MacFlaunt

Apple considers Snow Leopard more of a feature pack over Leopard rather than a fully-fledged update. But Snow Leopard is full of improvements and refinements, some of which Apple has said very little about. Have a look at these five* potential Snow Leopard gems that not many have talked about.

*Updated with an extra tip from Joel Housman.

Anti-malware protection

Apple confirmed on Thursday an undocumented Snow Leopard feature, namely built-in anti-malware protection. Apple prides itself on the security of its operating systems and Snow Leopard makes no exception. An alert will pop up the first time a potential piece of malware is detected in Safari, iChat or Mail and the malware signatures will be constantly updated via Software Update.

Triangulate your Mac’s location

The networking hardware built in Macs will be used to triangulate your approximate latitude and longitude, using a framework called CoreLocation (the same one used in the GPS-less original iPhone and now in the iPod touch). This feature should come in handy with increasingly popular location-aware services such as Google Latitude or the upcoming Twitter geolocation API; and it automatically sets your time-zone too.

Multi-touch in third-party applications

Apple will leverage a framework of code libraries and functions, which will allow third party developers to add more multi-touch features to their applications. Expect by the end of the year some really cool implementations of multi-touch features from Safari and iPhoto into other apps — such as retweeting with a four finger swipe in Tweetie.

Text substitution

Barely mentioned by Apple, the text substitution feature will spare you the $30 you would spend on similar applications such as TextExpander. Text substitution automatically expands shortcuts or phrases as you type, such as changing (c) to a copyright symbol (©) and fractions from 1/2 to ½. What’s even better is that you can set your own text snippets (eg. if you type your initials, they will expand into your full name).

QuickTime X screen recording

Yet another little mentioned feature in Snow Leopard is the screen recording capability in the new QuickTime X — it captures the activity on your screen and saves it as a movie file — simple as that. Screen recording in QuickTime X should save you some money if you don’t really need a professional screen-casting tool such as the new Camtasia for Mac.

Google Calendar support built-in to iCal

iCal will feature native Google Calendar integration. You can add another account from the Settings menu and select Google Account. After entering your Google credentials, iCal will sync with your default Google Calendar and you can also subscribe to another person’s shared calendar.

Found any other cool features that Apple has no or little mention of? Please lets us know in the comments.

[Via AppleInsider, All Things Digital, PC Mag, Wired]