A good friend sent me this link to Apple’s own Pro Tips Archive. This is the veritable mother-lode of OS X tips handy for veterans and switchers alike.
Less
More
Archive for the 'Tips' Category
Since posting about the fact that I was rebuilding my Mac, I’ve received a lot of emails from readers curious about how I did it. I’m actually surprised about the number of questions on this subject so I thought I’d explain the steps I took in a bit more detail for rebuilding your Mac from ground zero:
1. Clone the Drive.
I use SuperDuper but CarbonCopyCloner also works. No matter what, have at least one clone before you push the button to erase and install. This way you’ve always got the old system available once you start the process of rebuilding. This also gives you the option to simply copy over your old data to the fresh OS X install. That process only takes a few hours and usually is good enough to fix most problems but this post is about starting from zero so I’ll push forward.
2. Keep Your Passwords and Licenses Close By
There are a lot of ways to save your passwords. Some folks use Yojimbo, others use Excel sheets and some of the smarter ones just keep a text file or a mail archive. I do it through 1Password which is great for the rebuild because it is all in the keychain.
3. Erase and Install Leopard
Get the new operating system installed and run the software update utility. It probably will need to run a few times before everything is square but before long you’ll have a very clean copy of OS X on your Mac.
4. Load the Stuff that Pays the Bills
In my case that is Microsoft Office, iWork, and the Omni Applications. Once again there will be a series of software updates.
5. Load the Stuff that Makes You Smile
Just the essential fun stuff. One of the points here is not to go crazy. So for me the photo and music software got loaded along with the stuff required for me keep MacSparky running.
6. Get Productive
There are a few applications that just make everything easier. In my case that is Text Expander, Quicksilver, Default Folder X and a few other gems.
7. Load the stuff that Keeps Your Mac Running
I put on the essential utilities like MainMenu, OnyX and other things geek.
8. Sync It Up
For me this was SugarSync and .Mac Sync getting everything sorted out.
9. Stop
The key for me on a rebuild is not to go crazy. Put on the essentials and make everything else earn its way back onto your drive. I view it as audition time for my applications. You’ll be surprised how many applications don’t make the cut and you will quickly realize what the silent heroes are.
Finally, I would recommend you only do a ground zero build up when you absolutely have to. All of those little tweaks that you’ve spent years making will be gone and you really will spend a lot of time getting it back. I have had some hardware issues that required this rebuild and while it really isn’t that hard, it can be a pain.
What did I miss? Sound off in the comments.
Having conquered the issue of printing to PDF with a keyboard shortcut, I decided to take on another little thing that frustrates me constantly. I often send links to friends and readers. In Mail.App, in order to get the “insert link” box you have to click the mouse three times.
Edit –> Link –> Add.
When you are in the middle of typing an email, this is a pain.
Once again, the Keyboard system preference pane to the rescue. Here are the steps…
1. Add a Keyboard Shortcut for Mail
2. Insert the Menu Title “Add…” Once again, for the ellipsis, make sure to use the key combination “option” + semicolon (;). I have no idea why this is so but don’t argue with results.
3. Type in your keyboard shortcut. I’m using shift + control + L
That is it. Next time you find yourself writing an email and want to add a link just type in your shortcut and forget about the mouse. Up pops the link window.
Some times I figure interesting tips entirely by mistake. Tonight I was moving some widgets and accidently discovered a very cool tip.
If you hold the “Option” key while over a widget, OS X gives you the option to delete it. This is much faster than clicking the big plus sign below to “manage widgets”.
So there you have it. To quickly remove a widget, press the option key.
Here is one thing that has been driving me crazy for some time. I constantly find myself saving from Safari to PDF. Whether it is a utility bill or legal research, I have a fetish for saving PDF copies. The problem is that in order to do so you must click print, then the PDF button, then the “Save as PDF” button. Each step requires me to get the mouse in the right place and read the menu. Granted this is probably less than 10 seconds but I do it a lot and it makes me just a little bit nuts.
So I’ve been thinking about this and wondering if there is an Automator action or perhaps an Applescript that can simplify this. Well tonight I stumbled upon an excellent hint at MacOSXHints that address this very problem very easily through with a keyboard shorcut.
Here is the walkthrough.
Open your Keyboard Shortcuts tab in the Keyboard & Mouse system preference pane.
Click the “+” sign to add a new shortcut for all applications.
Then a box pops up asking for the command.
Type in the Command exactly as it appears: “Save as PDF…” For the ellipses, use the combination: option + semicolon. Don’t ask me why because I have no clue. Just do it.
For the keyboard shortcut use: command + P (I know this sounds like a conflict with the print shortcut, but trust me)
Now you are done.
Now go to your favorite webpage and hold down the command key and press “P” twice.
Bingo. “Save as PDF…” lickity split.
I recently had a switcher friend ask me about selecting and moving around in text in OS X. It occurred to me that there are probably a lot of new Mac users abusing their arrows keys as a result of not knowing how to select text so here is a quick review.
