A couple of weeks ago I canceled my MobileMe account. Why? Because it didn’t do the one thing I wanted it to do: share my calendar with my wife so we could coordinate our busy lives. That’s all.
I love MobileMe’s email, calendar, contact syncing (especially on the iPhone) and even iDisk. I gave Apple a year to improve it, but nothing happpened, so I switched.
Here’s how to recreate all of MobileMe’s features for FREE (except one) and how I use it to sync my iMac, MacBook and two iPhones.
On Windows, when you’ve finished using a particular piece of software, you close it with the X symbol in the top right corner of the application window.
Many switchers assume that the window close control in the top left of an OS X application window does the same job: but that’s not quite true.
The Menu Bar sits at the top of your screen at all times. Let’s take a moment to get to know it. It’s worth doing, because the Menu Bar is going to be one of your best friends.
When you used Windows, you were used to see menus inside each document window. File, Edit, all that stuff – every window had those menus built-in.
On the Mac, those menus do broadly the same job. They’re just in a different place.
This first tip starts with the very basic basics. Lots of more advanced stuff is coming very soon.
The first time you start your new Mac, you’ll see a screen that looks similar to the one above. If all you’ve ever used before is Windows machines, it might seem a little weird and intimidating.
So, here’s a super-quick guide to the geography of the Mac desktop.
Running across the top of the screen is the Menu Bar.
The Menu Bar stays there all the time, it is ever present. You’ll be using it a lot, so take a good look at it. We’ll cover the details of the Menu Bar in another post, coming soon.
At the bottom of the screen is the Dock, which also stays in sight all the time (but it doesn’t have to). Those symbols you see down there are applications, or programs, that you can use. Click on one to launch it.
The Dock does lots of things, some more useful than others. It’s also very adaptable; you don’t have to leave the Dock looking like that. You don’t have to have that particular set of icons on it. You don’t even have to keep it down there at the bottom of the screen. The Dock is yours to command: you can make it much more useful by customizing it a little. As with the Menu Bar, we’ll take a closer look at the Dock – and how to bend it to your will – in another post.
We’ve been deluged with emails from brand new, recent, and soon-to-become switchers asking questions and looking for help. It’s clear that there’s plenty of people out there with tips to share and questions that need answers.
So, to everyone who’s sent something in already: thank you. You guys rock. We will do our best to answer all your queries as we go along.
We’ve also had some mails from long-term Mac users who understand OS X just fine, but often encounter newcomers facing the same problems over and over again. Thanks to you guys too; your observations are spot-on and will come in very useful during this series.
If you have a tip you think should be included, or a question about something that’s been puzzling you ever since you shut down Windows for the last time, send them all along to us at 100tips@cultofmac.com.
Starting tomorrow, Cult of Mac will be publishing a series of posts simply called “100 Essential Mac tips and tricks for Windows switchers.”
These will be short, simple posts explaining one thing at a time. They’re aimed very squarely at people who don’t know much about OS X. Complete beginners who have only recently started using a Mac, and still don’t quite understand how it all fits together.
The posts are also a work in progress, and we’d love to hear your ideas for things that should be included on the list.
So if you are one of those newcomers to OS X and you have a question you want answered; or if you’re an experienced Mac user and have noticed something that your newbie friends always get wrong – let me know. I’ll be delighted to hear your suggestions and use the best ones in future posts.
Bring the kids to Macworld and put them to work hawking products, like their dad's new book. Photo by Omar G! http://www.flickr.com/photos/omargutierrez/85534936/
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2010 — Saturday is the last day of Macworld 2010 and you can bring a friend for only $15 when you use priority code SHARE. The Expo Hall hours are from 10:00am to 6:00pm.
If you want to show the kids a good time do the following:
Mobile Safari is a lovely browser but lacks a few features, and one of those is Find-in-page. If you want to find a specific piece of text on a very long web page, you have to resort to third-party fixes.
There are a variety of bookmarklets, alternative browsers and add-ons around, but this latest one is a bit different. Although it’s basically just a bookmarklet, it’s being distributed as an app on the App Store, for a fee of 99 cents.
It’s called Find in Page, and just from the title you know what it does. Here’s a simple demo video:
What separates this from other bookmarklets is the extra interface controls that appear above Safari’s built-in navigation controls when you’re using it. They let you flick between instances of your search term, or start a new search, without having to start all over again.
The app itself simply adds the bookmarklet to Mobile Safari’s bookmarks folder; in theory, you need only run it once to do this, then you can delete it from your device. But you might want to keep it around in case your bookmarks get edited or lost and you need to add it again.
Photographer/podcaster Lisa Bettany is first in line for the 2009 Macworld keynote. CC-licensed photo by Scott Meizner.
Macworld 2010 opens today. It is the 25th annual gathering of Mac users. That’s right, 25 years!
But thanks to the absence of Apple this year, this “Mecca for Mac Heads” may be the last. So check it out while you can.
The show runs for 5 days. The Expo showfloor opens on Thursday at noon.
For the first time since the eighties, it now includes a Saturday. Expect big crowds, lots of kids.
