Daniel SwartzTiger Features: 1-5
Now I finally get to the list of 200 features that Tiger has been boasting about. I plan to go through as many of these features as possible, to see if they are as great as Apple says. I’m sure they are, but let’s find out.
The page I am using to view the complete list of Tiger features is here:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/newfeatures/over200.html
Address Book
1. Auto-Update LDAP Cards: “Keep your server-based Address Book contacts synchronized with an LDAP based directory ‚Äî perfect for mobile professionals.”
This feature is a bit cryptic, as I don’t know what LDAP exactly is, so I’ve had to do some research into this one. All I know is that LDAP refers to an address book that may be online and Apple’s address book can be used to synchronize the contacts and perhaps even make changes. This will have to wait, as I don’t know of a server I can access…
2. Actions: “Automate tasks in Address Book using the new Automator feature.”
After learning a little bit about Automator and how to use it (see future review), there are some useful actions in the Address Book part of Automator. Information search and filter processes, which didn’t always seem to work, were interesting and rather useful. But it was the actions between Address Book and Apple Mail that I found the most powerful.
I was able to set up a Group Mail workflow that allowed me to send messages to specific groups in my address book. From the desktop I selected (right-click or control-click) from the Automator select menu the workflow I had set up in Automator. A box came up with the addresses already populated in the ‘To’ field and a text area for me to fill out the e-mail message. When I hit ‘Send’, I would have assumed that the message would have gone on its merry way, as I included this action in the workflow. What instead happened was that the message body came up in Apple Mail with a strange attachment of a file called ‘Desktop’, which seemed to be a screenshot of my desktop. I don’t know where this came from, but after deleting the file, I was able to successfully send off the message. Even with this odd unnecessary step, I still found this Automator workflow to be very quick and useful.
One thing to keep in mind about Automator is that one must know the correct order of actions in order for a workflow to work in Automator. Simply placing actions next to each other won’t necessarily make it work. One has to learn this somewhere, and I assume I have to buy a Tiger instruction book to learn more about this.
3. Certificate Support: “View certificate information in your Address Book for contacts who provide public keys.”
Since I don’t know anyone or have met anyone who accompanies there e-mails with ‘public keys‘, I was unable to test this feature. I’m not too worried though, as I don’t think I’ll be using public keys anytime soon.
4. Contact Import File Formats: “Import contacts into Address Book in a variety of formats, including tab-delimited and comma-separated text.”
Before Tiger, the Address Book could previously only import VCards and LDIF. And as the description above already says, Apple has now added tab-delimited and comma-separated text to add Address Book information.
A comma-separated text file looks like this and must be saved in .csv format:
“First Name”,”Last Name”,”Address”
“Fred”,”Sanford”,”123, Sample Road”
“Lemont”,”Sanford”,”456 Sample Road”
The top line lists the parameters that the rest of the lines (addresses) will contain and are separated by commas, hence the name of the file. However, each item must be surrounded by quotation marks, and then separated by commas, as seen in the example above. You can have as many lines as you want, and the Address Book will import all of the addresses, assuming they’ve been formatted correctly.
A tab-delimited file looks like this and must be saved in .txt format:
FIRST NAME LAST NAME STREET E-Mail
Fred Flintostone 123 Bedrock St. fred@dino.com
Barney Rubble 124 Bedrock St. barney@rubble.com
This example is similar to the .csv format, except that the data is separated by a tabbed space (simply hit the tab key after you have entered in data). The top line, as in the .csv file, is the list of parameters that the rest of the lines (addresses) will contain.
When you import either of these formats into the Address Book, a window titled “Text File Import” will appear asking you to confirm which fields you want imported from the address in the file. Select which ones you want and click ‘OK’ and poof, it’s all there.
5. Dashboard Widget: “Enjoy instant access to any contact in your Address Book directly from Dashboard.”
I find the Address Book widget in Dashboard to be extremely useful. Assuming you have it included in your list of active widgets, when you active Dashboard by clicking F12 and all your widgets appear, just type in a name or some element of the address and the address or addresses will appear in the Address Book widget.
One nice thing about this widget is that Address Book does not have to be launched in order to use it, as one has to have iTunes on when using the iTunes widget in Dashboard. If Address Book can access the address database, why can’t the iTunes widget simply access the music files when playing from music lists in the iTunes widget?
So there are the first five features of the list of 200 features that Tiger boasts. The next five will be up next for inspection.
Daniel
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