[CharlesS]

This thread is for revealing tiny little things you've found - things that either aren't on Apple's feature list (and would probably make Apple look desperate if they were) or are just tiny little footnotes, but nevertheless make you smile when you notice them.

Here are a few I've discovered:

1. The emacs shortcuts now work in Carbon apps. Woohoo!

For those who aren't familiar with these, there are a number of text editing shortcuts from emacs that have always worked in the Terminal and in Cocoa apps, but were conspicuously absent in Carbon apps. The most handy of these IMO are Ctrl-A to skip to the beginning of a paragraph and Ctrl-E to skip to the end of a paragraph, which don't require your hands to leave the home row, unlike command-arrows and Home/End. Now they work in Carbon, so I don't have to learn two different sets of behaviors for text fields anymore. Score one for consistency!

2. If you drag a hard drive's icon on the desktop, it stays at the same spatial coordinates where you left it, even after a reboot. I'd been wondering why this wasn't possible since System 6! It's really handy if you have a Time Machine backup drive or a rescue partition or any other volume that you don't normally access directly, because you can drag them down to the lower left corner of the screen where they won't get in the way.

3. The scroll wheel now can scroll windows that aren't the active window - even windows belonging to background apps!

4. Okay, okay, I know this is in the feature list, but it's just too cool that you can now use quoted phrases in a Spotlight search.

Okay, those are a few things I've discovered - if you have any more to share, fire away!

[Kar98]

[thunderous_funker]

I know this was leaked beforehand, but the fact that the Dock icon for iCal actually shows the correct date is causing me no end of happiness. I actually had iCal in the startup group before just so it wouldn't sit there showing some random date.

[CharlesS]

Huh - you're right! I hadn't noticed that. I wonder how it works?

[ghporter]

In Tiger at least, iCal would show the correct date, but only if iCal was running-even running hidden. I have my Macs set up to do this just so the date is correct there. This may be as good a reason as any for me to upgrade...once I have saved up for it.

[Geobunny]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

Huh - you're right! I hadn't noticed that. I wonder how it works?

It's just one more thing that the Dock's in charge of. Go to your Applications folder and it still shows incorrectly (well, it'll be right once a year I suppose! )

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

2. If you drag a hard drive's icon on the desktop, it stays at the same spacial coordinates where you left it, even after a reboot. I'd been wondering why this wasn't possible since System 6! It's really handy if you have a Time Machine backup drive or a rescue partition or any other volume that you don't normally access directly, because you can drag them down to the lower left corner of the screen where they won't get in the way.

One step closer to the spacial Finder.. MmmMMmm!

Nice feature.

V

[Kar98]

Spotlight will not just look for files containing the phrase, file _names_ containing the phrase, but also check the dictionary.

[Nodnarb]

Originally Posted by Geobunny 

It's just one more thing that the Dock's in charge of. Go to your Applications folder and it still shows incorrectly (well, it'll be right once a year I suppose! )

Wouldn't that be 12 times a year?

[AC Rempt]

Originally Posted by Nodnarb 

Wouldn't that be 12 times a year?

No cuz it shows the month, too.

[AC Rempt]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

In Tiger at least, iCal would show the correct date, but only if iCal was running-even running hidden. I have my Macs set up to do this just so the date is correct there. This may be as good a reason as any for me to upgrade...once I have saved up for it.

I thought you had access to the Ed discount? It was $69 at my local university (but I know that still might be a bit much for some). I guess what really irks me is that MacNN doesn't spring for copies for it's admins. Seems like the least they could do, and it pays for you guys to be hip on the new OS.

C'mon, MacNN! Honor the worker!







(PS. I'm only half kidding.




Maybe.)

[zro]

No idea if it's been advertised, but the new speech voice (Alex) is really good.

[TETENAL]

I don't know whether this is documented, but I noticed by chance that you can drag windows to another Space by dragging them to the side of the screen and holding them there for a little while.

[.Neo]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

3. The scroll wheel now can scroll windows that aren't the active window - even windows belonging to background apps!

Apple definitely advertised that.


Apple - Mac OS X Leopard - Features - 300+ New Features

[iomatic]

Originally Posted by .Neo 

Apple definitely advertised that.


Apple - Mac OS X Leopard - Features - 300+ New Features

I'm glad it's not behind-clicking; that's the biggest pet peeve of mine on Windows.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by .Neo 

Apple definitely advertised that.


Apple - Mac OS X Leopard - Features - 300+ New Features

Whoops, hadn't noticed that. Oh well, it hasn't gotten much fanfare anyway.

Here's another unadvertised feature I've noticed - the boot time! Leopard seems to boot much more quickly than Tiger - it doesn't even put up the progress bar at all! Straight from the grey apple to the desktop.

[Cold Warrior]

what's behind-clicking?

[CharlesS]

Here's something else: The Finder is now dock-aware. Inserting a removable disk no longer causes it to show up under the Dock if the Dock is pinned to the right.

[mindwaves]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

Here's something else: The Finder is now dock-aware. Inserting a removable disk no longer causes it to show up under the Dock if the Dock is pinned to the right.

