The real power of OS X lies in all of the hidden gems beneath what you see at first glance. Technologies like Expose, Spaces, Stacks, Spotlight and others help users tap the power of their Mac, while keeping the experience sleek and elegant. Aptonic’s Dropzone, a third-party application designed to further simplify your Mac experience, fits into this group perfectly and naturally.

It’s Like an Intern for Your Dock

Dropzone is an application that resides in your Dock like any other app. The power of Dropzone comes into play when you begin dragging files onto its icon. Similar to the appearance of a Stack, Dropzone will expand giving you options of what to do with the file or files you’ve selected. Think of it like Automator for your Dock.

For example, if I have a handful of files selected, and drag them onto my Dropzone icon, I am presented with a series of choices, one of which is “Zip files and email.” As simple as it sounds, dragging the files onto this icon zips the files automatically and attaches them to a new email message inside of Mail. Gone are the days of right-clicking to compress the files, attaching that to an email and then deleting the zip file when I’m done.

Another “destination” included is the ability to install applications quickly by dragging a DMG onto the “Install Application” destination. Behind the scenes, your Mac will mount the DMG file, locate the application inside, copy it to your Applications folder and launch it, unmount the DMG and move the DMG file to the trash.

Other destinations include quick access to uploading images to Flickr (including copying the image URL to your clipboard when its done) or upload files to your FTP server. Want those files zipped before upload? No problem. Just hold down the option key as you drag the files onto the icon. It’s quick and simple and really does save time.

I’m the type of Mac user who likes to keep my Dock as simplified as possible, but I do enjoy the ability to be able to drag files onto an application icon and force the file to open in that application. Dropzone allows me to throw applications I use frequently inside of it and then I have the ability to do just that. Compared to attempting the same thing with a stack in Leopard, I only spawn Finder windows.

Taking It Further

Several optional downloads can extend the functionality of Dropzone. There are add-ons to allow you to start your screensaver, mount/unmount firewire drives, and set your computer to sleep, in addition to many others. Dropzone even includes support for popular web services, including the ability to quickly share photos via TwitPic, shorten a dropped URL via the Is.Gd service (and copy it to the clipboard automatically), and quickly share photos and documents on Posterous.

If you are comfortable programming ruby scripts, Dropzone also offers a scripting API to allow you to create your own “destinations” to further extend the application.

If you’d like to try out Dropzone, it’s currently available for Leopard or Snow Leopard users. Aptonic does provide a trial version of the software, and the cost is only $10 to purchase the full version. The trial does limit you to 15 days of use and up to five “destinations” at a time. I spoke with the developers at Aptonic and they informed me that updates through 1.0 will be freely available to users who register, but the $10 price is likely just an introductory price. Download the demo version here.

I’ll be the first to admit, much like Quicksilver or Spaces, once you get used to integrating this app, it really does save you time. If you have tried out Dropzone, let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Report: The Connected TV Marketplace
• How to Market Your iPhone App: A Developer’s Guide

The latest build does indeed boast significant performance enhancements, including a reduced footprint for most applications, which have been rebuilt using Cocoa. The screens also show that most processes are now native Intel 64-bit, but that applications have an “Open in 32-bit” mode as well. As we’ve noted previously, Quicktime Pro features are all enabled by default, although Quicktime X is still missing. The version included with Snow Leopard is still 7.5.5.

Two new features, though arguably minor, really have me looking forward to getting my hands on Snow Leopard, because they address some of those petty, repeatedly annoying pet peeves of mine that prevent my OS X experience from being altogether pleasant.

The first is a restore feature that’s been added to the Trash Bin. Called “Put Back,” it allows you to undelete the file you just trashed, without having to drag and drop it back to its original folder. This is one of the very few things I miss from my days using Windows. Not everything Microsoft does with their OS is a complete failure. Just most things.

