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!

In ye olde times, with "Mack OSe 9," many users chose to keep their personal files, work, and documents on a different physical disk from their startup disk. It was a safety measure: If one disk goes down, at least the other won't. There was no structural reason to keep files in a particular disk location, other than keeping them out of the System Folder.

I visited a client yesterday whose drive scheme was set up exactly like this, and he wanted to be (finally) upgraded to Leopard. I wasn't sure how Leopard would handle the fact that his Users folder had been moved to a different drive, so (knowing I had backups of his entire system) I cautiously proceeded with the installation.

After the installer finished, Leopard had created a fresh, blank Users folder on the startup disk with a home folder bearing the same username. This wasn't exactly the answer I was looking for. I had to link, somehow, the new Users/hisname folder with his existing user folder on the other volume.

Turns out, Leopard handles this much better than previous versions of Mac OS X. Read on to find out how.

Apple just dropped 10.5.7 on us (a little late by some guesses), via Software Update (you can get to it under the Apple menu). Here's the blurb:

The 10.5.7 Update is recommended for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility and security of your Mac. For detailed information about security updates, please visit this website.

I notice a lot of sync-related "reliability" fixes here, some nice additions to the parental controls, a Gmail login fix, and widget updates (yeah, some people use those). Full details here. Enjoy!

Sunday night on the Talkcast, we approached the rumors of a 10.5.7 release coming soon, and all pretty much agreed that yes -- whatever is in it, it's very likely coming soon. Here's another rumble of thunder that hints at the storm: Nvidia announced a brand new card recently for Macs, called the Quadro FX 4800 -- it offers "ultra fast performance," "realistic effect," and tons of triangles and all of the other things that comes along with a video card that looks more like a Flip Mini than an actual set of circuits.

But most importantly, under "Drivers and Downloads," you can see that the Mac drivers require Leopard 10.5.7. Combine that with all of the other speculation flying around, and odds are that we'll see a new version of the OS in Software Update as soon as later today.

Thanks, Daniel N!

Update: EA has noted that The Sims 3, due in June, will require Mac OS 10.5.7. At least we know it will be by then.

Several outlets are reporting today that Mac OS 10.5.7 is due to drop any time now. Build 9J47 was released on Friday, less than a week after 9J44, and build 9J50 is said to have been distributed on Tuesday. Until now, these updates have been delivered weekly. This accelerated distribution, along with a shortening list of fixes (the latest build only addresses three) are clues that 10.5.7 is nearly ready.

Additionally, some customers have reported that the ATI Radeon HD 4850-equipped iMacs that they ordered have had their ship dates bumped up to this week (there's a rumor that the graphics card requires 10.5.7).

We'll let you know when this shows up, and report any changes (or problems) we experience after installation.

Have you ever needed more room on your screen? Or have you ever needed a way to organize all the stuff you are working on with your Mac? Mac OS 10.5, aka Leopard, debuted a feature called Spaces: a way of creating extra screens on your Mac. Think of them as virtual workspaces, where you can easily drop application windows to reduce clutter or simply focus on one thing at a time.

To activate Spaces, go to System Preferences > Exposé and Spaces > Spaces. From there you can enable from 2-16 "spaces" (virtual screens) and you can fine-tune application behaviors. For example, I have Skitch set to appear in Every Space, which simply means it'll appear in whatever space I happen to be working in when I open Skitch. Normally switching to an application will take you back to the space you left it in (you can turn this off in the preferences).

The really awesome thing about Spaces: it's like Exposé on steroids. If you're used to hitting a key and seeing all open windows, now you'll be able to hit a key and see all windows in all the Spaces you have open -- thus expanding your screen real estate considerably. Plus, you can use the two together. Hit a key to see all Spaces, then hit your Exposé key to see all the windows in every Space. You can also easily drag windows to another space either in the zoomed out view or just by pulling a window to the edge of the screen (depending on which space you wish to travel to). It's hard to explain, so watch the video to see what I mean.

Note that there are some apps (Microsoft Word 2008 in particular) that don't play well with Spaces, so your mileage may vary.

Want more tips and tricks like this? Visit TUAW's Mac 101 section.

