Web Worker Daily

Now that Apple’s new Leopard version of OS X is shipping, you may be wondering whether it’s time to upgrade. Certainly the $129 price tag is enough to give some people pause for a minor version increment - especially knowing that Apple will be back in another year or so asking for another swipe of the credit card to upgrade to OS X 10.6. Sure, there are those 300 new features to think about - but how many of them are really going to make a bottom line difference to the average web worker?

Well, like most things in the computer world, it depends. If you’ve already spent a lot of time and effort setting up third party software to optimize your connected life, and you’re happy with the way that everything fits together, you might not find a whole lot more than eye candy in Leopard. On the other hand, if you’re open to trying new integrated functionality, or haven’t dug deeply into add-ons, much of this might be new to you. Here’s our pick of the best Leopard innovations for the OS X user on the go.

Instant Screen Sharing and Back to My Mac - It’s just VNC, but it’s integrated perfectly into Finder and it seems to be better optimized than other VNC forks I’ve tried for OS X. In any case, it’s now dirt simple to control one Mac from another, across the network or across the internet.

Web Clips - If you love Dashboard and you love the web, this is a marriage made in heaven for you. Open a page in Safari, clip out any section you want, and you get an instant (and live) custom Dashboard widget. Top news stories, Gmail inbox, Twitter…they can all live on your Dashboard now.

Safari Speedup - The new version of Safari is faster than ever, with a prettier interface (try the new Find), better tab management, and a history searching feature. I still prefer the flexibility of Firefox addins, but I’ve got to admit that operating system integration has its highlights as well.

iCal Overhaul - With inline editing, event attachments, group scheduling support, delegation, offline calendaring and more, iCal is now a much more serious program. If you’ve been relying on a non-Apple calendar app, it may be time to re-evaluate switching back to the native iCal instead.

Better VPN Compatibility -  If you’re trying to connect to a Cisco VPN, or get an IP address via DHCP over PPP, Leopard may well work better for you than Tiger did. This is one for the telecommuters among us.

Wikipedia/Dictionary - I haven’t decided whether this is really useful or just cute, but the built-in Dictionary now includes Wikipedia as one of its sources (as long as you have an internet connection, of course). You can look up the latest news on American Idol without even popping open a browser window now, and get it back with pretty formatting.

To-Dos and Notes in Mail - You probably already have your own favorite applications for tracking these little bits of miscellaneous information, but if you’re a new switcher from Windows, this will be a comforting bit of parity with Microsoft Outlook.

RSS in Mail - This probably won’t replace any other RSS reader you’ve been using, but if you want to have an RSS feed archived and accessible to rules and Spotlight it’s worth a look.

Time Machine - You already have a backup solution, right? No? Well, the new Time Machine backup is easy to set up, easy to use, and (of course) full of eye candy. There are already plenty of ways to back up your data but if this is the one that gets you to actually do it then the upgrade is worth doing.

Boot Camp - No longer beta, it’s worth mentioning the Boot Camp support for dual-booting Windows simply because this is the feature that’s made it possible for many web workers of my acquaintance to move to OS X in the first place. If you’re stuck with just those few Windows applications that you need to run on a regular basis, this is one of the “have your cake and eat it too” solutions (though many people prefer Parallels or Fusion).

Of course, there are lots of other new features as well - these are just the ones that scream out “web worker” the loudest. Now, what you need to do is balance your desire for new features and cutting edge against the chance that something bad will happen during the upgrade (back up your critical data first!) and the expense. Some of us here at WWD made the jump in the first few hours of Leopard’s availability, others are hanging back to wait for “must-have” third party applications that depend on the new OS. Either way, you can still be a web worker!

Did we miss your favorite new feature? Tell us how it helps your web working career!