Mac OS X 10.5 features you can't live without?

[iCeFuSiOn]

So, I've done some research and I've noticed that there are several enhancements in Mac OS X 10.5 that make it an absolute dream to work with compared to previous versions. I want to know what features or enhancements you've noticed in 10.5 that you can't live without.

Here's my list:


"Arrange by" and "Clean up" available from Context Menu and Action button in the Finder.
Fine-tuned volume control using Option-Shift and then pressing the appropriate volume key on your keyboard.
The ability to have more than one folder selected for custom backgrounds (especially useful when your backgrounds are sorted, eg: Abstract, Nature, Vector, etc).
Easier Windows network share browsing in the Finder.
AirPort menu responds almost instantly whereas in Tiger it seemed to lag a bit.
Cleaner user interface overall.
Quick Look saves me lots of time.

[Sky Blue]

1. Time machine
2. Spaces
3. Icon previews/Quick Look
4. Keyboard shortcut for View > Arrange By
5. New Finder
6. Overall look (using other Tiger machines is painful)
7. Screen Sharing through Finder

[tersono]

Spaces & Stacks are the headliners for me - both of which I use dozens of times per day.

It has to be said, though, that Leopard has been a very positive experience for me generally.

[iCeFuSiOn]

1. Time machine
4. Keyboard shortcut for View > Arrange By

Thanks for pointing that one out, I didn't even notice it.

[iCeFuSiOn]

Forgot to mention this one:


Finder doesn't hang up when accessing CD drives or slow network shares

[Topher15]

Quick Look and Spaces for me.

[eswank]

1. Time Machine
2. Stacks
3. Spaces
4. Quick Look

[skyrider007]

I can live without anything but clothes, shelter, food and safe drinking water.

Just kidding! hehehe

Well I'd have to say Spaces and Quick Look. Apart from those I don't really see anything special in 10.5.

[edesignuk]

For me Quick Look is really the only thing I value much over Tiger.

[JSchwage]

Time Machine, Quick Look, Spaces, and Stacks.

[twig]

1. Quick look is a huge timesaver.
2. Time machine is nice to have, even if I've only used to recover one less-than-critical file.
3. Screen-sharing in iChat (at least I think it will be really useful if I can ever manage to configure my router to allow it)
4. Stacks are nice, but not in the "can't live without it" category

[psychofreak]

Quicklook
Borderless QT windows
Background apps without holding CMD
Download stack
Mail progress bar
Quick Pages start-up
Wikipedia in Dictionary
Cleaned up Network Preference pane
Help menu search

[acxz]

Definitely Quick Look and Stacks. The Cover Flow view in the Finder is a great bit of eyecandy too, especially with the Applications folder.

[scaredpoet]

Quicklook and coverflow are REALLY nice. My big gripe with OS X was that "Preview" didn't function the same as in Windows, where you could advance through photos in a directory and display each one very easily. Coverflow does this quite well, and in fact does the job better than in Vista (where the new version there is actually less functional than in XP).

I LOVE the tabbed terminal windows in the new terminal.app. I have to ssh and sftp into a lot of *nix servers through the day, and having things neatly arranged in tabs is much easier for me than having to juggle a dozen individual windows (though of course, PuTTY on a PC is even worse).

Lastly, I really like Stacks. I think I keep hearing people complain about it, but it's really made life on a Mac easier for me.

Could I live without these features? Yeah, I could. But going back to tiger now feels kinda awkward.

[Kilamite]

Didn't know about Option + Shift + Volume, that's cool!

My list:

Scrolling non-active windows
Time Machine
Quick Look
Sharing so easy
Finder Sidebar
Stacks
Guest account

To rattle off the top of my head the now.

[petvas]

The things that have really improved my daily computer life are:


Quick Look: A really great feature. I use it all the time
Spaces: Very convenient. I have created 6 Spaces to manage all my open apps
Stacks: Especially the Downloads Stack I use everyday
Time Machine: It has saved my files a couple of times. I didn't expect it to be so valuable.
Finder: It's better than on Tiger but still far from perfect

[thesdx]

I'd have to go with Quick Look and Spaces. I like the Finder from Tiger better than the one in Leopard, however. You could set it to a specific size, and it would open that way with every new window. Cover Flow in the Finder seems like it could be great, but the previews load way too slow to be usable.

[BlakTornado]

Didn't know about Option + Shift + Volume, that's cool!

Ditto!

That's awesome!


For me: (Although they're pretty much what everyone else has said)

- Spaces. Spaces. Spaces. I wouldn't be able to go back to Tiger without them... not that I want to or will do!!!
- The look of Leopard - I love the dock, the UI and the menu bar... it all.
- the slight core animation there is in apps. There'll be a LOT more soon, though...
-Dashcode

Stacks is a nice one but I managed fine without it. It's nice but not essential.

However, I was just comparing to Tiger... Windows, on the other hand, well... that's a different story (*Tries to squeeze a bog-standard PC mouse at school to activate expose and feels like a pillac*)

[Osarkon]

Quicklook and the fact that it doesn't crash when a Network share is disconnected spontaneously.

[motulist]

Quicklook!

(Though "can't live without" is stronger than I'd put it. More like a feature I "would hate to compute without.")

Edit:

Oh yeah, and the vastly improved Print window!
and not locking up when a network volume is disconnected!
and... lots more!

[QCassidy352]

1. Time Machine
2. Stacks
3. Spaces
4. Quick Look

these four for me too. I also really like screen sharing over ichat, but it's not essential.

[saxman]

Although I could live without them, my computer time is much enhanced by:

Quicklook
Finder not hanging when a network share is no longer available

I use spaces and stacks somewhat, but a more stable finder and quicklook have been very productive

[Techguy172]

I really like spaces and Stacks no mess allowed on my desktop I have always been like that I had a hard time with that in windows and now there is usually only one thing on there my Hard Drive I also like the the new UI really nice and for god sakes consitency if it were only more stable and had less bugs I would really love it. It would be the best i have ever used but that has yet to come true Time machine is excellent as well I forgot about that one and I'm using it right now see that's how good it is.

[DukeofAnkh]

1. Time Machine! This has saved me a lot of grief.
2. Spaces, Stacks, Quicklook, the GUI, all nice.



4. Keyboard shortcut for View > Arrange By


Sorry but what is it? I tried Googling but didn't come up with anything. Thanks! :)

I really like spaces and Stacks no mess allowed on my desktop I have always been like that I had a hard time with that in windows and now there is usually only one thing on there my Hard Drive I also like the the new UI really nice and for god sakes consitency if it were only more stable and had less bugs I would really love it. It would be the best i have ever used but that has yet to come true Time machine is excellent as well I forgot about that one and I'm using it right now see that's how good it is.

Um. I had less on my desktop in Windows than I do in Leopard. I now keep my drives on the desktop where in windows it was completely empty so as not to soil my background image. Instead of the quicklaunch bar I had it set to "desktop" so that all the icons it though were on the desktop came up in my startbar. Not saying I don't like Stacks (I do) just that you shouldn't blame the messy desktop on Windows. ;)

[iCeFuSiOn]

Sorry but what is it? I tried Googling but didn't come up with anything. Thanks! :)
Just go to the Finder and in the menu bar click on View > Arrange by and it will show you the list of view items along with their respective keyboard shortcuts.

[DukeofAnkh]

Just go to the Finder and in the menu bar click on View > Arrange by and it will show you the list of view items along with their respective keyboard shortcuts.

Thanks. :D I never really click on the Finder menu since all the functions I need are generally on the toolbar, but this will be handy.

[motulist]

I had less on my desktop in Windows than I do in Leopard. I now keep my drives on the desktop where in windows it was completely empty so as not to soil my background image.

Enjoy.

[DukeofAnkh]

Enjoy.

Thanks. I knew that, I just meant I choose to have my drives there. They don't look as ugly as My Computer and Recycle Bin etc in Windows and the widescreenness of my MBP makes them more useful.

[mikelcroft]

quick look and stacks, I don't know how I ever got by without them. :D

[DukeofAnkh]

I thought of another one:

I love being able to use Expose and Spaces at the same time. For example hit F8 and F9 (or whatever the buttons are on your computer) and you can see all the windows in all the spaces and drag them around. (I know you can drag without Expose enabled, but then you don't necessarily see them all.)

OK, so that's more part of Spaces than a separate new feature, but I love it.

[Topher15]

Um. I had less on my desktop in Windows than I do in Leopard. I now keep my drives on the desktop where in windows it was completely empty so as not to soil my background image. Instead of the quicklaunch bar I had it set to "desktop" so that all the icons it though were on the desktop came up in my startbar. Not saying I don't like Stacks (I do) just that you shouldn't blame the messy desktop on Windows. ;)
Yeah... a 'hide desktop icons' option would be useful for OS X.

