Impulsive Highlighters

Leopard: System Preferences

Here's a brief look at the major changes in System Preferences in Leopard. Most of the screenshots are self-explanatory.

Network



Apple has simplified the Network pane and made it look better. All the features a normal person won't need have been neatly tucked away into the Advanced sheet.

Parental Controls






Security



Security and Sharing were fighting for the custody of Firewall ,and Security has finally and rightfully won the battle.

Sharing


Sharing really needed Leopard. I mean, simply look at the mess that is the Tiger Sharing pane. You've got an Internet tab for Internet sharing and the Services tab for everything else. What, is Internet not a service? Internet sharing has been shown its rightful place alongside everything else in Leopard. And what the fuck is Firewall doing in the Sharing pane? Thankfully, it has been moved to the Security pane. Thus, the Sharing pane, which has never needed tabs in the first place has now lost them.

Time Machine



.Mac


Print & Fax
I like the new Print & Fax pane. You know that the Tiger one, if you've ever used it, is simply there as a half-assed front-end and knows as much about dealing with printers as – forgive me for using the h2g2 analogy – a tea leaf knows the history of the East India Company. In Leopard's Print & Fax, you can manage printers without ever having to open the Printer Setup Utility, which, as you might have guessed, doesn't exist in Leopard anyway.

Keyboard


Just noticed that Leopard officially supports different sets of settings for different keyboards. I might attach my Bluetooth keyboard and test this out but I probably won't because it'd be a pretty boring test either way.

Spaces

Bluetooth







The new Bluetooth pane looks spiffy and to test it out I hooked my Razor up to my PowerBook and used some of Address Book's phone integration features to accept/reject calls from within Mac OS X when they come on your phone, to send SMS's from Mac OS X through my phone and to dial a phone number directly from Address Book. Now, I believe all this is supposed to work in Tiger also but I just could never get the Tiger Address Book to properly hook up with my phone. 

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