Apple Leopard Mac OS X v10.5 Overview
Add a new mac to your mac. With 300+ new features, Leopard is the most impressive Mac OS X version yet.
Desktop. A neat place to work.
Just one look at the desktop in Mac OS X Leopard says you’ve arrived someplace new. From the menu bar to the stunning new Dock, Leopard is designed to help you enjoy the time you spend at your computer — and help you get more out of it.
Stacked in your favor.
Does your desktop get cluttered? You’re hardly alone. So you’ll love one of the most useful new features in Leopard: Stacks. A stack is a Dock item that gives you fast access to a folder of files. When you click a stack, the files within spring from the Dock in a fan or a grid, depending on the number of items (or the preference you set). Leopard starts you off with two premade stacks: one for downloads and the other for documents. The Downloads stack automatically captures files downloaded from Safari, Mail, and iChat, and the Documents stack is a great place to keep things like presentations, spreadsheets, and word processing files. You can create as many stacks as you wish simply by dragging folders to the right side of your Dock. Pretty neat.
An eye-opening experience.
The new desktop has a semitransparent menu bar and a reflective 3D Dock that perfectly frame your desktop picture — whether you use one of the beautiful included images or customize it with a favorite from your iPhoto library. The Dock has a bright active-application signal, and the look of Leopard extends to all applications. Every window has a consistent design theme, and active applications are even more distinct, casting deeper shadows.
Finder. Give your files the rock star treatment.
Now browsing the files on your Mac is as easy as browsing music in iTunes. That’s the idea behind the new Finder in Leopard. You can access everything on your system by flipping through your files using Cover Flow or by clicking items in an iTunes-style sidebar.
See what you seek.
Now you can actually see your files in the Finder — not just as icons, but as they really look. Using Cover Flow, you can flip through your documents as easily as you flip through album art in iTunes. Cover Flow displays each file as a large preview of its first page, and you can click through multipage documents or play movies.
The sidebar steps up.
Leopard brings new power to your old friend, the sidebar. Items are grouped into categories: places, devices, shared computers, and searches — just like the Source list in iTunes. So with a single click, you’re on your way to finding what you need.
Search party.
Combine Cover Flow with Spotlight and you’ve got one amazingly powerful search tool. Just type your keywords in Spotlight or specify search criteria, then browse through the search results using Cover Flow. You can easily save your searches for future use. Or use the prebuilt searches in the sidebar, such as Yesterday or All Images. You’ll soon be doing less searching and more finding.
Closer connections.
With shared computers automatically displayed in the sidebar, you can find files on any Mac or PC on your network. You can even use Spotlight and Cover Flow when you search another Mac. But here’s where things get really interesting. When you click a connected Mac, you can use screen sharing (if authorized, of course) — which lets you do anything you could do if you were sitting in front of that computer. Change a system preference, publish an iPhoto album, or add a new playlist to iTunes.
And now, back to my Mac.
Ever need something on your Mac when you were thousands of miles from home? With Back to My Mac and a .Mac account, you can connect to any of your Mac computers at home from any Mac over the Internet. Your home computers appear in the Shared section of the sidebar — protected from any eyes but yours — and you can browse their contents using Cover Flow in the Finder.
Look deeper.
From the Finder or the menu bar, Spotlight in Leopard lets you search for more specific sets of things. Use Boolean logic to narrow search results by entering AND, OR, or NOT in a search request. Search for exact phrases using quotation marks, or search for items by dates or ranges using > and < symbols. And now you can even use Spotlight to perform simple calculations. Just enter numbers and operators, then hit Return. Very handy.
Quick Look. Look before you launch.
Using Quick Look in Leopard, you can view the contents of a file without even opening it. Flip through multipage documents. Watch full-screen video. See entire Keynote presentations. With a single click.
Opening files is so 2006.
So you’re flipping through files in the Finder. But you’re looking for something specific and you don’t have time to open lots of files to find it. Enter Quick Look. It gives you a sneak peek of entire files — even multiple-page documents and video — without opening them.
See everything.
Quick Look works with nearly every file on your system, including images, text files, PDF documents, movies, Keynote presentations, Mail attachments, and Microsoft Word and Excel files. Just tap the Space bar to see a file in Quick Look, or click the Quick Look icon in the Finder window (if it’s not there already, add it by selecting Customize Toolbar from the View menu in the Finder). Then click the arrow icon to see the same file full screen — even video as it plays.
A Quick Look back in time.
You can use Quick Look to your advantage when you’re searching for files in Time Machine. Once Time Machine locates the file you’re looking for, use Quick Look to verify its contents. Then restore with a click.
Time Machine. A giant leap backward.
Time Machine is the breakthrough automatic backup that’s built right into Mac OS X. It keeps an up-to-date copy of everything on your Mac — digital photos, music, movies, TV shows, and documents. Now, if you ever have the need, you can easily go back in time to recover anything.
Set it, then forget it.
To start using Time Machine, all you have to do is connect an external drive (sold separately) to your Mac. You’re asked if you want it to be your backup drive, and if you say yes, Time Machine takes care of everything else. Automatically. In the background. You’ll never have to worry about backing up again.
Back up everything.
Time Machine backs up your system files, applications, accounts, preferences, music, photos, movies, and documents. But what makes Time Machine different from other backup applications is that it not only keeps a spare copy of every file, it remembers how your system looked on a given day — so you can revisit your Mac as it appeared in the past.
