OS X tips - page 9

Calendar, previously iCal, has had Time Zone support for a while now. The Mac I’m using that runs OS X Mountain Lion let’s my turn on Time Zone Support in the Advanced tab of the Calendar preferences, so I can be sure to be on time for meetings when I travel away from my current timezone (AKDT).

However, when using Time Zone support in Mountain Lion, calendar events that I scheduled in one time zone wouldn’t ever show me visually that they were. OS X Mavericks takes care of this problem with a small visual cue–now events scheduled in one time zone will show that time zone in their title in Calendar. Here’s how to make that happen.

In the new OS X Mavericks beta, there’s a new Notification system in place that mimics much of the way iOS handles notifications. Your iOS notifications, in fact, can push right to your Mac desktop as well.

Much like iOS, each app that uses Notification Center can be set to a fine-grained level of customization, letting you show them in Notification Center (activated with the icon in the upper right corner of your Mac’s screen), decide whether to let them use a Badge app icon, and whether or not to play a sound for each app’s notifications.

If, however, you value your privacy, you may want to disable the default setting that has your notifications showing up even when the display is off or locked.

Here’s how.

Just like in iOS, OS X Mavericks beta has gone to auto-updating of apps. This way, you don’t have to click thorugh to the Mac App Store each time it gets a red badge of update and click the Update or Update all buttons. It’s pretty slick, and will be a time saver as more and more apps run through the Mac App Store.

But what if you want to update things on your own schedule, or check the list of potential updates, picking and choosing the updates you want to activate, and ignore the ones you don’t?

All you need to do is disable auto-updating, and here’s how.

When you’re galavanting about with your MacBook Air or Pro, it’s important to manage you battery power. It just wouldn’t do to show up for an important meeting or interview with a dead battery, let alone not being able to watch a movie on the airplane, now would it?

Knowing which apps are sucking up the most juice is key to this effort, of course, and OS Mavericks beta makes it severely easy to know which ones are the most power-hungry. That way, you can quit the apps that are using up too much battery in order to leave enough power for the important stuff.

Here’s how it works.

One of the lesser talked-about features of the upcoming OS X Mavericks system is that of Mac App Store subscriptions. In iOS, developers are able to charge users on a recurring basis, like a subscription. Magazines in Newsstand do this fairly easily, and I have several subscriptions to magazines there.

This wasn’t available to OS X apps until the release of OS X Mavericks, and you can manage your subscriptions from the Mac App Store right now if you’re running the new Mavericks beta on your Mac right now. Here’s how.

It used to be that if you wanted to increase the size of your mouse pointer, you’d hop into the Universal Access pane in the System Preferences and then click on the Mouse & Trackpad tab to find the Increase Cursor Size slider.

With OS X Mavericks beta, if you go looking for the Universal Access preferences pane, you’re out of luck. It’s called Accessibility now. However, if you know that much, and drop into it, you won’t find a Mouse & Trackpad tab.

So, in OS X Mavericks beta, if you want to increase the size of your mouse pointer, here’s what you have to do.

One of the coolest things about Messages is the cross-device functionality, in that you can send messages to and from your Mac and your iOS devices. I use it while at work to chat with folks who text me from their iPhone; it’s a really handy way to avoid using a tiny screen while at work, not to mention letting you keep your iPHone in a bag, instead of beeping or vibrating on your desk.

Now, though, you can send an iMessage in the Notification Center in OS X Mavericks beta. Here’s how.

In the OS X Calendar, at least up to OS X Mountain Lion, the way to move from month to month, or week to week, is to hit the right or left arrows near the top of the calendar window, a fairly typical mechanic among calendar apps, really.

In OS X Mavericks beta, however, you can move through them much more intuitively. Here’s how.

One of the features I’ve been most looking forward to in OS X Mavericks is the ability to send directions from my Mac to my iPhone, to be able to take my directions on the go, even when I’m searching on my Mac. I hate having to go to my iPhone (or iPad) and re-enter the starting and ending addresses again; I just did that on my Mac!

While you still can’t do that with Google directions, you can now send directions from OS X Mavericks Maps right to your iOS Maps. Here’s how.

In yet another addition to the OS X Finder in OS X Mavericks, you can now tag your files. This is a wonderful way to keep track of stuff, since unless you’re an obsessive folder and sub-folder maker, tags are much easier to define and apply on the fly, making the dynamic organization of your files easier and less permanent.

OS X Mavericks tags seem a lot like Labels did, with a couple of differences. You can apply more than one tag to a file or folder, and you can sort your files by tag, as well. Here’s how.

Safari has been updated in OS X Mavericks, of course, with a host of under-the-hood improvements, along with quite a few new features. One of them lets you see what your social connections are recommending to their various social network sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Linked In.

If you want easy access to the links your friends, acquaintances, and business contacts are sharing on their social sites, all you need to do is add your social network credentials, and then open up Safari.

OS X Mavericks (named after a surfing hot spot in California) was announced recently, and it contains a ton of new features for Mac users to pore over and learn anew. While not as incredible an overhaul as the concurrent update to iOS 7, Mavericks still contains some fairly helpful features and additions to make it worth some poking around, even in the beta.

Speaking of the beta, remember that any of the stuff we talk about below may only exist in the beta, or in some other form, so enjoy playing around with these things, but don’t worry when things are different when Mavericks releases for real in the Fall.

That said, let’s take a look at five new, hidden, and above all, interesting, features of the latest beta for OS X: Mavericks.

Remember that the OS X Mavericks beta isn’t a final version—it’s meant to be used by developers to ensure that their software will work with Apple’s latest and greatest. With that disclaimer in mind, let’s check out yet another little feature in the beta.

Prior to OS X Mavericks beta, the Dashboard, loaded with useful widgets of all stripe, used to be limited to two states: disabled, or locked to the top left side of the Mission Control screen.

Now, however, with the advent of OS X Mavericks beta, that’s no longer the case. The Dashboard is now treated the same as any other Space when enabled. Here’s how to get it enabled, and then how to move it around.

Don’t forget that the OS X Mavericks beta isn’t a final version—it’s meant to be used by developers to ensure that their software will work with Apple’s latest and greatest. With that disclaimer in mind, let’s check out a new little feature in the beta.

Many apps have had access to special characters before, like iChat and Messages. You’d simply click the little smiley face, for example, and get all the fun emoticons Apple has provided.

If you wanted to type a special character in a text document, though, you’d have to remember that Option-8 is a text bullet, and Option-K is the degrees symbol, and Option-2 gives you the Trademark symbol.

Now, though, in OS X Mavericks beta, you can see visually what special characters are available to you across all applications. Here’s how.

Speech to text is the next new thing, with all devices we use, including our Macs, having the ability to listen to our speech and type what we say for us. What usually makes this magic possible are network-connected processing data centers, that take your speech and convert it to text, all somewhere other than your iPhone device, say. But what if you want to keep what you say to your devices private?

In the new version of OS X, Mavericks beta, there’s a new option to do just that. It’s called Enhanced Dictation, and here’s how to enable it.

As we continue to look at some tips for the new OS X beta this week, remember that OS X Mavericks isn’t a final version—it’s meant to be used by developers to ensure that their software will work with Apple’s latest and greatest.

With that disclaimer in mind, let’s continue.

If you need to use Java for any reason on your Mac, and you install OS X Mavericks beta on it, you’ll be sad when you try and run that Java-reliant bit of software.

For me, it was setting up the Minecraft server for my kid after I installed the beta last night to take a look at things. When I went to run it in Terminal, I got an error, saying there was no Java installed. So, even though I’d had Java installed in Mac OS X Mountain Lion, the Mavericks install seems to have taken Java off my Mac. No worries; it was kind of an easy fix.

OS X Mavericks (named after a hot surfing spot in California) was released last week, and even though it may have been overshadowed by the iOS 7 announcement at the same time, there are bound to be some new things in the operating system we can tip you about.

Remember, though, that as with all beta software, OS X Mavericks isn’t a final version–it’s meant to be used by developers to ensure that when it’s released this fall, all the devs with apps on OS X will have had time to make tweaks to their current Mac software, and start integrating Mavericks stuff into their next bits of software.

That said, let’s take a look at how to enable the new Do Not Disturb toggle in OS X Mavericks beta.

Mac OS X is full of great accessibility features to help those with differing abilities access their Macintosh, whether they have visual, hearing, or motor challenges. One feature, Full Keyboard Access, is set for those who can’t use the mouse reliably. You can use it, too, if you just want to keep your hands on the keyboard, focused on the task at hand.

Here’s how to activate it and make it work for you.

Yes, I’m totally making fun of those “lose belly fat” ads you might see all over the internet (or maybe it’s just me) with that headline, but the truth is, while many Mac users may know that hitting Command-Tab will bring up the Task Switcher in OS X, they may still be doomed to endlessly loop through their running apps with that keyboard shortcut.

If you’re running a lot of apps, that’s a lot of wasted time. Time that could be better spent actually in the apps you’re cycling through in and ever more frustrating rightward bound loop of task switching.

It used to be so easy to remove items from the sidebar of OS X Finder windows. You’d simply click, drag, and poof! The offending item would disappear like a well-heeled Dock icon in search of greater opportunity in the world.

Today, however (and for quite some time, really) you can’t just click and drag the sidebar items away without giving it a little more thought. That’s where this handy keyboard shortcut comes in.

Sure, you could use the right-click (Control-click or two-finger click on a trackpad) to bring up a contextual menu, but where’s the fun in that?

If you haven’t been using OS X’s Mission Control lately, you’re missing out. It’s a great way to separate out your apps, full screen and not, to be just that much more productive on your Mac.

Trouble is, it seems like a fairly mouse-centric system, with users encouraged to click on the different desktops across the top or the apps in the main window area to bring them up.

Luckily, there are a couple of keyboard shortcuts to help you move between Desktop spaces, at least, and one to help you add or delete them, as well.

Starting up your Mac each day may seem a simple thing, right? Just press the power key on your keyboard or main Mac unit, hear the Mac chime, and then get to work, right?

Sometimes, though, you might want to boot a Windows partition with Boot Camp, or start up from a network volume. Heck, you might even want to start from a completely different OS X disk.

In that case, use the following keyboard shortcuts to do so.

The Dock is one of those things that we all use on our Macs, but may not really do much more than swap out applications and use whatever Stacks were put there when we got the darn Mac.

However, if you really want to get the most out of your Mac, you might as well learn how to do a bit more with the Dock, and master your use of this oft-overlooked bit of user software. Here are four great ways to do just that.

Did you know that you can add Passbook passes to your iPhone from your Mac? It’s a feature Apple hasn’t really promoted, but iCloud syncs passes added from OS X to the iPhone with a click of a button.

Hat tip to David Chartier for pointing out this feature on his Finer Things in Tech blog. When viewing a Passbook pass from a source like Ticketmaster or Second Gear Software, simply click the “Add to Passbook” button. You’ll then see the above prompt, and the pass will be added to your iPhone via iCloud.

For more great Passbook tips, check out our handy roundup.

Source: Finer Things in Tech

As you open applications on your Mac, you may notice your Dock getting a little crowded. That’s because OS X adds an icon for each running app to your Dock as soon as you launch it, to let you know that it’s actually doing something. It’s one of the many great visual reminders built into the operating system.

Sometimes, though, your Dock might get a little too crowded. For example, I run Google Chrome all the time. If I remove that icon from the Dock, even when the app is running, I get more space for things I may not always need in the Dock.

Interested? Here’s how.