OSX Tutorials

App Store Help

2011-06-08T06:06:00.001-07:00

Before using App Store

To use App Store, you need:

An Internet connection: You can use Ethernet or Wi-Fi to connect to the Internet.
An Apple ID: To make purchases, you need to sign in to App Store using an Apple ID.

If you already have an iTunes Store account, a MobileMe account, or another Apple account, you can use that Apple ID. If you don’t have an Apple ID, you can create one.

Although anybody who logs in to your Mac can browse available applications, only an administrator can purchase, download, and install applications.

Sign in and out

When you’re ready to buy an application, you need to sign in to App Store using an Apple ID.

If you already have an iTunes Store account, a MobileMe account, or another Apple account, you can use that Apple ID. If you don’t already have an Apple ID, you can create one in App Store.

To sign in if you have an Apple ID:

Choose Store > Sign In, or click Sign In in the Quick Links section.
Enter your Apple ID and password, and then click Sign In.

To sign in if you don’t have an Apple ID:

Choose Store > Create Account.
Choose Store > Sign In or click Sign In in the Quick Links section, and then click Create Apple ID.
Follow the onscreen instructions to create a new Apple ID.
Choose Store > Sign In or click Sign In in the Quick Links section.
Enter the new Apple ID and password, and then click Sign In.

To sign out:
When you are finished using App Store, you can sign out to prevent anyone who can access your computer from making purchases using your Apple ID.

Choose Store > Sign Out.
Choose Store > View Account, and then click Sign Out.

To determine the currently active Apple ID:

Choose Store > View My Account, or click Welcome in the Quick Links section.

Accessibility

The following App Store features provide solutions for people with disabilities:

VoiceOver: You can use VoiceOver, a screen reader included with Mac OS X.
Keyboard shortcuts: You can use the keyboard to perform many tasks.

Search and browse

If you want to explore the applications you can download, there are several ways to browse. But if you’re looking for a specific application or kind of application, use search to find it quickly.

To browse:
Click a button in the toolbar.

Featured: Browse new and noteworthy applications.
Top Charts: Browse the most popular applications.
Categories: Browse applications in specific categories, such as photography. (You can browse applications in a particular category by choosing an item from the All Categories pop-up menu in the Quick Links section.)
Purchases: Browse applications you’ve purchased.
Updates: Browse updates to applications you’ve installed on your Mac.

To search:

Type text in the search field at the top right of the App Store window, and then choose an item from the pop-up list or press Return to display results.

Learn about applications

App Store helps you learn about an application’s features and requirements, and shows you customer ratings and reviews.

App Store displays a special rating that helps you understand whether an application may be inappropriate for children of a certain age. For example, “Rated 17+” tells you that the application may not be suitable for children under the age of 17. You can use ratings to set up parental controls to limit the App Store applications your children can use.

Buy, download, and install applications

You use an Apple ID to purchase applications and download them to your Mac.

After downloading, applications are automatically installed in the Applications folder, and application icons appear in your Dock.

To buy, download, and install an application:

If you want to make a purchase using an iTunes gift card or other iTunes credit, click Redeem in the Quick Links section.
Find the application in App Store.
Click the application’s icon or name, and then click Buy (click Free for free applications).
If you’re not logged in to the computer as an administrator, enter an administrator’s name and password.
If you’re not signed in to App Store, enter your Apple ID and password, and then click Sign In.
If requested, click Billing Info to enter or verify your billing information.
Click Done to download and install the application.

After downloading begins, the application’s icon and a progress indicator appear in the Dock.

To pause, resume, or cancel an application download:

Control-click the application icon in the Dock, and then pause, resume, or cancel the download by choosing an item in the pop-up menu.
Click the Purchases button in the toolbar, find the application in the list, and then pause, resume, or cancel the download.

If a download is interrupted because you lose your Internet connection or quit App Store, App Store starts the download again when the Internet connection is restored or the next time you open App Store.

View and manage your purchases

You can display a list of applications purchased using App Store. The list tells you the date of an application’s purchase, and lets you manage an application’s download status.

To learn about applications purchased using App Store:

Click the Purchases button in the toolbar.

For any application in the list, you can:

Pause, resume, or cancel a download.
Download and install an update to an installed application.
Download and install an App Store application purchased on another Mac using the Apple ID currently signed in.

Use applications on multiple Mac

After you purchase an application, you can install it free of charge on every Mac you use.

Here are ways to install a purchased application on another Mac:

On the other Mac, find the application in App Store, click Buy or Free, and then provide the Apple ID you used to purchase the application.
Copy the application from one Mac to another Mac. When you open the copied application on the other Mac, enter the Apple ID used to purchase it.
Open App Store on the other Mac, and then log in using the Apple ID used to make the purchase.

Click Purchases in the toolbar to list applications purchased. Any application that has an INSTALL option was purchased using the Apple ID, but not installed on the Mac you’re using. You can download and install the application on the Mac.

Update applications

App Store keeps track of updates for the applications you’ve purchased. The Updates button in the toolbar shows the total number of application updates available for downloading.

The number of updates is also displayed on the App Store icon in the Dock.

To manage application updates:

Click Updates in the toolbar.

For updates in the list, you can:

Download and install all of the updates at once, or download and install a specific update.
Pause, resume, or cancel a download.

Provide feedback for an application

You can review any application you’ve downloaded. You can also post a concern about another person’s review.

To provide feedback for a downloaded application:

Click the application’s icon or name to display information about it.

Do any of the following:

Rate the application by clicking one of the stars next to “Rate this application.”
Submit a review of the application by clicking “Write a Review.”

To report a concern about an existing review:

Click “Report a Concern” next to the review you’re concerned about.

Review and change your Apple ID settings

You can review and change billing information, the password, and other settings associated with an Apple ID at any time.

To access your Apple ID settings:

Click Account in the Quick Links section.
Enter the Apple ID and password for the settings you want to work with.
Click View Account, and then use the links to review and edit your settings.

Use parental controls

Use the Parental Controls pane of system preferences to control access to App store or to installed App Store applications. This is helpful if you are a parent and you want to ensure that your children use only applications that are simple or appropriate to their age.

To limit a user’s access to App Store or to installed App Store applications, you must first turn on parental controls for the user’s account.

To turn on parental controls for a user:

If the user account already exists, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click Parental Controls, click the lock if it’s not unlocked, and then enter an administrator’s name and password.

Select the account, and then click Enable Parental Controls.

If the user account needs to be created, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click Accounts, click the lock if it’s not unlocked, and then enter an administrator name and password.

Click the Add button (+) below the list of users, choose “Managed with Parental Controls” from the New Account pop-up menu, enter name and password information, and then click Create Account.

To restrict the installed App Store applications a user can open:

Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, and then click Parental Controls.
Click the lock if it’s not unlocked, enter an administrator name and password, select an account in the list of accounts, and then click Apps.

Select Limit Applications, and then choose an option from the Allow App Store Apps pop-up menu:

Don’t allow: Choose this option to prevent opening of any applications purchased from the App Store.
Numerical ratings: Choose “up to 4+” or another numerical option to restrict application access based on App Store application ratings. For example, an application rated 4+ contains nonobjectionable material, but an application rated 9+ may not be suitable for children under the age of 9. If you choose “up to 9+,” the user can open applications rated 9+ and lower.

All: Choose this option to allow opening all applications purchased using App Store.

To control a user’s access to App Store:

Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, and then click Parental Controls.
Click the lock if it’s not unlocked, enter an administrator name and password, select an account in the list of accounts, and then click Apps.
Select Limit Applications.

In the Allowed Apps list, click the Other Apps arrow to display a list of applications, and then do one of the following:

Select App Store to let the user open App Store.
Deselect App Store to prevent the user from opening App Store.

If you have trouble

If you’re having trouble using App Store, try these solutions:

If you see a message that your computer can’t connect to App Store, make sure your Internet connection is working. If you can open a web browser and view a website, there may be a problem with the store. Try using App Store again later.
Make sure your computer’s date, time, and time zone are set correctly in Date & Time preferences. Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, and then click Date & Time.
Make sure your Apple ID information is accurate and that you don’t need to correct a problem with a previous purchase. To verify your Apple ID information and review your purchase history, choose Store > View My Account or click Account in the Quick Links section.

Keyboard shortcuts

You can use keyboard shortcuts to quickly accomplish many actions in App Store. To find shortcuts for common commands, look in the menus or use the table below as a reference.

App Store menu shortcuts
Hide the App Store window - Command+H
Hide all other applications - Option-Command+H
Quit App Store - Command+Q

Edit menu shortcuts
Undo your last typing change - Command+Z
Redo your last undo operation - Command+Shift+Z
Cut the selected items - Command+X
Copy the selected items - Command+C
Paste the selected items - Command+V
Select everything - Command+A
Enter special characters - Option+Command+T

Store menu shortcuts
Go to the previous page - Command-Left bracket ([)
Go to the next page - Command-Right bracket (])
Refresh the current page - Command+R
Search for an application - Command+F

Window menu shortcuts
Close the App Store window - Command+W
Put the App Store window in the Dock - Command+M

Top 15 Terminal Commands

2011-05-05T08:06:00.001-07:00

You'll find the Terminal in the Utilities folder within the Applications folder. To carry out any of the following commands you will need to copy/paste or type in the line of text then hit enter. For the most part, applications will need restarting before changes take place. For most applications you can just quit and open them again, but for the Finder and the Dock it is easiest to just type “killall Finder” or “killall Dock” into Terminal after the command.

To reverse any of them, just repeat the command with NO at the end instead of YES, or vice versa.

1. Make hidden applications' dock icons translucent.

defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -bool YES

2. Normally the arrows next to artists and albums in your iTunes library search the iTunes store when you click them.
This command changes them so that clicking will search your iTunes library instead.

defaults write com.apple.iTunes invertStoreLinks -bool YES

3. This allows you to drag widgets out of Dashboard onto the desktop.
Requires the dock to be relaunched to take effect, so type "killall Dock" and press enter. Now, if you click and hold onto a widget in the dashboard and press F12 to return to the desktop, the widget won't disappear with the rest.

defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES

4. Force all mail to be displayed as plain text.

defaults write com.apple.mail PreferPlainText -bool YES

5. Set expanded save dialogs as default
(showing column/list view of folders rather than a drop down menu). Replace TRUE with FALSE to reverse.

defaults write -g NSNavPanelExpandedStateForSaveMode -bool YES

6. Display the currently chosen screen saver to be shown as the desktop background.
Press Control-C or Command-. to stop.

/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine -background

7. Display useful system stats in the login window.

defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow AdminHostInfo SystemVersion

Replace "SystemVersion" with one of the following for different stats:

SystemBuild 
SerialNumber 
IPAddress 
DSStatus 
Time
HostName

8. To remove accounts from the login window
Type this command with the short name of each account you wish to remove.

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow HiddenUsersList -array-add shortname1 shortname2 shortname3

9. Skip disk image verification. Potentially risky, use with disk images from trusted sources.

defaults write com.apple.frameworks.diskimages skip-verify -bool YES

10. Put double scroll arrows at both ends of scroll bar.
Use Appearance pane in system preferences to reset.

defaults write "Apple Global Domain" AppleScrollBarVariant DoubleBoth

11. Disable the unexpectedly quit dialog that normally appears when an application crashes.
Replace "none" with "prompt" to enable again.

defaults write com.apple.CrashReporter DialogType none

12. Set the history limit in Safari to a certain number of items and and/or a certain age.

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitHistoryItemLimit 2000

and/or

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitHistoryAgeInDaysLimit 30

13. Show hidden files in the Finder.

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool YES

14. Enable the debug menu in Safari.

defaults write com.apple.safari IncludeDebugMenu -bool YES

15. Deactivate Dashboard.
Requires the dock to be relaunched to take effect, so type "killall Dock" and press enter.

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -bool YES

OSX Tutorials

2011-05-02T09:28:00.000-07:00

Get Mac OSX Tutorials in to your Dashboard !
↓ Download

Welcome to OSX !

2011-03-16T05:39:00.000-07:00

"OSX is the world’s most advanced operating system..."

Built on a rock-solid UNIX foundation and designed to be simple and intuitive, it’s what makes the Mac innovative, highly secure, compatible, and easy to use.

Quite simply, there is nothing else like it.

Power of UNIX. Simplicity of the Mac.

Mac OS X is both easy to use and incredibly powerful. Everything — from the desktop you see when you start up your Mac to the applications you use every day — is designed with simplicity and elegance in mind. So whether you’re browsing the web, checking your email, or video chatting with a friend on another continent,* getting things done is at once easy to learn, simple to perform, and fun to do. Of course, making amazing things simple takes seriously advanced technologies, and Mac OS X is loaded with them. Not only is it built on a rock-solid, time-tested UNIX foundation that provides unparalleled stability, it also delivers incredible performance, stunning graphics, and industry-leading support for Internet standards.

Perfect integration of hardware and software.

Since the software on every Mac is created by the same company that makes the Mac itself, you get an integrated system in which everything works together perfectly. The advanced technologies in the operating system take full advantage of the 64-bit, multicore processors and GPUs to deliver the greatest possible performance. The built-in iSight camera works seamlessly with the iChat software so you can start a video chat with a click. Your Mac notebook includes a Multi-Touch trackpad that supports pinching, swiping, and other gestures.

And the OS communicates with the hardware to deliver incredible battery life by spinning down the hard drive when it’s inactive, by intelligently deciding whether the CPU or GPU is best for a task, and by automatically dimming the screen in low-light conditions.

Elegant interface and stunning graphics.

The most striking feature of a Mac is its elegant user interface, made possible by graphics technologies that are built to leverage the advanced graphics processor in your Mac. These technologies provide the power for things like multiway chatting, real-time reflections, and smooth animations. Fonts on the screen look beautiful and extremely readable. A soft drop shadow makes it clear at a glance which window is active and which ones are in the background. You can preview just about any type of file using Quick Look, and because the previews are high resolution, you can actually read the text. Built-in support for the PDF format means you can view or create PDFs from almost any application in the system.

Highly secure by design.

Mac OS X doesn’t get PC viruses. And with virtually no effort on your part, Mac OS X protects itself from other malicious applications. It was built for the Internet in the Internet age, offering a variety of sophisticated technologies that help keep you safe from online threats. Because every Mac ships with a secure configuration, you don’t have to worry about understanding complex settings. Even better, it won’t slow you down with constant security alerts and sweeps. And Apple responds quickly to online threats and automatically delivers security updates directly to your Mac.

Built for compatibility.

