Taking Screen Shots of Specific Windows or Portions of the Screen
Windows has one button to take a screen shot: PrintScreen. It takes a copy of the screen and puts it into the clip board. That’s it.Mac lets you put files onto the desktop with one keystroke. Its easy, if you want to capture part of the screen and put the resulting screen shot on your desktop Command+Shift+4
How to Quit Programs in Mac OS X
Sometimes in Mac you have to quit programs because for one reason or another they hang. It took me 2 months of using my Mac before I had to learn how to do this. I challenge any windows user to go 2 months without a crash.Anyhow, hit COMMAND+OPTION+ESC and select the application that’s giving you fits. Hit, “Force Quit”.
You can also do this on the command line using the commands ps aux to list the PID’s and then kill -9 <pid> to kill the process. But isn’t command option esc so much nicer?
High Contrast on OS X
I have a friend who is visually challenged/disabled and likes to highlight things in windows so he can see them better. The Mac has a better solution though. OS X has a high contrast mode that you can enable and disable with a keystroke. CTRL+OPTION+APPLE+8Oh The Audacity…
When I made the switch, I missed my sound recorder. I make prank calls pseudo-professionally, and how can I be expected to preserve my craft without a reliable sound program?Enter Audacity. A free (as in beer), open source sound recorder and editor. It works at the most basic level like sound recorer, but offers some other really nice features. You can adjust the microphone sensitivity RIGHT inside the program This is handy for low talkers, or worse, loud talkers. Also, with the LAME library you can export your work in MP3. A huge plus.
Do You Miss Alt-Tab on Windows?
Mac OS X has a wonderful program called Expose. Essentially you pick a “Hot” corner on the screen. When you move your mouse there, they computer will cascade all the open windows and dim them. This lets you see everything open at one time. However, if you’re like me and have a ton of stuff open at the same time, it can get over whelming. If you’d like to cycle through the applications, hit the tab button. Once the correct one comes to the top, click the mouse. Forget that alt tab garbage!Launch Programs Faster On OS X using a Third Party Launcher
I’m all for making things easier. Let’s be honest, I don’t want to USE a computer. I want the computer to be an extension of my body. I wan’t to think about something and have it done. I don’t want to think about the goal, and then have to translate my thoughts to the computer to accomplish a goal. I want it to be SEAMLESS.Towards that end, I found a program called QuickSilver. It’s a very simple, elegant, launcher. The premise is, you hit a combination of keys, in this case CTRL + SPACE, and then start typing the name of the program you’d like to launch. This is really nice because you can only fit so many programs in the bottom tray, and sometimes it doesn’t make sense to keep rarely used programs in the tray. So, you just hit the hot key, and start typing. In this case, I’m searching for Photoshop. I type PhotoS and it pops it up. I hit enter, and it launches. You can do this for anything! Pictures, Music, Files. You don’t even need to type the name in order. To find PhotoShop, I could type in Shop Photo. It’ll search fragments.
Even better, it plugs in to programs like iTunes, and iPhoto. I have just been playing with it the last couple days and this is what I’ve figured out. There is a ton of stuff this program can do. If you have a good tip or trick, drop it in the comments box.
Ever Want a Closer Look?
The MacBook has an awesome hidden feature many may not know about. With OS X, you can zoom in on any part of the screen EXTREMELY far. Easily 100x or more. The key is to hold down the CTRL button while scrolling. For those of you that don’t know, you can scroll by placing two fingers on the MacBook trackpad and moving them around.The screen will then zoom around the cursor. So next time your buddy thinks he’s being funny by sending a thumbnail of a great … painting…. you’ll have the last laugh.
Don’t Use AOL Instant Messenger For Mac, Use Adium! A Great AIM Alternative for Mac!
If you use AIM on a daily basis like so many people, you’ve probably found AOL’s Client for OS X a little bit disappointing. Though iChat is a great program with lots of multimedia capability, it can leave you jonesing for more basic functionality. Adium is an open source initiative to bring robust messenging to OS X. It’s capable of chatting with AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Jabber and Google Talk.Adium is very expandable. People all over the world are writing improvements, themes,
and and bug fixes.
It’s a great system.Some of the features of Adium that you might not expect:
- Logging of conversations
- Time Stamping
- Themes
- “Invisible Mode”
You can download Adium (which has a really cool duck icon) here: Adium - Download
How to Easily Zip Files and Folders in Mac OS X
Select all of the files or folders you wish to zip, including a single folder if you wish, and right click on them. If you don’t have a right click button, hold down CTRL while clicking on them. Then, select Archive …How to Quit Programs in Mac OS X
Sometimes in Mac you have to quit programs because for one reason or another they hang. It took me 2 months of using my Mac before I had to learn how to do this. I challenge any windows user to go 2 months without a crash.Anyhow, hit COMMAND+OPTION+ESC and select the application that’s giving you fits. Hit, “Force Quit”.
