Mac Tips and Tricks From Mobia

Look out to the internet to explode to day with information and coverage about the Tablet announcement. Head over to any number of tech blogs to catch up on all the rumors about what might happen later to day. Either way enjoy!

Tags: Tablet.

Just in case you live under a rock… The Apple Tablet is coming. It looks like they have filed a ton of patents having to do with multitouch technology and large looking iPhone things. They also bought the domain iSlate.com through a front company. Here’s a video with more information.

Tags: Apple Tablet, iSlate.

As of late Apple has been trying to figure out a way to progress technology and the way you watch TV to the next era, but Comcast, in it’s usual anti-innovation bent, has purchased NBC in an attempt it prevent a shift in the market away from set top boxes and cable companies.  The implications of this is huge.  It’s been almost a century since one company has owned the entire entertainment pipeline.  Comcast’s purchase of NBC would mean they control both the production, distribution and exhibition sectors of the market.  This should never be allowed due to the enormous antitrust issues.  Edison was the last one to do this and look how that turned out.  Independent filmmakers were forced to flee New York (First to South Florida and Cuba, then California) to get away from Edison and his goons.

While companies like Apple attempt to push the market forward into the future, there is Comcast (and others) who refuse to innovate or roll over and die.  The enormous power these companies have with lobbying and money they are going to stick around for a while, unless we as the consumers stand up for our rights and refuse to support such anti-innovation/anti-competitive practices.

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Tags: SEO, Usability.

Looks like the free market is working again…  and I’m sure at&t is not very happy.  Think about it…  you can get a full data plan from at&t for $30/mo. and get a number and unlimited calling with skype for about $5/mo.

While there are small hang-ups that don’t allow this to work flawlessly.  First, you can only receive skype calls when the skype application is running…  This is a huge pain.  The second, but smaller hang-up is that the bluetooth doesn’t work with it…  bummer and they should really fix that quickly.

Tags: iphone, ipod, ipod touch, skype, touch.

So I’ve been torn between getting the Wind or the AAO to fulfill my hackintosh desires.  MSI Just released the u120 which is a much sleeker body style, but sacrifices in that you cannot upgrade the ram and it lack bluetooth.  The older model (u100) has the expansion slot (expandable up to 2Gigs) and bluetooth, but the track pad is really small and the look isn’t as nice as the new model.  Then theres the AAO…  Acer just released a 10.1in screen version (up from 8in) which was the main reason I was leaning towards the MSI.  So now it’s back in the running (but it is only expandable to 1.5Gigs and lack Bluetooth.  Also the AAO is a little more cumbersome to Hackintosh than the MSI wind.  I’ll let you guys know what I go with.

Tags: AAO, Hackintosh, MSI, OS X, wind.

Built into every installation of Leopard is a wonderful app called spaces.  You can enable it in the System Preferences under Exposé and Spaces.  You can have a grid of up to 16 spaces, but I have it set to four spaces and I have the “Show spaces in menu bar” checked so I can keep track of where I am.

Once you have it up and running you can switch between your spaces using ctrl+arrow keys.  Another option is to hit F8 (you probably have to hit the fn key with that).  This will zoom you out to see all your spaces at once.  In this view you can choose another space, move the order of your spaces around by clicking and dragging (must be off of a window), or you can move widows arround to other spaces(clicking the window and dragging).

A third more advanced option that I came up with involves a mouse.  On many mouses these days there is a button directly behind the scroll wheel that is for switching between programs (it’s like cmd+tab, but it’s meant for windows and usually does nothing in OS X).  I downloaded a program called SteerMouse that allows you to customize all the buttons on your mouse.  It isn’t free, but it’s only $20 and you can get a full featured trial to try it out.  I used SteerMouse to map the F8 key to the button on my mouse and now can pop into spaces and move around my workspace much faster.

If you have any thoughts, suggestions, or just want to make fun of me feel free to leave a comment.

Tags: preferences, productivity, spaces.

Did you know that you can have all the functionality of a mouse scroll wheel on your multi-touch trackpad?  In stead of going to the side bar to scroll through long web pages or documents, just use two fingers on your track pad.

To enable this feature open up System Preferences (It’s in the Apple menu at the top left of your screen).  Once in System Preferences choose Keyboard & Mouse -> Trackpad -> “Use two finger scrolling.”  You might also want to check “Allow horizontal scrolling”.  And thats it…  now try it out.

Tags: arthritis, fingers, gesture, multitouch, preferences, scroll, trackpad.

Say you have a certain picture on your Desktop that you want to open in Photoshop to do some color correction.  Normally you would open Photoshop, wait for it to load, then go to file open, browse to your Desktop, Select the file and hit ok.  While this is all fine and dandy, there is a much faster way.  Simply drag the file from your desktop to the photoshop icon.  You can do this with any file.  The dock icon will darken if OS X deems it as the propper file type for that program.  If you want to force the program to open the file simply hold the alt/option to force the program to attempt to open the file.

notice the icon darkens

Tags: applications, dock.

If you’re new to a mac one of the most useful tips concerns quitting applications.  Ulike in windows where clicking the X at the top right of the window quits the program, OS X handles things a little differently.

On a mac, programs have the ability to “run” but have no open windows.  To quickly see what programs are currently running look to the dock.  Any program with a small triangle (Tiger) or blue glowing dot (Leopard) is currently running whether you have a window open or not.  This is useful because it means you don’t have to wait for the program to load back up if you decide you want to look at another webpage after just closing that safari window.

If you do want to fully quit a program you have a couple options.

1. You can simply hit command + Q and the program will quit.
2. With the desired application selected, click the application name on the menu bar in the upper-lefthand corner of the screen, then choose quit.
3. You can contextual click (“right” click, control + click, two-finger click or click and hold) the desired application icon on the dock, then choose quit.

This is something you want to watch out for because even if a program doesn’t have any windows open it’s still taking up valuble processing resource.  So, quit those apps when your not using them.  Your mac will be happy you did and so will you.

Tags: performance, Quitting.