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New Apple Products--as Imagined by the Elite Gadget Press

Jon Phillips — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:19:59 -0600

What will be Apple's next super-product--its next spectacular, game-changing "one more thing"? We asked five Apple experts to brainstorm with abandon and then brought their ideas to life.

3D Illustrations by Adam Benton.

Apple doesn’t develop category-creating products. Instead, it enters categories that already exist, deconstructs the competition, burrows deep into R&D mode, and returns with gear so dominant, you’d think Apple invented the category in the first place. This approach doesn’t require rocket science. It only requires a commitment to push the boundaries of what’s possible--and not release a product until it offers enough innovative new features and clever design to make people switch away from the competition.

Consider: The iPod has become a synonym for any portable music player. The iPhone has redefined what a smartphone can be. The MacBook enjoys near complete control of the $1,000-plus notebook market. And iTunes? It’s the world’s largest music retailer.

Apple watchers are well aware that the company is planning to release some sort of tablet computer, and given Apple’s recent history of making surprise announcements, that could very well happen between the day we put this issue to bed and the day you read this article. But what if the tablet rumors are bunkum? And even if the tablet is announced, what comes next? Jaw-dropping products can take years to develop, and Apple surely has tablet-eclipsing wonders brewing in its labs.

For answers, we turned to five tech journalists, people who follow Apple every day and are straight-A students of its products. Each expert was asked to fill out the same worksheet, wherein we requested details on the features, specs, wow elements, and essential “Appleness” of the gear they envision Apple making. We then took their worksheets and turned their ideas into the fully rendered fauxtotypes you see on the following pages. We did our best to stay faithful to our experts’ visions, but sometimes we did add elements of our own. But, of course, this entire little game is an exercise in interpretation: We asked our experts to interpret Apple’s magic mojo, and then we interpreted what our experts gave us. We hope we served our experts well.

Want to play too? You can enter our "Apple Fauxtotype Challenge" in January. But for now, please begin your tour of Apple’s future vision.

The Fauxtotypes

iRead

The Internet's everywhere-at-once tech reporter envisions the first mainstream application of full-color electronic paper.

Veronica Belmont

Omnipresent Video Host & Blogger

Bona Fides: Belmont was a producer/reporter for CNET and now hosts Sony's Qore video magazine and cohosts the Tekzilla video podcast. She is also a columnist for MaximumPC.com, regularly updates her own tech blog (veronicabelmont.com), and has 1,442,554 Twitter followers as of this writing--making her Twitter's most-followed tech journalist.

With its Kindle device, Amazon proved that e-readers aren’t lame pieces of junk. You just have to use eye-soothing “electronic paper” (aka e-paper) instead of not-so-reading-friendly LCD displays. And just this October, Barnes & Noble released the nook, an e-reader with two screens: a grayscale e-paper screen for reading and a smaller color LCD screen for navigation.

Yes, e-books are hot, and its against this backdrop that Belmont conceived the iRead--because you didn’t think Apple would pin all its e-book aspirations on the upcoming tablet, did you?

Click to embiggen for more details.

Belmont’s iRead concept uses two screens, but they’re nearly identical in their generous specs: 8 inches high, multitouch-enabled, and full-color-capable. That’s right: full color. The left-side reading screen uses e-paper, but it’s color e-paper--the first available in a consumer device. The right-hand screen, meanwhile, uses a regular LCD to display movies, games, and other traditional digital content. Belmont explains: “You can hold it open like a book to view rich media alongside corresponding text, or you can place it like an easel on your table top to watch videos or read hands-free.”

Click to embiggen for more details.

E-reader on one side, full-featured media player on the other. Sounds like the iRead could boost sales on iTunes, right? Indeed, Belmont envisions downloadable e-books that complement text with video snippets, author interviews, and other treats that only digital technology can provide. For example, “premium edition” e-books could have an audiobook component that syncs automatically to your text--so you could segue from reading a novel in a café to listening to that same novel in your car, all without missing a word.

Click to embiggen for more details.

Think your iTunes bills are getting expensive? Just wait until the iRead arrives, and you begin downloading e-books with abandon. It’s a pricey proposition, but if it reverses our descent into illiteracy, it’s a price worth paying.

The Fauxtotypes

iTenna

Gizmodo's top gadget expert posits a cynical response to the AT&T clusterfrick.

Brian Lam

Editorial Director, Gizmodo.com

Bona Fides: As the editorial boss of the gadget site Gizmodo, Lam enjoys unparalleled hands-on access to the product developments of Apple, a company that makes early looks of new gear as rare and valuable as Wonka’s golden tickets. Lam is often awarded “first seat” at Apple press events and has established Gizmodo.com as the world’s fastest live-blogging source of breaking Apple news.

The year is 2011. Apple is still locked in its suicide pact with AT&T. The reliability of voice and text-messaging service over the iPhone is as reliable as electricity service in Pyongyang. Anti-Apple protest rallies are a weekly occurrence, complete with cries of “No more telecom totalitarianism!” and placards of Steve Jobs bedecked in Kim Jong-il’s pompadour and glasses. Apple can no longer wait for AT&T to fix its network crisis, so it does an end-run around the iPhone’s greatest threat--it releases the iTenna, an add-on that allows users to tap into any cell network other than AT&T’s.

Click to embiggen for more details.

Or at least that’s the vision we saw when Brian Lam provided a bare-bones overview of his concept. Here’s Lam in his own words: “It’s a repeater. Perhaps an antenna, or a set of mini bunny ears. The thing could be attached. Or not. It connects to Sprint, Verizon, or T-Mobile, and routes everything over the iPhone’s Wi-Fi or Bluetooth or perhaps a dock connector.”

Click to embiggen for more details.

