[Tips & Tricks] 100 Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.7.x) Features, Tips & Tricks (+1) :)

Yeah, it's kinda outdated. But a man gotta do what a man gotta do, right? Seriously, that's also kinda a bummer too *sigh* Nevertheless Me gotta use what tools Me got in hand, and that tool is an Early 2006 MacBook, so this OS X is also kinda the most latest OS she'll ever have. So bear with me and here's the 100 Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.7.x) Features, Tips & Tricks (+1) :) :) :)

1.       Battery Status

If you've secretly suspected that your MacBook's battery isn't working correctly, Snow Leopard can tell you what your geek senses have know all along. In the menu bar you can check the status of your battery, and hopefully you won't see "Service Battery."

2.       QuickTime X video record

Need to record a quick video with your iSight or USB camera? You can record directly from your iSight camera in QuickTime X. If you're lucky enough to have a higher-quality camera, you can not only choose the camera and audio source directly from the QuickTime X window, but also decide where the video will be saved.

3.       Language and texts

In the System Preferences, choose Language & Text. A new tab called Texts has a Symbol And Text Substitution feature. Type ( c ) and you get © among other commonly used symbols. Make your own shortcuts! Of course, the app in question has to support it, but in general, you can do things like type “awesome” to substitute your name, “address^^” to substitute your address, and so on.

4.       Time is relative

Automatically set the time zone you happen to be in. Navigate to the Date And Time preference in System Preferences and check off "Set time zone automatically using current location." Perfect for travelers.

5.       QuickTime 7 isn't dead yet

QuickTime X is great. It gives users most of the QuickTime Pro features for free. But for die-hard QuickTime users that need more than a few screencasts and minimal export control, you can install QuickTime 7 from the Snow Leopard disc. Check the Optional Installs folder. Open the Optional Installs, and there's QuickTime 7 ready to be installed. Snow Leopard will find your previous QuickTime 7 preferences, and adds your registration number to the QuickTime 7 preferences.

6.       No Leopard, no problem

If you're running Tiger on your machine, don't worry. You can install Snow Leopard without having Leopard installed on your Mac first. Apple would like you to purchase the $169 Mac Box Set, but you don't actually need to. You just saved a ton of money!

7.       OpenCL hungers for graphics cards

We've been told by Apple that OpenCL-enhanced applications will scream with compatible video cards. What happens if you cram your Mac Pro with multiple video cards? We asked Apple, and they said if an application is built to support OpenCL and the video cards are supported, the application will indeed get a speed boost.

8.       Start up in 64-bit

If you want to make the kernel start up in 64-bit, hold the 6 and 4 keys on the keyboard at startup. Though applications can still run in 64-bit while the OS is 32-bit, starting up in 64-bit will be marginally faster. Be wary of losing application support, though.

9.       32-bit kernel vs. 64-bit kernel

Is running a 64-bit kernel really that great? We talked to Apple about this, and they told us that what you're doing when you hold down the 6 and 4 buttons during startup is actually booting the kernel into 64-bit mode. For 99.999% of users out there, booting up as usual with the 32-bit kernel is more than adequate. Your 64-bit applications, including the Finder, will still run super quick while the kernel is in 32-bit mode. There is no difference in the speed of 64-bit applications while your kernel is in 32-bit mode. 64-bit mode is useful only to hardcore users and servers.

10.   But I just bought a Mac!

Don't worry if you bought a Mac on, or after, June 8. Apple's Up-to-Date program means you can get Snow Leopard for $10. Hurry though, you have until December 26, 2009. Which'll be here before you know it.

11.   Import from a scanner directly into Preview

You can now import directly from a scanner into Preview. You can even choose network scanners. Just go to File > Import From Scanner.

12.   Screenshot names are time stamped

No more Picture 1, Picture 2, Picture 3 screenshot files on your Desktop. Snow Leopard now uses a time stamp to name your files.

13.   Sync Address Book with Google and Yahoo

If you're sporting a Google or Yahoo account, you can now easily sync the Address Book with these accounts. Navigate to Address Book > Preferences, click the Accounts tab, and there you go.

