Apple Mac OS X Version 10.5.6 Leopard (OLD VERSION)
by Apple

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Category: Software
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Software Summary

• Introduces over 300 new and enhanced features to OS X.
• Including a new desktop and updated finder enabling easy browsing and sharing between multiple Macs
• Preview files without opening an application using Quick Look
• Easily and automatically back up and restore lost files or a complete Mac with Time Machine
• Create groups of applications and instantly switch between them with Spaces
• Take advantage of the latest developments in processor hardware with full native 64-bit support, multi-core optimization, and new Core animation

• Pantone ColorMunki Design
• Mac OS X Leopard: The Missing Manual
• Teach Yourself VISUALLY Mac OS X Leopard (Teach Yourself VISUALLY (Tech))
• Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Leopard Edition
• Mac OS X Leopard Pocket Guide (Pocket Reference)

Software Reviews of Apple Mac OS X Version 10.5.6 Leopard (OLD VERSION)

Customer Review: Very Good, but Still Buggy - In Reality This is Still BETA, So Beware!!
Summary: 4 Stars

Description of Apple Mac OS X Version 10.5.6 Leopard (OLD VERSION)

Desktop. A neat place to work.
From the menu bar to the stunning new Dock, the Leopard desktop isn't just about design. It's about enjoying the time you spend on your computer and getting more out of it.

An eye-opening experience.
Start from the top. The menu bar hovers transparently above your workspace, letting the desktop image--perhaps a favorite from your iPhoto library--take center stage. Dock icons rest on a reflective floor with 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.

Stacked in your favor.
Take a look at your desktop. Is it cluttered with files you downloaded or saved there (somewhat less than) temporarily? You're not alone. Everybody does it. Time to clean house with Stacks--a brand-new feature in Leopard. Create Stacks from anything you want to access quickly from one place: a handful of documents, a group of applications, an entire folder. Files you download in Safari or save from an email are automatically directed to a Stack in the Dock, and when the download is complete, the Stack signals that a new item has arrived. When you want to see the files in a Stack, all you have to do is click--Stacks spring open from the Dock in an elegant arc for a few items, or in an at-a-glance grid for more. Pretty neat.

Browse your files like you browse your music with Cover Flow.

Finder. Give your files the rock star treatment.
Imagine if browsing the files on your Mac was as easy as browsing music in iTunes. That's the idea behind the new Finder in Leopard. Now you can access everything on your system from an iTunes-style sidebar and flip through your files using Cover Flow.

Grouped sidebar items help you find what you need fast.

The sidebar steps up.
Leopard brings new power to your old friend, the sidebar. Now 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.

See what you seek.
Bring your files to life with Cover Flow in the Finder. Just as you use Cover Flow to flip through album art in iTunes, now you can use it to flip through your files. Cover Flow displays each file as a large preview of its first page. And you can page through multipage documents or play movies.

Search party.
Stop looking and start finding with Cover Flow and Spotlight. Click a prebuilt search like "yesterday" or "all images" in the sidebar and Cover Flow displays your search results in the perfect at-a-glance format. Leopard comes with a number of helpful prebuilt searches, but it's easy to create your own customized searches as well.

Closer connections.
With shared computers automatically displayed in the sidebar, it's far easier to find or access files on any computer in your house, whether Mac or PC. All it takes is a click. But here's where things get really interesting. By clicking on a connected Mac, you can see and control that computer (if authorized, of course) as if you were sitting in front of it. You can even search all the computers in the house to find what you're looking for.

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 Macs at home from any Mac on the Internet. Your home computers will appear in the shared section of the sidebar just as they do when you're in the living room.

Improved spotlight searches.

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" into a search request. You can also search for exact phrases (using quotation marks), dates, ranges (using greater than [>] and less than [<] symbols), absolute dates, and simple calculations.

View, play, and read files without even opening them.

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 multiple-page 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, PDFs, movies, Keynote presentations, and Microsoft Word and Excel files. Click the Quick Look icon or tap the Space bar to see a file in Quick Look. Then click the arrow icon to see the same file full screen--even video as it plays.

Time Machine. A giant leap backward.
More than a mere backup, Time Machine makes an up-to-date copy of everything on your Mac--digital photos, music, movies, TV shows, and documents--so you can go back in time to recover anything.

Set it, then forget it.
You can start using Time Machine in seconds. The first time you attach an external drive to your Mac, Time Machine asks if you'd like to use that drive as your backup. Say yes and 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 keeps an up-to-date copy of everything on your Mac. That includes 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 any given day--so you can revisit your Mac as it appeared in the past.

Go back in time to restore any file on your system.

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. Once you do, click Restore and Time Machine brings it back to the present. Time Machine restores individual files, complete folders, or your entire computer--putting everything back the way it was and where it should be.

Preferential treatment.
Customize Time Machine by modifying the following behaviors in System Preferences:

• Backup disk. Change the drive or volume you're backing up to. Or back up to a Mac OS X Server computer.
• Do not back up. By default, Time Machine backs up your entire system. But you can also select items you'd rather not back up.
• Encrypt backup data. Turn on encryption to store your backup securely.
• Backup storage time limits. Manage older backups so your backup drive doesn't fill up.

Drag windows to different workspaces and unclutter your Mac.

Spaces. Room for everything. You do a lot on your Mac. So what happens when projects pile up? Easy. Use Spaces to group your windows and banish clutter completely. Leopard gives you a Space for everything and puts everything in its Space. Rearrange the rooms. Create a Space for work. Create a Space for play. Organize each Space the way you want it just by dragging in windows. Keep all your work projects in one Space and that fun flick you made in iMovie in another. Create a communication Space for iChat and Mail. You can even rearrange your Spaces with drag-and-drop ease--shift a Space and every window in it comes along for the ride. Make yourself at home. Moving from Space to Space is easy. Get a bird's-eye view and 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 you have that application open. Pick your patterns. Configure your Spaces by visiting the Expose 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 also assign applications to specific Spaces, so you'll always know where, say, Safari or Keynote is.

Email personalized stationery, write to-dos, and take notes.

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. Mail Stationary From invitations to birthday greetings, stationery templates feature coordinated layouts, fonts, colors, and drag-and-drop photo placement--everything to help you get your point across. You can even create personalized templates. And messages created using stationery in Mail use standard HTML that can be read by every popular email program on the market--for both Mac and PC.

Notes and tasks help you stay organized.

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.

Much ado about to-dos.
Forget manually entering a new item to your to-do list every time an email hits your inbox. Mail Tasks Simply highlight text in an email, then click the To-do icon to create a to-do from a message. Include a due date, set an alarm, or assign priorities. Every to-do you create includes a link to the original email or note, and to-dos automatically appear in iCal, complete with any edits or additions you make. And since to-dos are stored with your email, 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. And 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 emailed to you. 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 combinations of data in phrases like "lunch tomorrow at 12 p.m. at 701 Baltic Ave, San Francisco, CA," making it easy to make plans.

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 to automatically configure all those cryptic server settings for you.

Add effects to video chats and make remote presentations.

iChat. Not being there is half the fun.
Filled with fun 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.

Transform your video chats using Photo booth effects.

Share your files with friends using iChat Theater.

Chat for effect.
Transform your video chats using new Photo Booth effects. Choose an effect and your image changes instantly--iChat detects your background and adds the effect only to your image. And the reverse is true for iChat backdrops: Drag an Apple-designed backdrop or your own photo or video into the video preview window to create an effect that will fool your buddies into thinking you're chatting from your living room, the beach, or the moon.

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 an entire 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.

