New Features in Mac OS X 10.4
Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) is a major revision to Mac OS X. Here's a look at some of the new and revised features you can expect to find. Tip
- This book covers many of these features.
System
- Spotlight (Figure 2) is a new search feature that enables you to search available volumes from the Finder or while other applications are active. It even works within applications such as System Preferences to help you find what you're looking for.
Figure 2. One of Spotlight's features is a search results menu you can access when any application is active.
Figure 3. Dashboard puts tiny applications called widgets on your screen when you press
Figure 4.
You can use Automator to create custom
work.ows to automate tasks.
Figure 5. Parental Controls enable you to limit the use of certain applications.
Finder
- Smart folders work with Spotlight to create folders full of search results. Smart folders are constantly updated, thus automating the search process.Burn folders (Figure 6) make it easy to organize files to be burned onto a CD. Because burn folders contain aliases of items, there's no need to fill your hard disk with duplicate items. Best of all, when an item changes, the current version of the item is burned to CD.
Figure 6. Burn folders make it easy to organize files before burning them to CD.
Applications
- Dictionary puts the Oxford American Dictionaries inside your Macintosh. Use it to get word definitions, pronunciations, synonyms, and antonyms. This feature is available as an application or as a Dashboard widget.Grapher (Figure 7) , the first Mac OS X version of Graphing Calculator, graphs complex formulas.
Figure 7. Grapher is the Mac OS X version of Apple's old Graphing Calculator.
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Printing
- The Print dialog now includes a PDF menu (Figure 8) , which offers options for creating or faxing document PDFs.
Figure 8. The new PDF menu in Print dialogs lets you create or fax documents as PDFs.
Internet
- Safari can now work as an RSS reader (Figure 9) , so you can browse syndicated sites. A new View All RSS Articles command displays recent RSS articles from a variety of sources in your Safari window.
Figure 9. Safari is now an RSS article reader as well as a standard Web browser.
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.Mac
- A .Mac account now makes it possible to synchronize bookmarks, calendars, contacts, keychains, mail account, mail rules, mail signatures, and smart mailboxes.