14.   Rosetta isn't there by default

In Leopard, Rosetta is there when you need it. In Snow Leopard, the first time you try to install, or launch, a PowerPC app, you'll get a prompt to install Rosetta. Software Upload will launch and install Rosetta for you.

15.   Minimize windows into an application's Dock icon

In Leopard when you minimized a window, it flew to the right of the divider in the Dock. You can now have those minimized windows swoop down behind the app's icon in the Dock. You won't be able to see how many windows you'll have minimized at a glance, but with Dock Exposé, a thin line separates the regular windows from the minimized windows.

To switch to this mode, navigate to: System Preferences > Dock and check "Minimize windows into application icon."

16.   Where's Clean Install?

In order to clear up any confusion, Apple removed the "Clean Install" option from the Snow Leopard installer. Apparently, some folks didn't realize that a clean install erases the drive before installing. If you want to erase your intended drive before installation, click the Utilities button at the beginning of your install to use Disk Utility. After clicking Utilities, you'll be prompted to restart your Mac. After restart, navigate to the menubar Utilities > Disk Utility.

Sure, it's an extra step for you, but if it keeps your less-than-tech-savvy uncle from erasing all of his data while trying to install Snow Leopard, it's probably worth it.

17.   Will my scanner and or printer work?

Apple has posted a list of scanners and printers that will work with Snow Leopard. If in doubt, check it out. Apparently, Puppet Walt had an issue with his scanner. The poor old guy.

18.   Cisco VPN support

If you work from the road, or from home, you know how important Cisco VPN is. Snow Leopard has it baked right into the OS. To set up your VPN (you should check with your IT department) navigate to System Preferences > Network. Click on the small plus sign (+) in the lower-left corner. Choose VPN in the Select Interface drop-down. This is much better than opening a third-party application to get on the office server from home.

19.   Palm OS syncing gone

Uh-oh, if you're the owner of a device that runs the Palm OS (Treo, Centro, etc.), we have some bad news for you. Snow Leopard no longer supports Palm OS syncing, and since Palm has retired the OS, there's a good chance they won't be updating their software. Fortunately, you can grab a copy of The Missing Sync for Palm OS from Mark/Space. Good luck.

20.   Dock Exposé

This was the “ooh, ah” feature of the Snow Leopard demonstration at WWDC. Apple has taken steps to make sure Exposé is more awesome than ever before. One of the biggest improvements is that you only have to click and hold an icon in the Dock to trigger Exposé for all of that application's windows, instead of having to use a keyboard shortcut. This can be especially useful if you’re trying to quickly sort through all your Finder, Web browser, or word processing windows.

21.   Option-click in the Dock to force-quit

Holding down Option while clicking an app in the Dock has been a quick way to force quit an offending app. Force-quit is available when you right-click an app in the Dock or click and hold for Dock Exposé. You're also presented with Hide Others, a good way to hide all the apps except the one you have selected.

22.   Share your videos, get the URL right in the progress window

If you opt to share your videos from QuickTime X, you'll be presented with a progress window that uploads your video. Once the video is done, the progress window will display the URL for the video you've uploaded. This works with both MobileMe and YouTube.

23.   Nested Stacks

Stacks in Leopard wasn't exactly a fan favorite. The worst part was that it didn't work with certain folders. Though it was meant to reduce the number of clicks and windows you had to go through before getting to your file, if your folder had a number of subfolders, you would really only save one click. In Snow Leopard, if you click another folder within Stacks, it opens that folder within Stacks as well, with convenient back and forward buttons to jump through the folder hierarchy.

24.   Scrollable Stacks

In Leopard, Stacks adapted bigger folders by shrinking the icon sizes, often making very large stacks impossible to navigate. Stacks in Snow Leopard are fully scrollable, meaning the icons will stay a fixed, easy-to-read size, and if there are more items that can’t fit, you can scroll to them.

25.   Boot Camp HFS support

Covered here more extensively, Windows support via Boot Camp has improved drastically. Instead of your Mac being blind to the files on your PC side, and vice versa, they both have read-only access to the other partitions.

