Aint that special

I’ve used Leopard all weekend and I am hooked. I expected it to be just a mediocre upgrade without those gotcha features. I’ve been proven totally wrong. Since top ten lists are all the rage with the internets, here’s mine.

Top ten reasons to embrace Leopard

10) I actually like the Dock now (I don’t hide it in the basement between uses anymore)

9) Coverflow sucks less than I thought (It is actually handy for folders with images, but not much else)

Unified UI in all applications

7) Safari 3 no longer beta (it just feels more complete now)

6) Spotlight ROCKS! (if you are using Quicksilver just for launching, go with Spotlight now)

5) Stacks is handy (much nicer than folders in the dock)

4) Todo lists in mail—finally

3) Preview completely replaces Acrobat for most users

2) Time Machine actually works (if you need it)

1) It’s FAST AS HELL (seriously, my Mac Pro finally feels like a zippy machine)

I know some people will argue that my #1 might be due to a fresh untainted system, but I’ve reinstalled 10.4 several times on my Mac Pro, and it never felt this fast. OS 10.5 feels solid.

I will readily admit that I am paranoid about my digital life. My Mac has enough personal information on it that a genetic clone with my login password could completely replace me in my everyday life. I’ve talked about this concern previously.

I’ve gotten pretty smart about encrypting the really serious stuff. My method of choice happens to be Knox. But I started thinking about the unlikely event that someone might get my password and open the encrypted file. So I took it to another level. I made my user account folder invisible. I thought I was pretty clever. Until I needed to migrate my data to my new Leopard install.

I started my upgraded to Leopard by doing migration install on a blank drive, but I changed my mind after the install was complete. I just went ahead and did a clean install on the same drive, which of course reformats the drive. So by this time I I had forgotten my super-genius plan to hide my user folder. After the install was complete I went to the drive containing the old system and guess what was missing from the user folder. That’s right… my user folder, which of course was invisible.

I thought that Leopard had some how magically deleted a user folder on a totally separate drive. finally, I decided that no way would Cupertino do that to me. I fired up my old system drive and voila, everything was intact. I eventually figured it all out and fixed the problem.

The moral to the story is that Apple loves me and would never hurt me.

No one should complain that there are not enough choices for web browsers on the Mac. Each one is unique and has its own merits. The only logical thing to do is to run them all, right. Well at least a few. Here is an abbreviated list.

Safari
Firefox
Opera
Omniweb
Camino
Shira
Devonthink

The problem comes when you start to gather bookmarks and cookies in different browsers. You end up with a rats nest of info and no way to find that bookmark to that site with that guy that was once in that movie (you know, that guy). There are a few choices out there for syncing bookmarks but I’ve settled on Bookit from Everyday Software. It’s kind of tough to setup, but then again it is only $12.

Here’s a great use of this little application. I have a Mac at home that I use Safari and occasionally Omniweb and Firefox. Bookit is great for syncing all of the bookmarks across all the browsers. The major problem though, is that I run Firefox on a PC at work. It gets frustrating to use my bookmarks through a .Mac portal. The best solution for me is to run Google Sync with Firefox (it’s only available for Firefox right now) on both my Mac at home and my PC at work. Now when I sync with Bookit, all of my browsers end up with the same bookmarks. This also ensures that my iPhone has all of my current bookmarks too. I’ve reached browser nirvana.

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