The versatility and power of Mac OS X make it compatible in almost any environment, including Windows networks. It works with virtually all of today’s digital cameras, printers, and other peripherals without the need to manually download separate drivers. It opens popular file types such as JPG, MP3, and Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. In addition, Mac OS X includes built-in support for the industry-standard PDF format, so you can read and create PDFs from almost any application in the system — perfect for sharing work with colleagues whether they use a Mac or a PC. If you want to run Windows on your Mac, you can do that, too. And Mac OS X Snow Leopard is the only operating system with built-in support for the latest version of Microsoft Exchange Server, so you can use your Mac at home and at work and have all your messages, meetings, and contacts in one place.

Innovation for everyone.

Mac OS X comes standard with a wide range of assistive technologies that help people with disabilities experience what the Mac has to offer — including many features you won’t find in other operating systems at any price. For example, the built-in VoiceOver screen-reading technology makes it possible for those who are blind or have low vision to control their computer using key commands or gestures on a Multi-Touch trackpad. Mac OS X also offers out-of-the-box support for over 40 braille displays, including Bluetooth displays, and many other accessibility features, such as dynamic full-screen magnification, playback of closed captions, and a scalable screen.

Reliable to the core.

The core of Mac OS X is built on the same ultrareliable UNIX foundation that powers industrial-strength servers, helping to ensure that your computing experience remains free from system crashes and compromised performance. Even upgrading your Mac to the next version of Mac OS X is reliable and easy. It checks your applications to make sure they’re compatible and sets aside any programs known to be incompatible. If a power outage interrupts your installation, it can start again without losing any data. Best of all, upgrading doesn’t require reformatting your drive; you can keep all your compatible applications, files, and settings. And if something goes wrong when you’re using your Mac, Time Machine is there to keep automatic backups of everything on your drive.

Fully featured, fully loaded.

Mac OS X comes in a single, full-featured version that includes a large collection of beautifully designed applications. They not only let you surf the web, conduct video and text chats, manage your contacts, and accomplish other day-to-day tasks — they also work together to make you more productive and let you have more fun.

Mac A-Z Glossary

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Z

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Top 15 Terminal Commands

2011-02-11T13:51:00.000-08:00

defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -bool YES

defaults write com.apple.iTunes invertStoreLinks -bool YES

defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES

4. Force all mail to be displayed as plain text.

defaults write com.apple.mail PreferPlainText -bool YES

5. Set expanded save dialogs as default
(showing column/list view of folders rather than a drop down menu). Replace TRUE with FALSE to reverse.

defaults write -g NSNavPanelExpandedStateForSaveMode -bool YES

6. Display the currently chosen screen saver to be shown as the desktop background.
Press Control-C or Command-. to stop.

/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine -background

7. Display useful system stats in the login window.

defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow AdminHostInfo SystemVersion

Replace "SystemVersion" with one of the following for different stats:

SystemBuild 
SerialNumber 
IPAddress 
DSStatus 
Time
HostName

8. To remove accounts from the login window
Type this command with the short name of each account you wish to remove.

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow HiddenUsersList -array-add shortname1 shortname2 shortname3

9. Skip disk image verification. Potentially risky, use with disk images from trusted sources.

defaults write com.apple.frameworks.diskimages skip-verify -bool YES

10. Put double scroll arrows at both ends of scroll bar.
Use Appearance pane in system preferences to reset.

defaults write "Apple Global Domain" AppleScrollBarVariant DoubleBoth

11. Disable the unexpectedly quit dialog that normally appears when an application crashes.
Replace "none" with "prompt" to enable again.

defaults write com.apple.CrashReporter DialogType none

12. Set the history limit in Safari to a certain number of items and and/or a certain age.

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitHistoryItemLimit 2000

and/or

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitHistoryAgeInDaysLimit 30

13. Show hidden files in the Finder.

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool YES

14. Enable the debug menu in Safari.

defaults write com.apple.safari IncludeDebugMenu -bool YES

15. Deactivate Dashboard.
Requires the dock to be relaunched to take effect, so type "killall Dock" and press enter.

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -bool YES

FAQ - Frequently Answered Questions !

2010-10-02T08:39:00.000-07:00

Get expert advice and step-by-step how-to's the latest mac computers and software, iPhones, iPods and iPads.

Some Frequently Answered Questions:

Can a Mac run Windows and Microsoft Office?
Yes. Microsoft Office is available for the Mac, and Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files created on a Mac are fully compatible with Windows. Most other popular applications are available for the Mac, too. But if you need to use a particular Windows-only application, you have a few options: Boot Camp comes with every new Mac, and it lets you run Windows natively — as if your Mac were a PC. If you want to run Mac OS X and Windows side by side, you can purchase Parallels Desktop for Mac or VMware Fusion. Install one of these applications, along with the Windows Installation CDs, and you can run the occasional Windows program right next to your Mac applications, without having to restart.

Is a Mac safe from PC viruses?
Yes. The Mac OS X operating system isn’t susceptible to the thousands of viruses plaguing Windows-based computers. And although no computer connected to the Internet is completely immune to all viruses and spyware, Mac OS X has built-in defenses designed with your safety in mind. The Mac web browser, Safari, alerts you whenever you’re downloading an application — even if it’s disguised as a picture or movie file. And Apple continually makes free security updates available for Mac owners. You can even have them download automatically.

Will my other devices work with a Mac?
A Mac has hundreds of drivers for peripherals preinstalled. Just connect your device and, in most cases, you’re good to go. And a Mac is smart enough to know what to do when you plug in your digital camera: It opens iPhoto and asks if you want to import your recent photos.

Will my keyboard and mouse work with a Mac?
Yes. The Mac is compatible with virtually any keyboard and multibutton mouse, even the ones you use with your PC. Just plug them into the USB ports on your Mac and start working. You can also use the Multi-Touch Magic Mouse or multibutton Apple Mouse, which comes with every iMac and Mac Pro, respectively. And the trackpad on MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air offers “right-click” capability — just press the Control key when you click.

Can I work with my existing documents on a Mac?
Yes. A Mac can open most files from your PC, including Microsoft Office documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), PDFs, MP3s, iTunes songs, WAV files, JPEGs, GIFs, and more.

Can I join Windows networks?
Yes. If you have a network at home or at work, whether wired or wireless, a Mac will fit right in. You can share files with any computer on your network, browse the web, and get your work or home email.

What about Wi-Fi?
All new Mac computers are Wi-Fi capable. Available wireless networks automatically show up. Just select the network you want to join, enter a password if necessary, and you’re connected.

Is a Mac reliable?
When you buy a PC, you’re buying hardware from one company and an operating system and software from other companies. Not so with a Mac. Because Apple builds both the computer and the software that comes with it, they’re literally made for each other. This means that a Mac rarely freezes or crashes. Occasionally an application might quit, but it won’t affect the rest of your system. And Mac OS X resists most viruses, so you can do anything — without worrying about losing everything.

What software is available for the Mac?
Thousands of titles are available for the Mac. You’ll find everything from Microsoft Office and Rosetta Stone to Adobe Photoshop Elements and Adobe Creative Suite. A huge collection of games covering every genre is available for the Mac, including top sellers such as Age of Empires III, The Sims 2, Guitar Hero III, and many more.

How do I move my files to a Mac?
The best way to transfer your photos, music, documents, and other files is to let us do it for you. When you buy a new Mac from an Apple Retail Store or the Apple Online Store, simply add One to One to your purchase. One to One costs just $99, and it includes Personal Setup, a year’s worth of face-to-face training, and exclusive group workshops. It’s all designed to help you get the most out of your Mac.
If you like, you can transfer your files yourself. And it doesn’t require much work.

Here are two ways to do it:

Copy files from your PC to an external hard drive, connect the drive to your Mac, and move the files over.
Use a local network to move files directly from your PC to your Mac. For detailed information on moving your files to a Mac, read Switch 101: Migrate Your Files or Your Windows System.

Will my current email service work on a Mac?
Yes. You can access your current email in two ways:

View web-based email — such as Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, and MobileMe mail — in the Safari web browser.
Use the Mail application in Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Simply enter your email account information and you’re good to go. If you have email messages in Microsoft Outlook on your PC, you can transfer them to your Mac using inexpensive third-party software.
No matter which method you choose, you can continue using your current email address.

Which web browsers will work on a Mac?
Every Mac includes Safari, the fastest web browser in the world. You can also use Mac versions of Firefox, Opera, and others.

Can I instant message on a Mac?
Yes. Every Mac comes with iChat, Apple’s instant messaging application. iChat supports AIM, Google Talk, and MobileMe. In addition to text messaging, iChat allows you to video chat with friends and family around the world.3 Microsoft and Yahoo! offer Mac versions of their instant messaging applications, too.

What kind of support can I expect?
Every Mac comes with service and support that’s consistently voted the best in the business. If you have a problem in the first year of owning your new Mac, you can take it to an Apple Retail Store to get it fixed or figured out. And if you purchase the AppleCare Protection Plan, you extend your service and support to up to three years from the date of your Mac purchase. The Apple Retail Store also offers services like ProCare, which gives you priority support, and One to One, which provides personal training on your Mac. Each service costs $99 a year.

Is it easy to learn how to use a Mac?
Every Mac is created with the guiding principle that computers should be easy to use, so you can spend more time doing what you love and less time figuring out how your computer works. If you’ve never owned a Mac, you may need a little time to get used to it. But within a week or two, chances are you’ll get along like old friends. And because all Mac applications are designed to work in the same, intuitive way, once you learn one application — iTunes, for example — you’ll quickly pick up iPhoto, Mail, or any of the other software that comes with your Mac.

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Tips and Tricks !

2010-09-18T04:54:00.000-07:00

Mac

2010-09-14T02:13:00.003-07:00

MacBook

Apple's most affordable notebook.

MacBook has something for everyone. With a durable polycarbonate unibody enclosure that’s 1.08 inches thin and now only 4.7 pounds, it fits easily into your backpack or briefcase. The built-in battery lasts up to 7 hours on a single charge. Your photos, videos, games, and websites come alive on the new power-efficient, 13-inch LED-backlit widescreen display. And its spacious new trackpad supports two-finger scroll, right-click, and Multi-Touch gestures.



MacBook Pro

Apple's most advanced notebooks yet.

It’s all about performance. If you want enhanced pro features, a breakthrough built-in battery, and a brilliant display, you want the all-new MacBook Pro, now available in 13-, 15-, and 17-inch models. With advanced NVIDIA graphics processors, MacBook Pro is fast enough to run the most graphics-intensive games and professional applications, but portable enough to come along for the ride.



MacBook Air

The thinnest and lightest Mac notebook.

MacBook Air travels light. At just 3 pounds, it sets a new standard for mobile computing — without scrimping on the keyboard or display.

With a faster architecture, advanced NVIDIA integrated graphics, a 13.3-inch screen, a full-size keyboard, and breakthrough wireless innovations, MacBook Air is engineered to take on the wireless world.



iMac

The ultimate all-in-one.

iMac puts everything you need — display, processor, graphics, hard drive, optical drive, and more — inside one simple aluminum enclosure. Big LED-backlit displays are perfect for HD video. Fast dual-core Intel processors start at 3.06GHz. Available quad-core Intel “Nehalem” processors boost performance even more. And the included wireless keyboard and Multi-Touch Magic Mouse completely declutter the desktop.



Mac Pro

The fastest Mac ever.

The Mac Pro is a force to be reckoned with. With the Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processor and powerful AMD and NVIDIA graphics, it’s nearly two times faster than the previous generation.

Designed for easier expansion, every system supports up to two 30-inch Apple Cinema HD Displays, along with millions of configuration possibilities.

Mac OS X is engineered to get the most out of the advanced architecture in the new Mac Pro. Built on a rock-solid UNIX foundation, Mac OS X delivers true 64-bit performance and incorporates industry-leading developer tools.



Mac mini

The smallest, most affordable Mac.

Mac mini packs the complete Mac experience into a 6.5-inch-square computer. Just bring your own display, keyboard, and mouse. Mac mini brings the rest, including an Intel Core 2 Duo processor up to 2.66GHz, up to 4GB of memory, and high-performance NVIDIA graphics. All in an energy-efficient design that uses less than 14 watts of power when idle — something no other desktop computer can do.

iPod

2010-09-14T02:13:00.001-07:00

iPhone

2010-09-14T02:12:00.003-07:00

iPad

2010-09-14T02:12:00.001-07:00

iTunes

2010-09-14T02:11:00.002-07:00

iLife

2010-09-14T02:11:00.000-07:00

iWork

2010-09-14T02:10:00.003-07:00

MobileMe

2010-09-14T02:10:00.001-07:00

Just Added

2010-09-14T02:09:00.001-07:00

...get more OSX basics !

2010-05-11T08:18:00.001-07:00

Mac A-Z Glossary

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Z

Proud Member of ScreenCastsOnline

Mac OSX 10.6 !

2010-03-04T11:21:00.001-08:00

Customize your Mac

2010-03-04T11:20:00.000-08:00

Customize Your Mighty Mouse:

Whether you’re using a wired or wireless Mighty Mouse, you can customize it easily:

1. Choose System Preferences from the Apple menu.
2. Click Keyboard & Mouse; then click the Mouse tab.
You can program the four buttons on your Mighty Mouse, set scrolling options, and set response sensitivities for tracking, scrolling, and double-clicking.

Customize Your Mac with a Screen Saver:

Screen savers offer a great way to customize — and enjoy — your Mac. You have a variety of screen savers to choose from:

1. Choose System Preferences from the Apple menu.
2. Click Desktop & Screen Saver; then click the Screen Saver tab.
The column on the left lists the possibilities. You can also tell Mac OS X to generate a screen saver automatically based on the album art in your iTunes library or the photos in your iPhoto or Aperture photo libraries.

Simply click any of the available options to choose a screen saver. You can try it by clicking Test below the Preview screen.

Quickly Activate Your Screen Saver:

By designating a Hot Corner, you can have your screen saver start whenever you move the mouse into that corner. Here’s how:

1. Choose System Preferences from the Apple menu.
2. Click Desktop & Screen Saver and click the Screen Saver tab.
3. Choose one Screen Saver option and click the Hot Corners button.
4. Use the pull-down menus to indicate the corner you’d like to use to activate your screen saver.

Open Applications Automatically on Startup:

If you frequently listen to music, surf the web, get your email, or chat with friends, you may want your computer to open those applications every time you start up. On a Mac, it’s simple to do. Select System Preferences from the Apple menu, then:

1. Click Accounts (in the System row of the System Preferences window).
2. Click the Login Items tab.
3.Click the Add (+) button.
4. Scroll down and click Applications
5. Select iTunes and click the Add button.

The next time you start up your Mac, iTunes will start up, too. In addition to opening applications at Start Up, you can have Mac OS X open documents.

