New Features in Mac OS X 10.6 coming soon!

For those Mac fans out there that have been eagerly anticipating the new release of OS X 10.6 and dying to see what is coming soon the wait is almost over. While Apple told us the changes to 10.6 would be performance and under the hood changes and no new features we knew the people at Apple couldn't resist giving us new features and making our user experience just a little bit better.

In a recent YouTube posting LeopardOctober put up a video showing off some of the new features that are coming to Snow Leopard. Some of the new features that are coming to 10.6 include expanded data detectors, The Put Back Feature, Slider to adjust icon size right on the Finder, Stacks support Scrolling and drill down, Videos are playable right in the thumbnail icon, Click and drag screen shots with time date stamps in the file names, Services now alphabetized by type, plus expanded keyboard shortcut options. These are a few of the leaked cosmetic changes that are on top of the under the hood stuff that the user won't see but will definitely feel.

The Data Detectors were added in 10.5 and allow you to click on a phone number or a date and add it to your phone book or your calendar depending on the data type. It is an easy way to move appointments or other data from Mail into other apps and not have to retype information.

The Put Back Feature will allow you to go to your Trash Can and move files back to where they came from.

The Slider to adjust icon size while minor is a convenience that works well with playing Quicktime movies right in the thumbnail.

Stacks Drill Down makes this new feature in 10.5 much easier to use and creates a nice 3D effect to let you know where you are and let you navigate around without having to open another Finder Window.

Services which has been around Mac OS for decades and has always been an under utilized feature in the Apple menu has been alphabetized by function to make it easier to use. It is a quick access to common functions right in the Apple Menu.

In 10.5 we got Quick Look to allow us to preview documents and videos by pressing the space bar. In 10.6 we can actually play videos right off the thumbnail icon and not even have to open Quick Look. While I wouldn't recommend watching your favorite movie that way it is a quick way to find something you are looking for in your library.

Under the hood 10.6 is getting quiet a makeover with a whole slew of new features and tighter code I will take a look at next week.

To take a look at the You Tube Video of these new features visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEGVFArP9yU

The promise of MobileMe

While many in the media have complained about MobileMe's new Back To My Mac feature as not working or unusable I say it is great step in the right direction. Don't get me wrong there are a lot of things still lacking in MobileMe I would love to see happen to give me more seamless access to my data.

First the Back To My Mac feature has worked very well in networks where outgoing ports are not blocked. UDP 4500 and TCP 443 need to be available for Back To My Mac to work on OS X 10.5 Leopard. Currently I have a G4 Tower, Macbook Pro, and an account on Mom's Powerbook G4. All of these machines show up in my network list in most places I go and I can easily access my G4's hard drives or use Screen Sharing to access the desktop.

Now with the latest update to my Airport Extreme base station I can now access my file share on that device wen I am away from home. The limit being it only supports one Mobile Me account and our family has two Mobile Me accounts. So only one of us gets access to the Airport Extreme while away from home but it is a step in the right direction.

Since I have an account on Mom's laptop since I used it while mine was being serviced last year I can Screen Share here computer where ever I am with a network connection and remote control her computer and help her with issues she might have or answer questions about her Mac.

To make this work well. The first thing I did was plug my Airport Extreme WAN port into my cable modem. My Vonage router plugs into the LAN port on my Airport Extreme and works great. If you are using a Linksys or Netgear device then look at NAT-PMP (Network Address Translation - Port Mapping Protocol) or UPNP (Universal Plug n Play), or open the TCP 443 and UDP 4500 and point them at your Mac. As long as there is nothing preventing outbound traffic while you are away from home and your computer doesn't go to sleep you should have access to your Mobile Me.

If you have questions or issue with your Mobile Me drop me an email or comment and I will take a look at it.