Go back in time.
Enter the Time Machine browser in search of your long-lost files and you see exactly how your computer looked on the dates you’re browsing. Select a specific date, let Time Machine find your most recent changes, or do a Spotlight search to find exactly what you’re looking for. Use Quick Look to verify the file’s contents if you wish. Then click Restore and Time Machine brings it back to the present. Time Machine restores individual files, complete folders, iPhoto libraries, and Address Book contacts. You can even use Time Machine to restore your entire computer if need be.
How Time Machine works.
Beneath the hood, Time Machine is every bit as remarkable as it is on the outside. It’s based on stable and secure Mac OS X core technologies (like the HFS+ file system), automatically tracks file changes, and is aware of file system permissions and user access privileges. Bottom line: It’s working with more information than other backup utilities and doesn’t need to bother you for input.
Pick a disk. Any disk.
You can designate just about any HFS+ formatted FireWire or USB drive connected to a Mac as a Time Machine backup drive. Time Machine can also back up to another Mac running Leopard with Personal File Sharing, Leopard Server, or Xsan storage devices.
Back up the whole family.
The moment you choose a Time Machine drive, a single folder is created on the drive. Inside this folder is a subfolder for each Mac being backed up. (Yes, multiple Mac systems can share the same backup drive.) And within each subfolder is another list of folders — one for every backup performed on that Mac. Time Machine uses a standard file system to store all of its information. Nothing hidden anywhere.
Anatomy of a backup.
For the initial backup, Time Machine copies the entire contents of the computer to your backup drive. It copies every file exactly (without compression), skipping caches and other files that aren’t required to restore your Mac to its original state. Following the initial backup, Time Machine makes only incremental backups — copying just the files that have changed since the previous backup. Time Machine creates links to any unchanged files, so when you travel back in time you see the entire contents of your Mac on a given day.
Timing is everything.
Every hour, every day, an incremental backup of your Mac is made automatically as long as your backup drive is attached to your Mac. Time Machine saves the hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for everything older than a month. Only files created and then deleted before the next hourly backup will not be included in the long term. Put another way: You’re well covered.
Working on your schedule.
Say Time Machine is in the middle of a backup and you want to shut down your Mac or put it to sleep. Who wins? Like you have to ask. Time Machine simply stops the backup process and remembers where it is. It automatically resumes when your Mac is active again.
Back up only what you need.
By default, Time Machine backs up everything on your Mac. But if you want to exclude certain files, that’s easy enough. Just go to Time Machine preferences and check “Skip system files” or specify folders you wish to skip. You can also delete a single file or folder that you’ve been backing up — and delete it from all of your backups going back in time.
Backing up to a full disk.
One day, no matter how large your backup drive is, it will run out of space. And Time Machine has an action plan. It alerts you that it will start deleting previous backups, oldest first. Before it deletes any backup, Time Machine copies files that might be needed to fully restore your disk for every remaining backup. (Moral of the story: The larger the drive, the farther back in time you can back up.)
Migration with style.
To make setting up a new Mac even simpler, Time Machine shares its data with other Mac utilities. Use Migration Assistant to copy portions of any Time Machine backup to a new Mac, or select “Restore System from Time Machine” in the Leopard DVD Utilities menu. Choose any date recorded in Time Machine to set up your new Mac exactly as your previous Mac was on that date.
Ready when you are.
When your mobile Mac is connected to your backup drive, Time Machine works as you’d expect. When it isn’t connected, Time Machine also works as you’d expect. It keeps track of which files have changed since the last backup and backs them up to your backup drive the next time you connect. On any Mac, if Time Machine is unable to perform a backup, that’s duly noted in its preferences pane.
Mail. Think outside the inbox.
Leopard transforms email into personalized stationery. Notes you can access anywhere. To-dos that change as your errands do. For everything you do with email — and some things you haven’t thought of yet — there’s Mail.
Sincerely yours.
Mail for Leopard features more than 30 professionally designed stationery templates that make a virtual keepsake out of every email you send. From invitations to birthday greetings, stationery templates feature coordinated layouts, fonts, colors, and drag-and-drop photo placement from your iPhoto library — everything to help you get your point across. You can even create personalized templates. Messages created with stationery in Mail use standard HTML that can be read by popular webmail services and email programs on both Mac computers and PCs.
Noteworthy indeed.
Ever email yourself a reminder that gets lost in your inbox? Mail lets you write handy notes you can access from anywhere. Brainstorm ideas, jot down meeting notes, scribble a phone number — notes can include graphics, colored text, and attachments. Group notes into folders or create Smart Mailboxes that group them for you. Since your notes folder acts like an email mailbox, you can retrieve notes from any Mac or PC using an IMAP mail service like .Mac or AOL.
Much ado about to-dos.
Forget manually adding a new item to your to-do list every time an email hits your inbox. Simply highlight text in an email, then click the To Do button to create a to-do from a message. Include a due date, set an alarm, or assign priorities. Every to-do includes a link to the original email or note, and to-dos automatically appear in iCal, complete with any changes you make. And since to-dos are stored with your email (when using an IMAP mail service), you can access them from Mail on any Mac.
Spotlight on Mail.
With smarter relevance ranking in Spotlight, you’ll find the right email at the top of the search results list. Everything you create in Leopard Mail — to-dos, notes, and, of course, email messages — appears in a Spotlight search of your system.