When first we met the Turbo.264 hardware compression accelerator, it did a great job of speeding up video exports on older CPUs but didn't offer a tremendous boost on modern Intel hardware. True, it worked well with Elgato's EyeTV software to transcode TV recordings overnight for iPod or iPhone use, but not everyone needed to spend the money to recover that time.

Elgato's got an upgrade to the Turbo hardware now, the Turbo.264 HD. On the one hand, the new unit is limited to Intel Mac owners running Leopard -- leaving out the G4 and G5 users who benefited most from the speed boost of the older unit.

On the other hand, the widget has the ability to export in HD resolutions; you can do basic trim edits on clips and handle almost any input format under the sun. More importantly, the new stick brings a vital feature to HD camcorder users: on-the-fly transcoding of AVCHD video.

Mac users who have AVCHD camcorders have suffered long and loudly with the format, even though native editors like NeoScene and batch converters like VoltaicHD have simplified things a bit. While iMovie '09 and Final Cut/FCE can handle AVCHD, importing is a slow slog. The Turbo.264 HD promises to dramatically reduce importation time for AVCHD clips and offload the work of transcoding them from the computer's processor. If it works as advertised, it's going to be very popular with HD camcorder users.

The new unit is $150US and shipping now.

There's a post up at World Of Apple today with what seems to be screenshots of interface changes in Snow Leopard build 10A261, which was released in February. Nothing major, but nice little improvements.

For example, there's a re-designed Keyboard Shortcuts control pane that lets users define shortcuts as easily as restore the defaults. Another cool trick is the "Put Back" button available when browsing the contents of the trash from a Finder window. One click restores a previously doomed file to its former location. A stay of execution, if you will. I think that's pretty neat -- veteran Mac users may remember the similar "Put Away" feature, ?-Y, which has gone missing from Leopard (and Macenstein wants it back).

However, I imagine most people will be more excited about an option to browse nested folders within a stack. The screenshot depicts a stack displayed in grid view, its parent (still in grid view) off in a corner.

Unlike the ridiculous "enhancements" that George Lucas made to the original Star Wars movies, I'm looking forward to the tweaking Leopard will receive with version 10.6.

[Via AppleInsider]

It's Cocktail time yet again -- the intrepid folks at Maintain are updating the Leopard version to 4.3, and bringing more utility than ever to the already extremely popular and versatile Unix function and OS X tweaking app. The new version adds the ability to clear harmful files off the system (including some nasty trojans), lets you clear out the CrashReporter and HungReporter logs, and fixes a few QuickTime compatbility issues as well.

The update is highly recommended for all users of the Leopard Edition, and available right now from Maintain's website. If you haven't yet taken the plunge on getting access to all of the weird and wonderful Unix widgets running inside your computer -- everything from cron jobs and maintenance tasks to network optimization -- the app itself is available for a single-user license fee of $14.95. Considering all of the things this app does (not to mention how often they update), that's a bargain.

For those elite geeks who feel like going free of charge and foregoing the pleasant interface to the UNIX underpinnings of Mac OS X, you can accomplish some of the same maintenance and cleanup tasks with CLIX.

Mac OS X has been pretty much a dream for me. I can't ever remember getting the Apple blue or gray screen of death. My Mac Pro is up 24/7 and only reboots when I've done a software update. Most of the time it happily chugs along. The same is true for my MacBook Pro. It's been problem-free except for one bad battery that started to swell. Apple eagerly replaced it.

That makes it all the more vexing when minor things go wrong that seem pretty unexplainable. One little problem is Apple Mail notification sounds. They seem to work about half the time. I have 3 email accounts, and the one that is the most unreliable is the MobileMe account. Even though mail sounds are turned on, I usually don't get any sound when mails comes in. I use the 'glass' sound, but it fails on any selection. My POP mail accounts seem to trigger the alert properly.

This same problem existed in Tiger, and has survived several Leopard updates. This minor but irritating issue exists on both my computers, and so far has eluded all my detective work to eliminate it. This bug is impervious to permission resetting, changing default mail sounds, playing with the sound control panel, (yes, 'play user interface sounds' is checked) and making sure that Growl and other 3rd party hacks are nowhere on my computers. The guys at the Genius Bar scratch their heads and smile.

