The grumbling about Leopard started before its arrival. After all, it was, ahem, late. Apple had originally wanted to release it at 2007’s Worldwide Developers Conference in early June, but had to borrow some personnel from the Mac OS X team to help get the iPhone finished for its big coming-out party on June 29. Then when the cat was finally out of the bag on October 26, early reports of install problems, performance hits, bugs, and even the dreaded blue screens of death put a damper on all the great things about Leopard.

 

We dig a lot about Leopard, but plenty of little touches (it’s always the little things, isn’t it?) in the interface have always seemed odd. While minor issues with the aesthetics and functionality of Leopard’s interface hardly represent major problems, they can still be incredibly frustrating.

 

And we here at Mac|Life were annoyed right along with you. But as the Beatles used to sing, it’s getting better all the time. The Mac OS is now up to version 10.5.2, and a lot of the little annoyances have been cured, either by Apple in its software updates, or by third-party apps, Terminal hacks, and other workarounds. One by one, all the pieces to customize Leopard to your exact liking are falling into place.

 

All Better

 

Never say that Apple doesn’t love us. Need proof? The things we howled about the loudest when Leopard debuted are no longer issues, thanks to fixes in the Mac OS 10.5.2 update. But just in case you swore off updating after being burned by 10.5, or you just haven’t poked around 10.5.2 enough to notice all the welcome tweaks, we’ll show you around.

 

Stacks

 

The problem: Stacks was universally reviled in the Mac|Life offices because the feature felt like the interface version of cotton candy: fluff without substance, and rather messy to boot. You got a grid view or a fan view. And if you told fan view to put the items in alphabetical order, the A items would be at the bottom while the Z items were at the top. It sort of makes sense if you’re willing to admit that the stack does fan up from the Dock on the bottom of your screen, but it’s still totally backward for finding things easily in the list.

 

Right-click or Control-click a stack to change how it displays.

 

The fix: Luckily, the 10.5.2 update fixed this, and now you can customize your stacks how you like. Control-click or right-click a stacked folder in your Dock, and you’ll see a contextual menu that lets you customize how your stacks behave.

 

Under “View content as,” you can select Grid, Fan, Automatic, or the new choice, List, which behaves like docked folders did in Tiger, letting you navigate through folders and subfolders to open files or launch applications. In the “Display as” options, you choose whether to view the docked folder as a stack (which changes the look depending on what’s on inside) or as simply the folder’s icon. You can even have the stack display as a folder but behave as a fan- or grid-view stack.

 

We tend to keep our docked folders in List mode to navigate through them in a hierarchal list view. But it’s nice to keep one grid-view stack in the Dock for hot projects, dumping files and folders in there as we create them to keep the Desktop free of icon clutter.

 

Use the Terminal command in “Terminal Tweaks” (p5) to add a Recent Applications stack, and then right-click it for more options.

 

What should come next? Hopefully, Apple will continue to refine stacks in future updates—we’d like to be able to select multiple files in the Finder and right-click them for a “Create new stack” command in the contextual menu. Being able to keep a stack on the Desktop would be interesting, too.

 

Menubar

 

The problem: The menubar is such a simple thing, but it’s the only element on your Mac’s screen that you can’t get rid of (without installing extra software). But Leopard’s menubar is transparent by default, so if you use a photograph with a lot of detail as your wallpaper, the menu items can be incredibly hard to read. The Mac community quickly figured out fixes using Terminal commands or third-party software, but it seemed like such a misstep for Apple not to include a checkbox somewhere for turning it off.

 

Turn off the translucent menubar with this checkbox in System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Saver.

 

The fix: Apple to the rescue again. With 10.5.2, the Desktop & Screen Saver panel in System Preferences includes a checkbox for Translucent Menu Bar (under the Desktop tab). What’s even better, the solid menubar is a nice muted gray, easier on the eyes than the stark white menubar of Tiger.

 

Get easy access to Time Machine via its new menubar icon.

 

What should come next? How about a way to hide the menubar when it’s not in use, bringing us one step closer to our goal of a totally uncluttered Desktop? A haxie called Menufela let you hide the menubar in Tiger, but as of this writing it’s not Leopard compatible.

 

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Fix ’Em Yourself

 

If you’re bothered by a few of the user-interface tweaks Apple used to gussy up Leopard, you don’t have to just grit your teeth and live with them. Third-party developers have written some handy apps that let you make some changes. After all, while Apple’s design sense is one of the reasons we use Macs to begin with, you’re the one who’s got to look at your screen day in and day out. So you might as well put your personal stamp on things.

