Since it is the operating system’s job to help you manage files – creating, renaming, sorting, saving, etc. – you’d think a batch renaming feature would be an obvious inclusion, wouldn’t it? Apparently not.

True, it can be done via a command line, such as Windows DOS or Mac OS X’s Terminal, but why be geeky when we don’t need to be. We need something simpler. Enter Renamer4Mac…

Renamer4Mac gives you a graphical interface which lets you easily rename any number of files according to patterns which you can specify, and in many different ways. You can:

• Search and Replace
• Insert or Overwrite text
• Number the files sequentially
• Convert between upper and lower case
• Delete part of a filename.

It shows a preview of what the resulting names will be next to each file in the list, so you can see how your changes will affect the filenames. In addition, you can decide whether the changes will affect the file suffix or just the name itself. Since a file’s suffix determines what type of file it is and which program opens it, it’s good to see they’ve included this important safeguard.

Plus Renamer4Mac can optionally install a contextual-menu plugin, so that you can access its features by right-clicking on a selection of files (I often prefer running it this way).

The best part? The whole package comes to you as freeware, though donations are requested. You can download it from the developer’s website.

Eventually QuickDraw fell by the wayside to make way for Quartz in Mac OS X, but QuickTime lived on – and it went from being an optional extension to becoming an integral part of the Mac system. Nowadays, if you want to do any cutting, copying, pasting or other basic editing of QuickTime movies, you have to cough up money to Apple to unlock these features.

But what’s not generally known to the average user is that these features are only locked within Apple’s standard QuickTime Player application. Enterprising third-party programmers can freely tap into QuickTime’s full feature set and offer them to their users in other applications. One such result is this week’s treat for Mac AND Windows: MPEG Streamclip. Read on…

In addition to all that basic cutting, copying & pasting you used to be able to do, MPEG Streamclip’s main speciality is importing, playing back, editing and converting MPEG & other streaming movie files, including MPEG-2, the format used for DVD video. You can import streaming video from sources such as YouTube, and convert between different video formats for playback on iPods and other portable media. The video conversion dialog box lets you tweak just about every little aspect of the process, including compression codec, size ratios, de-interlacing, etc. And the best part? All this power comes to you absolutely FREE.

One caveat, though: To do anything with MPEG-2 files, you’ll need to buy the QuickTime MPEG-2 component from Apple (currently A$39 at this time of writing). Fortunately, if you don’t have need of MPEG-2 functionality, Streamclip will still work perfectly well without it. 
But you’d be surprised how much use MPEG-2 gets: Not only is it used for DVD video, but many camcorders and TV Tuner cards also record and store video in this format (I once flatted with a guy who regularly recorded TV shows on his computer. We used MPEG Streamclip to play & convert the saved files). If you find yourself dealing with MPEG-2 video a lot, I think you’ll find it’s worth the cost.

MPEG-2 related considerations aside, MPEG Streamclip remains a useful and powerful piece of software, especially for the price. With YouTube and portable media all the rage nowadays, MPEG Streamclip will have your video importing and conversion needs covered. More information as well as downloads for Mac and Windows can be found at the developers’ website.

I must say, first of all, that I’m enjoying Spaces – Apple’s version of virtual desktops – a lot. If you’re familiar at all with Exposé, the method of organising and switching among windows which was introduced in Mac OS X Panther, then you’ll find Spaces to be a natural complement to Exposé. Indeed, they both occupy the same spot in the System Preferences control panel – like they were made for each other. Exposé takes every window in every program and lays their thumbnails side-by-side so you can see them all at a glance and jump straight to the one you want.

Read on for more… 

Spaces takes Exposé to the next level – it effectively allows you to group these windows into their own individual panels, or ‘spaces’, on a grid. Your screen shows only one Space at a time, but you can switch between them, removing one group of windows from the screen and replacing it with a different group. Right now, I’ve got a 2×2 grid of Spaces happening. I assigned all my Finder windows to open in one particular Space, iTunes into another Space, email & web browsing to another Space, and my Adobe programs to open into yet another Space. It really does help keep the clutter of windows down – if you’re using a laptop, you’ll especially appreciate Spaces.

I haven’t yet had a chance to try out Apple’s Time Machine backup program with my external drive, however upon connecting the drive to my computer, I was immediately given a message asking me if I wanted to use it for Time Machine. Clicking “Yes” would have started Time Machine, and it would have started backing up the entire contents of my hard drive right then & there. The preferences for Time Machine consist of a large ‘On/Off’ switch, and a panel where I can tell it what NOT to back up. It’s hard to see how Apple could have made backing up any simpler.

