So it seems a large number of users think that the UI facelift in OS X Leopard leaves much to be desired, and developers have responded swiftly to such complaints. Here is an almost complete list of what you can change in Leopard:

Dock

Some like the 3D Dock, some don’t. The problem, I think, lies with the light gray shade of the Dock shelf. Since the gray shelf reflects windows that are close to it—and windows are gray—it gets really hard to see the glowing dots beneath Dock items.

Rev. Mitcz apparently thinks so too, and whipped up the Leopard Dark Glass Dock mod. This mod alters the look of the Dock shelf, such that it is a grey-black gradient. With his modification, the Dock is so much more visible now. The link to download can be found in his post, or you can download from here (hotlinked).

Alternatively, you can choose to change the color of the Dock with DockColor by Elgebar Studios.

Speaking of the glowing dots, if you prefer the black triangles that are in OS X Tiger, try Dock Delight by Mark Allen.

And, finally, if you prefer to have a 2D Dock, there is DockRestore by Space Software or DockChanger by Whimsically Plucky Software. DockDoctor by InnermindMedia takes the concept further by using a Dashboard widget.

Did you know that if you have Dock magnification turned off, you can momentarily enable it by holding down Control+Shift as you mouse-over the Dock?

Menu Bar

Ahh, the semi-opaque menu bar. I don’t get it. It’s pointless. While there isn’t yet a way to directly change the opacity level of the menu bar, there are applications that can take your desktop picture and apply a white band (or any other color you like) that goes beneath the menu bar and effectively turning it opaque.

Try LeoColorBar by md softworks or OpaqueMenuBar by Eternal Storms Software.

Also, have you noticed that there are no longer rounded corners in Leopard? If you miss that, Displaperture by Many Tricks can bring back the CRT goodness.

Stacks

In OS X Tiger, you can control-click on any folder in the dock and get a pop-up menu listing its contents. In Leopard, such folders have been replaced by Stacks. Now, control-clicking on a Stack brings up a new Finder window with the items in the Stack.

Ross Carter came up with DockAppsMenu; it is still a work-in-progress, and some users have reported it does nothing, so your mileage may vary.

Alternatively, you can drag a folder alias to the right of the dock, but you won’t get a pop-up menu.

Did you know you can open an item in the Stack and still keep the Stack opened? Just hold down the Option key before you click the item.

Default Desktop Picture

Windows XP has its ugly ‘Bliss’ desktop picture. OS X Leopard has an equivalent in the ‘Starfield’ desktop picture. To change the default ‘Starfield’ wallpaper you see at the login screen, open a Finder window and look into:

/System/Library/CoreServices/

There, you will find a file called ‘DefaultDesktop.jpg’. Replace this file with your desktop picture of choice; just remember to rename that to ‘DefaultDesktop.jpg’. Do a logout/login.

And if you really want to customize the login window, such as replacing the Apple logo and adding a custom login message, try Visage (US$9.95) by Sanity Software.

Scrollbar

The UI in previous versions of OS X 10.4 was, quite simply, a mess. iTunes had one look (the ‘Plastic’ look), iSync had another (the ‘Brushed Metal’ look). With Leopard, the appearance of windows has finally been unified into one consistent look.

Strangely, someone at Apple seemed to have forgotten about scrollbars. The scrollbars in Leopard still sport the candy Aqua look. Now you can replace them with iTunes-like scrollbars, courtesy of the folks at MacThemes.net.

Keyboard shortcuts you may or may not know, and may or may not find useful…

Dot, dot, dot
Well, so I am apparently “a word nerd“. If you are the anal-retentive sort when it comes to typesetting (like I am), you’d be delighted to know that the keyboard shortcut to input the ellipsis (a.k.a. the “dot-dot-dot”) is OPTION+; (the semi-colon key)…

I em not a hyphen!
… oh, and the keyboard shortcut to input the em dash—which is all too often unfairly substituted by the hyphen—is OPTION+SHIFT+- (the hyphen key). The irony of it.

Spot the word
With OS X 10.5 Leopard, you can look up the definition of a word in Spotlight. Simply type a word and Spotlight will show a Definition result field in its pop-up window. Sometimes you don’t even have to click on the definition to see it in full. A great time-saver. I use this interchangeably with CONTROL+COMMAND+D. (Source: David Pogue, New York Times)

You do the math
Also, you can do simple calculations right inside Spotlight. (Source: David Pogue, New York Times)

Yes, I really do want to restart!
By holding down the OPTION key when you click on the Apple logo on the menu bar, ‘About This Mac’ becomes ‘System Profiler’ instead. Also, the ‘Restart’, ‘Shut Down’ and ‘Log Out’ commands lose their ellipses, meaning you won’t be presented with the two-minute confirmation dialog box…

…on the other hand, when you hold down the SHIFT key, ‘Force Quit’ loses its ellipsis and defaults to whichever application is currently in the foreground.

Now! Now!! Now!!!
And if you are the really impatient sort, COMMAND+CONTROL+EJECT (the eject key there at the top-rightmost corner of the keyboard) triggers an instant reboot, while COMMAND+CONTROL+OPTION+EJECT does an instant shutdown (these are for Intel Macs only).

