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MAC OS
LAST UPDATED:
08 March 2009 17:02:38 -0600
Changes to this page are IN PROGRESS
Intermediate
With the release of Mac OS 8.6 comes an updated version of Pacific
Tech's Graphing Calculator. To celebrate this event I'd like to remind
you that you can paste PICT files onto the 3-D images created in
Graphing Calculator. Simply open a picture in SimpleText or another
PICT-hip application, select the picture (or portion of the picture),
copy the picture, switch to Graphing Calculator, and paste. Your
picture is now wrapped around the 3-D object.
Beginner
Apple's Map control panel is a fairly limited way to determine the
time and day in other parts of the world. If you want a more complete
resource, take a look at Leighton Paul's HourWorld. This $15
shareware, PowerPC-only application presents you with a world map that
indicates the time in five selectable cities, the distance between
your home city and the other four cities, the position of the sun and
moon, and the phase of the moon. If you like, you can view this data
for any time and date from 1994 - 2009.
You're probably aware that you can switch off AOL's chirpy
announcements (ie. "You've got mail!") by selecting Preferences from
the My AOL menu and deselecting "Play Event Sounds" in the General
tab. But because that's a global operation, you kill each and every
one of AOL's sounds by following this procedure. Perhaps you would
care to keep some sounds -- the Instant Messenger alert, for example
-- while dispensing with others. Here's how:
Open the America Online folder, then the Online Files folder, and
finally the Sounds folder. Drag any files you don't want out of this
Sounds folder and those sounds will no longer play.
Bonus tip: AOL determines which sound to play by the name of the
sound. You can therefore use any System 7 sound file (the format used
by the Mac version of AOL) and give it the name of a particular AOL
event. For example, you can record a snippet of Monty Python's famous
SPAM skit, save it as a System 7 sound, rename it You've Got Mail, and
replace AOL's original You've Got Mail file with the new file. Now
when you have AOL mail you'll hear "SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM,
SPAM, SPAM, SPAM...."
Beginner
If you meet the following requirements:
You spend a LOT of time with your Mac.
You use Griffin Technologies iMate ADB-to-USB adapter.
You know how to operate Apple's Balloon Help.
Try this:
Engage Balloon Help, point at the iMate USB Driver extension (found
in the Extensions folder inside the System Folder), and absorb some
useful advice.
Intermediate
If you're first on the block to possess Apple's new PowerBook G3
(bronze keyboard) you'll be pleased to know that you can use an
external display with your PowerBook with the lid closed. Here's how:
Put the PowerBook to sleep by closing the lid. If not already
connected, attach the power adapter and cable for the external
monitor, attach an Apple-compatible USB keyboard and mouse, and press
the Power button on the keyboard to bring the PowerBook back to life.
When you want to view the internal display just put the PowerBook
to sleep again and wake it with the cover open.
Intermediate
You may have noticed that nearly every time I recommend a piece of
shareware or freeware I send you to Macdownload.com. While this is a
wonderful resource for Mac software, wouldn't it be swell if you could
search the site without having to go to the Web page, entering your
query into the Search field, and waiting for the corresponding files
to appear on a separate webpage? Well, if you have Mac OS 8.5, you now
can thanks to the Macdownload Sherlock plug-in.
Just download the Macdownload.src plug-in, drag and drop it onto
your closed System Folder, and when you next fire up Sherlock, you'll
be able to search Macdownload from the comfort of Sherlock's Search
Internet tab.
As you might expect, you can find this plug-in at
http://www.macdownload.com.
Intermediate
When you escort that brand new PowerBook G3 (bronze keyboard) into
your office, jack a USB keyboard into the appropriate port, and put
this baby to sleep with Password Security activated you will discover
this anomaly: You will not be able to enter your password with the USB
keyboard. The reason why is that the Password Security control panel
activates before the USB bus is enabled and therefore the PowerBook
fails to recognize input from any USB device. The workaround is to
type your password on the PowerBook's built-in keyboard.
Beginner
Pangea software is on the verge of releasing its aptly titled,
cute-as-a-bug game, Bugdom. Since Pangea has a new game on the way, I
suppose it's perfectly all right to tell you how to cheat your way
through its last game, Nanosaur. Simply launch Nanosaur (and yes, each
and every iMac owner has a copy of this game) and type the following
codes:
F12+F1 = Restore Health
F12+F2 = Get all Weapons
F12+F3 = Get Shield
F12+F4 = Win the Game
F12+F5 = Get Fuel
If you don't already have a copy of Nanosaur, you can get a copy at
www.macdownload.com.
Beginner
Don't believe the floppy is dead? Try buying a floppy drive module
for your new PowerBook G3 (bronze keyboard). You can't. Apple has no
plans to make such a module. To use floppies on this particular Apple
product you must purchase and haul around a third-party USB-compatible
floppy drive.
Intermediate
After installing Mac OS 8.6 on an iMac that supports IrDA (Rev. A
and B models), you may notice that your modem no longer responds.
Here's why: The Mac OS 8.6 upgrade causes IrDA to be selected in the
Modem control panel's Connect via: pop-up menu. To bring the modem
back to the land of the living, open the Modem control panel and
select Internal Modem from this pop-up menu, choose iMac Internal 56k
from the Modem pop-up menu, close the Modem control panel, and save
the configuration when prompted to.
Intermediate
Under Mac OS 8.5 and later, if you have the "Smooth all fonts on
screen" option selected in the Fonts tab of the Appearance control
panel, some of your onscreen fonts may look a little hazy. To sharpen
things up a bit, increase the number that appears in the Smooth Fonts
Size box to 18. Now only fonts 18 points and higher will be smoothed.
Intermediate
Having unexplained freezes whenever you launch Excel? Then perhaps
now's the time to explain them. Excel will freeze on launch if your
Mac's monitor bit-depth is set to 2-bit or 256 grays. The workaround
is obvious: When working with Excel, don't use these bit-depth
settings. Instead use 256 colors or more.
Beginner
If your Mac has crashed or an application quit with an arcane error
code and you've wondered just what in tarnation that error means,
Black and Bleu, a $34 utility from Blue Rose Ltd., may have your
answer.
Black and Bleu carries simple and technical definitions for nearly
3,000 Macintosh errors. Not only does the utility explain what the
error codes mean, but also offers advice on what you can do to avoid
getting the error in the future. The demo version allows you to use
Black and Bleu three times before it expires. After that you must pay
for your copy. You can find that copy at: http://www.macdownload.com.
Intermediate
Someone I know very well indeed was in the process of designing an
invitation and wished to insert a flower-like dingbat into the design.
Unfortunately she didn't know how to determine which key corresponded
to the dingbat she desired. So, she dutifully opened a new word
processing document, typed each and every letter on her Mac keyboard
(yes, even the Shift and Option combinations), and then cut and pasted
the flower from the list of characters she had created.
Had she asked me for a shortcut, I might have suggested:
1. Using Key Caps, the Apple Menu item that ships with all Macs.
Just select the font you want and look at the characters on the
keyboard. To view alternative characters, hold down the Shift and
Option keys, either separately or together.
2. If the characters in Key Caps are too difficult to discern, try
Vincent Jalby's $15 shareware utility, FontBuddy. FontBuddy displays
every character in a font as well as the keyboard equivalents for a
font's characters. And unlike Key Caps, FontBuddy can display each
character at a size up to 256 points.
You can find your copy of FontBuddy at http://www.macdownload.com.
Intermediate
Last week I mentioned that Apple would not offer a floppy disk
module for the PowerBook G3 (bronze keyboard). While this is correct,
my hint that the only way to use a floppy on one of these machines was
to carry an external floppy drive was not. VST Technologies offers a
SuperDisk module that can read traditional 1.4 MB floppy disks as well
as 120 MB SuperDisk media.
If you desire one of these $230 modules, look for model number
LSG32. For more information try http://www.vsttech.com.
Beginner
Now that DVD players are becoming more popular on Macs, it's time
to reveal a small easter egg in the Apple DVD Player application.
Select About Apple DVD Player from the Apple menu. When the credits
begin to scroll:
Hold down the Shift key to make the credits scroll in reverse.
Hold down the Option key to speed up the scrolling.
Hold the Control key to cause the credits to move up and down and all
around the round About window.
Power User
On occasion, users with DVD drives may find that certain discs
won't mount properly. When you insert these discs you'll receive a
warning that the disc can not be read by the Macintosh. To skirt this
problem, try holding down the Command-Option and I keys while
inserting the DVD disc. This key combination forces the Mac to read
the disc as an ISO-9000 formatted disc -- a format that may be more
easily read than the format originally used on the disc.
Missing in Action
When you install the Mac OS 8.6 upgrade, the Apple Installer
application removes certain folders from your hard drive. These
folders include the AppleScript folder, Monitors Extras folder,
QuickDraw 3D 1.5.4 folder, and Open Transport Information. Normally
this isn't a problem but if you've saved documents to any of these
folders, those documents will be removed as well. It's unlikely that
you'll save files to any of these folders except the AppleScript
folder.
Therefore, if you are planning to upgrade to Mac OS 8.6 and have
tucked a few files away into your AppleScript folder, be sure to move
those files elsewhere.
TypeIt4Me
Riccardo Ettore has recently released an updated version of his
invaluable utility, TypeIt4Me. If you don't have a copy, you should.
TypeIt4Me is a control panel that automatically types large blocks of
text when you type a corresponding abbreviation for each block -- akin
to Word 98's AutoText feature. Here's how it works:
Just select a block of text and choose Add an entry from the
TypeIt4Me menu that appears in the Mac's menubar. TypeIt4Me will ask
you to enter an abbreviation. Now whenever you type that abbreviation,
TypeIt4Me replaces the abbreviation with the block of text. This is
incredibly handy for storing long signatures, boilerplate text for
online conferences and chats, and form-letter text.
Empty AVI Files
If you've recently downloaded and attempted to play an AVI movie
file, you've undoubtedly seen this error: "You may experience problems
playing a video track in 'blah.avi' because the required compressor
could not be found." In your continuing effort to play the movie you
hear the audio track but view nothing more than a white screen. Don't
panic, this is perfectly normal. This behavior is due to the fact that
you're missing the Indeo Video codec.
You see, although QuickTime supports AVI files it only does so when
the proper flavor of this codec is installed in your Mac's Extensions
folder. Regrettably, Apple doesn't include the codec with QuickTime (I
suspect this is a licensing issue), so in order for you to view AVI
movies, you must download the codec separately. To download the Indeo
Video 5 codec -- the version compatible with QuickTime 3 and 4 --
point your browser to:
MacSoft has recently released Falcon 4.0, MicroProse's advanced
F-16 flight simulator. This challenging game is gorgeous under 3-D
hardware acceleration but those users with ATI's Rage Pro graphics
accelerator chip will be unable to view these hardware rendered
graphics unless they download and install Apple's OpenGL software kit
and a beta RAVE patch from MacSoft.
Because this batch is a beta release, you may have some problems
with it -- problems that MacSoft claims no responsibility for. If you
do have problems, MacSoft suggests that you use Falcon's software
rendering mode until ATI releases its ATI Universal Update 4.0
software -- software that should address this issue.
Those lucky few with PowerBook DVD players may receive this error:
"Apple DVD Player cannot open because the required hardware was not
found." even though the required hardware is indeed present and
accounted for. Here's one reason why:
If you've installed Speech Recognition and switched it into
listening mode, it will change the Sound Monitoring Source option to
Built-In Mic in the Monitors & Sound control panel. The DVD software
doesn't dig this. If you want your DVD player to work again you must
disable Speech Recognition or change the Sound Monitoring Source to
Zoomed Video.
Resetting the iMac
Beginner
Veteran Mac users know that they can quickly restart a Mac by
pressing Control-Command-and the Power key. These same users may be
flummoxed when they try this same key combination on an iMac and
discover that nothing happens -- no restart, no nothing. If you find
yourself in this situation, avoid the flummoxing by instead pressing
Shift-Command-Power key. In all likelihood your iMac will immediately
restart when you press these three keys.
Snapz Pro 2.0
Intermediate
One of the world's finest screen capture utilities has recently
been upgraded -- Ambrosia's Snapz Pro 2.0. Like its earlier iteration,
Snapz Pro allows you to capture entire screens, windows, or
user-defined selections with the press of a single key -- and lets you
to do so in far more applications than Apple's built in
Command-Shift-3 screen capture command.
New to Snapz Pro is the ability to capture motion -- yes, you can
now capture video and audio events (including input from a microphone
attached to your Mac) over time as QuickTime movies. For example, you
can create animated tutorials -- just command Snapz Pro 2 to start
recording, run through a series of tasks (while narrating, if you
like), and when finished, again issue the capture command. Snapz Pro
then pulls the frames of captured video together and saves them in a
QuickTime movie. Very slick and highly recommended. Cost is $40 for
new users and $20 for those upgrading from version 1.x. You can find
your copy at http://www.macdownload.com.
Note on Note Pad
Intermediate
The Note Pad application that appears under the Apple menu is
handy, but limited -- each of the eight pages can only store 248
characters. Under Mac OS 8 and later, if you wish to create more Note
Pad files, here's how:
Open the System Folder and locate a file named, appropriately
enough, Note Pad File. Click on this file's icon and change its name
to something like "Note Pad File Old." Now select Note Pad from the
Apple menu. You'll be presented with a new, blank note pad and a new
Note Pad File will appear in the System Folder. When you want to refer
back to your old Note Pad, just rename the Note Pad file you recently
created and change the old Note Pad file back to "Note Pad File."
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
For previous tips and all other Macintosh help, please go to:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdhelp/filters/macintosh/
Copyright (c) 1999, Mac Publishing, L.L.C.
Daily Tips Live!
Beginner
As much as I take pride in these Macworld Daily Tips I must admit
that they lack a certain "show and tell" element. Sure, you can read
along and perform the various steps required to engage a tip, but
wouldn't it be swell if you could see some of these things done live?
Well, if you get ZDTV -- Ziff-Davis' compu-centric cable channel --
you now can.
Macworld magazine and ZDTV have joined forces to bring you a live,
Mac tip each and every business day as performed by a Macworld staff
member (or on occasion, a contributing editor, a.k.a. me). You'll find
these tips on ZDTV's Call For Help program (hosted by the
knowledgeable and always entertaining Leo Laporte) that airs from 7 -
8 PM Eastern Standard Time. The Mac tip segment generally falls just
after the half hour.
QuickTime Runs Out
Intermediate
If you are using the QuickTime 4.0 beta and have been dinking
around with your system clock, you may have noticed that if you set
the clock forward to the year 2000 or beyond, your Mac's system beeps
are muted. No, this is not a Y2K issue but rather a QuickTime beta
issue.
The QuickTime 4.0 beta shipped with a beta version of Sound Manager
-- a version that expires once the millennial odometer clicks over. To
avoid this problem next year, simply download the release version of
QuickTime 4.0, now available from Apple.
QuickTime Player
Intermediate
A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that you can configure QuickTime
4.0's preferences so that when you open a new movie, a new player is
opened as well. But if you decide not to change your preferences,
there's another way to go about it. Simply hold down the Option key
while clicking and holding on the File menu. When you do you'll see
that you're now offered the option to open a movie in a new player as
well as open a URL in a new player.
Switch Application Switcher
Intermediate
Mac OS 8.5's Application Switcher palette is extremely configurable
-- you can determine the size of the icons, whether an application's
name will appear in the palette, and whether the palette will display
icons horizontally or vertically, for example. Unfortunately, just
about no one knows the tricks for changing the configuration of this
handy palette. Thankfully, you know longer need to.
Instead, just download a copy of Mitch Crane's free SwitcherSetup
CM, a contextual menu plug-in that allows you to configure the
Application Switcher palette to your heart's content. Just drop
SwitcherSetup CM onto your closed System Folder and restart to install
the plug-in. To use it, Control-click on the desktop while in the
Finder.
You can find your copy at http://www.macdownload.com.
Useful Usenet
Intermediate
Not all ISPs are created equally -- some provide more complete
listings of Usenet groups than others, for example. If you're not
happy with the selection of Usenet groups that your ISP carries,
there's no reason to stick only with your ISP's news server. There are
several public news servers that are more than happy to accommodate
you. Simply use a news reader that supports access to multiple servers
-- Microsoft's Outlook Express is such a reader -- enter the address
of the new server, download that server's list of newsgroups, and
you're on your way.
To find lists of public news servers, try this address:
For previous tips and all other Macintosh help, please go to:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdhelp/filters/macintosh/
Copyright (c) 1999, Mac Publishing, L.L.C.
