In the post "Those World Clocks," I talked about a particular clock for Tiger's Dashboard. Moving to Leopard broke it slightly. Since then, I found a new world clock with a unique feature. It's called TimeScroller, and just as an update, I should probably sing its virtues here.
Check it out at http://www.timescroller.com/Home.html
Mail.app 3 has started a love/hate relationship with me. Some of the new features are just fantastic, and, it's been pretty stable. However, there are definitely some annoyances. I've already mentioned the syncing thing, and now, I have another. Mail.app doesn't truly "go offline" when you select "Take All Accounts Offline." It will still try to contact SMTP servers.
Some people may say that Spaces is broken. It's certainly not broken enough to stop me from using it. However, I'd agree on some level: it's just not quite right. I've already added my voice to the linked page, so, no need to repeat here. Check it out:
http://blogs.sun.com/bblfish/entry/why_apple_spaces_is_broken
In case you were wondering, Time Machine does not back up a File Vault protected home directories while that File Vault user is logged in:
Whlle some may see this as a problem, I'd opt for the security that File Vault brings a mobile user over the convenience of File Vault. That's not to say that you should ignore backups. In fact, if you're using File Vault, I'd say backing up is even more critical, as one flipped bit can render your entire home directory inaccessible.
Two of the best/most important docs I've found that discuss changes in Leopard:
and
Enjoy!
As tends to happen between milestone releases, utilities get changed in oh-so-subtle ways. This time, sort broke for me. That's right, sort! Of the things...
10.4 sort accepted the "plus notation" for denoting the position of the key that you wanted to sort on:
ls -l | sprt +5
(OK, terrible example as you can do this completely with ls itself, but, you get the idea).
In OS 10.5, that is gone, and you need the more formal "-k" switch:
ls -l | sort -k 4
Note that the plus notation is zero-based, and the k switch starts at 1.
Be aware!
Possibly one of the best additions to a scripter's arsenal: createmobileaccount. Buried way down in /System/Library/CoreServices/ManagedClient.app/Contents/Resources is where you'll find this little gem.
Once on (or ssh-ed into) a machine that's tied to OD, simply:
./createmobileaccount -e -v -s -n username
The "-e" switch creates a FileVault home....exceptionally cool. Just "./createmobileaccount" for help.
Thanks again to the engineer that put this one together!
Ah..."syslog -w" also now dumps the last 7 lines of the file. That's a nice touch and improvement over Tiger, which showed nothing until new entries were added to the asl database. Thanks to whichever engineer took care of that!
Wow, that was fast:
http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/
This includes the xnu kernel and other goodies. Check it out
In OS X 10.5 ("Leopard"), tail can now follow multiple files! Look:
bash-3.2# tail -f *
==> DirectoryService.error.log <==
2007-11-06 12:30:52 EST - T[0xB0103000] - Attempt #1 to initialize plug-in PasswordServer failed.
Will retry initialization at most 100 times every 1 second.
==> DirectoryService.server.log <==
2007-11-06 12:40:19 EST - T[0xB0289000] - Registered node /Cache
2007-11-06 12:40:19 EST - T[0xB0289000] - Plug-in Cache state is now active.
2007-11-06 12:40:19 EST - T[0xB0185000] - Plugin "Active Directory", Version "1.6", is set to load lazily.