26.   6GB to 7GB of free space

One of the seemingly outlandish claims that Apple made during WWDC is that after installing Snow Leopard, you would be able to reclaim 6GB to 7GB of drive space. After installing it, we can verify this is true -- space for even more FLAC music, yay.

27.   Location support for third-party apps

With Snow Leopard, Apple is introducing a new Core Location framework that will extend location support to third-party apps. Similar to the feature of the same name in the iPhone, the first example of this is the new automatic time function in the OS X clock. It triangulates your position based on your IP address, and sets your time zone correspondingly, instead of merely updating from a network time server.

28.   Exchange support

By far the most talked about feature in 10.6 is Microsoft Exchange Support, because it will be a key selling point for Apple, in order to reach business customers. Though it only supports Exchange 2007 servers, it’s still very well integrated -- you can sync your contacts, calendars, and mail accounts as well. Interestingly enough, Snow Leopard is the only OS with Exchange support out of the box, as Windows 7 requires you to buy Office 2007 to get that functionality.

29.   Wi-Fi signal strength in menubar

If you are in a Wi-Fi hotspot, or merely a place with a lot of unsecured networks, it’s often hard to figure out which one to go with, because in Leopard, when you clicked on the AirPort menubar icon to find new networks, there was no indication of which network was better, save for the name (if it had an awesome name, the network is also awesome, obviously). In Snow Leopard, you can see the signal strength of these networks from the menubar, helping you make that decision.

30.   Basic malware protection

Snow Leopard has basic malware protection for Safari downloads. Apple is keeping a database of virus definitions, and if you download an executable that contains it, the OS will warn you, and recommend you abort. More importantly, this database will be updated via Software Update, and files that are infected will be marked as such in the Finder. Still, download smart.

31.   Finder rewritten in Cocoa

Though you won’t see too many aesthetic differences, the Finder in Snow Leopard has been rewritten from the ground up. This makes it more future proof, more flexible -- essentially, more everything. This move should also make Finder more stable, because it uses all the newest frameworks, as well as more extensible. Look forward to some huge feature updates in Finder’s future.

32.   Higher-Res iChat (640x480) / lower bandwidth req

Video chat can be painfully slow, and has frequent hangups, unless you have a high-speed connection, and you aren’t using your bandwidth in other ways. Snow Leopard’s iChat tries to fix this, at least partially, by lowering the bandwidth requirements of iChat. At the same time, the introduction of iChat Theater enables high-quality, 640x480, video chatting.

33.   Auto-update printer drivers

Software Update is looking to be more useful in Snow Leopard. Not only does it update virus definitions, but is also going to update your printer drivers. This is often more elegant than having to update them manually, from the manufacturer's website.

34.   Draw Chinese characters on the TrackPad

If you happen to write Chinese and want to communicate with your business partners in China, you won’t have to buy a Chinese keyboard anymore. Snow Leopard’s revamped Language And Text preference pane has revamped the Chinese character input completely. You can draw the actual characters on your trackpad, and it recognizes the characters as you type.

35.   Empty Trash more reliable

Have you ever tried to empty the Trash, only to find that something is “in use,” when you know it most definitely is not in use. Snow Leopard tries to make the Empty Trash process faster and more reliable than ever before. However, it still stops the delete if you are, say, watching a movie and trying to delete it at the same time.

36.   Ejecting media more reliable

Along the same lines, Snow Leopard wants to make ejecting media, whether USB hard drives, CDs, or DVDs, more reliable. Hopefully this means the annoying beach ball of death doesn’t pop up when you hit the Eject button on your keyboard.

37.   Different statuses for different accounts in iChat

If you are using iChat with multiple accounts, but want to keep your status on your corporate IM account different than that of your personal AIM account, now you can. Apple clearly wants you to stop defecting to third-party chat clients like Adium, so it might be the time to give iChat a second chance.