Play With Conflict Catcher 8
Beginner
To combine a little fun with your conflict catching, select About
Conflict Catcher from the Conflict Catcher 8 menu (or launch Conflict
Catcher 8 and then select About Conflict Catcher from the Apple menu)
and type "play" (without the quotes, please).
I don't want to be too obvious about what happens when you do this
but a tad more information will make this tip more useful. So, here's
a hint: You'll find this tip far more rewarding if you use the Left
and Right Arrow keys and the Option and Control keys.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
For previous tips and all other Macintosh help, please go to:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdhelp/filters/macintosh/
Copyright (c) 1999, Mac Publishing, L.L.C.
Adjust QuickTime Audio
Beginner
The volume adjustment wheel found in the new QuickTime Player isn't
terribly easy to use -- some people won't know which way to move the
wheel and others may find the wheel too small to reliably click each
time they attempt to do so. To these people (and to you as well) I
suggest this: Don't bother.
Instead, just use the Arrow keys on your Mac's keyboard. The Up
Arrow key increases the volume and the Down Arrow decreases the
volume.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
For previous tips and all other Macintosh help, please go to:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdhelp/filters/macintosh/
Copyright (c) 1999, Mac Publishing, L.L.C.
Seeing Double
Beginner
If you've had your Mac for more than a few months there's every
likelihood that its hard disk contains duplicate files -- redundant
copies of SimpleText, for example. Sure, you could use Sherlock or the
Find feature to locate these duplicates and manually drag them to the
Trash, but why bother when Giuseppe Giunto offers a more automated
solution with his $25 shareware utility, Doublet Scan?
Doublet Scan is very simple to use. Just launch the application,
determine by what factors duplicates will be detected (by file name,
size, date, etc.), choose a volume or folder to search for duplicates,
and click Scan. In reasonably short order, Doublet Scan produces a
list of duplicates. To trash those superfluous files, just select
those you don't want and click the Trash button.
Until you pay for the full version of the program you'll only be
allowed to trash 10 files at a time. You can find your copy at
http://www.macdownload.com.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
For previous tips and all other Macintosh help, please go to:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdhelp/filters/macintosh/
Copyright (c) 1999, Mac Publishing, L.L.C.
Say What?
Power User
Recent versions of Apple's security program, At Ease, are capable
of speaking button names -- provided you're not using Mac OS 8.5 or
later. Regrettably, At Ease goes deaf when you use later versions of
the Mac OS because the program hasn't been updated to use the newer
text-to-speech software included with OS 8.5. Apple suggests this
workaround, however:
Remove the current version of the Text-to-Speech software and
replace it with version 1.4.1. Here are Apple's instructions for doing
so:
Download the English Text-to-Speech software version 1.4.1 from
Apple's Software Updates website at
http://asu.info.apple.com/
Turn Off At Ease using the At Ease Setup application.
Restart the computer.
Insert the Mac OS 8.5 disc and launch the Mac OS Install
application.
Select the startup volume on which the Mac OS 8.5 is already
installed.
Click the Add/Remove button since "The selected destination disk
already has Mac OS 8.5 installed..." Check the Text-to-Speech check
box and select the customized removal option from the Recommended
popup menu. Select "All English Text-to-Speech Software" to be removed
and click OK. Click the Continue button to begin removing the
Text-to-Speech software.
Restart the computer.
Install the English Text-to-Speech software version 1.4.1.
Restart the computer.
Turn On At Ease using the At Ease Setup application.
Restart the computer.
After logging into At Ease 3.0.x's panels, the buttons should be
spoken when the mouse passes over them as long as the Speak buttons
names option is checked for the At Ease user.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
For previous tips and all other Macintosh help, please go to:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdhelp/filters/macintosh/
Copyright (c) 1999, Mac Publishing, L.L.C.
Quick Search
Intermediate
If you use Microsoft's Internet Explorer to browse the Web and find
yourself routinely biffing over to Yahoo to search for one thing or
another, there's a simpler way to search Yahoo's database than typing
"Yahoo" into the Address field, waiting for Yahoo to appear, typing in
your query, and then clicking the Search button. Instead, just type a
question mark into IE's Address field, type a space, and then type
your search terms. Internet Explorer will now take you to a page that
contains links based on your query.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
For previous tips and all other Macintosh help, please go to:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdhelp/filters/macintosh/
Copyright (c) 1999, Mac Publishing, L.L.C.
Calling Up Your Calling Card
Power User
PowerBook mavens are surely familiar with this technique, but if
Apple makes good on the rumor of a consumer portable, I suspect many
new PowerBook users who haven't a clue how to use their telephone
calling card in conjunction with their new, take-them-anywhere Macs
will be unleashed on the world. Here's how:
Open the Remote Access control panel and focus your attention on
the Number field. If you're staying somewhere such as a hotel that
requires you dial a 9 or 8 to get an outside line, enter that number
first.
Now enter a comma. A comma tells the modem to pause for a bit
before proceeding through the dialing string. This comma will allow
the hotel's phone system some time to shift to outside-line mode.
Now enter any other numbers necessary to make a calling card call
-- usually a 0 and then a 1 plus the area code and number.
You'll need to wait for the phone company to issue the tone and
cheery greeting so add a series of commas -- five ought to do it, but
if after entering all these numbers you notice that the modem starts
sending your calling card number before the calling card tone plays,
add a couple more commas.
Now enter the calling card string.
Your dialing string should look something like this (you don't need
the hyphens, I added them to make the string easier to read):
9,01-555-555-1234,,,,,555-444-4321-1234
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
For previous tips and all other Macintosh help, please go to:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdhelp/filters/macintosh/
Copyright (c) 1999, Mac Publishing, L.L.C.
Chain Reaction
Intermediate
If, like me, you have several Macs in your office and each one
bears a modem and all of those modems use a single phone line, you may
be wondering how to connect those modems to the outside world.
The easy answer, of course, is to buy a phone line splitter -- a
small plastic doodad that sports a few extra phone jacks that you plug
into the telephone outlet in the wall. But suppose you've already
exhausted all the jacks on the splitter? Consider this:
External modems invariably carry two phone ports -- one that
connects to the phone line and one intended for your phone. Rather
than using that telephone port for its proposed purpose -- a telephone
-- connect another modem to it. That's right, use that telephone port
as another splitter.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
Macworld - the ultimate magazine for Macintosh Professionals.
Subscribe now:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdsubs/macworld/home.html
For previous tips and all other Macintosh help, please go to:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdhelp/filters/macintosh/
There are several programs you can use to change a file's type and
creator codes -- the codes that help the Mac identify the kind of file
its dealing with and the application that spawned the file -- as well
as such aspects as the file's visibility and whether it's locked. But
if you're dealing with several files, changing these aspects for file
after file can be tedious. Guillaume Grenier has removed a measure of
that tedium with his BatchTyper 2.0, a free utility that allows you to
impose new attributes on several files at once -- an entire folder-ful
of files if you like.
Guillaume asks for no money in exchange for his work (though he
certainly wouldn't turn down a buck or two if you forced it on him),
he only requests suggestions for improving BatchTyper. To give
BatchTyper a spin, download your copy at http://www.macdownload.com.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
Macworld - the ultimate magazine for Macintosh Professionals.
Subscribe now:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdsubs/macworld/home.html
For previous tips and all other Macintosh help, please go to:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdhelp/filters/macintosh/
Owners of Casady & Greene's Conflict Catcher 8 surely are aware
that they can use this fine utility to scan items on their Mac's hard
drives for damage. What they may not realize is that you can use this
same capability to scan items on networked Macs as well. This can be
quite handy if a remote, Conflict Catcher-less user appears to be
having problems that could be related to a corrupt file.
To scan the remote Mac, mount its startup volume on your Mac,
launch Conflict Catcher, and select "Scan Folder for Damage" from the
Special menu. In the Open dialog box navigate to the folder you want
to scan on the remote volume, select it, and click on the Select "XXX"
button at the bottom of the dialog box.
Note: Conflict Catcher will probably report that certain extensions
on the remote computer are damaged when they aren't. As far as I can
determine, such extensions are busy doing something else and this busy
state appears to confuse Conflict Catcher. When I tried this on a
remote Mac running Mac OS 8.6, Conflict Catcher reported that
Application Switcher, Control Strip Extension, FaxMonitor, File
Sharing Extension, Folder Actions, and Time Synchronizer were damaged.
Installing and running Conflict Catcher 8 on the remote computer
confirmed that this was not the case.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
Macworld - the ultimate magazine for Macintosh Professionals.
Subscribe now:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdsubs/macworld/home.html
For previous tips and all other Macintosh help, please go to:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdhelp/filters/macintosh/
Sierra has just released its "build Rome in a day" world-building
game, Caesar III. Let us honor the Great Caesar by revealing two ways
to cheat in the game.
Place a well and Command-Click on it to bring up the Information
dialog box. When the box appears, press Command-K and then:
Command-V to achieve victory
or
Command-C to get a thousand more denarii. This only works if you
have less than 5000 Dn.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
Macworld - the ultimate magazine for Macintosh Professionals.
Subscribe now:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdsubs/macworld/home.html
For previous tips and all other Macintosh help, please go to:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdhelp/filters/macintosh/
If you've recently upgraded to Mac OS 8.6, or have purchased a new
Mac with OS 8.6 pre-installed, you may have noticed that the venerable
Jigsaw Puzzle is missing from the Apple menu. Apple has given the boot
to this little toy -- it's not part of OS 8.6. However, even if you
have an older copy on-board, you could lose it if you're not careful.
You see, the Mac OS 8.6 installer will remove the Jigsaw Puzzle
from your Apple Menu Items folder and send it into the Great Beyond.
If you wish to save it, move it to a safe place (your Mac's desktop,
for example) before running the Mac OS 8.6 installer.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
Macworld - the ultimate magazine for Macintosh Professionals.
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This week, as the Mac faithful descend upon the city of New York
for Macworld Expo, one question is on everyone's lips:..Where are the
parties?
Ilene Hoffman provides the answer with her Hess Macworld Events and
Party list. This list provides a nearly complete rundown on all the
parties worth attending during Expo week. You'll find the list at:
http://www.xensei.com/users/ileneh/partylist.html
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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Mac users who've been around the block a time or two know that
Apple bundles a launcher utility titled, appropriately enough,
Launcher. These same users may also know that Launcher, though
convenient, is hardly the most comprehensive launching utility on the
planet. A far better alternative -- and one that takes the place of
Apple's Application Switcher Palette as well -- is James Thomson's $30
shareware application, DragThing 2.7.
With DragThing you can create docks for storing applications,
files, folders, URLs, and servers. In addition, you can create a dock
that displays the currently running applications -- just like the
Application Switcher Palette. The interface is just gorgeous and
highly configurable. This one is definitely worth a long look. You can
take that long look by visiting http://www.macdownload.com.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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If you own an iMac, you may have noticed that your little
all-in-one computing pal sometimes seems to stall for around 10
seconds -- the cursor moves but nothing else seems to happen.
Apple has traced this untoward behavior to the Apple CD/DVD Driver
extension and recommends that you insert a CD-ROM disc into the iMac
to avoid its reoccurrence. Others have found that the pause disappears
if you disable the Apple CD/DVD Driver extension. Of course, doing so
makes it impossible for you to play CD-ROM discs on your iMac -- not a
swell compromise.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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After months of waiting, Quake II has finally been released.
Because real rough and tumble Quake players eschew the single-player
game in favor of head-to-head Deathmatch play, you probably won't mind
if I reveal the following cheats:
Press the Tilde (~) key to reveal the console and type:
God = invincible
Notarget = enemies won't target you
Noclip = walk through walls
Give all = get all the goodies
Give shotgun = get shotgun
Give super shotgun = get super shotgun
Give machinegun = get machine gun
Give chaingun = get chaingun
Give grenade launcher = get grenade launcher
Give rocket launcher = get rocket launcher
Give hyperblaster = get hyperblaster
Give railgun = get railgun
Give bfg10k = get bfg10k
Give shells = get 10 shotgun shells
Give bullets = get 50 bullets
Give cells = get 50 cells
Give grenades = get 5 grenades
Give rockets = get 5 rockets
Give slugs = get 10 slugs
Give invulnerability = temporary invulnerability
Give health = full health
Give silencer = get silencer
Give armor = full armor
Give quad damage = get quad damage
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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Care to have quick access to your Eudora attachments? Easy enough
-- just hold down the Control and Command keys while clicking an
attachment. When you do so, the folder that contains the attachment
opens with the attachment highlighted.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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As you undoubtedly know, Microsoft Word allows you to place
pictures within text documents. What you may not know is that you can
move those pictures in two ways.
You can simply click and drag on the picture to move it anywhere on
the page, or you can Shift-click on the picture to move it along a
grid. Initially this grid is set to 0.1 inch but you can change the
spacing of the grid by displaying the Drawing toolbar, clicking Draw,
and selecting Grid from the pop-up menu. Now just enter new values in
the Horizontal and Vertical spacing fields.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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Mac OS 8.6 is mighty fine but it would be finer still if it offered
a few more key commands in the Finder. But there's no need to wait for
Apple to add them when you can do so yourself with Frank Ryan's $2
shareware patch, FinderPatch 1.2.
After installing FinderPatch you'll be able to use the following
key commands:
Command-T = Empty Trash
Command-B = Restart (B is for Boot)
Command-0 (zero) = Shutdown
Command-\ = About This Computer
Command-S = Sleep
You can find your copy or FinderPatch 1.2 at
http://www.macdownload.com.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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Copyright (c) 1999, Mac Publishing, L.L.C.
Resetting Application Tear-Off
Intermediate
Those using Mac OS 8.5 and later may have noticed that when certain
applications (games usually) automatically cause your Mac to switch
screen resolutions, the Application tear-off menu is inexplicably
placed in the upper left corner of the screen with the title bar
hidden beneath the Finder's menubar -- basically making it impossible
to move the Application tear-off menu.
You can stop struggling. To have access to the tear-off menu,
simply tear off a new menu by once again clicking and dragging on the
Application menu in the upper right corner of the menubar. The menu
will now move to the position of the cursor.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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Activision's Quake II is a fine game but it does lack on-board
support for 3Dfx Voodoo I and II hardware acceleration graphics cards.
If you happen to own one of these 3Dfx cards, fret not, you can add
Voodoo support to Quake II by downloading MesaQuake2 from
http://valerie.inf.elte.hu/~boga/Mesa/MesaDownloads.html.
While you're in the downloading mood, also download the
Mesa-compatible ref_gl.lib. You can find this file at:
http://www.pcworld.com/r/tw/1%2C2061%2Ctw-mwmt-07-30%2C00.html
To use MesaQuake2, just double-click the installer and all the
pieces will go where they're supposed to. To use the ref_gl.lib, move
the file with this same name that currently resides in the Quake 2
folder into another folder (in case you want the original back at some
point) and move the new ref_gl.lib file into the Quake 2 folder.
You'll know you've been successful when you see the spinning 3Dfx logo
just prior to the game loading.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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There have certainly been times when you've wanted to pull bits of
text from a Web page, but the page won't allow you to highlight the
text therein. Sure, you could download the entire page, but it's not
necessary.
Instead, just view the source of the page -- yup, all that HTML
junk -- and copy and paste the text you want from the source code.
Because the source page is likely to be cluttered with code, the
easiest way to locate your text is to use your browser's find command.
To view the source page in Internet Explorer, select Source from
the View menu.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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Many moons ago (June 24, 1999) I proffered a tip that began:
"The Note Pad application that appears under the Apple menu is
handy, but limited -- each of the eight pages can only store 248
characters."
Careful readers quickly noticed that this situation applies only to
the Note Pad application of old. The Note Pad we now know holds oodles
of characters and there's no reason to bother creating countless Note
Pad files in order to store more notes.
In a vain attempt to reestablish my credibility, allow me to offer
these additional Note Pad-related tips:
Click once on the page number that appears at the bottom of the
Note Pad to produce a dialog box that allows you to navigate to any
page within the Note Pad.
To move to the next page, press Command-Right Arrow.
To move to the previous page, press Command-Left Arrow.
To move to the end of a note, press Command-Down Arrow.
To move to the beginning of a note, press Command-Up Arrow.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
Macworld - the ultimate magazine for Macintosh Professionals.
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Because it's an email-centric world, we find ourselves popping on
and off the web to get our mail several times a day. Wouldn't it be
nice if all this popping could be done automatically and without
requiring that you manually disconnect from the web? While you can do
so with the automatic mail features of some email clients, you might
find it easier to use Pete Mellows' $10 shareware application, Mail
Checker.
