Snow Leopard nice touch: no more "Picture 1" files

I've always been a fan of ⌘-Shift-4 for taking quick and easy screenshots on my Mac, even with such level-up options as Jing, Skitch, GrabUp and LittleSnapper readily to hand. What I wasn't a fan of, however, was the proliferation of "Picture 1," "Picture 2,"... up to "Picture N" screenshot files on my desktop. Not only was it tricky to figure out which Picture file was which (a task made easier with Quick Look), it was also reasonably likely that at some point I'd overwrite a Picture 1 someplace that I wanted to keep with a brand-new Picture 1 I just snapped and copied off my desktop.

It's certainly not one of the marquee features of Mac OS X 10.6, but there's one little Snow Leopard tweak that's already won my heart: no more Picture 1s! Screenshots to file created via the system key commands (⌘-Shift-3 or -4, add the Control key to capture to the Clipboard instead of to a file) now get a name that's quite a bit more descriptive, including the date and time of the capture. No more file name collisions, no more wondering which Picture is the one you took of that cryptic error message in the middle of the night. Viva Snow!

Snow Leopard: Find what you're looking for

One of the little frustrations in my everyday use of Leopard was the way it searched in folders. When in a Finder window, there was a handy-looking search box in the upper right-hand corner. I would place the cursor, type my query, and be annoyed by the fact that OS X searched my entire Mac.

Nooo. If I wanted to search the whole thing, I would have asked to search the whole thing.

Thank goodness Snow Leopard fixes this minor workflow speed bump. Now you can choose what you'd like to use as a default: Search This Mac or Search the Current Folder. You can even say "I'll have another" by choosing to Use the Previous Search Scope.

Unfortunately the default out-of-the-box action is still set to look everywhere on your Mac. But don't worry, it's easy to change.

1. Make sure Finder is your active app (either click on the Finder icon in the dock, click the desktop or a visible Finder window, or cmd-Tab to switch to the Finder).
2. Choose Preferences in the Finder menu. Or you can just use the Command-comma key combo to invoke Preferences.
3. In Finder Preferences, click on the Advanced tab.
4. Choose your desired search scope from the drop-down menu under the heading "When performing a search."
5. Close the Preferences and enjoy a search or two.

That's it. Just one example of the many little changes in Snow Leopard that make life with the OS easier and more efficient.

Apple: "Exploding" iPhones succumbed to external pressure

There's been much news of "exploding" iPhones lately. If you're unfamiliar with the story, the European Commission formally asked Apple to investigate a series of reports that users' iPhones were abruptly cracking and/or catching fire. According to the French periodical Les Echos, an iPhone in Aix-en-Provence, France, started to "crackle and pop like a deep-frier" before breaking violently apart.

This past Friday, Apple said that, in all cases, the iPhones in question were damaged by an "external force," not a faulty battery or glass screen:

"To date, there are no confirmed battery overheating incidents for iPhone 3GS and the number of reports we are investigating is in the single digits. The iPhones with broken glass that we have analyzed to date show that in all cases the glass cracked due to an external force that was applied to the iPhone."

It does seem odd that at least four cases have been reported in France in short order. Still, it's even stranger that iPhones would suddenly turn into Molotov cocktails. We'll keep you updated on this story.