In OS X 10.4 Tiger, holding the OPTION key down when clicking on the AirPort icon on the menu bar lets you see a list of available hotspots arranged by their signal strength, with the strongest at the top of the list. Now, in Leopard, an OPTION-click displays more information such as the MAC Address, SSID, RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator) and Transmit Rate of the hotspot your Mac is connected to.

Slow motion
Still in awe of those silky-smooth animations in OS X? The next time you click on an icon in the Dock, or minimize a window, hold down the SHIFT key and watch the animation unfolds in slow motion. The details are stunning; if you SHIFT-minimize a QuickTime video, you’ll see that the video continues to play as its window is being animated. File this under ‘Really Useless Trivia’.

Your wish is my command…
Your Mac is secretly a puppy at heart, one that loves nothing more than having you issue it  a spoken command. Go to Speech in System Preferences, and turn on ‘Speakable Items’. The next time the thought pops into your head, hold down the ESC key and ask “What time is it?”

… and your feedback is important to us
Conversely, you can have your Mac recite a passage back to you. If the ‘Speak selected text when the key is pressed’ option is checked in the Text To Speech preference pane, your Mac will recite any highlighted word or passage when you press a key—I use SHIFT+ESC so that I associate it with its Speech counterpart shortcut. Tip: use the ‘Alex’ system voice that is new in OS X Leopard; it is quite stunning, and is a far cry from the rest of the monosyllabic-sounding voices. ‘Alex’ actually takes an audible breath between sentences!

Going back and forth
I must admit I realized this one only quite recently: In the Finder, you can use COMMAND+[ and COMMAND+] to go back and forward as you navigate folders by keyboard. These two shortcuts are mostly system-wide, meaning they should work for most applications.

Jump the gun
In the Finder, you can quickly jump to the file you are looking for by typing the first few letters of its filename. I can usually manage three letters if I type really fast. Combine this with other Finder navigation shortcuts and you may never have to touch the mouse. (Windows users: this works for Windows Explorer, too.)

If you are a geek, you’d love this comprehensive list of keyboard shortcuts by Dan Rodney or Apple’s official documentation on the keyboard shortcuts in OS X.

The first thing you may notice once you’ve installed OS X 10.5 Leopard is that the default desktop picture is no longer the ‘Aqua Blue’ JPEG that is used for 10.4 Tiger. It is, instead, the star-field-and-Aurora-Borealis picture that is the distinctive branding for Leopard, and this desktop picture is the one you will see at the login screen. Since I do not use the Leopard picture as my wallpaper, I sought a way to change the default.

Open a Finder window and look into:

/System/Library/CoreServices/

There, you will find a file called ‘DefaultDesktop.jpg’. Replace this file with your desktop picture of choice; just remember to rename that to ‘DefaultDesktop.jpg’. Do a logout/login.

And, while we are on the subject, you may have noticed that black is not one of the colors you see listed in the Solid Colors section of the Desktop & Screen Saver preference pane; I noticed this when I had to hook my MacBook Pro up for a presentation and I was unable to set a solid black background for the desktop. The list of colors are Aqua Blue, Aqua Dark Blue, Aqua Graphite, Gray Light, Gray Medium, Gray Dark, Kelp, Lavender, Mint, and White. But no Black.

To remedy this, simply browse to:

/Library/Desktop Pictures/Solid Colors/

Open any of the PNGs in there in Photoshop, modify its lightness to black, and save it as a unique PNG.

Updated 01.11.07

A typical Mac OS X installation comes with language localization for all system files; for example, an English OS X will contain information for all the other languages that OS X supports.

(Tom Harrington of Atomic Bird, the developer of Macaroni, has corrected me with the fact that the typical OS X installation contains only the following language localization: Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Danish, Finnish, Korean, Norwegian, Swedish, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese.)

The other languages are:

Abkhazian, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian (shqip), Amharic, Arabic (العربية), Armenian, Assamese, Avestan, Aymara, Azerbaijani (азярбайжан), Bashkir, Basque (Euzkeraz), Belarusian, Bengali, Bihari, Bislama, Bosnian, Breton, Bulgarian (български), Burmese, Catalan (català, Valencian), Chamorro, Chechen, Chichewa (Chewa, Nyanja), Church Slavic, Chuvash, Cornish, Corsican, Croatian (hrvatski), Czech (český), Dansk, Deutsch (Alle), Deutsch (Deutschland), Deutsch (Österreichisches), Deutsch (Schweizer), Dutch (Allen) (Nederlands, Vlaams), Dutch (België), Dutch (Nederland), Dzongkha, Esperanton, Estonian, Faroese, Farsi (Persian, فارسى), Fijian, Français (Belgique), Français (Canadien), Français (France), Français (Suisse), Français (tout), Frisian, Gaelic (Scots, Gàidhlige), Gallegan, Georgian, Greek (Ελληνικά), Guarani, Gujarati (ગુજરાતી), Hausa, Hebrew (עברית), Herero, Hindi (हिन्दी), Hiri Motu, Hungarian (magyar), Icelandic (Íslenska), Indonesian, Interlingua, Interlingue, Inuktitut, Inupiaq, Irish (Gaeilge), Italiano (Italia), Italiano (Svizzera), Italiano (tutti), Javanese (basa Jawa), Kalaallisut, Kannada, Kashmiri, Kazakh (қазақ), Khmer, Kikuyu; Gikuyu, Kinyarwanda, Kirghiz (кыргызча), Komi, Korean (한글), Kuanyama, Kurdish, Lao, Latin, Latvian, Letzeburgesch, Lingala, Lithuanian, Macedonian (македонски), Malagasy, Malay, Malayalam, Maltese (Malti), Manx, Maori, Marathi (मराठी), Marshallese, Moldavian, Mongolian, Nauru, Navajo, Ndebele (North), Ndebele (South), Ndonga, Nepali (नेपाली), Norwegian (All), Norwegian (Bokmål), Norwegian (Nynorsk), Occitan (Provençal), Oriya, Oromo, Ossetian; Ossetic, Pali, Panjabi (ਪਂਜਾਬੀ), Polish (polski), Português (Brasil), Português (Portugal), Português (tudo), Pushto, Quechua, Raeto-Romance, Romanian (româneşte), Rundi, Russian (русский), Sami (Northern), Sami (Southern), Samoan, Sango, Sanskrit (संस्कृतः), Sardinian, Serbian (Српски), Shona, Sindhi (سِندهِي), Sinhalese, Slovak (slovenský), Slovenian (slovenski), Somali, Sotho (Northern), Sotho (Southern), Spanish (Español), Sundanese, Suomi (Finnish), Swahili, Swati, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tajik (точики), Tamil, Tatar (татарча), Telugu, Thai (ภาษาไทย), Tibetan, Tigrinya, Tonga (Nyasa), Tonga (Tonga Islands), Tsonga, Tswana, Turkish (Türkçe), Turkmen, Twi, Uighur, Ukrainian (українська), Urdu, Uzbek (узбек), Vietnamese (Việt), Volapük, Welsh (Cymraeg), Wolof, Xhosa, Yiddish (ייִדיש), Yoruba, Zhuang; Chuang, Zulu.

That is quite a list! translates into quite a lot of disk space unnecessarily filled up. And the odds that a user would require switching his or her Mac to another language are pretty low. Even as I am proficient in both English and Chinese, I have no needs to run a Chinese OS X installation. Note that removing language-specific files do not take away the ability to input in those languages; removing language-specific files only means you won’t be able to run, say, a Chinese or Japanese OS X installation, in which system menus are in those languages.

Here’s how you can reclaim some disk space from your OS X installation. Download a 35-day free trial of Macaroni and install it. After installation, you will find Macaroni in System Preferences.

Choose the ‘Mac OS X Remove Localized Files’ and click the ‘Run Job Now’ button, after which you will be presented with a dialog box containing a list of all the languages present in OS X. Check those that you wish to remove and let Macaroni do the rest.

When I ran Macaroni through this, it reported, in the end, that it had removed 235660 files and 62704 directories and had saved 2454.61 MB. That’s 2.4GB!

Oh, and for the low price of US$9.99, Macaroni can run OS X maintenance tasks on a regular schedule. While OS X is intelligent enough to run these tasks on its own, it requires you to leave your Mac turned on overnight, something I suspect the average Mac user does not practice. Macaroni ensures that these tasks run, unobtrusively in the background, at the next opportunity. You can also customize your own maintenance jobs.

Updated 29.10.07

Ever since I first laid my hands on a PC 14 years ago, I have been fascinated by operating systems; in the early days, there was MS-DOS 5.0, 6.0, 6.22, and Windows 3.11 Windows for Workgroups. Then came 32-bit operating systems such as OS/2 Warp 3.0, Windows NT 3.51, Windows 95, Windows 2000, and OS/2 Warp 4, all of which I dabbled and played around. You could say I was promiscuous with operating systems. And, of course, I broke many machines along the way.

Fast-forward into the early 21st century, I was pretty much settled on Windows XP until I made the switch to Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger in mid-2007. Today, I took another step forward and installed Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, the highly-anticipated successor to OS X 10.4 Tiger.

I won’t go into the new features of Leopard that you would have already known by now. If you are really keen, here is a complete list from Apple (take it with a pinch of salt, though; some of the so-called ‘features’ are really corrections on shortcomings).

What I like about Leopard:

• Cover Flow in the Finder is a great way to browse files and folders, helped in no small parts by the addition of Quick Look. I do confess, though, that I had to look up in the help file how to invoke Quick Look by keyboard shortcut (it’s CMD+Y, or hit the spacebar).

• Generally, the redesigned Finder is a breath of fresh air, though I suspect I’ll still be using Path Finder more; its stack and tabs features makes Path Finder immensely more productive than the Finder.

• Scrolling non-active, background windows, though this didn’t work with Mozilla Firefox.

• The CMD+SHIFT+4 screen capture crosshair cursor now sports screen coordinates!

• The redesigned Network preference pane – it is now neater and more logically laid-out.

• Spaces – It’s not a new thing in computing, I know, but now I don’t have to rely on the occasionally-misbehaving VirtueDesktops or purchase You Control: Desktops. However, I’d much prefer if Spaces gave a visual indication of some sorts when an application window has been dragged from one space to another, like You Control: Desktops does. Update: Spaces apparently does inform you via overlay graphics that you’re dragging an application window from one space to another, but it disappears so quickly.