Stop the presses.
Subscribe to an RSS feed in Mail and you’ll know the moment an article or blog post hits the wire. Even better, you can choose to have new articles appear in your inbox alongside your latest email messages. Sorting your news is easy, too. Use Smart Mailboxes to organize incoming news articles according to search terms that pique your interest. Mail shares its unread RSS feed count with Safari, so your reading list always stays in sync.
Data, detected.
Say you get an email invitation to dinner. What if Mail recognized the address of the restaurant and let you map directions on the web? Or let you click once to add the date to your iCal calendar? With Leopard, it does. Mail even recognizes relative dates (“let’s meet next Tuesday”) and keywords (“dinner tomorrow”), so you can act on information rather than enter it.
Setup made simple.
Now you can set up a new Mail account in one easy step. Just enter your current email address and password and let Mail do the rest. Mail works with the most popular email providers, like Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, and AOL Mail, automatically configuring those cryptic server settings for you.
iChat. Not being there is half the fun.
Filled with cool new features, iChat turns any video chat into an event. Video backdrops, Photo Booth effects, photo slideshows, Keynote presentations, even movies on your Mac — you can share it all using iChat.
Chat from anywhere (or just look like it).
With the new video backdrops built into iChat, you can make it look like you’re chatting from the Eiffel Tower, under the sea, or from the moon. You can also create your own custom backdrops by dragging a picture or video from iPhoto or the Finder into the video effects window. Backdrops even show up on the screens of buddies who don’t have Leopard.
Chat for effect.
Transform your video chats using new Photo Booth effects. Add kapow! to a chat with the comic book effect. Get twisted with twirl. Soften your image with glow. Just choose an effect and your video changes instantly.
Show off (without showing up).
Why wait for a darkened room and a projector to present vacation photos or Keynote slides? Now you can do it all remotely, right in iChat. Put on a photo slideshow, click through a Keynote presentation, or play a movie — in full screen, accompanied by a video feed of you hosting — while your buddy looks on. In fact, you can show any file on your system that works with Quick Look.
Share and share alike.
Thanks to iChat screen sharing, you and your buddy can observe and control a single desktop with iChat, making it a cinch to collaborate with a colleague, browse the web with a friend, or pick plane seats with your spouse. Share your own desktop or your buddy’s — you both have control at all times. And iChat automatically initiates an audio chat when you start a screen sharing session, so you can talk things through while you’re at it.
Chatting for the record.
Now you can save your audio and video chats for posterity with iChat recording. Before recording starts, iChat notifies your buddies and asks for their permission to record. When you’re done chatting, iChat stores your audio chats as AAC files and video chats as MPEG-4 files so you can play them in iTunes or QuickTime. Share them with colleagues, friends, and family or sync them to your iPod and play on the go.
Crystal-clear audio.
iChat uses the AAC-LD audio codec to deliver the clearest possible sound during audio chats. A wideband codec that samples a full range of vocal frequencies, AAC-LD sounds great with any voice.
Still the best for text.
Text messaging also gets a boost in Leopard, thanks to these additions:
AIM to please.
iChat works with AIM, the largest instant messaging community in the U.S. You and your buddies can be either AIM or .Mac users. Text, audio, and video chat whether your buddies use a Mac or a PC. Sign in with your AIM account, and all your buddies appear in your iChat buddy list.
Spaces. Room for everything.
You do a lot on your Mac. So how do you keep order when projects pile up? Easy. Use Spaces to group your application windows and banish clutter completely. Leopard gives you a space for everything and makes it easy to switch between your spaces.
Turn on, space out.
Start by simply clicking the Spaces icon in the Dock. You’ll be prompted to turn on the Spaces feature. Then you can organize your spaces in practically no time.
Rearrange the rooms.
Create a space for work. Create a space for play. Organize each space just the way you want it. Simply open an application in a space or drag a window from one space to another in the bird’s-eye view. It’s that easy to organize and reorganize. Want to reorder your spaces? Just shift a space and every window in it comes along for the ride.
Make yourself at home.
Moving from space to space is easy. When you’re in the bird’s-eye view, select the space you want or toggle between spaces using the arrow keys. Even the Dock is down with Spaces: When you click a Dock icon, Leopard whisks you to the space (or spaces) where the application is open.
Pick your patterns.
Configure your spaces by visiting the Exposé & Spaces pane in System Preferences. Add rows and columns until you have all the real estate you need. Arrange your spaces as you see fit, then choose the function keys you want to control them. You can assign an application to always open in a specific space, if that’s more convenient — so you’ll always know where, say, Safari or Keynote is.
Sarari. Still the world's best web browser.
Now your favorite web browser is also the fastest on the Mac. With page load speeds that outperform every other major browser on the Mac, Safari for Leopard also introduces a few new features to the mix.
Browse like the wind.
The fastest web browser today, Safari loads and draws pages up to 3 times faster than Firefox 2 and up to 5.5 times faster than Opera 9. And it executes JavaScript up to 2.7 times faster than Firefox 2 and up to 2.6 times faster than Opera 9.1 What does all that mean for you? Less time loading pages and more time enjoying them.
Find inline.
Type a word into the new Find banner below the Bookmarks Bar, and Safari shows you the number of matches and brightly highlights matching terms while dimming the rest of the page. So you can view and browse every instance — in an instant.