The Dock – that strip of icons down the bottom of the screen – seems to be the one area of Leopard that’s come under fire from long-time Mac users. It’s now become a 3-D glass shelf upon which your icons sit, each one giving off a subtle reflection. In fact, if you drag a window near enough to it, that window will reflect too. Opinions have varied so far, but I actually find the glassy look quite funky. My only beef is that the little black marker which told you which programs were running is now a little light-blue LED dot, which doesn’t contrast well against the glass sheen.

The Dock also happens to be where ‘Stacks’ – the other main complaint from users – reside. The initial idea behind Stacks was to help remove the clutter of icons from the average desktop and bundle them together into one place on the Dock, keeping them accessible while not taking up space. This it does do rather well – you drag a whole bunch of icons onto the Dock and they become a Stack. Click on the Stack and it will show you a grid of the icons it contains. In theory, it’s a great idea. Unfortunately, the problem comes when you put a folder on the Dock. Before Leopard, it was possible to navigate these folders through a hierarchical menu. But once a folder comes onto the Dock, it becomes a Stack, and you lose that hierarchical menu functionality. I do hope Apple bring it back for the next patch update.

Quick Look is proving to be quite handy. Basically, if you click once on a file, and press Space Bar, you can browse through the contents of a file without opening the application it belongs to. So far, it works for text documents, movies, pictures & PDFs. Apparently it’s extendible, so 3rd-party programmers can tap into it to handle other file formats. Cover Flow has now made its way from iTunes and into standard Leopard windows – I’ve been using it to browse through my past & present graphics files. Working together with Quick Look, it’s a pretty neat way of browsing content and seeing at a glance what they contain.

On a basic interface level, I find it interesting that Apple’s window appearance seems to be returning to the days of OS 9 – After seven years, it seems grey is making a comeback. The very first Mac OS X hit us in the face with completely white windows & blue gummy buttons, differentiating itself completely from the old Mac system it replaced. Then slowly but surely, with each new version of the system, subtle touches of grey have been worked in here & there. Apple seemingly experimenting & refining as they went, until finally we have the somewhat darkened grey that is now prevalent in Leopard. Just what you might think of grey is a matter of taste and practicality – I find Leopard’s grey interface is just a smidgen too dark for me, but not enough that I couldn’t live with it. After long periods at the screen, though, it’s not overbearing and it IS easier on the eyes…

Finally, I have a miscellaneous grab bag of thoughts, again in no particular order:

• Finally I can now send files to Bluetooth devices via contextual menu. Windows seems to have already had this feature, but good to see it finally come to the Mac. Now I don’t need to use Bluetooth File Exchange so much! 
• Built-in file-compressing via contextual menu is now helpfully named 
  “Compress…” instead of “Create Archive of…” (It uses ZIP, by the way)
• TextEdit, the Mac’s basic text editor & viewer, now has AutoSave. Yeah!
• I’m loving the new Screen Savers and new iTunes Visualisers. No doubt put there to show off Core Animation.
• The Currency Conversion dashboard widget now includes lots more currencies than before, with some money types you probably didn’t even know existed (at this time of writing, 1 Australian dollar gets you 3.373 Qatari Rial) – and “Australian Dollar” is no longer at the bottom of the list. I should THINK not, Apple! * You can now use Apple’s Dictionary program to look up Wikipedia articles.
• My favourite comic-viewing dashboard widget, Wimic, now doesn’t render properly under Leopard – the outside border is a bit mangled, but at least I can still read the comics intact, so I’m not complaining too much. A little annoyed though.
• I’m impressed with Leopard’s new Networking preferences – you can now tweak things even further in depth – but not sure what to make of Leopard’s new firewall though. The only options here are “Allow all”, “Block all” and “Allow/Deny by application” (in addition to ‘Stealth Mode’ and ‘Logging’). The staggering thing here is that “Allow all” is set by default. Apple really should fix this for the next patch update. Some extra control settings would be nice too.
• Spotlight searching, introduced in Tiger, now seems faster & more responsive. Plus it has a few more tricks: You can finally do Boolean AND/OR/NOT searches, you can search your web browser’s history cache, get dictionary definitions, and also answers to Maths sums too.
• The Help menu now has its own Spotlight search bar. Handy!
• I’m looking forward to getting Leopard installed on my work computer so I can see how well Screen Sharing works. As it is, the only thing keeping it from being deployed there is an incompatibility with FileMaker Pro, which we rely on for our database. As one of only two Mac IT guys in my workplace, I’d love the ability to fix someone else’s computer remotely without leaving my desk.
• While taking partial screenshots for this article, I noticed the crosshair now displays pixel co-ordinates. Neat! Yet another of those little “attention to detail” touches Apple are known for.

