mac 101 posts

One of the adjustments those new to the Mac need to make is to familiarize themselves with the Command key. Although I switch hit and use Windows at work and a Mac when I'm not working, I've always preferred it over Control. Its proximity next to the space bar allows me to use my thumb, as opposed to my pinky finger with the Control key, for keyboard shortcuts. I find it particularly faster for copying and pasting.

The clover-looking key (it's actually an infinite loop), which had always been accompanied by an Apple logo until recently, sometimes behaves in ways similar to the Control key in the Windows world. At other times, however, it doesn't. Whether you're a recent Mac switcher or a seasoned Mac user, here are some shortcuts using the Command key to help you speed your way through tasks.

Adjusting the volume on your Mac via the keyboard is pretty easy: there are 3 buttons, one for Volume Down, one for Volume Up, and one for Mute.

When you adjust the volume, a sound is played to help you determine when it is loud enough or quiet enough. Most times I find this helpful, but sometimes I want to adjust the volume without hearing the noise. To temporarily disable the "volume change" sound, hold down the shift key while you adjust the volume. You will see the visual indicator on-screen, but no sound will come out.

For example, on my iMac keyboard, I can increase the volume by pressing fn+f12, but if I press fn+ shift+ f12 it will increase the volume without making any sound. Very handy especially if you are in a meeting or working in a library, etc.

(Thanks to TUAW reader @webgalpat for that tip!)

But what If you never want to hear the sound when you adjust the volume? Go to "System Preferences.app" and then click on the "Sound" preference pane, and UNcheck the box next to "Play feedback when volume is changed" (That tip and others were covered in our recent 5 Tips for Switchers article.).

Now let's combine those two tips: what if you have changed the preference so that the sound is not normally played when you adjust the volume but you decide that just this once you want to hear the sound level changes? In that case, just hold down shift while adjusting the volume and it will make the noise.

Bonus tip: you can use the keyboard to adjust the volume of your Mac, or mute/unmute it, even when the screensaver is on -- without entering your password or disabling the screensaver.

As Apple removes sexually suggestive apps from the App Store (and is evidently preparing a Red Light District for the future), users are wondering how they can protect their kids from certain content. With that in mind, here's an overview of the parental controls in iTunes.

Note that the screenshot at right is from iTunes 9.0.3. Older versions look slightly different. Parental controls are only available in iTunes 5 and later.

To access these settings, select Preferences from the iTunes menu, and then click the Parental tab. Here you've got several options.

First, you can disable access to podcasts, internet radio or the iTunes Store completely. Note that you can keep iTunes U accessible while disabling the rest of the store. Additionally, you can deny access to shared libraries. Once turned off, these items won't appear in the left sidebar of the iTunes window.

Ever since you've started using your Mac, you've been looking at those icons towards the top right of your display in your menu bar. These items can direct to many different things, from connecting to a wireless network, to finding items on your Mac. These items not only can be clicked on to show a pop-up menu to perform actions, they can also indicate activity depending on what that icon if for. Here's a summary of some of the most widely-used icons, some menu items you might not have seen before on your Mac, common applications that have uses for menu items, and some extra functions in these items.

Spotlight: The Spotlight menu item provides an easy shortcut to finding files on your Mac. Clicking it will show a search box directly under the menu bar, and will provide a summary of results when searching. This icon will also indicate when your Mac is indexing new search results, like when you plug in a external hard drive, by a pulsing dot inside the magnifying glass.

Bluetooth: This icon (which is a Bluetooth logo) will show the current status of Bluetooth on your Mac. If Bluetooth is turned on, it will simply show the Bluetooth symbol. If it's turned off, the item will appear faded. If the Bluetooth part has been unplugged, it will slow a line and it will also appear faded. If your Mac is connected to a Bluetooth device, it will show three dots along with a faded Bluetooth logo. If your Mac is connected to an Apple Wireless Keyboard or Mouse, there will be a low battery warning displayed on the icon if their batteries are running low.

The iTunes Store and App Store have mastered the art of the impulse purchase. "Only two bucks? Sure, why not?" The good news is that you can send a song, album, movie or TV show to a friend just as easily.

Let's start with music. First, find the album or song you'd like to send. If you're sending a song, you'll see a drop-down arrow next to the track's "Buy" button. Click it to reveal the menu at right, then select "Gift this song."

You're brought to a new screen (in the gallery below). From there you only need to enter some information, click continue and you're done! Your recipient will receive a nice email message with a download link. The process is the same for albums, individual TV shows, audiobooks (though the "Gift this audiobook" looks different) and movies.

Note that you can't gift entire TV seasons (bummer) or iPhone/iPod touch apps. However, you can opt to share a link to an interesting app. With the app selected, click the same drop-down button to reveal the "Tell a Friend" option. The same is true of Podcasts - hit that "Tell a Friend" button to let everyone know what you're listening to. With just a few clicks, you can share your favorite content with anyone you want!

Text replacement: it's one of Snow Leopard's really cool features. With it, you can type abbreviations and they'll automatically expand into full text. You can convert your most common phrases into just a few keystrokes, and let Snow Leopard take care of the rest. Here's a quick summary of what you need to do to make text replacement work for you.

Creating Macros in System Preferences.

Open System Preferences (it's in the Apple menu at the top of your screen) and navigate to Language & Text > Text. There you'll find a Symbol and Text Substitution list. Click the + button to add a new item. For this example, put (tuaw) into the Replace column and The Unofficial Apple Weblog into the With column. Leave the box to the left of these items checked.

So why use the parentheses? Strictly speaking, they're not necessary. You can define text substitutions on any set of characters, as shown in the screen shot below. What these parentheses do for me, is that they distinguish between when I want to type TUAW and not have it expand, and when I want the abbreviation to transform into the full Weblog name.



Enabling Text Replacement

Text replacement works on a per-application basis. Many applications default to this feature being off. To make text replacement happen, right-click within any text entry area such as a composition window in Mail or the text entry field in Colloquy, etc. The contextual menu provides a Substitutions submenu. Make sure Text Replacement is checked. If it is not, select it to toggle the option from on to off or off to on.



Applying Text Replacment

The big secret to making text replacement happen, once you've defined the shortcuts and enabled Text Replacement in the contextual menu, is the space key. Snow Leopard does not apply the shortcut replacement until it detects you have finished typing a phrase. Only then does it perform its internal look up and substitution.

Also prepare to wait a second or so. The replacement text often lags behind your typing. So go ahead and keep entering text. The operating system will catch up and perform its substitution work without your oversight.

For Mike G., with TUAW affection

More Mac 101, tips and tricks for novice Mac users.

I love iPhoto. I use it for most of my photo editing. The thing I don't like about iPhoto is how it opens each and every time I connect my iPhone to my Mac. What strikes my as plain silly is that, since the introduction of the iPhone two and a half years ago, Apple has not built in an option in the iTunes iPhone status window to disable the automatic iPhoto launch every time you plug in your iPhone.

If you want to take control of this behavior, and you'd prefer to stick with Apple's built-in tools (rather than take advantage of the free and easy Cameras prefpane) there is good news: there's a simple way to disable this 'feature' and it doesn't involve command line stuff. Even better, it isn't an "all or nothing" solution – eg: you can still have iPhoto automatically open when you connect your camera, but not have it open when you connect your iPhone. Aron mentioned this approach a few months ago but I thought it would be helpful to walk through it in detail.

It should be noted that this solution only works on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. If you are running 10.5 or earlier, you'll have to use one of the solutions noted above; we recommend the free Cameras preference pane as a quick fix.

You'll see the image above is of iPhoto's preferences. You may think the option of disabling iPhone auto-open is in there, but it's not. To stop the iPhone from opening iPhoto you actually need to launch the Image Capture application.

Step 1: Launch Image Capture (Applications>Image Capture). If your iPhone isn't plugged in already, plug it in to the USB port on your Mac. It should then show up in the devices source list.

Step 2: Make sure you have the iPhone selected in the source list. When you do, you should see any photos you have on the iPhone appear in the right-hand column of the Image Capture application.
Step 3: At the bottom of the source list, you'll see your iPhone's name then, below that, you'll see the words "Connecting this iPhone opens:" and a drop-down menu. Select "No application." Now close the Image Capture app and you're done. No more iPhone opening up iPhoto, but your other cameras will still auto-launch iPhoto when they are connected!