Quickly Switch Between Applications:

The Mac makes it easy to have multiple applications — Mail, Safari, iTunes, Pages, iChat, iPhoto, and others — open at the same time. So how do you quickly switch from Safari, let’s say, to Mail?

Just hold down the Command key and press the Tab key (Command-Tab). Mac OS X immediately displays a mini-Dock with icons for each of your open applications. At the left side of the mini-Dock, you’ll see the icon for your current application. Next to it (and highlighted), you’ll find the icon for the application you last used. Each time you press the Tab key (without releasing the Command key), you can cycle through your open applications.

One more tip: You can also use the Left Arrow and Right Arrow keys to navigate your open applications.

Get Dictionary Definitions in One Click:

You’re using Safari to research a paper on climate change and you find the phrase “anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.” What exactly does “anthropogenic” mean?

Here’s a fast way to get the definition of a word you’re not familiar with.

1. Hover your Mighty Mouse over the word and right-click.
2. Choose Look Up in Dictionary from the menu that appears.
3. Mac OS X immediately opens Dictionary and finds the meaning of “anthropogenic” for you.

Stored in the Applications folder, Dictionary works with all Mac OS X applications.

Go Home:

Whether you share a Mac with others or have one all to yourself, you can find all your personal data — documents, downloads, music, and more — in the home folder Mac OS X created for you when you set up your Mac (or when someone created an account for you).

You can spot your home folder easily: It’s the one with the icon of a house and your account name. And if you place it in the Dock, you can open it quickly without having to open any folders. Here’s how:

1. In the Finder, click the icon for your hard drive. (Unless you’ve renamed it, it’s probably called Macintosh HD.)
2. Open the Users folder.
3. Then drag your home folder from the Users folder into the Dock and release the mouse button.

Now, whenever you need anything in your home folder, you can access it quickly from the Dock.

Back Up Your Music, Photos, and Documents:

Time Machine is the fabulous backup application that’s part of Mac OS X Leopard. To use Time Machine, simply connect an external hard drive to your computer. The first time you connect it to your Mac, Leopard displays a dialog asking if you’d like to use it as your backup location. If the dialog doesn’t appear, don’t worry:

1. Choose System Preferences from the Apple menu.
2. Click the Time Machine icon.
3. Click Choose Backup Disk.

Time Machine toggles on, changes the image for your backup disk, and indicates when the next (in this case, the first) backup will occur). For best results, you should use a drive that’s at least as large as your Mac startup drive. (If your internal hard drive can hold up to 250GB of data, your Time Machine volume should hold at least 250GB.) And it’s a good idea not to store any other data on your Time Machine drive. That way, you maximize the amount of space you have to backup your files.

Take a Quick Look:

How do you quickly find a photo without opening them one at a time?

Let Quick Look help you. A new feature in Leopard, Quick Look lets you browse files — photos, Pages documents, Keynote presentations, QuickTime movies, Microsoft Word and Excel files — without having to open an application. Here’s how:

In the Finder, open the folder that contains the item you hope to find.
Select a photo; then click the Quick Look button in the folder’s toolbar (or press Command-Y).
Leopard instantly opens a Quick Look window with the photo you selected.

Not the photo you were looking for? Just click another. Quick Look keeps the preview window open, letting you click photos until you find the one you want.

Capture Screen Shots:

In Mac OS X, you can use simple keyboard shortcuts to do all sorts of things, including capturing images of what’s on your Mac screen. For example, you can take a screen shot of your entire screen by holding down the Command and Shift keys and pressing a 3.

If you hold down the Command and Shift keys and press 4, Mac OS X turns the cursor into crosshairs you can use to select whatever portion of your display you’d like to capture in a screen shot.

If you immediately hit the Spacebar after typing Command-Shift-4, Mac OS X replaces those crosshairs with a little a camera. Using the camera, you can take a screen shot of the Dock, the entire menu bar, a single open menu, the desktop, or any open window.

Basics

2010-03-01T10:59:00.001-08:00

Installation
Learn how to get the most out of Snow Leopard.

Using Finder
The Finder lets you organize, view, and access practically everything on your Mac, including applications, files, folders, discs, SD memory cards,...

Using Preview
Preview is a simple, elegant application for viewing and working with PDF documents.
You can also view and edit images. Crop, rotate, resize, and save images in a range of formats.

Using iLife
Organize photos by Faces and Places. Create photo books. Make a movie. Even learn to play music. All with iLife. All part of every new Mac.

Using iPhoto
Organize your photos. Crop, retouch, and remove red-eye. Then share on the web with MobileMe, Facebook, and Flickr, or make a photo book.

Using iMovie
Make movies on your Mac. Take your time editing or use themes to finish a movie in minutes. Then share on the web with YouTube or MobileMe.

Using GarageBand
With GarageBand on your Mac, you can learn to play guitar and piano, get lessons from famous musicians, and record and mix your own songs.

Using iWeb
Use iWeb to design websites and blogs featuring your photos, movies, and more. iWeb even notifies Facebook when you post something new to your site.

Using iDVD
With iDVD on a Mac, you can create and burn professional-looking DVDs to share your movies and photo slideshows.

Using iChat
If you're looking for a more personal way to stay in touch, iChat enables you to see and hear your friends, family, and coworkers no matter how...

Using iCal
If you need help managing your life and time more wisely, iCal provides all the tools you need to keep track of schedules, appointments,...

Using Mail
Learn what you can do if you are having issues sending Mail messages after updating to Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard.

Using Safari
Experience the web with the fast, easy-to-use web browser. With its simple, elegant interface and support for the latest Internet standards, Safari gets out of your way and lets you enjoy the web.
Safari 4 is a high performance, modern Internet web browser for Mac OS X and Windows. It supports the latest standards in HTML 5 and CSS 3,...

Using Address Book
Whether you've got all your contacts stored neatly in an electronic device or are still hanging on to your tattered address book, personal...

Using Exposé
Expose in Mac OS X lets you instantly view all open windows in stunning style with a single keystroke.

Using the Dock
Learn about The Dock, Dock Exposé, Dock menus, and Stacks in Mac OS X v10.6 and later.

Using Dashboard
Instantly get info with amazing new widgets. Play a game. Read the news. Search the web.

Customizing Your Mac
Every Mac comes standard with assistive technologies that help people with disabilities enjoy the power and simplicity of the Mac.

Keyboard Shortcuts
Tip of the Week. Create Your Own Keyboard Shortcuts. Keyboard shortcuts are such
huge timesavers, but sadly, not all Finder commands have them. ...

Mac Tips and Tricks for your iPhone !

...get more basics !

2010-02-04T16:36:00.001-08:00

Installation
Learn how to get the most out of Snow Leopard.

Using Finder
The Finder lets you organize, view, and access practically everything on your Mac, including applications, files, folders, discs, SD memory cards,...

Using Preview
Preview is a simple, elegant application for viewing and working with PDF documents.
You can also view and edit images. Crop, rotate, resize, and save images in a range of formats.

Using iLife
Organize photos by Faces and Places. Create photo books. Make a movie. Even learn to play music. All with iLife. All part of every new Mac.

Using iPhoto
Organize your photos. Crop, retouch, and remove red-eye. Then share on the web with MobileMe, Facebook, and Flickr, or make a photo book.

Using iMovie
Make movies on your Mac. Take your time editing or use themes to finish a movie in minutes. Then share on the web with YouTube or MobileMe.

Using GarageBand
With GarageBand on your Mac, you can learn to play guitar and piano, get lessons from famous musicians, and record and mix your own songs.

Using iWeb
Use iWeb to design websites and blogs featuring your photos, movies, and more. iWeb even notifies Facebook when you post something new to your site.

Using iDVD
With iDVD on a Mac, you can create and burn professional-looking DVDs to share your movies and photo slideshows.

Using iChat
If you're looking for a more personal way to stay in touch, iChat enables you to see and hear your friends, family, and coworkers no matter how...

Using iCal
If you need help managing your life and time more wisely, iCal provides all the tools you need to keep track of schedules, appointments,...

Using Mail
Learn what you can do if you are having issues sending Mail messages after updating to Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard. For example, you may...

Using Safari
Experience the web with the fast, easy-to-use web browser. With its simple, elegant interface and support for the latest Internet standards, Safari gets out of your way and lets you enjoy the web.
Safari 4 is a high performance, modern Internet web browser for Mac OS X and Windows. It supports the latest standards in HTML 5 and CSS 3,...

Using Address Book
Whether you've got all your contacts stored neatly in an electronic device or are still hanging on to your tattered address book, personal...

Using Exposé
Expose in Mac OS X lets you instantly view all open windows in stunning style with a single keystroke.

Using the Dock
Learn about The Dock, Dock Exposé, Dock menus, and Stacks in Mac OS X v10.6 and later.

Using Dashboard
Instantly get info with amazing new widgets. Play a game. Read the news. Search the web.

Customizing Your Mac
Every Mac comes standard with assistive technologies that help people with disabilities enjoy the power and simplicity of the Mac.

Keyboard Shortcuts
Tip of the Week. Create Your Own Keyboard Shortcuts. Keyboard shortcuts are such
huge timesavers, but sadly, not all Finder commands have them. ...

Store

2010-02-04T16:34:00.000-08:00

FAQ

2010-02-04T15:15:00.000-08:00

-
Can a Mac run Windows and Microsoft Office?

Yes. Microsoft Office is available for the Mac, and Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files created on a Mac are fully compatible with Windows. Most other popular applications are available for the Mac, too. But if you need to use a particular Windows-only application, you have a few options: Boot Camp comes with every new Mac, and it lets you run Windows natively — as if your Mac were a PC. If you want to run Mac OS X and Windows side by side, you can purchase Parallels Desktop for Mac or VMware Fusion. Install one of these applications, along with the Windows Installation CDs, and you can run the occasional Windows program right next to your Mac applications, without having to restart.

Is a Mac safe from PC viruses?

Yes, a Mac is 100 percent safe from viruses designed to attack PCs. And although no computer connected to the Internet is completely immune to all viruses and spyware, the Mac is built on a solid UNIX foundation and designed with security in mind. The Mac web browser, Safari, alerts you whenever you’re downloading an application — even if it’s disguised as a picture or movie file. And Apple continually makes free security updates available for Mac owners. You can even have them download automatically.

Will my PC devices (cameras, printers, hard drives) work with a Mac?

A Mac has hundreds of drivers for peripherals preinstalled. Just connect your device and, in most cases, you’re good to go. And a Mac is smart enough to know what to do when you plug in your digital camera: It opens iPhoto and asks if you want to import your recent photos.

Can I join Windows networks?

Yes. If you have a network at home or at work, whether wired or wireless, a Mac will fit right in. You can share files with any computer on your network, browse the web, and get your work or home email.

What about Wi-Fi?

All new Mac computers are Wi-Fi capable. Available wireless networks automatically show up. Just select the network you want to join, enter a password if necessary, and you’re connected.

Is a Mac reliable?

When you buy a PC, you’re buying hardware from one company and an operating system and software from other companies. Not so with a Mac. Because Apple builds both the computer and the software that comes with it, they’re literally made for each other. This means that a Mac rarely freezes or crashes. Occasionally an application might quit, but it won’t affect the rest of your system. And Mac OS X resists most viruses, so you can do anything — without worrying about losing everything.

What kind of support can I expect?

Every Mac comes with service and support that’s consistently voted the best in the business. If you have a problem in the first year of owning your new Mac, you can take it to an Apple Retail Store to get it fixed or figured out. And if you purchase the AppleCare Protection Plan, you extend your service and support to up to three years. The Apple Retail Store also offers services like ProCare, which gives you priority support, and One to One, which provides personal training on your Mac. Each service costs $99 a year.

Is it easy to learn how to use a Mac?

Every Mac is created with the guiding principle that computers should be easy to use, so you can spend more time doing what you love and less time figuring out how your computer works. If you’ve never owned a Mac, you may need a little time to get used to it. But within a week or two, chances are you’ll get along like old friends. And because all Mac applications are designed to work in the same, intuitive way, once you learn one application — iTunes, for example — you’ll quickly pick up iPhoto, Mail, or any of the other software that comes with your Mac.

Why should I spend more money on a Mac?

When you compare the cost of a PC and factor in the additional software, memory, and other extras you have to buy to go along with it, the difference in price between a Mac and PC isn’t as great as most people believe. And because the Mac comes with so many built-in applications that you’ll enjoy using for both work and play (rather than useless freebies you’ll want to uninstall), a Mac makes good financial sense. Finally, a Mac is built with the most cutting-edge technology by some of the smartest hardware engineers, software developers, and product designers on the planet. So you’re getting the latest technological advances and a computer that isn’t in danger of becoming obsolete anytime soon.

How do I move my files to a Mac?

If you buy a Mac at an Apple Retail or Online Store along with One to One you'll get Personal Setup where we'll transfer your files, install any new Apple software you've purchased, and put it in all the right places.

Top10 ScreenSaver

2010-02-04T15:02:00.000-08:00

1. Jack O'Lantern

Download

In this screen saver, you can turn gloomy pumpkin lantern into your mac screen saver. Interestingly here you can carve your PNG transparent and make your lantern to be displayed on your screen saver.

You can also find Apple logo as one of the default carving templates provided.

2. Screensaver X-Galaxy

Download

Screen saver built with a Leopard's nebula concept.

3. Plasma Tunnel

Download

By watching this screen saver, you will have a feeling of being taken into the depth of the water tunnel.
You can customize the color of the tunnel's wall also.

3. Flux

Download

Mac OS X Screen Saver that uses the movement of spheres to create a stunning, colorful composition.

5. Solar Winds

Download

Flurry-like Mac OS X screen saver.

6. Fireflies

Download

The most colorful Mac screen saver that I've ever seen for now.
More colorful than Flurry screen saver.

7. The Digg Labs

Download

The Arc of Digg as your Mac screen saver.
Everyone should have known about this already.

8. Flickr Shuffle Screen Saver

Download

This screen saver can load your favorite photos from Flickr,
shuffle them, add customizable transition effects and display them as your screen saver.
It's worth a try. Really.

9. Time Machine Screen Saver

Download

This Time Machine screen saver combines the Time Machine space time warp and your trustworthy RSS reader, making it so much of convenience (and awesomeness) for reading your RSS while also running your screen saver.

10. MovingPhotos 3D Screen Saver

Download

An absolutely beautiful screen saver.
This screen saver gives you the freedom on choosing your pictures folder and then works on it to create animation of photos flying around, constructing a virtual building.
This is a must have screen saver.