There’s 250 exhibitors, down from 400 last year. Here’s the Exhibitor List.
Attendance is expected at about 30,000 visitors. (But most Expo visitors this year got free passes instead of paying the usual $25 fee).
People are hoping this isn’t the last Macworld but consider the history. As Jim Dalrymple notes: “Apple pulled out of Macworld Expo Boston/New York — it failed; Apple pulled out of Macworld Expo Tokyo — it failed; Apple pulled out of Apple Expo Paris — it failed.”
The festive season is so close you can almost taste it. The kids are pestering to put up Christmas decorations; so why not give them something fun to do this year?
SymmetriSketch is a great free vector drawing application (also available for Windows and Linux users) that lets you play around with symmetry across a 2D plane.
First: QuoteFix for Mac fixes the problem of top-quoting in Mail! Now you can use Mail and reply to email messages underneath the text of the message you’re replying to, as God intended things to be.
Second: I got this tip from Tim Gaden’s Hawkwings blog, which has had a fresh burst of energy over the last month or so, and is now buzzing with tips about using Mail (and other cool things to make your Mac using life easier). If Hawkwings isn’t in your RSS reader or on your list-of-sites-to-keep-an-eye-on, I urge you to add it there.
Addendum for people who can’t see what the fuss is all about
There’s an old internet joke that you’ve probably heard a thousand times:
A: Because people don’t like reading backwards
Q: Why is top-quoting a bad idea?
Email is a very personal thing. Most people don’t care how their replies are displayed in their email software, but for those of us who’ve been around long enough to remember when “email client” was the term used for “email software”, some things – like whether you quote at the top or the bottom – matter a lot.
Most modern email services top-quote. By which I mean when you hit reply, the original message is underneath and your reply is on top. Makes no logical sense, but people have got used to things being that way. It’s just How Email Works for millions.
Gmail made things a little better, by retaining top-quoting but keeping messages in context as threaded conversations. Combined with its “Show quoted text” feature, it makes top-quoting bearable.
Thing is, Mail top-quotes too, and those same people – you know the ones I mean – hate it for that. Now, at last, there’s something for them. QuoteFix sorts it all out and makes it work the way it should. There. That’s better isn’t it?
So it’s nearly the middle of November, which means that those of you doing NaNoWriMo this year should be almost half-way through your novel. Assuming you’ve kept up the daily word count.
Among NaNo writers there’s a thriving subculture of AlphaSmart users.
“AlphaSmart?” you say. “What on earth is that? Doesn’t sound like a Mac.”
Apple’s products are generally well built and very dependable. When things do go wrong, Apple normally backs its products with excellent technical support and warranty service. Normally, if your Mac or iPhone develops a problem, Apple’s return policies or warranty service will make it right.
In spite of Apple’s best efforts, some Apple products manifest chronic problems — they’re “lemons.” What follows is a guide, which details some of your options should you get stuck with a lemon.
Ken’s trick depends on a little bit of Applescript to make it work. But not everyone knows Applescript, which is where another app called Hazel comes in handy.
I lost all my game progress, and all I got to show for it was this lousy dialog box.
One of the dumbest decisions Apple made regarding iPhone and iPod touch is devices wiping all traces of an app when it’s deleted, but providing no means for saving preferences and progress. Unless you use an uninstaller to remove an app or game from your Mac, you can usually pick up where you left off after a reinstall; savvy Mac owners can also fiddle around with preferences, moving them between Macs to ensure consistency across machines in app environments or videogame progress.
iPhone and iPod touch don’t allow such things. Spend hours making headway in Peggle and then, for whatever reason, delete and reinstall Peggle (by accident, or through having a restore go wrong), and your progress is gone—you have to start again. It’s like 1980s arcade games after the plug has been pulled, or cheap, miserly Nintendo DS games that lack a battery back-up in the cartridge, erasing progress and high scores when the device is powered down. For a platform Apple’s pushing as the best solution for handheld gaming, it’s asinine that you cannot export and import videogame progress and save states.
There is a workaround, however, using the shareware app MobileSyncBrowser, but it’s not for the faint-hearted…
Make free calls on your iPhone with Fring and Google Voice. CC-licensed pic by damienvanachter on Flickr.
If you have a Google Voice account, you can make free VoIP calls on your iPhone. You’ll need to sign up for an account at Gizmo.com and download the free Fring app for your iPhone, but after that you’re done. You can make free outgoing calls to (up to three minutes) and receive unlimited incoming calls through Google Voice.
Since I mount my iPhone on my windshield for easy access to my music, I thought it would be appropriate to drill a hole in the plastic to let me take pictures and video while driving. It wasn’t difficult to do. If you have a dremel or a drill you can crank this out in 3 minutes. The plastic is durable enough to handle the pressure of the drill and there isn’t any cracking.
I have the Griffin WindowSeat which comes with adapters for ipod touch and the 1st gen iPhone. It’s a great deal/gift for someone who has an aux input in their car.
Hit the jump to see a video showing the DIY dash cam at work.