RSS reader support has been a built-in feature of Mail.app since version 3.0 (when Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard was released). Although I subscribe to a number of RSS feeds, I've yet to find the need for a dedicated RSS reader app -- such as Newsgator's NetNewsWire.

I like having my email and news feeds in the same application. By default, RSS feeds that you subscribe to in Mail will appear in their own folder. If you'd like your RSS feeds to appear in your inbox, just click on the upward pointing arrow of an RSS feed(s) within the RSS section in Mail.app.

On the downside, this view of RSS feeds may flood your inbox and be overwhelming, depending on the number and the activity of feeds you're subscribed to. As a result, you may want to be selective in choosing your feeds. However, I've found this view particularly handy with time-sensitive feeds, and have used it on numerous occasions to score in-demand concert tickets (at face value prices, too!) with search-based Craigslist feeds.

The video shows hints about keyboard shortcuts (such as using the Command key on a Mac instead of the Control key on a PC), and using Command-Option-Escape on a Mac to force-quit an application, much like Control-Alt-Delete does on Windows. There's also tips on using the mouse on a Mac, and using the trackpad to perform gestures to get around your laptop.

Switchers are also going to need help on controlling windows; closing and minimizing controls, of course, are on the top left of windows on a Mac, much like the buttons on the top right of a window on Windows. There's also tips on the differences and how to adjust to similar features and applications on a Mac, like the differences between Windows Explorer and the Finder on the Mac, and what parallels there are between other bundled applications. Finally, there's also tips on which web browser to use, how to eject a disc, and where to go for help.

If you've got a friend or family member who's new to Mac OS X, it's something they should check out to help get used to using the Mac. Of course, right after that, the next step is to read through our library of Mac 101 tips and tricks for novice Mac users.

Now that the holidays are approaching, you'll probably be asked to service your relatives' computers. "You like computers, right? Will you take a look at this for me?" Prepare yourself, it's coming.

Some fixes are easy, including the stuck disc. It can happen for a variety of reasons that we won't go into here. After all, when the Titanic is sinking, you don't stop to yell at the iceberg. So let's just eject the disc.

The fix is simple. After trying the obvious (hit the eject key, drag the disc into the trash), restart the machine and as it starts up, hold down the mouse button (or trackpad button if the offending Mac is a laptop). The disc should now eject as the Mac continues to start up. If not, you may have optical drive issues to worry about. But chances are you'll get mom's extended edition Murder, She Wrote DVD ejected safe and sound.

More Mac 101, our tips and tricks for novice Mac users.

Update: You cannot install Snow Leopard on an 8 GB flash drive. I was incorrect in writing that an install of Essential System Software would take 3.81 GB. As a few of our commenters pointed out, and as is the case, in testing I erroneously tried to install Snow Leopard on a flash drive that already had a version of OSX on it, making the installation much smaller than installing on an empty flash drive. According to readers, installing Snow Leopard on an empty flash drive will take 8.01 GB requiring a 16 GB flash drive. I'm very sorry for any inconvenience this has caused.

It's a good idea to have a strategy in place in case of emergencies. If your hard drive tosses you errors, behaves badly or doesn't even appear, what to do? If programs crash at random, you need to be ready. You can prepare for this by creating a bootable flash drive containing some diagnostic and repair utilities.

This is not meant to replace or in any way affect backing up your hard drive. Time Machine makes it so easy that not having a backup plan is just silly... but so much for the disclaimer.

To make a diagnostic and repair flash drive, I'd suggest buying an 8 GB flash drive, 16 GB flash drive which can be had for around US $20 US $35 these days. When you get it, it probably won't be formatted for your Macintosh, so plug it in and run Disk Utility (in /Applications/Utilities) to format the flash drive. In doing so, you have a number of choices. With your flash drive highlighted click on Erase and choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and give the flash drive a name. Then click on Erase on the bottom right side of the screen and in a few seconds your flash drive will be ready for an operating system.

