The latest and greatest Mac operating system OSX Leopard 10.5 is just six days away from arriving in our hands. I took a good look at the full list of 300 new features and hand picked ten small but significant ones to showcase.
Multicore Enhanced OS
As I’m sporting a Mac Pro, I like to make the most of my four processor cores with software optimized for this platform.
Leopard provides optimum performance from Core Image, Core Animation, and OpenGL, all tuned to take advantage of your Mac’s multicore processor. All application on the system including ‘lightweight’ apps such as Mail and Address Book are all now multi core ready.
iChat Video/Audio Conversation Recording
Perfect for keeping track of important meetings or for creating video podcasts with others from around the globe, you can now save your audio and video chats with iChat recording.
iChat asks your buddies for recording permission before the chat starts, then stores completed audio chats as AAC files and video chats as MPEF-4 files — so you can share with others or sync to your iPod.
I’m often chatting on iChat and can’t keep track of notes on paper quick enough to keep up with the conversation, this will help me dictate notes after the fact – perfect for audio interviews.
Safari/Mail RSS Integration
RSS has become far more popular over the past year but a large majority of Mac users are still not too sure what it’s all about. With Leopard, Apple has made it even easier to manage and add RSS feeds to Safari/Mail.
You’re able to add news feeds to Mail directly from Safari. When you read an article in Safari, it will show up as read in Mail, and vice versa. This universal way of accessing your RSS feeds will make it much less of a chore to keep up with the latest news.
Of course, some will still stick with dedicated RSS readers like NewsFire, though having everything in sync between Safari and Mail, and multiple machines is appealing.
New AirPort Menu
Leopard gives you a clearer picture of your surrounding Secure networks in the AirPort menu, Secure wireless networks are now identified by a lock icon.
Talk about handy for those sporting laptops. How often have you been in a hotel and wanted to connect to an pen network without having to click on each one in the list to find an open one.
Image Manipulation Tools In Preview
Preview is no longer just an image viewing application without much of a purpose. You can now crop, rotate, resize, and save images in a range of image formats. Selection tools make it a snap to cut and paste images from Preview directly into other applications.
I’m looking forward to the revamped Preview as it looks like it will quicken up my photo output workflow for things such as Desktop Friday. No more wasted time opening Photoshop just to scale an image and save for web.
Enhanced Find In Safari
I wrote about this feature a couple of months ago. No more is searching on long pages clunky and time consuming, I can simply hit Apple + F and start typing, with results highlighted in orange instantaneously.
Safari now allows you to instantly and graphically locate any text on the current web page. It highlights every instance of the word you’re searching for and even dims the rest of the page so you can focus on the results of your find.
Calculations in Spotlight
I’m often opening Dashboard to make a quick calculation with the Calculator widget. Spotlight now allows you to calculate simple equations at the click of your mouse, or the touch of a key.
Simply hit your Spotlight shortcut, and start typing. Spotlight will instantly show you the result. Enjoy support for over 40 functions ranging from simple math to logarithms to trigonometry.
System Wide Grammar Check
Tigers system wide spelling check has been a real asset to the operating system since it was first introduced. Apple is introducing a similar feature in Leopard, a system wide grammar tool.
Let your grammar set a shining example. A built-in English language grammar checker helps ensure that you don’t make errors in grammar – I expect a few bloggers to be silently excited over this feature.
Eject All Partitions/Devices In Finder
I’m often stuck with a CD inserted in my Mac Pro, a handful of DMG files on my desktop, and multiple iPods hooked up to my machine. Ejecting and dismounting all of these devices doesn’t take long, but it’s annoying when you’re doing it multiple times a day.
Leopards new eject all partitions/devices feature provides greater flexibility when ejecting a partitioned USB or FireWire volume. You can eject just one of the volumes or all the volumes at once with a single click. No more dragging and dropping to the trash, just one painless click.
Hot Corner for Sleep Display
As Paul Stamatiou wrote a few days ago, this is one of the smaller new additions within System Preferences, yet it will make a large difference to those too lazy to switch their monitors off each time they leave their Mac.
I’ll be taking advantage of this feature and setting up a convenient hot corner to put my display to sleep each time I leave my desk.
Do any of these feature excite you as much as they excite me? Have you placed your pre-order for Leopard or do you plan to pick it up from an Apple Store on launch night?