Moving by the letter …
Arrow Keys
Selecting one letter at a time …
Shift + Arrow Keys
Moving one word at a time …
Option + Arrow Keys (right and left)
Selecting one word at a time …
Shift + Option + Arrow Keys (right and left)
Moving one paragraph at a time …
Option + Arrow Keys (up and down)
Selecting one paragraph at a time …
Shift + Option + Arrow Keys (up and down)
Move to Top or Bottom …
Command + Arrow (up and down)
Select to Top or Bottom …
Shift + Command + Arrow (up and down)
Move to Front/End of Line …
Command + Arrow (right and left)
Select to Front/End of Line …
Shift + Command + Arrow (right and left)
Did I miss anything?
Reader Anthony recently wrote me about the OS X slow motion features. That is, if you hold down the shift key while minimizing windows or activating expose’ or spaces, everything moves very slow. It really gives you a better idea of how the animation works in terms of both motion and fade.
I always thought of it as eye candy but Anthony makes a good point. When teaching your switcher friends how windows minimize into the dock, slowing things down can be helpful to demonstrate exactly how it all works.
I spent most of my time at Macworld connecting with friends and collecting promotional shirts from vendors. (I think I ended up with seven). I didn’t register to attend any of the sessions except those on the show floor.
Well today I discovered that video for most (all?) of the sessions is now online for free at Macworld Encore. The presentations include the keynote slides and are very well done by some of the smartest people in the Mac community. I don’t know when I’m going to find time, but I am definitely going to watch several of these.
I’ve had a few readers write asking how to change the look of icons in OS X since I posted the set of glass folders last week. The easiest way is to buy a copy of CandyBar 3. That, however, will cost you $29. If you want to do it by hand that is also possible with the following steps.
First you will have a file for which you want to change the icon. Here is a rtf file that deserves some attention.
Next you need to find a new icon. There are a variety of sources on the interweb. One of my favorites is Interfacelift where I got this clone soldier icon.
Now copy the new icon by clicking once on it and then pressing …
Now go back to the file that is to get a new icon. First click on it and then press …
This opens the information panel for that file which should look something like this.
Now comes the tricky part. Click on the icon in the information panel once. It should then have a faint little blue halo on it.
Once the icon has the blue glow then you paste the new icon you copied by clicking …
That is it. Close the information panel and you should be good.
Sometimes OS X is a little slow updating the icon but it generally happens right after you close the information panel.
If you decide you want to return a file to its default icon, you just give it the blue halo in the information panel and then click …
Just to give an example of how crazy this can get, here is my daughter’s dock. Whenever I use her computer it takes me five minutes to find Safari … which is coincidentally (this week) the peace symbol.
Hitting the built in volume buttons on your Mac is great for quickly raising or lowering your volume but what about when you want to lower or raise the volume just a little bit. Once again Apple has a solution that they don’t tell anyone about.
Hit the following key combination ….
Shift + Option + Volume up/down
Now you have four clicks per volume notch. Note that if you are doing this on a laptop you may also need to hold down the function key depending on how your keyboard is set up. So the next time your significant other/roomate/neighbor/local peace officer ask you to turn it down, you can … barely.
***note
This may only be a Leopard feature. If anyone still running Tiger can confirm or deny this, drop me a note or a comment.
***Update
Thanks to reader Stephen who confirmed this does not work on Tiger.
I’ve been spending some time learning a bit more about iTunes lately. One time waster I’m trying to kill is the process I use to load and discard podcasts. I listen to a variety of podcasts ranging from history to law to tech. I have a “slightly used and battered” generation one iPod Nano that generally gets plugged into my car stereo and my iPhone. It is a pain to manually copy and remove these things from various devices and even more of a pain to do it twice. So I decided to try and build a smart play list to do this work for me.
You can make a new smart play list from the menu bar (under “File”) or with a key combination (option-command-N) or by option clicking on the little plus sign below your play lists.
Once that is done it is a simple matter of filling in your rules.
So in order to fit in the playlist, the audio file has to be a podcast and have a playcount of 0. I then made a few rules to exclude specific video podcasts in my feed. Finally, I clicked “Live updating”.
Now, when I sync my iPod, iTunes figures out what podcasts have already been listened to and removes them from the list. It also adds anything new that iTunes has downloaded in the interim. It doesn’t matter if I’ve listened to it on my iPhone or iPod, it all gets synced up in the end.
I’m amazed at how ridiculously simple this was and how much easier it makes syncing. I’m going to be adding more smart playlists. Stay tuned.
Shawn Blanc » MarsEdit: Helping the Personal Publishing Revolution: “MarsEdit has a built in bookmarklet which can be used to generate a brand new post from any webpage. To set it up choose Install Bookmarklet from the MarsEdit menu.”
I’ve been using MarsEdit for months and somehow I missed this feature. Very handy.
I found myself in the mouse system preference pane tonight and noticed a little checkbox …
“For secondary clicks, place two fingers on the trackpad then click the button”
Hmmm.
I checked it and then put two fingers on the trackpad while clicking a desktop icon. It gave me the drop down menu consistent with a right click!
How come I never noticed this before. Now I can right click with one hand. Am I the only one that didn’t know about this?
