Top Ten Leopard Tips

Here are the top-ten Leopard tips from my friends, Adam Engst et al, at Take Control Books. They’ve already released five ebooks to help people upgrade to Leopard. These books cost either $10 or $15, but you can save 30% if you buy all five. Take Control publishes minor updates for free, so the authors can revise their books on the fly.

1. Back up first! Time Machine may or may not turn out to be everything you ever wanted in a backup program. But even if you’re going to have a full Time Machine backup after you upgrade to Leopard, don’t forget to back up your Mac first. Your best bet is a bootable duplicate to an external hard drive, using a program like SuperDuper.

   Not only does this provide insurance in case something goes wrong with your upgrade, it lets you use the cleaner and safer Erase and Install upgrade method, at the end of which the Leopard installer can migrate your user data, applications, and other files from your duplicate. From Take Control of Upgrading to Leopard

2. Update third-party software first. Some of your favorite third-party applications and utilities may already have been updated for Leopard compatibility. It’s worth going through your software and checking for any such updates before running the Leopard installer - especially for things like plug-ins for Safari and Mail, and any other system enhancements that may hack into your system in ways Apple doesn’t officially sanction. Many such programs may break under Leopard, but if you upgrade them to compatible versions beforehand, you’ll have a better chance of smooth sailing once Leopard is installed. From Take Control of Upgrading to Leopard

3. Opt out (not in) for additional fonts. In Tiger, if you wanted the forty or so additional foreign-language fonts installed, you had to ask for them specially during the installation process, or try and find them later. (Why would you care if your foreign language skills don’t include Chinese, Thai, or Tibetan? Many of the Asian fonts have wonderful Roman-based characters, such as numbers up to 100 and letters inside circles, squares, and rounded rectangles, both white-on-black and black-and-white.)

   Leopard, however, includes all the fonts by default, so if you don’t want your Font menus cluttered or the chore of removing the extras manually, decline the fonts during the installation process: Choose your installation method, and then on the Install Summary screen, click Customize. In the Custom Install pane that appears, uncheck Additional Fonts in the list of options. From Take Control of Fonts in Leopard

4. Reconsider Spotlight. In Tiger, many users found Spotlight a disappointment: it failed to find files; finding invisible files didn’t work; and the interface for dealing with the found files was just plain weird. Leopard fixes all this.

   There are only two Spotlight interfaces: the Spotlight menu, and the Finder search window. To use the Finder search window, choose Show All in the Spotlight menu, or press Command-Option-Space, or just start typing in a Finder window’s search field. You can work with the found results just as in any Finder window. Even better, you can refine the search as much as you like. Click the + button at the right side to summon a “criteria bar.” Click it again to summon another.

   If the criterion you want doesn’t appear in the leftmost pop-up menu, choose Other; especially useful “Other” options include “System Files” (which makes Spotlight search everywhere) and “Spotlight items” (which makes the results include non-file things like iCal events). Option-click the + button to make a criteria bar that can modify addition criteria using Any, All, or Not. Oh, and finding invisible files works. From Take Control of Customizing Leopard

5. Welcome guests to your Mac. When your friends or family want to use your Mac “just for a minute,” to check email, to surf the Web, or to play a game, you can do so more safely now by letting them log into the new Guest Account in Leopard. This account, which recreates a virgin home folder each time its activated, gives them standard user’s rights, and keeps them from prying into your personal files. From Take Control of Users & Accounts in Leopard

6. Capitalize on the Finder font previews. You don’t have to open Font Book, or the font manager of your choice, to see what a font looks like. With Icon Preview turned on as an option for any Fonts folder window, a font icon appears as a tiny, two-letter sample of its font. In a Column view window, the Preview column shows a small, but full alphanumeric sample of a selected font file. But, for a quick, big Finder font sample, just select a font file and take a Quick Look: choose File > Quick Look (Command-Y), or simply hit the spacebar. From Take Control of Fonts in Leopard

7. Share and share alike. Like a scent on a breeze that reminds us of older days, File Sharing in Leopard brings back a feature missing since Mac OS 9: folders that can be shared as network volumes. While third-party software could add back this behavior in Tiger, it’s not the same as having it built in. Sharing folders lets you choose which projects or parts of a hard drive to expose to others. This limits risk and makes file sharing simpler, too.