From this product brief, we extracted two features that really caught our fancy. First, we decided that connectivity over the dock connector made the most sense, so our fauxtotype integrates iTenna technology into a slide-on case. Second, we were smitten by the allusion to VHF rabbit ears, and thus begat the twin nubbins at the top of the device. The whimsy of the design matches the whimsy of the entire iTenna concept. As Lam himself states, “I’m perfectly aware that this product makes no sense, given the way Apple works. But, hey, neither does an iPhone that gets no reception in a major metropolitan city like San Francisco. Hello, I live four blocks from Haight Street--why do I have a zero percent call success rate for anything even resembling a human voice?”

The Fauxtotypes

iVision

The internationally focused gadget guru sees augmented reality making a quantum leap forward.

Michael Brook

Editor, T3

Bona Fides: One of Mac|Life’s sister magazines from across the pond, T3 (“Tomorrow’s Technology Today”) not only publishes in the UK, but also has 21 country-specific international editions, making it one of the world’s premier sources for gadget news and reviews. With 10 years experience reporting on technology, Michael Brook leads this formidable charge.

Augmented reality apps bring science-fictiony data overlays to the iPhone--which isn’t a terribly ideal place for them, as the iPhone keeps reality (augmented or otherwise) at arm’s length from our eyes. Brook’s iVision concept fixes all that by placing augmented reality mere millimeters from our corneas, letting it integrate perfectly with our natural vision. Viewing life through iVision--with digital data served directly on top of all that we see--completes the promise of everything augmented reality technology has to offer.

Click to embiggen for more details.

“Each lens will have a built-in HUD,” Brook says, “so you’ll be able to view the output of your augmented reality apps directly on your glasses. No need to hold up the iPhone. It will use Bluetooth, or a more advanced wireless standard, for connectivity. Low power, no need for constant charging. GPS positioning, etcetera, will be done on the iPhone with info relayed to the glasses for processing within the unit. Features like caller ID will naturally be viewed on the glasses, and when listening to music, track data will also appear on the head-up display.”

Click to embiggen for more details.

And then there’s the curious Oakley/Apple logo on the iVision frames. We told our experts that it’s common for Mac|Life fauxtotypes to imagine a marriage between Apple and some equally iconographic megabrand. In years past, we conjectured Apple synergizing with LEGO and Audi, and we were thrilled when Brook followed our lead, and used Oakley in his product brief.

Click to embiggen for more details.

“Apple has most areas of tech covered with the iPhone and computing products,” Brook says. “The glasses idea brings them squarely into the world of fashion, which, let’s face it, they’re already knee deep in from a tech point of view. Teaming up with a forward-thinking brand like Oakley allows them to be first to market with a groundbreaking product that makes more of existing tech.”

The Fauxtotypes

exerPod

The maven of mobility wants his exercise data completely bespoke.

Mark McClusky

Products Editor, WIRED

Bona Fides: As the senior editor in charge of products at Wired, McClusky is the magazine’s gear and gadget gatekeeper, leading the charge in covering technology that’s actually shipping today. He was also an editor on Mobile (a former sister magazine of Mac|Life), where he honed his expertise in handheld technology.

There once was a day when just a single iPod ruled the portable audio universe. It had everything we needed in a music player--or so we thought. Now there are four iPods, with each version offering a form factor, feature set, and price point skewed to specific consumer needs. Could this same type of fragmentation and specialization be applied to the iPhone line? After reading McClusky’s exerPod brief, we’re excited by the possibilities.

Click to embiggen for more details.

The exerPod is an Apple handheld devoted wholly to physical fitness. As McClusky says, “It makes the act of tracking your exercise and health totally transparent--it’s a thing you throw in your pocket, and it just does it, if you’ll pardon the Nike reference.”

Click to embiggen for more details.

Actually, we like the Nike reference, because with the exerPod, we see more companies teaming up with Apple to create highly integrated telemetry systems that marry real-world gear (shoes, bikes, home gyms, and so on) with custom apps--much like the existing Nike+ system. But let’s let McClusky explain how this works:

“It’s the ultimate tracking device for athletes, and other folks looking to monitor their health and performance. For example, using built-in accelerometers and GPS, it tracks speed and distance for runners. There’s also ANT+ wireless support to hook up to heart-rate monitors, bike-speed sensors and power meters, and gym equipment like treadmills. Any time you’re doing anything active, it’s tracking and capturing the associated data. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi let it beam information to your computer, as well as the ecosystem of sites that will spring up to let you slice and dice the data.”

Click to embiggen for more details.

Some might scoff that the iPhone can already do much of what McClusky envisions. Well, it can but at a hefty price--and not nearly as well. The exerPod is an inexpensive device (we see it costing $99) for folks who don’t want an Apple cell phone and simply need a small, rugged gadget that includes a battery of special features dedicated to a fitness lifestyle.

The Fauxtotypes

iMake

The mischievous master of DIY sees us making our own Apple gear in the future.

Mark Frauenfelder

Editor-in-Chief, MAKE

Bona Fides: As the founder of BoingBoing.net, one of the world’s first tech-culture websites, Frauenfelder has the longest career in tech journalism of all our five experts. He was also the founding editor of Wired Online, and today he’s the top editor of MAKE, a quarterly devoted to creating DIY tech projects.

Good googamaloo, what has Frauenfelder asked us to imagine here?! His iMake concept came to us exceedingly well fleshed out, so we’ll turn the podium over to him:

“iMake is a desktop manufacturing system based on the RepRap (reprap.org), an open-source 3D rapid prototyping technology. Apple led the way in the desktop publishing revolution, and now it’s leading the way in the desktop manufacturing revolution. With iMake, you can make your own small products at home, such as Bluetooth headsets, iPods with unique form factors, wristwatches, eyeglasses, door knobs, and more.

