2 Months in with Leopard

Image is of my current Macbook desktop. What’s that big circle you ask? Check out a little application launcher called Sapiens. Using gestures and a “brain” it presents you with your most used programs. (And is smart enough to show you the next most used when the MOST used is already running)

So I’ve been working with, and playing with, Leopard for the better part of 2 months now. During that time I have made some changes to the dock, installed a few updates, updated a number of applications, and found the awesome program you see above.

The dock is a great tool, but there are some issues with the latest incarnation. The mac user community very quickly discovered that the dock can be re-skinned very easily. So now on my Macbaby the dock looks like a field of grass and on the Macdaddy the dock is a simple smoked glass with a light border. On both docks I also replaced the running program pointer so that it was easier to see and made more sense.

The first update to Leopard was an easy install and while it fixed lots of things in the background, none of the cosmetic issues that people are complaining about in Leopard were touched. A few websites are saying that the next update will make some much needed changes to the “Stacks” feature as well as many other changes.

I’ve had some issues. Crashes of applications, crashes of the whole system. But they were easily resolved and none were data or system threatening. Plus, Time Machine, the included backup software has been running and keeping my data backed up on another hard drive.

Spaces has been pretty useful. When I am doing anything other than simple tasks, I put the primary applications on space 1 and then put background applications on other spaces. Itunes for example is usually on space 4 and stays there running music while I work.

The most used new feature for me has got to be Quicklook. Quicklook is amazing. Click on, or keyboard navigate to, a file and hit the space bar. the operating system will bring the file up and show it to you. No waiting for the application that supports the file. A Word document will appear instantly and let you read through it to see what it is without your having to wait for word to load. Really amazingly easy and useful. All they need now are more plugins to support more obscure files.

Finally, let me talk about Sapiens, the program I reference in the image above. Imagine this: You want to launch a program and it’s either not on your dock, or you have so much on your dock you can’t easily see it. So what do you do? You move your mouse in a circle a few times and Sapiens pops up. In that circle are the 13 most run programs on your machine. Don’t see the one you need? Start typing the name and it will pop into the middle allowing you to launch it by hitting enter or by clicking the icon in the middle. It’s an amazingly simple idea with a lot of thought put behind it. For more information click the Sapiens link above.

I’ll probably do this again after the next update comes out. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed.

Tags: Mac, Leopard