This feature alone is worth buying Leopard. It has been missing since 9.1!

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by AC Rempt 

I thought you had access to the Ed discount? It was $69 at my local university (but I know that still might be a bit much for some). I guess what really irks me is that MacNN doesn't spring for copies for it's admins. Seems like the least they could do, and it pays for you guys to be hip on the new OS.

C'mon, MacNN! Honor the worker!
(PS. I'm only half kidding.
Maybe.)

The education price is not $69 online, and I'm not sure the Apple retailer on campus has Leopard yet. Unfortunately, my book store doesn't sell Apple software-that comes from the Apple retailer... And I have more than one Mac to upgrade (though not my wife's 800MHz G4 iBook ) so I still need the family pack. Sort of a bummer this way, but that's where I am. Our MacOS mods have apparently planned to be really close to first in line for the upgrade anyway. Me? I'm not an OS mod, and it's not "critical" for me to have the latest OS. I just have to wait... Ah well.

[jlgrandam]

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

I don't know whether this is documented, but I noticed by chance that you can drag windows to another Space by dragging them to the side of the screen and holding them there for a little while.

woah, first time I've seen this mentioned. Thanks!

[Stogieman]

I like how the Airport menu now indicates which networks are locked.



The search feature in the help menu comes in handy when trying to locate menu items.

[frdmfghtr]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

The education price is not $69 online, and I'm not sure the Apple retailer on campus has Leopard yet. Unfortunately, my book store doesn't sell Apple software-that comes from the Apple retailer...

It's not $69 at a regular retailer either. I dropped into the local Apple Store to try out Leopard and the in-store educational discount was 10%. Right now, the biggest draw for me is Time Machine, so I can easily wait until Monday to get my copy on-campus for $69.

As far as unadvertised features...one of the Apple people showed me a really nifty feature of the Help system. If you go into Help from the top menu in Finder and type a search term, if it is a command in the menu bar somewhere, it will open that menu and point out the selection. I thought, "now that is pretty cool." Maybe this was advertised, but it's still cool.

[brokenjago]

It was advertised, yes. I've also known about it since Late 2006 when they posted the Mac OS X state of the union vids where they showed it off.



Still, very cool.

[legacyb4]

Not sure if this means I actually have "n" now, but Network Utility now shows me:

Wireless Network Adapter (802.11 a/b/g/n)

on my MacBook and I know I didn't cough up in 10.4 for the upgrade.

If only there was an N network somewhere I could test...

[CharlesS]

I wouldn't be surprised if that support were rolled into 10.5. The reason you had to pay for that update back when it came out was because the Sarbanes-Oxley Act prohibits companies from adding features to products without making you pay for them. You paid for 10.5.

[Nodnarb]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

I wouldn't be surprised if that support were rolled into 10.5. The reason you had to pay for that update back when it came out was because the Sarbanes-Oxley Act prohibits companies from adding features to products without making you pay for them. You paid for 10.5.

Kind of off topic: I do remember that whole debate with the law and making people pay like $5 or something (was it $10?) for the "N" upgrade...but what does that mean for the iPhone? They already have added new features, and hopefully add a bunch more, but without making people pay?

[CharlesS]

No idea - IANAL.

I just remember Sarbanes-Oxley being the stated reason for the $5 charge for the AirPort update.

[gradient]

A big finder improvement in my books: when you click on a filename to rename it, everything EXCEPT the extension is highlighted for editing. Nice.

[Nodnarb]

Interesting. I didn't even think about this (possible) issue until you just brought that up, but I don't see any difference in adding new features to a mac via software updates, or adding new features to the iPhone via software updates. Wonder how they're going to get around it (or they may have just been bullshitting in the first place to get people to pay $5 for 802.11N).

Ok I'm done, go back on topic, sorry.

[mdc]

They said that they are doing some special accounting for the iPhone and AppleTV so that they can add features to it and not be affected like with the 802.11n issue.

Not sure if this has been brought up, but you can drag a file onto the stack icon in your Dock to copy it to said folder.
When I download an app for the first time I put it on my desktop for the first use, if I like it then it goes to my apps folder. I dragged the app out the dmg to my desktop and was happy with it so I dropped it onto my Stack in the Dock and it copied it to the folder.

Neat.

[gradient]

Still OT, I know, but I can think of several free software upgrades that have come out in the last couple years that contained new features. EyeTV 2.5 is the most recent that I remember - so I don't get how that law works.

[sc_markt]

I like the way the find function in Safari works. It tells you how many instances of the text it found and when you click the next button, the text is easy to see in the yellow box.

- Mark

[legacyb4]

Hey, that's pretty neat. Think of how many keystrokes we will save over a year with something as simple as that!

Originally Posted by gradient 

A big finder improvement in my books: when you click on a filename to rename it, everything EXCEPT the extension is highlighted for editing. Nice.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by gradient 

Still OT, I know, but I can think of several free software upgrades that have come out in the last couple years that contained new features. EyeTV 2.5 is the most recent that I remember - so I don't get how that law works.