Click to embiggen for more details.

“To create a product, you visit the iTunes Store to choose from among tens of thousands of product designs--prices range from free to $9.99--purchasing one just as you would a song, video, or app. The 3D data is sent to the iMake, which builds the parts, layer by layer, out of high-quality plastic. The iMake will also make the circuit boards. Then, all you do is snap the pieces together! After purchasing a 3D model from the iTunes Store, it takes about 15 minutes to print a 3D part.

Click to embiggen for more details.

“It seems counter-intuitive that Apple would allow its customers to have a hand in designing its products, but after witnessing the runaway success of its iTunes App Store--which has thousands of apps created by third parties--Apple realized that quality rises to the top and that enabling people to design and create their things is even cooler than giving them the tools to design and create their own media, as Apple did when it put the power of publishing in the hands of everyone.”

Thank you for this fascinating glimpse at the future, Herr Frauenfelder. And thank you for not spec’ing the iMake to have the ability to make its own parts, a feature of the RepRap.

Uh, hello?! Skynet?! Anyone?!

The Fauxtotypes

Into Thin Air -- Conquering Mount Everest With a MacBook

Florence Ion — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 12:01:20 -0500

How a Mac became a key piece of gear for this seasoned climber and mountain guide.

Case Study: Dave Hahn

Occupation: Pro climber and mountain guide

Gear: 13-inch Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook with 128GB solid-state hard drive, 4GB RAM, running Final Cut Express, Aperture, Logic Express, Microsoft Office 2008, and iWork '09

Hahn has climbed Everest 15 times.

When professional mountain guide and expert climber Dave Hahn is packing for an expedition up Mount Everest, he always brings along the essentials: climbing gear that’s in working order, clothes warm enough for the Himalayan clime, and his MacBook equipped with a 128GB solid-state drive (SSD).

Unlike standard hard drives--which have moving parts that can break through mishandling or because the air pressure at high altitudes prevents the disc from spinning--SSDs have no moving parts. As such, they aren’t subject to mechanical failures or delays the way standard hard drives are, and they tend to outperform drives with moving parts. Of course, they’re also much more expensive. To add a 128GB SSD to a 15-inch 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro, for example, you’ll pay $200 more--whereas a 500GB standard hard drive costs nothing. Doubling the SSD’s capacity to 256GB racks up an extra $650 over the laptop’s base price.

On a recent Eddie Bauer–sponsored expedition up Everest, Hahn encountered plenty of hardships, including long, grueling days getting from point A to a much-higher-up point B, staving off respiratory illnesses, and enduring freezing-cold nights. Nonetheless, Hahn and his expedition team were able to rely on a few constants while scaling the mountain--their MacBooks.

As snow falls, Dave Hahn looks out from Everest Basecamp.

As a way to showcase a line of its First Ascent pro climbing gear, Eddie Bauer commissioned Hahn and five other world-class climbers to head out with a production crew and ascend the world’s highest mountain. The trip was primarily designed as a climbing expedition, but Hahn says “production was important as far as being able to tell the story.” Having a reliable and creative production team was integral to keeping the Born Out There blog (blog.firstascent.com) updated with detailed dispatches and engaging videos of the team’s daily trials and tribulations. The team included three video producers equipped with a Sony Ex1 and two Sony Ex3s, a still-camera photographer, and one designated blogger--in this case, Hahn, who, in addition to working as a mountain guide, EMT, and ski patroller, is also a writer.

Each time Hahn sat down to do a dispatch, he’d pound out a written blog and the production team would also post a series of photos and a couple of minutes of edited video. Though Hahn has climbed Everest 15 times, he says, “This is the most extensive blogging I’ve been involved in--and I’ve tried to do it on a number of trips.” Apparently his extreme blogging aspirations were a few years ahead of available technology.

“I started getting MacBooks a couple of years ago with expeditioning in mind. I had PCs and I saw the Macs around me just whirring away.” But rather than outfit a PC laptop with a solid-state drive, Hahn bought a MacBook in 2007--equipped with a standard hard drive. “I was disappointed that my hard drive didn’t work at Everest Basecamp that year, but I was blown away by how much I liked the Mac and how trouble-free everything seemed to be.”

The First Ascent guide and production team catch up on their email, blogs, and RSS feeds after a long day.

Something about OS X just clicked with Hahn. “I was really pleased with how everything fit so well together and how normal tasks were anticipated, explained, and executed. My first MacBook was still working great and meeting all of my non-Everest needs, so I was just biding my time until the solid-state Mac models came out with big enough memory last fall,” at which point he purchased his current Everest-ready 13-inch unibody MacBook.

Hahn wasn’t the only Mac user on the Born Out There Everest trip. The entire production crew came packing SSD-equipped 15-inch unibody MacBook Pros.

Gerry Moffatt, Hahn’s production partner, agrees that at such high altitudes, SSDs are the only way to prevent the computers from crashing. With a standard hard drive, Moffatt says, the low air pressure would collapse the drive and stop the disc from spinning. But with the SSD MacBook Pros, the crew had no problems. “At 21,500 feet, they worked great.”

Head of production Gerry Moffatt (right) and First Ascent video editor Tom Grimshaw (left) review the day's video footage in a teahouse in Namche Bazaar on the approach to Everest Basecamp.

So how did the crew manage to upload their blog posts and stay connected to the Internet from their remote location on Everest? The team used a broadband global area network (BGAN) to access a satellite phone network that provided enough bandwidth to log on and upload their content. But it was still a challenge to power all the gear. A flexible solar panel plugged directly into the various laptops and cameras kept them juiced up.