You can also do this on the command line using the commands ps aux to list the PID’s and then kill -9 <pid> to kill the process. But isn’t command option esc so much nicer?
High Contrast on OS X
I have a friend who is visually challenged/disabled and likes to highlight things in windows so he can see them better. The Mac has a better solution though. OS X has a high contrast mode that you can enable and disable with a keystroke. CTRL+OPTION+APPLE+8Oh The Audacity…
When I made the switch, I missed my sound recorder. I make prank calls pseudo-professionally, and how can I be expected to preserve my craft without a reliable sound program?Enter Audacity. A free (as in beer), open source sound recorder and editor. It works at the most basic level like sound recorer, but offers some other really nice features. You can adjust the microphone sensitivity RIGHT inside the program This is handy for low talkers, or worse, loud talkers. Also, with the LAME library you can export your work in MP3. A huge plus.
Do You Miss Alt-Tab on Windows?
Mac OS X has a wonderful program called Expose. Essentially you pick a “Hot” corner on the screen. When you move your mouse there, they computer will cascade all the open windows and dim them. This lets you see everything open at one time. However, if you’re like me and have a ton of stuff open at the same time, it can get over whelming. If you’d like to cycle through the applications, hit the tab button. Once the correct one comes to the top, click the mouse. Forget that alt tab garbage!Launch Programs Faster On OS X using a Third Party Launcher
I’m all for making things easier. Let’s be honest, I don’t want to USE a computer. I want the computer to be an extension of my body. I wan’t to think about something and have it done. I don’t want to think about the goal, and then have to translate my thoughts to the computer to accomplish a goal. I want it to be SEAMLESS.Towards that end, I found a program called QuickSilver. It’s a very simple, elegant, launcher. The premise is, you hit a combination of keys, in this case CTRL + SPACE, and then start typing the name of the program you’d like to launch. This is really nice because you can only fit so many programs in the bottom tray, and sometimes it doesn’t make sense to keep rarely used programs in the tray. So, you just hit the hot key, and start typing. In this case, I’m searching for Photoshop. I type PhotoS and it pops it up. I hit enter, and it launches. You can do this for anything! Pictures, Music, Files. You don’t even need to type the name in order. To find PhotoShop, I could type in Shop Photo. It’ll search fragments.
Even better, it plugs in to programs like iTunes, and iPhoto. I have just been playing with it the last couple days and this is what I’ve figured out. There is a ton of stuff this program can do. If you have a good tip or trick, drop it in the comments box.
Ever Want a Closer Look?
The MacBook has an awesome hidden feature many may not know about. With OS X, you can zoom in on any part of the screen EXTREMELY far. Easily 100x or more. The key is to hold down the CTRL button while scrolling. For those of you that don’t know, you can scroll by placing two fingers on the MacBook trackpad and moving them around.The screen will then zoom around the cursor. So next time your buddy thinks he’s being funny by sending a thumbnail of a great … painting…. you’ll have the last laugh.
Mac Reference Guide
Peachpit Press makes this site avaialbe for free: http://www.peachpit.com/guides/guide.aspx?g=macBurn - burning application for Mac OS X
DVD burning is build
into the Macintosh Operating System; you don't need any extra software. Read
the instruction book that came with the MacBook but also see the free DVD
burning software for the MacBook above. Also if you, for example, need to be able to
copy a VIDEO_TS folder, and burn to another disc, or burn from disc image, LiquidCD is
good, and free.
Cleaning
Let’s clean the Macbook. But first a disclaimer: MACBOOKSPECIFICATIONS.COM is offering to the best of our knowledge excellent methods to clean your computer. HOWEVER, Doing anything to your computer, you assume all risk. We cannot be held liable for you putting your computer in the dishwasher. If you’re at all uncomfortable with the following, Compressed Air in a can can be bought at your local computer store, and a thin bristle paint brush can be bought at your local hardware store. They make a great combo as cheap computer cleaning supplies.In Preparation for Cleaning Your Computer
Shutdown you computer, unplug it from the power adapter, and remove the battery.
Get a clean, damp cloth. Make sure it’s lint free. Choose a fabric like cotton that’s not particularly linty. (Tip: if your cloth is linty, use a piece of tape to pull all of the lint off of it)
Make sure the cloth is just damp, if it’s dripping you’re going to have problems.
Clean the keyboard, trackpad, and screen. It should do a pretty good job of removing most of the gunk.
There are two additional things you can do, but are NOT recommended by Apple. See the disclaimer above.
1) Wet a cloth with Windex. Ring it out so it’s just damp. Use it to clean the screen. Focus on areas that are greasy, the rest can be cleaned with water.
2) If you’re getting yellow spots where your wrists/hands would rest, you can use NON-ACETONE, I repeat Nail Polish Remover WITHOUT ACETONE to get that off. It should clean it up very quickly, use sparingly. Did I mention NON ACETONE?
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