Just to warn you, you may need to squint to read the text…apologies.

The benefits of this, for me at least, are plain to see…Dock space, quick access and genuinely cool. As i mentioned, it works with any site. All you need to do is follow the instructions in Todd’s video which takes literally 2 minutes and you’re done.

My favorite sites for this to work with are:

Google Reader:

Pownce:

FriendFeed:

Twitter

Plurk:

Google + osx = floats my boat.

There are two kinds of memory- long term memory which goes on your hard drive; which is where documents are stored. This isn’t usually referred to as ‘memory’ but rather ‘hard disk’, ‘drive’ or simply ’space’. Hard drive space limits how much stuff like music you can hold and store.

Then there is the short term memory; which is usually what is meant by the word ‘memory’. This is ‘volitile’ that is, it’s all lost when you turn off your computer. It is used to hold temporary data, like the programs you are working on, pictures you’re looking at etcetera or the music iTunes will be playing in the next 10 minutes.

The size of ‘memory’ is what defines how much multi-tasking you can do: and the ‘memory’ in both versions is the same- 2GB, which is probably more than enough for most of the things you’re likely to want to do on a laptop.

The ‘hard-drive’ is what differs between models.

• The cheaper version is *larger*- 80GB; and is made of moving parts, similar to a CD drive locked in a case. This option uses the same hard drive as a large iPod (the ones you can hear clicking and whirring).

• The more expensive version is highly unusual- it uses ’solid state’ memory; with no moving parts. The upside is it’s more reliable, uses less power, and is smaller and lighter. It’s also faster to read and write from- this means that ”memory” and CPU intensive things like image manipulating wont be much different, but reading, moving, deleting, downloading large documents will be faster.

• The downside is it’s a lot more expensive, and the more expensive model is actually smaller (64GB). This is the same memory as in use in the iPod nanos.

Apple speculate you will use the time machine function to store most of your data on an external drive (or home desktop) ; and you’ll only store current documents on your laptop (or you’ll use online facilities like Google Docs).

Thank you for much better, clearer & in fact - correct explanation Alex. Trent, you’re fired.

Update
For a thorough technical comparison of the two, have a read of this from Ars Technica

Firstly, you should know you can search any site with quicksilver simply by visiting the site (with Safari), typing “***” (without the “) into the search space on the site and then bookmarking the results page with whatever name you want to type in quicksilver to search the site.

For example, to search amazon.com:

1. Visit Amazon.com with Safari and search for ***

2. The results page should be this

3. Then bookmark this page and call it Amazon Search.

4. Now bring up Quicksilver and ensure you rescan your catalog. Give it 20-30 secs or so and then type “Amazon Search”, press tab, then tab again and type “.” (without the “) to allow you to type what you’re wanting to search for and search for “AnyItemOnAmazon”.

5. Voila.

_______________________________

NOW TO SEARCH GMAIL…it’s a little more tricky as you’ll find that gmail doesn’t change it’s url when you search for anything inside it.

So, you’ll need to do the following (if you’re using gmail.com):

1. Type : http://mail.google.com/mail/?search=query&view=tl&start=0&init=1&fs=1&q=*** into Safari

2. Bookmark the results page and call it something like “Gmail Search”

3. Bring up Quicksilver using your launch shortcut - rescan your catalogue

4. Type “Gmail Search” (without the “), press tab, tab again and then “.” to enable the text space and type whatever it is you’re wanting to search for.

5. Done Diddy

ps. If you’re using google apps for your domain, this is the url you need to bookmark:

mail.google.com/a/XYZ.COM/?search=query&view=tl&start=0&init=1&fs=1&q=***

1. If you use f9 or f10 for expose frequently & you also happen to have a number of different applications appear, you can scroll through each individual application on your desktop by clicking ‘tab’.

2. Another useful tip is to click on f9 or f10, either will work and then press command-tab to bring up the application switcher. This will then give you the opportunity to bring to the front the application’s window that you’re looking to get to.

The two tips come in particularly useful if you’re a) primarily a keyboard user b) tend to have multiple applications open on one desktop ’space’.

These may be familiar to an old school mac user, but to relative newbies I hope this is of some help. Ciao for now.

So here we are, 26th October that is… We’ve waited for this for a long, long time. Unless you’ve been locked up, everyone should know what I’m talking about. Before I do, let me make it clear that i’m using a white macbook. I say this because it has been pointed out to me that there some substantial differences between using Leopard on a macbook compared to say, an imac. BIG is generally better people. Ok, let’s make a start.