After 70 days and 29,035 feet, the Born Out There crew returned home. Hahn recently embarked on another adventure—an annual summer tour of the Northwestern United States, during which he takes clients on climbs in Washington and Alaska. Though he lives in Taos, New Mexico, Hahn refers affectionately to Mt. Rainier, which he’s climbed more than 200 times, as his “office.” Sure, a laptop can’t help you when you’re cold, hungry, thirsty, and clinging to an ice-covered trail on your way to Rainier’s summit. But Hahn’s life as a professional climber, guide, and writer wouldn’t be nearly as trouble-free without his MacBook. For more about Dave Hahn, see www.mountainguides.com/hahn.shtml.

100 Snow Leopard Tips, Tricks, and Features

Arvind Srinivasan and Roberto Baldwin — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 13:02:49 -0500

After installing Snow Leopard on our Macs, the Mac|Life staff began scouring the inner crevices of 10.6 looking for all the features we can. While Snow Leopard has been advertised as more of a speed increase and "tightening of screws" of the OS, it still has some great features that'll help you work faster.

After spending the weekend with the new OS, we found 100 features, tips, and tricks that should help get you up to speed and make you a Snow Leopard power user.

If you have a tip or feature we missed, drop it in the comments and we'll add it to the article.

Battery Status

If you've secretly suspected that your MacBook's battery isn't working correctly, Snow Leopard can tell you what your geek senses have know all along. In the menu bar you can check the status of your battery, and hopefully you won't see "Service Battery."

No Leopard, no problem

If you're running Tiger on your machine, don't worry. You can install Snow Leopard without having Leopard installed on your Mac first. Apple would like you to purchase the $169 Mac Box Set, but you don't actually need to. You just saved a ton of money!

QuickTime X video record

Need to record a quick video with your iSight or USB camera? You can record directly from your iSight camera in QuickTime X. If you're lucky enough to have a higher-quality camera, you can not only choose the camera and audio source directly from the QuickTime X window, but also decide where the video will be saved.

Language and texts

In the System Preferences, choose Language & Text. A new tab called Texts has a Symbol And Text Substitution feature. Type ( c ) and you get © among other commonly used symbols. Make your own shortcuts! Of course, the app in question has to support it, but in general, you can do things like type “awesome” to substitute your name, “address^^” to substitute your address, and so on.

Time is relative

Automatically set the time zone you happen to be in. Navigate to the Date And Time preference in System Preferences and check off "Set time zone automatically using current location." Perfect for travelers.

QuickTime 7 isn't dead yet

QuickTime X is great. It gives users most of the QuickTime Pro features for free. But for die-hard QuickTime users that need more than a few screencasts and minimal export control, you can install QuickTime 7 from the Snow Leopard disc. Check the Optional Installs folder. Open the Optional Installs, and there's QuickTime 7 ready to be installed. Snow Leopard will find your previous QuickTime 7 preferences, and adds your registration number to the QuickTime 7 preferences.

The video player requires Flash 8 Player or later. Please download the latest Flash Player.

Spring-loaded drag and drop between applications

Got a pic you want to email or add to a document? There's a quick new way to do that. Drag what you want placed to the app in the Dock. Exposé will initiate that app. Hover over the window you want the item placed in, and press the space bar. Release the mouse button and BAM! It's there.

OpenCL hungers for graphics cards

We've been told by Apple that OpenCL-enhanced applications will scream with compatible video cards. What happens if you cram your Mac Pro with multiple video cards? We asked Apple, and they said if an application is built to support OpenCL and the video cards are supported, the application will indeed get a speed boost.

Start up in 64-bit

If you want to make the kernel start up in 64-bit, hold the 6 and 4 keys on the keyboard at startup. Though applications can still run in 64-bit while the OS is 32-bit, starting up in 64-bit will be marginally faster. Be wary of losing application support, though.

32-bit kernel vs. 64-bit kernel

Is running a 64-bit kernel really that great? We talked to Apple about this, and they told us that what you're doing when you hold down the 6 and 4 buttons during startup is actually booting the kernel into 64-bit mode. For 99.999% of users out there, booting up as usual with the 32-bit kernel is more than adequate. Your 64-bit applications, including the Finder, will still run super quick while the kernel is in 32-bit mode. There is no difference in the speed of 64-bit applications while your kernel is in 32-bit mode. 64-bit mode is useful only to hardcore users and servers.

But I just bought a Mac!

Don't worry if you bought a Mac on, or after, June 8. Apple's Up-to-Date program means you can get Snow Leopard for $10. Hurry though, you have until December 26, 2009. Which'll be here before you know it.

Import from a scanner directly into Preview

You can now import directly from a scanner into Preview. You can even choose network scanners. Just go to File > Import From Scanner.

Screenshot names are time stamped

No more Picture 1, Picture 2, Picture 3 screenshot files on your Desktop. Snow Leopard now uses a time stamp to name your files.

Sync Address Book with Google and Yahoo

If you're sporting a Google or Yahoo account, you can now easily sync the Address Book with these accounts. Navigate to Address Book > Preferences, click the Accounts tab, and there you go.

Rosetta isn't there by default

In Leopard, Rosetta is there when you need it. In Snow Leopard, the first time you try to install, or launch, a PowerPC app, you'll get a prompt to install Rosetta. Software Upload will launch and install Rosetta for you.

Minimize windows into an application's Dock icon

In Leopard when you minimized a window, it flew to the right of the divider in the Dock. You can now have those minimized windows swoop down behind the app's icon in the Dock. You won't be able to see how many windows you'll have minimized at a glance, but with Dock Exposé, a thin line separates the regular windows from the minimized windows.

To switch to this mode, navigate to System Preferences > Dock and check "Minimize windows into application icon."

Where's Clean Install?