Top10 Tips

2010-02-04T14:22:00.000-08:00

1. Diagnose MobileMe Sync Glitches:

If MobileMe syncing never seems to work right (and it never has for me) you can check what went wrong by holding the Option key and clicking on the Sync icon in the menu bar.
A menu will pop down showing what synced and what didn’t.
There’s also a link to Sync Diagnostics and you can reset sync system without having to open System Preferences.

2. Sync Google and Yahoo Calendars:

You can easily import your Google and Yahoo calendars into iCal.

In iCal, go to the iCal menu and hit Preferences.
Select the Accounts tab hit the Plus sign under the Accounts box.
The dialog box that pops up will allow you to log into your Google or Yahoo accounts by entering your email addresses and passwords.

3. Auto Text Correction:

If you always make habitual typing mistakes like “don;t” instead of “don’t,”
go to System Preferences>Language & Text.
Under the Text tab you’ll find a list of text substitutions.
Hit the + sign at the bottom, add your most annoying mistakes, and Snow Leopard will automatically correct them.
Only works in certain apps like Mail, iChat and TextEdit.
Unfortunately it corrects fun mistakes like “teh” for “the.”

You can also add shortcuts like “tyl” which will type out
“Thank you for your letter but this isn’t my department.
I refer you to my esteemed colleague, cc’ed here,” and so on.

It will also fix curly quotes, which don’t play nice when cutting/pasting text into a webpage.

4. Shrink App Windows Behind the App’s Dock Icon:

For some reason, it irritated me when a minimized window shrunk to the Dock next to the Trash can.

Shrink a lot of windows and they would all line up on the right-hand side of the Dock, next to the Trash.

In Snow Leopard, they can now be shrunk behind the application’s icon in the Dock, where they belong.

Go to System Preferences>Dock and check “Minimize windows into application icon.”

5. Auto Time Zone:

If you travel a lot, your Mac can now detect what time zone you’re in and automatically reset the time in the menu bar.

Go to System Preferences>Date &
Time and select the Time Zone tab.
Hit the “Set time zone automatically using current location” box.

6. Force Quit With Option-Click in the Dock:

If you have trouble remembering the Force Quit key combination (Option-Command-Esc) or hate hunting down the Force Quit dialog under the Apple menu,
here’s a Snow Leopard shortcut.

Hold down the Option key while clicking an app’s icon in the Dock.
Up will pop a contextual menu with Force Quit.
It also presents a Hide Others option, which I use a lot.

Quick and easy.

7. Change Audio Input and Output:

Instead of firing up System Preferences to switch from speakers to headphones,
hold down the Option key and click the volume control icon in the menu bar.
A menu will pop down showing the available inputs and outputs.

8. Enlarge Your Icons:

Ever want to look through a big folder of pictures to find the one you want but find Quick Look cumbersome?
In Snow Leopard just choose Icon view and hit the slider at bottom right to enlarge the icons to their full 512×512 glory.
Now you can see clearly what each file contains.
Icons also give a live preview of the file – music, movies and multi-page PDFs.

9. Use Stacks as a Quick Launcher:

To quickly launch an app, put your Applications folder in the Dock.
When you click on it, it’ll pop up as a stack.
Start typing the first few letters of the app you want – say “iCh” – and hit the Return button when the icon is highlighted.
This works pretty well as a fast app launcher after you’ve tried it a few times and got used to it.

10. Easy Convert Movie for iPhones and iPods:

Movies downloaded from the Internet are always a pain to get on your iPod or iPhone.
Not in Snow Leopard.

In QuickTime X, go to the Share Menu and Select iTunes.

In the dialog box, just choose the device you want – iPod, AppleTV or Computer.
Be sure to download and install Perian for maximum file compatibility.

Top50 Widgets

2010-02-04T12:41:00.000-08:00

Top100 Apps

2010-02-04T12:02:00.000-08:00

1) AppFresh
Software updater is great for Apple applications, but appfresh has the ability to check thrid party apps for updates. A great little tool for keeping upto date.

2) AppZapper
AppZapper cleans up and uninstall all of those applications and preference files.

3) Disk Inventory X
Scan your disk and visually shows what files takes up how much space.

4) Grand Perspective
Very similar to Disk Inventory X, shows you what files take up how much space on your website.

5) OpenPlist
A very cool little tool if you need to end up editing Plist files.

6) Quicksilver
Its a quick launch tool that enables you to open and do practically anything.

7) Stuffit
An application design to unstuff or unpack nearly any file. Create if you use archives a lot.

8) TextWrangler
A very cool text editor that lets you edit text files quickly. Sometimes more powerful than text edit.

9) TidyUp
An application that enables you to search through a list of files finds duplicates. Great if you have many files and you need to organise them.

10) Todos
Leaves no application behind. A very visual way to view all of the applications on your computer. Kind of surpassed by the stacks in the dock.

11) UnRarX
UnrarX gives you the abilty to easily uncompress .rar files.

12) Xslimmer
It can really reduce the size of applications.

13) Adium
A simple all in one AIM, chat client.

14) ApGrapher
A great little program that offers the ability to find information about the wireless networks whizzing around your head.

15) Azureus
One of the best bittorrent clients out there. Has lots of user extensions through the use of plugins.

16) Colloquy
A really powerful application that can be used for the IRC networks. Special care has been taken in this application to make it blend in with the rest of the Mac OS theming.

17) CSSedit
A must for any web developer. CSSedit offers the best tools around to help you edit and modify CSS code for you webpages.

18) Cyberduck
A small lightweight application for ftp. Has some small niggles, but it is free. Transmit is better if you use ftp a lot.

19) Firefox
One of the best web browsers around in my opinion. A viable alternative to safari.

20) iStumber
A great small application that enabled you to view wireless and bluetooth networks quick and hassle free.

21) LittleSnitch
The application that snitches on any application that is trying to access the net to phone home. Great for protecting you privacy.

22) Netnewswire
A very popular RSS client for the mac, nuff said.

23) Skype
Offering superior calls over the internet, it is the application if you do a lot of talking and want a good quality transmission.

24) Transmission
A light weight bittorrent application that is gaining popularity. Its personal choice at this point of transmission verse Azureus.

25) Transmit
A great application from Panic that will feature a couple of time in this list. It is a powerful application for ftp uploads and downloads.

26) Undercover
A piece of software that dials to the undercover servers if you computer has been stolen. Great if you use a laptop, less useful on a desktop.

27) Unison
Another piece of panic software that enables you to use the usenet newsreader networks. A really good piece of software if you use usenet a lot.

28) Vidalia
A GUI controller for the Tor anonymity network. One click on, one click off, simple and easy to use. Best of all its free.

29) VLC
The all in one application for watching videos. Supports nearly every codec imaginable.

30) Aperture
One of Apples Pro programs for organizing and altering photos. A very powerfull application although comes with a bit of a price tag.

31) Audacity
A free audio editor which has a few advance features that make it create for editing audio for your videos or other applications.

32) Blender
A free 3D modeler which has the same power of many of the most advance applications on the market. Comes with quite a steep learning curve.

33) Delicious Library
A very cool application used to organise your books, movies, games and CD’s. You can use your built in iSight to save time by scanning your books. Very cool and fun to use.

34) DeskLickr
A simple application that uses the vast photo resource of flickr to change your wallpaper every so often. Makes a cool change.

35) Desktastic
Anoter Panic app. This time it can be used to write directly on your desktop. Very cool if you use a tablet for your daily work.

36) Gimp
The free image editing program. Used by many open source and linux users.

37) Google Earth
Use it to zoom in on planet earth and explore the world around you.

38) HandBreak
An open source application that can quickly convert DVD’s to Mpeg-4.

39) iLife
The all in one package made by Apple. I don’t think this needs any explaining.

40) iShowU
This application takes a direct recording of your screen. Great if you want to make recordings of specific applications. You need a good CPU, a bit of a power hog.

41) Joost
A very hot application that lets you watch free TV. Beautiful application even though the amount of TV stations are a bit small.

42) Photoshop
The high priced application for real pros who want to edit and manipulate images and photos.

43) Pixelmator
The medium priced application that has a lot of great image editing potential. Not as expenisive as Photoshop.

44) Shapeshifter
Bored of your interface? Let shape shifter change it for you. Not Leopard compatitble although this is likely to change.

45) Theme Park
A great little app which lets you delve into the resource files for applications and lets you change them. Not as powerful as Shapeshifter but lets you tweak little bits of your operating systems interface.

46) TVShows
A little app that downloads all of the torrent files for your favourite TV shows. You need a bittorrent client to finish the process off.

47) Wallsaver
Puts your screensaver as your wallpaper. Add a bit of life to your desktop.

48) Autorate
A simple piece of software that rates your musis in your iTunes libary based on the number of plays and track skips.

49) Fish
A simple little program that shows you little fishes swimming around.

50) iAlertU
A little program that can arm your computer. Moving your laptop will set of the alarm and alert you to intruders.

51) Liquidmac
Once again using the motion sensor in a laptop. This program fills the screen with water which you can play around with by moving your computer.

52) MacSaber
Let your Mac become a jedi. Once again using the motion sensor makes cool lightsaber noises.

53) Quinn
Tetris on the extreme side of life. A cool little app with amazing graphics on the old arcade favourite Tetris.

54) Resize ‘Em All
A little program which can be used to resize images.

55) Rulers
Put a ruler on your screen. This application lets you measure nearly anything on your screen, great if you are in the design world.

56) smcFanControl
A small application that runs in your menu bar to control your fan speeds.

57) TimeOut
One for the work-a-holic. A little application that tells you to take a break and stop what you are doing.

58) Wallsaver
Sets your screen saver as your wallpaper. A great little program to add a bit of movement to your desktop.

59) Apple Remote Desktop
One of Apples many programs that lets you work effectively on your network. This app lets you look in on a remote desktop and work with it remotely.

60) Battery Health
One of many tools used to help you find out how much juice is left in your Mac battery. A tool for any laptop.

61) BootCamp
Installing Windows on a Mac is never easier with BootCamp. A simple program that create a partition on you disk for installing windows.

62) BwanaDik
A menu bar monitoring tool for you network. Lets you find tons of info about you LAN and WAN.

63) Carbon Copy Cloner
For serious back ups you need somthing like Carbon Copy Cloner that can clone your entire drive quickly and easily.

64) Chmox
Chmox is a program that enables you to open .chm help files on your Mac. Chm files are not supported in preview.

65) Coconut Battery
A personal favourite of mine, this is another battery tool to monitor the health of your battery. I wish my laptop was run off coconuts.

66) DasBoot
DasBoot is a tool to create a diagnostic and repair kit for your computer to put on an iPod or flash drive.

67) Flip4Mac
The tool endorsed by Microsoft to help with those pesky .wmv files.

68) FreeDMG
This software creates drag and drop .dmg archives on the fly. Easy to use if you make a lot of disk images.

69) GeekTool
GeekTool is a preference pane module to show system logs, unix commands output, or images (i.e. from the internet) on your desktop.

70) Growl
A very useful tool that is used by many applications to show a clean way of displaying messages to you. Like the bubbles in Windows except a hell of a lot better.

71) Hardware Monitor
Hardware Monitor is designed to check the various pieces of hardware on you computer for faults and problems as well as give messages back to you.

72) Hex Fiend
Editing hex files cannot be easier with Hex Fiend.

73) HoudahGeo
HoudahGeo allows you to add Geo data to any image within the EXIF data. Helps you find your way around the world in your images.

74) iStat Menus
iStat Menus off a wide range of statistical analysis of your computer including various hardware bits. Their widget is one of my favouites.

75) Mac Pilot
This piece of software allows you to modify various parts of your computer that you would normally have to do through Terminal.

76) MacJanitor
This little app cleans up various system files and other bits and bobs to keep your computer running smoothly.

77) MainMenu
MainMenu is another piece of software to help you keep your computer running smoothly.

78) MenuMeters
Another monitor piece of software but this one is designed to run within the menu bar.

79) Monolingual
Who needs to know French. Monolingual removes the languages from the computer that you do not need.

80) Operation
A project management tool that lets you organise your projects quickly and easily.

81) Parallels
Highly recommended virtualization software for virtualizing other OS’s.

82) Service Scrubber
Helps you organise and remove services from your menus (Name of App > Services)

83) SquidDan
Once a very popular proxy tool for sorting out your own proxy.

84) Stomp
Stomp those big files down to size. Helps reduce video files into more compressed formats.

85) SuperDuper
Another great backing up utility although its not fully Leopard compatible at the time of writing.

86) Synergy2
A very cool little application that lets you share a mouse and keyboard between one or more computers.

87) TinkerTool
A tool that lets you access more preferences the Apple has built into the OS.

88) VMWare
Another very good piece virtualization software to enable to to virtualize other OS’s.

89) Cha-Ching
A simple money program that helps you organise your accounts, budgets and finances.

90) Concept Draw
More of a group of programs that offer a wide range of applications such as flow charts to mind maps.

91) Filemaker
A cross platform database application, that has amazing power and potential.

92) iWork
Apples work application package to complement iLife, a good package if you want the Apple integration although lacks on some features.

93) Microsoft Office
Office is one of the most prominent packages on the Windows machines for work programs. Very good on Mac, although some small annoying bugs.

94) Money2
Another application for managing your accounts. The interface on this program is amazing.

95) Neooffice
An Open Office port to Mac, like Microsoft Office, except its free.

96) Nvu
A very powerful webpage editor for designing and creating websites. Just as good as Dreamweaver.

97) Omnigraffle
A brill program that offers a really cool way of creating presentation diagrams. Check out the Omni Groups offerings for all of the cool programs they have to offer.

98) Process
Another program by Jumsoft on this list that lets you plan and organise your projects.

99) Quicken
Another personal finance program, but this one feels more corporate and official.

100) Yojimbo
A cool little program that helps you organise all your bits of information, great if you end up filling up dashboard with millions of stickies.

Top10 Widgets

2010-02-04T11:45:00.000-08:00

1. Earth

Get the Earth Widget with live updated satellite images!

2. Rollercoaster

Wanna have a nonstop rollercoaster ride? Here we go.

3. FishTank

Get a real FishTank in to your Dashboard. You can switch on and off the Bubble Sounds at anytime - Enjoy !

4. Apps on Mac

Essential software to make your Mac more awesome… enjoy!

5. NASA TV

Watch live stream NASA TV:
- get Launch and Landing Coverage
- get complete LIVE Shuttle Coverage
- get Current Missions Reports

What’s New in this Version
- Public, Education and Media Channels added

6. Dashboard on Fire

Get your Dashboard fullscreen on Fire!
- Flip to the back and switch on or off the crackling sound effect when ever you like !

7. YouTube

Watch and Search Featured, Most Discussed, Most Recent, Most Viewed, Top Favorites and Top Rated Videos in your Dashboard.

