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Mac OS X Services in Snow Leopard

Mac OS X Services let one application supply its powers to another; for example, a Grab service helps TextEdit paste a screenshot into a document. Most users either don't know that Services exist, because they're in an obscure hierarchical menu (ApplicationName > Services), or they mostly don't use them because there are so many of them.

Snow Leopard makes it easier for the uninitiated to utilize this feature; only services appropriate to the current context appear. And in addition to the hierarchical menu, services are discoverable as custom contextual menu items - Control-click in a TextEdit document to access the Grab service, for instance.

In addition, the revamped Keyboard preference pane lets you manage services for the first time ever. You can enable and disable them, and even change their keyboard shortcuts.


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Doug McLean

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Published in TidBITS 898.
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Macs & Mac OS X | 27 Sep 2007 | Listen  | Print Printer-Friendly Version of This Article

Apple Updates iWork '08 and Core 2 Duo Mac Firmware

by Jeff Carlson Send Email to Author

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Continuing its recent update spree, Apple released incremental versions of Keynote, Pages, and Numbers (collectively iWork '08), as well as firmware revisions for Intel-based Macs. The updates are available via Software Update or as stand-alone downloads. Unsurprisingly, the company doesn't offer much detail about what's changed other than performance improvements: Keynote 4.0.1 (31.1 MB download) also addresses issues with builds; Pages 3.0.1 (27.8 MB download) updates the change tracking feature; and Numbers 1.0.1 (26.1 MB download) addresses issues with tables.

The EFI firmware updates "improve the performance and reliability of Intel Core 2 Duo processors and fix issues with Boot Camp" and are available for iMac (3.9 MB), Mac Pro (2.8 MB), MacBook (1.7 MB), MacBook Pro (2.8 MB), and Xserve (1.5 MB) computers. Each installs an application in the Utilities folder (which is located in the Applications folder) that will update the firmware. Remember that doing so can lead to a dead computer if something goes wrong, so be sure you have a backup of your data; downloading Apple's Firmware Restoration CD 4.1 utility and making a disc from it isn't a bad idea either (although I had no trouble on my MacBook Pro).

 

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