In order to clear up any confusion, Apple removed the "Clean Install" option from the Snow Leopard installer. Apparently, some folks didn't realize that a clean install erases the drive before installing. If you want to erase your intended drive before installation, click the Utilities button at the beginning of your install to use Disk Utility. After clicking Utilities, you'll be prompted to restart your Mac. After restart, navigate to the menubar Utilities > Disk Utility.

Sure, it's an extra step for you, but if it keeps your less-than-tech-savvy uncle from erasing all of his data while trying to install Snow Leopard, it's probably worth it.

Will my scanner and or printer work?

Apple has posted a list of scanners and printers that will work with Snow Leopard. If in doubt, check it out. Apparently, Puppet Walt had an issue with his scanner. The poor old guy.

Cisco VPN support

If you work from the road, or from home, you know how important Cisco VPN is. Snow Leopard has it baked right into the OS. To set up your VPN (you should check with your IT department) navigate to System Preferences > Network. Click on the small plus sign (+) in the lower-left corner. Choose VPN in the Select Interface drop-down. This is much better than opening a third-party application to get on the office server from home.

Palm OS syncing gone

Uh-oh, if you're the owner of a device that runs the Palm OS (Treo, Centro, etc.), we have some bad news for you. Snow Leopard no longer supports Palm OS syncing, and since Palm has retired the OS, there's a good chance they won't be updating their software. Fortunately, you can grab a copy of The Missing Sync for Palm OS from Mark/Space. Good luck.

Dock Exposé

This was the “ooh, ah” feature of the Snow Leopard demonstration at WWDC. Apple has taken steps to make sure Exposé is more awesome than ever before. One of the biggest improvements is that you only have to click and hold an icon in the Dock to trigger Exposé for all of that application's windows, instead of having to use a keyboard shortcut. This can be especially useful if you’re trying to quickly sort through all your Finder, Web browser, or word processing windows.

Option-click in the Dock to force-quit

Holding down Option while clicking an app in the Dock has been a quick way to force quit an offending app. Force-quit is available when you right-click an app in the Dock or click and hold for Dock Exposé. You're also presented with Hide Others, a good way to hide all the apps except the one you have selected.

Share your videos, get the URL right in the progress window

If you opt to share your videos from QuickTime X, you'll be presented with a progress window that uploads your video. Once the video is done, the progress window will display the URL for the video you've uploaded. This works with both MobileMe and YouTube.

Nested Stacks

Stacks in Leopard wasn't exactly a fan favorite. The worst part was that it didn't work with certain folders. Though it was meant to reduce the number of clicks and windows you had to go through before getting to your file, if your folder had a number of subfolders, you would really only save one click. In Snow Leopard, if you click another folder within Stacks, it opens that folder within Stacks as well, with convenient back and forward buttons to jump through the folder hierarchy.

Scrollable Stacks

In Leopard, Stacks adapted bigger folders by shrinking the icon sizes, often making very large stacks impossible to navigate. Stacks in Snow Leopard are fully scrollable, meaning the icons will stay a fixed, easy-to-read size, and if there are more items that can’t fit, you can scroll to them.

Boot Camp HFS support

Covered here more extensively, Windows support via Boot Camp has improved drastically. Instead of your Mac being blind to the files on your PC side, and vice versa, they both have read-only access to the other partitions.

6GB to 7GB of free space

One of the seemingly outlandish claims that Apple made during WWDC is that after installing Snow Leopard, you would be able to reclaim 6GB to 7GB of drive space. After installing it, we can verify this is true -- space for even more FLAC music, yay.

Location support for third-party apps

With Snow Leopard, Apple is introducing a new Core Location framework that will extend location support to third-party apps. Similar to the feature of the same name in the iPhone, the first example of this is the new automatic time function in the OS X clock. It triangulates your position based on your IP address, and sets your time zone correspondingly, instead of merely updating from a network time server.

Exchange support

By far the most talked about feature in 10.6 is Microsoft Exchange Support, because it will be a key selling point for Apple, in order to reach business customers. Though it only supports Exchange 2007 servers, it’s still very well integrated -- you can sync your contacts, calendars, and mail accounts as well. Interestingly enough, Snow Leopard is the only OS with Exchange support out of the box, as Windows 7 requires you to buy Office 2007 to get that functionality.

Wi-Fi signal strength in menubar

If you are in a Wi-Fi hotspot, or merely a place with a lot of unsecured networks, it’s often hard to figure out which one to go with, because in Leopard, when you clicked on the AirPort menubar icon to find new networks, there was no indication of which network was better, save for the name (if it had an awesome name, the network is also awesome, obviously). In Snow Leopard, you can see the signal strength of these networks from the menubar, helping you make that decision.

Basic malware protection

Snow Leopard has basic malware protection for Safari downloads. Apple is keeping a database of virus definitions, and if you download an executable that contains it, the OS will warn you, and recommend you abort. More importantly, this database will be updated via Software Update, and files that are infected will be marked as such in the Finder. Still, download smart.

Finder rewritten in Cocoa

Though you won’t see too many aesthetic differences, the Finder in Snow Leopard has been rewritten from the ground up. This makes it more future proof, more flexible -- essentially, more everything. This move should also make Finder more stable, because it uses all the newest frameworks, as well as more extensible. Look forward to some huge feature updates in Finder’s future.

Draw Chinese characters on the trackpad

If you happen to write Chinese and want to communicate with your business partners in China, you won’t have to buy a Chinese keyboard anymore. Snow Leopard’s revamped Language And Text preference pane has revamped the Chinese character input completely. You can draw the actual characters on your trackpad, and it recognizes the characters as you type.

Higher-res iChat (640x480) / lower bandwidth req

Video chat can be painfully slow, and has frequent hangups, unless you have a high-speed connection, and you aren’t using your bandwidth in other ways. Snow Leopard’s iChat tries to fix this, at least partially, by lowering the bandwidth requirements of iChat. At the same time, the introduction of iChat Theater enables high-quality, 640x480, video chatting.

