You’ve taken your requisite Apple product unboxing video and boasted about your brand new Mac on Facebook, but now it’s time to get down to business. Whether you’re new to the Mac or not, here’s how to set up and get started. More »
Blog Archives
Set Up and Get to Know Your New Mac [Merrychristmahanukwanzaakkah]
Posted on December 25, 2010
How to Find Hidden Features in Mac Applications [Mac Tip]
Posted on December 21, 2010
Secret Terminal commands in OS X (like the one that enables FaceTime’s autoaccept feature) are great, but they generally stay hidden until someone publishes them on the web. Here’s how to find an application’s hidden features yourself. More »
How to Narrow Down Exact Duplicates in iTunes [ITunes]
Posted on December 15, 2010
We’ve mentioned iTunes’ “show duplicates” feature a few times before, but on its own, you might still have to sift through a lot of songs. With the ever-useful Option key, however, you can narrow down those results to show exact duplicates only. More »
How-To: Printing Mailing Labels From Address Book
Posted on December 9, 2010
This holiday season, the Unites States Postal Service recommends getting First Class Mail out by Monday, Dec. 20 to ensure delivery by the 25th. The following two tips will help you get address labels printed up and ready to mail using your Mac. Both methods use Avery 8160 Address labels in this tutorial, but a wide variety of Avery printable labels can be used.
Apple Address Book and MobileMe Contacts
Apple’s Address Book application on Mac OS X Snow Leopard has the ability to print directly to address labels. First create a new group called “Holiday Cards 2010? in Apple’s Address Book. Add the contacts you wish to send a card to this season to this new group. Once this task is complete, simply select the group and perform the following steps:
- Select File>Print from the Address Book Menu
- Click the icon next to your Printer choice that looks like an upside-down triangle
- From the Style drop down menu, choose Mailing Labels
- Under the Layout tab, set the Page to Avery Standard and 8160 (or whatever type of mailing label you have)
Now you’re all set to print. I would also recommend saving the results as a PDF file, and printing from there. That way you’ll always have a record of whom you already mailed cards to this holiday season. If you want to change the font or add an image to the address labels, from that same print dialog box where you choose which type of label you’re using, simply toggle over from Layout to the Label tab and make any changes you want.
Avery Designer Pro and Google Contacts
Just as with the Apple Address Book solution above, the first thing to do when you’re dealing with your Google-stored addresses is to create a new group called “Holiday Cards 2010? in Google’s Contacts. Add your chosen contacts to the group. Now we’ll export the group to a local file on your Mac, and use Avery’s Designer Pro for Mac application to actually print the labels. Once you’ve installed Avery’s software, perform the following steps:
- Export the contact group in Google Contacts as a “Google CSV” file (google.csv)
- Launch Avery Designer Pro and choose 8160 – Easy Peel Mailing Labels (or whatever type of mailing label you have) from the list of all Avery Products
- Click on the Use Blank button in the bottom right hand corner of Avery Designer Pro
- From the toolbar located on the top left, click on the Text Box button to add a text box to the label
- Now click on the Mail Merge button located just below the toolbar, this will prompt you to load the exported CSV file (google.csv)
- Select the exported CSV file from the file system, and insert the columns you want to show up on the label
Now you can print from Avery Designer Pro’s File menu. I would again recommend saving the results as a PDF file, and printing from there.
This technique is a little more flexible considering you have the option to choose one of Avery’s design styles. It’s also a little more powerful since you are actually designing the address labels in a designer that even supports layers, and of course a little more complex, as you need to export data and install and use a third-party application.
You can also mix and match the above two solutions, as you could certainly export your Google Contacts as a vCard and import them into Apple’s Address Book. The Avery Designer Pro application can also import Apple Address Book Contacts. Either way, hopefully you find printing mailing labels on a Mac one of the easier one of the easier things to cross of your list this holiday.
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Mac 101: Setting Up Your Mouse or Trackpad
Posted on December 8, 2010
There’s a myriad of options when it comes to setting up your Mac’s mouse or trackpad. The Mouse and Trackpad sections in System Preferences have helpful videos showing you how to use different features, but here’s a guide to getting those settings just right.
One- or Two-Button?
One of the most confusing things about a Mac mouse is its lack of physical left and right buttons. Both the Magic Mouse and the Mighty Mouse which preceded it have only one click function, clicking anywhere on the mouse, but it’s possible to set up a secondary or right-click, too.
To enable a right-click, open up Mouse in System Preferences (?>System Preferences) and find the Secondary Click setting. On the Magic Mouse, you can set the secondary click to either be on the right, or the left, for left-handed users. To use the right-click function when it’s turned on, perform your click on the right-hand side (or left, if you set it to left) of the mouse.
You can enable two-finger tap secondary clicking in the System Preferences>Trackpad options. Trackpads also have the option of a one-finger secondary click, where you click in the corner of your choice on the trackpad to perform a secondary click instead of using a two-finger tap.
If you uncheck the option for Secondary Click, then to perform a right click, you will need to hold down Control on the keyboard and click with the mouse. Clicking on the left or right-hand side without holding the Control key will perform a left-click.
Scrolling With Inertia
Both the Magic Mouse and trackpads have the option to scroll with inertia. This is the effect you see on the iPhone, where flicking makes the scroll carry on after you let go. The option can be found alongside the checkbox for Scroll, which for mice is under the One Finger heading in the relevant Systems Preferences pane, and for trackpads is under Two Fingers.
You can also turn off scrolling altogether, but that would become tiresome after a while, because it means either using the cursor keys to scroll, or dragging the scrollbar on the right of a window. I imagine you’d be turning scrolling back on fairly soon after turning it off.
Getting a Closer Look
System Preferences (under either Trackpad or Mouse) also offers the option to turn on Screen Zoom for your input device. By holding one of either Control, Option or Command, depending on your choice in the settings, you can then scroll upwards on your device to zoom in on your screen, and scroll down to zoom back out again. This is great for the visually impaired. There are some other options for Screen Zoom which let you change how the screen moves in relation to the cursor, and turn image smoothing while zoomed on or off.
Navigating Using a Mouse or Trackpad
If you use a Magic Mouse or a trackpad, you can turn on swipe to navigate, which lets you go back and forward in your web history, jump between pages in a Preview document, and much more, depending on which application you’re using. On a mouse, you swipe either left or right with two fingers, and for a trackpad it’s three. There are no settings for swipe to navigate; it’s a simple on or off setting.
Trackpad Multitouch
If you own an iPhone or iPad, and you like being able to pinch to zoom, and rotate with two fingers, you’ll be happy to hear that the new glass trackpads on MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs, as well as the Magic Trackpad, support both these multitouch gestures, and a few more. Each gesture can be turned on and off individually, and additional gestures to choose from include swiping up and down with four fingers to access Exposé and the Application Switcher (??). These gestures are the best thing about Apple’s Magic Trackpad.
These are just the options which Apple has built-in to Macs by default. With an application like MagicPrefs, you can add even more functionality to your mouse or trackpad such as custom gestures other than the Apple specified ones. If you have any other input device-related tips or tricks, feel free to share in the comments.
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Hide and Show Desktop Icons on OS X with an Automator Service [Video]
Posted on December 2, 2010
We’ve featured a few ways to keep your Windows desktop neat, but if you want to temporarily hide your Mac’s desktop icons, you can do so with a simple AppleScript and Automator. More »
Mac 101: Keep Your Mac Running with Regular Maintenance
Posted on December 2, 2010
If your Mac is running slow or things don’t seem to be working as they should, it may just be that you need to give your computer a little bit of TLC in the form of regular maintenance. Here are a few ways to look after your Mac to make sure it doesn’t get too ill.
Before you start, it’s always a good idea to do a backup of your system, or at least your sensitive files. These are very basic steps that don’t incur much risk, but you’re always better off having a backup than not.
Do It Every Day: Empty the Trash
It might seem obvious, but emptying the Trash is a great way to claim back hard drive space, which can, in some cases, speed up your Mac. To do this, simply click and hold (or right-click) the Trash icon in the Dock. Then click Empty Trash in the pop-up menu which appears. You’d be surprised how often you might forget to do this for days or even weeks at a time.
Do It Once a Month: Give Your Battery a Break
If you’re like me, and you never completely shut down your MacBook, instead only closing the lid occasionally to put it to sleep, then your battery might be getting a bit worn out. It could even be losing the ability to charge completely. Once in a while, turn your laptop off completely to give the battery a rest. Apple even suggests regularly running the charge down until the notebook turns off, then waiting a while to let it run out completely before recharging.
You can check the condition of your battery if you’re running Snow Leopard (10.6.x) by holding Option and clicking the battery status icon in the Menu Bar. If it shows ‘Replace Soon’, your battery may be losing the ability to hold its charge. If “Replace Now” or “Service Battery” is displayed, you should contact Apple about getting the battery replaced, especially if you’re still covered under warranty or AppleCare.
Do It Once Every Couple Months: Verify and Repair Disks and Permissions
Repair Disk Permissions
Repairing disk permissions can sort out strange goings-on, particularly those related to starting up your Mac. Open up Disk Utility (Found in the Applications>Utilities folder) and click on the disk you’re interested in using the source menu on the left. Click the button on the left, Verify Disk Permissions. Disk Utility will automatically take care of the rest.
