MacTips - for Mark's new Mac

imathis

I figure handy little tips might be nice, kind of like a house warming present for Mark's LussumoBook Pro, or perhaps more of a lap warming present, but I don't like where this is going I'll start off with a few. Don't stone me if you know them already.

1. Spell Check on input fields
While typing this I can press cmd+shift+; to do a spell check on this input field... pretty sweet.

2. Right click - Mac style!
If you miss right click, on your new lbp you can enable a special two finger right click option through the preference pane. Just put two fingers on your track-pad and click with your thumb. Pretty sweet. (you may have to be running 10.4.7 depending on your manufacturing date)

3. Butler > Quicksilver
Use butler for your launcher/etc. It's better than quicksilver and it does a ton more with ease and simplicity. It may take a little while to learn all that it can do, but it's truly the best.

Bergamot

Repairing Permissions fixes all problems. (Ok, really it doesn't, but it feels like you're doing something productive)

3stripe

Smultron - nice tabbed text editor with syntax highlighting
Transmit FTP - nice tabbed FTP program
Amule - if you want to run eMule on a Mac

jeffbax

SeaShore (http://seashore.sf.net) - Free Image Editor based on GIMP but with Cocoa Interface Vienna (http://vienna-rss.sourceforge.net/vienna2.php) - open source RSS aggregator Transmission (http://transmission.m0k.org/) - OS bittorrent (not as featureful as say Azureus but much faster) svnX (http://www.lachoseinteractive.net/en/community/subversion/svnx/features/) - awesome cocoa SVN frontend pixen (http://www.opensword.org/Pixen/) - the best sprite art program. period. colloquy (http://colloquy.info/) - best IRC app ever! adiumX (http://www.adiumx.com) -.... best IM client ever ;) cyberduck (http://cyberduck.ch/) - awesome FTP/SFTP client. growl (http://growl.info/) - system event notification All 100% free and likely free software/open source as well. As for Butler vs Quicksilver... Quicksilver does so much more than just launching apps.

Crypt

Journler ( http://journler.phildow.net ) - free journal and weblog editing app with a great UI and tons of features such as video and voice recording, iLife integration and more. SolarSeek ( http://solarseek.sourceforge.net ) - I am a developer and project manager of this app. It's free and open source. Just a native soulseek client, but since we are re-writing it, don't use it :-p . Objective C, sockets, and network programming are a pain in the ass, which is why we are going to use Python specifically this library http://twistedmatrix.com/projects/core/documentation/howto/servers.html from this site http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/ . Wow I really rambled on that last one. Sorry bout that. forgot to add SubEthaEdit ( http://codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/index.html ) - Best colloborative text editor. AppZapper ( http://appzapper.com ) - Although it's shareware, it's a fun way to get apps and other things off your computer and into the trash. Delicious Library - ( http://delicious-monster.com ) - Fun and cool book/dvd/music/and more catalogging. Senuti - ( http://fadingred.org/senuti/ ) - Free and open source app with and iTunes like interface that allows your to rip your music off your ipod and back onto your computer.

Mark

This is awesome - keep the tips coming - I don't know squat about this thing...

3stripe

+1 for Adium, it's a neat way to do Google, AIM and MSN all in one box, and you can even write your own css styles for it

imathis

"As for Butler vs Quicksilver... Quicksilver does so much more than just launching apps."

Yeah I know. I used to use it all the time. I'm just saying butler is definatly worth a try. Binding actions to hot corners, smart application control, great pasteboards, and abbreviation based launching are just a few features that it does better. Yeah I know that quicksilver has a few aces up it's sleves, but it's just not my style.

4. TextPander
This app is awesome for text replacement. If you're tired of typing out repetitive information in forms or emails, you can set text replacements for that info. If you were going to type "Your Lord and Master, Mark" you could assign that to ylam or something else you woudn't normally type. Note: this app used to be free, but they are selling the latest version.

This is the last free version

enjoy

Bergamot

++ for Smultron and Transmit Chax fixes most of the major problems with iChat, making it pretty darn nice to use as long as your contacts all use AIM. Also, somewhere I have a super tip for triggering Expose with the "enter" key in the lower right (next to the arrow keys). Nobody ever uses it for anything, but the Expose dialog won't let you pick it without some voodoo. Of course, I've misplaced that tip, so it may be a while before I can post it.