Auto-update printer drivers

Software Update is looking to be more useful in Snow Leopard. Not only does it update virus definitions, but is also going to update your printer drivers. This is often more elegant than having to update them manually, from the manufacturer's website.

Empty Trash more reliable

Have you ever tried to empty the Trash, only to find that something is “in use,” when you know it most definitely is not in use. Snow Leopard tries to make the Empty Trash process faster and more reliable than ever before. However, it still stops the delete if you are, say, watching a movie and trying to delete it at the same time.

Ejecting media more reliable

Along the same lines, Snow Leopard wants to make ejecting media, whether USB hard drives, CDs, or DVDs, more reliable. Hopefully this means the annoying beach ball of death doesn’t pop up when you hit the Eject button on your keyboard.

Different statuses for different accounts in iChat

If you are using iChat with multiple accounts, but want to keep your status on your corporate IM account different than that of your personal AIM account, now you can. Apple clearly wants you to stop defecting to third-party chat clients like Adium, so it might be the time to give iChat a second chance.

Split-pane Terminal

If you have certain scripts that you have running all the time, it might be a good idea to keep a split-pane Terminal. While the two panes will mirror the same command, you can scroll to different positions within each pane, allowing you to monitor different parts of the same output at the same time. The other cool feature of the new Terminal is a new default font, which, while doesn’t add anything in particular, is definitely prettier.

Accept event invitations from within mail

A hidden gem in iCal is the ability to auto-add events from Mail. Say your friend emails you, inviting you to a party on a given date. If you enable the feature, iCal will pull the relevant information from the message, including location and date, and create a new event.

Black bezel for the Dock's contextual menus

A small UI change Apple made with Snow Leopard was changing the contextual menus for Dock items (accessed by right-clicking something in the Dock) to black glassy menus. It looks much better -- we just wish the same courtesy was extended to other contextual menus as well.

Icons can be up to 512x512

The new Finder has a zoom slider in the bottom right of each window, allowing you to zoom the icons inside up to 512x512 pixels, without having to go into Cover Flow.

Live previews in icons

The enlarged icons allow for an actual preview of the files, so that’s exactly what Apple enabled. You can live-preview the documents represented by the icons, like movies, music, PDFs, and even certain presentations. While we may still use Quick Look instinctively, this is an easy option to preview file contents even faster.

Grand Central Dispatch

Another major feature that doesn’t affect the average user at all, Grand Central Dispatch is a framework that allows for simple multi-core threading in applications built in Xcode. What this means is that more OS X apps are going to be able to harness the extra power of dual-core CPUs, meaning that you can waste time playing games even faster than before.

App-relevant Services

Even if you are a Leopard user, you probably don’t use Services, which are AppleScripts that can trigger different events across applications. Even if you have accidentally clicked the menu item at some point, you would have likely seen a lot of grayed out options, and wondered exactly why they chose to include useless things. Snow Leopard corrects this by only putting things in the Services menu that you can actually use. Furthermore, Automator workflows that you create will be added to the Services menu, making it something that you might actually want to click on in the future.

Revamped Image Capture

Image Capture is sort of the little brother to Preview, iPhoto, and the multitude of other photo-organizing apps that you have on your Mac, but it is a great bare-bones way to get pictures off a scanner, camera, or even iPhone. Snow Leopard features a completely redone Image Capture that features more information, an iTunes-esque interface, and faster importing.

Sticky Notes keyboard shortcut

One of the things Microsoft brags about is Windows 7's sticky notes, which hang around obnoxiously with your tasks. Apple has had these since Tiger, but in Snow Leopard, they have one cool feature that Windows doesn’t. You can assign a keyboard shortcut (System Preferences > Keyboard) that automatically creates a sticky note with whatever text is currently selected. This is great for clipping notes, text fields, and so on, from anywhere around your Mac.

Text labels in Exposé

Speaking of another completely redone feature, the new Exposé features text labels under every window that is currently displayed, especially useful if you can’t actually tell what the window is by its contents.

Multi-process Safari (sandboxing)

Snow Leopard claims that its version of Safari 4 supports sandboxing of individual tabs, similar to what Google Chrome does. What this means is that if a plug-in crashes on a tab, it won’t crash the browser on the whole, and the rest of your browsing experience will be intact.

Pinch to zoom icons on Desktop

If you want to make the icons on your Desktop bigger, merely pinch to zoom on a multi-touch trackpad. This works better in reverse, because if your Desktop is cluttered, it helps to make all of the icons tiny until you can clean it up.

3- and 4-finger gestures for older multi-touch trackpads

Extending the olive branch to users of older-generation MacBooks and MacBook Pros that did not have four-finger and three-finger trackpad gestures, Snow Leopard brings this feature to those MacBooks, provided you have a supported model.

More granular firewall settings

In order to prevent hackery of the malicious variety, Snow Leopard includes more firewall settings than its predecessor. You can choose to block incoming connections from certain apps, always allow connections from other apps, and set an allow/do not allow list. This is a huge upgrade from the mere “off/on” found on the previous firewall.

Specify how long after screen saver you want to lock computer

Have you ever walked away from your laptop to get a soda, and then walked back to see your computer lock in front of your eyes. Instead of scrambling to prevent going into screen saver, merely set the computer to ask for the password after a certain period of time after the screen saver activates.

New desktop wallpapers

Though not quite the caliber of the LSD-influenced wallpapers that are in Windows 7, Apple has introduced a few new default desktops in Snow Leopard as well, namely, more nature and art images.

Show date in menubar

One notable omission in the default OS X clock is the date, as you have to click the time to see it. In Snow Leopard, you can choose whether or not to see the date in the menubar, and choose how it is displayed, whether fully written out, or abbreviated by number.

