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Very soon, more precisely in September ‘09 we all will spend time reading the N amount of not so appearant features in Apples latest Mac OS X release Snow Leopard . I thought it would be a good idea to go down the memory lane and have a look at the famous 300 new features announced with the release of Mac OS X Leopard, as honestly I’m not sure if we have fully utilized our powerhouse Mac OS X.

On Leopard release the 300 features had a very prominent page, which will now re-route you to What is Mac OS X page, part of the Snow Leopard release pages. Googling for that specific 300 feature page, I was lucky to find one on Apple’s Asia site, unfortunately without pictures. (if anyone knows of a better link, please share).
The 300 odd features are grouped under different categories:

• Address Book (2)
• AppleScript (8)
• Automator (7)
• Boot Camp (7)
• Dashboard (3)
• Dashcode (7)
• Desktop (6)
• Dictionary (5)
• DVD Player (10)
• Finder (8)
• Fonts (6)
• Front Row (5)
• Graphics & Media(5)
• iCal (12)
• iChat (24)
• Imaging (3)
• Instruments (4)
• International (11)
• Mail (15)
• Networking (2)
• Parental Controls (7)
• Photo Booth (8)
• Preview (14)
• Printing (8)
• Quick Look (3)
• Safari (13)
• Screen Savers (6)
• Security (11)
• Spaces (5)
• Spotlight (8)
• System (9)
• System Preferences (7)
• Terminal (9)
• TextEdit (7)
• Time Machine (12)
• Universal Access (17)
• UNIX (12)
• Xcode 3 (10)

I will surely not be able to explore & detail all the 316 or so features. In this Intro post I will look into the few easy ones.

ADDRESS BOOK

1. Google Map Addresses
   View a detailed map of any address in Address Book. Just hold down the Control key while clicking any address and select “Map of” and Safari will show you its location in Google Maps.Awesome feature, just love the easy flow and execution. The only down part is, addresses should be mapped by Google.
2. Synchronize with Yahoo!
   Synchronize Address Book on your Mac with your Yahoo! address book. Just enter your Yahoo! account information in Address Book preferences to get started.
   
   UPDATE! Address Book Syncs with MobileMe, Exchange, Yahoo and Google. For Google, you need to download the Contact Sync application. Here is the link to support and how to install for Google.

IMAGING

1. Improved Tethered Camera Support
   Control your camera directly from Image Capture, allowing you to take pictures and download them in a single, convenient step. More camera models from Canon and Nikon are now supported.

   WOW! I used this feature and it works like charm.

2. Enhanced Wireless Capture
   Wirelessly import images from many 802.11-enabled digital cameras and Bluetooth devices.
   
   Yet to get my hands on a 802.11 enabled camera. But just a little googling reveals that the feature works like a charm.
3. Network Scanning Support
   Take advantage of new Bonjour-based network scanners, Leopard leads the way with the technology required to allow scanning over a network.
   
   It sure does for sure!

FONTS

1. Printable Font Book
   Print out comprehensive previews of your fonts, including sample text in varying sizes or all available glyphs. Just select fonts in Font Book, choose Print from the File menu, and select any of the three built-in report types.

   A very important feature for Graphics professional to have a print reference available of installed fonts. Other entries in the FONT groups are:

   - Language Collection: Fonts grouped by Languages
   - System Font Protection: Your Mac will alert you while deleting a system font
   - New Fonts: Apple welcomes Arial Unicode, Microsoft Sans Serif, Tahoma, Papyrus Condensed, and Wingdings fonts
   - Font Auto-Activation: If a font is deactivated but used by a specific application, that font will become active for the life of that application (until its quitted)
   - Braille Support: Addition of Apple Braille Regular, Apple Braille Outline, and Apple Braille Pinpoint fonts

FINDER

1. New Sidebar

   Don’t you just love the New Sidebar. People who are not familiar with previous OS X releases, it was unlike the iTunes interface we are so familiar with now. The grouping and placement of elements makes it a breeze to select the right action item.

2. Cover Flow

   Either you are looking at documents or images, Cover Flow allows you to quickly and visually identify the right document. Other entries are:
   - Back to My Mac: You can share with other other Macs you own.
   - Screen Sharing image Instant Screen Sharing from the Finder: Welcome Remote control of fellow macs (if authorized)
   - Icon Preview: The name says it all
   - Path Bar: Very long awaited feature for Windows Explorer/Run command fans
   - New Folder of Options: Folder viewing options
   - Folder Sharing: Now you can share any folder

I’ll wrap this post up till here. And will continue writing about the same topic in continued posts

Apple, Mac OS 300, Address Book, Apple, Features, Finder, Font Book, Fonts, Google, Google Maps, Imaging, Mac OS X, Snow Leopard, Yahoo