Top 10 obscure new Leopard features
I was just reading through the 300 new Leopard features just posted today on Apple's site. They usually have a list like this with each major OS X release, and I always find it interesting, as there are usually a few little features that don't make the "top features" list, but are the kind of refinements that can make upgrading worthwhile. Here are a few that I found that I'm looking forward to using.Scriptable System Preferences: There's all sorts of functionality in System Preferences that I wish again and again I could change using a script. It doesn't look like everything is scriptable, but it's definitely a step in the right directionUI Recording and Playback: Back in the day, Applescript used to support recording, which was a great way to set up simple tasks and learn scripting. This has fallen by the wayside in OS X, but I'm glad to see some kind of recordability make it back into the OS, even if it's slightly less sophisticated.Spring-Loaded Dock: I knew about this before, but apparently in addition to opening folders via the dock, you can also "spring-load" applications. Pressing the space bar while holding a drag over an app in the dock will launch the application. I'm pretty sure I'll find ways to use this.Finder Path Bar: This is a nice little touch that puts the full path to the current folder in the bottom bar of your Finder window, similar to the one you see when selecting a search result. Simple, but will definitely make life easier.Inline iCal Editing: I never really liked having to shuttle all the way over to a separate window/drawer to edit iCal events. This looks like it will be much more intuitive.iChat Audio/Video Recording: I don't do audio/video chats that often, but I love having transcripts of my text chats to look back at, and being able to do this with audio/video chats is definitely nice to have.Self-Tuning TCP: One of those under-the-hood optimizations that probably should have been done a while ago, and for which there are multiple third-party ways to enable it. Nice to see this here.PDF Manipulation in Preview: This is sweet, being able to reorder pages in a PDF, or copy pages from one PDF to another. You can combine multiple PDFs into on or split them apart. Preview is really getting to be a pretty powerful little application.Calculations in Spotlight: Finally, I can do quick calculations directly from my keyboard without having to open a separate app or widget.Scroll Non-Active Windows: Another little feature that I've found myself wanting fairly often. I sometimes employ the command-drag trick to drag a background window's scroll bar, but just being able to crank the scroll wheel is much nicer.