Faster Time Machine backups

Even better than telling you how much time is left in your backup, Time Machine speeds up significantly in Snow Leopard. In our tests it was about twice as fast as Leopard, namely reducing the time in the Preparing Backup stage.

AppleScript has access to Cocoa frameworks

At WWDC, Apple announced something called Cocoa Bridge, which allows you to access any Objective-C frameworks from within AppleScript, with an AppleScript syntax. This will make AppleScripts much more functional, as well as make it easier to develop applications that don’t necessarily require a GUI.

Treat trackpad as a virtual screen, guided by VoiceOver

Apple has introduced a plethora of new functions to help Universal Access. If you have trouble seeing, you can navigate the computer using the trackpad as a virtual screen, with the help of VoiceOver, which will tell you exactly where to go.

iCal syncs with Google Calendar and Yahoo Calendar

iCal now syncs with Google Calendar and Yahoo Calendar out of the box. iPhone users may be used to this, because you could enable it within iTunes, but now, you can do it directly from iCal.

Mail detects flight numbers

In the new Mail.app, there are more data detectors than ever. If someone emails you a flight number, you can click it, and be presented a contextual menu that includes tracking the flight in your Dashboard. This is incredibly useful, because you don’t have to worry about cutting and pasting properly, and then finding the airline site to track the flight.

Flagged photo screen saver

One of the new screen savers in Snow Leopard is an option to cycle through flagged pictures from iPhoto. If you get tired of seeing a particular face in your photo slideshow screen saver, you can always remove them from the flagged list without deleting their photo.

Better installer

The new Snow Leopard installer is much improved -- it does not try to upgrade incompatible apps, but rather puts them in a separate folder. Clearly, Apple engineers remember the blue screen of death fiasco when people tried to install Leopard on computers that had Application Enhancer installed.

Better documentation browser Xcode

Finding documentation for Objective-C frameworks has never been easier than in Xcode 3.0, equipped with a three pane documentation browser. You can easily search for a particular function, class, or object, and navigate back to your own project in the same window.

Properly sized windows in Exposé

One annoying thing about the old Exposé was that all application windows were the same size when zoomed out. This meant that you often couldn’t see the text on larger windows, and smaller windows were unnecessarily large. Now, the windows are sized relative to their actual size.

Wake servers on demand

Apple wants you to reduce power consumption and bandwidth consumption, as servers can go to sleep in Snow Leopard without losing their data connection. Any time you request data from the server, it will send a wakeup signal, and you can continue using the data uninterrupted.

Arrange Exposé windows using keyboard shortcuts

With all windows visible, you can press Command-1 to arrange them by name, Command-2 to arrange them by application, press the Tab key to view all windows belonging to a given application, and best of all, enlarge a given window by selecting it and pressing the space bar.

Video chat with AIM users in iChat

If your friends have webcams and use the latest AIM client, you can video- and audio-chat with them from iChat. Think of it as a consolation prize, because they are still using Windows.

Take screenshot directly from preview

You can always use Grab, Shift-Command-4, or Shift-Command-3, but if you want, you can take a screenshot (full screen, window, or selection) directly from Preview. This is more versatile than the other two options, because you can edit it directly, save it in a file format of your choice, and save it in a location of your choice.

Color-correction histogram

The new Preview gets a bit more hardcore with the introduction of a color-correction histogram, which allows you to adjust levels and see what they might do to your picture.

New annotations toolbar in Preview

Annotations are front and center in the new Preview. In fact, there's a whole toolbar dedicated to it. Instead of having to select each tool from the menu, just click on it and then use it. The new annotations in Preview are text and arrows, especially useful if you want to jot notes in a PDF's margin
without printing it out.

Proof pictures for printing within Preview

For people that want to print directly from Preview, instead of editing their pictures in a dedicated photo manager, Preview now offers several proofing options, and you can view a soft-proof with several different color profiles. This will make your prints more accurate, and eliminate the need to open Photoshop every time you need to print a picture.

Opening JPEGs faster

At times, opening large images (we’re talking 100MB) takes FOREVER. With Snow Leopard, opening JPEG images is faster, and opening other file types also have speed improvements. Furthermore, keeping them open takes up less RAM, so your computer won’t slow to a crawl.

Better PDF text selection

One of the most touted features in Snow Leopard was that Apple used “advanced algorithms” for better PDF text selection. If you work with a lot of PDFs, this is absolutely critical -- no more garbage line breaks, selecting across different columns, or garbled text selection.

Import photos directly into Preview

Again, Preview has taken a lot of features that existed in other OS X applications, and consolidated them in an easy-to-use package. You can import photos directly into Preview, and edit them directly, akin to Image Capture.

Wake up and shut down faster

If you're the impatient type, you'll be happy to learn that Snow Leopard wakes two times faster than Leopard, and shuts down 1.8 times quicker. Perfect for the spy trying to get those secret plans onto their MacBook and out of the embassy's secret office before being caught.

Open a PDF contact sheet

If you are working with a multi-page PDF, this function in Preview will help you reorganize the pages, add new pages, and so on. Instead of doing this from the sidebar, you can zoom into pages in your contact sheet, and work with them directly.

Data detectors in TextEdit

Similar to the data detectors in Mail, if you find an address, flight number, phone number, or anything else that can be detected, you can select it, right-click it, and perform the relevant actions, like showing it on the map, creating a new contact, and things like that.

Easily transform text to all lowercase, all uppercase, or capitalize the first letter of words

TextEdit now supports text transformations. You can easily make everything uppercase, everything lowercase, or capitalize the first letter of every word selected, also known as headline case.

Autocorrect in TextEdit

Using the text substitution feature, TextEdit now supports some limited autocorrect, akin to the iPhone. Say good-bye to spelling errors.

