Stacks is pretty much Leopard’s only non-eyecandy change to the dock, and it had the potential to be pretty handy, but the fact that the icon representing the stack is whatever the top file in the folder happens to be really ruins it (for me at least). However, if you haven’t yet given up on stacks and thrown them off your dock, there is a solution: overlaying stacks icons.

In essence, these are just small-ish semi-transparent icons that are permanently our top icon. This picture explain it best (before & after):

Original post & creators of icons: here (Japanese, hence my post)

Download link: here

Now, to get the icons to stay on top of our stacks is a little tricky. First we obviously need to put the icons into the stacks folder(s). We could name the icon 0.app and sort by name to keep them up top, but this isn’t really practical for the Downloads stack, so we’re going to change the access modified date using the unix command touch. So open up Terminal and follow this example, replacing the location and name of the icon where neccessary.

	cd ~/Downloads 	

	touch -mt 202001010101.01 " Downloads "

This will change the date modified of the icon to 1st January, 2020. Obviously you’ll need to change ” Downloads ” to whatever the folder/icon is named. The example is with the downloads stack but you can do it for any of them. Now just make sure your stack is sorting by date modified (ctrl-click/right-click the stack and Sort by:). Repeat for other stacks and enjoy.

As a kind of update to Bryce’s post Quick Look Your Folder, the same developer has now released a Quick Look plugin that allows you to check all the files archived into a .zip one. The link is here.

Just recently I came across a fantastic little Plugin for Leopard users. Using the plugin from Taiyo@hatena, it’s now possible to Quick Look (a new feature of OS X 10.5) any folder. That way there’s no need to open a folder when you’re not sure if what you’re looking for is inside it.

The plugin’s available HERE.

Apple recently posted a solution to the Blue Screen error on their website (FINALLY). Check it out here, or read below:

Mac OS X 10.5: “Blue screen” appears after installing Leopard and restarting

Issue or symptom:
After completing an upgrade installation of Leopard and restarting the computer, a “blue screen” may appear for an extended period of time.
Products affected

* Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

Solutions

You may have third-party “enhancement” software installed that does not work with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Use one of these solutions.

Solution 1: Reinstall Leopard (recommended)

It may be necessary to perform an Archive and Install installation of Leopard. Archive and Install moves your existing Mac OS X system files to a folder named Previous System, and then installs a new copy of Mac OS X on the selected volume. Mac OS X–installed applications, such as Address Book and Safari, are archived, and new versions are installed in the Applications folder. Applications, plug-ins, and other software may have to be reinstalled after an “Archive and Install.” This is covered on page 7 of the Install & Setup Guide included on the Leopard DVD.

Read the rest of this entry »

Before

If you’ve installed Leopard, you may noticed the folder design has changed to a more 3D-like design/Flat design. Vote in the poll on the right sidebar or comment with your thoughts!

————————————————————–

After

Hello itsALLmac readers! I am writing to you from my MacBook (lucky I have one), as my iMac which I am currently installing Leopard on is not working.

Let me explain the problem in a collection of beautiful numbered dot-points, so you can get a better understand of what’s going on here:

1. Backed up iMac using Carbon Copy Cloner, that’s all smooth and easy.

2. Put Leopard disc into iMac, hoping to do an Upgrade installation so that I could just keep all files on the iMac on it, and continue with Leopard. However, it claims the internal hard drive cannot be installed onto, requesting that is reformatted to Mac OSX Extended (Journal), which I do, knowing that I have my back up for when this all starts working.

3. Installing fine, finishes after 1h - 2h, asks to Restart, which I do.

4. Computer starts loading up, goes through the standard white background (with Apple logo and spinning dial) loading up the computer, then the standard blue background. However, the blue background does not change, it remains like this, on-going.

There is more so keep reading if you would like to see what happened.
All Updates:

UPDATE 1: I now have the original Leopard installation disk. Put it in whilst holding down C and managed to pull up the original Leopard installation window. I am currently verifying the disk as instructed.

UPDATE 2: Disk was verified as “ok” which is good. I then erased the hard drive completely. Now am installing Leopard onto the hard drive as if it was a new computer. 1 hour 9 minutes remaining. Should be done sooner though. Will keep you posted.

UPDATE 3: All fixed. Yay yay yay.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sorry I’m 3 minutes late, but…

Yes what you are seeing right above, is the official Mac OSX 10.5 Leopard Background. It looks great, but unfortunately this is only a download of the image up to 1024×640.

Click here for other images sizes.
Comment if you have a bigger size!

Macrumors.com recently made a great post about a person who managed to get an early copy of the final Leopard build. Lucky guy.

Here’s an excerpt from their article which can be found here:

• All my applications and settings were retained
• Time Machine asked me on the first time I started in leopard, which of my five external Hard Drives should be used for backups. I didn’t have to configure anything else
• When I started Mail for the first time, it had to upgrade the mail database. After that, Mail is blazing fast!
• I told Mail to import my RSS Feeds from Safari but that didn’t work!
• Reading RSS in Mail is nice to have
• Tasks in Mail appear even if completed. That might be a bit distracting for some people
• Mail is FAST! Seeing is believing!
• Finder: Well, the first time it ran, it hanged! After killing the process, I was amazed by the speed and coverflow!
• Quick View: COOL - GREAT FEATURE
• Safari is blazing fast!
• .mac has the option to synchronize settings and Dock items
• Stacks: I am not impressed. I like the downloads stack though. I had to manually change the path in Mail and Safari though!
• Spaces: I created 4 Spaces and I find it a very cool feature, especially the live ala expose preview
• Applications start instantly, especially iLife and iWork!
• iCal is much better. There is an inline editor and an event drop box now
• Contacts is more or less the same
• iTunes seems much faster than before

This is great news, shame about the small bugs he mentioned, but maybe they were unique to this user.
Once again, thanks to Mac Rumors for this!

In all the excitement of Leopard coming out in 5 days from now, along with the ongoing posts about Leopard on itsALLmac.com, we have decided to revamp the website background with a new and exciting screenshot from the Leopard welcome video that we managed to get our hands on. Along with that, below is the link to a zip with 6 screenshots from the video. They are all pretty big so should be good for all of you 24inch screeners out there!

Download Leopard Welcome Images Pack!

Little preview:

Apple recently posted this new OSX Leopard Guided Video Tour, which can be viewed Here.
The tour is pretty decent, similar to the iPod Touch tour a little while ago, basically displaying some of the new features of Leopard.

8 Days. 22 Hours. 30 minutes. 29 Seconds. That is precisely how long it will be until Leopard is officially out, according to the Apple Home Page, which has just been updated with a nifty little countdown (see picture).
Just makes the wait seem even longer.