3stripe

Intersting. I have Expose triggered in the bottom left and bottom right of the screen, which is great for me, but messes with head of anyone else who ever touches my Mac

imathis

Adium double plus good!
very configurable and minimalistic

5. iPodDisk
iPodDisk allows you to browse your ipod music just like a file system except by artist, title, genre, or whatever.
href="http://ipoddisk.ourbiti.com/index.php/download/

6. Screen Shots
Since you said you don't know anything about your new mac, here's a simple screenshot taking guide. All screenshots are saved to your desktop as Picture #.png.
cmd+shift+3 - Screenshot of your whole desktop
cmd+shift+4 - Allows you to draw a box with your mouse to screenshot
cmd+shift+4 then space - Cursor turns into a camera icon, now you can just click an application window to take a screenshot of only that window

Just hit esc to cancel a screenshot

placenamehere

here's my take on some essentials... try all the free text editors you want.. but you'll probably wind up with textmate anyway: http://macromates.com/ Netnewswire for feed reading: http://ranchero.com/ grab full screen web pages + thumbnails with paparazzi: http://www.derailer.org/paparazzi/ ditch safari + firefox and use Camino (for web browsing): http://www.caminobrowser.org/ carbon copy cloner for full drive mirroring/backups: http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html neo office is shaping up: http://neooffice.org/ x-tunes for quick access to itunes: http://www.pol-online.net/index.php?page=freeware

jeffbax

I bind all my expose functions to my mouse buttons.

imathis

On Carbon Copy Cloner, it's good, but not the best. which leads me to:

7. SuperDuper (link)
If you are serious about backups you'll pay the 27 bucks for SuperDuper. I did and It's well worth it.
Here is an article reviewing all backup software for OS X SuperDuper is the only one that faithfully copies all aspects of a file including resource forks and metadata. It also has a smart backup feature that only copies the files that have changed. I've nearly filled all 80GB of my powerbook and it only takes me about 15 minutes to smart update my external firewire drive.

LoOkOuT

Someone mentioned screengrabs.
For quick screengrabs, this widget is brilliant:

(linky)

And while were on productivity widgets, you'll need this:

(linky)

Mark

ditch safari + firefox and use Camino

I tried camino, but there is one huge problem with it for me: the x's on the tabs. I find myself clicking between tabs like a mad fiend most of the time, and because the x is right on the tab, I accidentally close tabs all the damn time. I prefer how the x is always over to the right like in firefox...

3stripe

Turn off the x's and use keyboard shortcuts is what I say, whatever da browser. Personally I use firefox cos the extensions rock. That said, http://pimpmysafari.com/ has some good shiiiiit

imathis

It took me a while to get used to Safari instead of FireFox. Now I only use FF for testing. Big help was SafariBlock & SafariStand. The main reason I use Safari is that it looks so much nicer than firefox (in that it's consistant with the mac user interface), and seems to handle a bit better than camino.

Go to: http://pimpmysafari.com/ for all your addon goodness

Edit: I just remembered two reasons why I love about on Safari:

Activity Menu (cmd+option+a)
This menu shows all the files that a webpage loads. If you accidentally mis-link, you can catch the reason easily here. Also it's great for when you're browsing sites and you just want to grab one item or wihtout having to view source code.

Smart Source Viewer (cmd+option+u)
You can make changes to the source and hit reload on the source viewer and it will display the update the website in Safari. Sometimes that's just faster.

Ben

For the next version of Firefox they're putting the crosses on individual tabs.

WallPhone

Useability tests show x's on tabs is better logical grouping of function to the object it represents, and thus more user-friendly. I believe that is the reason Firefox is going that way.

I always figured the tab should have the X, but be grayed when the tab is not topmost. Then if you want to close, you double click while over the X--once to activate it's tab, and once to close it.

Effectively eliminates the accidentally closing of an inactive tab because that would require two clicks.

3stripe

+1 for Activity Menu on Safari... is there a plugin for Firefox that does something similar. It's bloody handy if you're working in Flash etc when working with external content, as you can see exactly what's happening....