• The redesigned Front Row – its interface is slicker and seems more responsive, and Front Row finally gets its own icon in the Applications folder; in OS X 10.4 Tiger, you can start Front Row only by hitting OPT+ESC or with the Apple Remote Control.

• The improved DVD Player is a big leap forward from its previous version, which was really anemic in features and controls.

• Web Clips – You can clip any portion of a web page and send it to the Dashboard. This web clip is live and will update when its original page does.

• iLife Media Browser in Open Panel – Photos, movies and music in the iLife suite is now readily-accessible in any Open (open file) Panel, which really extends Apple’s intent for the Mac to be a digital lifestyle hub.

What I do not like about Leopard:

• The first time I started the Leopard installation process off the DVD, I thought it had hung when it came to the dialog box that asked for a destination drive to be specified. For a full minute, the dialog box was blank. No spinner progress indicator, no nothing, which was strange considering how the typical Mac installer would at least show a destination hard drive grayed out even if it was not yet ready to be chosen.

• The translucent menu bar. Why? Now, your wallpaper shows through behind the menu bar, which means the menu bar will take on the color of whatever the wallpaper is. This results in the legibility of the items on the menu bar varying wildly with your choice of wallpapers. And with some wallpapers that are visually heavy—photographs, especially—you can’t see a thing. Ten minutes after I had booted into Leopard, I fired up Photoshop and added a 22px-high white bar to the top of my wallpaper of choice. No more transulcent menu bar. Update: Wow, that was certainly fast; md softworks has just released LeoColorBar, an application that “adjusts your desktop picture on Mac OS X 10.5 so it doesn’t bleed through the transparent menu bar. It also lets you round the edges of the menu bar and display the whole image (so none is covered by the menu bar).”

• More spinning beach balls than usual – In the first two hours spent poking around Leopard, I noticed more spinning beach balls (busy cursor) than usual. I suspect this is due to the incompatibility of certain applications, or perhaps it is Spotlight doing its initial round of indexing. I expect this issue to ease off in the days after.

• I am ambivalent about Stacks. I presume most users will have quite a fair number of files in their Document and Download folders—the two stacks that are in the Dock by default. It is a good idea if you have only have 9 or ten files or folders; otherwise, Stacks default to a grid view that is simply a mess to look at, with icons grouped so closely their filenames get truncated and are hardly readable.

• When browsing files in the Finder, hitting the Return key triggers a rename instead of opening the file. In Path Finder, the two Enter keys give two unique functions; hitting the Return key opens a file, while hitting the small Enter key (to the right of the CMD key on the right of the spacebar) triggers a file rename.

• Quick Look in the Finder sometimes chokes with QuickTime video files that are 1GB or more in size. Once or twice, attempting to open such files in Quick Look would only crash the Finder.

As for application incompatibility, the main showshopper was SideTrack 1.5. After Leopard was successfully installed, the keyboard on my MacBook Pro became unresponsive. I was stuck at the login screen. The only solution was to plug in an external keyboard, login and uninstall SideTrack. Raging Menace, the developer of SideTrack has posted an advisory on this unfortunate problem.

Also, I ran into the “Blue Screen of Death” problem that many other Leopard users had run into; after Leopard has finished installing and has rebooted, a Mac may get stuck at a blue screen, with only a cursor and no activity. I can confirm that removing Application Enhancer has solved the problem, and now Apple has posted a support document regarding this issue.

Most of the applications I use work fine with Leopard except for the following:

• Speed Download (needs to be updated to version 4.1.16)
• Journler (needs to be updated to version 2.5.4, still in beta)
• Path Finder (previous version works fine, but version 4.8.1 offers some enhancements)
• Mouseposé (needs to be updated to version 2.5.2)
• WiFind (version 1.3.2 installs but does not appear in the wifi menu in the menu bar)
• Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.8 generally works fine in Leopard, but there are known bugs, such as that of certain Firefox extensions causing Leopard to display security alerts.

More to come after I’d put Leopard through the paces…

Oh, rejoice! Cerulean Studios, the publishers of Trillian, has just announced a port of Trillian Astra to OS X.

One of the many things I missed after switching to the Mac was Trillian 3; I had to settle for Adium X, another multi-protocol chat application. Trillian 3 is a multi-protocol instant messaging application that combines MSN, Yahoo!, AIM, ICQ, and Jabber chatting into one single interface. Ever since I was recommended Trillian by a friend three years ago, I’d stopped using MSN Messenger or Yahoo! Messenger on their own. Trillian 3 was Cerulean Studio’s most-recent version for the longest time, and their announcement of the completely-rewritten Trillian Astra caused a big stir in the Trillian community.

I can’t wait to start alpha-testing Astra OS X.

Mac OS X has a feature called Active Screen Corners, of which you can assign various Exposé actions to happen when the mouse pointer is at either of the four corners of the screen. The available options are: All Windows, Application Windows, Desktop, Dashboard, and Start or Disable Screensaver.

CornerClick takes this concept a step further. With CornerClick, you can assign more than one action to each screen corner; for example, instead of only having Exposé trigger when you activate a screen corner, you can now trigger Exposé on mouse hover, Desktop on a two-second delay hover, and perhaps trigger Dashboard on mouse hover and the pressing of a function key. The possibilities are quite endless.

