IN APPLE'S universe, the Leopard is the most evolved cat the world has seen to date. It is more powerful than the Tiger or Panther, and more intelligent too, with more tricks up its spotted sleeve.
This is made particularly clear with the additional features in applications such as Dashboard, iChat, Safari and Mail.
Parental Controls
FIRST up, use it to monitor and limit the children's use of the Mac and the Internet. Prior to Leopard, the other cats in the Apple OS X family left the control at the application level.
With Leopard however, parents can go to System Preferences and look for "Parental Controls" listed under "System". In order for this to work effectively, the parent and child should have separate accounts on the Mac, with the parent possessing administrative rights while the child is a "standard" user. In the child's account, select the box "Enable Parental Controls".
Set up this way, the parent (administrator) can control application and website access of the other (standard) users. Parental Controls can limit the people the kids e-mail or iChat with, the Mac applications they can access, and even the time of day they can use the computer, with separate settings for week days and weekends. Parental Controls can also check websites for adult content and bar entry to them. (See screen configurations above).
Leopard also logs the activities of the standard account so the parent can review what the child has been doing on the Mac.
iChat
THIS has been around since the OS X was launched at the turn of the millennium. In Leopard, iChat ties up with just about anyone - with accounts to Mac, AOL, Jabber and Google Talk. Two nifty features in the new iChat are screen sharing and the ability to record audio and video chats. Do note though that iChat presents the four different types of accounts in different buddy lists. To integrate it all, try Chax from www.ksuther.com/chax.
Spotlight
THIS is another application that has been around and has now been ramped up. This is the Mac's omnibus search facility; since it searches for everything - from documents to movies and applications - Apple has wisely added Boolean search in the Leopard version. If you're looking for this article in my Mac, for example, you could type in the file name "Leopard AND doc AND Digital Life". You could even search for it by typing in the headline.
Safari
THIS open source Web browser has also been reworked. Besides Google search, Safari can now sift through the information on the Web page itself. Select "Find" under the "Edit" pull-down menu, or use the "Cmd F" keyboard shortcut then type in the text string.
Another new trick in Safari: the creation of webclips for Dashboard. On Safari select "Open in Dashboard" - under the File tab. Safari will select various areas it can clip. Choose the area and hit Return. Safari will make that clip a widget on Dashboard.
In spite of its fabulous anti-junk filter and organising capability, Mail, the e-mail application packaged as part of OS X, has always been seen as a poor cousin to Microsoft's Entourage. After all, Entourage combines a calendar, to-do list, notes and address book with its e-mail function; and all of these can be integrated using Project Centre.
Well, Leopard does provide all these functions under the OS directly, and now they work better with one another, although they are not integrated. Mail has been enhanced with notes and to-dos. It also has Data Detector, which looks for contact details that could be added to the Address Book with a mouse click; details can also be added as an event in iCal.
Calendar sharing was the strong feature of iCal but now anyone using the open source Caldev standard can share calendars with iCal. So, a working Mum can check her daughter's calendar to check if she needs to be picked up from a tuition class; and then tap into her husband's calendar to see if he might be available to do the job.
Next installment: A closer look at the radical new tool in Leopard - the Time Machine. Coupled with its new Time Capsule, this technology could be the Mac user's backup dream.
This article was first published in The Straits Times, Digital Life on 24 June 2008.