Pick up the tabs.
With tabbed browsing in Safari, you can open and switch between multiple web pages in a single window. Drag and drop your tabs to rearrange them, open one in a new browser window, or merge all your current windows into one tabbed window. Safari resizes each tab depending on the number you have open. You can bookmark a set of tabs or revert to the tabs that were open when you last closed or quit Safari.
PDFs at your service.
The new PDF controls in Safari let you zoom in and out, save a PDF file, or open one in Preview — all from the comfort of your browser.
Resize at will.
Maybe the text field you’re typing in is a bit too small to read. Or maybe you just have a lot to say. Either way, Safari lets you resize text fields on any website, just by grabbing the corner of the field. Resize a field and the web page reflows to make room.
Clip it.
Now you can turn any web page into a Dashboard widget. Click the Web Clip button next to the address field in Safari and select exactly what you want your new widget to display. Then click Add, and Safari sends your Web Clip widget to Dashboard, where you can view it alongside your other widgets. You can even customize its border using built-in styles on the back of the widget. Your Web Clip widget is “live” and will update as frequently as the page from which it came.
Surf securely.
Safari protects your personal information when you surf the web on a shared or public Mac. Go ahead — check your bank account and .Mac email at the library or shop for birthday presents on the family Mac. Safari also uses strong 128-bit encryption when accessing secure sites such as your bank or an online store, so you can transmit account and payment information with confidence.
Parental Controls. Safety first.
As a parent, you want your kids to have a safe and happy experience on the computer. Leopard keeps an eye out even when you can’t. With a simple setup, you can manage, monitor, and control the time your kids spend on the Mac, the sites they visit, and the people they chat with.
A safer Internet.
Using the same technology that keeps your inbox free of junk mail, a new content filter in Leopard takes a quick peek at websites before they load and tries to determine if they’re suitable for kids. If not, Leopard blocks them from view. Of course, you can override this filter by creating lists of specific websites you want — or don’t want — your children to see.
Bedtime and time limits.
Many kids would sit at the computer for days if you let them. Fortunately, Leopard makes it easier to set the rules. Just enter bedtime and time limits for using the Mac, specifying different times for weekdays and weekends if you wish. Parents happy, kids happy (relatively).
Under log and key.
With Leopard, your Mac logs your kids’ activities to help you keep them from communicating with people they shouldn’t be. The log keeps track of websites your kids have visited, applications they’ve used, and people they’ve chatted with. It’s the perfect way to make sure your children stay safe online. You can access the parental controls and monitor logs remotely from any Mac on the network.
Boot Camp. Run Windows on your Mac.
eopard is the world’s most advanced operating system. So advanced, it even lets you run Windows if there’s a PC application you need to use. Just get a copy of Windows and start up Boot Camp, now included with Leopard. Setup is simple and straightforward — just as you’d expect with a Mac.
Run Windows at native speed.
Boot Camp supports the most popular 32-bit releases of Windows XP and Windows Vista. When you use either operating system on your Mac, your Windows applications will run at native speed. Windows applications have full access to multiple processors and multiple cores, accelerated 3D graphics, and high-speed connections like USB, FireWire, Wi-Fi, and Gigabit Ethernet.
Ready, setup, go.
When you're ready for Windows, the Boot Camp Assistant sets up your hard drive for you. It leaves all your Mac data in place while it creates a separate partition on your drive for Windows, and then begins the installation process. Boot Camp includes a PDF setup guide, so you can refer to it as you go.
Drivers galore.
When you install Windows using Boot Camp, you won’t need to search the Internet for drivers or burn a disc. After you run Boot Camp, simply insert the Leopard DVD to install the necessary drivers. Everything you need to make your Mac work with Windows is right there. When you use a Windows application, you’ll have full access to unique Mac features (iSight, Apple Remote, trackpad, specific keyboard keys, keyboard backlighting) and connectivity (wired and wireless).
Choose your OS.
After you’ve installed Windows using Boot Camp, you can start up your Mac using either operating system. Simply hold down the Option key when you power up and choose one or the other.
Already running Boot Camp? Even easier.
If you’re already working with Boot Camp Beta, you’re practically finished before you start. All you need is some new drivers. To install them, simply start up your Mac in Windows and update the drivers from the Leopard DVD.
Add a new mac to your mac. With 300+ new features, Leopard is the most impressive Mac OS X version yet.
Desktop. A neat place to work.
Just one look at the desktop in Mac OS X Leopard says you’ve arrived someplace new. From the menu bar to the stunning new Dock, Leopard is designed to help you enjoy the time you spend at your computer — and help you get more out of it.
Stacked in your favor.
Does your desktop get cluttered? You’re hardly alone. So you’ll love one of the most useful new features in Leopard: Stacks. A stack is a Dock item that gives you fast access to a folder of files. When you click a stack, the files within spring from the Dock in a fan or a grid, depending on the number of items (or the preference you set). Leopard starts you off with two premade stacks: one for downloads and the other for documents. The Downloads stack automatically captures files downloaded from Safari, Mail, and iChat, and the Documents stack is a great place to keep things like presentations, spreadsheets, and word processing files. You can create as many stacks as you wish simply by dragging folders to the right side of your Dock. Pretty neat.
An eye-opening experience.
