After about two weeks meddling with the latest Mac OS X: 10.6 Snow Leopard, I found several nice little improvements that might be useful for other users. I’ll keep on looking because I’m sure that there are more, but let’s see what we’ve got in our treasure box so far.
1. Date in Menubar
Not everybody will care about this, but for those who’s been longing to be able to glance at the menubar to see date and day, your wish has come true.
2. WiFi Signal strength indicator
While this is also not for everybody, those hotspot hunters will appreciate the new ability to know which spot has stronger signal. There’s also the indicator to show secure (password protected) or non-secure (free) spots.
3. Automatic Time Zone
Still related to WiFi, Mac users can set their machine to adjust the time zone automatically by determining the location of their current WiFi location. So if you travel a lot around the world and use WiFi to connect to the internet, you don’t need to manually go back and forth to the “Date and Time” settings in System Preferences.
4. Undelete the trash
People do “accidental deletion” all the time. And because the accidentally deleted files will be kept in the “Trash” folder until you really delete it, you can drag the files you still want to keep back to their original folder. But doing that manually over and over again can be annoying. Now in Snow Leopard, you can right click (or Control + Click) on the poor files, choose “Put Back”, and everybody will be happy again.
5. Better (Image) Drive Eject
Sometimes you can’t eject the (image) drive because it’s still in use or one of the content of that drive is in use by other application. You can fix this problem easily by closing the application and then you can eject the drive. Problem is, you don’t always know which application is using the drive. Snow Leopard makes it easy for its user to solve the problem by showing which application prevent the drive to be ejected.
6. Enlarged Icon
When you are using Icon view (Command + !), there’s a slider in Snow Leopard’s finder. The function is to adjust the size of the icon. So what? You might ask. Big icon, big deal. Actually, the cool things about this is you can actually “see” the item in the icon view. Image’s icon is the image itself, text’s icon is readable (if you set the view large enough), and you can even flip the page of a document’s icon.
7. Delayed Screensaver Password
One of the easiest way to secure your computer from the prying co-worker’s eyes is to set a screensaver password. But if often leave your computer in a short moment only to repeatedly type the password, this simple security system could be annoying. Snow Leopard let the users decide how long should the screensaver (or sleep mode) run before you need to type in the password. So if a user goes for a glass of water in the dispenser, he/she can continue right away.
I know seven is just a tiny part of Snow Leopard whole improvements. But I’ll add more along the way. Do you know other useful little things in Snow Leopard? Share using the comment below.
Jeffry Thurana is a creative writer living in Indonesia. He helps other writers and freelancers to earn more from their crafts. He’s on a quest of learning the art of storytelling, believing that how you tell a story is as important as the story itself. He is also an architect and a designer, and loves traveling and playing classical guitar.
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