Personally, I set all Exposé actions to only happen only if I press the Shift key as well. This is because applications such as Final Cut Pro requires a lot of mouse travel, and I always end up accidentally triggering an active screen corner. Now, with CornerClick, those kind of accidental triggers are a thing of the past.

CornerClick installs itself as a System Preference Pane and is free. Download CornerClick here.

1. TimeDrawer – TimeDrawer 1.0 is a version control application which records chronologically the changes you make to documents and files in your Mac. Think of it as something like Time Machine from the upcoming Mac OS X Leopard.

While there are many other applications that do the same, what makes TimeDrawer remarkable is how its beautiful user interface fits seamlessly to the OS; it makes it feel as though TimeDrawer was built right into Mac OS X. (US$29.95)

2. iQuip – iQuip is a freeware application that adds quotes to the OS X login window. If you like some food for thought to start the day, give iQuip a try. (Free)

3. Carbon Copy Cloner – Like Acronis TrueImage, CCC allows you to clone a hard drive to another either as a file-by-file copy or as a disk image. Great as a backup tool or when you simply need to temporarily move your installation out of a system disk, such as recently when I had to reinstall Boot Camp because the system disk had fragmentations in its free space, and the only way was to repartition the system disk. Carbon Copy Cloner version 3.0 beta is looking very good. (Free)

4. Overflow – Overflow was designed to overcome the problem of a user’s dock from cluttering up, hence its name. You can create separate categories for your applications, work files, games, or anything else you want to be able to access quickly. While Quicksilver is a very powerful tool, Overflow, with its ability to group applications by categories, compliments Quicksilver nicely. (US$14.95)

5. JetClock – JetClock allows you to know the time in 4 different cities of your choice throughout the world. It is perfectly integrated into the system menubar and can replace the system clock. (Free)

6. MenuCalendarClock – MenuCalendarClock is a menubar calendar that ties in with either iCal or Microsoft Entourage. Quickly view events in the current month as mouseover popups or add calendar events easily with just a click. (US$19.95)

8. Think – Think is an application with just one purpose; to help you concentrate. Think darkens the desktop and everything behind a foreground application, leaving you to better focus on whatever it is you are doing. Personally, I love this application; could be useless for some of you, though. (Free)

Freeverse seems to have pulled Think from their website. If you want a copy, contact me with the contact form in the sidebar.

9. Growl – Growl is a notification system for OS X. Growl notifications are a way for your applications to provide you with new information without you having to switch away from whatever it is you are doing (much like the Heads-Up Display feature in Aperture). The list of applications that support Growl is growing strong. (Free)

10. Speed Download – Speed Download 4 is a download manager much like FlashGet or GetRight. WIth a download manager application, you will no longer have incomplete downloads (because a download manager will resume downloading in the event of a disconnection) or have to keep a browser open while waiting for a download to finish. Speed Download 4 can also perform simple FTP functions. (US$25.00; US$15 if you upgrade from another Mac download manager)

11. Burn – Most CD/DVD burning applications are bloatware, containing lots of junk features no one really uses. Beneath Burn’s elegant and deceptively simple-looking interface is a set of features that rivals its commercial counterparts; with Burn you can burn five kinds of data discs (Mac, PC, DVD, Mac+PC, DVD-Video), two kinds of audio discs (Audio CD, MP3 Disc), four kinds of video discs (VCD, SVCD, DVD, DivX) and three kinds of disk images (IMG/DMG/CDR/Toast/ISO, Cue/Bin, TOC). (Free)

12. Sidenote – Before Sidenotes, I used to keep a text file named ‘Scrap’ into which I will chuck any bits of information I come upon while surfing. Now I can do the same in a much more elegant way. Sidenote is a note-taking application that hides at the edge of your desktop like a desk drawer. As and when you need it, Sidenote will automatically expand so that you can use it to take all your daily notes; you can even drag into it any picture, text clipping, or PDF file. Notes can be printed or exported as RTF. It’s like Stickies but clutter-free. (Free)

13. Afloat – Afloat is a window management utility for OS X. Once installed, Afloat offers near system-wide options to make application windows translucent, float above all others (always-on-top), or movable by keystrokes. (Free)

14. Vienna – Vienna is a freeware, open source RSS/Atom news reader. It’s got one of the most elegant interface I’ve seen for an RSS reader. (Free)

15. Firmware Password Utility – Windows users will (or should) be familiar with the practice of protecting their laptops with a boot-up password which can be set from within the BIOS. Apple has a similar option for Mac OS X, though it is neither a built-in option nor a much-publicised offering available in the Install Disk that comes with your system. Firmware Password Utility is in the Applications/Utilities/ folder in the OS X Install Disc 1.

With the Firmware Password Utility, you can prevent others from starting your computer using a CD or other disk with an operating system on it. Why this prevention? Because any one can easily use an OS install disc to boot into your system and change your password.

Important note: when you set a Firmware password, it prevents others from starting up the computer from a volume other than the chosen startup disk (usually your system disk). Once security is enabled, you cannot startup from other devices such as an external FireWire disk, a CD-ROM drive, or another partition or disk inside the computer. If you need to boot from your OS X install disc (to repair disk, for example), you’ll have to disable firmware password first. You may screw up your system if you apply this carelessly.