I’ve had several people ask me about backup strategies lately so I thought I’d share a post about my ideas on the subject. A backup plan doesn’t need to be complicated. With some of the new tools available it doesn’t even have to be expensive. It just needs to follow a few simple rules.
1. Keep it Simple.
The more complex you make your backup plan, the less likely you are to follow it. Complexity used to be a requisite of a backup strategy. Thankfully that is not true any more.
2. One Backup is Quaint, Two Backups are Secure.
If you have your data backed up in one place you are “probably” okay. However there are a variety of circumstances that may cause one backup to be one too few. For instance, what if:
* You have a power surge that blows out your computer and your backup drive;
* A thief steals your computer and the shiny Western Digital box sitting next to it;
* Your computer fails and unbeknownst to you, your backup drive has been broken for several months?
That last one happened to a friend of mine. He lost five years worth of family photos. So having two backups in two different places is probably a good idea. If you don’t have a choice and only have one backup drive, I recommend you don’t keep it plugged in and store it somewhere else in your home.
My Backup Plan
My backup plan uses three external hard drives. I could pull it off with two but I happen to have an extra drive and I am a bit irrational when it comes to backups. So, anyway, my backup gear is …
1. a 1TB Western Digital MyBook with Firewire 800;
2. a 500GB Western Digital USB 2.0 Drive;
3. a 320GB Lacie USB 2.0 Drive.
My plan involves a combination of Carbon Copy Cloner and Time Machine. I was a happy user of SuperDuper but I’m still waiting for them to release a Leopard version. So my strategy is to keep it simple and keep in two places so what I do is this:
At Home …
I keep the 1TB and 320GB home on my desk. The 1TB drive holds my Time Machine drive and other miscellaneous stuff that doesn’t get copied in Time Machine like my Parallels folder, Aperture library, and a few other oversized files. The 320GB is used for my clone image whether it be Carbon Copy Cloner or (hopefully soon) SuperDuper. I do the clone a few times a week. Now I know 320GB is a lot for a clone drive. But if everything goes according to plan … I just may need that space soon. More to come on that later.
At Work …
The 500GB drive stays at my office and also holds a clone of my drive plus other miscellaneous media. The clone gets run a few times a week. Often I’ll set it to copy before heading off to lunch or a long meeting.
That is it. Simple system + multiple locations = Backup mojo.
So that is the heavy lifting of my backup plan. There are a few extra wrinkles however. For instance, I use my iDisk to keep copies of my essential documents. I know keeping it synced requires a nice chunk of hard drive space but I’m okay with that. I also store some files in the cloud in other places (Mozy is a good solution), and often carry copies of my most recent stuff on a 2GB thumb stick. I don’t do any backups to CD or DVD. It reminds me too much of the bad old days and boxes of floppies.
Let me know your plan or share it in the comments.
Apple has this funny habit of adding useful features and not publishing it or telling anyone about it. Here is one that may not be all that useful but definitely fun.
option + shift + k
Go ahead. Try it. Did it make you smile?
Mac OSXHints posted its results on its top 10 hints contest. Number one was the hack that allows you to put a “recent documents” icon in the Leopard Dock. I’ve been using this hack since they first discovered it and it is quite handy.
I’ve excepted my Aperture library from TimeMachine and over the weekend I was making sure to back up my Aperture library to a few places. In the process I managed to duplicate my image folder by a factor of four. Yep. It went from 8,000 images to 32,000 images. When I looked in the folder I saw things like this.
Dave running with scissors
Dave running with scissors (1)
Dave running with scissors (2)
Dave running with scissors (3)
I’m pretty certain this was my own doing and not Apertures but it left me with a trick problem of how to get rid of all those extra copies. I certainly wasn’t going to do it by hand for 8,000 photos. I started thinking about some fancy Automator or Applescript action but then I remembered that Aperture has an “Move Master” command. I ran it putting the masters in a new location. That essentially rebuilt the 8,000 photo folder making it possible for me to simply delete the bloated folder.
MacOSXHints recently figured out that Leopard Mail has some helpful searching tools. Put simply, some of the improved spotlight functionality has found its way into the mail search code.
The three tags that are known at this time are from, subject, and email.
“from:david sparks”
This command would get you copies of all emails from me.
“subject:macsparky”
This would return all the emails with MacSparky in the subject line.
“email:david@macsparky.com”
This returns all the email from a specific email address (as opposed to the identifying name tag).
The full article is at OSX hints right here. It is strange they don’t include the boolean operators (which you can use to search email through Spotlight). It is also strange, but not unusual, for Apple to include this kind of code and tell nobody about it. Doesn’t it make you wonder that some software engineer might have just put it in for his/her own interest and not bothered to tell anyone about it?
I had one of those little “Aha!” moments today. I was putting together an outline for a work project and next to it I had a Preview window with a long PDF document in it. I kept moving back and forth between the windows and activating the Preview window to scroll down the document then clicking back in OmniOutliner to resume work there. Well wouldn’t you know one time I forgot to click first in Preview AND IT DIDN’T MATTER. Yup. In Leopard you can mouse scroll (or two finger scroll on your laptop) and move through an inactive window. Try it yourself.
Recent Comments