   Leopard provides a neat interface (in the Sharing preference pane, under the File Sharing service) to choose which folders or volumes to share, and to set which users may access and modify files. But it can be even simpler. In the Finder, select any folder or volume, choose Get Info, and check the Shared Folder box to share that item; it’s automatically added to the Shared Folders list in File Sharing. From Take Control of Sharing Files in Leopard

8. Control your kids! A great way to keep your kids from using their Macs too much is to set time limits with Leopard’s significantly enhanced Parental Controls. You can set limits for school nights and weekends, and this prevents them from logging in between the morning and evening hours you set, or playing games or chatting after bedtime. From Take Control of Users & Accounts in Leopard

9. Lock down FTP. Apple is still hiding its secure FTP (SFTP) light under a bushel. FTP as a protocol is insecure: passwords and data pass in the clear, visible to anyone on a Wi-Fi hotspot or other untrusted network at a college or elsewhere. SFTP protects you by encrypting the entire FTP connection. You won’t find the option connected with FTP in the File Sharing preferences though.

   The trick is that Leopard enables SFTP when you turn on Remote Access in the Sharing preferences pane. Unfortunately SFTP can’t be limited in scope as to what files a user with a Mac OS X account can see, so SFTP is a better tool for a computer owner’s remote access. All well-known Mac OS X FTP clients support SFTP. From Take Control of Sharing Files in Leopard

10. Become a Spaces cadet. You’ll get the hang of using Spaces right away (and you should definitely use it, as it is a really easy and very cool way to handle window clutter), but one or two major features might escape your notice. An important thing to be able to do is to move an already open window from one space to another. Since you are always in just one space, how can you possibly do that? If you’re in All Spaces mode (which you get to by clicking the Spaces icon in the Dock, or by pressing F8), you can drag a miniaturized window directly from one space to another!

    Otherwise, hold the mouse down on a window’s title bar and switch directly to another space with a keyboard shortcut (such as Control-Right arrow); the window will travel with you to the new space. Or, drag the window to the edge of the screen and pause with the mouse still down and at the screen’s edge; you’ll switch spaces automatically, bringing the window with you.

    And here’s another tip: When you’re in All Spaces mode, you can use Exposé triggers. It’s particularly useful if you enter All Spaces mode and then activate your All Windows Exposé trigger. The result is quite spectacular: you can now see all your windows in all your spaces, simultaneously! Click a window to switch to that space and bring that window frontmost, all in one amazing move. From Take Control of Customizing Leopard

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These guys are the experts, but I have two Leopard tips too. First, switch to Safari. I swear it renders pages faster than any browser that I’ve used. This means sacrificing some Firefox plug-ins, but the tradeoff is worth it even if Safari didn’t enable you to create widgets (see next).

Second, roll your own widgets. My favorite feature of Leopard is the ability to create widgets with Safari. I made widgets out of the site traffic reports that I track. Now I just go to Dashboard and see four widgets instead of going to four web pages. Here’s how: Safari—>File menu—>Open in Dashboard. I’ve used Dashboard more in the first twenty-four hours since upgrading to Leopard than during all the years Dashboard was available prior to Leopard.

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Please add your favorite Leopard tips by adding a comment to this posting.

Comments

[A]

@anon | Oct 30, 2007 9:54:28 AM
"There just isn't any evidence - meaning data - to support the claim that erase and install is safer"

??? Really? Have you looked for such data? You're a professional support person, are you? Where is your authority in making such a claim?

Having installed/upgraded/supported hundreds (if not 1000s) of computers (of all sorts) over the past decade (empirical data, thank you very much), I can easily and categorically tell you that you are flat-out wrong.

Upgrading any OS has *always* been better using a clean install of the new OS, rather than building on top of the current installation. Leopard doesn't change this *fact*.

[Daneel]

I'd switch to safari but i have one major problem with it. It prioritizes one tab and just ignores the rest. Here in India, broadband is only 256kbps. So the only way to watch a Youtube video is to click pause and do your other work and be back to the tab in 5 minutes. In Firefox, normally the entire video would have loaded, but in Safari, only when i shift to the tab and maintain focus it loads the page.