[adamswick]

Don't forget multi-page PDF creation in Preview.

[GoKyu]

Enjoy.

I was wondering about this....I have one hard disk icon on my desktop called "Scratch Disk" (you can figure out what that's for), and I'd rather have it hidden from the desktop....BUT still keep the rest of my hard disk icons on there...is that even possible?

As I'm a new Mac user, Leopard is the only OS X I've ever really dealt with, but these are my favorites...

• SPACES - Could NOT get through the day without it. I have 6 spaces set up, and I'm *constantly* switching between apps. I was used to this on my Linux system, but this is even *easier*!

• Quick Look - Use it all the time! I don't ever plan on going back to Windows, but if MS is gonna copy something from OS X, that should be one...

• Stacks - I download everything from my web browser here...in windows, everything went straight to my desktop, so I always had like 20+ extra icons at any given time...now my desktop is actually neat and organized.

• In the Finder, I use "Keep arranged by -> Name", because I always did that in XP. (I would like to know how to make that setting apply to ALL folders though...) I'm also used to viewing my folders by thumbnail, so I leave it that way as well. I use column view most of the time when I'm browsing through a set of directories...very quick and easy. I hardly ever use list view or cover flow though.

Still waiting to get my TB hard disk, but when I do, I'll set up Time Machine (honestly, as secure as OS X is, and as easy as it is to uninstall programs (whereas in Windows you have DLL hell and bits and pieces left over to mess things up in the system), you *almost* don't need a backup like TM at all (of course all computers need it, but I can get along without TM for a while longer.)

And finally...

• Terminal - I love the themes they included...my theme of choice is homebrew....looks just like the old dumb terminals when I was in uni logging into my UNIX (and VAX!! :eek:) account...

OS X is VERY cool, and I'm loving the ride!

-Bryan

[DukeofAnkh]

Yeah... a 'hide desktop icons' option would be useful for OS X.

It's in Finder preferences like the screenshot someone posted a few replies back. Sorry, my comment was a bit too ambiguous, I meant to emphasise that both OSes do the hide desktop icons thing.

[Topher15]

It's in Finder preferences like the screenshot someone posted a few replies back. Sorry, my comment was a bit too ambiguous, I meant to emphasise that both OSes do the hide desktop icons thing.

That only hides the four options listed in the Finder prefs but it doesn't hide all icons.

[DukeofAnkh]

That only hides the four options listed in the Finder prefs but it doesn't hide all icons.

Oh sorry, I forgot that the desktop is also a folder. If you've put other stuff in the desktop folder, I think the only way to hide it is to not have it in that folder. (Which I realise isn't an optimal solution, but if you don't want the icons there, would making a folder somewhere else for them make much of a difference?)

[doubleohseven]

I can't live without the new finder- just type in what you want and boom, it's right there! Stacks is also a handy feature too.

[mckyvlle]

Exposé & Spaces
I really can't live without this. Having to look for a window in the Taskbar or KDE Kicker is sooo much pain now.

Quick Look and Cover Flow
Finding the right file in a not-very-well-sorted folder couldn't be easier.

Spotlight
I use Spotlight as my app-launcher.
I've tried Quicksilver, but it has some glitches under Leopard and the dev seems to be abandoning the project.

Double finger scrolling and ctrl+click
w00t! :cool:

Location switching in Network Prefs
I work on my MacBook at several locations, all with different net settings. Very very convenient with this!


If I mentioned any features that aren't Leopard-specific, then it's my bad. :o My MacBook is my first Mac and it comes with Leopard.

[iCeFuSiOn]

It's in Finder preferences like the screenshot someone posted a few replies back. Sorry, my comment was a bit too ambiguous, I meant to emphasise that both OSes do the hide desktop icons thing.
There is a defaults write command that can solve this for you.

Open Terminal (located in /Applications/Utilities) and type the following commands:

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false
osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to quit'

And then restart the Finder by clicking on its Dock icon.

To revert the change, type the following commands in the Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool true
osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to quit'

And then restart the Finder by clicking on its Dock icon.

If you don't feel comfortable restarting the Finder through the terminal, you can always perform a simple log off / log on to restart it (just click on the Apple in the menu bar and click on "Log off (your name) ..." and then log back in); if you are going this route make sure to leave out the following command when performing your steps:

osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to quit'

[darwinian]

I like quicklook and fast spotlight. Plus the great X11, Spaces, Airport, and BT fixes that had better appear in 10.5.2.