16. Journler – If Apple wrote a journal type of application as part of its iLife suite, Journler would be it; yes, it’s that good. It’s a blogging client. It’s a note taker. It’s a place for you to hammer out thoughts and musings. If you’re stumped for words, create audio and video entries instead; Journler integrates with iLife applications in addition to Mail, iWeb, Address Book, AppleScript and Spotlight. I’ve been using Journler for a month now* to gather my thoughts for a screenplay I’m working and it is definitely an application for writers. (Free)

* Thanks to Elias Diodati for reminding me about Journler.

17. Cellulo – I have to deal with a lot of QuickTime clips in the course of my day-to-day work. Cellulo lets you drag-and-drop QT clips into playlists. Cellulo is great when you have a bunch of clips to present; instead of sorting these clips into a folder with the Finder, you can simply create a playlist and present these clips full-screen. Cellulo can also import subtitles from the most popular file formats and have them displayed over the movie. (Free)

Ever since Intel Macs came into existence, independent developers have been releasing builds of Mozilla Firefox optimized for the Intel CPU architecture. The more popular one has always been BonEcho, though I personally prefer the Firefox build by Izyc; his version features widgets (form fields, buttons, outline, etc.) that are prettier and much closer to what you might expect to see in the Mac user interface.

Firefox 2.0.0.6 has just been released, and already the Intel-optimized builds are out for download.

• BonEcho 2.0.0.6

• Firefox Izyc 2.0.0.6

When using Firefox Izyc for the first time, you may notice that its scrolling speed is crazy fast. This is because the developer has, for some reason, changed the default speed from a value of 1 to 10. To restore the default value:

1. Type about:config in the address bar and hit Enter
2. Type mousewheel in the “Filter:” field
3. Double-click on the line mousewheel.withnokey.numlines
4. Change the value to 1

TimeDrawer 1.0 is a version control application which records chronologically the changes you make to documents and files in your Mac. Think of it as something like Time Machine from the upcoming Mac OS X Leopard.

While there are many other applications that do the same, what makes TimeDrawer remarkable is how its beautiful user interface fits seamlessly to the OS; it makes it feel as though TimeDrawer was built right into Mac OS X.

TimeDrawer runs quietly in the background and makes a record every time a file has been saved and closed. When you need to go back earlier in time, invoke TimeDrawer with a hot key and it appears, Exposé-like, over the desktop. Documents and files that are tracked by TimeDrawer appear as a scrolling strip of thumbnails. Type in the name of a file and click on any one to get a preview of the file; click on two or more files and TimeDrawer can even highlight the changes from one version to the next.

I’ve been trying out TimeDrawer for half a day and I am glad to say that, while its interface is extremely intuitive, there are a couple of caveats: firstly, I wish there was a way for users to customize the level of transparency for the Illumination Panel mode of display. The current (fixed) level of transparency is not opaque enough and shows too much of the desktop. Secondly, I wish there was a way to choose the orientation of the vertical text direction below the thumbnails, like how you can in Microsoft Word. Personally, I find it easier to read vertical text when it is read from bottom up.

TimeDrawer costs US$29.95. Download a trial here (scroll down the page for English description). File Hamster is a nice Windows alternative that I have tried before and liked.

Updated 20.06.07: This list will be continue to grow here.

The first thing I do when I get hold of a new computer is to customize the operating system. I have a list of what I consider essential software that either makes up for the shortcomings of the OS or, since I zip my way around an OS, makes my workflow faster.

So, in no particular order, here is my list of essential software for Mac:

1. Mozilla Firefox – No introduction to Firefox is needed, really. The open extension architecture of Firefox is what makes its my favorite browser; there is just about an extension for any feature you wished the browser had. (Free)

2. Path Finder – Try this and you will never want to look at the Mac Finder ever again. If you are a power user, you’ll appreciate time-saving features in Path Finder such as tabbed windows and especially the Drop Stack; with the Drop Stack, you will never again bungle up a spring-loaded folder file move. There are simply too many enhancements in Path Finder for me to list. What is amazing is that the early versions of Path Finder was coded by just one developer! (US$34.95)

3. smcFanControl – Save your nuts! smcFanControl is an application that allows you to set the speed of the CPU fans. It displays the temperature of the CPU as a MenuExtra. Also, it can automatically apply different fan speed profiles when the laptop is either running on battery, undergoing charging or running on AC. MacBook and MacBook Pro owners in particular will love smcFanControl; I do. By ramping the fan speed to the max, I am able to shave 10℃ off the reported temperature. (Free)

4. Lab Tick – This menu bar extra allows you to control the intensity of the keyboard backlight, and even overriding the ambient light sensor on your PowerBook or MacBook Pro. (Free)

5. Ejector – This application places an eject button in the menu bar that lets you pick what mounted volumes to eject. (Free)

6. Sticky Windows – Sticky Windows shrinks windows into little neat tabs along the sides of the desktop. Simply drag a window to the sides of the desktop and it automatically collapses into a tab with the title of the window on it. Windows that are made Sticky can be set to automatically minimize once they are no longer in the foreground. (US$15.95)

7. Default Folder X – The default Open/Save dialog of the Finder is pretty darn anemic. Default Folder X is the Open/Save dialog box on steroids. Besides offering you shortcuts to favorite folders, recently-used folders, etc, it also allows you to pick any open window on the desktop as the destination folder. (US$34.95)

Tip: On a related note, if you would like to have the Open/Save dialog always expanded, check out this tip here.