 

Dock

 

The problem: We’ve gotten dozens of emails from Mac lifers who hated the new 3D glass Dock in Leopard, mainly because the open-application indicator, which in Tiger was a unmistakable black triangle, has morphed into a light blue, translucent dot beneath each open app’s Dock icon. If your background image is a similar color, the indicator can be easy to miss.

 

CandyBar lets you easily change Docks, icons, and other elements. Check out

iconfactory.com for themes and icon sets.

 

The fix: Two downloadable apps make customizing your Dock quick and easy. CandyBar 3 ($29, www.panic.com) does for icons and Docks what a program like Extensis Suitcase does for your fonts: keeps them all organized in one spot and lets you activate them across your system with just a few clicks. Even if you don’t want a flashy new Dock, you can use CandyBar to display the 2D “simple” version of Leopard’s standard Dock (which appears by default when you position the Dock on the left or right of your screen) along the bottom of the screen as well—this makes the indicators much easier to see. CandyBar also organizes collections of downloadable icons and Docks; you just download new sets as handy iContainer files for free at iconfactory.com/freeware, then drag the iContainer file into CandyBar’s Organize sidebar. Buttons in the Change section of the sidebar make it easy to change some or all of Leopard’s default icons with minimal clicks and no need to open the Terminal

 

Dock Library sticks to the basics, organizing and applying new Docks.

 

If you don’t care about icons, just Docks, you can forgo CandyBar and grab the freeware app Dock Library (www.dativestudios.com). Then go grab some free Docks from www.leoparddocks.com or www.leoparddocks.net, and you can import them into Dock Library without even unzipping them first. When you’ve got a list of Docks in Dock Library, you just click the one you like, click Activate, and type in your administrator password. Our favorites are Wave Dock by Scott Korfhagen (from leoparddocks.com), which uses the familiar black-triangle indicators, and Jet Black by Bryan Clodfelter & Mike Yaroshinsky (from leoparddocks.net). But whether you want your Mac to look sophisticated or silly (like with a Dock based on Super Mario Bros.), there’s something out there for everyone.

 

What should come next? We’d love to see Apple offer some limited Dock customization built into the System Preferences, which currently only lets you tweak its size, magnification, position, and choose whether it should be hidden when not in use. Being able to select the Dock’s background color, amount of reflection, and open-application indicators would be enough to make us happy.

 

iChat

 

MoreIchatEffects adds more video backdrops for fun while chatting.

 

The problem: iChat 4 packed a lot of amazing new additions—screen sharing is a godsend, for example, as is the ability to easily record your audio and video chats. But some of the additions are just silly eye candy: Take the video backdrops, which looked so great in the Apple demos but in real life don’t work well enough to wow.

 

But bells and whistles aside, iChat is missing some features we wished Apple had added: a single buddy list for all your chat accounts, built-in Growl notifications, and a way to keep our chat windows on top of other windows. Support for USB webcams is also lacking (unless the webcam is among the handful of certified UVC-for-USB video units), which is a shame for owners of Macs without built-in iSights—Apple discontinued the standalone FireWire iSight some time ago.

 

The fix: Install some add-ons. Chax (free, www.ksuther.com/chax) will give you a unified buddy list for all your contacts, customizable Growl pop-ups, an always-on-top option for contact windows or chat windows (cleverly hidden in the Window menu), and more. If you’re used to using Adium but you can’t resist the siren song of iChat’s screen sharing, Chax can add some of Adium’s features. And iChat Pro (free, infinisedesign.net) mods your contact list to look more like Adium’s, eschewing the Text, Audio, Video, and Screen Sharing buttons at the bottom of the iChat contact lists.

 

Voilà! Once Chax is in the house, all our buddies (AIM, .Mac, and Google Talk) are now under one roof.

 

If you’ve got a monochromatic background behind your computer chair to allow the video backdrops to work well, why not give yourself more to choose from? Download the aptly named MoreIchatEffects (free, ismileys.free.fr). The same page also offers additional smileys for free in (wait for it) MoreIchatSmileys. Finally, Ecamm’s iUSBcam ($9.95, www.ecamm.com), formerly known as iChatUSBCam, will let Leopard’s iChat 4 recognize your USB camcorder, a lifesaver if you don’t want to shell out $100 or so for an iSight on eBay

 

iChat Pro makes the contact list resemble Adium’s by streamlining the window and ditching the four buttons along the bottom.

 

What should come next? Cinema Displays with iSights built in, baby! If Apple can cram one into the MacBook Air, we think it can get one into a display. As far as the software side, chat apps have such a personal feel to them that the more customization features one can offer, the better. And it’d be nice to have an option for USB cameras without paying an extra $10.