The Apple support boards are full of similar complaints, and when you eliminate the people that had their sound turned down, or the other obvious fixes, there is a pretty large residue of people who have this problem. Apple must be aware of it.

Don't get me started on the error I get 2-3 times a week when Time Machine tells me a backup didn't work, and then the next hour everything is fine. This is another error that has survived several Leopard updates. Like a good citizen, I always do the larger combo updates to have the best chance of replacing any bad system components.

Every OS has a long list of issues. Actually, I find the current build of OS X the most reliable system software I have ever used. That said, I'd love to see some of these little bugs cleaned up. I'm sure you have your own lists and will share them.

Maybe Apple will read this and send me a fix for my notification sounds issue. The problem is, I probably won't notice the mail when it comes in. Grrrrr.

Psystar, as you may remember, is the computer company that has begun selling computers with Mac OS X Leopard pre-installed. Of course, they drew the attention of Apple legal right away, but that only caused them to further dig in their heels.

Last month, they challenged Apple's claim to the copyright of Mac OS X, claiming that Apple never registered Mac OS X with the U.S. Copyright Office.

Previously, Judge William Alsup had dismissed federal antitrust claims, which only prompted Psystar to amend its countersuit with all new claims.

Now, they're trying yet another angle. Psystar is claiming the first sale doctrine. Similar to the right you have to buy a book and re-sell it, Psystar says that since they bought legit, retail copies of Mac OS X from Apple and installed them on their computers, they're in the clear. If they want to then sell those computers, that's fine and dandy. Unfortunately for them, they also bought shrinkwrap EULA's which impose license conditions. They don't "own" the software.

Everything else aside, this seems like an awful amount of time, effort and expense just to sell computers. There are less difficult ways to sell Mac OS computers, folks. At this point, you're just being stubborn, Psystar. Let it go.

Back in April, Psystar went public with the first commercial Hackintosh clones. For US$554, they'd send you a Core 2 Duo minitower with Mac OS X pre-installed. In June, they released rack-mount servers with Leopard Server pre-installed in both 1U (starting $1599) and 2U (starting $1999) configurations.

Update: It seems that Psystar has included claims to the first sale doctrine, as some of our readers have pointed out, for a while now. However, we don't feel that it's a "linchpin" of the case -- first-sale hasn't been rejected by the court. More on this seemingly unending story as it develops. Thanks to Alex at World of Apple for the heads-up.

MacMod.com has announced their honorees for the best mods on Macs that they saw last year, and you can see all of the hacks and mods over at their site right now. Most of the mods are case modifications, like the very slick iPhone custom, and the "Xbox G4," as seen above, which is a Powerbook G4 modded into the case of an Xbox 360 (with working ring of light!).

I find it interesting that despite all of the slick case designs and gadget melds, the winner ends up being a software hack (well, it's actually more than a software hack, but still, you won't find any neon tubing in this mod, just a beige case): Leopard running on a PowerMac 8500. The mod itself ends up being a fine trip over the history of Apple's current software, its past machines, and all of the gooey chips and hardware inside. Very cool. Kudos to all the modders for their work -- we can't wait to see what 2009 brings to the mod community.

Earlier this week, HP announced the availability of two new home servers, the MediaSmart ex485 and ex487. It's true that both are based on Microsoft's Windows Home Server platform, but the interesting thing for Mac users is that they're recognized by Time Machine as backup targets, and they can act as an iTunes server. At $599US for the ex485 (750GB of storage) or $749US for the ex487 (1.5TB), that's not a bad deal.

Other specs include a 2GHz Celeron CPU, 2GB of DDR2 RAM, gigabit Ethernet, four USB 2.0 ports, one eSATA jack and four internal HDD bays. Note that total storage on these units can be scaled up to 9TB.

HP will begin taking pre-orders in January for shipment in February.

For now, I've got a G4 iMac in my basement acting as a home media server, as it were, to the Apple TV. Two external drives are attached -- one for Time Machine and one for a SuperDuper! clone, scheduled to update weekly.

A third, pocket-sized drive is updated via SuperDuper! weekly and lives off-site (read: my wife's desk in her classroom, don't tell!). Do you have a home-spun backup and streaming solution?

[Via Engadget]