So with all that said, what’s my opinion on Leopard? Overall, I think there’s more to like than not. New features like Time Machine, Spaces and Quick Look make file browsing, managing screen clutter and backing up easy.

Compatibility is very good – a lot of programs I’ve run through it still hold up happily under Leopard. Major developer-friendly improvements under the hood means the potential for some great applications in the future from programmers.

The annoyances/bugs I’ve mentioned above are relatively minor ones and can easily be fixed via update patches from Apple or third-party utilities (As I speak, a new Leopard-compatible version of TinkerTool has just been released).

Particularly regarding things like the firewall defaults and Stacks/Dock functionality. Apple do have a history of listening to their customers in the end, so I have every confidence those shortcomings will be addressed soon.

In the meantime, for the obsessive-compulsive among you, a completely thorough review of Leopard from top to bottom & inside out can be found here.

For the more visual person, Engadget features a Leopard vs. Vista Chart Showdown.

And finally, some useful Leopard tips, tricks and hints can be found 
in the link.

We hope you have enjoyed reading this article and hope you will stay around and read some more articles here at Inspect My Gadget.

It seems that the Family Packs were popular this year – by the time I arrived they’d all sold out. At $AU249 for 5 licenses, I’m not surprised – that’s less than the cost of 2 licenses! Still, at least they had some single copies of Leopard left, and so $AU158 later, this happy camper was on his way home with a shiny new box… And shiny it truly is – the purple nebula behind the ‘X’ on the front is a funky 3D hologram, while the back sports some sparse silvery highlighting. Even without the disc inside, the box is a serious bit of bling.

How does the installation go, and what are my initial impressions? 

The specifications for Leopard indicate a Mac with a G4 running at 867 MHz or faster, any G5 or Intel processor, 512 MB memory and at least 7 GB of hard drive space. Basically, any Mac as far back as four or five years can run it (I reckon even an eight-year-old G4 tower fitted with processor & AGP graphics card upgrades could run it!).

For this article, I’m installing Leopard onto a Powerbook G4. It’s old but with a 1.33 GHz processor and 1.5 GB memory, it more than meets the minimum requirements. With the contents of my Powerbook’s hard disk safely backed up onto an external FireWire drive, I’m ready to throw caution to the wind and install this new cat.

Upon inserting the DVD, I double-click the “Install” button and watch the computer restart. The installer itself is pretty straight-forward; it asks which disk to install on, and it provides a couple of buttons to Customise the installation, and to decide what type of installation you want – Upgrade the existing system, Archive & Install, or Erase & Install. I pick ‘Upgrade’ and away I go.

The installation takes about an hour or so, giving me plenty of time to go make a cuppa and do some un-nerdy things, like socialising.

Upon returning, I find a completely new-look desktop. The installation has apparently gone silky smooth; all my settings & icon arrangements are intact. Gone is the swirly aqua-blue that was OS X’s default wallpaper for many years – the new default is a stylish purple aurora/nebula set in space, to underscore the “Time & Space”  theme that seems to be the signature undertone of this new system. 

Soon I’m on my way…

I’ll be writing about some of my experiences & discoveries in Part II of this article, but for now & for what they’re worth, here are some of my initial thoughts:

• Different features will strike a chord with different people – you’re not likely to ever take advantage of every single one of the 300+ new features. But Apple have made sure there’s something for everyone, so whether you’re a full-on developer or casual home user, or somewhere in between, you’ll be sure to find something to like with Leopard. I’ve been stumbling across all sorts of interesting little minor discoveries in my first few hours of using Leopard – not earth shattering mind you, but subtle “nice to know it’s there” stuff. No doubt you’ll come across your own.
• The more I’ve seen of Leopard, the more convinced I’ve become that Microsoft really have lost touch with their customers. With Apple’s OS X Leopard, there’s only ONE version of the system (two if you count OS X Server) – no separate Basic, Premium or Ultimate editions, and no 32 or 64 bit versions. The per-license prices for Leopard are an absolute bargain when compared to Vista (or even XP), AND there’s no ridiculously restrictive activation systems in place to make you feel like a criminal. Microsoft, are you taking notes here??