38.   Split-pane Terminal

If you have certain scripts that you have running all the time, it might be a good idea to keep a split-pane Terminal. While the two panes will mirror the same command, you can scroll to different positions within each pane, allowing you to monitor different parts of the same output at the same time. The other cool feature of the new Terminal is a new default font, which, while doesn’t add anything in particular, is definitely prettier.

39.   Accept event invitations from within mail

A hidden gem in iCal is the ability to auto-add events from Mail. Say your friend emails you, inviting you to a party on a given date. If you enable the feature, iCal will pull the relevant information from the message, including location and date, and create a new event.

40.   Black bezel for the Dock's contextual menus

A small UI change Apple made with Snow Leopard was changing the contextual menus for Dock items (accessed by right-clicking something in the Dock) to black glassy menus. It looks much better -- we just wish the same courtesy was extended to other contextual menus as well.

41.   Icons can be up to 512x512

The new Finder has a zoom slider in the bottom right of each window, allowing you to zoom the icons inside up to 512x512 pixels, without having to go into Cover Flow.

42.   Live previews in icons

The enlarged icons allow for an actual preview of the files, so that’s exactly what Apple enabled. You can live-preview the documents represented by the icons, like movies, music, PDFs, and even certain presentations. While we may still use Quick Look instinctively, this is an easy option to preview file contents even faster.

43.   Grand Central Dispatch

Another major feature that doesn’t affect the average user at all, Grand Central Dispatch is a framework that allows for simple multi-core threading in applications built in Xcode. What this means is that more OS X apps are going to be able to harness the extra power of dual-core CPUs, meaning that you can waste time playing games even faster than before.

44.   App-Relevant Services

Even if you are a Leopard user, you probably don’t use Services, which are AppleScripts that can trigger different events across applications. Even if you have accidentally clicked the menu item at some point, you would have likely seen a lot of grayed out options, and wondered exactly why they chose to include useless things. Snow Leopard corrects this by only putting things in the Services menu that you can actually use. Furthermore, Automator workflows that you create will be added to the Services menu, making it something that you might actually want to click on in the future.

45.   Revamped Image Capture

Image Capture is sort of the little brother to Preview, iPhoto, and the multitude of other photo-organizing apps that you have on your Mac, but it is a great bare-bones way to get pictures off a scanner, camera, or even iPhone. Snow Leopard features a completely redone Image Capture that features more information, an iTunes-esque interface, and faster importing.

46.   Sticky Notes keyboard shortcut

One of the things Microsoft brags about is Windows 7's sticky notes, which hang around obnoxiously with your tasks. Apple has had these since Tiger, but in Snow Leopard, they have one cool feature that Windows doesn’t. You can assign a keyboard shortcut (System Preferences > Keyboard) that automatically creates a sticky note with whatever text is currently selected. This is great for clipping notes, text fields, and so on, from anywhere around your Mac.

47.   Text labels in Exposé

Speaking of another completely redone feature, the new Exposé features text labels under every window that is currently displayed, especially useful if you can’t actually tell what the window is by its contents.

48.   Multi-process Safari (sandboxing)

Snow Leopard claims that its version of Safari 4 supports sandboxing of individual tabs, similar to what Google Chrome does. What this means is that if a plug-in crashes on a tab, it won’t crash the browser on the whole, and the rest of your browsing experience will be intact.

49.   Pinch to zoom icons on Desktop

If you want to make the icons on your Desktop bigger, merely pinch to zoom on a multi-touch trackpad. This works better in reverse, because if your Desktop is cluttered, it helps to make all of the icons tiny until you can clean it up.

50.   3 and 4-fingers gestures for older multi-touch trackpads

Extending the olive branch to users of older-generation MacBooks and MacBook Pros that did not have four-finger and three-finger trackpad gestures, Snow Leopard brings this feature to those MacBooks, provided you have a supported model.

51.   More granular firewall settings

In order to prevent hackery of the malicious variety, Snow Leopard includes more firewall settings than its predecessor. You can choose to block incoming connections from certain apps, always allow connections from other apps, and set an allow/do not allow list. This is a huge upgrade from the mere “off/on” found on the previous firewall.

