Computer

This had bothered me as well and a Google search did not reveal an answer. (Turns out, simply cntl-clicking on this icon and reading would have.) So here’s to you Mr. TUAW Tip Guy.

TUAW Tip: Auto-quit Printers in Leopard

Filed under: Peripherals, TUAW Tips, Leopard

I just ran across this simple, but handy tip over at Mac OS X Hints. One of the little annoyances of Leopard that didn’t make our recent post is the way Leopard handles printers. When you print something it starts the little application that controls the print queue for that device but (unlike Tiger) the application remains on your Dock after the print job is finished.

If this annoys you (like it does me), it turns out that there’s a simple fix. Just right click on the Dock icon and select “Auto Quit.” Now the printer queue application will quit itself (and so disappear from your Dock) once it’s finished processing your print job.

I’m not entirely sure why this behavior is not the default (as it was before), but it’s a nice little discovery that removes yet another little annoyance.

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)

 

If you use Butler (and why wouldn’t you? I use maybe two features of it, iTunes control and multiple pasteboard, but it has hundreds!) a Leopard fix is out. A bit about Butler:
Butler’s purpose is to make it easier for you to perform different — potentially recurring — tasks. Butler lets you arrange these tasks in its fully customizable configuration. There, you can assign one or more triggers to a task…

And now, the fix:

Many Tricks · Butler

Butler 4.1.3 Transient
Requires ≥ Mac OS X 10.4
This is a transient release that will expire on January 1, 2008. If you need to run Butler on earlier Mac OS X versions, please click here.
Butler is compiled as a universal binary. This means that Butler runs natively on both Intel- and PowerPC-based Macs.

 

This had bothered me as well, so I thought I would pass it along. The key step here is backup before you archive and install. You did do that, didn’t you?

macosxhints.com – 10.5: Keychain access after 10.5 archive/install

After archive/install upgrading to 10.5, Mail.app, Safari, etc. all complained about my keychain information missing. So I simply copied the file ~/Library » Keychains » login.keychain to ~/Library » Keychains » yourusername.keychain. After that, everything worked fine again.

[robg adds: There were some comments on the queue review site about this hint that I thought I should share. I haven't seen this issue myself, but the comments covered a range from "Thanks for figuring out this simple solution. This had been nagging me since install" to "I think there should be some advice on backing up the original before doing this" and "Are we sure this is even the right thing to do?" So this tip may or may not help you, but at least one of our reviewers noted that it solved the same problem for him.]

 

UPDATE: If you have feedback and comments on the OS, Apple will accept them here http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html/ (and hopefully not circle file them).

I have said this once before already, but I am not feeling the stack love in leopard. The premise is to make folders in the dock open up “stacks” of pretty icons for easy access. The problems are (let me enumerate):

1. Custom icons of folders are lost.
2. If you have more than a few items (depending upon screen size) you get a large, square grid instead of the “tower” and
3. If you have subfolders you cannot dig down through them via the Dock.

(Click to enlarge the image at right.)

What makes this particularly heinous (and I mean that in the best possible sense, it is truly evil) is that Stacks have taken away functionality that I already had! And in return I get…nothing. Pretty, large icons, but those are not needed.

I am really, really hoping and praying in that fervent manner of fevered desert pole-sitters that Apple will allow us to turn this off in a future update. Or at least allow us to dig down into subfolders.