a great way to start saving money and begin working with an accounting application that was designed from the ground up to work on Macs.

If you make your living with words, and some of us around here at TUAW do, then a good dictionary is what you need.

The mother of all dictionaries, the Oxford, is now available for Macs (PPC and Intel) on CD with half a million words, and the ability to trace word usage through more than 2 million quotations. This version 4 edition CD has the full text of the OED 2nd edition, plus supplementary volumes, full text search, options to customize the entry display, and a variety of ways to display the results.

The Dictionary is designed to be copied to your hard drive, and requires at least a G4 processor with 867MHz or greater or an Intel Core Duo 2.13GHz or faster. The dictionary can run on either OS X 10.4x for 10.5x.

If memory serves the OED hasn't been on the Mac since version 1, and this is a welcome return. The CD is pricey, US$295.00, but buying the printed version is more than $900.00 and takes 20 volumes. Amazon has the CD version for $212.40.

You're probably saying "hold it -- my Mac has the Oxford Dictionary built in!" You'd be right, but it is a cut down version, with about 2/3 of the definitions missing, and for U.S. users, we get the Oxford American Dictionary, not the English Dictionary.

The CD release is not perfect. It has no way to save searches or info out for later research, and the dictionary does not integrate into the existing dictionary on Leopard, so the two don't talk to each other. The GUI is ugly and not Mac like. If you are looking for the last word in dictionaries, however, this is it.

John Gruber mentioned in a recent post about Apple's Snow Leopard list of Enhancements and Refinements that one of the small adjustments to Snow Leopard will be that the default gamma on displays will switch from the typical 1.8 value to 2.2, which is what is used on TVs as well as being the long-standing default gamma value in Windows.

Gamma affects the visual contrast you see on your screen, and a higher value indicates a higher level of contrast. The cost of this higher contrast is that you lose some detail on the less luminous parts of your screen.

If you're interested in seeing what this is going to look like in Snow Leopard, or switching your gamma setting now so that you're used to it ahead of time, here are the steps to do it using the Display Calibrator Assistant:

1. Head into System Preferences, and click on the Displays icon.
2. Click on the Color tab, and press the Calibrate... button.
3. On the Introduction window that opens, click Continue
4. On the next screen, "Select a target gamma", choose "2.2 Television Gamma"
5. Click Continue leaving your Target White Point set to Native (or whatever yours is set to)
6. Now name the new profile you've created, click Continue and then Done.
7. Lastly, you can now choose to switch between your default color profile, and your newly created profile with the gamma set to 2.2.

I realize this might seem terribly obvious to some users, but for others playing with color profiles is not ground they've previously covered. If you're one of those people, this tip is for you.

We've talked about pet management software before on TUAW. It's software that allows you to keep track of important information about your companion animals, including when the next vet appointment is, what medications they're taking, names and addresses for vets, groomers, and more.

Clarus 1.0 is the latest application of this genre, and it looks like a keeper. The £15.00 GBP program, which appears to have been named after the mythical dogcow of Apple lore, can be downloaded for a free trial. Purchasing the application eliminates built-in limits on the number of contacts, insurance policies, medications, and vet visits.

Unlike other pet management packages, KennettNet built Clarus from the ground up as a Leopard app, and it takes advantage of integration with Address Book, iCal, Quick Look, and AppleScript. Clarus is localized for English, French, German, and Spanish Mac users.

What I find most useful about this program is how it stores all of my pet's care information in one place. Should my cat Ruby require emergency medical care, I have all of her records at my fingertips. If she runs away from home, I can print a "missing" poster with one click.

Clarus gets two paws-up! Moof!