Mac - page 64

There’s no need to break-out the calculator (either real or software) when you want to do a quick calculation. Just use Spotlight, as follows.

Trying to get somewhere in a hurry? The folks at Apple figured this might happen, so they built a very neat feature into OS X Lion to help you see a map of any address you’ve been sent via email, or encounter in a web page or document. No copying and pasting required.

For those who yearn for the glory days of the Classic Mac OS and Beige Boxes, Andrea Grell offers up an authentic and interactive working demo of System 7 running on a Performa 6116CD. From the startup chime to eWorld, this blast from the past is worthy viewing for all old Mac fans.

Here’s a neat and simple trick that lets you forward several emails at once if you use the OS X Mail application.

If you’ve written a book full of Mac tips, as I have, it’s inevitable people ask what my favourite tips are. So here they are, for one-time only—the top 10 tricks I use every day. They’re not all barnstormers, and they’re not guaranteed to be mind-blowing. They’re just the little things I do to make life easier and more efficient when I’m using my Mac. Please share your own in the comments!

Macs are distinctive among the computing fraternity in the melodious chime they make while booting. While PCs that do nothing more than beep might look on enviously, the fact is that the chime isn’t always welcome—boot your MacBook in a library, for example, and several annoyed faces will willingly hand out censure.

Here’s how to turn off the chime. These instructions are created for OS X Lion but should work with older versions of OS X.

Is your New Years’ Resolution to start video or audio podcasting? Mac OS X Lion includes all the tools you need to produce professional results. Here’s how.

Here’s a quick trick that lets you open files in the application you want, even the app in question thinks it can’t understand that file type. This can be useful with some older word processing files, for example.

The world of iOS was set alight when it was realized anybody can utilize Emoji–full colour emoticons, popular mostly in Japan. Suddenly SMS got a lot more interesting! However, with OS X Lion you can also utilize them on your Mac, making for everything from better emails to more colorful documents.

Want to quickly edit a movie file but can’t be bothered battling with the complexity of iMovie or Final Cut Pro? Here’s how to use QuickTime Player, included with every Mac, to trim movie files and merge movie files together.

OS X remembers and autocompletes passwords for you, but what if you forget them? And then what if your hard disk should suddenly shake itself apart and you have to start with a fresh installation? Here’s how to view any password that OS X stores for you, for applications and websites.

Apple’s advertising runs the gamut from motivational to touching, pragmatic to inspiring. They don’t play the humor card very often, but this latest ad showing Santa using Siri on an iPhone to help him through his rounds is actually pretty funny and appropriate for the season.

Thanks Siri! Thanks Santa! And Happy Holidaze to all…

All Macs come with a powerful word processor in the form of TextEdit. Here are five tips to let you get the most from it and maybe even avoid the need to splash out on Microsoft Word or iWork Pages.

Your Mac will check your spelling as you type in many applications, underlining mistakes in red, but did you know that it can also check your grammar?

If your Mac has a multitouch trackpad, there’s a simple but amazing tweak you can make that could revolutionize the way you use your computer.

Got a new Mac? You’ve probably realised that OS X provides an excellent out-of-the-box experience. Unlike with Windows, few add-ons are required. There’s a great browser, for example, and full PDF support. But there’s still some tools that most experienced Mac users download the minute they boot-up a new Mac. Here they are, listed for possibly the first time…

Here’s a quick but useful tip for those who love their desktop backgrounds and change them on a regular basis.

There’s a secret gesture you can use with Mac multitouch trackpads that lets you double-tap with four fingers to switch back to the most recently used desktop space in OS X Lion (although not previous versions of OS X).

If you’re using your Mac to give a presentation, you might not want everybody to see your messy desktop! If so, you can run a quick command that will hide your desktop icons.

Christmas is coming, and instead of writing out holiday cards by hand, wouldn’t it be easier to just e-mail them to all your friends and loved ones? But e-mail can be so impersonal, at least without knowing the right trick. Here’s a fun trick that can be used to send entertaining emails to people on special occasions, such as birthdays or during the forthcoming holiday season.

Here’s a neat and simple trick that will slow down scrolling to a nice, leisurely pace — great if you’re trying to read while scrolling.

Smart Folders in Mac OS X Lion are finally something to talk about. In earlier versions of Mac OS X they were frankly kind of dumb, but not any more. They now act and work just like regular folders in Finder and they are incredibly fast. That is why Apple made a Smart Folder, All My Files, the default folder when you open a new Finder window in Mac OS X Lion.

There are many other development tools available besides the free copy of Xcode that comes with every Mac. LiveCode 5 (starts at $99; $49 for upgrades), a development tool running on Mac OS X and other operating systems from RunRev, gets it inspiration from the programming language HyperTalk. It is designed with an intuitive user interface to make application development easier using a language that uses an understandable English-like syntax. You can use it to create your own iOS apps.

I’ve had a few friends experience a problem with their Spotlight search results after upgrading to Mac OS X Lion and at other times for other reasons. They claimed to search for items that they knew were somewhere on their computer, but Spotlight wasn’t able to find them in both cases.

Here’s a down and dirty fix for Spotlight that is useful when Spotlight seems to stop providing the results you expect. It is also useful when you just want Spotlight to re-index your system.

Apple changed many things on the Finder sidebar with the release of Mac OS X Lion. Probably one of the better changes was how Apple locked down the sidebar. It is now harder to accidentally remove an item from the Favorite section on the sidebar.

If you work in AppleCare or any other kind of support organization you probably want to hug someone for this change, because it probably generated a lot of calls for support in earlier versions of Mac OS X.