The Box

I received the package this afternoon with freshly brewed Mac OS X Leopard. Fresh and hot Leo blew a breeze of innovation and progress towards my nostrils. The box itself is a small, cd album sized package. It contains 1 dvd, a manual (more a “show-off booklet”) and of course 2 Apple stickers. Nothing impressive? Take a closer look at the box. It has this holographic effect mirrored around the huge familiar “X”. Amazing effect.

Desktop

Installation (well I upgraded my Tiger) took about 40 minutes and boom - a reboot. Login screen looks the same as in Tiger (aww, I was counting on something new from the beginning, even just a small touch would have been nice…), after a short while system loaded up correctly and finally I could try Leopard on my own!

It’s easy to see, the desktop has been designed to match all the new Apple products (the ilife & iwork suite.)

Menu

Can you see what i’m getting at here? I’ve no doubt it was a hard decision for Apple to make the menu semi-transparent. I can see it has changed from the early beta shots as it’s now more solid. Works really nice with darker pictures, getting worse with light or highly saturated images. Anyway I do love it! Although i’m sure some people out there would have wanted Apple to simply give them the option of transparent or not. But hey, the reason I switched to Macs not so long time ago was the fact that I hated everything about Windows’ design and colors. It was really distracting and full of contrast, nasty colors etc.

The new system has probably every kind of window, menu or dialog toned to one shade of matte grey which is fantastic. It’s even less distracting than Tiger and lets you focus on your work easily, although on non-native mac apps such as firefox & flock the difference is styles is pretty noticeable…but i’m sure these will be updated in no time.

The drop-down boxes in the menus have rounded corners at the bottom which just give it a nicer look and not much else - but it’s the details people, it’s the details.

The other thing which was fortunately added to the menu look is the ‘engraved’ effect. Now each application has that Garageband window look which means the title looks like it’s been literally engraved into the aluminum window. The text gains sharpness, it’s easier to read it and it looks sweet, voila.

Dock

Let the battle begin! I can see the fights between Tiger Dock Lovers and Leopard Dock Lovers already… This is a really hard point to write about. The dock itself looks slick, classy and it’s more or less cover flow added to the dock. The 3D look gives it more ‘gadgety’ feeling and ok the mirror effect does it as well. I guess this is the only aspect of the Leopard UI that could distract the user. The small arrows indicating is the application running have been replaced with these bright spotlights. Not the best thing to have done… Say what you like but I’m more than sure that the mirror effect is using a good chunk of memory and it’s another process for your cpu to think about. But yeah… Apple likes to improve the design for the cost of performance. It’s not their first time they’ve this. Second thing are the strange shadows behind the icons in dock. Is there 2 of them?

Ok I assume its to give the user a stage light experience? If you want to get rid of the stage, then take a look at this. It works great!Icon one! Finder! Number one file managing application, bravo! Works great, design wise…boring & far too itunes like. The folder icons Apple have added to Leopard are dull blue - boring hospital blue. It looks like Candy Bar are going to be profiting from this over the next few years, once they update it!!The stacks? They’re definitely useful and they do look good…well, almost. Could you also please tell me what that blasted light line is doing there to the bottom of the dock?

Coverflow

Ok, Apple really can be proud of this. I was amazed at how quickly Coverflow works in Finder. What’s more important - How beautiful it is! Icons in Leopard are extended to 512×512 pixels and all of OSX’s native icons are upgraded to that size too. They are sharp, crisp and oh so yummy. Browsing through them is pure pleasure. It works smoothly even on my MacBook, the files are pre-cached in fraction of a second. Great functionality…

Front Row

Heavily disappointed. The zoom out effect which was present in Tiger when starting Front Row is gone. Now it just fades out to black. Bottom-line it’s basically Apple TV layout and design.

Other Worthwhile Mentions:

• You’ll notice the top window, i.e. the window you’re currently using, is slightly darker a matte grey than the other lower windows. You’ll also notice a more prominent shadow over the windows underneath…Worth a mention.

Xcode 3.0 and Objective-C 2.0 are coming too! I guess it’s high time to learn Cocoa and start developing native applications for Mac OS.

If you still don’t know what’s new in Leopard, here’s a list of 300 new features implemented. Give it a try, worth reading.

To give you an example of the ideal time you could use the app…Say you & a bunch of your friends attended a wedding. Actually, let’s take it a step further - its’ YOUR wedding and you want every single photo from the beautiful day. A week or so after the big day, your friends upload their photos - you login to photobook & in a matter of minutes you’ve got all their photos sitting in your iphoto. The only downside…they’re not high-res but that’s hardly PhotoBook’s problem.

Oh, and one final point before I show you a couple of screenshots - it costs nothing, nada, zilch (at the moment) and you can download it here.