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.
Sure, iChat has a lot to offer for video and audio chats, but 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 PC. Sign in with your AIM account and all your buddies appear in your iChat buddy list.

	iCal. Your schedule is clear. Leopard introduces a new look to iCal, along with an easier-to-use interface that makes scheduling and rescheduling a breeze. Add new group calendaring features, and iCal works better for business or pleasure.
	Photo Booth. Say cheese. Come on. You know you want to. Your built-in iSight or USB camera just begs to take your snapshot. Open Photo Booth--now built into Leopard--and have a little fun.
	Dashboard. Where there's a will, there's a widget. Leopard lets you create your very own Dashboard widget from any website. And new .Mac syncing keeps all of your widgets on all of your Macs.
	Front Row. Put on a show. Looking for a great way to enjoy all the cool stuff on your Mac? Front Row in Leopard works like Apple TV to play digital music, movies, TV shows, and photos on your Mac using the ultra-simple Apple Remote.
	Safari. Still the world's best web browser. Now your favorite web browser is also the fastest on the planet. With page load speeds to rival every other major browser, Safari for Leopard also introduces a few new features to the mix.
	DVD Player. Very entertaining. DVD Player in Leopard probably boasts more features than the DVD player in your home entertainment system. And you don't have to leave your Mac to enjoy it.
	Parental Controls Give your kids a safer, happier Mac experience.
	Accessibility. More user friendly. Leopard offers new features destined to make it the most accessible Mac OS yet. New voice technology in VoiceOver, along with Braille support, Breakthrough Browsing, and extended keyboard capability, give users with visual disabilities more control over the Mac than ever.
	Boot Camp. Run Windows on your Mac. Leopard 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.
	Automator. Your personal automation assistant. Automator brings remarkable speed to any task that's often repeated on your computer. Leopard adds even more muscle to Automator, making it easy to automate more kinds of tasks.

A host of new features that make life easier for every developer.

Rock-solid foundations.
Explore the core technologies that power Leaopard.

64-Bit. Advanced precision in one OS.
Leopard delivers 64-bit power in one, universal OS. Now the Cocoa application frameworks, as well as graphics, scripting, and the UNIX foundations of the Mac, are all 64-bit. And since you get full performance and compatibility for your 32-bit applications and drivers, you don't need to update everything on your system just to run a single 64-bit application.

Multicore. Fire on all cylinders.
Today's Mac computers offer astounding performance with up to eight cores of processing power. So how do you take full advantage? Simple. With Leopard. A rearchitected system, finely tuned key applications, and powerful new tools for developers make Leopard the perfect OS for your multicore Mac.

Security. Safer by design.
Every Mac is secure--right out of the box--thanks to the proven foundation of Mac OS X. Apple engineers have designed Leopard with more security to protect your personal data and make your online life safer.

Core Animation. Drag-and-drop-dead gorgeous.
Welcome to the next level in computer animation. No, it's not a feature film--it's your desktop. Core Animation is an API that makes it simple for Mac developers to add visually stunning graphics and animations to applications. Without any esoteric graphics and math techniques, you can create fluid, stutter-free effects and experiences as groundbreaking as Spaces and Time Machine.

UNIX. The UNIX you know. The Mac you love.
What can the fully UNIX-compliant Leopard do? It can run any POSIX-compliant source code. Help you make the most of multicore systems. Put a new, tabbed-interface Terminal at your fingertips. Introduce a whole host of new features that make life easier for every developer. So, really, what can't it do?

Create stunning Mac applications more quickly.

Ready. Set. Code.
Discover developer tools you can build on.

Xcode. Build fast. Work smart.
Xcode 3.0 delivers better performance, as well as innovations that let you create stunning Mac applications more quickly. Enjoy a graphical IDE in which form focuses your functions. Delight in a debugger so groundbreaking, you'll make mistakes just to see it in action.

Xray. Apps, the developer will see you now.
When you need help debugging, Xcode 3.0 offers an extraordinary new program: Xray. Taking interface cues from timeline editors such as GarageBand, Xray lets you visualize application performance like never before.

Dashcode. Widgets without the wait.
Ever wish you could make your very own Dashboard widget? A handy RSS feed of your favorite blog, maybe. Or a miniature photocast of your iPhoto library. Something uniquely useful, uniquely you. Say hello to Dashcode. Now you can get a widget up and running in minutes, even if you've never written a line of code in your life.

Macintosh Software

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