Archive for September, 2007
Jobs & Wozniak in the Early Days
Saturday, September 29th, 2007 | Mac Resources | No Comments
This is a little clip from a movie, “The Pirates of Silicon Valley.” This movie chronicles the early years of Apple Computers. This may be something for the really die hard Mac fans. But you can’t own a Mac without knowing its history. This movie should be required viewing. May be not.
Enjoy.
Commonly Used Mac Keyboard Shortcuts
Friday, September 28th, 2007 | Mac Resources, Tips | No Comments
A great way to save time when using your Mac is to use keyboard shortcuts. Below, I’ve listed 27 commonly used keyboard shortcuts. You can find additional ones in the System Preferences under Keyboard & Mouse. In addition, Apple has a more extensive list of keyboard shortcuts on their website.
Bold Selected Text ……………………………… Command + B
Capture Portion of Screen to a File ……….. Command + Shift + 4
Capture Screen to a File ………………………. Command + Shift + 3
Close Tab/Window …………………………….. Command + W
Copy ………………………………………………… Command + C
Cut …………………………………………………… Command + X
Find & Replace ………………………………….. Command + F
Force Quit …………………………………………. Option + Command + Esc
Get Info …………………………………………….. Command + I
Italicize Selected Text ………………………….. Command + I
New Tab ……………………………………………. Command + T
New Windows ……………………………………. Command + N
Open …………………………………………………. Command + O
Paste …………………………………………………. Command + V
Preferences ………………………………………… Command + ,
Print ………………………………………………….. Command + P
Quit …………………………………………………… Command + Q
Save ………………………………………………….. Command + S
Select All …………………………………………… Command + A
Toggle Open Applications ……………………. Command + Tab
Toggle Open Windows in Application …… Command + `
Underline Selected Text ………………………. Command + U
Undo ………………………………………………… Command + Z
View All Windows …………………………….. F9
View Application Windows …………………. F10
View Dashboard ………………………………… F12
View Desktop ……………………………………. F11
The nice thing about keyboard shortcuts on a Mac is that most shortcuts perform the same task across the system. So, you only need to learn them once and you can apply them in just about any application.
Which keyboard shortcuts are your favorite? Are any of the above listed shortcuts new to you? Do you know of any that I missed? Please share with me in the comments.
Mac 101 – System Preferences: System – Part 2
Thursday, September 27th, 2007 | Mac 101 | No Comments
Well, we’re done to the last few areas under the System category of System Preferences. Today we’ll talk about Speech settings, Startup Disk and Universal Access settings.
Speech
If you didn’t know this already, let me tell you – your Mac can speak. It can read off text and it can also respond to spoke commands. In the Speech section of System Preferences is where you can control the speech settings of your Mac. Here you can turn on and off Speech Recognition, as well as calibrate the microphone and modify a few other settings. Further, your Mac can read to you. It can read the text of alerts when they are displaced, it can announce when an application requires attention and it can also read selected text. Again, the Speech section of System Preferences is where you can modify the settings that control the speaking ability of your Mac.
Startup Disk
Most user probably will not need to modify any settings in this area of System Preferences. Basically, here you can tell your Mac to use a different Startup disk than your hard drive. You can tell it to use a network drive to load the operating system when starting up or a partition on the internal hard drive. My suggestion is, don’t mess with these settings unless you know what you’re doing.
Universal Access
The Mac is handicap accessible. Universal Access is a group of settings that can modify the way the system works and looks to assist people with various handicaps. There are settings to make the Mac more user friendly for visually impaired or hearing impaired people.
This wraps up the System Preferences series of lessons. System Preferences has another category called “Other.” Settings in this category will vary from user to user. These depend on software utilities that you install on your Mac. As you install utilities that are integrated into the Mac OS X, their preference panes will appear in the Other category of System Preferences.
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More Mac Lessons: Mac 101
Apple Headlines 9.26.2007
Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 | Apple Headlines | No Comments
Your iLife just got better
Apple just released a slew of point-updates for iLife ‘08, promoting hard-workers iMovie, GarageBand, and iPhoto…
Apple drops new Leopard build, may be release candidate
Labeled “Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard build 9A559,” the new release came just hours after the Cupertino-based company issued two minor updates to the previous full-sized build (9A527), both of which were aimed at testing the system’s automated Software Update mechanism.
Notice for Boot Camp Beta Users
The Boot Camp Assistant and license for Boot Camp beta versions 1.0b through 1.2b will expire on September 30th, 2007. Expiration does not affect installed copies of Windows. Updating the beta license is simple.
Hands on: Getting down to iWork ‘08
With iWork ‘08, the latest generation of its office suite, Apple has given Mac users a powerful alternative to Microsoft’s Office for Mac. This new version finally offers an alternative to Excel called Numbers, a spreadsheet tool unlike any that has come before it. It also adds some great new features to iWork’s other two applications — the presentation program Keynote and the word processor Pages — including a few that many users felt were lacking in previous releases.
Apple’s Leopard Will Exclude 800MHz G4 Processors
According to AppleInsider, Apple is about to announce that Leopard will not support 800 MHz G4 PowerPC processors. Previously developers had been told that it would require at least an 800 MHz G4.
Mac 101 – System Preferences: System – Part 1
Tuesday, September 25th, 2007 | Mac 101 | 1 Comment
We’re nearing the end of the series on System Preferences. System settings is that last category in System Preferences. There is a category of Other, which will vary from Mac to Mac based what software or utilities you have installed. In the System area of System Preferences we have six groups of settings that allow you to control the behavior of your Mac system.
Accounts
This is where you control the user accounts on your Mac. If you’re the only user of your Mac you will only have one account in this area of System Preferences. This is where you can set up additional user accounts if you desire to do so. It may be useful to have multiple user accounts if your Mac is used be several people. Multiple user accounts help to keep settings and data organized for each user. In the Accounts are you can set and change user passwords, change the user picture, modify login items and set parental controls. Login Items are programs or services that you want loaded upon login. So, if you’d like to have a particular program load when you login to your user account this is where you would set that up.
Date & Time
Here you can set the date and time of your computer. You can keep the time current manually or you can select an option to automatically set time and date according to a server at Apple. Further, you can set the Time Zone that you live or work in. This will adjust the time accordingly and allow the Apple server to synchronize your computer to the proper time if you’re using that feature. Finally, this is where you can modify Clock settings. You can change if the clock appears in the task bar and how. You can view the clock as digital or analog, 12 or 24 hour format, display the time in seconds and other options.
Software Update
Every Mac comes equipped with a software update utility. This utility periodically checks for new software updates. In Systems Preferences under Software Update you can change the frequency at which the Mac checks for new updates. Here you can also tell the system how you would like it to behave if there are new updates. Software Update can notify you when new updates are available for download or it can download them in the background and let you know when its ready to install. Finally, you can also see a list of all updates installed to date. In case you’re uncertain if you installed a certain update, this is where you can find out.
In the next installment of Mac 101 we will cover Speech, Startup Disk and Universal Access settings. If you’d like to receive these posts and other content from Gustacci.com in your Inbox, please sign up for email delivery.
Next Lesson:
Mac 101 – System Preferences: System – Part 2
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