52.   Specify how long after screen saver you want to lock computer

Have you ever walked away from your laptop to get a soda, and then walked back to see your computer lock in front of your eyes. Instead of scrambling to prevent going into screen saver, merely set the computer to ask for the password after a certain period of time after the screen saver activates.

53.   New desktop wallpapers

Though not quite the caliber of the LSD-influenced wallpapers that are in Windows 7, Apple has introduced a few new default desktops in Snow Leopard as well, namely, more nature and art images.

54.   Show date in menubar

One notable omission in the default OS X clock is the date, as you have to click the time to see it. In Snow Leopard, you can choose whether or not to see the date in the menubar, and choose how it is displayed, whether fully written out, or abbreviated by number.

55.   Faster Time Machine backups

Even better than telling you how much time is left in your backup, Time Machine speeds up significantly in Snow Leopard. In our tests it was about twice as fast as Leopard, namely reducing the time in the Preparing Backup stage.

56.   AppleScript has access to Cocoa frameworks

At WWDC, Apple announced something called Cocoa Bridge, which allows you to access any Objective-C frameworks from within AppleScript, with an AppleScript syntax. This will make AppleScripts much more functional, as well as make it easier to develop applications that don’t necessarily require a GUI.

57.   Treat trackpad as a virtual screen, guided by VoiceOver

Apple has introduced a plethora of new functions to help Universal Access. If you have trouble seeing, you can navigate the computer using the trackpad as a virtual screen, with the help of VoiceOver, which will tell you exactly where to go.

58.   iCal syncs with Google Calendar and Yahoo Calendar

iCal now syncs with Google Calendar and Yahoo Calendar out of the box. iPhone users may be used to this, because you could enable it within iTunes, but now, you can do it directly from iCal.

59.   Mail detects flight numbers

In the new Mail.app, there are more data detectors than ever. If someone emails you a flight number, you can click it, and be presented a contextual menu that includes tracking the flight in your Dashboard. This is incredibly useful, because you don’t have to worry about cutting and pasting properly, and then finding the airline site to track the flight.

60.   Flagged photo screen saver

One of the new screen savers in Snow Leopard is an option to cycle through flagged pictures from iPhoto. If you get tired of seeing a particular face in your photo slideshow screen saver, you can always remove them from the flagged list without deleting their photo.

61.   Better installer

The new Snow Leopard installer is much improved -- it does not try to upgrade incompatible apps, but rather puts them in a separate folder. Clearly, Apple engineers remember the blue screen of death fiasco when people tried to install Leopard on computers that had Application Enhancer installed.

62.   Better documentation browser Xcode

Finding documentation for Objective-C frameworks has never been easier than in Xcode 3.0, equipped with a three pane documentation browser. You can easily search for a particular function, class, or object, and navigate back to your own project in the same window.

63.   Properly sized windows in Exposé

One annoying thing about the old Exposé was that all application windows were the same size when zoomed out. This meant that you often couldn’t see the text on larger windows, and smaller windows were unnecessarily large. Now, the windows are sized relative to their actual size.

64.   Wake servers on demand

Apple wants you to reduce power consumption and bandwidth consumption, as servers can go to sleep in Snow Leopard without losing their data connection. Any time you request data from the server, it will send a wakeup signal, and you can continue using the data uninterrupted.

65.   Arrange Exposé windows using keyboard shortcuts

With all windows visible, you can press Command-1 to arrange them by name, Command-2 to arrange them by application, press the Tab key to view all windows belonging to a given application, and best of all, enlarge a given window by selecting it and pressing the space bar.

66.   Video chat with AIM users in iChat

If your friends have webcams and use the latest AIM client, you can video- and audio-chat with them from iChat. Think of it as a consolation prize, because they are still using Windows.

67.   Take screenshot directly from preview

You can always use Grab, Shift-Command-4, or Shift-Command-3, but if you want, you can take a screenshot (full screen, window, or selection) directly from Preview. This is more versatile than the other two options, because you can edit it directly, save it in a file format of your choice, and save it in a location of your choice.