8. Asteroid

Play Asteriods with this amazing Asteriod widget !
The Asteroid OSX Dashboard Widget is based on Gary C. Martin AsteroidsQC V0.9 Quartz Composer development.
Many Thanks to him indeed !

9. BigBen

Get the most famous clock in to your Dashboard.

10. Have a Studio!

Use your Keyboard to play the Piano, click on the Samples for some Beats and enjoy your little studio in your Dashboard! Credits to ButtonBeats.com for the Piano Synthesizer!

Hot News

2010-02-02T11:04:00.000-08:00



Using Address Book:

2009-12-19T12:39:00.003-08:00

See Which Groups They’re In:

If you have a contact that appears in more than one Group, you can instantly see which of your Groups this individual appears in by simply clicking on his or her contact and holding the Option key.
When you do this, every Group that they appear within will become highlighted.

This is handy if you want to clean up your Groups by deleting extra instances of people who appear in multiple Groups.

Create a Birthdays Calendar:

Thanks to Address Book, you’ll never forget a birthday again. That’s because iCal will create a Birthdays calendar for you, so you’ll have plenty of time to pick up a card or present. First you need to add a birthday field to Address Book. Here’s how:

1. Open Address Book and go to a contact to which you’d like to add a birthday.
2. Pull down the Card menu and choose Birthday from the Add Field option.

The birthdays you add in Address Book automatically appear in iCal if you:

1. Open iCal.
2. Choose Preferences from the iCal menu.
3. Click the checkbox next to Show Birthdays calendar (under the General tab).

Automatically Add Email Addresses in Mail:

When you’re reading messages in Mail, you can automatically add someone’s email address to Address Book simply by typing Command-Shift-Y. And once you create a group address in Address Book, you can add all of the group members simply by type the group name in the To (or cc) field in Mail. Here’s how:

1. Go to Address, click the + sign below the Group column, and give your new group a name — “Tennis Team,” for example.
2. Click “All” at the top of the Group column (so the name of everyone in your Address Book appears) and drag the names of everyone on the tennis team into the new Tennis Team group.
And you’re done. The next time you want to send email to the team, you won’t have to enter each name one at a time. Just start typing “Tennis Team” and let Mail fetch and fill in all the email addresses for you.

Fill Out Forms Quickly:

Enter it once. Use it practically everywhere. One of the brightest gems in Mac OS X, Address Book integrates with Safari, Mail, iChat, iCal, and other applications. And it syncs effortlessly with iPhone, iPod, and .Mac — so you can take contacts wherever you go.

Because it integrates with Safari, you can use it to fill in forms when you’re shopping online. Here’s how:

1. Open Safari and choose Preferences from the Safari menu.
2. In the Preferences dialog, click the AutoFill tab and click the checkbox next to Using info from my Address Book card.
3. Click the Edit button to view, and if you’d like, modify any of the information on your Address Book “My Card”.
Next time you shop online, Safari will retrieve the information it needs from Address Book.

Customizing Your Mac:

2009-12-19T12:39:00.002-08:00

Using the Dock:

2009-12-19T12:39:00.001-08:00

The One-Click Trick to Moving the Dock:

Okay, so you’re working in a program like Final Cut Pro or iMovie, which takes up every vertical inch of the screen, and when you go to adjust something near the bottom, the Dock keeps popping up.
Oh sure, you could move the Dock to where it’s anchored on the left or right side of the screen, but that just feels weird.
But what if you could move it temporarily to the left or right, and then get it back to the bottom when you close Final Cut Pro, in just one click?

Here’s how: Hold the shift key, click directly on the Dock’s divider line (on the far right side of the Dock), and drag the Dock to the left or right side of your screen. Bam! It moves over to the side.
Then, once you quit Final Cut Pro, just shift-click on that divider line and slam it back to the bottom (okay, drag it back to the bottom). A draggable Dock — is that cool or what!

Open a Web Page from the Dock:

You can fill your Dock with applications, documents, folders, and stacks. In fact, you can even add bookmarks for web pages to your Dock. Let’s say you like to keep track of the latest news about Apple. If you add the Hot News site to your Dock, you can visit it whenever you’d like with a single click. Here’s how:

1. Go to the Apple Hot News page.
2. Drag the little Apple icon just to the left of the URL in the Address bar to your Dock.

Mac OS X creates a locator icon with the name of your website. To visit the site, just click the icon. Safari launches and takes you immediately to Hot News.

Want to add another? Since you like learning more about the Mac, let’s add the Find Out How page to your Dock, as well. To do so,

1. Visit Find Out How.
2. Drag the little Apple icon just to the left of the URL in the Address bar to your Dock.

Now, when you want to learn more about using your Mac, you can Find Out How right from the Dock.

Keep an Eye on Things, Live From the Dock:

Do you like to know what’s going on “under the hood” of your Mac (stuff like your CPU usage, disk activity, memory usage — you know, total geek stuff)?
If you do, you can keep an eye on things right from within the dock using Mac OS X’s Activity Monitor. It’s found in the Applications folder, under Utilities.
Once you’ve found it, drag it into your dock, then click on it to launch it.
Once it’s launched, click-and-hold for a moment on its dock icon.
A menu will pop up, and you’ll see a dock icon menu item.
This is where you choose which activity you want to monitor from its live dock icon.
Choose it, and a live graph will appear in the dock that’s updated dynamically as you work.

Folders to Add to Your Dock:

Adding folders to the right side of your dock can be a real timesaver, and two of the most popular folders to add to the dock are your home folder and your Applications folder.
Another thing you might consider, rather than putting your entire Applications folder on your dock, is to create a new folder and put in aliases of just the applications and system add-ons (such as the Calculator, etc.) that you really use.
Then you can access these by Control-clicking on the folder in the dock and a pop-up menu will appear that looks a lot like the Apple menu from OS 9.

Dropping Text on the Dock for Fast Results:

Let’s say you’re reading an article online, and you read a sentence that you want to email to a friend. Don’t do the copy-and-paste thing. Instead, just highlight the text and drag-and-drop it right on the Mail icon in the Dock. It will open Mail and put that sentence into a new mail message. This tip also works in other Cocoa applications like TextEdit, Stickies, and Safari. For example, if you’re reading a story and want to do a Google search on something you’ve read, just highlight the text and drag-and-drop it on the Safari icon in the Dock. It will launch Safari and display the Google Search Results.

Remove an Application from the Dock:

If you’d like to reduce the number of applications from the Dock, you can do so at any time. Simply grab the icon of the document, folder, or application you’d like to remove, and drag it out of the Dock. Release the mouse button, and the item will vanish in a puff of virtual smoke.

Add an Application to the Dock:

If you enjoy the convenience of the Dock, you can make it even more useful by adding items to it you use regularly. Here, for example, you’ll find two ways to add one or more applications to your Dock.

Let’s say you’re currently using Keynote ’08, your favorite presentation software, and would like to keep it in the Dock at all times. Right-click on its icon in the Dock, and select Keep in Dock from the contextual menu that appears.

Or try this option. Open the Applications folder, grab Text Edit, and drag it to the Dock. Next time you want to use Text Edit, just click its icon in the Dock.

You can use this method to add multiple applications just as easily. In that open Applications folder, choose Calculator and Dictionary, two handy utilities, and drag both into the Dock.

Change the Position of the Dock:

Mac OS X lets you customize the Dock in a number of ways.

If you choose Dock from the Apple menu and select Dock Preferences, a dialog will open giving you access to all of the Dock customization options.

Use them to:

- change the size of the Dock
- turn Magnification On (or Off) by clicking the check box and, if On, the degree of Magnification
- indicate where you’d like the Dock to appear
- select the effect (Genie or Scale) used to minimize a window
- check the Animate box, which makes the icon for an application bounce when you open it
- check the box to have Mac OS X hide the Dock when it’s not being used

Changing the Dock Syle:

Lets get started!

Before we start, you're going to need to design your dock style.
Now I have no tutorial made on how to do this, but this is my favorite website for dock images:

http://leoparddocks.com/

From here you can download the images you need to replace the images on your dock!

Lets Begin!

You want to go to your Mac's HD, mine is called Tom HD.
In there you will find a folder called System that looks like this:

Once inside you'll find a folder on its own called Library, open up the folder.

Now you will need to find a folder called "Core Services" which looks like this:

Now, look for Dock !
Once you have found it, CMD + Click it and select:
Show Package Contents - > Contents - > Resources.

You are looking for these files:
scurve-l.png - scurve-m.png - scurve-sm.png - scurve-xl.png

Select these files and make sure YOU HAVE BACKED THEM UP!

Also, in some cases you may need to back up seperator.png too.
To be on the safe side, I back it up anyway!

You're nearly there now!

Go ahead and open the ZIP file you have downloaded from Leopard Docks (http://leoparddocks.com/), notice you have: scurve-l.png - scurve-m.png - scurve-sm.png - scurve-xl.png

You need to select those files (And sometimes, if it comes with it, the seperator.png too!)

Once you have them selected, go ahead and drag them into the Resources folder and overwrite the existing scurve PNG Files!

You're done!

All you need to do, is restart the dock. to do this, open up Terminal
(CMD + Space - > Type Terminal - > Press Enter)

Once you're in terminal, type:
killall Dock

Once the dock has reloaded, you should have a sweet new dock !

Using Mail:

2009-12-19T12:39:00.000-08:00

The Instant Email Slideshow:

Have you come to dread a certain type of email? You know—the “what we did on our vacation” letter comprising a brief message and a jumble of attached photos?

Here’s how to make quick sense of such missives in Apple Mail, using one of Leopard’s new Quick Look functions.

First, click the Quick Look button in the email’s header.

All attached images now appear in a convenient and attractive slideshow.
The icons along the lower edge of the slideshow screen let you play the slideshow, step through the images one at a time, view them simultaneously in a photo grid, expand them to fill your screen, and add your favorites to your iPhoto library.
You can also scroll through the images using your left- and right-arrow keys.

Mail Older Than One Year:

If you’ve got email that’s more than a year old just clogging up your Inbox (and taking up valuable space), you can use a Smart Mailbox to help you do some fast email house cleaning.

Just Control-click on the email account (or your Inbox if you don’t have multiple accounts) that you want to clean up, and then choose New Smart Mailbox from the contextual menu.
When the Smart Mailbox dialog appears, from the first criteria pop-up menu on the left, choose Date Received.
From the next pop-up menu over, choose “is before the date,” and in the final field, type a date that is approximately one year before today.
Click OK and all your email that is one year old (or older) will appear in that Smart Mailbox.
To delete that old email, just click on the Smart Mailbox, press Command-A to select all the email, then press the Delete key on your keyboard.

Now, the nice thing is that tomorrow more one-year-old email will appear in that Smart Mailbox (thanks to its live updating), and the next day, and the next day, and so on, so your mailbox never has more than one year of archived messages.
So, about once a month, click on that Smart Mailbox and easily delete all the old email.

Create an iCal Event from Apple Mail:

Leopard is smart—smart enough to recognize dates within the text of an email in Apple Mail.

When your cursor hovers over a date in the body of an email, a dotted rectangle surrounds the date, and a small arrow appears.
Hold on the arrow, and up pop two iCal options: Create New iCal Event and Show This Date in iCal.

Choosing Create New iCal Event generates a dialog box. Its default name is the subject line of the original email, though you can change it here. You can also specify the location and duration of the event and add additional notes. When you’re finished, choose Add to iCal. Leopard adds the date to your calendar—without even opening iCal.

Not sure if you’re available? Choose Show This Date in iCal. This opens iCal at the date in question, but doesn’t add the event to your schedule.

Resizing Photos for Emailing:

Have you ever noticed how freaked out relatives get when you email them high-res photos from your six- or eight-meg digital camera? For example, your grandmother in Minnesota may not have Photoshop CS4, and so dealing with that 26MB, 41-inch-wide photo you shot with your eight-meg camera might put a strain on her system. That’s why you might want to reduce the size of those photos you’re about to email. You don’t even have to launch Photoshop — because you can do the resizing right within Mail.

After you attach a photo to your email message (you can just drag-and-drop the image into the New Message window), take a look in the bottom-right corner of your email message window, and you’ll see a pop-up menu where you can choose the Image Size you’d like to send. As soon as you choose a size (other than Actual Size), the image is immediately scaled down right within the email message window so you can see the exact size of the photo you’re sending.

Emailing Web Pages:

If you run across a web page you want to share with a friend, don’t send her a link to it — send her the page itself. Just press Command-I and a dialog will appear, asking for the email address of the person you want to send this web page to. Just enter her email address, along with your text message, and click send, and it will send the contents of that page (complete with graphics, formatting, links, etc.) to your friend. She’ll be able to see that page right within her email application.

Email Attachments Made Easy:

If you want to attach a file to an email message, you can drag the file directly to Mail’s icon in your Dock. This opens Mail and creates a brand-new email message window with that file already attached. Sweet! Better yet, even if you drag multiple attachments, they all attach to just one email message (rather than creating one message for each attachment, as in previous versions of Mac OS X).

Create Custom Email Stationery:

Leopard’s enhanced Mail program has a cool new feature: a set of professionally designed stationery templates you can use to spiff up your email.

But you can also create your own custom stationery templates. Here’s how.

Create a new email message. Add the elements you’d like to appear each time you load the template, like a signature line. You can also add dummy text to delete later, if you wish.

Under the Format menu, choose Show Fonts and Show Colors and use the Font and Color palettes to specify fonts, text size, colors, and type effects to suit your taste. (Note that the colors you choose for backgrounds might not show up until you’ve saved your stationery and opened a new message.)

Use the Format menu to set text alignment and styles. You can even add graphic elements, such as photos or logos. When you’re satisfied with your work, choose Save as Stationery from Mail’s File menu. The program will prompt you to name your creation.

When you want to load your template, create a new message and click the Show Stationery button. You’ll see the Apple templates, organized in folders. (You may need to scroll down to see all the folders.) At the bottom of the list is a new folder, Custom, where your template resides. Any additional templates you create will be stored in the Custom folder as well.

Select the Custom folder, double-click on the icon for your stationery, and the template appears, ready for you to add new text. When you’re done writing your new message, send like any other email.

Remember, though: The design professionals who created the Apple templates are professionals for a reason.

Email a Web Link Instantly:

Have you ever found a web page that you can’t wait to share with a friend or colleague? Leopard offers a great way to share such web links. Here’s how:

1. In Safari’s address bar, select the URL for the page you’re browsing.
2. Pull down the Safari menu.
3. Highlight the Services option and select, first, Mail and then Send Selection from the hierarchical menus that pop up.