8. SideTrack – Microsoft Windows users will feel right at home with SideTrack. Feature for feature, SideTrack feels like a direct port of the Alps Pointer driver that is installed in so many Windows laptops. With Sidetrack, I can use the trackpad on my MacBook Pro exactly the same way as I use the trackpad on my Sony VAIO; side vertical and horizontal scrolling, corner tapping, etc. SideTrack also offers three different settings for cursor acceleration, which is great since I cannot stand how slow the default cursor speed is on the Mac. Try the ‘Redmond switcher acceleration’ and see that cursor fly! SideTrack is a must-have for switchers. (US$15)

Important note: SideTrack is not yet compatible with Core 2 Duo MacBook and MacBook Pro models.

9. DejaMenu – This little application lets you access the menu bar of an application as a pop-up menu at the mouse cursor’s current location. This is especially useful in a dual-monitor setup; you no longer have to move the mouse cursor across all that screen real estate just to access the menu bar. Combine this with SideTrack and you can immediately call up the menu bar with a corner tap! (Free)

10. ecto – The closest to Windows Live Writer for the Mac. (US$17.95)

11. AppFresh – AppFresh is an application which helps you keep track of new versions of all your applications (both third-party and Apple). (Free)

12. Peripheral Vision – Whenever you plug in a device (USB, FireWire, Airport, LAN, Bluetooth or even AC Power), Peripheral Vision either displays a visual notification or plays an audio notification. You can also set Peripheral Vision to perform a certain action upon plugging in a device. (US$8.95)

Note that the download for Version 1.62 hosted on Granted Software’s website will not work on an Intel Mac. For Intel Macs, download a beta Universal version here (direct link); Peripheral Vision has been bought over by Plasq, the makers of Comic Life.

13. Witch – The default CMD+TAB switcher does not tell you much; with Witch, you can TAB through all open windows by their window titles. Witch, by default, uses the ALT+TAB keystroke, since Mac OS X 10.2 and later reserves the CMB+TAB keystroke exclusively. But if you much prefer Witch and wish to make it the default switcher, use PullTab to reclaim the CMB+TAB keystroke so that you can assign it to Witch instead. (Free)

Tip: When you tap CMD+TAB, the selection bar goes from top to bottom. If you overshoot the window you wish to switch to, tap CMD+SHIFT+TAB to reverse the direction of the selection bar.

14. WiFind – The Airport icon in the Finder Menu Bar does not show much information. WiFind integrates itself seamlessly into the Airport menu and shows you whether a WiFi hotspot is open or protected, which channel it is on, and what its signal strength is, all at a glance. This should have been built-in into OS X. At only US$8, WiFind is a steal. (US$8)

Tip: The default Airport menu will sort hotspots by signal strength if you hold down the OPT key while clicking on the Airport menu icon.

15. Smart Scroll X – The most useful feature in Smart Scroll X is, to me, Grab Scroll. If you use a Wacom tablet for Photoshop, you will know how to pan around an image by holding down the spacebar and dragging your Wacom stylus around the canvas. Grab Scroll in Smart Scroll X is exactly like that, except now you can scroll a web page in your browser or the Finder by dragging. It is hard to describe well what Smart Scroll X does; you really have to try it to see what it is like. If you are a heavy Wacom user—and especially if you are still using an Intuos2, which does not have the zoom strip—chances are you will like Smart Scroll X. (US$19)

16. Quicksilver – I can’t believe I’d forgotten about Quicksilver. Quicksilver is a keyboard-based application launcher; hit CMD+Spacebar (my preferred keystroke) and the Quicksilver window pops up. Start typing the name of an application, file or bookmark and Quicksilver will quickly show you all the possible hits. After a few times, Quicksilver will remember your most-frequently launched applications.

But more to being just a launcher, what really makes Quicksilver powerful is that it can run commands. For example, you can call up Quicksilver, type the name of a file, press TAB (upon which the focus will then be on the gear icon on the right) and use the arrow keys to pick an action you want Quicksilver to take on that file.

And the best part is that Quicksilver is free!

Tip: I recommend turning off the “Reset search after…” option under the ‘Command’ section in Quicksilver’s Preferences. Often, I find myself typing halfway into Quicksilver and pausing long enough for Quicksilver to reset whatever it was I had just typed (the default is set at 1 sec).

Tip #2: Windows users, try Launchy. While Launchy does not have the ability to run commands as elaborately as Quicksilver, you still get a neat launcher. Do note that Launchy sometimes inexplicably loses whatever additional folders you have specified in its indexing database and resets to default (especially after a restart), a bug that its developer has yet to fix.