The second is the ability to navigate folder structures from within the “Grid” view in stacks. I actually keep my folders in “List” mode specifically to avoid the annoying problem of having a Finder window open every time I click on an Adobe application, for instance, since they reside in nested folders. There’s even a video of this in action.

All things considered, it looks like Snow Leopard is on track to be one of the most impressive Mac OS revisions in recent memory. Kind of makes you wish they took their time and got things right the first time around, so we wouldn’t have to pay for the privilege of having Leopard’s kinks worked out. I honestly think they should offer some kind of special upgrade pricing for people who’ve already bought Leopard, but I suppose as long as they’re adding something new to the pot that’s actually useful, it’ll be worth taking the hit.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

Anyone else tired of a Dock’d Applications folder that seems to be a link to Address Book?

I’m hearing a lot of complaints in various forums and reviews about the icons of stacks in the dock, and not much in the way of solutions, so I thought I’d suggest the one that’s working for me. (There is a bigger post upcoming with a lot of tricks to Leopard, but I wanted to get this one out first, so that at least some people might be happier.)

The problem is simple: Stacks in the Dock show a pile of icons, with the topmost one being the one most recently accessed, or first in the alphabet, or whatever. This is frustrating a lot of people who have custom icons for the folders in their docks, as instead of the custom icon, the stack icon is a changeable picture, usually of the object that starts with A. Many are grumbling about bad UI design with this, as we are used to the icons that we had representing the folders that were plainly used so much that we thought they deserved a place in the dock. And yes, in my opinion, it is a design flaw. There’s a reason for distinctive icons in the Dock – they’re a mnemonic toy, and a representation of everything under that icon. (I know I’m not alone in thinking that Address Book, which I hardly ever use, is not a good symbol for my applications folder.)

The simple fix? First, find that icon that you liked so much before. Now, rename it. Try something like “_ Proper Applications Icon” – anything with a non-alphanumeric character should do. When you put that icon in the stacked folder, so long as your stack is set to sort by name (command-click on the stack, and choose ‘Sort by’), that icon will stay on the top of the stack. To illustrate my point, to the left is my Dock, after I added a better icon to the Utilities stack, and to the right is a snip of my Applications stack’s grid view after I put an icon in there. There’s still the slight aberration of the other icons sticking out from behind the folder in the Dock, true, but it’s much better than staring at Address Book.

Icons from David Lanham’s Agua set.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

First off, Stacks. We’ve been hearing about patents along these lines for maybe a couple of years now. It’s nice to see that come to fruition. And I see a lot of potential in this new feature, for helping to keep my Desktop clean. I like it spotless as much as possible… So having Stacks at the ready is an interesting new feature I’m excited to play with, and expect will enhance my workflow. Will it knock Quicksilver off the top spot for accessing files quickly??? We’ll see.

Icon Previews will be huge for me. I love that I’ll be able to see the document in icon form as a super quick preview – quicker even than Quick Look, which looks decent in and of itself. This new feature seems like a no-brainer, but I’m sure will enhance many a user’s experience while looking through their documents. Spring cleaning anyone? The prospect of switching my icons from their current extreme (small, small, small) to the other end of things (big, big, big) suddenly seems like a good idea. (mental note, get larger LCD…)

Quick Look is a nice idea in practice, but I wonder how useful it’ll actually be to me, if only for the above mentioned reason. Couple the preview icons with the new CoverFlow capability and I doubt I’ll get much use from Quick Look.

Transparent Menu Bar. Um, short of [maybe] looking neat, why? Either hide the whole darn thing, or leave it be is my stance. I don’t see the use in the partially visible Menu Bar. Sorry Steve.

So I think the All Show and No Go argument is a bit harsh. There’s definitely some usability in the features we saw demonstrated. Don’t forget this is Apple, who’s design-centric strategies are partially to thank for where they are today. Just because Windows Vista tries to copy the eye candy and lacks in the functional area, doesn’t mean Apple’s following Redmond now.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks