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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software, Mac 101

Mac 101: iCal alarms

iCal is the calendar software that ships with every Mac. When combined with a MobileMe account, it's quite handy. In fact, iCal is the only calendar I use.

New users are often unaware of how much iCal can do. In this post, I'll focus on the types of alarms you can create. With a few simple steps, you can go beyond a simple beeping message.

First, create a new event. Simply double-click the proper time on the proper day and an hour-long event appears. Double-click the event, and the edit window appears. From here you can name your event, identify the location and duration (all day vs. timed), set repeat options and the target calendar if you maintain more than one (I don't).

Now for the fun part. Below the calendar option you'll see "Alarm." Clicking it reveals several options:
  1. None (kind of self-explanatory)
  2. Message (presents a dialog box on your Mac and iPhone/iPod touch if synced via MobileMe)
  3. Message with sound (same as above with plus a system sound)
  4. Email (send an email message to a given address)
  5. Open file (Open a file on your Mac)
  6. Run Script (My favorite. See below)
The first three are self-explanatory. When selecting a message and/or system sound, you have to option to display it minutes, hours or even days before or after the event. Likewise, you can chose any system sound you like.

The email option is nice as well. For instance, once the mini at my day job has completed its daily task, I have it send me an email as a confirmation. As long as I see that message, I know that everything's A-OK.

The option to open a file is handy, too. I'm using it to open a Keynote file right now, but you can have it launch a kiosk application, perhaps a broadcast app like Nicecast, etc.

Finally is run script. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not Applescript pro, but even I see the powerful potential here: Have iCal run any script you can write up at any time. Awesome! Finally, you can set more than one alarm to an event. For example, display a message and send me an email, just to be sure I make that meeting.

As you see, iCal can do much more than store your appointments. Now go be productive and have fun!

Filed under: Video, How-tos, iPhone, iPhone 101

How to make iPhone videos sparkle with iMovie

If you read my recent post about taking movies with the iPhone 3GS, you probably noted that I talked about the lack of editing capabilities on the iPhone with the exception of trimming the beginning and ending of your videos. What if you want to edit your movies, add titles or effects, or combine a bunch of short iPhone video clips?

Several of the comments left by TUAW readers asked the same question, and it's so easy to do that I decided to whip up a quick tutorial showing how this works. You probably have a tool on your Mac that can do the job for you with just a few clicks, drags, and menu selections. iMovie is the perfect easy tool for creating full feature films (just kidding) from individual scenes shot with the iPhone 3GS video camera. Here's how to do it.

Continue readingHow to make iPhone videos sparkle with iMovie

Filed under: Software, Mac 101

Mac 101: Getting the most out of Dictionary.app

Welcome back to Mac 101, our series of posts aimed at novice Mac users and veterans who like the occasional refresher.

Mac OS X is equipped with a dictionary application that does pretty much what you'd expect, and a few things you might not. Here's how you can get the most out of Dictionary.

Most people use a dictionary to look up a word's definition. Doing so in Dictionary is pretty straightforward: Just launch the app, type your target term into the search field and hit return. That's all well and good, but not very interesting.

Here's what is. Click any word in the definition to find the meaning of that word. Do this just once, and an orange "Snap Back" icon appears in the search field. When clicked, it brings you back to your original search term.

Here's another cool trick. Let's say you looked up "Surname." Dictionary displays it broken up by syllable: "sur•name." If you highlight and copy it, it will paste as it should be written: "surname."

But wait, there's more! Highlight or position the cursor over a word in any Cocoa application (Safari, for example) and hit Control-Command-D. A small window appears that displays that word's definition and thesaurus alternative(s). If the term in question is the name of an Apple product, you'll see that product's official description from Apple. Clicking "More" at the bottom of this tiny window launches Dictionary.

Let's say you typically misspell a word that you have to type often (my Achilles' heel is "Twitterrific"). Simply right- or Control-click that word and select "Learn Spelling" to add it to Dictionary.

Dictionary is also more than a collection of definitions. You can quickly switch between a thesaurus, official descriptions of Apple products and Wikipedia. Additionally, select "Font/Back Matter" from the Go menu to access a slew of great information, like
  • Proofreader's Marks
  • The History of English
  • Countries of the World
  • Chemical Elements
Of course, every single word you find there can be clicked to reveal its definition. Finally, here's a bit of eye candy that isn't useful but still fun. You can browse every photo in Dictionary by navigating to
/Library/Dictionaries/New Oxford American Dictionary.dictionary/Contents/Images

and switching to Cover Flow view.

Filed under: Leopard, Mac 101

Mac 101: Supersize your icon views


Welcome back to Mac 101, our occasional series of tips for new and novice Mac users.

Over the past 25 years, icons may have become ubiquitous almost to the point of fading into the visual background; still, the little pictures that began in 32x32 black and white format have grown up quite nicely into the massive 512x512 icons we enjoy in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Although the list and column views are more utilitarian for most file management tasks, there are times when icon view is the way to go.

You can control whether or not a particular Finder window displays in Icon view via the View Menu ("as Icons," or ⌘-1), and then adjust the display size of the icons via the View Options inspector panel (⌘-J). You can get up to 128px square icons in Finder windows, which is plenty big, but what if you want to see all the graphical power of those fully operational battle icons?

One way to see the full-size icons is via Cover Flow -- simply switch your Finder window to "as Cover Flow" (via the toolbar button, the View menu, or with a quick ⌘-4) and you can scale your icons at will by adjusting the window size. If you prefer not to have that black background around your icon, however, what is there to do? Thanks to Rob Griffiths at Macworld & MacOSXHints, here's a great tip for getting the maximum size out of your icon previews in the Finder without resorting to Cover Flow.

To view icon previews up to 512x512, hit the Spotlight search field at the top right of the window; search for a null string (two quotation marks next to each other, no space in between, like so ""), then change the search target from This Mac to Current Folder and the search type from Contents to File Name. Switch to icon view and you'll see, at the bottom right corner of the window, a scaling slider. Push it to the right to maximize your icon size. It's just the thing for appreciating the fine detail on your bottle of unicorn tears. (If you're looking for the CHOCK LOCK and Rick Astley icons above, they're in the QuickPix 2008 pack from the Iconfactory.)

Rob also hazarded a guess that we might see a more accessible version of this feature in future Mac OS X versions. If you watched the Snow Leopard stealth preview video posted earlier, you know he may well be right.

Filed under: Tips and tricks, Mac 101

Mac 101: Spaces for your screen and brain


Have you ever needed more room on your screen? Or have you ever needed a way to organize all the stuff you are working on with your Mac? Mac OS 10.5, aka Leopard, debuted a feature called Spaces: a way of creating extra screens on your Mac. Think of them as virtual workspaces, where you can easily drop application windows to reduce clutter or simply focus on one thing at a time.

To activate Spaces, go to System Preferences > Exposé and Spaces > Spaces. From there you can enable from 2-16 "spaces" (virtual screens) and you can fine-tune application behaviors. For example, I have Skitch set to appear in Every Space, which simply means it'll appear in whatever space I happen to be working in when I open Skitch. Normally switching to an application will take you back to the space you left it in (you can turn this off in the preferences).

The really awesome thing about Spaces: it's like Exposé on steroids. If you're used to hitting a key and seeing all open windows, now you'll be able to hit a key and see all windows in all the Spaces you have open -- thus expanding your screen real estate considerably. Plus, you can use the two together. Hit a key to see all Spaces, then hit your Exposé key to see all the windows in every Space. You can also easily drag windows to another space either in the zoomed out view or just by pulling a window to the edge of the screen (depending on which space you wish to travel to). It's hard to explain, so watch the video to see what I mean.

Note that there are some apps (Microsoft Word 2008 in particular) that don't play well with Spaces, so your mileage may vary.

Want more tips and tricks like this? Visit TUAW's Mac 101 section.

Filed under: Mac 101

Mac 101: Put your display to sleep fast

Quick! The boss is coming! Hide your screen! What, you don't have Spaces set up so you can switch to that handy Excel worksheet you've got open? That's okay -- just put your display to sleep.

Of course, there are other reasons to want to quickly turn off your display, but they all have one simple key combination: Control + Shift + Eject.

It works with both desktop and laptop Macs. Moving the mouse or pressing a key on the keyboard wakes it right back up when you're ready.

Of course, if you want to put your whole computer to sleep, you can use Option + Command + Eject. There are other helpful shortcuts, too, in this article deep in the TUAW archives.

Thanks to our own Michael Rose for this one. Want more tips and tricks like this? Visit TUAW's Mac 101 section.

Filed under: Mac 101

Mac 101: Enter directory paths when in open/save dialogs



Last week I told you about easily switching directories (folders) while in an open/save dialog. This was great when you knew where a folder was located in a specific place, and you could drag + drop it on the dialog. But what if you want to type in a directory path (i.e. ~/Desktop)?