Mac OS X Leopard automatically starts Mail (if the application’s not already open), creates a new email message, and places the selected web link in the body of the email document. All you have to do is enter the email addresses of your recipients, add a subject, and include a note about the web link.

Add an RSS Feed to Mail:

In Leopard — the best version of Mac OS X ever — the versatile Mail program offers a great new feature. Its built-in RSS support lets you read the RSS feeds you subscribe to. That means you can use the same application to read both your mail and your favorite RSS feeds.

Let’s say you visit the Apple Hot News page all the time and would like to be notified when new Hot News articles appear. To do so,

1. Launch Safari and go to the Hot News page.
2. Click the RSS icon in the Address Bar and the browser window will change to display Hot News as a series of single-line RSS feeds.
3. Click the + button at the top of the page as if you were going to create a bookmark for this page.
4. In the sheet that drops down, click the checkbox next to Mail; then click the Add button.
5. In the Mailboxes sidebar, Mail automatically creates a new folder to hold all your RSS feeds and puts Apple Hot News to the new folder.

To browse the feeds, simply click on Apple Hot News and Mail displays the headlines of all the articles in the Message pane. Click any of the headlines to have the Hot News article displayed in full. To visit the source of the Hot News article, click the Read more link, and Mail will open (or switch to) Safari and display the page.

Quickly Email a Photo:

You can quickly email a photo to one or more friends or colleagues by grabbing the photo with your mouse, dragging it to the Dock, and dropping it on the icon of the Mail application.

Mac OS X will immediately open Mail (if it’s not already open) and create a new Mail message with your photo already enclosed. You simply have to add recipients and click Send. If you select multiple photos, Mac OS X will put them all into a single mail file.

Email a PDF:

“Send me a pdf pdq,” your headhunter tells you. And you smile. Because you know that, thanks to Mac OS X, you can create and dispatch a PDF in seconds. Here’s how:

1. Choose Print from the File menu.
2. Click the drop-down PDF menu and choose Mail PDF.
3. Enter a subject, an email address, and click Send.

What applications let you do this? All of them. Creating PDFs — and emailing them — is a feature built into Mac OS X, so whether you’re surfing the web in Safari, writing a business plan in Pages, honing a budget in Numbers, working on a presentation in Keynote, or updating your resume, you can create a PDF and email it quickly and easily.

Add Email Accounts to Apple's Mail:

Every Mac comes with Apple's very own killer email client.
It's called Mail, and in our opinion, it's one of the greatest applications ever.
Thanks to Mail, you don't have to check each of your separate email accounts online anymore.
Just pop them all into Apple's Mail and you can read all of your messages in one simple application.

But how do you get your email accounts into Mail?
Or, if you're already using Mail, how do you add other email accounts?
We'll show you how to do it!
Open the Mail application.
You can find it in the Applications folder, and it's usually also on your Mac's Dock.

From the File menu, select Add Account.:

Select your email account type from the Account Type menu.
Generally speaking, most email accounts are POP accounts.
Enter your full name and email address.

Click Continue.

Enter your incoming mail server (also known as the POP server), user name, and password.
In some cases, your user name might be your full email address.
If you don't have this information, contact your service provider.

Click Continue.

Mail will now try to log into the POP server you provided.
If the test fails, click continue anyway.(Mail's test doesn't always work -- even if you've provided the correct information.)

Click Continue.
Type in your Outgoing Mail Server (also known as a SMTP server).
If your outgoing mail server requires authentication check the User Authentication checkbox and enter your user name and password.

Click Continue.
If your outgoing mail server requires SSL
Check that box and select your authentication.

Click Continue
Make sure the information you have entered is correct. Click Continue.

That's it! You've added a new email account to Mail.
To add another email account, click Create Another Account.
To finish the process, click Done.

Using Safari:

2009-12-19T12:38:00.002-08:00

Browse in Privacy with Safari:

Under normal circumstances, Safari retains records of your web browsing activity. It remembers the pages you visit, the data you download, and your web searches. It may also store your personal data in order to automatically complete online forms.

While these features can save time and help you retrace your online steps, there are occasions when you might prefer to leave no footprints — for example, when browsing on a public computer.

The solution is simple: Before you begin browsing, go to the Safari menu and select Private Browsing. When the warning box appears, click OK. Now Safari stores none of the aforementioned info.

What if you decide you need privacy after you’ve been browsing?
You have several options: You can remove individual pages from Safari’s page-view history, erase the entire history, or clear all traces of your activity, including any cookies and cache files you may have accumulated.

To review the pages you’ve visited and delete them as desired, go to the History menu and select Show All History. Here you can select pages and clear them with the Delete key.
To wipe the entire Safari history, select Clear History from the History menu.
For a completely clean slate, go to the Safari menu and select Reset Safari.

Note that the Private Browsing option does not prevent Safari from collecting cookies (the preference files automatically generated by many websites). The Reset Safari option clears all cookies.
If you want to delete only certain ones, choose Preferences from the Safari menu, click the Security tab, and then click Show Cookies.
You can select and delete individual cookies from the list that appears.
Careful, though — if you’re a frequent web user, this list can be very, very long.

Searchin’ Safari:

Safari’s search features are more powerful than ever in Mac OS X Leopard.

To search a web page for text, type Command-f, which opens the Find banner near the top of the browser window. Type your search term. (No need to press Return.)

Safari instantly tells you how many times the term appears on the page. The first occurrence is indicated in your highlight color, and all subsequent ones are framed in white. The remainder of the page dims to gray.

You can advance from one occurrence to the next by pressing the Return key (or typing Command-g). Holding Shift while pressing return (or typing Command-Shift-g) steps you backwards between occurrences. When you’re finished, press the Done button next to the search field, closing the Find Banner.

For Google searches, just type Command-Option-f. This jumps your cursor to the main Search field, ready for you to type a search phrase.

It’s easy to revisit your Google search results. Each time you enter a new search, Safari remembers the search results page. Click through to as many pages as you like — if you want to snap back to the Search results, simply click the orange arrow to the right of the Search field.

Create a Bookmark:

You Tube, the Onion, Apple Hot News, your bank, your local Craigs List, Wikipedia — if you visit the same websites on a regular basis, you can save yourself some time and keystrokes by creating bookmarks for those sites. Let’s say you keep up with environmental news with regular visits to grist.org. The easiest way to create a bookmark is to:

1. Go to the site for which you’d like to create a bookmark.
2. Click the + sign in the Safari toolbar.
3. In the Sheet that drops down, type “grist” (or whatever name you’d like to use for the site), choose the folder — “News,” for example — where you’d like to keep it, and click the Add button.

And you’re done. Next time you want to catch up on environmental news, instead of typing the name of the site, simply click the News folder (found in the Bookmarks bar of most Macs), and choose grist from the menu that appears.

Create Your Own Dashboard Widget:

Thanks to Mac OS X Leopard, you can make your own custom Dashboard widget. In seconds. They’re called Web Clip widgets, and they’re easy to create. Here’s how:

Click the Web Clip button in the Safari toolbar.

Position the clear box that appears over the Videos being watched right now section, click once to place it, then resize the box using the handles that appear along the sides of the box.

When it’s the size you want, click the Add button.

And your part’s done. Mac OS X Leopard does the rest, creating your widget and opening Dashboard, so you can check your handiwork. Since your new Web Clip is live, its contents will update automatically. Click the little information button in the lower, right-hand corner to customize your widget’s border.

One more thing. Click a video (or a link on a featured story), and Mac OS X Leopard closes Dashboard, launches Safari, and takes you to the page whose link you clicked.

Block Internet Ads:

Tired of seeing pop-ads when you visit websites? You can eliminate the vast majority of them quickly and easily in Safari. Here’s how:

1. Open Safari.
2. Choose Block Pop-Up Windows from the Safari menu

Wasn’t that easy?

Using iCal:

2009-12-19T12:38:00.001-08:00

iCal: Your Powerful Personal Assistant:

When you add an event to your iCal calendar, you can do much more than simply name it and specify a date and time. Like a good personal assistant, it can remind you of upcoming events, help round up others for meetings, and even ensure that you have essential files in front of you at just the right moment.

To access iCal’s hidden superpowers, just double-click on the event’s name (or select it and type Command-i), then click the Edit button.

To invite other participants to an iCal event, just type their email addresses into the Attendees field. If you prefer, you can open iCal’s Addresses panel by typing Command-Option-a, and drag names from your contacts list. When you’ve added the desired contacts and event details, click Send, and Apple Mail will email the event request. If the event changes, you can send an update with the revised information.

There are many options here. For example, you can assign customized, color-coded categories to help keep track of work projects, personal appointments, and other commitments. You can set up recurring events via the repeat menu, which allows for custom recurrences (say, the last Tuesday of May every ten years) in addition to daily, weekly, monthly, and annual events. To create an event that continues over one or more days, click the “all-day” checkbox.

You can ask iCal to remind you of your upcoming events through a powerful alarm function, which issues one or more event reminders via pop-up messages or email. When pop-up reminders appear, you can “snooze” them for as little as one minute or as much as a week. You can even schedule the iCal alarm to automatically run a script or open a file on your computer at a specified time.

You can also attach documents, graphics, or other files to an event — pictures, maps, spreadsheets, or whatever — and include any relevant URLs. Finally, you can insert additional text into the Note field: anything from a phone number to an entire meeting agenda. (Though this field initially displays as a narrow strip, you can type or paste in as much text as you like.)

When you’re finished, click Done. All the data you added will appear next time you double-click on the event.

Subscribe to an iCal Calendar:

You can create calendars in iCal to keep track of all sorts of activities — all your meetings at work, your spouse’s meetings, after-school activities for the kids, family birthdays.

You can even use iCal to subscribe to calendars published on the Internet. Let’s say your kids’ soccer league publishes the practice and match schedules on the league’s .Mac site. To subscribe, simply:

1. In iCal, choose Calendar from the Subscribe menu.
2. Type the URL for the .Mac website where the schedule is published.
3. Check the “Refresh” checkbox to have iCal automatically update your copy of the calendar when the league publishes updates.
4. Click the Subscribe button.

And you’re done. iCal adds the schedule to your Calendars list and places a curved arrow next to it. Double-click the name if you’d like to change it, but you can’t make any other changes to a calendar you’re subscribing to.

Share an iCal Schedule:

With your busy schedule, you depend on iCal to make certain you know when the kids need to be at the dentist and when you’re supposed to be in Philadelphia for the sales conference. Since this information may be just as valuable to your spouse, it would be helpful to share your calendar, and iCal offers a simple way to do so.

Select the calendar you want to share.
From the Calendar menu, choose Publish and fill out the form in the sheet that appears.
Click Publish. iCal displays the URLs where you can view your schedule online and lets you either visit the page or send email to those with whom you’d like to share your calendar.

Using iChat:

2009-12-19T12:38:00.000-08:00

iChat AV: Audio Chatting? Drop It to the Dock:

If you’re doing an audio chat, do you even need the iChat window open? Well, if you close it, you’ll quit the chat, but if you minimize the chat window to the dock instead (press Command-M), you can continue your chat, even though the window is no longer visible. When it’s time to end your chat, just click on the minimized chat window in the dock.

iChat AV: Fixing Bad Audio Chats:

This is an old trick, but I forgot to include it in the previous edition of the this book...
so... here it is:

If you’re having an audio chat, and the audio becomes garbled or is dropping out a lot, you can have iChat try to improve the connection using this simple trick. Just click the Mute button for just a second, then unmute it by clicking it again. This causes iChat to reassess the connection and that will usually do the trick.

Create a Buddy Icon with Photo Booth:

If you’re using a Mac with a built-in iSight camera, use the built-in iSight camera to take a single snapshot of yourself, a 4-up snapshot (that’s four quick shots in a row), or a movie clip.

1. Open the Applications folder and double click on Photo Booth.
2. Choose the type of snapshot you’d like to take by clicking the appropriate button on the left just below the live video window.
3. Then pose nicely, smile, and click the Camera button.
Photo Booth places thumbnails in the drawer at the bottom of the window.

Ready to set your iChat buddy icon?

1. In the thumbnail drawer at the bottom of the window, select the photo you’d like to use.
2. Click the Buddy Picture icon.

Photo Booth copies the image, quickly opens iChat, and displays the photo in the Buddy Picture window. Use the slider to resize it if you’d like. Click Set, and you’re done.

Add a Buddy to iChat:

An extremely versatile application, iChat lets you participate in simple text chats, audio chats, or video chats with one or a group of people with Internet access and a MobileMe, AIM, Google Talk, or Jabber account. To get started, you first need to set up iChat on your system by clicking the icon for iChat in the Dock and responding to the questions in the dialogs that appear.

To add a buddy to your Buddy List in iChat:

Choose Add Buddy from the Buddies menu (or click the + sign at the bottom of the Buddy List window).
Type the name of your friend’s account name in the Account Name field and select the type of account from the pop-up menu.
Choose the group to which you’d like to add your new buddy, type your buddy’s first and last names in the appropriate fields, and click the Add button.

Using Exposé:

2009-12-19T12:37:00.002-08:00

TabExpose 1.8:

How much do you love Tabs ? Anyone who experienced Tab browsering could not imagine for one second having to go back to a single-page windows surfing.

How much do you love Apple Exposé - the feature that displays all open windows in a quick and clear way so you can access what you need in a snap ?

TabExposé is a Safari add-on that enables you to view all open tabs in Safari the same way Exposé displays all open windows on your Desktop.

What’s New in this Version:
- Bug fix on 10.4 and 10.5 that left some users with only one tab in Safari

TabExpose 1.8
Download

Become a Spaces Cadet!

Spaces, one of the coolest new features of Mac OS X Leopard, lets you switch among multiple desktops. For example, you might create a communication workspace for Mail, iChat, and Address Book, another for media programs like iTunes and iPhoto, and a third for video games.
Then, instead of hiding/showing programs or dragging them around onscreen, you’d simply switch desktops. If you’re the sort of user who tends to have many applications open at once, Spaces is a godsend.

In fact, Spaces and Expose share a control panel. To access it, select System Preferences from the Apple menu and choose Exposé & Spaces. Click the Spaces tab.

This is where you set the key commands for activating Spaces and switching between your desktops. You can also specify the number of desktops and how they’re arrayed in columns and rows. (If you check “Show Spaces in menu bar,” you can switch desktops using the menu bar icon as well as key commands.)

You also have the option of permanently assigning a program to a particular desktop. If, say, you always want iTunes to open in its own window, click the Add (+) button, navigate to the iTunes application, and click Add. Click-hold in the Spaces field to assign it to a desktop. Here, for example, whenever iTunes is opened, Space 4 will automatically be displayed.