Well that pretty much wraps it up for Part I of this article. Stay tuned to Inspect My Gadget for Part II of the Leopard Log…

Leopard is Apple’s brand new version 10.5 of the Mac OS X operating system – it continues the trend of naming their OS’s after jungle cats, and it’s their reply to Microsoft’s Windows Vista… It arrives this week. Will it have what it takes to out-”Wow” Vista ?

Developers and early testers have apparently found a lot to like with Leopard, both on the surface and under the hood. As IMG’s resident Mac guy, I’ll certainly be looking to get hold of a copy once it is released. I plan to keep a log of my experiences with Leopard, from the installation and first impressions, to detailed how-to’s. Stay tuned to Inspect My Gadget over the coming weeks as the saga unfolds.

In the meantime, Apple has posted a webpage which lists a grand total of
316 new features, tweaks and improvements that have gone into Leopard. For a small sample of my favourites, read on…

Obviously some features will appeal or detract more than others depending on what kind of user you are, but here are some of the ones from the list that I’m looking forward to, in no particular order:

• Time Machine - this one will be huge. It finally brings ‘set-&-forget’ automated backups to the average user, and makes it dead easy. It’ll certainly make external hard drive manufacturers very happy.
• Spaces - Apple’s implementation of virtual desktops/workspaces. The concept has been around for some time, but it’s never come standard with a mainstream OS until now. I will be interested to see what kind of uses I can make from it.
• New Desktop & Screensavers - What can I say, I’m always a sucker for system software bling.
• Stacks - I’ve always been into reducing desktop clutter, this looks like it’ll be a great way to do it.
• DVD Player - now has a new interface, better handling of scratched discs, and improved video deinterlacing. Already a substantial improvement on the original – now all it needs is support for interactive content and I’ll be a happy camper.
• Instant Screen Sharing - FINALLY a way to view & control another Mac on a network without having to shell out money for Apple Remote Desktop. Microsoft has had free Remote Desktop connection built in to Windows for years. It’s about time, Apple! (<– I didn’t write that!, Ed)
• Folder Sharing - previously if you wanted to share content on a network, you had to do it from your Home “Public” folder (unless you had Mac OS X Server). Now any folder can be shared. Again, Windows has had this feature for some time – good to see it come to the Mac.
• Font Auto-Activation - As a graphic designer, I’m very happy about this one. If a program specifically requests a font that’s disabled, Leopard will activate that font for as long as that program is open, and disable it again when it quits. Previously, you needed a third party program like Suitcase to do this sort of thing.
• Core Animation & updated OpenGL - This is more for developers, but the possibilities for the end user are fantastic.
• Wireless Capture - Lets you import images from Wi-Fi & Bluetooth cameras & devices. Sounds like it’ll be a great way to get photos directly off my mobile phone without resorting to Bluetooth File Exchange.
• Network Scanning Support - The office I work in will benefit from this one.
• Mail - I couldn’t care less about the new HTML formatting templates and RSS feeds in Apple’s email program, but I can certainly see how the integrated Notes & To-Do’s can be handy.
• Preview - Apple’s basic image & PDF viewing app just got less basic! I’m blown away by almost every feature Apple has listed under this heading. Suffice to say that certain things you used to need Adobe Acrobat Professional for, you can now do with Preview.
• Printing - Again, I’m looking forward to just about every feature listed in this section. Location-aware printing will certainly be a godsend for laptop owners, and improved CUPS support will further open the Mac to third-party & open source printer driver development.
• Resizable Disk Partitions - Previously the only way to resize disk partitions was to reformat the drive. This is nothing short of amazing.
• Guest Login - FINALLY! I really don’t know why this didn’t come to the Mac sooner. While it is possible to create a user account with limited access privileges and call it “Guest”, it’s good to be able to set up a PROPER Guest account.
• TextEdit - Now it can handle MS Word 2007 and OpenDocument
  (OpenOffice) formats. Just how well it can maintain formatting & layout remains to be seen, but at least it can open them.