The new desktop has a semitransparent menu bar and a reflective 3D Dock that perfectly frame your desktop picture — whether you use one of the beautiful included images or customize it with a favorite from your iPhoto library. The Dock has a bright active-application signal, and the look of Leopard extends to all applications. Every window has a consistent design theme, and active applications are even more distinct, casting deeper shadows.
Finder. Give your files the rock star treatment.
Now browsing the files on your Mac is as easy as browsing music in iTunes. That’s the idea behind the new Finder in Leopard. You can access everything on your system by flipping through your files using Cover Flow or by clicking items in an iTunes-style sidebar.
See what you seek.
Now you can actually see your files in the Finder — not just as icons, but as they really look. Using Cover Flow, you can flip through your documents as easily as you flip through album art in iTunes. Cover Flow displays each file as a large preview of its first page, and you can click through multipage documents or play movies.
The sidebar steps up.
Leopard brings new power to your old friend, the sidebar. Items are grouped into categories: places, devices, shared computers, and searches — just like the Source list in iTunes. So with a single click, you’re on your way to finding what you need.
Search party.
Combine Cover Flow with Spotlight and you’ve got one amazingly powerful search tool. Just type your keywords in Spotlight or specify search criteria, then browse through the search results using Cover Flow. You can easily save your searches for future use. Or use the prebuilt searches in the sidebar, such as Yesterday or All Images. You’ll soon be doing less searching and more finding.
Closer connections.
With shared computers automatically displayed in the sidebar, you can find files on any Mac or PC on your network. You can even use Spotlight and Cover Flow when you search another Mac. But here’s where things get really interesting. When you click a connected Mac, you can use screen sharing (if authorized, of course) — which lets you do anything you could do if you were sitting in front of that computer. Change a system preference, publish an iPhoto album, or add a new playlist to iTunes.
And now, back to my Mac.
Ever need something on your Mac when you were thousands of miles from home? With Back to My Mac and a .Mac account, you can connect to any of your Mac computers at home from any Mac over the Internet. Your home computers appear in the Shared section of the sidebar — protected from any eyes but yours — and you can browse their contents using Cover Flow in the Finder.
Look deeper.
From the Finder or the menu bar, Spotlight in Leopard lets you search for more specific sets of things. Use Boolean logic to narrow search results by entering AND, OR, or NOT in a search request. Search for exact phrases using quotation marks, or search for items by dates or ranges using > and < symbols. And now you can even use Spotlight to perform simple calculations. Just enter numbers and operators, then hit Return. Very handy.
Quick Look. Look before you launch.
Using Quick Look in Leopard, you can view the contents of a file without even opening it. Flip through multipage documents. Watch full-screen video. See entire Keynote presentations. With a single click.
Opening files is so 2006.
So you’re flipping through files in the Finder. But you’re looking for something specific and you don’t have time to open lots of files to find it. Enter Quick Look. It gives you a sneak peek of entire files — even multiple-page documents and video — without opening them.
See everything.
Quick Look works with nearly every file on your system, including images, text files, PDF documents, movies, Keynote presentations, Mail attachments, and Microsoft Word and Excel files. Just tap the Space bar to see a file in Quick Look, or click the Quick Look icon in the Finder window (if it’s not there already, add it by selecting Customize Toolbar from the View menu in the Finder). Then click the arrow icon to see the same file full screen — even video as it plays.
A Quick Look back in time.
You can use Quick Look to your advantage when you’re searching for files in Time Machine. Once Time Machine locates the file you’re looking for, use Quick Look to verify its contents. Then restore with a click.
Time Machine. A giant leap backward.
Time Machine is the breakthrough automatic backup that’s built right into Mac OS X. It keeps an up-to-date copy of everything on your Mac — digital photos, music, movies, TV shows, and documents. Now, if you ever have the need, you can easily go back in time to recover anything.
Set it, then forget it.
To start using Time Machine, all you have to do is connect an external drive (sold separately) to your Mac. You’re asked if you want it to be your backup drive, and if you say yes, Time Machine takes care of everything else. Automatically. In the background. You’ll never have to worry about backing up again.
Back up everything.
Time Machine backs up your system files, applications, accounts, preferences, music, photos, movies, and documents. But what makes Time Machine different from other backup applications is that it not only keeps a spare copy of every file, it remembers how your system looked on a given day — so you can revisit your Mac as it appeared in the past.
Go back in time.
Enter the Time Machine browser in search of your long-lost files and you see exactly how your computer looked on the dates you’re browsing. Select a specific date, let Time Machine find your most recent changes, or do a Spotlight search to find exactly what you’re looking for. Use Quick Look to verify the file’s contents if you wish. Then click Restore and Time Machine brings it back to the present. Time Machine restores individual files, complete folders, iPhoto libraries, and Address Book contacts. You can even use Time Machine to restore your entire computer if need be.
How Time Machine works.
Beneath the hood, Time Machine is every bit as remarkable as it is on the outside. It’s based on stable and secure Mac OS X core technologies (like the HFS+ file system), automatically tracks file changes, and is aware of file system permissions and user access privileges. Bottom line: It’s working with more information than other backup utilities and doesn’t need to bother you for input.
Pick a disk. Any disk.
You can designate just about any HFS+ formatted FireWire or USB drive connected to a Mac as a Time Machine backup drive. Time Machine can also back up to another Mac running Leopard with Personal File Sharing, Leopard Server, or Xsan storage devices.
