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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.

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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.

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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.

To receive similar content from Gustacci.com, grab an RSS feed or sign up for email delivery. I hope you find this tutorial helpful. Please let me know your thoughts, comments and suggestions in the comments section.

More Mac Lessons: Mac 101

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