The day of Leopard’s release will undoubtedly see it installed by thousands of excited users, but not everyone has the luxury of upgrading immediately. Even if you’re too budget-conscious to pony up the $129 to upgrade, or if you work in an office where stability trumps novelty, you can still enjoy some of Leopard’s features - assuming you’re running Tiger (Mac OS 10.4).

 

Here’s how to create reasonably lifelike facsimilies of five of Leopard’s most anticipated features. These workarounds may not be as attractive or as integrated as they are in Leopard, but they get the job done - and some of them are even free.

 

1. Organize Your Mac Life

With Leopard’s Spaces feature, Apple promises to integrate virtual desktops into the Mac OS for the first time. The advantage of this technology is its ability to create multiple desktops within the same user account, each with its own set of applications, and to let users switch between them anytime.

 

To add this nifty virtual desktop support to Tiger, download VirtueDesktops (free beta). Sadly, the developer has suspended work on this app, but the most recent beta was plenty stable in our testing. To get started, drag VirtueDesktops into your /Applications folder. Launch the program and enter your admin password to proceed with installation. Run VirtueDesktops, then log out and log back in to complete the setup. When VirtueDesktops is running, its icon appears in the menubar.

 

Create your desktops by clicking the app’s icon and selecting Organize Your Desktops from the drop-down menu. VirtueDesktops provides three default desktops in the list on the left; double-click each to rename it. Assign a background image to each desktop by dragging an image into the photo box on the right. Assign a tint by clicking the plus-sign button below the Decorations box, selecting Desktop Tint, and selecting a color label from the top of the screen.

 

To assign applications to a specific desktop, first run the applications. Then select Organize Your Applications from VirtueDesktop’s menu. To pin an application to a particular desktop, select it from the list on the left, check the box next to Bind Application To Desktop, and select the appropriate desktop from the drop-down menu. Once everything is set up, switch between your desktops by clicking the menubar icon or by pressing Control-Shift and the right or left arrow keys.

 

Create separate work areas by assigning your apps to different desktops with VirtueDesktops.

 

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2. Get Your Files & Apps in a Row

One of the most visually appealing features in Leopard demos we’ve seen so far is Stacks, a Dock enhancement that creates beautiful pop-up menus of the contents of docked folders. Of course, Tiger already possesses this basic function, although without the visual flair promised by the Leopard demo. To dock a folder in Tiger, drag its icon to the right side of the bar that separates docked applications from the Trash. Then Control-click (or right-click) the docked folder’s icon to browse the folder’s contents.

 

Leopard also features a better way to manage Safari downloads. Rather than automatically placing all downloads onto your Desktop - resulting in endless visual and system-clogging clutter - Leopard features a Downloads folder on the Dock. You can approximate this feature in Tiger. Launch Safari and open its Preferences (Command-comma or Safari > Preferences). Click the drop-down menu next to “Save downloaded files to” and select Other. In the resulting dialog, browse to your Documents folder, create a Downloads folder, and select that folder as the location for your downloaded files. Finally, return to the Finder, open your Documents folder, and drag the new Downloads folder to the right side of the Dock. To see the contents of your Downloads folder, just Control-click (or right-click) the folder icon.

 

To set your docked folders apart, try assigning them different icons. First select the icon you want in the Finder. Then press Command-I, select the icon preview, and press Command-C. Highlight your Downloads folder, press Command-I, select the icon preview, and press Command-V to paste the new icon over the old one. You can download free icons at interfacelift.com.

 

Control-clicking on any docked folder within Tiger will display a list of the folder’s contents, although not quite as stylishly as Leopard’s animated Stacks feature.

 

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3. Automate Your Backups

Leopard’s Time Machine promises to make recovering an old version of a file as easy as browsing through a folder, a first for the Mac OS. But the core feature behind Time Machine - automatic, incremental backups - is already available in Apple’s Backup service, available to .Mac subscribers ($99 per year).

 

To get started, download the Backup app from your .Mac account (log in to www.mac.com and look for Backup in the list on the left side), and add it to the /Applications folder. Run the application, and click the plus-sign button at the bottom of the window to create a new backup plan. To back up your Home folder (which will preserve all of your data except for the OS itself), simply choose the Home Folder preset from the list, and click Choose Plan. Under Destination and Schedule, double-click the Daily plan, and select your preferred backup location and schedule.

 

To restore a file, select your plan from Backup’s main window, and click Restore. Select the appropriate dated incremental backup on the left, and browse through the saved folders and files in the panes on the right. Check the box next to the files and folders you need, and click Restore Selection to make them available on your Desktop.

 

It’s not as dramatic as a souped-up DeLorean, but .Mac’s Backup can restore selected files and folders from its automatic, incremental backups.

 

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4. Smarten Up Your Email

Anyone who spends a lot of time replying to the same old emails might be excited about Leopard’s addition of personalized templates to Apple Mail. Templates allow you to save predefined responses, eliminating the pain of, say, retyping the same set of driving directions to your annual office party. For a small fee, MailTemplates ($14.95) will add a similar ability to Mail in Tiger, although without the graphic-intensive layouts that Leopard promises. Download and run the MailTemplate installer, then log out and back in to being using the app.

 

MailTemplates adds a contextual menu to Mail (as well as to most other applications), and an application called MailTemplateEditor to the /Applications folder. To create a template, launch the editor and click the green pencil icon. Use the checkboxes to designate each template as a new message or a reply, and enter the text for the template in the appropriate fields. You can assign placeholders for the clipboard contents, reply addresses, and other dynamic values using the Insert Special Object drop-down menu.

 

To use your new templates, right-click a message within Mail, and select the appropriate template from the New Message With Template or Reply With Templates menu.

 

Plain-text templates may not be as pretty as Leopard’s image-heavy stationary, but they will save you a lot of typing.

 

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5. Share Files and Folders

If you already have a .Mac account, Leopard promises to make selected files from any of your Macs available online. Microsoft’s FolderShare offers a similar (although less elegant) function in its ability to sync files or folders across multiple computers, regardless whether the machines are Macs or PCs. In both cases, selected files and folders are available to you from any computer anytime.

 

To setup FolderShare, download the Mac version of its desktop client (free beta) to each machine that you want to sync files to. When you run the software on the first Mac, it will help you create an account on FolderShare’s servers. When setting up FolderShare on subsequent Macs, select “I’ve already created an account” and enter your login details (email address and password).

 

To begin syncing a folder, make sure that each of your Macs is online and running the FolderShare client. Then click the FolderShare icon (in the menubar) from one of the machines, and select My FolderShare. Your FolderShare account will open in Safari. Click the Sync My Folders button, select your first machine, and choose a file or folder to sync. Repeat the process on each Mac. As long as the FolderShare client is left running, changes will be synced automatically across all Macs sharing that folder.

 

Setup takes a bit longer than we’d like, but FolderShare’s ability to sync files across multiple computers is worth it in the end.