Back up the whole family.
The moment you choose a Time Machine drive, a single folder is created on the drive. Inside this folder is a subfolder for each Mac being backed up. (Yes, multiple Mac systems can share the same backup drive.) And within each subfolder is another list of folders — one for every backup performed on that Mac. Time Machine uses a standard file system to store all of its information. Nothing hidden anywhere.
Anatomy of a backup.
For the initial backup, Time Machine copies the entire contents of the computer to your backup drive. It copies every file exactly (without compression), skipping caches and other files that aren’t required to restore your Mac to its original state. Following the initial backup, Time Machine makes only incremental backups — copying just the files that have changed since the previous backup. Time Machine creates links to any unchanged files, so when you travel back in time you see the entire contents of your Mac on a given day.
Timing is everything.
Every hour, every day, an incremental backup of your Mac is made automatically as long as your backup drive is attached to your Mac. Time Machine saves the hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for everything older than a month. Only files created and then deleted before the next hourly backup will not be included in the long term. Put another way: You’re well covered.
Working on your schedule.
Say Time Machine is in the middle of a backup and you want to shut down your Mac or put it to sleep. Who wins? Like you have to ask. Time Machine simply stops the backup process and remembers where it is. It automatically resumes when your Mac is active again.
Back up only what you need.
By default, Time Machine backs up everything on your Mac. But if you want to exclude certain files, that’s easy enough. Just go to Time Machine preferences and check “Skip system files” or specify folders you wish to skip. You can also delete a single file or folder that you’ve been backing up — and delete it from all of your backups going back in time.
Backing up to a full disk.
One day, no matter how large your backup drive is, it will run out of space. And Time Machine has an action plan. It alerts you that it will start deleting previous backups, oldest first. Before it deletes any backup, Time Machine copies files that might be needed to fully restore your disk for every remaining backup. (Moral of the story: The larger the drive, the farther back in time you can back up.)
Migration with style.
To make setting up a new Mac even simpler, Time Machine shares its data with other Mac utilities. Use Migration Assistant to copy portions of any Time Machine backup to a new Mac, or select “Restore System from Time Machine” in the Leopard DVD Utilities menu. Choose any date recorded in Time Machine to set up your new Mac exactly as your previous Mac was on that date.
Ready when you are.
When your mobile Mac is connected to your backup drive, Time Machine works as you’d expect. When it isn’t connected, Time Machine also works as you’d expect. It keeps track of which files have changed since the last backup and backs them up to your backup drive the next time you connect. On any Mac, if Time Machine is unable to perform a backup, that’s duly noted in its preferences pane.
Mail. Think outside the inbox.
Leopard transforms email into personalized stationery. Notes you can access anywhere. To-dos that change as your errands do. For everything you do with email — and some things you haven’t thought of yet — there’s Mail.
Sincerely yours.
Mail for Leopard features more than 30 professionally designed stationery templates that make a virtual keepsake out of every email you send. From invitations to birthday greetings, stationery templates feature coordinated layouts, fonts, colors, and drag-and-drop photo placement from your iPhoto library — everything to help you get your point across. You can even create personalized templates. Messages created with stationery in Mail use standard HTML that can be read by popular webmail services and email programs on both Mac computers and PCs.
Noteworthy indeed.
Ever email yourself a reminder that gets lost in your inbox? Mail lets you write handy notes you can access from anywhere. Brainstorm ideas, jot down meeting notes, scribble a phone number — notes can include graphics, colored text, and attachments. Group notes into folders or create Smart Mailboxes that group them for you. Since your notes folder acts like an email mailbox, you can retrieve notes from any Mac or PC using an IMAP mail service like .Mac or AOL.
Much ado about to-dos.
Forget manually adding a new item to your to-do list every time an email hits your inbox. Simply highlight text in an email, then click the To Do button to create a to-do from a message. Include a due date, set an alarm, or assign priorities. Every to-do includes a link to the original email or note, and to-dos automatically appear in iCal, complete with any changes you make. And since to-dos are stored with your email (when using an IMAP mail service), you can access them from Mail on any Mac.
Spotlight on Mail.
With smarter relevance ranking in Spotlight, you’ll find the right email at the top of the search results list. Everything you create in Leopard Mail — to-dos, notes, and, of course, email messages — appears in a Spotlight search of your system.
Stop the presses.
Subscribe to an RSS feed in Mail and you’ll know the moment an article or blog post hits the wire. Even better, you can choose to have new articles appear in your inbox alongside your latest email messages. Sorting your news is easy, too. Use Smart Mailboxes to organize incoming news articles according to search terms that pique your interest. Mail shares its unread RSS feed count with Safari, so your reading list always stays in sync.
Data, detected.
Say you get an email invitation to dinner. What if Mail recognized the address of the restaurant and let you map directions on the web? Or let you click once to add the date to your iCal calendar? With Leopard, it does. Mail even recognizes relative dates (“let’s meet next Tuesday”) and keywords (“dinner tomorrow”), so you can act on information rather than enter it.
Setup made simple.
Now you can set up a new Mail account in one easy step. Just enter your current email address and password and let Mail do the rest. Mail works with the most popular email providers, like Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, and AOL Mail, automatically configuring those cryptic server settings for you.
iChat. Not being there is half the fun.
Filled with cool new features, iChat turns any video chat into an event. Video backdrops, Photo Booth effects, photo slideshows, Keynote presentations, even movies on your Mac — you can share it all using iChat.
Chat from anywhere (or just look like it).
With the new video backdrops built into iChat, you can make it look like you’re chatting from the Eiffel Tower, under the sea, or from the moon. You can also create your own custom backdrops by dragging a picture or video from iPhoto or the Finder into the video effects window. Backdrops even show up on the screens of buddies who don’t have Leopard.
Chat for effect.
Transform your video chats using new Photo Booth effects. Add kapow! to a chat with the comic book effect. Get twisted with twirl. Soften your image with glow. Just choose an effect and your video changes instantly.
Show off (without showing up).
Why wait for a darkened room and a projector to present vacation photos or Keynote slides? Now you can do it all remotely, right in iChat. Put on a photo slideshow, click through a Keynote presentation, or play a movie — in full screen, accompanied by a video feed of you hosting — while your buddy looks on. In fact, you can show any file on your system that works with Quick Look.
Share and share alike.
Thanks to iChat screen sharing, you and your buddy can observe and control a single desktop with iChat, making it a cinch to collaborate with a colleague, browse the web with a friend, or pick plane seats with your spouse. Share your own desktop or your buddy’s — you both have control at all times. And iChat automatically initiates an audio chat when you start a screen sharing session, so you can talk things through while you’re at it.
Chatting for the record.
Now you can save your audio and video chats for posterity with iChat recording. Before recording starts, iChat notifies your buddies and asks for their permission to record. When you’re done chatting, iChat stores your audio chats as AAC files and video chats as MPEG-4 files so you can play them in iTunes or QuickTime. Share them with colleagues, friends, and family or sync them to your iPod and play on the go.
Crystal-clear audio.
iChat uses the AAC-LD audio codec to deliver the clearest possible sound during audio chats. A wideband codec that samples a full range of vocal frequencies, AAC-LD sounds great with any voice.
Still the best for text.
Text messaging also gets a boost in Leopard, thanks to these additions:
- Tabbed chats
- Multiple logins
- Invisibility
- Animated buddy icons
- SMS forwarding
- Custom buddy list order
- File transfer manager
- Space-efficient views
AIM to please.
iChat works with AIM, the largest instant messaging community in the U.S. You and your buddies can be either AIM or .Mac users. Text, audio, and video chat whether your buddies use a Mac or a PC. Sign in with your AIM account, and all your buddies appear in your iChat buddy list.
Spaces. Room for everything.
You do a lot on your Mac. So how do you keep order when projects pile up? Easy. Use Spaces to group your application windows and banish clutter completely. Leopard gives you a space for everything and makes it easy to switch between your spaces.
Turn on, space out.
Start by simply clicking the Spaces icon in the Dock. You’ll be prompted to turn on the Spaces feature. Then you can organize your spaces in practically no time.
Rearrange the rooms.
Create a space for work. Create a space for play. Organize each space just the way you want it. Simply open an application in a space or drag a window from one space to another in the bird’s-eye view. It’s that easy to organize and reorganize. Want to reorder your spaces? Just shift a space and every window in it comes along for the ride.
Make yourself at home.
Moving from space to space is easy. When you’re in the bird’s-eye view, select the space you want or toggle between spaces using the arrow keys. Even the Dock is down with Spaces: When you click a Dock icon, Leopard whisks you to the space (or spaces) where the application is open.
Pick your patterns.
Configure your spaces by visiting the Exposé & Spaces pane in System Preferences. Add rows and columns until you have all the real estate you need. Arrange your spaces as you see fit, then choose the function keys you want to control them. You can assign an application to always open in a specific space, if that’s more convenient — so you’ll always know where, say, Safari or Keynote is.
Sarari. Still the world's best web browser.
Now your favorite web browser is also the fastest on the Mac. With page load speeds that outperform every other major browser on the Mac, Safari for Leopard also introduces a few new features to the mix.
Browse like the wind.
The fastest web browser today, Safari loads and draws pages up to 3 times faster than Firefox 2 and up to 5.5 times faster than Opera 9. And it executes JavaScript up to 2.7 times faster than Firefox 2 and up to 2.6 times faster than Opera 9.1 What does all that mean for you? Less time loading pages and more time enjoying them.
Find inline.
Type a word into the new Find banner below the Bookmarks Bar, and Safari shows you the number of matches and brightly highlights matching terms while dimming the rest of the page. So you can view and browse every instance — in an instant.
Pick up the tabs.
With tabbed browsing in Safari, you can open and switch between multiple web pages in a single window. Drag and drop your tabs to rearrange them, open one in a new browser window, or merge all your current windows into one tabbed window. Safari resizes each tab depending on the number you have open. You can bookmark a set of tabs or revert to the tabs that were open when you last closed or quit Safari.
PDFs at your service.
The new PDF controls in Safari let you zoom in and out, save a PDF file, or open one in Preview — all from the comfort of your browser.
Resize at will.
Maybe the text field you’re typing in is a bit too small to read. Or maybe you just have a lot to say. Either way, Safari lets you resize text fields on any website, just by grabbing the corner of the field. Resize a field and the web page reflows to make room.
Clip it.