Whenever you type your Spaces key commands, you’ll see a translucent overlay depicting the available desktops. Switch between them using the key commands you’ve assigned in the Preferences panel.

If you get confused about what’s assigned where, don’t panic — just press the Activate Spaces key command (the default assignment is F8).
This opens a global view of all your desktops. Just click within any desktop to open it.
You can also move items from one desktop to another simply by dragging them between windows.

Changing Dashboard and Exposé settings:

If you assign a Mouse button to a function in the Dashboard & Exposé pane in System Preferences but it doesn't work as expected, go to Mouse tab of the Keyboard & Mouse pane to assign the function to the mouse button.

Since you can assign functions to your mouse buttons in the Keyboard & Mouse pane and the Dashboard & Exposé pane, you may inadvertently override a function if you give the same button a new function in the Dashboard & Exposé pane. If the button is enabled in the Mouse tab of the Keyboard & Mouse pane (not set to Off), it will use the most recent setting you assigned to it, but the other preference pane may not always show the newest function.

In other words, if a Mouse button doesn't behave how you expect it to, go to the Mouse tab in the Keyboard & Mouse pane and reassign the function to the mouse button.

Exposé Show-Off Trick #1:

Showing off Exposé to a friend or co-worker who uses a PC is more than a blast, it’s your duty, because even Windows XP still has nothing like it. But if you really want to be a major hambone, before you press F9 to invoke Exposé, start a QuickTime movie clip, have a DVD playing, or have iTunes playing a song and click on the Visualizer (heck, have all three going at once). When you press F9, the QuickTime clip (DVD, iTunes, etc.) keeps playing even when miniaturized. It’s fun to watch their face as it changes from “Cool!” to “Why doesn’t Windows have that?”

See Your Way Clear with Exposé:

Mac OS X offers a simple way to see what's on your desktop when you have a lot of windows open. It’s called Exposé, and here’s how you can use it.

Press the F9 key and Exposé instantly creates thumbnails of the open windows and displays them neatly on your screen. Click the window you want, and Exposé brings it to the front, switching automatically to the appropriate application.

You can press the F10 key to create thumbnails of the open windows of your current application. Or F11 to move all open windows to the side, so you can see the files on your desktop.

Using Finder:

2009-12-19T12:37:00.001-08:00

A Immaculate Desktop:

Are you the sort of neat-freak who abhors Desktop clutter?
Who keeps all apps and docs in carefully organized folders? Consider diving deeper into onscreen clean by making your mounted drives and discs disappear from the Desktop and accessing them instead via Finder windows.

Here’s how to try it: From the Finder, pull down the Finder menu and select Preferences — or just press Command-comma [⌘ ,] from within the Finder.
Click the General tab and uncheck Hard disks; CDs, DVDs, and iPods; and Connected servers.

Next, click the Sidebar tab and check the boxes next to all the items you unchecked under the General tab.

When you want to access a drive, disk, or server, just open a Finder window by pressing Command-n [⌘ n] from within the Finder.
And when you close the Finder windows, your desktop will be spotless.
(Remember, Command-w [⌘ w] closes a Finder window, and Command-Option-w [⌘ ⌥ w] closes all Finder windows at once.

Don’t Want To Open A File?

The idea behind Spotlight is that it will find the file you want, and then open that file for you, so you can start working on it immediately.
But what if you just want to know where the file is, and not necessarily open it? (For example, what if you just want to know where it is, so you can burn a backup copy to a CD?)
To do that, once the results appear in the spotlight menu, just hold the Command key and then click on the file. This will close Spotlight and open the Finder window where your file is.
Or if you want Spotlight open, just click on the file and press Command-R, which will open a Finder window with the file selected, leaving the spotlight dialog open.

See Your File’s Hidden Info:

Want more info on your files than the standard icon view provides (after all, it just gives you the file’s name in icon view)?
Then turn on Show Item info. This adds an extra line of information below many files and folders that can be very useful.
For example, now not only do you get a folder’s name, but just below the name (in unobtrusive light-blue, 9-point type), you’ll see how many items are in that folder.

If the file is an image, the Item Info shows you how big it is. MP3 files show how long the song is, etc. To turn on Item Info for your current Finder window, press Command-J to bring up its View Options. Then turn on the checkbox for Show Item Info. If you want to show the item info for every window (globally), then choose the All Windows button at the top of the dialog.

Ultimate Menu:

Want to really speed things up?
How about jumping right to the Apple menu without even clicking the mouse? Just press Control-F2, press Return, and the Apple menu pops down (if you’re using a MacBook, press Function-Control-F2).
Oh, but there’s more! Now that you’re in the Apple menu, press the Right Arrow key on your keyboard to move to the other menus (Finder, File, Edit, View, etc.) and the Left Arrow to move back.

Once you get to the menu you want, press Return, then type the first letter of the command you want in the menu and it jumps right there.
Now press Return again to choose that command (and you did it all without ever touching the mouse).

Opening Moves:

In most cases, double-clicking a file on your Mac automatically opens it in the appropriate application. But sometimes you may want to overrule your Mac and open a file in something other than the default.

For example, say you’ve edited a series of images in Photoshop, and now you want to take a quick look at them. You might prefer to view them in Preview, a Mac OS X program that opens in an instant, rather than the larger, slower-to-load Photoshop application.

To quickly specify your app, Control-click the item you want to open, then choose Open With from the pop-up menu that appears. This takes you to a list of every application your Mac considers capable of reading the file. Choose the name of the application you want, and the file opens in that program.

If you think you’ll be opening the file repeatedly in that program, you may want to specify an ongoing Open With preference. To do so, select the file and press Command-I to see the file’s Info window. Click the Open With tab and choose your program. Now the file will always open with your preferred application.
And if you click the Change All… button, every file of the same type will open with this application.

Control-click any file to specify the application in which it opens.

One-Click Long-File-Name Fix:

If you’re working in a window set to Column view, you’re going to run into this all the time — files with long names have the end of their names cut off from view, because the column isn’t wide enough.
That doesn’t sound like that big of a problem, until you start working with more descriptive file names, and you can’t see which file is “European Front End Silver Car” and which is “European Back End Silver Car” because everything from “European” to “Silver Car” is cut off.

Luckily, there’s a quick fix — just double-click on the little tab at the bottom of the vertical column divider bar, and the column will expand just enough so you can see even the longest file name of any file in that column.
Option-double-click on the tab, and every column expands to show the longest name in each column. Pretty darn sweet!

The Burn Folder Isn’t Burning Aliases:

When you create a burn folder in Tiger (which you do by either choosing New Burn Folder from the File menu or from the Action menu [that’s the button with a gear icon on it in Finder windows]), if you look inside that folder, you won’t see your original files.
Instead, you’ll see aliases to the originals (you can tell they’re aliases because they have a little curved arrow on them).
But don’t let that throw you — when you do finally click the burn button (in the upper right-hand corner of the burn Folder’s window), it actually gets the original files and burns those to disk, so you don’t have to worry about having a CD full of aliases pointing to files you no longer have.

So why all the aliases in the first place? Because it points to your files (rather than copying them into the folder), which makes burning discs much faster than in previous versions of Mac OS X.

Look Inside Multiple Folders Automatically:

Need to see what’s inside more than one folder while in List view?

Do it the fast way—Command-click on all the folders you want to expand, then press Command-Right Arrow.

All the folders will expand at once.

If the file you’re looking for isn’t there, just press Command-Left Arrow (you can do that, because your folders are still highlighted) to quickly collapse them all again.

Know Your Status:

The status bar (the thin little bar that shows how many items are in your window and how much drive space you still have available) was at the top of every Finder window back in Mac OS 9.
In earlier versions of Mac OS X (including Jaguar), the status bar was off by default, so you had to turn it on, and then it appeared at the top of your Finder windows.
In Tiger you’ll find the status bar info displayed at the bottom center of every Finder window by default (well, that’s true as long as your toolbar is visible).
If that’s the case, why is there still a menu command called Show Status Bar?
That’s because, if you hide the toolbar, it hides the status info at the bottom of the window, so you need the old status bar back.
It’s still off by default, so to turn on the status bar, first open a window, hide the toolbar (see previous tip), then go under the View menu and choose Show Status Bar.
(Note: If you don’t hide the toolbar first, Show Status Bar will appear “grayed out.”)

Making ZIP Files:

One of my favorite Mac OS X features is the ability to create ZIP compressed files from within the OS (basically, this shrinks the file size, ideal for files you’re going to email — smaller file sizes mean faster file transfers).
To create a compressed file, either Control-click on the file and choose Create Archive (which is Apple-speak for “make a compressed ZIP file”).
Or you can click on a file, then go to the Action menu (the button that looks like a gear up in the Finder window’s toolbar), and choose Create Archive from there.
Either way, it quickly creates a new file, with the file extension “.zip.” This is the compressed file.
You can also compress several different files (like three, for example) into one single archive file — just Command-click (or Shift-click contiguous files) on all the files you want included, then choose Create Archive of X Items from the Action menu.
A file will be created named “Archive.zip” (that’s it!). By the way, if someone sends you a ZIP file, don’t sweat it — just double-click it and Tiger will automatically decompress it.

Make the Sidebar Work Like the Dock:

You can customize the sidebar of the Finder window by adding other icons that make it even more powerful. For example, if you use Photoshop a lot, just open the window where your Photoshop application resides, drag the Photoshop icon right over to the sidebar, and the other icons in the sidebar will slide out of the way.

Now you can use this window kind of like you would the dock — to launch Photoshop, just click on its icon in the sidebar, plus like the dock, you can even drag-and-drop images you want to open right onto the sidebar’s Photoshop icon.

Show or Hide Hidden Files:

Show Hidden Files:

1. Open a new Terminal window by double clicking its icon in Applications > Utilities > Terminal
2. Enter the following commands in the terminal window. (Press enter after each line).

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE killall Finder

3. Your Finder will restart and you will be able to see hidden files!

Hide Hidden Files:

1. Open a new Terminal window by double clicking its icon in Applications: Utilities.

2. Enter the following commands in the terminal window. (Press enter after each line).

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE killall Finder

3. Your Finder will restart and you will NOT be able to see hidden files !

Change Directories Using the Titlebar:

This is a really useful shortcut to change directories. To quickly change your current directory using the titlebar follow these steps:

1. Open a new Finder window by selecting its icon in the dock.

2. Hold down the Command key and click the Titlebar. A popup will appear displaying the directory tree leading up to the current directory. Click the directory you would like to change to.

Rename a File:

To rename files in Mac OS X is incredibly simple. There are two basic methods.

1. Select the file you would like to rename and then click on the filename. The filename will highlight in blue and then you can change it.

2. Select the file you would like to rename and then press Enter. The filename will highlight in blue and then you can change it.

Using "Stationery Pad":

Opening the "Get Info" window !

You can select any file and type command+i to bring up its "Get Info" window.

For more details on working with this and the related commands, see It's about getting the right info.

Creating a template out of any file:

To turn a file into a template, just select the "Stationery Pad" option in the Get Info window. Unfortunately, there is no visual sign on the file icon telling you that a file has been turn into a "Stationery Pad".

The next time you double click to open a file marked as "Stationery Pad", the program responsible for this file will actually open a new untitled file but with all the content in "Stationery Pad" file.
If you do a "Save" command, you will save a new file while leaving the original file untouched.

Using Preview:

2009-12-19T12:37:00.000-08:00

From EPS to PDF in No Time Flat:

This trick is pretty much just for graphic designers who work with EPS images from applications like Adobe illustrator, Coreldraw for Mac, Freehand, and Photoshop.
If you want to convert your EPS image instantly into a PDF (ideal for emailing), just drag it onto Apple’s Preview application icon in your dock (or in your Applications folder) and Mac OS X automatically converts your Postscript file to a PDF on the fly.
When you choose save from the File menu, it will save as a PDF.

Assigning Color Profiles:

Preview lets you color manage photos. You can assign an ICC color profile for any open JPEG or TIFF image by going under the Tools menu and choosing Assign Profile. This brings up a dialog with a pop-up menu of available color profiles. To assign a specific profile, just choose it from the pop-up menu, then click OK.

If instead you want to change the color profile to match a specific ColorSync profile, then go under the same menu, but instead choose Match to Profile. A dialog will appear where you can choose the source, and which profile you want to match.

Seeing a Photo’s EXIF Metadata:

When you take a photo with a digital camera, a boatload of background information is embedded into the file (called EXIF metadata), including when the photo was taken, the make and model of the digital camera, the exposure, shutter speed, lens focal length, whether the flash fired, and a host of other related info. Believe it or not, Preview can display all this EXIF metadata — you just have to know where to look.
To see the EXIF data for the current image, just press Command-I, then click on the Details tab, and if you scroll down a bit, you’ll see a header for EXIF Properties, along with the full scoop on your image.

Converting to TIFF, JPG, or Photoshop:

Want to change most any graphic into a Photoshop file? Just open the file in Preview, go under the File menu, and choose Save As…, where you can export your graphic in Photoshop format. But you’re not limited to Photoshop format — Preview will also export your file as a JPEG, PICT, BMP (for sharing files with PC users), PICT, Targa (for video), and more. If the format you’re saving in has options (such as quality and compression settings for JPEG and TIFF images), they will appear near the bottom of the dialog.

Hidden Sorting Options:

When you open multiple images in Preview, they appear in the Drawer. You can sort them manually by dragging them up and down the list, but there’s another way—if you Control-click on one of the images in the Drawer, a contextual menu will appear, and you can then sort by name, size, keyword, and more.

Create Your Own Icons:

You don’t have to live with the icons your Mac displays by default. Instead, personalize your folders, files, and drives with custom icons using just about any graphic file you desire, whether it’s a jpeg, gif, png, Photoshop or Illustrator file, or even a PDF.

First, choose an image you want to use and open it in Preview. If the file doesn’t open in Preview by default, select the image in Finder, select Open With from the File menu and then select Preview from the drop-down list.

Once your image has opened in Preview, press Command-C to copy it.

Next, select the file, folder or drive whose icon you want to change, and press Command-I to show its Info window.

Click the file, folder, or drive icon at the top left corner of the Info screen, then press Command-V to replace this icon with your chosen image.

Close the Info window. The new image should appear in place of the old icon on your desktop or Finder window — even in List view.

To make your icons appear larger or smaller, go to the Finder and select View Options from the View menu. Use the slider in the pop-up window to change your icons’ display size on the desktop or in Finder windows.

You can also copy icons from the Info window of one file, folder, or drive to another. Just select the desired icon, copy it, then select the icon you want to replace and paste. Want to revert to the default Mac icon? Select your custom icon in the Info window and press the Delete key.

