Archive for the 'Tips & Tricks' Category

Being a blogger for MacApper gives me the chance to become skilled in the art of using Apple’s “Grab” feature. This mighty feature allows its controller to take screenshots of any part of the computer. With Leopard’s arrival, more interesting features have come to grab, assisting my fellow knowledgeable bloggers. We would like to share with you the shortcuts necessary in order to get the best screenshot possible from your Apple computer.

Time Machine was an awesome addition to OS X, and it works brilliantly. However, to me, it can be a bit annoying to have Time Machine in the Dock; I’m always hitting it when I don’t mean to. So to solve this little problem, I’ve found a better place to keep it…Finder!

Time Machine is part of the Finder (thinking a little outside the box), as it is basically an extension of the Finder’s functionality, so why not make it a little bit more part of the Finder - Drag the Time Machine icon, from the Applications folder onto the top pane of the Finder window, et voilà! - you can remove it from your dock, and still have a quick way back to the past

Google the phrase “execute Automator workflows” and you’ll find tips on incorporating workflows into existing applications or running them from the command line. The Apple document Mac 101: Automator will give you the basics on saving your workflow as something other than a workflow, but let’s talk about the ways that we incorporate Automator into the everyday use of our Macs. Usually, if you’re a mouse person, you’ll double-click the workflow, Automator will open, and you’ll click the play button to run. In this post I’ve included some time-saving ways to execute Automator actions and incorporate them into the Finder.

Back in January of 2004, Google introduced Google Earth for Mac. As I’m sure many of you have experienced first hand, Google Earth is a program that is basically a virtual globe that allows you to zoom in and out of places all over the world. Since that update though, the interface hasn’t really changed much. If you have ever wished that Google Earth’s interface could get a bit of a boost, now is your chance.

Two years ago, Adam Betts re-designed a few elements of Google Earth’s interface. I just recently came across his blog post, and I thought I would share it with all of you.

No question Macs come with an array of great fonts for almost any project, be it a presentation or a research paper. In fact according to Apple, Mac OS X “includes over $10,000 worth of high quality Roman, Japanese and Chinese fonts”. This is great, but with just a tiny bit of effort, hundreds of high quality free fonts can also be at your disposal.

In just a couple easy steps you’ll have all sorts of fun new fonts to play around with, and you’ll have no more excuses to use Comic Sans or Papyrus.

For most of us, we have and use different identities. Some of us may have one identity for friends and family and another identity for freelancing and so on. With all these identities, we need a way to bring them all together into one.

I have four email accounts that I use the most, which means I have four different mailboxes that I check often. When using mail.app, the left sidebar of your mail.app application can become a mess with all of its folders. I decided to figure out a way to make my four mailboxes, one.

No one really knows how long until the futuristic real-time strategy game StarCraft II is released, but you can bet it won’t be any time soon. Developer Blizzard Entertainment is notorious for taking its time intricately crafting epic story arcs and balancing multiplayer modes, which would explain how the company has produced some of the most popular computer games ever released.

So while we wait impatiently, why not brush up on the basics by playing the original StarCraft in the mean time?

Chat etiquette is something of a lost art with my friends. We have the sort of relationship where they just sign off in the middle of a conversation because they know that I will forgive them. Call me a doormat, but I accept my friends for who they are despite the sting of hearing the slamming door sound before I could send the punchline to my joke. With this tip, you’ll be able to have that last word or continue the conversation when your buddy signs off.

I like to obsess over things. As soon as I find something interesting enough, I’ll invest a good ninety percent of my time just to get the hang of it. Old school Gillette razors, chess, hold ‘em and Jeet Kune Do have all had their share of my attention over the past few years, but this Christmas I avoided a disaster.

If you can feel where I’m going with this click the jump.

Alright so You have installed Leopard. You’ve started using Spaces, Time Machine, Stacks, and (my personal favorite) QuickLook. Wait a second though - didn’t Apple say there were 300+ new features?

If you look closely there are really tons of features in this cat that got lost in the crowd. I’m talking about the little enhancements that aren’t flashy or revolutionary, but are useful, fine-tuned, or actually improve or enhance the user experience.

Right after the jump is a list of ten that you might not have come across yet.

I love the fact that Spaces is included in the Leopard OS; many would not think that this would be a useful feature. I used to be one of those who found it to be a waste.

For the average Mac user, it may be, but for those of us who are demanding or hate clutter, the ability to create multiple workstations is invaluable.

If you missed the last installment, read it first. In the previous article I discussed how to organize your files to be processed. In this article I will show you how to access your files, and how to process through them.

So if you remember I told you about how my mother’s desktop was a wreck: files everywhere, with the desktop full with icons. I could hardly find her hard drive on the desktop. Chaos!

My mother has the messiest file system I have ever seen on a computer. I, being a savvy computer user myself, maintain the complete opposite: a slick file organization system. Let me explain.

Meet my mother: a few years ago, she was one of the few people in the entertainment industry who worked without email; a relic of an industry which used to rely solely on telephones. My mother’s lack of email was due to many things, including a fear of computers. So, on Mother’s Day, 2005, I forced her to conquer her fear. I gave her a computer, hoping to drag her (kicking and screaming) into the information age. She willfully agreed.

I have a certain group of websites that I like to have automatically opened each morning when I get up for coffee. Yeah I know it’s not the type of thing that everyone will want to do, but I found a pretty neat way to do it, and thought I should pass it along to you guys. If you are new to Automator this may also serve as a really basic ‘getting started’ guide as well.

Open up Automator and choose a Custom project. Drag the following over to the right window:

Leopard is cool. There’s no doubt about it. But there’s always that one thing that’s missing from something you buy, whether it be from your new iPod, your new toaster, or your new operating system. We’ve covered many of the customizations that can be made to Leopard in the past, but we’ve decided to compile them all in one place, ready to be downloaded and tried out, (almost) all for free.

Wanna bring back the rounded corners? 2D-ify that dock? Kill that transparent menu? Whatever it is, you can likely find it here. Do let us know if we missed some.