The Small Wave.

This discovery article is about things that, frankly, would make for a short post if written about individually. But there are a number of thoughtful touches sprinkled throughout Snow Leopard that make your work nicer, or more efficient, and I want to mention some of them here...

Text Substitution

The system-wide text substitution is great. Go to the Languages and Text control panel to select the ones you want, or add your own:

I’ve already added a few of my own, and they work perfectly in the Snow Leopard version of apps like Mail and TextEdit. One thing to note, however. Text replacement may not be enabled by default. Applications handle this differently, so you may need to turn it on for a given app. In an application's Edit menu you’ll see a menu for Substitutions. Just check the ones you want to turn them on. Alternatively, select Show Substitutions on the menu to display a dialog box where you can control them all at once. Either way, check Text Replacement and you’re in business.

TextEdit

It took only the addition of a few features to vault TextEdit to my default word processor of choice:

• Text replacement, as explained above
• Correct spelling automatically
• Smart dashes

These are all available in Pages, but with TextEdit I have them in a faster environment for most of my writing.

Keep in mind TextEdit already had plenty of desirable word processing features. Things like simple styles, lists, line spacing, tabs, paste and match style, find/replace, hyperlinks, hyphenation, and more. Heck, it even has kerning and ligatures. Further, as an RTF editor it can contain graphics, and makes nice use of the new streamlined Services menu in Snow Leopard:

No, I’m not giving up Pages anytime soon. Sometimes I need columns, headers, TOCs, etc. But most of the time I don’t. TextEdit is fast and uncluttered, with more than just the basics, and yet so lightweight I think nothing of leaving it running all the time. With the latest improvements its become my word processor for blog posts, and where I’ll start most other writing projects as well.

iCal

My favorite new feature in iCal, and it practically brings tears to my eyes, is this:

Now when I double-click an existing event I don’t see this dreadful thing:

Instead, I get the thing of beauty below. Imagine that, an actual window I can type in, and move around, and everything.

Sadly, this only works for existing events. If you double-click a date to add a new event you still get the “talking” editor, which you need to drag off if you want a window. Still, this feature makes me very happy. For other people, their favorite new feature might be this:

You can now sync your Mac calendar with Google or Yahoo! calendars. The Address Book has a similar capability, so your contacts can be in sync between these services as well. I used Yahoo! for years and this would have been great, but I'm on MobileMe now.

Mail

Exchange support could be huge (I love it on my iPhone), but my company does not use Exchange 2007 so I cannot try this or comment on it. However, the text substitutions mentioned above are extremely nice. So is the speed increase. And I love that I can re-order the sidebar categories. For me, this means banishing Reminders to the bottom of the list.

QuickTime X

So much has been written about the new QuickTime X player that I won’t dwell on it other than to try to define a little bit better what this thing is:

• 
  Do not confuse QuickTime X player with the actual QuickTime X technology. The player is the tip of the iceberg you see. QuickTime X is a refinement and tuning of Apple's media technology as ambitious as Snow Leopard was to Leopard.
• QuickTime X player is not QuickTime Pro. Pro allowed editing in the middle of a movie, combining multiple movies into one, better output options, and more.
• QuickTime X player is more than the QuickTime 7 player it replaces. You can trim movies and then upload directly to YouTube or MobileMe. You can also output them to iPod, iPhone or Apple TV devices. It can also record your screen actions, and the performance is better.

The number of QT Pro users is relatively small. For the vast majority of Mac users what they’re getting is a sleeker, faster movie player than what they had before. One that also allows them to trim footage and upload it for sharing, as well as recording on-screen actions. That’s a pretty nice bonus as part of only a $29 software package.

And Even More…

Your Mac goes to sleep, you immediately grab the mouse but it’s too late, you have to enter a password to get back in (if you’ve chosen that option). Well, in the Security preferences panel you can now set a “grace period” between sleep and requiring a password. You want to be Green. Really, you do. But you can’t let your desktop Mac sleep because you might want to grab a file, or see a shared photo, or play a shared song, from your MacBook. Well, if you use an Airport Extreme or Time Capsule as your router you can set an option to Wake for Network access. Let the desktop get some sleep, knowing it’ll wake if you need it. Day, date and time in the menu bar. You could do this before, but had to jump through hoops. Now you just check a few boxes:

Where Does It End?

In this discovery series I specifically avoided the advanced technologies in Snow Leopard like Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL. These are very important, but I wanted the series to focus on what most people could see and make use of immediately. Yet there are more, many more, things to discover. I couldn’t begin to list them all. QuickLook now works in iChat for received a file. Safari now has “plug-in protection” so Adobe Flash (and others) won’t crash the browser. And on and on… What about you? What have you found? I’d love for others to leave their own Snow Leopard discoveries in the comments below. Previous Articles in the Snow Leopard Discovery Series:

• Installation
• MobileMe
• The Finder
• The Dock, Exposé, and Spaces
• Preview

If you’re wondering why I’m writing about these items together, it’s because Exposé and Spaces are both related to window management (with Spaces at a higher level), and in Snow Leopard they built Exposé into the Dock so it comes along for the ride. Spaces hasn’t really changed in Snow Leopard. Where the real change comes is Exposé itself, which is slicker than before, and some Dock changes to invoke it.

