I appreciate that Mac OS X will warn me the first time I run an application downloaded from the Internet. However, I don't like that a) you can't turn it off and b) it warns about things that aren't applications. The worst is when I download a .zip or .tgz with a bunch of PHP scripts--OS X will warn me about every single one. Luckily, this can be stopped with a quick trip to Terminal: just navigate to the folder with the scripts and say xattr -d com.apple.quarantine *

Or, "things that have been in Windows since 1995 and/or Classic Mac OS that have not yet made the jump to Mac OS X, the most modernest OS extant."

I had to use Time Machine to recover my 10.6 Mac. Two little issues:

1) Quick Look didn't work. It would open up the big grey rectangle but not show anything--pictures, movies, PDFs, Excel files, nothing worked. I was at 10.6.1 and 10.6.2 was out but installing that update (and all the rest available at the time) through Software Update didn't fix it. A tip here http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10398867-263.html suggested downloading and installing the combo update (also for 10.6.2) and that cleared it up. ("Combo Update" is Apple's term for "everything since the last .0", so the 10.5.8 combo update can be run on any system, 10.5.0-10.5.7, and it'll work.)

2) The system folder "/private" was visible in the Finder at the root level of my hard drive. Not a big deal, but since I never need to go there there's no need to see it all the time. Running "sudo chflags hidden /private", as suggested here http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=648139 did the trick.

WOW it's been a long time since I've updated this. :-) And, sad to say, 10.5's Dock still sucks out loud. I found a new annoyance: the "Open in Finder" option shows up at the BOTTOM of a menu, so if you just want to open a folder that's in your Dock but you've got a lot of things in it, you have to click, scroll to the bottom of the list, THEN you can finally see the magic "View in Finder" option. But that's not what I'm here to talk about today.

I've seen a lot of articles about launching apps on a Mac and a lot of people, when hearing about QuickSilver, say "Well I just use Spotlight. Why use QuickSilver?" Here is my response.

The Dock in 10.5 still sucks, even after the 10.5.2 update that brought back hierarchical folder menus.
Let us recap:

10.0-10.4: you drag a folder into the Dock.

1. Its icon appears.
2. If you click on it, it will open its Finder window.
3. If you right-click on it, you will see its contents in a menu. This menu is left-justified, like all other easily-readable text in the known universe, next to a nice, straight, vertical column of small icons. Holding the mouse over any folder shows that folder's contents, and if there is a subfolder you can mouse over that to see its contents, etc. You can activate any item—program, document, or folder—by clicking on it.

1. The icon is from one of the things in the folder.
2. If you click on it, you see a fan or stack, depending on how many things it has.
3. If you right-click on it, you get a little menu with options.

I prefer StuffIt over BOMArchiveHelper.app because StuffIt shows a status bar. Who cares if it's a little slower (which StuffIt seems to be), I prefer to know how long it's going to take. What's better: knowing it'll be a minute, or sitting there with NO clue for 50 seconds?

UPDATE: I just tested this on my old 10.3 Mac... and the same thing happens! How long has this been the case? I could have sworn I've used 'locate' many times in the past and not seen other users' files. Hmm...

(OK, now onto the original post.)

One of the first things I noticed in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard seems to be a bad change and I can't imagine why Apple made it. 'Locate' has worked fine since 10.0 came out over six years ago. (UPDATE part 2: seems I'm wrong--testing 'locate' on a 10.3 box shows the same insecure behavior--so I guess the only new thing is that they show the warning. This is so, so weird--I swear it didn't used to do that. I thought OS X just silently used 'slocate' like most Linux distros do.) Now that I've updated to 10.5, when I say
sudo /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb
it tells me
>>> WARNING
>>> Executing updatedb as root. This WILL reveal all filenames
>>> on your machine to all login users, which is a security risk.

Sure enough, if I 'su -' to another user, create a file with a unique name, switch back to me, and 'locate' that file, it pops right up. Why?

Just a few random notes re: things shown in the Keynote. This isn't commentary on every single point, just the ones that matter to me--mostly with regard to UI.

Some people are complaining that Apple's new ads just spend too much time making fun of Microsoft. But a) Microsoft deserves it and b) Apple warned them.

OS X disables the ability to take screenshots when a DVD is playing. With the regular key commands, at least. It still works from the terminal. I wrote a little script that takes a screenshot and advances the DVD one frame.