68.   Color-correction histogram

The new Preview gets a bit more hardcore with the introduction of a color-correction histogram, which allows you to adjust levels and see what they might do to your picture.

69.   New annotations toolbar in Preview

Annotations are front and center in the new Preview. In fact, there's a whole toolbar dedicated to it. Instead of having to select each tool from the menu, just click on it and then use it. The new annotations in Preview are text and arrows, especially useful if you want to jot notes in a PDF's margin without printing it out.

70.   Opening JPEGs faster

At times, opening large images (we’re talking 100MB) takes FOREVER. With Snow Leopard, opening JPEG images is faster, and opening other file types also have speed improvements. Furthermore, keeping them open takes up less RAM, so your computer won’t slow to a crawl.

71.   Better PDF text selection

One of the most touted features in Snow Leopard was that Apple used “advanced algorithms” for better PDF text selection. If you work with a lot of PDFs, this is absolutely critical -- no more garbage line breaks, selecting across different columns, or garbled text selection.

72.   Import photos directly into Preview

Again, Preview has taken a lot of features that existed in other OS X applications, and consolidated them in an easy-to-use package. You can import photos directly into Preview, and edit them directly, akin to Image Capture.

73.   Wake up and shut down faster

If you're the impatient type, you'll be happy to learn that Snow Leopard wakes two times faster than Leopard, and shuts down 1.8 times quicker. Perfect for the spy trying to get those secret plans onto their MacBook and out of the embassy's secret office before being caught.

74.   Open a PDF contact sheet

If you are working with a multi-page PDF, this function in Preview will help you reorganize the pages, add new pages, and so on. Instead of doing this from the sidebar, you can zoom into pages in your contact sheet, and work with them directly.

75.   Proof pictures for printing within Preview

For people that want to print directly from Preview, instead of editing their pictures in a dedicated photo manager, Preview now offers several proofing options, and you can view a soft-proof with several different color profiles. This will make your prints more accurate, and eliminate the need to open Photoshop every time you need to print a picture.

76.   Data detectors in TextEdit

Similar to the data detectors in Mail, if you find an address, flight number, phone number, or anything else that can be detected, you can select it, right-click it, and perform the relevant actions, like showing it on the map, creating a new contact, and things like that.

77.   Easily transform text to all lowercase, all uppercase, or capitalize the first letter of words

TextEdit now supports text transformations. You can easily make everything uppercase, everything lowercase, or capitalize the first letter of every word selected, also known as headline case.

78.   Autocorrect in TextEdit

Using the text substitution feature, TextEdit now supports some limited autocorrect, akin to the iPhone. Say good-bye to spelling errors.

79.   HTTP live streaming in QuickTime X

Though HTTP live streaming for H.264 files has yet to hit the mainstream, it’s nice to know that QuickTime X supports it. Instead of having to use a RTSP file stream, you can use the more open standard of HTTP to stream video to your Desktop.

80.   Visual chapters in QuickTime X movies

If you are watching a movie that has chapters, you can view the chapters visually, and skip ahead. The interface is glitzy, but still speedy.

81.   QuickTime X optimizes movies for display on the Web

Unless you want to tick off your ISP unduly, it’s probably a good idea to upload reduced-quality (and smaller file size) videos to the Web. QuickTime X does this in two ways. First, you can directly send videos to YouTube and MobileMe. And you can also save the videos in a format and size amenable to Web viewing anywhere else you'll upload it.

82.   Click to fast-forward in QuickTimeX

One annoying part of the fast-forward button in Leopard’s QuickTime was that it was more like a skip -- you had to hold it down to actually fast-forward. QuickTime X allows you to click the fast-forward button, and click it again to change the speed. You can fast-forward up to 8x.

83.   Trim out silent parts of video automagically in QuickTime

One really neat feature in QuickTime X is the ability to select all the silent parts of videos, and trim them as you see fit. Perhaps you were using your iSight to monitor your roommate, and don’t care about the silent parts, or maybe you would use this for less-creepy endeavors. But either way, it’s a nice trick to have, and many full-featured video editors lack it.