Now you can turn any web page into a Dashboard widget. Click the Web Clip button next to the address field in Safari and select exactly what you want your new widget to display. Then click Add, and Safari sends your Web Clip widget to Dashboard, where you can view it alongside your other widgets. You can even customize its border using built-in styles on the back of the widget. Your Web Clip widget is “live” and will update as frequently as the page from which it came.
Surf securely.
Safari protects your personal information when you surf the web on a shared or public Mac. Go ahead — check your bank account and .Mac email at the library or shop for birthday presents on the family Mac. Safari also uses strong 128-bit encryption when accessing secure sites such as your bank or an online store, so you can transmit account and payment information with confidence.
Parental Controls. Safety first.
As a parent, you want your kids to have a safe and happy experience on the computer. Leopard keeps an eye out even when you can’t. With a simple setup, you can manage, monitor, and control the time your kids spend on the Mac, the sites they visit, and the people they chat with.
A safer Internet.
Using the same technology that keeps your inbox free of junk mail, a new content filter in Leopard takes a quick peek at websites before they load and tries to determine if they’re suitable for kids. If not, Leopard blocks them from view. Of course, you can override this filter by creating lists of specific websites you want — or don’t want — your children to see.
Bedtime and time limits.
Many kids would sit at the computer for days if you let them. Fortunately, Leopard makes it easier to set the rules. Just enter bedtime and time limits for using the Mac, specifying different times for weekdays and weekends if you wish. Parents happy, kids happy (relatively).
Under log and key.
With Leopard, your Mac logs your kids’ activities to help you keep them from communicating with people they shouldn’t be. The log keeps track of websites your kids have visited, applications they’ve used, and people they’ve chatted with. It’s the perfect way to make sure your children stay safe online. You can access the parental controls and monitor logs remotely from any Mac on the network.
Boot Camp. Run Windows on your Mac.
eopard is the world’s most advanced operating system. So advanced, it even lets you run Windows if there’s a PC application you need to use. Just get a copy of Windows and start up Boot Camp, now included with Leopard. Setup is simple and straightforward — just as you’d expect with a Mac.
Run Windows at native speed.
Boot Camp supports the most popular 32-bit releases of Windows XP and Windows Vista. When you use either operating system on your Mac, your Windows applications will run at native speed. Windows applications have full access to multiple processors and multiple cores, accelerated 3D graphics, and high-speed connections like USB, FireWire, Wi-Fi, and Gigabit Ethernet.
Ready, setup, go.
When you're ready for Windows, the Boot Camp Assistant sets up your hard drive for you. It leaves all your Mac data in place while it creates a separate partition on your drive for Windows, and then begins the installation process. Boot Camp includes a PDF setup guide, so you can refer to it as you go.
Drivers galore.
When you install Windows using Boot Camp, you won’t need to search the Internet for drivers or burn a disc. After you run Boot Camp, simply insert the Leopard DVD to install the necessary drivers. Everything you need to make your Mac work with Windows is right there. When you use a Windows application, you’ll have full access to unique Mac features (iSight, Apple Remote, trackpad, specific keyboard keys, keyboard backlighting) and connectivity (wired and wireless).
Choose your OS.
After you’ve installed Windows using Boot Camp, you can start up your Mac using either operating system. Simply hold down the Option key when you power up and choose one or the other.
Already running Boot Camp? Even easier.
If you’re already working with Boot Camp Beta, you’re practically finished before you start. All you need is some new drivers. To install them, simply start up your Mac in Windows and update the drivers from the Leopard DVD.
Feature-specific requirements
Time Machine requires an additional hard drive (sold separately).
Photo Booth requires an iSight camera (built-in or external), USB video class (UVC) camera, or FireWire DV camcorder; and an Intel or PowerPC G5 processor. Backdrop effects require an Intel Core Duo or faster processor. Backdrop effects when using a DV camcorder require fixed focus, exposure, and white balance.
Boot Camp requires a Mac with an Intel processor and Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista (sold separately).
Screen sharing in iChat and in the Finder requires a 128-Kbps Internet connection (300-Kbps recommended).
Front Row requires a Mac with built-in IR and an Apple Remote.
DVD Player requires a 1.6GHz processor or faster for improved de-interlacing.
iChat requirements
Developer tools require 1GB of memory and an additional 3GB of available disk space.
Time Machine requires an additional hard drive (sold separately).
Photo Booth requires an iSight camera (built-in or external), USB video class (UVC) camera, or FireWire DV camcorder; and an Intel or PowerPC G5 processor. Backdrop effects require an Intel Core Duo or faster processor. Backdrop effects when using a DV camcorder require fixed focus, exposure, and white balance.
Boot Camp requires a Mac with an Intel processor and Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista (sold separately).
Screen sharing in iChat and in the Finder requires a 128-Kbps Internet connection (300-Kbps recommended).
Front Row requires a Mac with built-in IR and an Apple Remote.
DVD Player requires a 1.6GHz processor or faster for improved de-interlacing.
iChat requirements
- Audio chats require a microphone and a 56-Kbps Internet connection.
- Video chats require an iSight camera (built-in or external), USB video class (UVC) camera, or FireWire DV camcorder; and 128-Kbps upstream and downstream Internet connection.
- Photo Booth and backdrop effects require an Intel Core Duo or faster processor.
- Backdrop effects when using a DV camcorder require fixed focus, exposure, and white balance.
- Some iChat features offer better performance and quality with higher system capabilities.
Developer tools require 1GB of memory and an additional 3GB of available disk space.
