With PGP installed, upgrading to Leopard can produce hard-to-pinpoint slowdowns, as I saw with a beta of email program Mailsmith. But uninstalling the software or upgrading to a Leopard-compatible beta solves the problem.
BBEdit 8.7.1 is a fairly minor update, though with welcome changes and fixes. Adam also explains how to configure BBEdit to protect from remote data loss.
Microsoft has just made available the Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.3.9 Update, which solves a crashing bug in Word 2004 when you try to print a document.
Apple touted Leopard's firewall as an improvement over Tiger, but security consultant Rich Mogull found significant problems with how it works and makes some suggestions for better security.
Apple has quietly updated the MacBook and MacBook Pro with slightly faster processors and a few other minor, though welcome, improvements. Less welcome in the enterprise world is the implied requirement than the new MacBook run only Leopard.
Spotlight on Leopard is so much better than Spotlight on Tiger, it could be a major reason for upgrading. It's full of power user tricks you might not realize are there - until you read this article, that is!
Now that Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is released, we're starting to see an expected set of updates and incompatibilities. Login and Keychain Update 1.0 corrects issues with accounts created in early versions of Mac OS X; the new Back to My Mac feature could allow someone with access to your .Mac account to take control of your machine; Apple warns Aperture users not to run the software while Time Machine is performing a backup; and a slew of compatibility updates are also available.
If you're still hanging on to Classic, and to fonts that exist only in Classic, this might be a good time to straighten out any old font suitcases that you want to bring forward into Leopard.
Few people have trouble viewing a PDF, but clicking links in PDFs is another story. If you've ever had trouble clicking a link in a PDF to go to a Web site, or have been nagged incessantly by Adobe Reader about visiting Web sites, read on for how to take control of your PDF-reading software.
If you use QuicKeys and are planning to upgrade to Leopard, make sure to install QuicKeys X3 3.2 first to ensure compatibility. You'll also find some new features and welcome bug fixes.
Apple has released Apple Remote Desktop 3.2 Admin and Client, fixing a variety of nagging bugs, improving performance in several situations, and adding Leopard compatibility.
When faced with the dreaded "The startup disk is almost full." error message, Adam turns to a pair of free tools for exploring how disk space is being used.
Battery Update 1.3 improves performance of batteries for 15-inch MacBook Pro portables by updating their firmware.
Apple has released MacBook, MacBook Pro Software Update 1.0 to enable journaling on the hard disks of the latest laptop models.
Mac OS X 10.4.10 doesn't know about the new daylight savings time rules that take effect on 30-Sep-07 in New Zealand, but New Zealand Mac users can fix their Macs with a free utility from Glenn Anderson.