Apple Mac OS X Leopard 10.5

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.

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.

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 Time Machine iconhourly 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.

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.

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.

Boot Camp Assistant
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.

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.