 

Hey, Apple: A Little Help?

 

No matter how much a new OS is beta tested before it’s released, the sheer amount of code that goes into one means that bugs are inevitable. At press time, Leopard had been updated to version 10.5.2, which means that it should be ready for prime time. But we’re still waiting for a few issues to be resolved—and resolutions that only Apple can provide via future updates. Here’s the short list of what we’d like fixed . . . yesterday.

 

Closed-Lid Blues

 

Not recommended if you use your notebook in lid-closed mode. There’s a workaround, but we’d prefer a true fix.

 

February’s (post-10.5.2) Leopard Graphics Update 1.0 messed up notebooks’ ability to operate in lid-closed mode. You should be able to run in lid-closed mode by attaching an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse, closing the notebook’s lid, and then waking it up again with the keyboard or Apple Remote. Now, that same procedure doesn’t work. A workaround: Attach the external monitor while your Mac is off, then press the Mac’s power button and immediately close the lid—before the startup chime—forcing the Mac to use the external display

 

Wireless Mess

 

Our AirPort connection is working fine now, but seems to drop out more often in Mac OS 10.5.2 than it did before.

 

Although we’ve only experienced this issue sporadically, we’ve seen widespread complaints about it online, even in our own MacLife.com Forums. Users report that after upgrading to Mac OS 10.5.2, their AirPort connections consistently drop out, either after the Mac wakes up, or just randomly while Web surfing. This is especially infuriating for MacBook Air users, since that machine can’t connect to a network via Ethernet without the $29 USB-to-Ethernet adapter.

 

Printer Auto-Quit

 

We have Auto Quit selected in the contextual menu, but it has no effect on our networked printer.

 

It isn’t that we mind seeing the printer icon in our Dock—it’s nice to have a visual confirmation that all is well and that the Mac did indeed send the job out to be printed. But in Tiger, the Dock icon would vanish after the job finished printing. Leopard gives you an option to Auto Quit when you right-click the Dock icon, but that option doesn’t work, and the printer icon quickly wears out its welcome.

 

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To Haxie or Not to Haxie?

 

Unsanity came up with the word “haxie” (a hybrid of “hack Mac OS X”) to refer to tweaks you can make after installing the company’s Application Enhancer software, or APE (free, www .unsanity.com). Examples are Font Card (to modify the Font menu), Mighty Mouse (to change the look of your cursor), and FruitMenu (to tweak the Apple menu and contextual menus). APE is free, but most of Unsanity’s actual haxie apps cost between $10 and $20.

 

However, since these apps change Mac OS X’s code in ways Apple didn’t intend, they can cause problems with other software, and so Apple and several other developers recommend steering clear of them to avoid issues. For example, Bare Bones Software products (BBEdit, Yojimbo, TextWrangler, and others) display a warning after a crash or force-quit that haxies might be the culprit. And according to a 2007 email by an Apple Developer Technical Support employee, Apple’s official policy is not to support systems with APE installed, even ignoring crash reports sent by users if the report finds that APE is installed on that Mac.

 

And if you have APE installed on Tiger, even Unsanity recommends you don’t install Leopard unless you first upgrade APE to version 2.0.3. Even trying to delete APE from your Leopard Mac won’t fix the problem—you’ve got to upgrade APE. And Unsanity does have Leopard-compatible versions of the haxie apps available for download, but they’re currently just in beta (meaning they’re free but even riskier than normal). Haxie at your own risk—we’re steering clear of APE altogether for now.

 

Terminal Tricks

 

Messing around in the Terminal can be a little nerve-wracking—there’s no Undo, and exact spelling is essential. But all the power users are doing it, so if you want to try tweaking Leopard’s UI the big-boy way, roll up your sleeves, launch the Terminal from Applications/Utilities, and type in these commands exactly as we’ve written them.

 

Make the Dock 2D instead of 3D
Type (all on one line): defaults write
com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES
Press Return.
Type: killall Dock
Press Return again.
To revert to the 3D dock, type in the
same command, but substitute
NO for YES.

 

Add a “Recent Applications” stack to your Dock
Type (all on one line): defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add ‘{ “tile-data” = { “list-type” = 1; }; ‘tile-type’ = “recents-tile”; }’
Press Return.
Type: killall Dock
Press Return again.

 

Force apps to display the expanded Print dialog by default
Type (all on one line): defaults write -g PMPrintingExpandedStateForPrint -bool TRUE
Press Return.
To reverse this, enter the same command, but substitute FALSE for TRUE.