More Icon Tips: The most successful icons are clear, small images without too much detail, like a close-up photo of a face or a flower. You may want to crop an existing image down to a single detail in an image-editing program to create a better-looking icon — or use one of the thousands of purpose-made icons available in various online collections.

Keep in mind that using a large image as an icon increases the file size of your destination folder or file. For example, using a 3.4 MB photo as an icon for a 36 KB document increases that document’s total file size to 92 KB. Try creating a lower-resolution or smaller version of your image instead.

Using Dashboard:

2009-12-19T12:36:00.002-08:00

Change the Dashboard shelf's background image:

When you press the '+' symbol in the bottom left corner while Dashboard is active,
the Dashboard shelf slides up into view containing all your widgets.

The background image used for the shelf can be found here:

...System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/perf.png

You can replace this image with any PNG image you like and it'll be tiled,
or you can use a single, full width image.

The shelf is 118 pixels high and as wide as your monitor (1024 pixels in my case),
so you can use those dimensions to construct your own shelf background.

The bottom area (where the widget names appear) will need to be lighter in color for best results, as the text is both light and shadowed.

The height of the text area is 14 pixels.

Note also that you do not need to make your PNG file the full width of your monitor -- the image will repeat horizontally if it's not full-width.

You can use a tiny 2KB PNG to create the above full shelf background.

Speed up Dashboard by clearing out its cache:

Over the course of the past few months, Dashboard had become painfully slow for me, sometimes taking 10 to 20 seconds to load. I took a look at:

~/Library/Caches/ DashboardClient

...and found that the Dashboard cache was 20MB. This seemed excessive,

so I took a gamble and deleted all the files in the DashboardClient folder.

Dashboard now loads almost instantaneously for me.

Quickly free memory used by Dashboard widgets:

If you only use Dashboard on rare occasions, and don't want all those widgets to stay running forever, try the following AppleScript:

tell application "Dock"

quit

launch

end tell

This will relaunch the Dock and, since all the Dashboard widgets are subprocesses of the dock, they will be closed. Widgets will stay closed until Dashboard is invoked again.

This is a handy way to quickly free up the RAM used by open Dashboard widgets.

Run it, and the RAM is released.

Press F12 again after that, and you'll see that your open Widgets are all still open.

Widget Limbo !

When you have dragged a widget out of the Dashboard layer you can make it go into Widget Limbo like this: press and hold the mouse button over the widget; do not move the mouse.

Press F12. Release the mouse button.

The widget will now belong outside (beneath) Dashboard,

but only be visible (in a darkened state) when Dashboard is active.

So it's not possible to close it nor move it. (You can hold the Option key to close a widget).

Draging a widget out of the Dashboard shelf:

1 - Start by pressing F12 or whatever your definded key is.

2 - Click one a widget icon in the Dashboard's shelf, holding the mouse button down on the widget.

3 - Press F12 again. Release the widget.

That's it. To move a widget back into the Dashboard layer, click and hold the mouse on the one you want to get rid of, press F12, and release the mouse button.

Run a widget without installing it:

Normally when you download a widget and double-click it, you are presented with a dialog to install the widget.
You can either cancel, and exit the installer, or click install, and the widget is moved to you widgets folder (Library/widgets).

However, in some situations you don't want to move the widget.
For instance if you are trying out a widget and don't know if you want to keep it, or you are developing a widget and are just testing it out.

To stop the widget being installed:

Hold down Command and Option while double-clicking it.

Instead of an install button, you are presented with Run, which, funnily enough, allows you to run the widget without installing it.
Clicking this opens the widget up in dashboard, but it isn't moved to the widgets folder, instead running it from wherever you downloaded it to.

As a result the widget won't be in your dashboard bar, so it is a nifty trick if you want to save scrolling through loads of widgets (especially if you are a dashboard addict, like TheDashboard).
This also means that once you have closed the widget, its gone for good, and you can't open it up from within the dashboard.
Of course its still sitting in your downloads folder, so a quick Command-Option-Double-Click will have it open and running again.

Resize Web Clip Widgets:

If you use Safari’s new Web Clip feature to make a Dashboard widget out of a small Web item, you may be dismayed to find that Safari enforces a minimum size of about 128 by 128 pixels; you can’t make the Web Clip selection smaller than that.

The solution is simple if not obvious:

After creating the widget, click on the i on the widget’s face and then click on Edit.

You’ll be able to resize and reframe the widget as you wish.

Launch Dashboard with the Mouse:

If you have a multibutton mouse and want to avoid using the keyboard just to invoke Dashboard, assign a mouse button to it instead. Let’s say you have an Apple Mighty Mouse.

Go to the Key-board & Mouse preference pane and click on the Mouse tab.

Then choose Dashboard from the pop-up menu corresponding to one of the buttons.
If you use a third-party mouse with its own software, follow the manufacturer’s instructions for configuring its extra buttons.

Show Widgets on the Desktop:

If you want to have a widget available from the desktop, not just Dashboard, turn on Dashboard’s developer mode.

In Terminal, enter:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES

press return and type:

killall Dock

That done, press F12 to fire up Dashboard.
Click on any widget and begin dragging it.
Without releasing the mouse button, press F12 again.

The widget should move out of the Dashboard layer and onto the desktop, floating above all other windows

Disable Dashboard:

If you’d like to disable Dashboard, for either RAM usage or other reasons, here’s how to do it.
It requires a trip to the Terminal, in Applications > Utilities, but it’s not too hard to do.

Open Terminal, and then type this command, followed by the Return key:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES

This tells the system that you no longer wish to have Dashboard available.
However, the Dashboard task is actually “owned” by the Dock, so to make your changes take effect, you need to restart the Dock.
The easiest way to do that is to type this command into the Terminal (and press Return when done):

killall Dock

After the Dock restarts, hit F12 and you’ll see…nothing at all.
If you run Activity Monitor, you also won’t find any Dashboard widgets in the list of tasks, even if you had several open when you ran the above command.

Dashboard has been eliminated from your system, and won’t return until you tell it to do so.

You can do just that by opening Terminal again, and typing this command:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean NO

Once again, you’ll have to use this command:

killall Dock

...to make the changes take effect.
Once you do, though, you’ll find that Dashboard is back as usual—and any widgets you had opened on the Dashboard will still be open.

Dasbhoard Keyboard Shortcuts:

Here are some useful keyboard shortcuts to remember:

Command-R – Refresh Widget
Command-= – Show/Hide Widget Tray
Command ←/→ – Scroll Widget Tray Left/Right

Hold option and hover over a widget to dispaly it’s close [X] button.

Must press control to get contextual menu, mouse right-clicking does not work.

Using iLife:

2009-12-19T12:36:00.001-08:00

Organize your photos !

Make a great movie in the time you have !

Your Recording Studio !

Design a website to share your photos, movies, and music !

Create your own DVD in less time than it takes to watch one !

To learn more about iLife or to purchase it, visit the iLife website at www.apple.com/ilife.

iLife ’09 System Requirements:

Mac computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5, or PowerPC G4 (867MHz or faster) processor
iMovie requires an Intel-based Mac, Power Mac G5 (dual 2.0GHz or faster), or iMac G5 (1.9GHz or faster).
GarageBand Learn to Play requires an Intel-based Mac with a dual-core processor or better.
512MB of RAM; 1GB recommended. High-definition video requires at least 1GB of RAM.
Approximately 4GB of available disk space
DVD drive required for installation
Mac OS X v10.5.6 or later
QuickTime 7.5.5 or later (included)
AVCHD video requires a Mac with an Intel Core Duo processor or better. Visit iMovie ’09 Camcorder Support for details on digital video device and format support.
24-bit recording in GarageBand requires a Mac OS X-compatible audio interface with support for 24-bit audio. Please consult the owner’s manual or manufacturer directly for audio device specifications and compatibility.
Some features require Internet access and/or MobileMe; additional fees and terms apply. MobileMe is available to persons age 13 and older. Annual subscription fee and Internet access required. Terms of service apply.
iPhoto print products are available in the U.S., Canada, Japan, and select countries in Europe and Asia Pacific.
GarageBand Artist Lessons are sold separately and are available directly through the GarageBand Lesson Store in select countries.
Burning DVDs requires an Apple SuperDrive or compatible third-party DVD burner.
Flickr service is available only in select countries.

iLife Tips and Tricks:

PDF Manuals:

iPhoto:

Getting Started

iMovie:

GarageBand:

iWeb:

Getting Started

iDVD:

Sharing photos from Aperture with iLife:

Aperture 1.5 offers full-size previews of images that can be used with iLife and iWork '06 or later.

Make sure you have iLife and iWork:

iPhoto
iMovie HD
iDVD
iWeb
GarageBand
Keynote
Pages
iTunes

To update from previous versions of the iLife and iWork applications, from the Apple menu, choose > Software Update.

You will also need to update to Aperture 1.5. If you have a previous version of Aperture installed, Software Update can also be used to update to version 1.5.

How to access images from Aperture in iLife and iWork ?

To browse Aperture images in iLife and iWork, you must first enable sharing in Aperture.
Details can be found on pages 161-162 of the Aperture User Manual.

To view the shared images in iLife or iWork:

Select the Media pane in one of the iLife/iWork applications.
Click the disclosure triangle next to the Aperture icon in the browser window.
Click the disclosure triangle next to Aperture Library to access images in Aperture's built-in Smart Albums or Smart Albums you have created at the Library level. To access images from specific projects, click the project's disclosure triangle. Click on the icon for individual albums or Smart albums within projects.

Handling of Stacked Images:

When you browse Aperture images in the iLife/iWork Media pane, you may notice that there seem to be fewer images than expected available there.
This is because only the pick or album pick image from each stack in Aperture is shared with iLife and iWork.

When you browse images from an Aperture project or built-in Smart album, the pick image from each stack will be available.

When you browse images from an Aperture album, then the album pick will be available.
If there is no album pick specified, then the pick image will be used when browsing albums. Smart albums you create offer the option Ignore stack groupings.

If this option is selected, then all images that meet the criteria for the Smart album will be available in the Media pane, regardless of stack pick status.

If you find that you need access to more than one image from a stack in an iLife or iWork application, then drag the non-pick image from the stack in Aperture, or access it from a self-created Smart album.

Note that it may take some time before changes made to stacks in Aperture will be reflected in the Media pane.

Labeling of Aperture images in the iLife/iWork Media pane:

If the Caption field for an image in Aperture is filled in, then this is what the iLife/iWork Media pane will display.
If the Caption field is empty, then the Version Name field will be used as the image label in the Media pane.

Sharing Aperture Images with iTunes/iPod:

Syncing Aperture images to an iPod is very much like syncing iPhoto images.

Connect the iPod to the computer
When iTunes 8 or later opens, choose the iPod icon in the Source list.
Click the Photos tab in the Viewer.
Choose Aperture from the Sync Photos from pop-up menu, and make sure the associated checkbox is selected.
Select either the All Photos and albums or Selected albums radio button.
If you opt for Selected albums, click the checkboxes for the albums you wish to sync with the iPod. Note that only albums (including Smart albums) are available, projects are not. Stacked images are handled in the same way as with the Media pane in the other applications.

Desktop Picture and Screen Saver:

Images from Aperture may also be used as the Desktop picture, or Screen Saver.

In both cases, the Aperture library is available in Source list.

Choose the album or project you wish to use.

Sort order of Aperture images with the iLife Media Browser:

Here are some tips about how images will be sorted when you use Aperture 1.5.4 or later with the iLife Media Browser.

In most cases, the iLife Media Browser will display Aperture images in alpha-numeric order by version name.

Numerals will precede letters, and numeric sort is always by the first digit.

For example, the following four image names will be sorted in this order:

11-Image
2-Image
A-Image
B-Image

If you need multi-digit numerical sorting, use leading zeros for the names that use fewer digits.

Doing this with the list above results in the list being sorted in this order:

02-Image
11-Image
A-Image
B-Image

If you use a custom sort order for images within an Aperture project, then the iLife Media Browser will reflect the custom sort order.

Making presentations with Keynote:

Keynote lets you create stunning, interactive slideshows quickly and easily using professionally designed themes, cinematic transitions, and animated text.
With its interactive and timing features, you can build storyboards, self-running presentations, portfolios, and more.
Keynote's built-in iLife media browser gives you instant access to your iLife creations so it's simple to add your own photos, movies, and songs to your presentations.

You can also import data and media from other applications.

If your computer has an Apple Remote, you can use it to control your Keynote presentations from a distance.

Keynote is part of the iWork set of productivity applications.

To learn more about Keynote or to purchase iWork, see the Keynote website at www.apple.com/iwork/keynote.

Resources for educators:

Apple has a rich history of supporting students, schools, and universities.
From Apple products and solutions specifically designed for education to technical resources for integrating Mac OS X into the educational environment, Apple offers products and services to help students learn and explore their creativity, and tools to help teachers and administrators provide the best possible learning environment for their students.

Some of the products and resources Apple provides are:

iLife, the suite of creativity applications that includes iPhoto, iMovie, iTunes, iDVD, and GarageBand
PowerSchool, a web-based student information system from Apple that simplifies data-driven decision making by providing real-time information to all stakeholders over the Internet
IT resources such as Apple Xsan and Information Lifecycle Management

For more information about Apple education resources, visit the Apple Education website at www.apple.com/education/.

Where are my applications?

Mac OS X includes many applications to help you get started quickly and easily using your Mac.

You'll find many frequently used applications in the Dock, and you can add applications to the Dock whenever you want.

You can also open your most recently used applications and documents by choosing the Recent Items command in the Apple menu.

Use the iLife suite of integrated applications to make music, produce movies, create digital photo slideshows, burn DVDs, and more.

The suite includes GarageBand, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, and iTunes.

For more information, visit the iLife website. Open the iLife website

Don't rename or move iLife applications:

If you have iLife installed on your computer, do not rename or move any of its applications from the default Applications folder.

This includes iDVD, iMovie, iPhoto, iTunes, and GarageBand.

If you've renamed an iLife application or moved one, you may get one or more of the following alerts:

You get the following alert when you try to use iMovie's "Share with iDVD" feature or click the Create iDVD Project button:

For the best results, don't change the name of the individual iLife applications in the Finder.
Also, leave the iLife applications in the Applications folder of the startup disk (don't move them outside of this folder or into a subfolder).

Moving or renaming the iLife applications can also cause issues when updating or upgrading to newer versions of the iLife applications.

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Using Address Book:

Customizing Your Mac:

Using the Dock:

Using Mail:

Using Safari:

Using iCal:

Using iChat:

Using Exposé:

Using Finder:

Opening the "Get Info" window !

Creating a template out of any file:

Using Preview:

Using Dashboard:

Using iLife: