Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

• Available in September.
• $29 upgrade from Leopard.
• Intel only.
• Faster
  • 64 bit.
  • Grand Central Dispatch: better use of multicores.
  • Open CL: better use of GPU (if yours is recent enough).
• Preview
  • Allows copying text from a single column.
  • Text annotation.
  • Multiple documents in single window, cross-document search.
• Text
  • Substitution, built-in/added (e.g., 1/2 → ½).
  • Automatic spelling correction.
  • Case transformation.
• Dock
  • Exposé built in & spring-loaded.
  • Stacks has navigable folders.
• Quicktime X
  • Edits.
  • Screen video capture.
• Mail previews MS Office files (e.g., Word ".doc"); includes Quick Look.
• Finder has slider to magnifiy icons (up to 512x512) that can be used as Quick Look (as in Cover Flow).
• Safari more crash resistant (sandboxed plugins).
• Menu bar can have both date & time.

Freeware

Graphics

1. Vector graphics ("draw"): OpenOffice (Draw)
   • Lots more tools than basics: e.g., gradient shading, transparency, primitive 3D.
   • Retuns to Select tool after use of any other tool.
   • Uses click, click-&-drag, & double-click instead of left, middle, & right mouse buttons.
   • Includes text editor (Writer) that's better at reading MS Word files than TextEdit.
   • Sun PDF Import Extension Beta allows editing of PDF (but still buggy).
   Inkscape also can edit PDF files; uses X11. (Cocoa version should be ready when GIMP's is.)
2. 3D graphics (raytracing, etc.): Art of Illusion (Java); saves as JPG (e.g.), but Preview will convert to PDF
3. Bitmap graphics ("paint"):
   • Seashore (now with a cloning tool) or LiveQuartz (now with a background eraser tool, in Leopard).
   • Gimp X11 (also Cocoa version α: Help menu crashes it; also GIMP for Painters) is more powerful but more awkward.
   • Hugin is a GUI for Panorama Tools to stitch overlapping photos together.
   • MakeCubic creates Quicktime VR files.
4. Convert PDF to EPS (Mac OS X will do EPS → PDF & PDF → PS, but not PDF → EPS) with xpdf:
   In Terminal, type "pdftops -eps" or just drop the PDF(s) on the icon of Droppdftoeps (which I made with DropScript: see below).
5. JaxoDraw (Java) draws Feynman diagrams with just the mouse. (Others require programming & specifying coordinates.)
6. STIX fonts have all the characters of TeX's Computer Modern fonts in a form that can be used in other programs, e.g., when making figures. ("STIXGeneral.otf" and "STIXGeneralItalic.otf" are the most important ones: TeX does math numerals as roman, math letters as italic.) Also, Computer Modern Unicode fonts (Latin/Greek/Cyrillic only; "cmunrm.otf" and "cmunti.otf" are the ones most relevant for math.)

Other

1. MacTeX installer, includes TexShop (simplest GUI front end for TeX; now with source line numbering): ⌘-click on input/output to find same spot in other window; now improved with SyncTeX. (Modeled on TeXShop, TeXworks, now β, is for all platforms; includes SyncTeX.) If you have font cache problems, try this bug fix.
2. Safari AdBlock, an InputManager (but Apple may soon discontinue use of InputManagers).
3. MacFusion allows mounting (s)ftp volumes as the Finder should, so you can add files, & edit with TextEdit (or use the latest iWeb, which includes ftp).
4. Screensavers:
   • Really Slick (especially Hyperspace, Helios, & Lattice)
   • System 47 for those who like Star Trek (see User Comments for installation)
   • Uniqlo: dance?
   • RandomExtra chooses which screensavers to randomize.
5. Radar in Motion: weather widget
6. Apply shell command(s) to files by drag&drop: Drop shell script on DropScript to make it an application. Also, Platypus.
7. Fortran & related stuff; CERNLIB & other HEP.

Tips

Safari 4

1. For the latest, install both the latest Safari and Webkit β, then use the Webkit β.
2. JavaScript bookmarklets (drag to Bookmarks Bar) to click while viewing relevant page:
   1. One for translation.
   2. YouTube MP4 DL downloads mp4 in best quality.

Text

1. Option-delete deletes words.
2. Control-click on selected word(s) to look up in Dictionary, Google, or Spotlight; hold control-⌘-D to go from word to word for Dictionary.
3. Control-clicking on a typo to choose a correct spelling is easier than retyping; control-T between 2 letters to transpose them.
4. Click & drag to select text as contiguous letters, double-click & drag to do it with words, triple-click with paragraphs.
5. Character Palette for all Unicode characters (e.g., math in Mail): "Edit>Special Characters...", or add directly to Title Bar by selecting in "System Preferences...>Personal>International>Input Menu". (See also my Unicode page.)
6. Xcode (install separate from System) includes FileMerge (or opendiff in Terminal): Compare 2 files (etc.) with nice interface.

Finder

1. Screen Sharing (also in iChat) allows remote control of your Mac (even over the internet).
2. Put date into Menu bar (along with time): In System Preferences>International>Formats, use Customize, copy & paste stuff from Dates into Times (Medium). (But this will double the date in some other places.)
   Note: This will be a Date & Time > Clock preference in Snow Leopard.
3. ⌘-Shift-4 to select portion of screen for snapshot, or hit space for camera to select window (or dock, menu bar, or desktop for all).
4. When Finder refuses to delete a file, claiming it's still in use, I use Secure Empty Trash.

Mail

1. Data Detectors: Click on address to look up on map or add person to Address Book, or on date to add to iCal.
2. Move between mailboxes with ⌘-(number of mailbox).

Preview

1. Alpha channels: Instant Alpha makes colors of region you select transparent; Extract Shape does similar by drawing outline.
2. Thumbnails in Sidebar can be used to delete or re-order pages (even between files).
3. Bookmarks

Spotlight

1. To search by filename, type name:
2. Does Dictionary & Calculator.
3. For Boolean searches, use AND, OR, NOT (instead of Tiger's more obscure equivalents | and -), with parentheses; also - for AND NOT.

Other

1. News/rumors: AppleInsider (RSS), MacRumors (RSS), MacBidouille (RSS), Ars Technica (RSS).
2. WWDC coverage: MacRumors, Gizmodo, gdgt.
3. Grapher (in Applications>Utilities) also does equations nicely; for arithmetic, just delete the "x=" (or whatever) & type.
4. TeXShop preference I missed: To get Preview Window Magnification to work, you need to set After Window Resize to Fixed Magnification.
5. I had a problem with X11 starting up unexpectedly (specifically, when running Terminal, or TeXShop with SyncTeX). Fink (which I no longer use) had put a line source /sw/bin/init.csh in my ~/.cshrc file, which I removed. (If you use another shell, a similar line may appear in another shell initialization file.)
6. Turn picture into icon in Terminal with "sips -i". (Cut & paste icons in Finder with Get Info.) Useful to give icons transparency.
7. If a program gives some weird error message doing something it did fine the day before, and seems to run fine otherwise, restart it.