Recently in OS X Category
Stacks in leopard are pretty cool. Sure, there was always something like it (right-clicking a folder in the dock), but this adds a little flare. Unfortunately it takes something away, too. I'm not sure what Apple thought they were accomplishing by making the stacks' icons dynamic, but a lot of us don't really like it. I like to be able to glance and know which one is my applications folder, which my documents folder, which my downloads folder, and so on. But that's just not how it works.
TUAW is posting about a "workaround" or "hack." Or really whatever you want to call it. Basically you put a folder into the folder that you have added as a stack, give it an icon you like, use touch at the command line to set its modified date far into the future, and name it with a preceding and trailing space. And frankly, I think it's lame to have to do that. If you are using the fan format, it eats a slot. If you're going automatic, it may tip you over the edge into grid from fan, which just isn't as neat. So yes, it stings.
But hey, you get used to these things pretty quickly.
It's the little things about Leopard that have me most excited, odd as it sounds. Apple released a list of 300 New Features in Leopard. Among them, the ability to record UI actions in Automator, making it possible to automate pretty much anything! And let's not overlook the tabbed terminals. And I don't use iChat, but tabs there sure are nice too.
It's definitely nice to see these additions.
ZDNet has written a review of Mac OS X for the x86 platform. Bootleg copies of this developing operating system have been available for some time but few are willing to takes the risk.
This development coincides with the choice from Apple to move to Intel processors. What's really special here is that Apple is developing the OS to run only on Apple hardware. They wouldn't want companies like Dell and Gateway to be able to sell machines with Mac OS X; Apple relies on sales of both hardware and software to survive and doesn't want to lose the pricing standard they've set. That means that ZDNet had to use a "modification" to install on their x86 machine. Translation? This is essentially illegal.
So place your bets as to whether or not there'll be a law suit. My money is on no, because this review is pretty shining.
A quick summary of the review will tell you that the OS itself performs pretty much on par with Windows XP, but the applications need a lot of work. This comes as no surprise since the Applications couldn't properly be tested without an OS that's mostly complete. Judging by this review, we now have an OS that's mostly complete and is at the stage of adding more drivers and squashing bugs. Application developers should now be pretty free to test. Sounds like things are moving along quite nicely.
You can find the Version Tracker page here; Mac OS X 10.3.7 has been released. Primarily it addresses specific issues with World of Warcraft and certain video cards, and issues with some Windows printer servers. Thanks to this update life at the office has improved dramatically for me as I can now print from my computer instead of connecting to the print server and printing from there. That wasn't fun to have to do. As to the World of Warcraft issues, frankly I attributed those to lag anyway so who knows if I felt them or not? I'm playing a totally different character now with totally different art in those situations.
As a side note, when I performed a Repair Permissions I only had one file to fix. After installing this update my system seems to run a bit quicker. I'm very satisfied.
Mac OS X 10.3.4 (Panther) has been released! Version Tracker has a great summary of changes here. Thus far it seems to be running smoothly and, although none of the changes particularly impact me, I'm thrilled to see them none the less. Every one of them is a genuine improvement. Good to see.
So all of you Apple users, go run Software Update.
This is the latest update for Mac OS X and appears to be an enhancement release rather than a bug-fix release. I'm quite happy to see that. Of course, few of these updates apply to me at all but I always love to be up to date. You can read the details posted to version tracker here. Panther users should run software update to install this.