I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m in love with Mission Control. I am especially fond of how easily it makes using spaces (virtual desktops) a part of my everyday work flow. Throw in a few full-screen applications like Mail or Safari and I’m happily zipping back and forth between them all. Now I’ve found a keyboard trick that allows me to move around my spaces zippy fast without taking my hands off of the keyboard.
Here is a great tip that will let you convert any text that you can drag select into a spoken track delivered right into iTunes. You can then sync that track and take it with you on the go. Listen to what you might have been reading later or share it with friends and family.
Mac OS X Lion borrows something else from iOS, but this time it is from iOS 5 an unreleased version of the operating system for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. You can now easily tweet text that you’ve selected using the new Twitter integration feature in Mac OS X Lion.
Apple provided some great default keyboard shortcuts in Mac OS X Snow Leopard and one of my favorites was Command+D. You could use that keyboard shortcut combination to select the Don’t Save option when closing a document you haven’t saved yet. Unfortunately Apple decided to change the keyboard shortcut combination in Mac OS X Lion.
I like to keep my computer organized and this means that I like to keep my files and folders sorted alphabetically by name. Occasionally I might want to sort them temporarily by kind (i.e. PDF, JPEG, etc.) and afterwards I would sort them again by name. In Mac OS X Snow Leopard you had to toggle between one or the other manually and Leopard would only remember your last sort method selected.
Now Mac OS X Lion will let you decide how you want your files arranged and it remembers that arrangement, but it will also let you temporarily view them sorted in a different order. The next time you view the files they are sorted in the original method you selected, but in order to get this to work properly you need to know the difference between an old and new Finder view in Mac OS X Lion.
Here is a tip that will show you how to get the most out of two new Spotlight search features that expand that utilities reach quiet a bit. The version of Spotlight that ships with Mac OS X Lion now includes Web and Wikipedia searches just like the ones we are used to seeing on iOS.
Now Mac OS X Lion can not only search your Mac, but its reach has now expanded out to the internet with the ability to perform Google and Wikipedia searches.
Mac OS X Lion now offers a new icon view called All My Files in Finder and you can use new gestures on your trackpad to navigate through all of the files on your Mac. You’ll be able to quickly find the wayward image, PDF, or other file fast.
One of my favorite things about Mac OS X Lion is the introduction of new trackpad gestures that make my computing experience a lot more efficient. One of the gestures I use the most is the new swipe gesture in Quick Look.
One of my favorite improvements that shipped with Mac OS X Lion is Mail 5.0 and its new Conversations view. This new view allows you to view message threads by combining messages into a chronological timeline. It has one drawback, since by default, any messages that you sent don’t show up in the timeline. That makes it hard to read and make sense of the thread. Here is a tip on how to fix it.
Mac OS X Lion looks a lot different from its predecessor Mac OS X Snow Leopard and one of those differences is the sidebar in Finder and Mail. The sidebar looks a lot different because it displays different elements in Lion and the icon it displays aren’t even in color now.
Apple has introduced a new feature in Mac OS X Lion called Resume. Resume will automatically reopen all the windows you had open the last time you used an app after you relaunch it.
Not a bad trick for some apps, but for some others it can quickly be really annoying. Here’s a tip on how you can permanently avoid it altogether.
Many of the complaints I’ve heard about Mac OS X Lion is about Dashboard. It now has its own space (virtual desktop) where all your Dashboard Widgets live. Well those living arrangements aren’t as permanent as one would think. Here is a tip on how you can set your Widgets free!
One of the biggest changes that Apple has implemented in Mac OS X Lion is Mail version 5.0. The new version of Mail has a whole new look and feel to it that I’ve heard a few of you complain about. Well good news this tip will show you how to reverse the new modern look that Mail is sporting these days into something a bit more classical.
Apple has introduced new recovery features available through a combination of new hardware and software. One of these new features is called Lion Internet Recovery which will allow you to start your 2011 MacBook Air or Mac Mini directly from Apple’s servers.
The recovery process starts when the Command+R option doesn’t work or when you install a brand new blank hard drive.
Here is a tip that will let you force your 2011 or later Mac to launch Internet Recovery on startup.
The iPhone is a powerful reporting tool, so much so that the BBC is creating an app that will help reporters make the most of it in the field, replacing more expensive and sometimes less reliable equipment like satellite phones.
Many other mobile journalists are using them in the field. Their tips for recording and editing audio and video can come in handy for any iPhone user who wants to capture a lecture, conference or family moment — then edit and send with minimum hassle.
If you are planning on using Target Disk Mode to boot your Mac equipped with Thunderbolt ports you’ll need Apple’s special Thunderbolt cable in order for it to work. This is required even when connecting two Macs or a Mac to an external Thunderbolt equipped disk drive.
Here’s a good resource to take a look at if you plan on upgrading to OS X Lion this month. Roaringapps.com is a crowd sourced application compatibility database for OS X Lion. The site depends on user input about the compatibility of existing applications running on Snow Leopard or whether or not apps will need Rosetta.
Sync versus streaming. Essentially, that is the difference between how Apple, Amazon and Google view the cloud. However, a closer looks finds iCloud could pay off big for the Cupertino, Calif. company looking to cash-in on the falling price of flash memory.
I take a lot of the things for granted on my iPhone, since I’ve been using one since the original was released back in 2007. Apple released the iPhone, which many call the iPhone 2G, along with an Apple branded Bluetooth headset. That headset didn’t last very long and it was ultimately abandoned by Apple and replaced by third-party alternatives.
Therefore, although Apple abandoned the headset market iOS retained the support that Apple baked into each Bluetooth headset they made. That support allows my iPhone 4 to display the mysterious symbol that a fair number of readers comment about on my posts. So what is it?
I did something last weekend that I know many of you may have done already. I dragged my Mac Mini into the living room and connected it to my large screen LCD TV. I ran into an interesting problem after doing so. My Mac Mini would not display the Mac OS X menu bar. It wasn’t visible, but luckily there is an easy fix for this problem.
Our heads are spinning with all the new little features that are packed into iOS 5. Our heads also might be spinning from the new “LED Flash for Alerts” feature found under the Accessibility settings which we just enabled. While it currently only works on the iPhone 4, this neat little feature enables your phone to send out a few pulses of light from the LED Flash every time you get a new Text or Phone call.
“What? No way, that’s not my Enrique Iglesias track. How’d that get on my iPhone?” Have you ever had your musical tastes harshly criticized by a friend who’s browsing through the music library on your iPhone? Apple’s now enabled users to avoid those awkward moments of friends discovering your guilty pleasures by allowing you to delete songs from your iPhone or iPad.
Apple hit more than a few home runs at this weeks WWDC keynote and the announcements surrounding iOS 5 were the best as far as most of us at Cult of Mac are concerned. However, one of the home runs that went straight out of the ball park was an announcement about the changes made to the Camera app in iOS 5. That app has changed in two very important ways involving the Home and Volume Up buttons.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3dUCSvcffU
There are a lot of perks that come with jailbreaking your iPhone 4, and this latest tweak is one of the coolest things we’ve seen in a while. RecognizeMe is a jailbreak tweak that allows user of the iPhone 4 to unlock their devices via a facial scan.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFJxt8lZQjg
Jason Bradbury, the self-proclaimed Apple Expert, has discovered a simple hack that allows owners of the iPad 2 to take X-Ray style photographs through clothes. By applying a filter after blasting a subject with infrared light, the iPad 2’s camera can see through clothing. The best part of the hack is that you don’t need any type of training in radiology as it is incredibly simple and utilizes everyday household objects (infrared light and cellophane) to make it work.
The steps are quite simple:
1: Flood a subject with infrared light. Bradbury recommends using a digital camera with a night vision mode, or a children’s toy that uses infrared light. The infrared light penetrates the clothing and will be able to be picked up with the right filter.
2: Cover the camera on your iPad 2 with two layers of cellophane. The cellophane acts filters out the natural light enough to wear the infrared light comes in stronger and is picked up by the iPad 2’s camera lens.
3. Start snapping pictures. With your infrared source in place and your filter setup you are now ready to start taking some amazingly cool photos.
