This post: 50 Things Every Mac Geek Should Know is pretty good except that a lot of the tips are for the iPhone and iPod. Some of the more useful ones cover:
This post from techradar has some good tips comparing how things are done on a Mac compared to what you might be used to in Windows. It includes a number of very basic actions that we do all the time and which can be frustrating to figure out if you don’t know where to look.
Belkin has just released a new product to help in the transition from a PC to a Mac. It is a cable that goes between the two computers and transfer files, settings, preferences, and more with the Migration Assistant.
It costs $50. It is compatible with Windows XP or Windows Vista and with Mac OS X v10.4 and v10.5.
On a PC you can use the keyboard to select buttons in dialog boxes in 2 ways: using the shortcut key (Alt + the underlined letter) or by the tab key to go to the next control. On the Mac you are stuck using the mouse: or are you?
Here’s a tip from Mac Tips and Tricks: Go to System Preferences (under the Apple icon in the Menu Bar) and then select Keyboard & Mouse. Select the Keyboard Shortcuts tab and look at the very bottom of the window. The control is called Full Keyboard Access. The default tab that is selected is Text boxes and lists only. Change that to All controls and you are set. From now on hitting the tab key will move between all the controls, including the buttons.
In Windows to dismiss a window you can click on the X in the upper right of the window. As explained in a previous post, there is an equivalent on the Mac, the red circle with an x in the upple left. But there is a small gotcha difference. In Windows, if it is the main application window that you close by clicking on the X it also quits the application. However, on the Mac with a few exceptions (System Preferences, Dictionary, and Calculator) the window will close but the application will continue to run. This is not a big deal but it will eat up some of your memory and may lead to unexplained behaviour.
To really quit the appication, use the Quit command in the Menu Bar under the application name, the keyboard shortcut command-Q, or right (control) click on the icon in the dock and select Quit.
This doesn’t particularly have anything to do with switching from a PC to a Mac but is more a public service because I think it is good to spread this information as widely as possible.
If you would like to opt out of targeted ads from Yahoo or Google this can now be done at their websites. It is done by placing a special cookie on your site that tells those two servers not to place their own tracking cookies there. For Google this also include Doubleclick cookies (Google bought Doubleclick).
Since cookies are browser-specific you have to visit these pages in each of the browsers you use and opt out for each. If you already block cookies from these sites then this procedure isn’t necessary (or possible since it works by placing a special cookie in your system).
Here are the pages to visit:
Previously you could subscribe to a Google calendar but not sync with it from iCal the built in calendar program that comes with MacOS. That meant that you could only edit the calendar on Google but see the events both in Google and in iCal on your Mac. Now, with syncing you can make the changes in either place.
The instructions are on this google page and there’s no point in me repeating them (and if they change it’s better to have the pointer than my out of date version).
After you’ve done this and the calendars sync you might see 2 versions of your events. If you’re like me and had subscribed to that calendar, just go to the calendar under Subscriptions and Delete it.
I recently ran into a problem with my iTunes where every time I would start it, almost immediately it would freeze: that is, I could see all my music, it was trying to download new podcasts, and the spinning rainbow wheel came up and wouldn’t go away. Going to Force Quit showed iTunes not responding.
After looking around the web for help I saw that the iTunes database can easily get messed up. One of the reasons is a “bad” podcast. Recently I had a problem with a podcast that would appear to download (I watched it complete in the download window) but afterwards it didn’t appear in the list of podcasts. I went to the website of the podcast and watched it there and didn’t think anything of it but at this point I guessed that it was causing my problem.
The solution offered on the web when this happens is to remove your iTunes database and then reimport all your music. I moved out the files and sure enough iTunes did work again. However, this solution would have required me to resubscribe to all my podcasts again and there are way more than I want to have to add manually.
So I figured out on my own a much better way to do it.
First, run the PropertyListEditor application (that comes with your Mac) and open the file: /username/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iTunes.plist that is under your user account. N.B. with any playing around with files like this make sure to BACKUP the original file.
Click on the triangle next to Root to see the list of cookies. Near the top of the list will be disablePodcasts and it will be set to No (meaning that you can watch or listen to podcasts). Click on the word No and select Yes (to disable podcasts). Then save the file.