It could just be a simple matter of companies hoping the government doesn't notice.

[draggerman11]

Originally Posted by Nodnarb 

Kind of off topic: I do remember that whole debate with the law and making people pay like $5 or something (was it $10?) for the "N" upgrade...but what does that mean for the iPhone? They already have added new features, and hopefully add a bunch more, but without making people pay?

Apple is able to issue added features to the iPhone because they are spreading earnings from iPhone revenue over the course of a year, instead of posting it on their books when it is purchased.

[- - e r i k - -]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

It could just be a simple matter of companies hoping the government doesn't notice.

Wasn't this law related to hardware upgrades in particular? Something about unannounced hardware features being enabled by software?

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by mdc 

Not sure if this has been brought up, but you can drag a file onto the stack icon in your Dock to copy it to said folder.
When I download an app for the first time I put it on my desktop for the first use, if I like it then it goes to my apps folder. I dragged the app out the dmg to my desktop and was happy with it so I dropped it onto my Stack in the Dock and it copied it to the folder.

Neat.

Folders in the Dock have always worked in that fashion.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by gradient 

Still OT, I know, but I can think of several free software upgrades that have come out in the last couple years that contained new features. EyeTV 2.5 is the most recent that I remember - so I don't get how that law works.

They're a German company, so the U.S. "Enron law" doesn't apply to them.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by - - e r i k - - 

Wasn't this law related to hardware upgrades in particular? Something about unannounced hardware features being enabled by software?

No, as far as I understand it, it applied to delivering new functionality to products already paid for. This technically requires them to shift all profits made from that product into the new quarter in which delivery of the product was completetd.

[Catfish_Man]

Originally Posted by Geobunny 

It's just one more thing that the Dock's in charge of. Go to your Applications folder and it still shows incorrectly (well, it'll be right once a year I suppose! )

I still find it incredibly bizarre that they haven't come up with a nicer design than "any code requiring dealing with multiple gui apps goes in Dock.app".

[.Neo]

Originally Posted by Catfish_Man 

I still find it incredibly bizarre that they haven't come up with a nicer design than "any code requiring dealing with multiple gui apps goes in Dock.app".

Makes sense. You don't see a new mail badge in the Finder either.

I'm not really sure why people would expect those dynamic icons (for lack of a better word) in both the Finder and Dock.

[Catfish_Man]

Originally Posted by .Neo 

Makes sense. You don't see a new mail badge in the Finder either.

I'm not really sure why people would expect those dynamic icons (for lack of a better word) in both the Finder and Dock.

I'm talking purely from an architectural standpoint. Personally I would probably run a tiny daemon that kept it up to date (doesn't iCal already have a daemon for running alarms?).

[mdc]

Originally Posted by sc_markt 

I like the way the find function in Safari works. It tells you how many instances of the text it found and when you click the next button, the text is easy to see in the yellow box.

- Mark

The new Safari search is really nice.
If you use command-F to search you can use command-G to cycle through results.

[BoingoBongo]

Front Row seems a million times faster. You don't have to wait for lists of artists/songs/tv shows/movies/whatever to load, it's just instant. I REALLY like this.

[.Neo]

Originally Posted by BoingoBongo 

Front Row seems a million times faster. You don't have to wait for lists of artists/songs/tv shows/movies/whatever to load, it's just instant. I REALLY like this.

I think it has to do with that Front Row 2 doesn't rely on applications like iTunes and iPhoto anymore. Front Row on Tiger would actually launch iTunes and iPhoto when listing to music or watching a photo slideshow, when they weren't running.

Front Row 2 seems to be a real stand-alone application capable of reading your iTunes/iPhoto libraries on it's own, where Front Row for Tiger was just a simple front-end.

[andretan]

Originally Posted by mdc 

The new Safari search is really nice.
If you use command-F to search you can use command-G to cycle through results.

Actually, this is not a Leopard feature... Safari 3 running in Tiger also has this.

[Mrjinglesusa]

Originally Posted by thunderous_funker 

I know this was leaked beforehand, but the fact that the Dock icon for iCal actually shows the correct date is causing me no end of happiness. I actually had iCal in the startup group before just so it wouldn't sit there showing some random date.

I hadn't noticed that until you mentioned it. Apple, it's about time.

Originally Posted by gradient 

A big finder improvement in my books: when you click on a filename to rename it, everything EXCEPT the extension is highlighted for editing. Nice.

It's a minor thing but very convenient IMO.

Originally Posted by BoingoBongo 

Front Row seems a million times faster. You don't have to wait for lists of artists/songs/tv shows/movies/whatever to load, it's just instant. I REALLY like this.

One of the first things I noticed after upgrading.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Perhaps one of the best unadvertised feature is Disk Utility's on-the-fly non-destructive partition resizing. It came in a 10.4 point release in the form of a CLI command as well as the Boot Camp Assistant utility but now anyone can create and resize HD partitions without cryptic CLI commands.

[Kar98]

Originally Posted by gradient 

A big finder improvement in my books: when you click on a filename to rename it, everything EXCEPT the extension is highlighted for editing. Nice.

Nice find!