Mac-101 Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Mac 101: Apple's product guide

by Michael Rose (Jan 29th, 2008)

Back to basics with Mac 101, our ongoing series of posts aimed at new Mac users. If you've got a hankering for news about the latest Mac-compatible products, you've got plenty of places to look (including, naturally, right here). What if you've got a specific product need, something obscure, ...

Mac 101: Boot options

by Mat Lu (Jan 11th, 2008)

We've had some questions recently on Ask TUAW about boot options so I thought it would make for a good Mac 101. Obviously, Boot Camp has brought dual-booting to the fore on the Mac platform, but there are actually a variety of boot time options built into your Mac which allow you to interact with it ...

Mac 101: Keyboard text selection

by Mat Lu (Jan 3rd, 2008)

For someone who loves keyboard launchers like Quicksilver, I have to confess an embarrassing deficiency in my keyboard competency: I've never really learned to select text with the keyboard. So I thought the topic would make for a nice beginning of the year Mac 101. The keyboard text selection ...

Mac 101: Photo Booth tricks

by Dave Caolo (Nov 29th, 2007)

I've got a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old, so Photo Booth is a big hit in my house. They love to mug for the camera and send silly snapshot to grandma and grandpa. I've used it quite a bit, and thought I knew all the tricks. This morning, Macsupport has pointed out a few new ones. First, you can ...

Mac 101: Drag and drop in the Application Switcher

by Mat Lu (Nov 27th, 2007)

We've talked previously about the wonders of the Application Switcher, the translucent bar that comes up when you hit ?-Tab. However, thanks to Macworld I realized today that the Leopard version adds a great feature that should have been there a long time ago: drag and drop. In Leopard the ...

Mac 101: Using Quick Look

by Mat Lu (Nov 14th, 2007)

So far as I can tell, practically everybody loves Leopard's Quick Look previewer. For today's Mac 101 I thought I'd share a few tips about using Quick Look. First is nice little tip from Mac OS X Hints about zooming in Quick Look. If you invoke Quick Look with the spacebar you can actually zoom ...

Mac 101: Screen rotation

by Mat Lu (Nov 5th, 2007)

For today's Mac 101 I thought I'd draw your attention to a feature of the Displays tab of the System Preferences that only appears on external monitors: Rotate. If you plug in an external monitor to your Mac you should see that you have the option to rotate the display by 90 degree increments ...

Mac 101: Enlarging Finder Previews

by Erica Sadun (Oct 17th, 2007)

Leopard may be just around the corner but we're not ignoring you readers who aren't ready to upgrade. Here's a quick tip for those of you who plan on staying in Tiger land. Sometimes you want to view pictures by previewing them directly in Finder. To automatically view the largest possible preview, ...

Mac 101: Using the Up Arrow in Finder

by Erica Sadun (Oct 1st, 2007)

It's no surprise to most Mac users that you can use arrow keys to navigate through Finder windows. Arrow-key presses work in all three window styles: icon view, list view and column view. What many new Mac users don't realize though is that there are Command versions of these arrow keys. When ...

Mac 101: How to go Home

by Michael Rose (Sep 18th, 2007)

More Mac 101, the TUAW answer to the unasked questions of novice Mac users. You've certainly seen the little house in your windows, but do you know who lives there? You do -- at least, your stuff does, and if Carlin said it that's enough for me. Unlike Mac OS 9, which pretty much let you put your ...

Mac 101: Keychain

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Sep 17th, 2007)

The Keychain on your Mac is a little application buried in the Utilities folder in your Applications folder. I say buried because I think Keychain is sadly neglected by most users. Here are some things you can do with it: Save web page passwords Save login info (aside from websites, like your ...