Obviously, there’s more I could choose from, but at the risk of regurgitating what’s already on Apple’s website, I invite you to click here to check out the full list for yourself. The list doesn’t even cover the features that Mac OS X Server will include!

I’ll be writing up on my experiences with Mac OS X Leopard once I manage to get hold of a copy, so keep an eye out here at Inspect My Gadget.

However, as powerful as Unix is, unless you’re a hardcore computer geek or a programmer, it’s still somewhat difficult to grasp for the rest of us mere mortals (yours truly included!) who have been brought up on a steady diet of mouse pointers, icons and windows. This has provided a golden opportunity for independent Mac developers – you’ll find a lot of shareware/freeware programs that exist now for the Mac are essentially a friendly graphical front-end to a set of complex Unix commands.

Which brings me to Tinkertool, one of those items of software I personally can’t imagine doing without. TinkerTool lets you tweak Mac OS X’s default settings in ways that you wouldn’t normally have been able to do unless you knew Unix – as such, it doesn’t provide any new features, it just brings already-existing features out of hiding.

Among the tweaks which are now possible:

• Change the default file format for screenshots (PNG is the Mac default, but you can set it to JPG, TIF, BMP & more).
• Change the default system fonts.
• Show hidden system files (Be careful with this one – those files are hidden for a reason!)
• If you don’t like Apple’s Dashboard, you can now disable it completely.
• Disable those hidden files that tend to show up on a PC when you’re sharing files across a Mac-PC network.
• Make dock icons turn semi-transparent to show that a program is hidden (a personal favourite of mine)
• Group scrollbar arrows together at either ends of a window, to save mouse mileage (very useful if you’re dealing with extra-large
  windows)

…Plus heaps more. Download Tinkertool from Bresink.com and give it a spin – you’ll find all sorts of subtle ways to make your Mac OS work the way you want it. And just like any other software we endorse here at Inspect My Gadget, it’s completely free!

A recent IMG Quickie article “Windows Software: PDF Creator” told about a free utility for creating PDFs in Windows, but what about Mac OS X? Fortunately and conveniently, Mac OS X comes with the ability to create PDFs built-in. In fact, you can create a PDF from just about any Mac program around, even if that program doesn’t offer the feature itself.

You access this ability from the Print dialog box – basically, if you can print it, you can PDF it. Click the “PDF” button at the bottom left of the Print dialog box, and you are given a list of options. 
Select “Save as PDF”, it’ll ask for a name & location to save your new PDF to, and voila – instant PDF!

You may want to take the time to check out some of the other options; for instance, if you think the PDF is going to be too big, select “Compress PDF”. If you’re security-conscious, you can select “Encrypt PDF”. Or if you want a quick way to create a PDF and then attach it to an email in one fell swoop, you can select “Mail PDF”.

However, Mac OS X also has its own distinct personality quirks & features. The current version of the operating system – 10.4, also known as “Tiger” – was released in April 2005. Its stand out features are listed here:

• Spotlight
• Dock
• Sidebar
• Smart Folders
• Expose
• Dashboard

This article, which I’ll be presenting in two parts, aims to cover most of Mac OS X’s unique features & methodology, and in particular how to use them to your advantage.

Part 1 which follows will cover Spotlight, the system-wide search feature, as well as the Dock & Sidebar. Part 2 will cover Smart Folders, Exposé and Dashboard.

Spotlight

Spotlight is the Mac’s system-wide Search feature, which created a b ig splash when Tiger was first released in 2005. With it, you can search not only for files or programs by name, but you can also search for almost anything else that has anything to do with that name, like Address Book contacts, Mail messages, iCal events and lots more.

Actually, there’s a bit of debate over who came up with the idea first – Apple & Microsoft were both working on the concept for their upcoming operating systems. Search exists on Vista as well as Tiger, and the feature works very well on both, but there’s no denying that Apple were first to the party.

To use Spotlight, you start by clicking on the blue magnifying glass in the top-right corner of your screen and start typing. Spotlight will immediately start returning search results as you type, sorting them by Kind. When you see your results appear, just highlight the one you want, or select “Show All” to see every result.

Spotlight technology permeates throughout the whole operating system. You’ll find that almost any window you open has a textbox in the top right corner with a little magnifying glass in it. Type your words here, and Spotlight will do its thing.