84.   Easy file conversion for iPhones and iPods

If you have a lot of videos on your computer, you know the pain of converting them to an iPhone-watchable format. Now, QuickTime X does that for you. To maximize the functionality, use a plug-in like Perian Tools to open third-party formats, and export them to iPod and iPhones to eliminate the need for a converter.

85.   Quick Look in iChat.

If a friend sends you as picture of him wrestling a bear, you can use the power of Quick Look to instantly preview it and make sure it's a real bear and not his brother in a bear suit.

86.   Edit iCal events quicker

In Leopard you had to double-click on the event, then you had to click Edit to edit the event. That's one too many clicks. In Snow Leopard, you can just double-click on the event to get to edit mode.

87.   Shuffle through screen saver photos

Mac users have always had the option to shuffle through different Desktop pictures, but now you can shuffle through different Photo Library screen savers. Check Use Random Screen Saver then click on Shuffle. Check the boxes of the image libraries you want shuffled as screen savers.

88.   Set the default search in Spotlight

If you use Spotlight a lot to find files, you know it’s slightly annoying when you type a file name into the Spotlight field in your Documents window, only to have it search everywhere, including Mail Downloads. In the Finder navigate in the menu bar to Finder > Preferences, click on the Advanced tab, and change the default search location.

89.   Put it back

Accidentally put an item in the trash? Right-click on the item and select Put Back from the contextual menu. The file will return to its location before you threw it away.

90.   More Automator Templates

If you're a fan of Automator, you'll be thrilled to find out that there are new templates for your automating ways

91.   Faces and Places in Spotlight

If you have a copy of iPhoto '09 you can use Spotlight to search for Places and Faces you've set up in iPhoto. Find pictures of friends without opening iPhoto. Or, you can quickly locate all those incriminating pictures from Vegas.

92.   Search documents even before they are completely indexed

Sometimes, with very large PDFs, you have to index it before searching it, which takes valuable time. Because Preview is using Grand Central Dispatch, you can search documents before Spotlight is finished indexing them.

93.   Open .dae files in Preview

Preview will now open 3D .dae files. You can zoom, rotate and play viewpoint animations from within Preview. Once you find a camera angle you like, you can print the image out.

94.   Set the Mail sidebar the way you like it

You can now move the Mail items in the sidebar so they are displayed just how you like 'em. Just click and drag to your desired position

95.   Keep the kids off the pr0n sites

Improved Web filters means you can keep little Timmy off the naughty sites he shouldn't find out about until he's in college. Parental Controls can be found in System Preferences.

96.   Think of the children and their time out

Another fun way to keep the kids away from the horrors of computing and the Internet, is the new time limit function for accounts. Set up an account for your kid and set a time limit for that account. A timer in the menubar will let them know how much time they have left.

97.   iChat buddy search in Spotlight

Couldn't get enough Spotlight searching when you were combing through your Faces and Places? Well lucky for you, you can also search all of your iChat buddies in Spotlight.

98.   Save $4 on Snow Leopard

Can't make it to the Apple Store? Or maybe you live in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere and you have to order everything by mail? Well, you can save $4 on Snow Leopard if you order it from Amazon. Oh, and you get free shipping.

99.   OS X apps go 64-bit

We're not sure how we forgot to add this to the original list. Maybe we shouldn't have played that Snow Leopard drinking game? Oh well.

So we were going to list every app that is running in 64-bit goodness. But it turns out about 95% of the OS X apps are rolling 64.

What that means is that the Finder, Mail, Preview and pretty much everything else that Apple throws on your Mac with Snow Leopard, is running faster.

100. Access Audio inputs/Outputs from the Menu Bar

Instead of firing up the Sound System Preference, just hold down option and click on the volume control in the Menu Bar. Boom, all of your audio inputs and outputs.

101. Where the hell is Directory Utility?

If you’re a fan of the Directory Utility app (and seriously, who isn't) don't bother trying to find in the Utilities folder. Instead load the System Preferences and navigate to Accounts > Login Options > Network Account Server, click join and there it is.