How I Organize

The screenshots below make more sense if you understand how I organize my apps/windows. Put simply, I use six spaces as an integral part of my work. Each space generally only has 1-3 apps in it, so clutter in any one space is minimal.

Exposé Alone

Let’s say I’m in space #5 and invoke Exposé. I use a gesture (upper right screen corner) to invoke the "All Windows" option, and see this: This shows me “all windows” for the space I’m in; you can see I’ve got three windows in this space. It should be immediately apparent what’s different about Exposé in Snow Leopard. Instead of lining up willy nilly, the windows are lined to a grid. Further, instead of being unlabeled until you move the mouse over them, they have permanent labels. Finally, there’s a dark blue border around the "selected" window under the mouse (in this case, iPhoto). Aside from clicking the selected window to switch to it, there's a new feature you can perform that we’ll get to in a minute.

Spaces Alone

Now let’s say I go back to space #5, and instead of invoking Exposé I invoke Spaces (gesture to the lower-left corner). I’ll see this: I’ve got a lot running for the purposes of this article (yet at this point it's not all displayed). Notice that space #5 has a darker background than the others. That’s because it’s the currently "selected" space (i.e. under the mouse). So now you’ve seen each feature invoked on its own. Click on a window in Exposé and you go to that window. Click on a window in Spaces and you go to that window and space. Simple enough.

Exposé and Spaces: Together

The beauty of Exposé is that it works with Spaces. if I’m showing all my spaces, and then invoke Exposé’s All Windows option, I see everything. (Obviously, if  you don't use Spaces then Exposé's All Windows option always shows everything.) Go back to the spaces picture above and imagine if I invoked Exposé from there. In other words, if I quickly moused to the lower-left and then upper-right corners (a natural movement since I’m right handed). I get this: Now I get a picture of all opened windows on the Mac. Notice the mouse is over a window in space #4. The space has the darker background, and there’s a dark blue border around the selected window. A cool new feature in Exposé is that the selected window can be previewed for a closer look. Just hit the space bar to see this: This is really nice when using Spaces and Exposé together because the displayed windows can get small-- especially on my 13” MacBook. Sometimes the window title will be enough, but with similar titles the preview feature is a great way to ensure you’ve found the window you want. Just click the preview to move to that window. (Windows 7 provides previews, too, but if you click it the whole thing disappears. Instead, you must click the small tab from which you generated the preview. Not a very wise implementation.)

And It’s Only $29. But Wait, There’s More!

Exposé’s additional polish and window previews are great, but there’s even more, and here’s where the Dock gets involved. Let’s say I’ve done some work in the Finder, and then from any space or application I just click and hold on the Finder icon in the Dock. I see this: Three windows displayed, and in a similar style as we saw before. But one of them is drawn below a fine white line. What’s this? Well, there’s a new preference for the Dock that allows windows to minimize to the app's icon instead of a separate slot in the Dock. If you choose to use this option (I love it), minimized windows display in Exposé below a line on the screen. Once Exposé is invoked you do not need to continue holding the mouse button down. This allows for some other great features. For example, assume I’m still at the screenshot above, and I click on the TextEdit icon in the Dock. I get this: So I can quickly switch Exposé from one app to another. In fact, I can cycle Exposé through every open app by repeatedly pressing the Tab key. Sweet. Whether alone or with Spaces, and no matter how you invoke it (gesture, the Dock, keyboard, or mouse), the bottom line is you click an Exposé window (or its preview) and you're there.

It’s Too Much! My Head’s Gonna Explode!

Well, yes, if you tried to use every method you’re head might explode. But the way you work will lend itself to certain methods that make the most sense for you. Personally, I think Apple added the Dock access so more people would discover Exposé. The Dock makes invoking it more accessible. And by making the windows line up neater, with labels, usability is enhanced no matter how you invoke it. As for me, I’m a Spaces guy, too. The lower-left and/or upper-right corner gesture as needed is easy and natural. I can quickly have a space’s -- or all -- windows right in front of me. Yet as I’m working I rarely have more than a couple apps’ “clutter” to deal with at once. I don’t think I'll use the Dock for Exposé very often, I love using the gestures. But the neater grid, labels, and previews are something I’m already taking advantage of. Previous Articles in the Snow Leopard Discovery Series:

• Installation
• MobileMe
• The Finder