While in an open/save dialog, pressing Command + Shift + G will allow you to type in a directory path. For instance, if I wanted to open my Documents directory for my user, I would type ~/Documents. The tilde (~) tells the computer to look in the current user's home directory.

Want more tips and tricks like this? Visit TUAW's Mac 101 section.

Filed under: Mac 101

Mac 101: Drag an entire application from one space to another


Spaces is a very nice way to manage all of your Mac's applications. You can have certain applications set to open in certain Spaces, and you can drag windows between spaces by clicking the Spaces application icon in the Dock (or menu bar). But did you know there is a simple way to drag all of application's windows between spaces?

To do this, simply launch Spaces (using either a key combo, Dock icon, or menu bar item), then find the application whose windows you wish to move from one Space to another. Command + drag one of the windows, and all of the windows from that application will follow. It's that simple.

Want more tips and tricks like this? Visit TUAW's Mac 101 section.

Filed under: Mac 101

Mac 101: Instantly create todos in Mail.app

Have you ever been reading an email in Leopard's Mail.app and thought, "Oh, I need to remember that"? If you can right click, then you can remember anything, quickly and easily, using Todos. When you come across something in an email you want to remember, first highlight the text.

Next, right-click on it and select "New Todo." The current message window will then show a notepad-style view of the selected text. From there, you can change the due date and priority. Finally, assign that todo to the iCal calendar of your choice by clicking the orange arrow/circle beside the item.

Mail displays Todos in the sidebar. To see your tasks in iCal, select "Show To Do List" from the "View" menu.

Want more tips and tricks like this? Visit TUAW's Mac 101 section.

Filed under: Mac 101

Mac 101: Make any text speak to you

Have you ever wished your Mac could read a long text document to you? Well, with the speech service, you can easily have your Mac read as much or as little text as you want.

While in Safari, TextEdit, Pages, and other applications; select the text you want to be read, then click the application name in the menu bar. Go to Services > Speech > Start Speaking Text. Your Mac will then use the default voice to read the text. It will continue reading until it reaches the end of the selected text, or you can select Services > Speech > Stop Speaking to end it immediately.

You can change the default voice by opening System Preferences (Apple menu > System Preferences) and going to Speech > Text to Speech. Once there, select a voice from the drop-down "System Voice" menu.


Want more tips and tricks like this? Visit TUAW's Mac 101 section!

Filed under: Mac 101

Mac 101: Shorten text using the Summarize Service


Have you ever been reading a long article and wished you could somehow magically make it shorter? With a Mac OS X service called "Summarize," you can do with a few simple clicks. In many applications such as Safari, Pages, and TextEdit, you can select a block of text and click the application name in the menu bar > Services > Summarize.

Once you're in the summarize service, you can quickly and easily shorten the selected text by moving the slider between 1% and 100%. As you move it, the text will magically get shorter, while at the same time keeping the basic meaning of the text that you originally selected. The service is so accurate that it's sometimes scary.

When you're done, you can save your summarized text by closing out the window -- you will be asked to save or discard. The result is a .rtf file.

Want more tips and tricks like this? Visit TUAW's Mac 101 section today!

Filed under: iPod Family, iTunes, Mac 101

iTunes 101: Use smart playlists to limit size


Want to make an iTunes playlist that will fill your iPod, without making one that's too big to fit? With an iTunes Smart Playlist you can do this and much more. In this Mac 101 tip I'll show you how.

Start by making a new Smart Playlist by selecting File > New Smart Playlist (or hold down the option key and click the gear that appears in the bottom left hand corner). You can select what you want from the drop-down menus in the middle section. For instance, I chose "Genre ... is ... Rock," but you can choose any of the options you want. Check the box next to "Limit ..." and type in how much storage your iPod or iPhone has, then select "GB" or "MB" from the next drop-down menu for Gigabytes and Megabytes. You also should make sure the "Live updating" checkbox is checked.

When you're done, click OK. You then need to make sure that you sync this and only this playlist to your iPod by going to your iPod (under devices) > Music, and select "Sync Music," and "Selected Playlists." Then put a check mark beside the playlist you just created. Re-sync, and you're done!


Want more tips and tricks like this? Visit TUAW's Mac 101 section today.

Filed under: Mac 101

Mac 101: Multi-touch Tips


With the introduction of the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros last month, Apple included several ingenious features for the multitouch trackpad. In this Mac 101, I'm going to walk you through a couple of extra-finger tricks.

