There there blog, I know I’ve neglected you. I’ve been super busy and … yes, yes ok I know excuses won’t cut it here. You’re pissed. I’m sorry.
Here is a peace offering instead: My favorite (and default) video player for OS X, NicePlayer, has finally been updated in the form of a preview build. This preview includes the return of remote control support, something which has been broken since 10.5 originally came out. Yes, that is quite a long time now and yes, I did wonder up until the moment I found this preview build if the application was dead in the water.
Having tried a lot of the alternative video players available for OS X 10.5 right now, VLC has become my favorite choice.
This mostly has to due with flexibility and the fact that it supports the Apple remote. Up until now I defaulted to NicePlayer (which also supports the remote but only under 10.4).
The only problem with VLC is the application icon which is about as smooth as a car wreck in the dock. MacRabbit has a very nice replacement icon set which also supports file types.
A collection of tips and other goodies I’ve read recently about OS X 10.5 Leopard:
The 512×512 icon support gives an already polished operating system an even cleaner look. Try looking at your applications using Quick Look and you’ll see what I mean. Apple even hid a few things in their default icon set, like the Font Book icon (letters are A F K) and a letter written in the TextEdit icon (good overview w/pics here).
You can find all of the default icons for 10.5 at /System » Library » CoreServices » CoreTypes.bundle (right-click and open package contents) » Contents » Resources. (via macosxhints.com)
public.generic-pc.icns is my personal favorite Stacks is a cool feature and is actually somewhat useful, but Apple should take note of these sweet overlays.
If you have the developer tools installed you will find two extra screen savers located at /Developer/Examples/Quartz Composer/Compositions/Screen Savers. Copy the two files to /Library/Screen Savers or ~/Library/Screen Savers. The Security screen saver is fun and is actually motion activated.
Photobooth can now make animated GIFs. Handy for buddy icons.
Drives/devices mounted remotely seem to show up in the Shared section of the finder sidebar instead of the Devices section like in 10.4. Until I realized this I was only able to open them using Quicksilver. Turns out you can drag them in the sidebar from Shared to Devices, and the move is even permanent after the drive is removed and then remounted.
Lifehacker sent out a call for submissions for an OS X menu bar show-and-tell feature about a week ago. I snapped a quick screenshot and sent mine in. Today I was happy to see they picked it up and put it on their site:
I’ve had my Macbook for six months now, and I just now noticed this cool little feature in OS X’s Dashboard. The weather widget shows all kinds of weather conditions (a couple weeks ago it impressed me with little freezing rain balls bouncing off it) and at night it switches to show cloud conditions with the moon. It wasn’t until just now that I noticed it tracks the exact phase of the moon too.
I opened up dashboard for the first time tonight and this is what I saw. Sure enough we are having a clear night and a new moon, meaning no moon visible at all.
Pretty nifty.
Click the thumbnail for the full version.
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