HTTP live streaming in QuickTime X

Though HTTP live streaming for H.264 files has yet to hit the mainstream, it’s nice to know that QuickTime X supports it. Instead of having to use a RTSP file stream, you can use the more open standard of HTTP to stream video to your Desktop.

Visual chapters in QuickTime X movies

If you are watching a movie that has chapters, you can view the chapters visually, and skip ahead. The interface is glitzy, but still speedy.

QuickTime X optimizes movies for display on the Web

Unless you want to tick off your ISP unduly, it’s probably a good idea to upload reduced-quality (and smaller file size) videos to the Web. QuickTime X does this in two ways. First, you can directly send videos to YouTube and MobileMe. And you can also save the videos in a format and size amenable to Web viewing anywhere else you'll upload it.

Click to fast-forward in QuickTimeX

One annoying part of the fast-forward button in Leopard’s QuickTime was that it was more like a skip -- you had to hold it down to actually fast-forward. QuickTime X allows you to click the fast-forward button, and click it again to change the speed. You can fast-forward up to 8x.

Trim out silent parts of video automagically in QuickTime

One really neat feature in QuickTime X is the ability to select all the silent parts of videos, and trim them as you see fit. Perhaps you were using your iSight to monitor your roommate, and don’t care about the silent parts, or maybe you would use this for less-creepy endeavors. But either way, it’s a nice trick to have, and many full-featured video editors lack it.

Easy file conversion for iPhones and iPods

If you have a lot of videos on your computer, you know the pain of converting them to an iPhone-watchable format. Now, QuickTime X does that for you. To maximize the functionality, use a plug-in like Perian Tools to open third-party formats, and export them to iPod and iPhones to eliminate the need for a converter.

Quick Look in iChat.

If a friend sends you as picture of him wrestling a bear, you can use the power of Quick Look to instantly preview it and make sure it's a real bear and not his brother in a bear suit.

Edit iCal events quicker

In Leopard you had to double-click on the event, then you had to click Edit to edit the event. That's one too many clicks. In Snow Leopard, you can just double-click on the event to get to edit mode.

Shuffle through screen saver photos

Mac users have always had the option to shuffle through different Desktop pictures, but now you can shuffle through different Photo Library screen savers. Check Use Random Screen Saver then click on Shuffle. Check the boxes of the image libraries you want shuffled as screen savers.

Set the default search in Spotlight

If you use Spotlight a lot to find files, you know it’s slightly annoying when you type a file name into the Spotlight field in your Documents window, only to have it search everywhere, including Mail Downloads. In the Finder navigate in the menu bar to Finder > Preferences, click on the Advanced tab, and change the default search location.

Put it back

Accidentally put an item in the trash? Right-click on the item and select Put Back from the contextual menu. The file will return to its location before you threw it away.

More Automator templates

If you're a fan of Automator, you'll be thrilled to find out that there are new templates for your automating ways

Faces and Places in Spotlight

If you have a copy of iPhoto '09 you can use Spotlight to search for Places and Faces you've set up in iPhoto. Find pictures of friends without opening iPhoto. Or, you can quickly locate all those incriminating pictures from Vegas.

Search documents even before they are completely indexed

Sometimes, with very large PDFs, you have to index it before searching it, which takes valuable time. Because Preview is using Grand Central Dispatch, you can search documents before Spotlight is finished indexing them.

Open .dae files in Preview

Preview will now open 3D .dae files. You can zoom, rotate and play viewpoint animations from within Preview. Once you find a camera angle you like, you can print the image out.

Set the Mail sidebar the way you like it

You can now move the Mail items in the sidebar so they are displayed just how you like 'em. Just click and drag to your desired position

Keep the kids off the pr0n sites

Improved Web filters means you can keep little Timmy off the naughty sites he shouldn't find out about until he's in college. Parental Controls can be found in System Preferences.

Think of the children and their time out

Another fun way to keep the kids away from the horrors of computing and the Internet, is the new time limit function for accounts. Set up an account for your kid and set a time limit for that account. A timer in the menubar will let them know how much time they have left.

iChat buddy search in Spotlight

Couldn't get enough Spotlight searching when you were combing through your Faces and Places? Well lucky for you, you can also search all of your iChat buddies in Spotlight.

Save $4 on Snow Leopard

Can't make it to the Apple Store? Or maybe you live in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere and you have to order everything by mail? Well, you can save $4 on Snow Leopard if you order it from Amazon. Oh, and you get free shipping.

If you have a tip or feature we missed, drop it in the comments and we'll add it to the article.

Update: Features and tips we missed

OS X apps go 64-bit

We're not sure how we forgot to add this to the original list. Maybe we shouldn't have played that Snow Leopard drinking game? Oh well.

So we were going to list every app that is running in 64-bit goodness. But it turns out about 95% of the OS X apps are rolling 64.

What that means is that the Finder, Mail, Preview and pretty much everything else that Apple throws on your Mac with Snow Leopard, is running faster.

Access Audio inputs/Outputs from the Menu Bar

Instead of firing up the Sound System Preference, just hold down option and click on the volume control in the Menu Bar. Boom, all of your audio inputs and outputs. - Tip via Jermoreno

Where the hell is Directory Utility?

If your a fan of the Directory Utility app (and seriously, who isn't) Don't bother trying to find in the Utilities folder. Instead load the System Preferences and navigate to Accounts > Login Options > Network Account Server, click join and there it is. - Tip via Jermoreno

Hidden MacBook Features Uncovered

Arvind Srinivasan — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:37:03 -0500

We tried everything, and we couldn’t replicate this on our MacBooks. Check out what this French guy was able to make his laptop do. Apple needs to make this an official hardware upgrade.