With Mail Checker you can configure Eudora (Lite or Pro),
Microsoft's Outlook Express, Claris Emailer, Netscape Communicator, or
Bare Bones' Mailsmith to automatically grab your email at different
intervals throughout the day. Additionally, you can create different
configurations for different days -- for example, on Monday through
Friday you can ask Mail Checker to look for mail every 30 minutes and
on the weekend, when mail is likely to come less often, Mail Checker
can grab your mail every two hours.
Mail Checker offers a variety of configurations. You can find your
copy at http://www.macdownload.com/.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
Macworld - the ultimate magazine for Macintosh Professionals.
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Those who have installed the latest version of Aladdin's StuffIt
have surely faced this problem: When you send a StuffIt 5.x file,
users with earlier versions of StuffIt can't open the file -- earlier
versions of StuffIt Expander can't open StuffIt 5.0 files. Because the
current version of DropStuff 5.x doesn't allow you to save files in
StuffIt 4.x format, you either have to insist that the recipient
download the latest version of StuffIt Expander (something some users
are reluctant to do) or come up with a way to save your StuffIt file
in the earlier format. This is that way:
Download a copy of StuffIt Lite. Unlike DropStuff 4.x, StuffIt Lite
doesn't depend on the StuffIt Engine -- all the compression takes
place within the StuffIt Lite application -- so you needn't worry that
your file will be saved in a format incompatible with the version of
StuffIt your recipients might have.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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MacSoft has recently released Microsoft's empire-building game, Age
of Empires. If you've ever felt cheated by Microsoft, here's your
chance to return the favor.
Press the Return key and type:
pepperoni pizza = 1000 food
woodstock = 1000 wood
quarry = 1000 stone
coinage = 1000 coin
steroids = instant building
reveal map = reveals the entire map
no fog = turns off the fog of war
photon man = get the laser guy
e=mc2 trooper = get a futuristic trooper
home run = win
resign = lose
hari kari = commit suicide
diediedie = everyone else dies
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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Those with DVD-equipped Macs may have noticed that movies
occasionally stutter or skip. There are many possible causes for this
behavior. Among them:
Something's going on in the background: Applications automatically
do one thing or another -- auto-save or check email, for example --
may be take your Mac's attention away from the movie. Likewise,
utilities that check disk performance or optimize files in the
background could be causing interference. Be sure to check that the
Network Time Server is switched off as well.
Movies that ship on dual-layered DVDs can pause for a moment when
switching layers.
If you're using virtual memory, movies may pause as well.
If the Configure pull-down menu in the TCP/IP control panel is set
to DHCP server but you're not connected to the internet or the DHCP
server isn't available, the movie may pause every five minutes or so.
To avoid this delay, make TCP/IP temporarily inactive.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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Mac OS 8.6 changes the default settings for virtual memory. Unlike
in older versions of the Mac OS, which set virtual memory to 1MB over
the amount of real RAM in your Mac, Mac OS 8.6 defaults to 64MB or 1MB
over the amount of physical RAM, whichever is greater.
Therefore, if you have a Mac with less than 64MB of RAM and don't
care to have the OS assign 64MB of hard disk space to virtual memory,
make sure to reduce the virtual memory setting in the Memory control
panel.
Note: If you upgrade from Mac OS 8.5 or 8.5.1, the virtual memory
settings you used previously will be maintained in Mac OS 8.6, even if
you have less than 64MB of real RAM.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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Those of you fed up with the high cost and inconvenience of air
travel may be considering taking your late-summer vacation on the
road. If you are, be sure to check out James Kotka's free TripCalc, a
handy utility that tells just how much your road trip will cost based
on the information you provide. That information includes the miles
you intend to travel, your average driving speed, the fuel efficiency
of your auto, average cost of fuel, the per-day amount you're willing
to spend on food and lodging, and the number of hours you intend to
drive each day. TripCalc is very easy to use and you certainly can't
argue with the price.
You can find your copy at http://www.macdownload.com.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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Now that games are back on the Mac, we're starting to see pinball
simulations return to our favorite platform. Recent releases such as
Sierra's 3D Ultra NASCAR Pinball and Empire Interactive's Pro Pinball:
Big Race USA are the Big Pinball Fun but I'll let you in on a little
secret: Although these games attempt to simulate the pinball
experience by mapping keys to opposite sides of the Mac's keyboard --
imitating the side buttons on a real pinball machine -- there's a
better way to play.
The first thing I do when I fire up a new pinball sim is remap the
flipper keys to the left and right arrow keys and the plunger to the
down arrow key. This leaves your left hand free for the various nudge
keys which, if you must know, I map to Z and X for left and right
nudge and Space Bar for forward nudge (you may find S more intuitive
for forward nudge).
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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If you're using AppleWorks 5 on a blue and white Power Mac G3 you
may have noticed that when you create a circle in a word processing
document with the Circle tool, the screen redraws oddly.
This is due to a buy in the ATI software that ships with the blue
and whites. To fix the problem, download the ATI RAGE 128 Update 1.0,
located at http://www.apple.com/swupdates.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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The Application Switcher that appears in recent versions of the Mac
OS has a hidden treat. Here's how to reveal it:
Create a text clipping of the words "secret about box" (without the
quotes, if you please). Drag and drop this clipping onto the
Application Switcher palette to display the treat.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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Here are a few handy shortcut keys you can use in Internet
Explorer's Favorites and History windows:
To expand the contents of a folder -- Right Arrow key.
To collapse the contents of a folder -- Left Arrow key.
To expand all the subfolders within a folder -- Option-Right Arrow
key.
To collapse all the subfolders within a folder -- Option key-Left
Arrow key.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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There are times when it's helpful to know exactly what an installer
application has added as well as removed from the System Folder.
Although you can pinpoint certain changes by color coding your old
files and then looking for uncolored files after the installation is
complete, there's now an easier way. That easier way is Zach
Schneirov's free Installer Observer. This utility asks only that you
scan your System Folder (or select folders within your System Folder)
with Installer Observer before installing new software. After an
installation, simply run Installer Observer again and click the Load
and Examine Changes Made button. Installer Observer will then detail
the changes made to your Mac's software.
You can find your copy at http://www.macdownload.com.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
Macworld - the ultimate magazine for Macintosh Professionals.
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It's possible that you have a digital camera that you've attempted
to attach to your Mac via serial connection. It's also possible that
once you've established this connection your camera's software refuses
to recognize your Mac's existence. It's even possible that you've
rectified the situation by downloading and installing Apple's
SerialDMA 2.1 extension.
However, once you've installed SerialDMA, even though your camera
now makes the proper connection to your Mac, this nagging dialog box
continues to appear on startup: "There is a file in your Extensions
folder called "SerialDMA." With the current version of the system
software, this file is obsolete. It may be safely dragged to the trash
and removed."
Here's the tip: It's a dirty lie. If your camera didn't recognize
your Mac before and it now does thanks to the installation of
SerialDMA, removing this fine extension will once again make the
connection impossible regardless of what this misinformed dialog box
says. In future, ignore this dialog box and go about your business.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
Macworld - the ultimate magazine for Macintosh Professionals.
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As shocking as it may be to old time Mac users who once considered
a 100MB hard drive to be a nearly limitless storage resource, hard
drives are now being released that offer dozens of gigabytes of
storage. This can present problems for software that, like these
aforementioned geezers, never dreamed Macs would host drives with such
gargantuan capacity.
For example, the Mac OS 8.5 and AppleShare IP 6.1 installers won't
work with volumes larger than 21 gigabytes (the Mac OS 8.6 installer
does work with drives larger than this, however). Therefore, if you
want to install either of these packages on such a vast volume, you
must first partition it in such a way that one of its chunks is
smaller than 21GB.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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If you've attempted to schedule a little nap for your PowerBook you
may have noticed that occasionally it refuses to go night-night at the
time you've designated in the Scheduled Wakeup & Sleep panel within
the Energy Saver control panel. Here's why:
The software that controls this function won't allow your PowerBook
to snooze if it thinks you're busy doing something. What this really
means is that if you're working on your PowerBook within a few minutes
of its scheduled nap time, the PowerBook will wait for 20 minutes of
inactivity before it catches its forty winks. Therefore, if you really
want your PowerBook to blink out at a particular time each day, make
sure that you stop using it (and that no background applications are
using it) 20 minutes before it's scheduled to snooze.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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Apple ended the extended warranty program on its notoriously funky
AppleVision 1710 and 1710AV monitors at the end of 1998 so if you own
one of these displays and it goes south, you're on your own. Because
you are on your own this tip may help: Should you wake one day to find
that your monitor's green LED lights up but the screen remains black,
you may be able to fix the problem by resetting the monitor. Here's
how:
With the power off, jack the display into a Power Mac running
AppleVision software version 1.5.5 or later. Make the proper
connections (power, video, and ADB) and fire up the Mac while holding
down the Command-Option-A-V keys until you hear the system beep sound.
This beep means that the monitor has been reset. With any luck, this
reset procedure will cure your monitor's ills.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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If you need to reformat text from email, PC applications, and
downloaded web pages or you'd care to prepare text for Internet
release, HTML publishing, or print, Daniel Taylor's $29 shareware
program, TextSpresso may be in your future. In addition to the
aforementioned capabilities, TextSpresso serves as a capable text
editor, allows you to create text filters, and offers batch formatting
of text files.
You can find your 30-day demo of TextSpresso at
http://www.macdownload.com.
If you've attempted to drag items that have custom icons to the
Launcher and discovered that those icons are replaced by generic
folder icons, Apple has an answer for you. To maintain those custom
icons, try this:
1. Drag a folder(s) with a custom icon onto the Launcher.
2. Option-click on the category button to open the related Launcher
Items subfolder. If you have no Launcher category buttons, open the
Launcher Items folder within the System Folder.
3. Select all alias items in the folder that do not appear correctly
in the Launcher.
4. Choose Get Info from the File menu for the selected items.
5. Close those Info Windows.
6. Go back to the Launcher window, and if the icons aren't correct
yet, click another category button and back to get the Launcher to
update. If you have no Launcher category buttons, close the Launcher
and open it again. The buttons should now show the correct icons.
Now that Electronic Arts has released the Mac version of SimCity
3000, would-be mayors are probably wondering how to best pursue
success in this fine city simulator. Why not do as the Big Boys and
Girls do in their towns and burgs and make your city grow through
deception and cheating? Here's how:
Press Command-Option-Shift-C and type the following codes into the
resulting dialog box:
I am weak = You can place just about anything on your city map for
free.
Call cousin Vinnie = Check for a new petitioner who offers you
money with no questions asked.
Garbage in, garbage out = All garbage facilities become available.
Power to the masses = All power facilities become available.
Water in the desert = All water facilities become available.
UFO swarm = Type this code and set disaster to UFO for a
particularly destructive treat.
Nerdz rool = High tech industry appears in industrial zones.
The birds = A flock of seagulls (no, not the band) appears.
You've assembled a brilliant, transition-rich, 140-slide PowerPoint
presentation, you're looking at your presentation in Slide Sorter
view, and you suddenly begin to wonder exactly which transitions
you've inserted where. After all, PowerPoint only provides you with a
generic icon to indicate that there is a transition between slides --
that icon doesn't tell you what type of transition takes place.
If you need a quick reminder, remember this: You can audition the
transition effect in Slide Sorter view by simply clicking once on the
slide that contains the effect you want to see and then clicking the
transition icon. PowerPoint will perform the transition on the
thumbnail of the slide you've clicked.
If you hold down the Option key while clicking on the small
triangles that appear next to folders in List view, not only will the
triangle point down, revealing everything inside that folder, but all
folders within that folder will open to reveal their contents.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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In these days when downloading files that consume tens-, or even
hundreds of megabytes is more and more common, there's little more
aggravating than losing your connection to an ftp server just minutes
before completing a 68MB download. In the bad old days of ftp transfer
you'd have the begin the download all over again. You no longer need
to if you have a copy of Peter Li and Vincent Tan's $35 shareware ftp
client, NetFinder. This baby allowed me to pick up where I left off
three separate times while I attempted to download a 164MB file last
weekend.
Resuming downloads isn't NetFinder's only strength. Unlike many
other ftp clients, NetFinder looks and operates like a Mac
application. You'll feel right at home after spending just a few
minutes with it. You can find your copy at http://www.macdownload.com.
Check it out.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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You can quickly change the case of words you highlight in Microsoft
Word. To do so, highlight one word or more a press Shift-F3. When you
first do this, every letter in the selected word is capitalized. If
you press Shift-F3 again and all letters in the selection move to
lower case. Press Shift-F3 yet again and the first letter of every
selected word is capitalized.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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If you're a hard-core gamer you may be considering the possibility
of employing both a Rage 128 and a Voodoo 3 video card -- after all,
RAVE games look great on the Rage 128 and for GLIDE games, you must
have a 3Dfx card and the Voodoo 3 is the current top of the heap. Of
course, because both the Rage 128-based video cards and the Voodoo 3
are 2D and 3D cards, you must have a separate monitor for each.
Let's suppose that you're so hard-core (and wealthy) that you can
afford this set-up. Will it work? Yes, but only if you arrange it this
way:
To begin with, you must configure your monitors so that the card
running a particular game is designated monitor 1 in the Monitors &
Sound control panel (monitor 1 is the monitor on which the Mac's
menubar appears). For example, if you're running a RAVE game, the
monitor attached to the Rage 128 card must be monitor 1. To give a
monitor this designation, open the Monitors & Sound control panel,
click the Arrange button, and drag the small menubar that appears in
the picture to the monitor you want to designate monitor 1.
Secondly, remember that GLIDE games won't run in a window, they
must run in full screen. Therefore, if you've been playing a game that
supports both RAVE and GLIDE -- Unreal, for example -- and you decide
you want to switch from RAVE to GLIDE, be sure that the game is
configured to start up full screen, not in a window. Unreal has a
setting in the Advanced Settings window that allows you to configure
the game this way.
Just so you know: Yes, you can cut down on this "you be Monitor 1
this time" fandango by dragging the images of the monitors on top of
one another in the Monitors & Sound control panel so that the monitors
mirror each other, but this really kills performance.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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Apple recently announced the three models that make up the Power
Macintosh G4. Other than their megahertz ratings (400, 450, and 500
MHz), what's the difference between the three?
The low-end model (model M7631) includes a PCI graphics slot (and
accompanying PCI graphics card), no wireless networking capabilities,
no digital video-in support, hardware DVD decoding, and the same modem
used in the Blue & White Power Mac G3s.
The 450- and 500 MHz models (models M7232 and M6921) use an AGP
graphics slot (and accompanying AGP graphics card, support wireless
networking (AirPort), support video-in with an appropriate video card,
offer software DVD decoding, and use a special modem designed for the
G4.
From the outside you can distinguish the low-end model from the
middle and high-end machine by the arrangement of the microphone and
speaker jacks on the back of the Macs. The low-end model has the two
jacks placed side-by-side while on the higher end machines the jacks
are vertically arranged. And because Apple can't seem to release a
professional Mac without putting part of its name in parentheses, you
may also find that Apple refers to the low-end model as Power Mac G4
(PCI Graphics) and the other two as Power Mac G4 (AGP Graphics).
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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Looking to organize your life (or at least the part of your life
found on your Macintosh)? Then it may be time to give Sig Software's
Drop Drawers a try. This $15 shareware application allows you to pack
pull-out drawers full of such things as aliases, URLs, email
addresses, pictures, movies, sounds, and even bits of styled text that
you can drag and drop into your documents. The tabs that represent the
drawers take up very little screen real estate and can be moved
anywhere on screen you like.
You can find your copy at http://www.macdownload.com.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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A lot of people are under the impression that if you hold down the
Mac's Shift key at startup, you can't use your CD-ROM drive. After
all, the Apple CD/DVD Driver extension didn't load, so a CD shouldn't
mount. This isn't exactly true. What is true is this:
If you have a bootable CD-ROM in the drive at startup that contains
the Apple CD/DVD Driver (or Apple CD-ROM driver) the Mac OS will use
that driver, load it into memory, and your CD-ROM will mount. This
works for Mac OS discs and the startup discs that came with your Mac.
So, what good is this tip? Just this: That driver stays in memory
as long as your Mac is running. You can therefore eject the CD-ROM
disc you used to mount the disc and slip another CD-ROM into the Mac
-- it too will mount. This is useful for those times when you need to
troubleshoot your Mac -- with Extensions off -- with a utility that's
contained on a CD-ROM disc.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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I recently told you how to cheat your way through SimCity 3000, but
those cheats aren't the game's only secrets. For more fun, press
Command-Option-Shift-C, type the following into the resulting dialog
box, and keep your eye on the news ticker:
fund
advisor
moremoney
maxis
1234
sc3k
mayor
hello
simcity
money
ticker
porntipsguzzardo
will wright
simearth (or any other sim game such as simant or simfarm).
