Package Management in Leopard?
Poking around the stuff installed by the latest Leopard 10.5.1 update, I noticed something exciting I hadn't seen before: pkgutil. This command line tool apparently allows you to finally manage installed packages using a package database (a SQLite database located in /Library/Receipts/db/). At the moment this tool is far from perfect, I've noticed some strange data here (inaccurate install paths), plus it seems that the package must be designed to write data to the database, so it currently doesn't track all packages. One important thing to note: it appears that this tool could be potentially damaging to your system. According to the man page, will allow to remove the files installed by any package without any dependancy checking, so you could really screw yourself with this. (I actually haven't tried to remove anything myself, so I'm trusting the docs here). Still the existence of this tool is an extremely hopeful sign of real package management on OS X. Check it out with man pkgutil, but use caution.
Mac OS X 10.5.1 Leopard Update
Today Apple whisked out the first update for Leopard: 10.5.1. This seems to fix a host of bugs in the initial release, some minor, some a bit more serious. I used the System Update tool and installed it with no problems. A list of some of the things fixed can be found here.
More Time Machine (Manual) Launch Options
Another way to launch Time Machine Manually (expanding on this post) is a nice new Time Machine Launcher Dashboard Widget. This will allow you to manually launch Time Machine without having the Time Machine icon taking up space in your dock.
Keyboard Shortcut reveals all recent items (and more)
Ok, [cmd]+[space] (by default) opens the spotlight search field. But [opt]+[cmd]+[space] will go beyond that and open up a Spotlight Window listing all the contents of your mac listed in by the time they were last opened. This list includes Applications, files, safari history, and more. This shortcut it listed under the Spotlight section of Keyboard Shortcuts tab in the Keyboard & Mouse System Preferences pane as "Show Spotlight Window" so it can be remapped. It sort of makes the whole "Recent Items" item the Apple menu seem somewhat inadequate.
Open Script Editor from Finder…
It seems for whatever reason you can open the Script Editor from the Finder with the [cmd]+[shift]+[8] keyboard shortcut. Not sure why this key binding is there, I haven't found any documentation about it, but it seems too specific to be an accident.
11/14/2007: Turns out this is mapped… from the Services menu… should have looked there I guess. This was pointed out to me from Rob Griffiths of macosxhints.
Stupid Hint of The Day
Another one for the Dock. If you hold down the [ctrl]+[shift] keys while you drag your mouse over the dock, the dock will use magnification if it's turned off in the dock preferences. If Magnification is turned on this trick will prevent magnification. I could see this being useful if you normally keep magnification off and have as extraordinarily large number of open apps that shrink your dock to an uncomfortably small size.