Using Two Fingers
  • Scroll -- If you're in a long document, or webpage, you can easily scroll through it by moving two fingers, side-by-side, up and down the trackpad. This feature works in almost any application.
  • Rotate -- If you're in Preview.app or iPhoto, you can easily rotate a photo by rotating two fingers (like twisting off a bottle cap). This will work in only a few Apple applications, and may work with some third-party apps.
  • Pinch Open and Close -- In Preview.app or iPhoto, you can zoom in on a photo by "pinching" the trackpad using two fingers. This is similar to the way you would zoom a photo on the iPhone.
Using Four Fingers
  • You can launch Exposé by swiping four fingers downward on the trackpad. This will allow you to view all open windows as tiles on your screen. This is the equivalent to using fn + F9.
  • You can view your desktop by swiping four fingers upward on the trackpad. This will allow you to see everything on your desktop, without the clutter of open windows. This is the equivalent to using fn + F11.
Other Application Uses
  • While reading your email in Mail.app, try swiping three fingers up or down on the trackpad. This will allow you to move to the next / last email without clicking or using the arrow keys.
  • While in browsing the web in Safari.app, try the two-finger "pinch" to zoom in on text. You can also use three fingers to swipe back and forth through the recent browsing history.
  • If you want more cool multi-touch trackpad features, check the "Trackpad" section of System Preferences.
Want more tips and tricks like this? Visit TUAW's Mac 101 section.

Filed under: OS, Leopard, Mac 101

6 easy steps to migrate your Mac using Time Machine

If you use Time Machine in Leopard, then transferring your stuff to a new Mac might be a bit simpler than you thought. With Migration Assistant, you can easily transfer Applications, Documents, Settings, and more. In this Mac 101, we're going to show you how it's done, and how you can do it yourself!

1. Make sure you have a recent backup
Make sure you have a recent Time Machine backup on the machine you wish to transfer your information from. To check, go to System Preferences (Apple menu) > Time Machine. If you see a recent backup, then you're set; if not, click "show Time Machine status in the menu bar." In the resulting menu bar item, click "Back up now." Time Machine will make a new backup.

2. Make sure you're not leaving anything behind
In the Time Machine System Preference pane, click the Options button. In the dialog box, you can see all the folders you have chosen not to backup -- check these to make sure you really don't want them. If you do, click the folder and chose the "-" (minus button) at the bottom. Click OK and backtrack to step 1 to create a current backup.

3. Getting the new machine ready
From this point, you can deviate into two directions:
  • If your Mac is new: Boot up the new Mac and go through the setup screens. When the setup assistant asks if you want to migrate information from your old Mac, choose "From Time Machine backup or other disk."
  • If your Mac has an existing account, don't fret. Just open "Migration Assistant" located in /Applications/Utilities.
4. Connecting your Time Machine drive to the new machine
Once you have completed the above step, click continue. Migration Assistant will ask you to specify the backup you would like to transfer to the new machine.




Continue reading for more details...

Continue reading6 easy steps to migrate your Mac using Time Machine

Filed under: Software, Mac 101

Mac 101: Address Book A-Z

New to the Mac? Welcome back to our Mac 101 series, which explores the basics of Mac OS X, provides tips and tricks, and dives into key features of Apple's bundled applications.

Address Book is the contact management software bundled with every new Mac. It's easy to use and well integrated with Mail and iCal. Let's explore some of its capabilities.

Creating a new record

There are three ways to do this. The first is to select "New Card" from the "File" menu. The second is to click the "+" icon below the "Name" column. Finally, you can press Command - N on your keyboard.

Next, fill in the fields. Some have drop-down titles. For example, you can label a phone number as "work", "home" or "mobile". Finally, you can add a note to the notes field.

Adding a photo is fun. Just click the photo box next to a contact's name and a new window appears. From there, you can browse to a photo on your computer or take a snapshot with your iSight camera. You can even apply some filters to the photo by clicking the Filters button on the right hand side of the window. That photo will appear on that person's record, on email messages retreived with Apple's Mail and on a synchronized iPhone or iPod.


Continue readingMac 101: Address Book A-Z

Tip of the Day

Holding the Command key (aka the Apple key) and pressing Tab will cycle through your open applications. It's easier to Cmd-Tab if you are Copy (Cmd-C) and Pasting (Cmd-V) to and from various applications.


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