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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Here's the situation: You've left the house in a hurry with your
PowerBook G3 (Bronze keyboard) and upon reaching your destination you
realize that you've left your power adapter at home and your battery
is nearly drained. Thankfully, the person sitting right next to you
has a PowerBook G3 (Wall Street), its accompanying adapter, and two
fully-charged batteries. This person offers to loan you his adapter
and just before you plug it in, you wonder, "Will this adapter work
with my PowerBook or will it reduce it to a puddle of molten plastic?"
Here's the answer:
It will work. In the last couple of years, Apple has standardized
its PowerBook adapters. If you have any of the PowerBook G3s (Bronze,
Wall Street, or original PowerBook G3) you can power it with Apple's
M4402 adapter. You can even use this adapter with the PowerBook 3400
and 1400. Better yet, according to Apple, that sleek, wind-up power
adapter that will ship with the iBook (model M7387LL/A) can be used
with the PowerBook G3s.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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Unless the rock you've been living under is particularly dense, you
know that MP3 is one of the hippest things happening in computerdom.
I've recently discovered a $17.95 shareware MP3 player that is just as
hip. It's called Audion, is made by Panic, and plays not only MP3s but
audio CDs as well as network audio. It features beautiful skins (Panic
terms them "faceplates", a three-mode design that allows you to
quickly switch between MP3, CD, and net play; drag and drop playlist
support; and an equalizer. You'll like it a lot and can find your copy
at http://www.macdownload.com.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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If you have an old Apple Multiple Scan 17 or Multiple Scan 20
Display and would like to quickly return them to their factory
settings, here's how:
To reset brightness and contrast, press the Reset button with the
tip of an unbent paperclip or ballpoint pen.
To reset all picture controls, hold down the Control button (the
one next to the recessed Reset button) and then employ the paperclip
or pen.
To reset all the picture controls except brightness and contrast,
select any of the set-up buttons (press the Command button on the
monitor) and then press the Reset button.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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An under-reported advantage of Apple's upcoming Power Mac G4 (AGP
Graphics, ie. the-more-expensive-models) is that these Macs come with
separate 12Mb USB controllers for each USB port. So what? So this:
You can now attach up to 127 USB devices to each USB port. On
previous USB-compatible Macs (and on the low-end G4) you can share 127
USB devices between the two ports.
Also, unlike previous Macs, you can boot from a USB device with the
new G4s.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
Macworld - the ultimate magazine for Macintosh Professionals.
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Intermediate
Modern day Macs no longer issue the dreaded "Chimes of Doom" when they
fail to pass their hardware startup tests. Instead, they beep. But,
they'll beep differently depending on the problem encountered and the
Mac model. Here are the codes:
On an iMac, Blue and White G3, Power Mac G4 (PCI Graphics), and
PowerBook G3 Series (Bronze keyboard):
1 beep = No RAM installed/detected.
2 beeps = Incompatible RAM type installed.
3 beeps = No RAM banks passed memory testing.
4 beeps = Bad checksum for the remainder of the boot ROM.
5 beeps = Bad checksum for the ROM boot block.
On a Power Mac G4 (AGP graphics):
1 beep = no RAM installed.
2 beeps = incompatible RAM types.
3 beeps = no good banks.
4 beeps = no good boot images in the boot ROM (and/or bad sys config
block).
5 beeps = processor is not usable.
Should you hear any of these beeps, and haven't just installed new
RAM or otherwise mucked about with the insides of your Mac, Apple
suggests that you call your Apple Authorized Service Provider for
troubleshooting assistance.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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Beginner
Mac OS 9 with its Sherlock II search engine is just around the corner,
but perhaps you're itchy to try a search utility a tad more capable
than the version of Sherlock you currently own. Look no further than
Copernic 99, a search utility that allows you to simultaneously
consult many of the top search engines on the net. Using Copernic 99
you can rifle through information on the web and in newsgroups as well
as snoop around for people's email addresses.
You can find your free copy at http://www.macdownload.com.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
Macworld - the ultimate magazine for Macintosh Professionals.
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Intermediate
If you have a PowerBook G3 (Bronze keyboard) and have noticed that the
battery icon on your PowerBook's menubar has a red X over it, your
battery has gone into a deep discharge state and may not be recognized
by your PowerBook. To wake this slumbering battery up, try this:
Shove the battery into either bay and leave it there for 30 seconds
or so. Then remove the battery -- pulling it out just about an inch.
Leave the battery in that precarious position for a few seconds and
then reinsert it into the bay. Leave it in the bay for another 30
seconds and if the X doesn't disappear, repeat the in and out
procedure.
Apple claims you may have to perform this operation 10 to 12 times
before the X disappears and you can fully charge the battery.
Alternatively you can recharge the battery with an external battery
charger.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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Beginner
MacSoft has recently released Total Annihilation Gold Edition which
includes the original Total Annihilation plus two expansion packs --
Battle Tactics and The Core Contingency (such a deal!). Because you're
a busy person you may not have time to play through all the levels in
order and may be seeking some outside assistance. Consider us your
outside assistance source. To pick among all of the levels, try this:
In the New Campaign screen (the screen with the New Campaign,
Skirmish buttons) type "Drdeath" (without the quotes, okay?). A bone
icon will appear. Click on this bone to select from among the levels.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
Macworld - the ultimate magazine for Macintosh Professionals.
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Intermediate
The Mac OS 8.6 updater is a bit choosy about what it will and won't
update. For example, it will only update components that reside in
their original location. If you move a component, this updater is not
about to search for it -- it assumes you moved it because you didn't
want it and the updater isn't about to presume that you'd like an
updated copy of an unwanted component.
If you do indeed want these components updated you can either move
them back to their original location and rerun the updater, or, if you
tossed them out, reinstall them from the Mac OS 8.5 installer and then
run the 8.6 update.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
Macworld - the ultimate magazine for Macintosh Professionals.
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Beginner
Increasingly -- thanks to digital cameras, MP3, and the ready
availability of cool QuickTime movies -- Mac users have more
multimedia files to keep track of. Sure, you could toss all your
graphics, movie, and audio files into a single "Multimedia Junk"
folder but why bother when a darned fine multimedia cataloging program
is available for a scant $25 shareware fee.
That darned fine program is Script Software's iView Multimedia 3.7
-- a media cataloging application that allows you to organize and
preview most of the media you're likely to find on your Mac. iView's
interface is clean and easy to work with. The main window contains
three tabs that represent different views of your media files-Info, a
list view; Thumbnail, where you can see previews of your files in four
selectable sizes; and Media, where you can view graphic files at
magnifications ranging from 25-to-2,000 percent, play movies, or
listen to audio files. The variety of files you can import into iView
is impressive-these include any media type supported by QuickTime 4.0
as well as EPS, Freehand, Illustrator, AppleWorks, Flash, PageMaker,
and, with the addition of Script Software's $48 iViewXT extension,
QuarkXPress documents.
You can find your copy at http://www.macdownload.com.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
Macworld - the ultimate magazine for Macintosh Professionals.
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Intermediate
If your PowerBook or iBook is acting oddly -- not waking from sleep,
refusing to power on, or failing to charge the battery -- it's
possible that its Power Manager has become corrupted. If you suspect
that such is the case, the method for attacking the problem is to
reset the Power Manager. Here's how you do it with the PowerBook G3
(Wall Street), PowerBook G3 (Bronze Keyboard), and the iBook (No
Parentheses Necessary):
Wall Street:
Shut down the PowerBook, press the Shift, Fn, Ctrl, and Power On keys
at the same time. Wait five seconds. Restart.
Bronze Keyboard:
Shut down the PowerBook, press the Reset button on the back of the
'book (between the video port and modem jack). Wait five seconds.
Restart.
iBook:
Shut down the iBook, press the Reset button (use a paperclip to push
this small button that's located above the Power button). Wait five
seconds. Restart.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
Macworld - the ultimate magazine for Macintosh Professionals.
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Beginner
Last week's Total Annihilation cheat -- starting from any level of the
game -- may not have been satisfying enough for the real cheaters
among us. For those who need a little more help, try this:
Press Enter and type the following:
+atm = increase metal and energy by 1000
+radar = complete radar coverage
+nowisee = reveals map and turns off line of sight
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
Macworld - the ultimate magazine for Macintosh Professionals.
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Intermediate
When you create a numbered or bulleted list in Word 98, it can be
difficult to create a blank line between numbered or bulleted items --
you press Return and whether you like it or not, Word prefaces the
next line with a numeral or bullet. To insert a blank line, do this:
Press Return and then type Command-0 (that's a zero). This command
adds 12 points of blank space above the line on which your cursor
resides. To remove that space, just type Command-0 again.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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Beginner
The new iMac -- referred to by Apple as the iMac (Slot Loading) --
features a Power button that works differently than Power buttons of
the past. When the iMac (Slot Loading) is switched on and you press
the Power button, the iMac (Slot Loading) goes to sleep unless a
server is mounted. If a server is mounted a dialog box pops up and
warns you that the iMac (Slot Loading) is about to go to sleep and you
should make plans to deal with that situation.
If the iMac (Slot Loading) is turned off or sleeping, pressing the
Power button fires up the iMac (Slot Loading) or wakes it from sleep.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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Beginner
If you are guitar-enabled (meaning you have such an instrument or have
some idea of how such a machine operates) and would like to explore
music through your Mac and a guitar interface, take a look at Scott
Lahteine's $15 shareware program, Fretpet, a musical application that
allows you to create chords, add picking patterns and bass lines, and
generally have a good old time.
You can find your copy at http://www.macdownload.com.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
Macworld - the ultimate magazine for Macintosh Professionals.
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Intermediate
The iMac (Slot Loading), iBook, and Power Mac G4s have a nifty new
feature that allows you to select, at startup, which drive the Mac
will boot from. To reveal this feature just press and hold the Option
key at startup. When the Mac boots you'll see a Circular Arrow icon,
icons that represent any bootable devices attached to your Mac, and an
Arrow icon. Pressing the Circular Arrow icon causes the Mac to rescan
all busses for any bootable device. The Arrow icon causes the Mac to
continue the boot process with the currently selected device.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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Beginner
Okay, so Electronic Arts and Maxis can't be bothered to provide a set
of building tools for Mac users interested in creating their own
structures for SimCity 3000. EA and Maxis have tipped their little
corporate hats to Mac folk in this regard however: They've created an
Apple Campus Landmark for SimCity 3K. Dropping Apple HQ on your
SimCity has no effect on the surrounding neighborhood but what the
heck, it looks pretty darned cool.
You can find your copy at
http://www.pcworld.com/r/tw/1%2C2061%2Ctw-107mac%2C00.html
Once you get there, locate the link that reads "Download the
installer here." Click this link, download the file, run the
installer, and the Apple Campus will yours.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
Macworld - the ultimate magazine for Macintosh Professionals.
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Intermediate
A number of users have reported that Apple's iBook refuses to wake up
after you put it to sleep. One cause of the errant behavior may be
that you've chosen the "Preserve memory contents on sleep" option in
the Energy Saver control panel.
Apple suggests that if you've chosen this option and your iBook
doesn't wake properly that you restart the iBook (by pressing the
Reset switch with a paperclip) and immediately press and hold the Esc
key as the iBook restarts. Let go of the key once you see the Happy
Mac icon.
Pressing Escape forces the iBook to skip the preserved memory file
and should allow the iBook to restart as Jobs intended.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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Beginner
The second you lay hands on the iBook you'll notice that the keyboard
is quite flat. To those accustomed to typing on an angled keyboard,
this flatness may be disconcerting. RoadTools offers a colorful
workaround for this issue. It's called the iCoolPad.
Like its sibling, the CoolPad, the iCoolPad is a two-piece,
swiveling pad that elevates the back of any laptop computer and grips
any surface it comes in contact with (take note, airline travelers and
students using desks with tiny tops). Unlike the CoolPad, the iCoolPad
comes in two colors -- the iBook's Blueberry and Tangerine -- and,
offers a greater degree of elevation to counteract the iBook's flatter
form factor.
The iCoolPad costs $24. You can take a look at the iCoolPad by
visiting http://www.roadtools.com.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
Macworld - the ultimate magazine for Macintosh Professionals.
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Intermediate
iMovie, the new consumer-level video editing application based on
Apple's Final Cut Pro looks mighty nifty but some may think that it's
niftiness is reserved only for those with movies that have been
captured via direct DV link. It's like this:
iMovie can only capture video via FireWire and a digital camcorder
-- iMovie's Import command doesn't recognize QuickTime movies not
saved in the DV format. Therefore you can't use this command to import
non-DV movie clips. However, you can use these clips if you convert
them to DV streams, but you'll need QuickTime Pro to do it. Here's
how:
Open the non-DV clip in QuickTime Player 4.0 and choose the Export
command. In the resulting dialog box select Movie to DV Stream in the
Export popup menu. The default settings are fine so don't bother
changing them. Name and save the movie. Place the converted movie into
your project's Media folder.
When you next launch iMovie you'll see a dialog box that contains
this awkwardly phrased thought, " There was 1 stray clip file in the
project folder. It will be loaded onto the shelf for you to decide
what to do with it."
Ignore the poor grammar and click OK to import the clip to the
Shelf.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
Macworld - the ultimate magazine for Macintosh Professionals.
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Intermediate
If you've hacked and slashed your way through the single-player
missions of Quake II at every level of difficulty you may long for
more single-player carnage. That carnage can be yours if you're
willing to taint your Mac by inserting a CD-ROM originally intended to
work only with PCs.
Thanks to the folks at Logicware, you can now use two add-on
mission packs with the Mac version of Quake II. To use these mission
packs -- The Reckoning and Ground Zero -- download a copy of
Logicware's Q2MacMissionPacks from
http://www.pcworld.com/r/tw/1%2C2061%2Ctw-mac025%2C00.html .
Follow the instructions provided in the Read Me.
These two mission packs are sold separately and can be obtained
from any store that sells PC games.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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Beginner
The iBook ships with not one, but two Pangea games -- the delightful
Bugdom and Brian Greenstone's Paleolithic effort, Nanosaur. However,
only Bugdom is actually installed on the iBook's hard drive. If you
want to play Nanosaur as well, you must install it from the iBook
Software Install CD. On this disc you'll find the Nanosaur installer
inside the Nanosaur folder inside the Application's folder.
Note that Nanosaur is not included on the iBook Software Restore CD
so should you use this disc to restore your iBook's hard drive, you'll
once again have to install Nanosaur separately.
--This tip contributed by Chris Breen
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Here's a general-use tip for users of Microsoft Word and most any
other word processing program. It concerns what we'll call
"auto-wrapping," which is NOT a personal assistant for the holiday
season.
Auto-wrapping is the way your word processor knows that, as you're
typing, you've reached the end of a line and should automatically jump
to the beginning of the next line. Maybe you've occasionally tried to
tap the space key or hit the tab key to insert space at the beginning
of that line, only to see the cursor stubbornly refuse to move from
the beginning of the line. Maybe you're trying to indent a bullet line
or a quote, for instance, and the dang cursor just won't move off the
left-side margin.
The key here is to use a return or, even better, a "soft return."
See, your word processor is busy trying to stuff as many characters as
possible on each line; and when it auto-wraps you to the next line, if
you tap the space bar or the tab key, those characters are stuffed
onto the previous line. Because those characters are invisible to you,
it looks as if nothing is happening--until you insert a goodly number
of spaces or tabs, and the cursor jumps out to an unexpected (and
undesirable) place.
The solution to this dilemma is to hit Return in order to insert a
line-break (or paragraph break, if you prefer to call it that) at the
end of the previous line. Alternately, you can do what's called a
"soft return" by putting your cursor at the end of the line and
holding down the command key and hitting return. (Some applications
prefer Shift-Return, so check your documentation.) This will quietly
end the "auto-wrap" mentality for just that one paragraph--and even
though the next line will appear to be a part of the previous
paragraph it will actually behave independently.
That's the beauty of the Soft Return.
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
WARNING: MOST VIRUS WARNINGS INSULT YOUR INTELLIGENCE!
Oh my, the glory of email. It allows us to stay in touch with loved
ones, glean the latest news, trade funny stories and bad jokes... But
how many of us are plagued by the relative or friend who forwards
every virus warning, every e-petition to help save Sesame Street,
every rumor about the impending taxation of email?