If you need to, you can click Repair Disk Permissions to iron out any errors that get picked up. I’d suggest doing this before restoring and erasing disks and so on. Oftentimes repairing permissions will sort out the problem, without having to resort to a disk repair.
Verify and Repair Disks
If something strange starts happening on your Mac, it’s a good idea to verify that your startup disk is okay. If the structure of the disk’s file system is changed in some way, then your Mac might start behaving strangely. In order to check that everything is as it should be, you can once again use Disk Utility. Select your startup disk from the list of drives on the left and hit Verify Disk. Disk Utility will go ahead and check the status of the disk you selected. Don’t worry if your computer is unresponsive during the test; that’s normal.
If Disk Utility finds an issue with a disk, you can use the Repair Disk button to have your Mac try to repair it automatically. Most of the time, a simple repair will sort out any issues you’re having with a disk.
Sometimes, though, you will have to boot your Mac from your OS X install disc in order for Repair Disk to work. To do that, make sure your OS X install disc is in your Mac’s drive, reboot your computer, and hold C. Don’t reinstall OS X, but instead choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu and try to verify and repair once again.
Getting It Done Automatically
It can be a pain to remember to carry out maintenance on your machine regularly. Luckily, there’s an application, OnyX, which can perform maintenance such as checking permissions and cleaning out temporary files automatically. OnyX can perform daily, weekly and monthly scripts which do all the boring things for you. Plus it’s free. OnyX can’t empty the Trash, but it can clear caches and temporary files. It also checks the status of your startup disk whenever you launch the application.
Got any maintenance tips of your own? Share them in the comments.
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Keep iPhoto From Auto-Launching Every Time You Connect Your iPhone [Annoyances]
Posted on December 2, 2010
Since most iPhones and iPod touches are, in fact, cameras, iPhoto will annoyingly launch itself every time you plug them in. It turns out, though, you can disable this behavior—the setting is just a little hidden. More »
Podcast Rundown Part 2: Audio for on the Go
Posted on November 15, 2010
There are plenty of great podcasts out there to choose from, but we’ve got the best of the audio variety right here to scratch your Mac itch. While all the TWiT-centric video podcasts in part one of my podcast roundup have companion audio feeds, these radio-styled talk shows are much better choices for your iPhone or iPod touch.
Audio Podcasts for iPhone/iPod Touch
TWiT TV’s The Tech Guy. (iTunes Link) Leo Laporte is the Chuck Norris of all tech-based talk shows on any format. Leo may be trying to record every moment of his life, given the number of shows he’s involved with. With audio and video podcasts, and traditional over-the-air shows, it’s amazing he finds the time to tweet. While Leo tends to be more Mac-focused than PC, the tech discussions can go either way.
The Mac Observer’s Mac Geek Gab. (iTunes Link) Dave Hamilton and John F. Braun have been with The Mac Observer for a long time, and have been producing a quality podcast for almost as long. Their enthusiasm never seems to die out. The depth of knowledge they have regarding Mac-related technologies is proven over and over. There’s also an enhanced iTunes version with premium content, but you can only grab it through iTunes.
The MacCast. (iTunes Link) For Mac geeks by Mac geeks. With five years of history behind him, Adam Christianson is another veteran of all things Mac. The variety that each show has to offer is refreshing. Adam is very articulate, and you can easily visualize the detailed step-by-step walk-througsh typically included in each show.
Mac OS Ken. (iTunes Link) A quick podcast bringing you the latest Mac news — all of the latest Mac news. Ken Ray has a familiar format that’s often imitated. At times, you expect a full-on rant to ensue, but Ken manages to pull back and keep to the facts with just enough commentary to keep things interesting. This podcast even has its own iOS app.
For Mac Eyes Only. (iTunes Link) Beyond the quick tips, the weekly program is a collection of how-tos mixed in with news and rumors being discussed online.
Listening to Podcasts
Lately, I’ve been trying to steer clear of having to sync daily. I use MobileMe to keep my bookmarks, contacts, calendar and notes in sync when on the go. I have my favorite albums on hand and utilize services like Pandora to fulfill my other music needs. Podcasts, on the other hand, are very time-based, and it wasn’t until I found Podcaster for $1.99 in the App Store (iTunes link) that I was able to wean my iPhone completely off of its dependence on iTunes. Without having to search all over again for my favorite podcasts, I was able to export the OPML file from iTunes, upload and share the file from my MobileMe iDisk, and import the URL into Podcaster. That way, my iPhone will always grab the most current content automatically.
Think we’re missing any truly great audio podcasts? Please share in the comments.
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Command-Click OS X Dock Items to Show Them in Finder [Mac Tip]
Posted on November 5, 2010
File this under shortcuts-that-might-be-ancient-but-we-never-knew: with just a quick modifier key, you can show any dock item in the Finder, whether it’s an application or a file in a stack. More »