18. UNO – The Mac OS has a beautiful user interface, I’ll grant you that. But, as of OS X 10.4.8, there have been inconsistencies in the design of the UI; iTunes has the flat, gray look while iSync has the brushed metal look (ugly, if you ask me). If you are looking for one unified look to all your OS X windows, give UNO a try. (Free)

I’ve gone and done it; I bought a Mac. I have become a switcher. Well, kinda, sorta…

Earlier last week, I received word through the grapevine that someone is letting go of two MacBook Pros at a very, very attractive price. One has already been snapped up by the guy who relayed the news to me. On Friday, I finally made the call to the seller; I am now the proud owner (sorta; more on that later…) of a seven-month-old MacBook Pro 17″ (Core Duo, 1GB RAM and 120GB HDD) in mint condition.

I have four reasons for getting the MBP. Firstly, after the whole flaky tethered shooting fiasco I had faced during my last shoot, the incentive for getting the MBP could not be greater since, with it, I can shoot tethered with Capture One (the Windows version of Capture One is just too darn ugly and counterproductive for me to even consider it). The offer came at a time when I was just this close to springing for a new MacBook Pro; all of last week, I was considering which MBP to buy.

Secondly, I do not have a workstation in the office on which I can properly do offline edits. Thirdly, I forked out the money to get it because I am going to make it a company purchase and get a reimbursement; at $2,600, we’d have been crazy to not get it.

Lastly, I work in an all-Mac environment both in and out of the office; the girls have, between themselves, two G5 iMacs, two iBooks G4 and a PowerBook 12″, while every post house I bring my work to are running FCP or Avid on Mac suites.

* * * * * *

No manufacturer knows how to create the out-of-the-box experience like Apple can. From the tidy little black box containing the user guides you see after you have lifted the laptop out of its styrofoam bed to the initial setup sequence that runs on-screen for the first time, every little touch about the packaging of a Mac is designed to impress. Not having ever owned an Apple product save for an Airport Express, I know now why Apple can charge premium prices for its products and get away with it. The whole damn lot is just understated sexiness. Unpacking the MacBook Pro alone has had me convinced that, perhaps, just perhaps, I am going to be made a convert after all.

At 3.1 kg, the MacBook Pro 17″ is one heavy machine, in no small parts due to its all brushed aluminum alloy body and to its sheer size. Next to my trusty Sony VAIO TR5GP, it is quite a culture shock and only reinforces my suspicions that this MacBook Pro is going to be more of a desktop replacement than something I would be toting everywhere with me.

Here are what I immediately like about the MacBook Pro 17″:

• Coming off on the 10.4″ screen of my VAIO, 17″ is a lot of screen real estate. The native resolution of the MacBook Pro 17″ at 1680×1050 pixels also makes it way more useful than that of its MacBook counterpart for video editing and photography.
• The four LED indicators on the battery; press the button on the battery and the LEDs light up to show you the remaining battery life.
• The backlit keyboard; a sensor within the MacBook Pro lights up the keyboard in a cool violet hue according to the amount of ambient light.

What I do not like:

• It runs very, very hot. This is one laptop you definitely do not want to be using on your lap.
• Abysmal battery life; I could barely ilk three-and-a-half hours out of it. I have been spoiled by the nine hours or so I can get out of my VAIO.
• Why did Apple not make the Remote Control a size that will fit into the ExpressCard slot?
• Speaking of ExpressCard, why the heck are ExpressCard memory card readers so expensive? $100 for a CompactFlash reader? Nuts!

Being the occasional Mac user, I can safely say I am not quite lost in the transition from Windows to Mac, and being platform-agnostic, there are things I like and dislike on equal parts about both operating systems.

I dislike how icons in the OS X Finder are unorganized by default.

I like how Windows Explorer relies heavily on context-sensitive menus and how easy it is to customize those menus.

On a related note, I cannot for my life understand why there is no right-click button on the Mac. Yes, there is the two-finger-tap-for-right-click gesture I can do on the trackpad of the MBP, but try and right-click a text selection and you will know what I mean…

I like how most dialog boxes are non-modal in OS X.

With the Windows taskbar, I like how I can quickly see at a glance what applications are running; in OS X, I have to mouse-over the icons in the Dock.

I like how much faster the OS X desktop boots into a usable state than the Windows desktop, and how much more responsive it feels while dragging stuff between window to window in OS X than in Windows.

I absolutely love the ease in which I can unmount external drives in OS X with just one click, rather than the counterintuitive way of having to find the eject icon that is buried in the system tray in Windows and then having to right-click it; further to that, having an external drive appear on the OS X desktop when it is plugged in makes so much sense it makes me wonder why Windows does not do that.

I do not like how—and do not understand the logic why—Mac installers come as disk images and how I have to open up the Applications folder in a Finder window and drag an application over to consider it installed. Yet, I also hate it when the supposedly ‘smart’ MSI installations and the whole InstallShield nonsense in Windows screw up (which they do quite often).

And the eye candy in OS X. Oh, my…

I watched in awe the first time I pressed the Menu button on the Apple Remote Control and the OS X desktop recedes into the distance to give way to Front Row. Bloody cool visual transition. And how the semi-opaque background of Dashboard rippled when I drag-and-dropped a widget onto it. Violet’s eyes darn near popped out when she saw the transition.

I suspect I will be using OS X just as heavily as I use Windows. I bought a Mac for necessity more than for preference. Plus, I have too heavy an investment in Windows software and Windows-only hardware to fully make the switch. Does owning a Mac now make me a switcher?

Well, kinda, sorta…