I received an email from an EasyCrop user this morning saying that dragging to the Desktop no longer works. I ran some tests and found that I was able to drag to Finder windows but not to the Desktop. This seemed like a Finder bug to me, so I restarted the Finder (Cmd-Opt-ESC and select Finder, then click Relaunch) and, sure enough, dragging to the Desktop started working again.

On a related topic, I have also seen Leopard (Tiger too, but this seems to be happening more since I upgraded) get into a state where Dashboard and Exposé stopped working. Restarting the Dock process fixes this. To restart the Dock, enter the following command in the Terminal:

killall Dock

If you’re not comfortable with Terminal, you can also force quit Dock using Activity Monitor.

Amazon is taking pre-order for the freshly updated MacBook with the Santa Rosa chipset. We know Amazon has free shipping and all, but can you afford to wait till 2021?

I just released TapDex 3.3 this morning. It now runs great on Leopard (the previous version didn’t show phone numbers).

I don’t like the new Leopard Dock. The 3D look itself doesn’t bother me, but all that reflection makes it hard to see the app icons. And those glowing orbs for indicating running apps are just too low-contrast to see. Luckily, there is an undocumented option to turn off the 3D look. Just open Terminal and enter the following line to set the option:

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES

Then restart the Dock using:

killall Dock

Good news for FileChute users who upgraded to Leopard over the weekend. FileChute 2.9 was released this morning and you can download it here.

I received numerous emails from users who want to know if our apps run on Leopard. Here are the known issues.

FileChute has some rather serious problems (threading issues, for techies out there) running on Leopard. It is basically unusable at this time.

TapDex runs but phone numbers and some other information are not showing up.

SizzlingKeys mostly works. “Put display to sleep” doesn’t work.

I am working to resolve these issues. Please stay tuned for updates.

When I was playing with the beta builds, Leopard’s translucent menu bar really bothered me. Depending on the wallpaper, the effect of the translucency can vary from distracting to making the menu downright illegible.

Maybe it’s just my imagination but I think Apple made some last minute changes to the menu bar in the shipping version of Leopard. It looks much better, much less distracting. I want to say the wallpaper under the menu bar has a gaussian blur applied to it and the opacity has been turned up a notch. I haven’t done a side-by-side comparison, so again, it may be just my imagination. But I’m happy the translucent menu bar doesn’t bother me as much as it used to.

It’s official! Apple has announced that Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) will go on sale on October 26. It is available for pre-order on Apple’s online store for $129. But Amazon has a much better deal at $109 with free shipping and no sales tax in most states. I have already pre-ordered my copy.

Here’s our affiliate link to Leopard on Amazon

We are very excited to see FolderBrander selected by Dan Frakes of Macworld magazine for this month’s Gems Grab Bag. Hopefully this means it will show up in Macworld magazine’s Mac Gem column soon.

When FileChute appeared on Mac Gems in the September 2006 issue, it instantly became a household name. Ok, not quite household, but it definitely pushed it to the next level. We hope it will do the same for FolderBrander!

FolderBrander fans, please visit the Gems Grab Bag page and post your comments.

I purchased iLife ‘08 and iWork ‘08 at full retail price plus sales tax. Had I waited, I could have gotten them on Amazon for quite a bit less. Prices on Amazon change, but as of today, iLife ‘08 is 14% off list and iWork is 5% off. Free shipping and no sales tax make this an even better deal. Here are our affiliate links to Amazon:

iLife ‘08 iWork ‘08

If you rather not go through our affiliate links, just visit www.amazon.com and search for “iLife”.