Restart iTunes and it should now work but the word Podcasts will now be missing from the Library.
Bring up the iTunes Preferences (from the menu bar) and go to the Parental tab. Uncheck the Disable Podcasts box. Then go to the Podcasts tab and change the menu option for Check for new episodes to Manually. Click on OK and Podcasts should be back in your Library but now they won’t download until you update them manually.
If you are not sure which podcast is causing the problem you will have to use trial and error to find the problem by updating/downloading the podcast and seeing if it freezes again (and force quiting and restarting iTunes). In my case, I could see on the list of podcasts the one that it was trying to download (the greyed out name appeared) when it froze and that probably was the problem. This was good because it was the podcast I already suspected.
When you have found the problem podcast Delete it and then resubcribe to just that one podcast. Update that podcast to test and hopefully it will now succeed. Click on the Refresh button (in the lower right) and see that all the pending podcasts download without freezing.
Finally, go back to the Preference for Podcasts and change the Check for new episodes menu to be what you normally want. Overall, it is a bit of work but a lot less than reimporting your library and resubscribing to all your podcasts.
Fluid is a very interesting application that will take any web page and make into a regular Mac application that lives in the Application folder and can go in the Dock. And it is free.
After downloading and installing Fluid, run it and you will see the following window:
Copy and paste (or type) the URL/web address of any web page into the URL field, give the “application” a name and then Create it. Now you have a new application that you can run like any other on your Mac and it will bring up the web page in its own window.
There are several advantages of this compared to running an application in a browser window (or tab). You can launch it easily (from the Dock, Quicksilver, Spotlight, etc.), fix it into a Space, arrange it with other windows, etc. Another big advantage is that if your browser crashes or freezes, it won’t stop the application. I am currently running a Pandora “application” and it’s nice to know that the music will continue regardless of what happens in other applications.
One other capability of Fluid is that its applications can be placed on the right hand side of the Menu Bar (these are called Menu Extras). To do this, select the application and then from its main menu (the one under the name you gave it), select the command Convert to MenuExtra SSB…, and then OK.
Good candidates for Fluid applications are those that you use a lot and have application-like functionality. These include Google Mail, Google Docs, and Basecamp. Or just pages you access a lot, like YouTube.
You’re used to finding things in certain places on your machine but on a Mac the places are different. Here’s some help finding things. I’m going to go down the list on the left side of Windows Explorer and point out where you’ll find things in the Mac Finder.
Desktop: hurray it’s the same name in both systems. In the Finder it’s usually the first item under Places.
Local Disk C:, D:, etc. These hardware devices are similar except they are listed by name and without the letter. The default name for the boot disk in MacOS is Macintosh HD (corresponding to C:). All the hardware is listed in the Finder under Devices.
My Documents: This is called Documents on the Mac and is usually found under Places. (Note that you can move anything into and out of the Finder by dragging it, so yours may look different.) The actual folders are located in the following places (Windows: boot disk; Documents and Settings; username; My Documents. Mac: boot disk; Users; username; Documents)
Program Files: This folder is under the boot disk (usually C:) and it is where most of your programs are found. On the Mac it is called Applications and is usually found in Places. It is actually located under the boot disk just like in Windows.
Control Panel: on the Mac you access the same functionality via the System Preferences… which is under the Apple icon in the System Menu at the top left of your screen.
Media (Music, Pictures, Movies): in Windows these are under My Documents. On the Mac they are one level higher, under the folder associated with the username (so they are brothers to the Document folder instead of children).
System Files: in Windows these are in the Windows folder under the boot disk (usually C:). On the Mac (viewing through the Finder) they are in two folders found under the boot disk: System and Library. Actually there are many other system files but you need to be using the Terminal to see them (under root: / they are the directory names that do not start with capital letters)
My Network Places: This rather confusing hierarchy of machines in your workgroup and symbolic links to shared folders is much more simply displayed in the Mac in the Shared area on the left of the Finder.
Recycle Bin: It’s called the Trash on the Mac and is not in the Finder Places by default but you probably want to access via the user interface and not the Finder anyway. It’s icon is on the far right end of the Dock.