One of the best features Apple incorporated into Mac OS X Leopard is their built-in Time Machine backup system. For small studios, or individual designers, Time Machine is one of the best automated backups available.

You can click on the small backup-clock icon in your menu bar to access many Time Machine features: Check the date of your last backup, force an immediate backup, or jump back to search through the recent backups of your computer.

But what if you want to look through the files from another computer? By default, Time Machine’s restore interface only shows you files from your computer. But hold down the Option key and a menu option named “Browse Other Time Machine Disks” will appear in that menu.

Last week, Extensis quietly released an update to their excellent Font Management Best Practices Guide. This is the 5th edition of their font management white paper, and it remains an excellent resource for designers who struggle with how to best manage their huge font libraries.

Managing Fonts in Mac OS X – 5th Edition (January 2009)

Simplifying the complex topic of font management in Mac OS X isn’t an easy job. Extensis does a good job describing the underlying challenges designers face when managing fonts on Mac OS X today. Their solutions are expectedly biased towards their own software (Suitcase Fusion 2, or the new Universal Type Server) but not unfairly so.

I hate it when I can’t find a certain menu item. It happens a lot these days as I jump between multiple versions of different software.

Mac OS X Leopard adds a search field to the top of the Help menu. In addition to various help topics (which I usually ignore) it pulls up a list of all the menu items that include any search terms you type.

Highlight those menu items (using the arrow keys on your keyboard) and the appropriate menu pops up with a floating pointer showing you where the command is located.

With typical Apple finesse, a subtle animation helps draw your eye.