Well, these warnings are, more often than not, just so much bunk,
friend. Mostly these are Urban Legends, see? Toss 'em away, I say. And
if you're a big heart (I hope you are), you can do a little checking
before forwarding that "Microsoft is giving away free trips to
Disneyworld" email to your entire address book.
My favorite Websites for hoax-busting are Urban Legends Reference
Pages and AFU & Urban Legends Archive (listed below). These sites are
great for dishing the truth about circulated rumors, and they provide
an easy way for you to tell your well-intentioned friend that he has
been duped. (Something along the lines of "Don't feel bad, so many
people have been fooled by this hoax, it's actually described at the
following Website..." usually does the trick.)
Computer viruses are, of course, another area of concern for many
computer users. Once again, the bulk of warnings that arrive in your
mailbox are suspect (and often even the true ones apply only to PCs,
not Macs). To check out virus-related rumors, consult Vmyths, also
listed below.
So, you can now relax your soul, leave the virus hunt to the
professionals, and quit worryin' yourself (and me) half to death.
There's a navigation miracle on the radar for city dwellers (and
visitors!) in New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and
Washington, D.C. It's Vindigo, a software package for those of you
with Palm OS-based handhelds (or PDAs as they're also known).
You can tell Vindigo where you are or where you want to go by
street intersections. Then you can tell it that you want to eat, shop,
or play, and Vindigo will display matching restaurants, shops, or
clubs. For any given place, Vindigo provides a review from sources
like zagat.com and local newspapers, as well as walking directions
with approximate distances, and contact information. The service is
ad-driven, so it's free to use.
Vindigo
http://www.vindigo.com/
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
It's always worth revisiting THE site to keep pace with all the
flurry of updates to your fave programs: Its name is Version Tracker,
and it knows what's out there. If you've never visited, go to Version
Tracker and you'll see a list of Mac software that's recently been
updated and find links to all kinds of helpful pages (Mac OS updates,
for example, or the Top Downloads page).
Version Tracker recently unveiled a new interface design and now
offers expanded information about (and even reviews of!) most of the
software updates.
Version Tracker
http://www.versiontracker.com/
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
Even though the Mac pioneered the idea of icons to represent files
and folders, some people find that viewing folders by Icon doesn't
show enough pertinent information. That's where List View can really
help: In any open window, you can go to the View menu and select the
As List option to immediately switch to a column-type listing that
includes valuable information THAT YOU CAN CONTROL.
For instance, if you go back to the View menu, and select View
Options, you can pick which bits of info you'd like to display about
documents. (Simply check the appropriate boxes.) My mainstays are date
modified, size, and kind. Whatever you choose, you can instantly sort
a folder by clicking on the tabs listed at the top of an open
list-view window. For example, if you click the Date Modified tab, the
window will reshuffle to display the contents accordingly. Same thing
for the Size tab--if you're trying to quickly figure out which file in
a folder is the space hog.
One last thing: The little pyramid-shaped thing at the far right
side of the row of tabs? It toggles the order in which items are
sorted. You know, oldest to newest versus newest to oldest. Biggest to
smallest, or the opposite. A to Z, or vice versa. It's called the
Reverse-Sorting Pyramid, and it's a VIB (Very Important Button).
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
Sometimes, the old days of a secretary seem attractive. Just
somebody to TypeIt4Me, you know? Wouldn't it be nice to be able to say
"Hey, write a letter to 'So-and-so'" and have a secretary who can fill
it up with meaningful phrases like "I'm so glad that you and I had
this chance for a few important and personal words between friends."
All Hail TypeIt4Me, which will do just the trick, reducing
repetitive phrases to a single key combination. So instead of typing
"We should really get together soon for some lunch and a few laughs,"
you can just type a key shortcut or an abbreviation (that you
specify). TypeIt4Me is so great that it's available in Italian, French
and Dutch versions--as well as the English, of course. And the program
is so solid and simple (it was written in 1989), that the newest
version update is over a year and a half old.
TypeIt4Me
http://www.hebel.net/~rettore/TypeIt4MeIndex.html
Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
We've talked a little in the past about the fun of the Appearance
Control Panel and how it allows you to set your own desktop pictures
as well as desktop patterns.
If you've enjoyed tinkering with this feature, you may have
wondered how the System decides what's a Desktop Picture and what's a
Pattern. Here's the answer: If the image in question is less than 128
pixels square, it treats it like a pattern and will add it to the
Patterns list. If it's even a pixel bigger in either direction, your
Mac will treat it like a Picture, which overlaps and covers any
pattern.
Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
Slow HTML, your time is up. They don't call it the World Wide Wait
for nothing. All those graphics and whatnot can make surfing something
of a drudge. So if you're an HTML programmer working in a Mac
environment, you might want to give HTML Timer a spin. It'll look at
your code and tell you if it's great, or overweight.
HTML Timer is $10 shareware, available from Monkey BreadSoftware.
Where, oh where is your next fabulous Mac system going to come
from? For years now, smart Mac shoppers have been getting their
hardware from Vermont's Small Dog Electronics. But today's tip isn't
just free advertising for Small Dog--there's something here for you
too: You can go to the Small Dog site and sign up for their Kibbles &
Bytes newsletter. Written by Small Dog's CEO, Don Mayer, Kibbles &
Bytes "contains great deals on Macintosh hardware and software as well
as a bit of Macintosh industry news and commentary." Every now and
then, the newsletter even offers bargains by way of a "Garage Sale."
So, you've had enough, dang it. After hours of doing
computer-intensive projects, you've realized it's time to go outside.
No, wait; not just yet. Let me finish, already!
If you find that your desktop is a sea of opened and cast-aside
folders, and you want to tidy up before walking away, it's super easy:
Just hold down the option key and click the close box (upper left hand
corner) of any open folder, and SHAZAAM! All open windows will close,
leaving a clear desktop.
You could call it a Desktopple...
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
Do you know the Mac equivalent of "take two aspirin and call me in
the morning?" It's rebuilding the desktop, doc. Long a useful tool for
correcting odd behavior, this cure also makes good preventative
medicine.
There are two methods: The Finder method is to hold down the Option
and Command keys while your Mac is booting up. Keep holding them down
until you see the dialog that says "Are you sure you want to rebuild
the desktop?" Then, let go of the keys, click OK and carry on. (Never
you mind if it says something about "Info comments may be lost.")
Some people use TechTool, or other utility software, to rebuild the
desktop. TechTool is diagnostic freeware with a solid following in the
Mac community. Supposedly, it wipes clean all the desktop nooks and
crannies that the Finder method sometimes misses.
Techtool
http://www.micromat.com/
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
Talk about get-up-and-go computing: Powerbooks seem like the wonder
of the world, once you've had one. So much information, software,
music and whatnot in a luggable form. What's not to like?
If you do haul your Powerbook around a lot, and tend to use the
CD-ROM drive, too, Apple recommends that you not keep a disc loaded in
the Mac. When you're on the go, pop out that CD before you pack your
Powerbook--for the safety of your hardware.
If you're just a customization freak, well, you can't help it, can
you? Maybe it's just an old Willie Nelson song, Three Days*, stuck in
your head that you want your computer to reflect. If so, go to the
View menu and select View Options and check the Use Relative Date box.
Now, when folders are viewed As List, you'll see "Yesterday" and
"Today," where appropriate--instead of say, "Wednesday, July 19,
2000."
But what about "Tomorrow?" To get that one, you'll have to really
geek out and go to the Date and Time Control Panel and set the date
back one day. Then, look at something you've been working on during
the day. The modification date will sho' nuff say "Tomorrow." Huh.
*From the 50's Willie Nelson hit: "Three days, filled with tears
and sorrow; yesterday, today and tomorrow."
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
In today's wacky multi-media world, one thing it pays to keep
up-to-date is Apple's Quicktime multimedia software. These days you
can use it to watch video, play MP3s and stream a wide variety of
content from the Internet. The latest update to Version 4 and the
"preview" version of 5.0 are both available for downloading:
Welcome to the MAC OS: A miracle of functionality. And a chubby
fella, too, it sometimes seems. These days under the hood of OS9,
there are dozens of control panels and hundreds of extensions, all
adding various bits of functionality to your computer. But remember
that Apple is trying to make most of the people happy most of the time
with its "standard" set of extensions and control panels. Why not turn
off some of the things that you're just never gonna use?
Using the Extensions Manager control panel (on the Apple menu,
inside the Control Panels folder), you can do just that and learn a
great deal about your system along the way. Just click that little
triangle where it says Show Item Information near the bottom of the
window. The resulting window will show you a sentence or two about
each extension, as they're selected. Based on these descriptions, you
may find a handful of extensions that don't need to be active. Turning
them off will make the OS less RAM-hungry, which means more memory for
your other softies.
You can start with some of the printer extensions like ImageWriter
or LaserWriter 300/LS. If you don't have an ImageWriter or a 300/LS
model Apple LaserWriter printer, well, you don't need those
extensions. (Remember: Turning off an extension is NOT akin to
throwing it away; you can always turn it back on at a later time. You
know, when you drag that ole Apple Imagewriter out of the attic.)
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
Oh those cluttered windows upon windows upon windows! Sometimes
there's so much stuff opened on the desktop that it's hard to see
important things like the CD you need to eject so you can put in some
new tunes. Never fear--if you can move enough windows to click even a
pixel or two of the CD's icon, you can eject it using the "Put Away"
command, Command-Y. Out it pops, Pops.
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
The talk-to-your-computer revolution is coming, make no mistake,
but it's no standard feature yet. To be able to dictate text to your
computer you still need Speech-to-Text software like IBM ViaVoice.
(See the link below.) However, you can use voice commands to make your
Mac execute simple things like Menu Commands, opening a file, or
switching between open applications.
If this sounds like fun, you'll first need to dig up that Mac OS CD
you've conveniently stashed away--PlainTalk isn't automatically
installed, so it's not likely to be part of your system yet. Insert
the CD and double-click the Install button. Select your destination
disk and click OK in the dialog box that tells you you've already
installed Mac OS. Then, click the Add/Remove button and scroll down to
English Speech Recognition. Select that item and proceed with the
installation (which will require a restart when all is said and done).
When your Mac boots back up, you'll be greeted by several key
PlainTalk windows, plus the Speech section of the online Help program,
which will help you get started.
In the next few tips, I'll examine some of handy items from the
PlainTalk world. (With that in mind, feel free to wait a day or two
before you install the components I've just described.)
Previously, we looked at installing Apple's spoken-command
software, PlainTalk, off the OS installer CD. Today, a couple of
pointers:
When you reboot your Mac after installing PlainTalk, you should be
greeted by a series of windows designed to help you learn the program.
If not, go to Apple Menu, Control Panels and select Speech; then
choose Speakable Items from the Options menu, and select On.
Now for the obvious: You'll need an internal mic or an external one
plugged into the back of your computer. But you knew that, right?
Today, we continue speaking of--and to--Apple's spoken-command
software, PlainTalk.
First, I have to warn you: Your Mac may have a hearing problem. You
read that right... See, your Mac has to listen to you talk, but you
don't want it listening all the time, right? I mean there's no reason
for my Mac to hear me say: "Ms. Moneypenny, get me my hat."
So, by default, your Mac only hears you when you hold down the ESC
key. You can adjust this setting from the Speech Control Panel, under
Options, Listening. Here, you can set your choice of keystroke or you
can set it so that your Mac answers to its name. And as cool as this
sounds ("Hal, open Netscape Communicator." Go ahead; you can dream
about it), many people find their computers get a little contentious
if they're always listening. If you want to use this option, it's a
good idea to use a name that is polysyllabic.
Regrettably, a key command tends to work more predictably.
Today we offer a couple more bits on Apple's spoken-command
software, PlainTalk.
Once you've set things up to begin chatting with PlainTalk, your
most valuable time will be spent with the Speakable Commands window,
which is a list of all the available built-in commands. Although it's
possible to create your own custom verbal commands, you'll find that
there are many useful ones already onboard... and some silly ones,
too.
Happily, you don't have to memorize these commands--provided you
can remember to say, "Show Me What to Say," which opens the Speakable
Commands window, so you can see for yourself what other commands are
available.
And if it's a smirk you seek, try saying "Knock, knock" for a
glimpse of the corny side of those Apple programmers.
The pop-up window is Thee Cool Tool of Tidyness in the Mac OS. Just
take a fave folder, open it in the Finder and drag it (by the title
bar) to the bottom of the screen. It instantly converts into a minimal
lingering tab. Click the tab to open the folder, and then use the
corner grippers to size the window according to how you like it. After
that it ALWAYS OPENS THAT WAY. It's like a springloaded drawer of
goodies that snaps shut when you click elsewhere on the screen.
By the way, you can remove a tab by simply dragging it (or the
opened folder) up from the bottom of the window.
I could really use this kind of functionality in a home dresser
version. Apple?
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
It's always a good day to buy a computer, but some days are better
than others. When new models come out, for instance, prices generally
go down on the old barely-obsolete models.
So, have you seen the swank new G4 Cube? Wowza. Everybody's
swooning, but some of us are swooning because its introduction means
it's time to buy last year's 400mhz G4! Priced-to-sell at $1399 and
falling! (at MacWarehouse, among others) Uh-huh! Check your favorite
catalog reseller or Apple's online store.
And if you're the kind of devil who has JUST GOT to have THE BRAND
NEW THING, check out the new Indigo iMac, recently released and priced
right at $799. Light on the pocketbook, long on style and Mac
chutzpah!
Apple iMac
http://www.apple.com/imac/
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
Desktop aliases can provide handy ways to bypass the clutter of a
series of folders in order to kibitz with frequently used documents on
your hard drive. You can use this same approach if you work in an
environment where there are shared servers. Just mount the server that
you use, click your way to your favorite folder or file, and
Option-Command drag its icon to your desktop. If you need a password
to log on the computer that stores this item, you'll be prompted when
you double-click on the alias, and then it'll pop right up. Easy.
A powerful Web surfer is an up-to-date Web Surfer, methinks. And
since your main browser is your link to the Internet and all its
booty, it pays to keep up to date. So, all the Netscape Communicator
users out there may want to go grab the new version, with dandies that
include:
The option to remove all mail from POP or IMAP servers when you
quit the program
StuffIt Expander 5.5 (although other bundled utilities like RealPlayer
are still a little behind, version-wise)
Printing from the Finder
In addition, the new version
Fixes the Mac-specific JavaScript bugs
Improves cosmetic problems with italic text and other issues
Generally plays nicer with OS9 than the previous versions
and is no longer subject to the Brown Orifice security vulnerability
Netscape Communicator is a 13.6 MB download and requires a
PowerPC-based system running Mac OS 7.6.1 or later. Version 4.75 is
the latest official release for Mac (although Netscape 6 is available
as a "Preview" for you edgy surfers).
Netscape
http://www.netscape.com/download/
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
Well, what about all this MP3 business? Is it a bit of a puzzle to
you? Napster this, Gnutella that... how can you, the intrepid
cyber-jammer, get in on the fun?
There are lots of MP3 tutorials and software packages available--so
many that it can become dizzying. But at the center of the storm is
Napster, besieged by lawsuits at the moment and yet in many ways being
The Shot Heard 'Round The World.
Matthew Cone, of MacInstruct, offers a particularly enlightening
article on the topic. It provides an info-packed overview of the
workings of Napster, using the Mac version of this sharing software,
Macster.
Several recent tips have involved the powerful List View option for
folders, a feature that allows you to see info about documents in a
single view and to customize those views to your tastes.
But let's say you decide you've mucked the whole thing up and want
to restore the original views? It's easy: Just go to the Views menu
and select Reset Column Positions. After that, click Reset in the
confirmation dialog box. You're back to square one.
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
In the world of file and folder management, the Get Info command
(command-I) can give you important information about when a file was
created and when it was last modified--and the same generally holds
true for folders. But look out: The modification date for a folder is
a little squirrely. For example, if you make changes to a document
inside a folder, that doesn't change the Date Modified for the folder
itself. The modification date for folders only changes when something
is moved IN or OUT of the folder.
Be careful when you're tossing "old" folders. They may be hiding
recently modified documents that you don't want to lose!
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
Users of Microsoft's Office 98 for the Mac may want to take notice
of a newly released updater patch for the popular program. The patch
fixes bugs in Word 98 and adds support for upcoming file formats in
PowerPoint 98. To download the free patch (it's 5.6 MB), go to:
One of the little bugaboos that's received some attention in OS 9
is the dirty thieving of hard drive space for purposes of Virtual
Memory. For most folks, it's a good idea to work with Virtual Memory
turned on, but if you've got scads of extra RAM, you may have elected
to turn Virtual Memory off. If so, and you're running low on hard disk
storage space, you can run a little program called Memory Contents
Fixer 1.0, which looks for an invisible file called "Memory Contents"
in your system folder, and if (a) the file exists and (b) it is not in
use, it will offer to delete it for you.
This "Memory Contents" file normally is used to hold the computer's
virtual memory. However, when you turn virtual memory off under OS 9,
this file is not always deleted.
If you had a large amount of RAM installed before you disabled
virtual memory, you may be missing up to hundreds of Megs of disk
space. This application will help you recover it.
Memory Contents Fixer
http://software.theresistance.net/
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
There you are again--caught with a jillion windows open on the
desktop and just sick sick sick of it.
Try this simple trick to make them all be gone: Hold down the
Option key and click the Close Window box in the upper-left corner of
any window and--bing bing bing--all open windows will close, leaving
you clutter-free. For the moment...
We've all probably faced it from time to time: The disk that won't
eject. What to do when this happens? It's a slightly scary situation,
but easy to handle if you've got a paper clip at hand.
The safest way to handle the situation is to reboot your Mac.
Chances are, the disk will pop out on start-up. Sometimes, however,
this doesn't work and you'll have to resort to paper clip surgery.
Just insert the end of a straightened paper clip into the pin-sized
hole next to a drive and PUSH. (On newer machines, you may first have
to flip open a door covering the drive.)
If you have to resort to the paper clip trick, it's a good bet your
Mac won't like it too much and might well freeze up or otherwise
misbehave. Accordingly, it's a good idea to restart after paper
clipping a drive, just to make sure things keep running smoothly.
And now, let's pause for Mac History 101, in the form of "Making
the Macintosh."
Thanks to some diligent Mac buddies at Stanford, we can take a
detailed look back at the history of the computer that helps us "Think
Different." Here's a fascinating and in-depth site for the Mac-curious
and the Mac-proud.
(There was going to be an exam, but it appears that somebody from
Microsoft walked off with the notes... Hmmm.)
Making the Macintosh
http://library.stanford.edu/mac/
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
"Back in the day, way back when, yr. momma and I couldn't have cool
desktop pictures and patterns and such; No sir, we had to make due
with crummy grayscale patterns, and 16-level grayscale at that! AND we
had to walk on hot coals instead of gravel for 12 miles to get to
school. But that's just how it WAS back then..."
Okay, gramps... Luckily, we've got it easier and prettier with the
modern Mac OS. Take the Appearance control panel, for instance. (As
with all control panels, you'll find this on the Apple Menu, in the
Control Panels folder.) It's loaded with neat customization abilities
to help you make your Mac a reflection of that Very Special You.
Like to plaster the desktop with a favorite picture? Well, it's
easy. In the Appearance Control panel, you'll see the Place Picture
button (or it may say Remove Picture, if one is already in place),
which will give you a dialog box in which to hunt around for your fave
pic. But to make it even easier, that preview window to the left
supports drag and drop, so you can just drag picture after picture
onto the control panel and see how you like it. Don't forget to spend
a few minutes playing with the various positioning options, like Tile
On Screen or Fill Screen.
Try combining your picture choice with some of the patterns
supplied (the list is to the right of the preview window) for a more
abstract look. When you get a combination you like, don't forget to
click Set Desktop.
Tomorrow: Let your desktop change itself!
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
Yesterday we looked at some of the ways the Mac OS has made it easy
to spruce up the appearance of your desktop with the Appearance
control panel.
Today, we'll add one handy trick to that.
It's nice to be able to change the desktop picture, but you're busy
right? Probably, you're even now thinking, "Mick, can you get to the
point, 'cause I'm BUSY, already." Alright, alright! Geez, some people.
So as I was saying, why not make your Mac change its own dang
desktop? It's easy. Just take some of your favorite images and put
them in a folder by themselves. Now open the Appearance control panel
and then drag that folder onto the miniature preview window. One of
the pictures from the folder will pop up in the frame. Now click Set
Desktop, close the window and be done with it. The next time you
restart your Mac, you'll have a--you guessed it--different desktop
picture. And the next time. And the next time!
Voila. The self-changing desktop
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
The world of Ham radio, aka amateur radio, is a lot older than the
world of the PC, but has always attracted similar
technologically-adventurous types. And sure enough, there is a
community of Ham operators who also happen to be Mac fans and users.
Here's a neat site where the two meet. Scroll about halfway down
the page for the Mac links.
Well, it's just amazing the myriad of ways you can do screen grabs
on the Macintosh. Just when I thought there are no more, well, guess
what?
How about Command-Shift-4, with the CAPSLOCK on? With this method,
the pointer turns into a bulls eye, which you can then click on an
open window and--bang!-- you capture exactly that window with no fuss
or bother! As always, it's saved as a new PICT file, called "Picture
1", on your hard drive.
But wait, there's more! When using the CapsLock option, you can
hold down the Control key before letting go of the mouse button to
store the image in the clipboard!
Thanks to the several gallant screen capture-teers who wrote in
with these secrets.
Now then, here's the recap on Screen Cap tricks inherent in the Mac
OS:
Command-Shift-3: Caps the entire screen
Command-Shift-4: Pointer turns to cross hair, you specify the area to
capture
Command-Shift-4 (CapsLock on): Bulls eye captures a particular open
window
Command-Shift-4 (CapsLock on, Control key pressed down before
releasing the mouse button): Sends window-cap directly to clip board
instead of making a PICT file
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search for
the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
Yes, fellow Mac fans, we're on the verge of a new dynasty. As you
probably know, the next-generation Mac operating system, OS X, has
been released as Beta software. Somewhat controversially, Apple is
selling this pre-release version to techno junkies for $29.95.
Take heed though: Beta software is what the software industry calls
its babies that aren't quite fully polished. Without a doubt, many
rounds of bug-zapping will take place before the full and final
version of OS X is released to the public months from now.
So, unless you just insist on surfing the bleeding edge, you'll
probably want to stick with OS9 for all your important work. And if
you want to play OS X, be sure to back up all your important stuff.
Scratch that--back up all your important stuff anyway. It's just
smart.
In the meantime, if you're curious but cautious, you can read the
company line on OS X at:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/beta/start.html
For those of you chomping at the bit, we'll drop in with little OS
X bits from time to time.
The last time you stepped into a computer store, you may have
noticed the blooming of many (too many, some would say) colorful PC
knock-offs of the iMac. But when it comes to great design, Apple is
getting its props from no less than the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum, a
branch of the Smithsonian Institute.
The museum called the Macintosh and iMac computers "revolutionary,"
and praised Apple founder Steven Jobs and designer Jonathan Ive for
fostering "groundbreaking but user-friendly design."
Well, as great an impression as the iMac has made, the jury has
pretty much come in with a "Nay" verdict on that funny little
saucer-shaped mouse. So, fortunately, the folks in Cupertino have done
some extended head-scratching and debuted the all-new Apple Pro Mouse,
a laser-point-driven mouse that doesn't even need a mouse pad. For
details and pricing check out the official line:
Apple Pro Mouse
http://www.apple.com/mouse/
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
As we've discussed in a previous tip, the List View feature is a
powerful way of viewing your various folder contents. It shows
important information like file name, size, type and so forth.
A useful thing to know is that you can rearrange the order of these
columns by grabbing a tab and dragging it left or right. (When you
drag, the pointer turns into the helpful glove icon to let you know
what's going on.)
As an example, open a folder, and under the View menu, choose As
List. Now, grab the Size tab at the top of the open window and drag it
to the left, on top of the previous column. When you release, the size
column will jump over to the left of the previous column.
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
Well, it's hard not to rock with all the built-in audio gadgetry
that's made it into the Mac OS these days. But if somebody's
complaining and you've just GOT to turn down your AppleCD Player, just
slap that ol' keyboard shortcut, Down Arrow.
Here are a few more key commands for AppleCD Player:
Up Arrow increases the volume.
Right Arrow moves to the next track
Left Arrow moves to the previous track
Command-Right Arrow will fast-forward through a track
Command-Left Arrow rewinds through a track
Remember, you've got to have the AppleCD Player as the front-most
application for these shortcuts to work.
For quite a few years now, the fine folks at Boxtop Software have
been making fab little applications for streamlining Web design. Their
latest is a picture-crunching tool called SuperGIF, and it's getting
quite the raves.
If you're trying to shrink the size of your Web graphics without
having a Photoshop University degree, SuperGIF does the trick--and it
does so without any user interaction at all. Pure drag-and-drop! No
knowledge of the many things that effect GIF file sizes is required.
SuperGIF is $29.95 shareware, by Boxtop Software.
BoxTop Software
http://www.boxtopsoft.com/
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
Hmm, icons, icons everywhere... so whaddya doin' with those boring
old standard-issue ones on your desktop? Changing document icons (the
little picture associated with each and every document or folder on
your computer) can be a great way to show your Mac how much you care.
And it's easy:
Start by clicking on an icon that you like, and then select File,
Get Info (or key shortcut Command-I). Then, click on the icon that
shows up in the resulting window (you'll see a box appear around it
when you click on it), and choose Edit, Copy (Command-C). Next, find
the document whose icon you want to replace, and repeat the procedure:
Get Info, select the icon to be replaced, and then Edit, Paste
(Command-V). Voila! A shiny new coat of e-paint for your document or
folder.
There are many icon sites available on the Web, so you can download
icons to match your style, and customize to your heart's content.
Here's one of particular breadth:
IconFactory
http://www.iconfactory.com/
NOTE: Some of the packages here require the use of Icondropper, a
shareware program available at IconFactory, which further simplifies
the process of sprussing up your documents. Like many downloads, all
the packages arrive in a stuffed or binhexed format, so you'll want to
have Stuffit Expander handy, naturally.
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
One of the great triumphs in desktop publishing is the dingbat, an
efficient way to store non-alphabetical characters in a font format.
The most ubiquitous (but far from the only) set is Zapf Dingbats. Zapf
Dingbats (named for venerable typographer Herman Zapf) is always ready
to help out with the handy arrow, bullet or whatnot.
Figuring out which letter on your keyboard corresponds to which
Dingbat, however, can be a headache.
Fortunately, Key Caps can help here. Just open Key Caps from the
Apple menu, and select Zapf Dingbats from the fonts menu (if you don't
see it, you may have to reinstall it from the System CD). Now you'll
see all the letters on the little keyboard display change to a melange
of crosses, stars and doodads. Holding down modifiers Option, Shift
and/or Control yields an even greater selection.
Last time, we did an overview of the fabulous pop-up windows
feature in OS9. Here's a great way to make a launching bay of apps and
other faves using a Pop-Up:
Start by making a new folder and call it Hal9000. (No, you don't
have to call it Hal9000. But I'll be disappointed if you don't). Then,
select a few of your most favorite applications and/or documents and
drag aliases (remember? Command-Option drag) of them to this folder.
Position the icons however you see fit, and resize the window to
accommodate them. Then, drag the folder to the bottom of your screen
to turn it into a Pop-Up and--bingo--you've got a place from where you
can quickly open a few of your favorite things.
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
Okay, any designers out there? Raise your hands... One of the great
things about the Mac is its illustrious history in the realm of
Desktop Publishing and Graphic Design. The Mac has made it so easy
over the years, with powerful software like QuarkXPress, Adobe
Pagemaker, Adobe Photoshop, and Macromedia Freehand (to name but a
few).
The Mac also made the world of typography accessible to the masses.
Now, we've all got our favorite fonts (we'll provide some font links
in upcoming tips), but who could use a refresher (or introduction) to
the history of the art of Typography?
If you're that type (pun fully intended, of course), take a look at
CounterSpace, a site designed by students and professionals to inform
about type and typography:
Note: You'll need Shockwave Flash plugin for your browser, in order
to let this site do its stuff. If you don't have it, run over and
download it for free:
Special gizmo alert! Look at the title bar of any open folder
window (you'll see the name of the folder, and to the left of it, a
folder icon). This is more than just a nicely-beveled little icon; it
enables you to deal with that folder in ways that would have required
that you close the folder in the olden days.
For instance, if you want to move (or copy) that folder, you can
just click and drag on that title-bar icon instead of closing the
folder and possibly digging through several levels to find it. (To
make a copy, press Option as you drag the icon.)
You can also drag documents to that title bar icon instead of the
open window if, say, you've got that window collapsed with the
window-shade feature. (The collapser is in the upper rightmost corner
of any open window.)
And here's my favorite: When you hold down the Command key and
click and hold on the title bar icon, it will display a hierarchical
listing of that folder's location, allowing you to navigate up to the
next folder level, or all the way to the root directory.
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
Well, here we are in the digital age. Ho-hum. Still got that analog
camera dontcha? Haven't found the right digital camera for the right
price, and so you're stickin' with the Christmas '96 point-and-shoot
or that trusty old Pentax? Hey, me too. But wouldn't it be nice if you
could zap off some of those pix of the newest family member (or maybe
it's that new sports car) to all of your email-reading friends? Well,
I'm here to tell you that there's a growing host of Web photo services
where you can post your photos, for FREE even. For details, try using
your favorite search engine to look for "web photos" or "online
photos."
Or, save yourself the trouble and get plugged into Photoworks.com.
These are the guys who used to be Seattle Film Works (of the famed gig
where they would give away 35mm film on the condition that you had to
have them develop it.) The good news is, they've sweetened the deal by
adding FREE WEB PHOTO HOSTING to their service. Now they'll give you
film, send you mailing envelopes, and process your film for $10 per
roll. The great big important bonus is that as soon as they develop
your film, they post your pictures on your very own section of the
photoworks.com Website. From there, you can send friends pix from all
your good times. It's one of the best deals goin' on the Net, friend.
If you're curious, you can sign up for a free roll, including
processing:
PhotoWorks.com
http://www.photoworks.com/
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
Who's your deal-findin' buddy on the Net? It's dealmac, Jack. This
purveyor of fine Mac-related bargains, in its own words, "nets you the
best Mac savings from across the Web and publishes them every
weekday... we don't sell it, we tell it--the best coupons, promotions,
rebates, and bargains for your computing needs."
Check it out for all of your Mac needs. You'll even find a
personalized notification service that will email you when the gizmo
you covet appears online at just the right price.
Today we continue with a closer look at the mighty Control Strip,
Desktop Determinator for a number of useful things.
When you use the control strip, you'll notice that it seems
cemented in place on your screen. While this is nice (you don't have
to worry about accidentally grabbing and moving it), it could be that
you would prefer it in a different location. For example, maybe you
want to move it up about a quarter-inch so it doesn't block your
Pop-Up Window tabs.
Simple: Just hold down the Option key and point at the tab on the
end of the strip. The pointer will turn into a hand, and you can then
grab (click) the Control Strip and drag it around.
You can also move the Strip horizontally, but it will always jump
to one edge of the screen. If you move it to the other side of the
screen, you'll notice that the Control Strip does a FLIP, rearranging
the ends of the Strip, but leaving the contents in the same order.
Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
I'm going to spend the next several tips pointing out some of the
features and benefits of the Mac OS's most friendly and useful system
element: the Control Strip. Featured prominently in Mac OS 8 and in
Mac OS 9, the Control Strip lets you adjust a variety of control
panels without going to the trouble of opening them. It also performs
numerous other functions.
If you don't see the Control Strip, just hit Command-Control-s, and
it will appear at the bottom of your screen. You can then minimize or
truncate it at any time by clicking on the gray tab at the right end.
If you prefer for the Control Strip to vanish, just press
Command-Control-S again. This is the default key shortcut, but if you
prefer something else--like an F-Key--go to the Control Strip control
panel and click on Define Hot Key. Then you can pick your own key
combination for toggling the Control Strip.
Tomorrow: Customizing the Control Strip.
Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
CONTROL STRIP MODULES: WHAT YOU GET, WHAT YOU NEED
The Control Strip offers fabulous desktop power for controlling a
variety of things, so we're going to take an extended look at the
standard set of modules installed with the Mac OS. In some cases, you
may not need all the installed modules, in which case you can
Option-drag a few tiles to the trash, for a leaner Control Strip.
As you consider "Should or shouldn't I remove this module?"
remember that it's really an issue of how often you change the
particular SETTING, not whether or not you USE a certain control.
For example, if you tend to adjust the volume on your Mac
frequently, it behooves you to have a tile for doing so. If not, then
you might want to toss that tile. Besides, you can always reinstall it
later.
To kick off our look at individual modules, then, I'd like to bring
your attention to the Volume tile. It's the one that shows speaker
icon, and it offers the quickest access to controlling speaker volume.
In other words, it's a keeper.
Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
In this continuing series, we're looking at the ins and outs of
that glory of the MacOS, the Control Strip, module-by-module, from
left to right. If you don't need any one of these tiles, you can just
option-drag it off the Strip and save yourself a little chunk of
screen real estate. (By the way, if you need assistance identifying a
Control Strip module, go to the Help menu and choose Show Balloons;
then, simply point your cursor at a module to identify it.)
The last in the Control Strip Modules series concerns the Web
Sharing tile. If you've got a full-time Internet connection, you can
actually use a Mac OS9 feature called Web Sharing to offer up a folder
on your computer to other Macs connected to the Internet. (More on
this in an upcoming tip.) This tile lets you turn this feature on and
off.
Chances are, you're keeping your drive's contents to yourself, in
which case you can option-drag this one into the trash.
In this continuing series, we're looking at the ins and outs of
that glory of the MacOS, the Control Strip, module-by-module, from
left to right. If you don't need any one of these tiles, you can just
option-drag it off the Strip and save yourself a little chunk of
screen real estate. (By the way, if you need assistance identifying a
Control Strip module, go to the Help menu and choose Show Balloons;
then, simply point your cursor at a module to identify it.)
Video Mirroring: Some extra-doodad Macs actually have the built-in
capability of hooking up a second monitor, which acts as an extension
of your viewing area. It's mighty cool; you just mouse across the
screen off of one monitor and onto the other--especially helpful for
programs like Photoshop or QuarkXPress, which feature a whole ream of
floating tool palettes. This module allows you to turn this feature on
and off. (The mirror option will display the same screen image on both
monitors.) But if you've attained this level of geekdom (I take the
Fifth on this, myself), why ever turn it off? (Don't answer that,
please.)
Incidentally, if you aspire to be the next Nam June Paik, you can
always go out and buy a video card to support that second monitor
jack. Then, call the Guggenheim to schedule a show.
In this continuing series, we're looking at the ins and outs of
that glory of the MacOS, the Control Strip, module-by-module, from
left to right. If you don't need any one of these tiles, you can just
option-drag it off the Strip and save yourself a little chunk of
screen real estate. (By the way, if you need assistance identifying a
Control Strip module, go to the Help menu and choose Show Balloons;
then, simply point your cursor at a module to identify it.)
TV Mirroring: Throughout the years, a few Macs have included an A/V
TV connection on the back. In other cases, you can buy an A/V card to
install in your Mac for this purpose. If you've got one, you can shoot
the image from your screen onto a TV monitor, using the TV Mirroring
module. If you've got no such plans, you can option-drag this module
to the trash.
In this continuing series, we're looking at the ins and outs of
that glory of the MacOS, the Control Strip, module-by-module, from
left to right. If you don't need any one of these tiles, you can just
option-drag it off the Strip and save yourself a little chunk of
screen real estate. (By the way, if you need assistance identifying a
Control Strip module, go to the Help menu and choose Show Balloons;
then, simply point your cursor at a module to identify it.)
Speakable Items: Ever wish you could just talk to the computer
instead of typing everything and clicking and so forth? Well, we're on
the way to that golden road with Apple's PlainTalk software (more in
upcoming tips). For now, if you use PlainTalk, you can use this module
to turn Speakable Items on and off from the desktop.
In this continuing series, we're looking at the ins and outs of
that glory of the MacOS, the Control Strip, module-by-module, from
left to right. If you don't need any one of these tiles, you can just
option-drag it off the Strip and save yourself a little chunk of
screen real estate. (By the way, if you need assistance identifying a
Control Strip module, go to the Help menu and choose Show Balloons;
then, simply point your cursor at a module to identify it.)
There are a couple of modules that deal with sound, and they're
pretty straightforward:
Sound Volume: Ah, an easy on-screen method of adjusting your Mac's
overall system volume! Just click and drag the slider. Thank you, Mac
OS.
SoundSource Strip: Some of us have gotten into the swing of
recording audio on our Macs. Whether you're recording from a CD or
from the built-in mic or an external mic, you have to select the
source. This control panel shows your options and what's currently
selected. The long way around would be to go to Control Panels, choose
the Sound panel (or, on some Macs, the Monitors & Sound Panel). This
way is quicker.
In this continuing series, we're looking at the ins and outs of
that glory of the MacOS, the Control Strip, module-by-module, from
left to right. If you don't need any one of these tiles, you can just
option-drag it off the Strip and save yourself a little chunk of
screen real estate. (By the way, if you need assistance identifying a
Control Strip module, go to the Help menu and choose Show Balloons;
then, simply point your cursor at a module to identify it.)
Remote Access: If you've got a dial-up Internet connection, the
Remote Access module is one of your best buddies. It keeps you in the
know about your dial-up number, your name and password, and other
Internet settings. In addition, the pop-up module displays a
Connect/Disconnect option.
The Connect/Disconnect option is the easy way to get online or quit
your session and free up the phone line. Remember, you may be able to
CONNECT just by firing up your email client or a Web browser, but
quitting the program won't DISCONNECT you automatically--typically,
that takes 10 minutes of inactivity. Use the Disconnect command to
free up your phone line pronto.
In the last tip, we talked about the Connect/Disconnect feature of
the Remote Access Control Strip module. Today we pick up with another
useful feature: Default Internet setup.
Most people only have one dial-up routine, but the Mac allows a
user to have multiple settings. If you do any traveling with a laptop,
for instance, you might have one setup for at home and another for
on-the-road. You can add configurations by selecting Open Remote
Access from the Control Strip. Then, type Command-K to see the
Configurations window, where you can add a new configuration by
Duplicating and Renaming an existing Configuration. After you've
created the necessary configurations, save your settings and you'll
see each of them listed in the Remote Access module on the Control
Strip.
In this continuing series, we're looking at the ins and outs of
that glory of the MacOS, the Control Strip, module-by-module, from
left to right. If you don't need any one of these tiles, you can just
option-drag it off the Strip and save yourself a little chunk of
screen real estate.
Printer Selector: You may be in a situation where you have several
laser printers from which to choose, and if so, this handy module lets
you choose right from the desktop, without going to the chooser.
Dandy!
If you don't have multiple laser printers (or even one, since the
typical home printer is of the color inkjet variety), you don't need
this puppy. Just option-drag it to the trash, if you please.
In this continuing series, we're looking at the ins and outs of
that glory of the MacOS, the Control Strip, module-by-module, from
left to right. If you don't need any one of these tiles, you can just
option-drag it off the Strip and save yourself a little chunk of
screen real estate.
Monitor Resolution: Changing the monitor resolution is one way to
turn that Studio Apartment-sized screen into a roomier spread!
Resolution represents the number of dots that compose your screen. In
the olden days, 640 pixel by 480 pixels was the standard screen
resolution, which made your icons pretty hefty. You can slim the whole
package down by switching the monitor resolution to something higher,
say, 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768. By experimenting with this control strip
module (or the Monitors control panel, which does the same thing), you
can decide what resolution is the right balance of easy-on-the-eyes
and spacious-on-the-screen.
In this continuing series, we're looking at the ins and outs of
that glory of the MacOS, the Control Strip, module-by-module, from
left to right. If you don't need any one of these tiles, you can just
option-drag it off the Strip and save yourself a little chunk of
screen real estate.
Monitor BitDepth: This module allows you to change the color
settings on your Mac. Older machines might perform slightly better
with a more compact color scheme, like Thousands of Colors, but these
days, most people might as well use the Millions of Colors option.
Photos will look much better at this bitdepth. To see the effects for
yourself, open a photo (or look at a Web page with a photo on it) and
use this module to change the setting to Thousands of Colors. You'll
see the picture get sort of blotchy. Switch it down to 256 Colors for
a real kick in the head, Fred.
In this continuing series, we're looking at the ins and outs of
that glory of the MacOS, the Control Strip, module-by-module, from
left to right. If you don't need any one of these tiles, you can just
option-drag it off the Strip and save yourself a little chunk of
screen real estate.
Location Manager: Controls the powerful Location Manager control
panel, which allows you to save a variety of settings concerning where
you're using your computer. This feature is most useful for laptops,
but maybe you're the type who packs up your desktop machine for road
trips. (Hey, I've done it!)
In this continuing series, we're looking at the ins and outs of
that glory of the MacOS, the Control Strip, module-by-module, from
left to right. If you don't need any one of these tiles, you can just
option-drag it off the Strip and save yourself a little chunk of
screen real estate.
Keychain module: New to OS 9, the Keychain is a security tool
designed to store a variety of passwords and to control them with one
master password. This tile allows you to lock or unlock your Keychain.
(More on the Keychain in a future tip.)
CONTROL STRIP MODULES: ENERGY SETTINGS AND FILE SHARING
In this continuing series, we're looking at the ins and outs of
that glory of the MacOS, the Control Strip, module-by-module, from
left to right. If you don't need any one of these tiles, you can just
option-drag it off the Strip and save yourself a little chunk of
screen real estate.
Energy Settings: Primarily a laptop extension of the Energy Saver
control panel, this one appears on iMacs, too. Mostly, however, it
displays redundant stuff--for example, you can put your computer to
sleep more easily by just hitting the Power key.
File Sharing: Used for controlling sharing your Mac over a network
(specifically, toggling File Sharing on and off). It's not necessary
for accessing the Internet.
In this continuing series, we're looking at the ins and outs of
that glory of the MacOS, the Control Strip, module-by-module, from
left to right. If you don't need any one of these tiles, you can just
option-drag it off the Strip and save yourself a little chunk of
screen real estate.
Battery Monitor: You'll only see this if you've got a laptop, in
which case it will display the status of your batteries.
CDStrip: One of my faves, this shows you the tracks on an audio CD
and allows you to play the CD, as well as jump around between tracks.
By the way, if you use an Internet audio player like SoundJam MP or
Real Jukebox, your Mac can "learn" the names of the CDs and remember
them, so you won't see "Track 11," you'll see "Blue Rhondo A La Turk."
Very nice.
In this continuing series, we're looking at the ins and outs of
that glory of the MacOS, the Control Strip, module-by-module, from
left to right. If you don't need any one of these tiles, you can just
option-drag it off the Strip and save yourself a little chunk of
screen real estate.
AppleTalk Switch: This one turns AppleTalk on and off. AppleTalk
has to be active if you're connected a laser printer or to another
Mac, but is NOT necessary to connect to the Internet.
Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
In this continuing series, we're looking at the ins and outs of
that glory of the MacOS, the Control Strip, module-by-module, from
left to right. If you don't need any one of these tiles, you can just
option-drag it off the Strip and save yourself a little chunk of
screen real estate.
AirPort module: This baby controls AirPort networking. Did you buy
a $100 AirPort card for your Mac? You'd remember if you did. It's a
card that you install in your Mac that allows wireless access to a
local network or to the Internet. If you've got an Airport card, and
access to an AirPort network, yours is the glory. Otherwise, you don't
need it.
Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
What makes the Control Strip so wonderful is that it packs so much
functionality into such a small space. Each item is called a module
and is represented by a tile on the Control Strip.
The modules are stored in the Control Strip Modules folder in the
System Folder. But you don't have to go there to add or remove items
from your Control Strip. You can simply drag new modules from the
Desktop straight onto the Control Strip (the smart Mac OS actually
quietly copies the file to the Control Strip Modules folder when you
do this) and it will appear thereon.
You can also drag tiles OFF of the Control Strip--just remember to
hold down the option key while dragging.
Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
A while back we discussed methods of hooking up "mini-networks"
between your trusty old machine and that shiny new one that you just
bought. That method for connecting up two Macs assumed that both had
the RJ-45 (read: looks like a fat phone plug) jack. Of course, there
are plenty of older Macs that predate that baby. Fortunately, there's
always a way, as faithful reader John F. helped me understand.
Several older Macintosh models have built-in ethernet on the
motherboard, in the form of AAUI (Apple Attachment Unit Interface).
These models include Centris and Quadra, as well as those upgraded
with the Apple Ethernet NB Card, and even the LaserWriter IIg
printers. To attach an AAUI-capable Mac to your Ethernet network,
you'll need a "transceiver." Specifically, an AAUI-to-10Base-T
Transceiver. (Be sure to specify 10Base-T, NOT 10Base-2.)
There are a couple of low-price transceivers available, including
those made by MacSense and Asante ($20 to $40). Farallon offers a
higher-end Etherwave solution for closer to $100. Search the
MacWarehouse site (or your favorite Mac retailer) for "aaui".
Yesterday we dealt with ways to connect older Macs to the newer
machines so you can transfer all that hard work onto a new ride. Today
we'll look at doing the same thing, only with pre-Ethernet Macs.
The bottom line: If your Mac is old enough that it predates
ethernet, and you're just itchin' to get that old data onto your fancy
new machine, you'll need an Ethertalk-Localtalk bridge, made by two
longtime hardware makers: Asante and Farallon. These handy little
boxes will convert your old LocalTalk port to an RJ-45 Ethernet port.
They're also handy for hooking up older printers. You can get the
details on these babies (which have street-prices around $90) at the
following Web sites:
After hooking up your adapter, turn on file sharing on the older
Mac, mount its disk as an Appleshare server volume using the Chooser
on the new Mac, and copy away.
(Thanks again to John F. for added insight)
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
They say "One person's trash is another's treasure," but who cares
about that other guy?? It's your trash and you want it gone! So why
should you, trash-tosser extrordinaire, be confounded with a warning
message every time you empty your Mac's trash can? Well, you don't, of
course. Apple sets this default warning to help you not accidentally
throw stuff away. This warning box also shows how full the trash can
is, which can be gratifying to some of us purging types. But if you'd
rather live without the warning box, select the trash can, choose
File, Get Info (shortcut: Command-I) and uncheck the Warn Before
Emptying box. Now you're on your own, Quark.*
(Pop culture note: Years before Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
introduced us to the Ferengi, there was an amiable "interstellar
garbage man" played by Richard Benjamin, in an eponymously-titled,
short-lived show: Quark.)
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
One must begrudgingly admit that a lot of the Internet audio
revolution seems to be a bit (just a bit!) preferential towards PCs.
Not any more. Check out earBuzz.com, the only major digital music
site that's run and maintained entirely on Macs. No more worrying
about competing Windows standards--everything you find here is
Mac-tested and Mac-approved. And EarBuzz.com claims to be the only
site to give 100% of CD sales profit back to the people who need it
most: the artists.
earBuzz
http://www.earbuzz.com/
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
When you're viewing folders in the List View mode, you may notice
that while documents show their size, folders only show a dash. That's
because it takes a little extra oomph for the OS to calculate folder
sizes, since it has to look in the folder and add up its contents. In
the System 7 days, you could elect to tell the OS to Show Folder
Sizes, but only globally (ie ALL folders), which made the system
somewhat slow.
With OS9, you can select View, View Options and check Calculate
Folder Sizes, and this option will apply only to the active folder.
What's more, modern G3 Macs are so dang speedy, applying this option
no longer results in sluggish performance.
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
There's always been some misgivings among hardcore Macheads over
the Button view of folders (under the View menu, select As Buttons to
see what it looks like). A holdover from the Performa days, they are
considered by some people see to be cumbersome and too bulky. However,
these buttons can be helpful for kids (you only have to click them
once to open the file or folder), or for beginning users--whenever
you're trying to keep things simple.
Along these lines, you can make a folder with aliases to some of
the kiddies' favorite items and set it to a Button View, for ease of
use. And if you just can't stand the big fat buttons, go to the View
menu and select view options. Then, you can change the view to Small
Buttons instead.
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
All over the country there are Macintosh User Groups. One of the
towering giants has long been the Arizona Macintosh User Group, or
AMUG, for short.
For those of you with DVD players (they're standard on the G4s and
later), they've got a goodie you might want to consider:
AMUG has released a collection of Macintosh freeware and shareware
on DVD. It contains over 9,500 items for a full 3.2 GB of files (over
5 GB decompressed). Of course, you could find and download almost
everything in this collection from the Internet (including numerous
updates and utilities licensed from Apple). But that would be a major
chore.
The DVD provides faster access for those without high-speed
connections, and it's also a useful archive for future reference.
The DVD costs $20 ($26 outside the U.S.) direct from AMUG.
Well, aren't you the organized one! You've got all your goodies
tucked away in folders and subfolders and subsubfolders of subfolders.
Oh, your mom would be so proud.
But what's that you say? Sometimes when you have to dig out a
document from cold storage, you leave a trail of open windows that's
just plain slovenly? What can you do?
Here's a simple technique to keep your desktop tidy, no matter how
deep you dig: On the way to a sunken subfolder, hold down the Option
key as you wade in. As you open successive layers of folders, the
previous ones will close, eventually just leaving only your desired
folder open.
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
It used to be only programmers knew the gospel and glory of Bare
Bones Software's fabulous text editor BBEdit. Years later, it
continues to be a serious tool for all manner of text-based computing,
and can be used by people of all walks and skill levels.
In addition to being THE crack HTML code editor (many basic
shortcuts are included, and there are a wealth of HTML-specific
plugins available), BBEdit can search and replace across multiple
documents. Take that, Microsoft Word.
What makes BBEdit so mean and lean is that it's not worried about
being PRETTY. For example, you can't use different fonts or italics or
bold or any word processing features (within BBEdit itself, that is;
if you're coding HTML, naturally you can apply any and all text
attributes to resulting Web pages). What you get instead is powerful
control over CONTENT, be it HTML pages, copy, lists, or whatever you
like to type. If you're typing copy, it's no problem to send your
BBEdit docs to your PC friends; and if you want to make it more
handsome, you can easily open a BBEdit document in any word processor
and then add a bit of spit and shine.
BareBones Software sells BBEdit for $119, but also offers a
shareware version called BBEdit Lite, which is mighty in its own
right. Get it at:
Anybody's who's ever done a whit of desktop publishing may know
that there's one thing that's indispensible on a Mac: It's Adobe Type
Manager, a control panel that makes fonts appear onscreen with smooth
edges--at any size. Without it, you're lookin' at a severe case of the
jaggies whenever you magnify a page in, say, Pagemaker or QuarkXPress.
ATM is an all-encompassing tool, affecting most any application that
involves typesetting.
That's why it's good news that Adobe has released version 4.6 of
ATM Light, a free download from the Adobe Website.
In addition to its time-honored duties, ATM Light 4.6 now also
supports OpenType fonts, a font specification co-developed by Adobe
and Microsoft. If you'd like to learn more about the OpenType
standard, you can read about it here:
If you wanna get a little misty-eyed over Macs-gone-by, then stroll
on over to the Fly on the Mac, a Mac commentary site that is currently
running a retrospective of Apple's 1988 ad campaign. We've come a long
way baby.
http://www.whichauction.net/apple_ad/
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
One fab component of the Mac OS is called Application Switcher, and
it allows you to switch between open applications with a keystroke
instead of mousing up to the Application menu in the upper right
corner of your screen. Here's what you do to turn it on and specify
your preferred key shortcut:
Under the Help menu, select Mac Help. In the resulting window, type
"Application Switcher", and then click "Switching Between Open
Applications." (It should be the first item in the list of search
results.) In the resulting window, scroll about 2/3 of the way down to
the section called "Switching from One Program to Another" and look
for the link called "Help me modify the keyboard shortcuts." Once you
click that link, you can specify a key combination that's convenient
for you. My fave is "control-tab."
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
While BBEdit is often lauded for its code editing prowess, I've
been schooled by several Mac fans in the code world that Peter
Keleher's shareware Alpha, now at version 7.2, is also a champ.
MacWorld concurs: "BBEdit may get lots of good press, but the
shareware text editor Alpha beats it in the area of HTML features.
When you add Johan Linde's free plug-in, HTML mode 2.0.3, Alpha
becomes a remarkably flexible and customizable HTML editing tool."
One of the typographical tricks that separates the uber-Mac user
from the crowd is being able to conjure up those accented characters,
like the u in uber or the e in resume. (Of course, this tip is
formatted in plain text, so much of the affect is lost. But you know
the characters I'm talking about.)
In any event, it's easy to insert these characters using the
venerable Key Caps application found in the Apple Menu. Just fire it
up, select the font you're using, and press a combination of modifier
keys (Option, Control and Shift) to see a shuffling of the various
available characters.
Extra tip: To get most accent marks that appear over a letter
requires two keystrokes; one for the accent and another for the
letter. Example: to type an accented e, you first press Option-e (it
will appear that nothing happens), then you type "e" ... and before
you can say "Jan Tschichold," there's your accented e. To put that
accent over an a, you type Option-e, and then press a. You get the
idea.
A few tips ago, we discussed ways to capture screen shots of your
Mac desktop. In addition to the Mac OS methods, command-shift-3 and
command-shift-4, there are a variety of shareware utilities that offer
greater power over the screen grabbing process.
My personal favorite is Snapz Pro from the fine folks at Ambrosia
Software. This $40 shareware program allows you to save files in a
variety of formats including TIFF and JPEG, and even creates short
movies so you can capture a sequence of on-screen events.
Snapz Pro
http://www.snapzpro.com/
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
Finally, here's a resource that doesn't politely sniff and turn
away from owners of older Macs. Just nod casually while That One Guy
goes on and on about his soon-to-arrive G4 Cube, then surf your way
over to EveryMac.com for the lowdown on your beloved PowerMac 7200.
At EveryMac.com, you'll find detailed technical, configuration, and
pricing information on all Mac models, not just the latest and the
greatest.
EveryMac.com
http://www.everymac.com/
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
Since audio has become a larger and larger part of the computing
experience, here's a little tip to remember when you're having trouble
kickin' out the jams like you know you wanna. In other words, an
answer to that age-old lament: "Why can't I crank it up more?"
The thing to remember is that there are SEVERAL volume controls at
your disposal, and they sometimes trick each other. If you use the
control strip (and if you don't, you should), there's a speaker icon
there that controls overall system volume. When you change this
slider, it's like opening the Sound Control Panel (or Monitors &
Sound, depending on your version of the OS) and changing the volume
therein.
In addition to that volume control, you might also use the Apple CD
Player, which is generally featured in the Apple Menu. This
application has volume control that's independent of the previous
control I talked about. In addition, you may have programs like
SoundJam MP or RealPlayer (for playing Internet audio and MP3s), which
each have THEIR own volume controls. Another variable might be those
swank multimedia speakers you just hooked up: they've got THEIR own
volume knob.
The bottom line is, if your computer ain't rockin' the way it was
yesterday, you may have inadvertently turned down the System Volume
(aka the speaker on the Control Strip, aka the Sound Control Panel).
This is the Master King Emperor Volume Control of System sound. So
check to make sure that control hasn't snuck down to a lower level.
--Mick Jeffries surfs the Mac Fantastic in a daily lifelong search
for the Perfect Leisure-Time Moment.
It's the occasional simple tip that can make things just a bit
easier... and cheers to that, right?
For instance, what is the date today? If you're like me, and
typically aren't sure right off the top of your head, just click in
the upper-right corner of your desktop where the time is displayed.
Clicking the time toggles the date, see?
The Universal System Bus was a great idea when it debuted a few
years back, and still is (though it will probably eventually be
superceded by Firewire). Through USB, you can have external devices
like CD-Burners, digital cameras and hard drives which you can
"hot-swap." That is, you don't have to turn your computer off to plug
them in or unplug them. The System is constantly scanning for new
devices and will "see" them when you plug them in, assuming the right
drivers are in place. This was a big improvement over SCSI, or PC's
Parallel Ports, which require you to shut down the computer before
plugging or unplugging any devices. (Note to those of you still using
SCSI devices: it's absolutely hazardous to not turn off your Mac
before changing connections.)
Like most things, however, USB is subject to conflicts and
flakiness and sometimes you may find that you've got something that
gets along less than amicably with your system.
If it seems like your system is freezing and the culprit is a new
USB device, try booting up the computer without that device plugged
into the USB port and then plug it in after the system has fired up.
If you've got an incompatible USB device, a complaint call to the
manufacturer is also highly recommended. Compatibility of Mac hardware
has always been a cornerstone of the Apple community. It's harder to
police, though, in the converging PC world of USB and Firewire.
Sometimes, the old days of a secretary seem attractive. Just
somebody to TypeIt4Me, you know? Actually, it's mostly those
repetitive phrases that get me, like: "I'm so glad that you and I had
this chance for a few important and personal words between friends."
All Hail TypeIt4Me, which will do just the trick, reducing
repetitive phrases to a single key combination. So instead of typing
"We should really get together soon for some lunch and a few laughs,"
you can just type a key shortcut or an abbreviation (that you
specify). TypeIt4Me is so great that it's available in Italian, French
and Dutch versions--as well as the English, of course.
Some of you may recall that I recommended this handy utility
previously, in which case you're probably already hooked. However,
you'll also likely be interested to know there's recently been an
update released (the first in a year and a half). If you're not using
version 4.8.2, your Ms. Hathaway may need a quick update.
These days, RAM is king when it comes to running modern
applications. Here's the forklift analogy to help you understand the
difference between hard drive memory and RAM memory: Your hard drive
is like a warehouse full of boxes of information--the more memory, the
larger your warehouse. Software like Web browsers, graphics programs,
and email are like forklifts that move the boxes around--and RAM is
the fuel that runs the forklift. The more RAM, the more stuff you can
move around.
Get it?
So if your software runs slowly (especially memory hogs like Adobe
Photoshop or a Web browser with a full arsenal of plug-ins like Flash,
Shockwave, RealAudio, etc.), your path of least resistance is to buy a
RAM upgrade.
Let's get down to the basic cheese. If you're going crazy trying to
get that pointer to point correctly, it may be because your mouse is
swimming in dust-bunnies.
Every now and then, when you find yourself banging your mouse
around trying to make it behave, take a time out and give it a
defunking instead: Flip it over, carefully push and twist the plate
surrounding the ball, and the back will pop off. Plop out the ball,
and inspect the workings. A good hearty BLOW is likely to dislodge
free-floating bits of grunge. Also you can gently take your finger and
guide the wheels that touch the mouse, while pushing slightly
off-center to dislodge the Ring of Grime that may have built up on
those wheels.
For particularly tough build-up, use a cotton swab dipped in a bit
of rubbing alcohol. The alcohol will help break up that grime, and
then quickly evaporate.
It's worth occasionally pointing out those little investments that
make computing a more pleasant experience--and one of my great faves
for nearly a decade has been the Kensington Turbo Mouse.
This device, which retails for $109, beats your average mouse
hands-down for ease of use, ergonomic correctness, and functionality.
With up to four programmable buttons, you can set it up to
double-click automatically, send things to print with a single click,
or even open your favorite applications with a single click.
Three cheers, the folks at Kensington have finally elected to make
the Turbo Mouse in a USB configuration, so if you've got a USB-capable
Mac, now you can know the wonders of the Turbo Mouse, as well.
The military has a situation called FUBAR. It stands for "Fouled up
beyond recognition"(approximately). You undoubtedly know that this
also happens on your Mac sometimes, usually resulting in a frozen
screen or a system that just won't respond. Usually at that point,
you've got to restart and maybe lose what you were working on.
For these times, I'm going to tell you the secret LAST DITCH
EFFORT.
If you've got a system that's not responding, but the mouse is
still movable; or you've got a frozen clock cursor, but nothing else
is working, you can try to shake things loose using a programming
command demanding your Mac to GO TO THE FINDER, DO NOT PASS GO:
Command-Power. (Yes, I'm referring to the Power-On button on your
keyboard.) If an empty dialog box pops up, you may be (and that's a
big maybe) in luck. Try typing "g" or "g finder" (no quotation marks)
and hitting return. If Fate smiles, this command will toss you out of
whatever snafu has happened back into the loving, but confused arms of
the Mac OS. At which point you should restart your Mac IMMEDIATELY.
Be aware though: While this command has saved my hiney on numerous
occasions, I'd say it works less than 50 percent of the time. If it
doesn't work, your system will probably freeze and you'll have to do a
hard-restart (which you were going to have to do anyway, right?).
To hard-restart a frozen Mac, hold down Shift-Command and press the
Power-On key. (Last note: Sometimes even this doesn't work and you
have to unplug your Mac or press the Power or Reset button on the Mac
itself--if your Mac has such a button.)
Previously, we looked at a couple of dynamite Internet font
resources to spice up your computing. Today, one more to chew on:
MyFonts.com is a Web site devoted to fonts done by font
aficionados. There's the TypeXplorer, a tool to browse the 10,000 font
database by adjusting thickness, width, height, and other font
variables. Find a font you like and the TypeXplorer displays a graphic
preview, even allowing you to "testdrive" the font with your own text.
You can browse by font styles, font names, font designers, or font
foundries.
For the most part, you'll have to pony up some cash to become the
proud owner of the fonts on this site, but it's a great place to
explore the fascinating world of digital typography and the designers
behind it.
This one's simple: Dig up an extra mouse or go out and buy a new
(cheap, even!) one. Nothing improves the laptop experience (in desktop
situations) like a real mouse. And the little bugger takes up so
little space that you can pack it with you easily on your worldly
ventures, Ace.
Forget about "Red Planet," there's a safer way to find intelligent
life in the universe. You can participate in the SETI@Home project,
the largest shared computing project ever.
Best if you have a DSL line at home (or run it at the office; it's
not a bandwidth hog), the SETI@Home screensaver works while you're
away by analyzing bite-sized chunks of radiotelescope data and
reporting back to the Berkeley-based project that works with SETI
(Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence), popularized in the movie
"Contact."
The official word: "As of February, 2000, SETI@home has grown to
encompass 1.6 million participants in 224 countries. The amount of
computing time contributed since May 1999 is equal to 165,000 years,
averaging 10 Teraflops (about 10 times more than the largest
supercomputer on the planet). It is the largest computation ever done,
and has attracted the participation of 20,000 groups such as schools
and private companies."
Pitch in! It's FREE (unlike building your own Very Large Array).
Previously, we discussed the importance of adequate RAM to keep
today's memory-hungry applications running in top form. Today, a
"classic" OS quandary.*
Say you're running a bunch of applications and want to recapture
some RAM by quitting one or more programs. You quit them, but when you
check the About This Computer box, the numbers remain unchanged and no
RAM has been made available.
Why doesn't quitting apps free up memory?
Your system memory (RAM) is fragmented, which means the free memory
is broken up into little chunks (metaphorically, that is--your actual
RAM is in fine shape). Memory fragmentation occurs after you open and
close a lot of applications. To fix this situation, you'll have to
quit everything and restart your Mac. You'll now find that more free
memory is available.
* With the approaching advent of Mac OSX, this problem goes the way
of the big lizards.
Everybody knows word processing beats the heck out of a typewriter.
No whiteout! But extensive keyboarding also beats the heck out of your
wrists. Can you say Carpal Tunnel Syndrome?
If you do a lot of word processing at your Mac, you should think
about an ergonomic split keyboard to ease the strain. Your wrists will
thank you every day for this minor investment of 60 or 70 bucks. My
longstanding favorite is the Adesso Tru-Form split keyboard. This
company also makes old-style serial or newer-tech USB models.
Tired of all those system fonts your Mac came with? Well, my
typographical friend, lucky for you the Internet is just teeming with
free fonts, which you can download and install to jazz up your word
processing or graphic design.
Simply download that special font that's caught your fancy, unstuff
it and drag it to the Fonts folder in your System Folder. Fonts for
Macs and PCs differ somewhat, so in your search, you'll want to look
for either Mac PostScript fonts or Mac TrueType fonts. Both are widely
available.
One of my favorite font sites is Chank.com. Chank.com is the work
of Minneapolis' Chank Diesel, self-proclaimed Alphabetician. His site
blends wise-ass humor with a constantly updated selection of
custom-designed fonts, many of which are free. Among the feathers in
his cap is the typography used on a lot of Taco Bell advertising.
Chank
http://www.chank.com
Another mighty fine font site with a number of free selections is
Astigmatic One Eye Foundry. A free font section can be found here:
You may have seen a recent Intel commercial featuring three strange
men who are, well, completely blue. The much-celebrated Blue Man Group
has been doing its rollicking "mimes from space" schtick for years
now, but it was a little surprising to see them show up in an Intel
(read: Windows processor chip) commercial.
Y'see, when it comes to running its complicated live show, the Blue
Man Group relies on Macs.
If you've got a Powerbook or an iBook sitting active on a desk for
many hours a day, you may occasionally have problems with it acting
skittery after a while. Because of all the compressed circuitry,
laptops can sometimes overheat, making them behave erratically.
Here's the quickest and cheapest solution that you'll ever hear for
this problem: Take a fat pen--a highlighter, for instance--and wedge
it up under the middle under your open laptop, between the desk and
the machine, at the 6 o'clock position. This little bit of incline
will be enough to get some cool air underneath your machine, but not
enough to bother you when you're typing.
Extra two bits: Another personal fave for this scenario is to flip
over an old wireframe "In" box and set the laptop on that.
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