[Joe d'Eon]

Re: My previous comment -- I'm not spamming this thread with a link to my podcast -- it's just a short test podcast anyways to demonstrate what I'm talking about.

[Joe d'Eon]

I'm trying to switch to Safari, but I just noticed it doesn't render at least one thing quite right.

I was playing around with Garageband and iWeb to see how easy it might be to create and publish a podcast. Well, it's pretty easy, but notice that this page:

http://tinyurl.com/3bo2lc

renders properly in Firefox and plays the enhanced podcast with pictures; while Safari (at least on my mac) only shows a white block where there should be pictures.

[Marc Duchesne]

Tip : Finder/CoverFlow/QuickLook : in the CoverFlow window, select the file you want to read, hit the Space bar, boom, you're in QuickLook mode. Read .ppt files w/o this $ù^% PowerPoint, Buddies ;-)

post-scriptum to Guy : Opera 9.5b "Kestrel" is way faster than Safari 3.0, and it has Session Restore built-in (plus many really cool user-friendly features which Apple should, hum, "integrate" into Safari with 'the Apple touch' ;-)

[Hagablog]

I haven't upgraded yet although I plan to.

I like the sound of Spaces, I have used VirtueDesktops for about a year now and am now addicted to switching from one space (with my coursework in) and another space (with my web browser and RSS reader in).

For me Leopard offers a few disappointments. Time Machine back-ups aren't bootable, iChat still doesn't support MSN and what were Apple's design team smoking when they thought that the transparent Menu Bar was a good idea. Stacks look good and I can see myself using them a lot, I often put folders in the Dock and Control-Click them to get a list (This will be great for switchers as it can be used a kinda Start Menu).

Not great about that whole .ape thing, I've had to uninstall a load of my favorite additions (SmartScroll X) just to be safe.

[Vanish]

anon has obviously never worked in a professional environment supporting Macs. Clean install is MUCH more reliable than backup and upgrade. If something goes terribly wrong, a proper restore of the backup takes much longer than using the archive and install option, and is no faster than the clean install method.

As an IT professional who has experienced upgrade disasters both at work and at home, I have learned to ALWAYS use the clean install method unless I'm doing a rapid troubleshooting session, in which case I use archive and install.

I'm uncertain where these additional hours come from, unless you're counting re-installing all of your applications. Unlike Classic Systems, Mac OS X apps do put things hither and yon, things which sometimes read your configuration and write to themselves, in which case an upgrade completely breaks the app. The side benefit to a clean install, is you won't likely clutter your hard drive with apps you rarely, if ever, use.

[Nick]

anon: He's not saying that you MUST do a clean install. I did have APE installed and I had a hell of a time getting Leopard going. First I tried upgrading... Blue screen of nothing... not to mention that my MBP became super hot. Shut it down, try again. And again. It stayed at that blue screen until it power saved. The solution for me was to do a clean install. I didn't lose any data because I had a SuperDuper backup. Now, I hope that most people don't have to go through that, but wouldn't it be nicer to have a backup just-in-case?

[Jean To]

Here another discovery I made accidently with Space:
Grab an application and hit sides of your screen, you'll see it move to the same direction in Space.

Enjoy!

any questions www.JeanTo.com

[Ryan]

Thanks for the informative list.

[Jon Baer]

Here is another great tip for using Spaces, hitting the app icon in the dock will let you cycle through to the next document. Alt+click will reverse the direction.

[jack]

I haven't had any issues with upgrade install. I would also suggest Command-1, -2, -3, -4 for the different Finder views. Some items are viewed best as columns, details, or CoverFlow.

[Tyson Williams]

Great list, thanks for sharing

[Tony Spencer]

Its unfortunate that Firefox is so much slower than Safari but I've become far too dependent on my plugins to give it up and I just can't see widgets as a solution. For instance there is no way you could duplicate the web developer's extension in a dashboard widget (and make it as useful).

[anon]

For the *vast* majority of users, erase and install is a waste of time. Even those users who had APE installed (a relatively small number), haven't lost their data. There just isn't any evidence - meaning data - to support the claim that erase and install is safer, much less that it's so much safer that it justifies the additional hours involved doing a clean install or archive and install.

The Take Control book suggests wasting much time for very small, if even existent, gains. Backup, then upgrade. It's that simple.