I inadvertently omitted a step! Click the icon for the drive (not the disk partition -- the one that includes the size) and click the Partition tab. Choose "1 Partition" from the pop-up menu, Mac OS Extended on the right, then click Options at the bottom of the screen and make sure "GUID" is the selected partition type. Thanks to everyone who pointed this out.

More Mac 101, tips and tricks for novice Mac users.

It's so easy to take Address Book for granted, and yet that simple utility has two absolutely killer features: big phone numbers and simple envelope printing. These features do exactly what their descriptions suggest: display phone numbers in Very, Large, Type -- and print envelopes, complete with your personal return address.

To zoom a phone number, control-click or right-click the number you want to see and choose Large Type from the contextual pop-up. Address Book zooms that number way out, allowing you to see it while dialing, even if you're not standing right next to the computer. I find that it's a lot easier just to show the number to my husband than try to read it out to him. Your spousal success rate may vary.

To print a properly formatted envelope, just insert a standard envelope into your printer. Make sure the address side (and not the flap side) faces the toner cartridge. For me, that is flap side down. My printer, which is pretty darn standard, has an envelope feeding clamp in the single sheet feed. I pop open the single sheet access, adjust the clamp inward to match the envelop size and feed in the envelop flap side down.

In Address Book all I need to do is select a contact and print it. (File > Print). Make sure you've chosen Envelopes from the Style (it's my default), and that Print my address is selected so the return address is properly added to the envelope. If you're using an envelope that's not a standard business layout, choose the proper layout. Address Book supports most common envelope styles used in North America, Japan, and "International."

Address Book can also print out mailing labels, lists, and a pocket address book. See the Style pop-up for details. For the free contact manager that comes with the OS, it's got moxie.

More Mac 101, our tips and tricks for novice Mac users.

For some reason, I tend to come across times when my optical drive doesn't want to eject the CD or DVD that's in it. I found myself having to restart the computer and try again... in more serious instances, I have to restart and force-eject the disc by holding down the mouse button during the boot process.

At some point I thought to myself, "There's gotta be a better way to do this." Having to restart my computer when a disc doesn't want to eject is not exactly user-friendly. After pondering the possibilities for quite some time, I remembered that you could enable some menu extras (including an eject button) from the CoreServices folder.

Go to the root of your hard drive, either by choosing "Computer" from the Go menu or by clicking it in the sidebar of a Finder window (my hard drive is the icon labeled 'Server' in the screenshot), and follow this path:

System > Library > CoreServices > Menu Extras

Once in that folder, you'll see a lot of different extras that you can put into your menu bar. Just double-click the ones that look appealing to you and they will appear in your menu bar. Go ahead and give them a try. If you decide that you don't want something in the menu bar, just hold down the command key and drag it off the bar.

The eject button doesn't always fix a stuck CD, but it's one more option to try before restarting my computer.

More Mac 101, our series of tips and tricks for novice Mac users.

Now that the winter holidays are almost upon us, we're thinking about sharing stories, photos, and movies with far-flung relatives and friends. There's a slew of ways to get this done, and this post focuses on creating a simple site in iWeb '09 and publishing it not to Mobile Me, but to your own host via FTP.

If you're unfamiliar with iWeb '09, I'll say this: It does what it does well. If your goal is to share photos, movies and stories with minimal fuss and zero coding, iWeb will work. When I travel, I typically create an iWeb gallery and movie page. Yes, there are many other options, but this one works for me.

If you'd rather not publish your iWeb site to MobileMe and have access to FTP, you're in luck. The setup is simple. First, create your site. Next, click the title of your site in the iWeb '09 sidebar (this doesn't work with previous versions of iWeb) to reveal the publishing options. In the first drop-down menu, select "FTP Server." Give your site a name and enter a contact email.

Below that, enter your FTP settings. You'll need your server address, username, and password. Next, enter the path to the directory (http://mysite.com/paris, for example). Just make sure the directory already exists on your server or you'll get an error. It won't hurt to test the connection at this point by clicking the button that's available for just that purpose.

Finally, enter your site's URL and then click Publish. Off it goes! If you set it up correctly, your iWeb-powered site will be uploaded to the proper place on your site. Subsequent updates require re-publication, so just hit that Publish button again when you're done making changes

That's it! Have fun sharing your holiday experiences with iWeb '09.