The Dock and Sidebar

The Dock in Mac OS X works a bit like the Taskbar in Windows, but more fluid. It shows what programs are currently running (shown by a little black marker), and also contains shortcuts to things that you make use of most frequently. Items on the left of the dividing line are applications, and items on the right are anything else – Files, folders, servers, whatever.

To customise it, just drag icons onto it, or off it. Drag an icon along the dock to rearrange its order. Drag the dividing line to make the Dock bigger or smaller. A word of reassurance: When something is dragged off the Dock or Sidebar, it disappears in a puff of smoke. Don’t worry! You haven’t deleted anything – just the shortcut. The original item is still safe   

If you want to change the way the Dock behaves, select ‘Dock’ from the Apple Menu, or just right-click the dividing line.

The Sidebar, which can be found on the left side in all Finder windows and Save dialogs, works pretty similar to the Dock in that it keeps shortcuts to files and places you use most often. You customise it the same way, by dragging icons onto it and off it.

Stay tuned for Part 2, where we’ll be highlighting some more of Tiger’s nifty features! Please stick around and check out some other articles at Inspect My Gadget.

However, Mac OS X also has its own distinct personality quirks & features. The current version of the operating system – 10.4, also known as “Tiger” – was released in April 2005. Its standout features are listed here:

• Spotlight
• Dock
• Sidebar
• Smart Folders
• Expose
• Dashboard

Welcome to Part 2 of our Beginners’ guide to the Mac OS X “Tiger” operating system! In Part 1, we looked at Spotlight, the system-wide search feature, and the handy Dock and sidebar. Now we look at Smart Folders, and two pretty nifty screen features.

Smart Folders

You may have already seen a similar concept in iTunes, known as Smart Playlists. Well, Apple took the concept beyond iTunes and made it a standard part of the Mac system. Smart Folders are actually an extension of Spotlight (see Part 1) – basically they’re Saved Searches.

To create one, just select ‘New Smart Folder’ from the File menu, feed it some criteria (eg. “All Word Documents on the Computer created in the last 30 days”), and click the ‘Save’ button. This creates a purple folder which fills with the names of all the files from anywhere in your system that meet the criteria you specified.

A similar feature exists on Windows Vista, called ‘Virtual Folders’, which works on the same principle. Both are an excellent way of organising your files!

Exposé

Exposé is a truly nifty way of managing a whole lot of open windows, cutting through the clutter and letting you jump straight to the window you want, or just hiding them altogether. Trust me, you won’t want to go back once you’ve tried it! 

(Incidentally, Microsoft introduced a similar feature in Vista called Flip3D, but I’m going to be a little biased here and say that Apple does a much better job of it). 

To use it, you just press F9, F10 or F11.

F9 will take every window you’ve got open in every program and lay them out so you can see them all side-by-side (see picture). Just click on the one you want, and it will jump you straight there.

F10 does the same thing, but only for the program you’re currently in.

F11 moves all windows out of the way so you can see your desktop.

You can customise the way Exposé works by going to Apple Menu > System Preferences > Dashboard & Exposé. For example, if you don’t like having to reach for the keyboard every time, you can have Exposé activate when you, say, move the mouse into a corner or if you press the middle mouse button.

Dashboard

Dashboard gives you access to a whole bunch of mini-programs called ‘Widgets’. There are widgets for all sorts of things like Weather, Stock Quotes, Unit Conversions, Calculators and heaps more.

Basically, this is Apple’s implementation of an idea that was kick-started by a shareware program called Konfabulator (which Yahoo! later bought from its authors, rebadged ‘Yahoo! Widgets’ and is now a free download from Yahoo’s website).

It works a bit differently from Windows Vista’s Gadgets and Yahoo’s Widgets in that Dashboard widgets don’t constantly remain on the desktop – rather, they stay hidden away until you need them. Just press a key (F12) to summon them, then press it again to dismiss them.

To customise your Dashboard, press F12 and then click the little + sign at the bottom left of the screen. You will then be presented with a collection of widgets – just drag the ones you want onto the screen. You can even put more than one instance of the same widget onscreen (for example, one copy of the Weather widget for Sydney, and one for London).

Each widget has a little ‘i’ in the bottom corner. Click it and you can access that widget’s settings.

My personal Dashboard contains widgets for quick post-it notes, Wikipedia searching, and a regular selection of the daily comics; so I’ve personally been finding it handy 

That ends our introductory article on Mac OS X’s main features – we hope you’ve found it useful. Please stick around and check out some of our other articles at Inspect My Gadget.