Simply Mac Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Tips & Tricks’

May 201202

4 Super Secret Terminal Tricks Dedicated to the Dock

by Mat Bitner

On a Mac, the Dock is the one utility that keeps us tied to our favorite applications. It keeps everything nice and neat, but did you know you can customize certain properties on your dock to make it more to your liking?

To start with, you’ll need to open the Terminal application (located in Applications/Utilities, or just type Terminal into Spotlight). Just type in the following commands and press enter to execute them. Once you’ve typed in your commands and tweaks, you need to restart the Dock for them to take effect. To restart the Dock, type the following command into Terminal:

killall Dock

To disable the tweak, just run the “Reversal Command” for that code.

1. Enable the Suck Minimize Effect

When you first turn on your Mac, you can choose from the default “Genie” minimize animation or change it to the simp “Scale” animation. There’s actually a hidden effect called “Suck.” To enable it, type in the command:

defaults write com.apple.dock mineffect suck

If you think Suck sucks, just change it back in System Preferences > Dock.

2. Enable iTunes Track Notifications

There are a ton of third party applications that put iTunes track notifications in the menubar, but you can have similar functionality in the dock by entering the following command in Terminal.

defaults write com.apple.dock itunes-notifications -bool TRUE

Now the iTunes icon will have a little bubble showing the artist and song title at a song change. If you start getting annoyed, just type in the same code and change true to FALSE.

3. Make List View Stacks like Grid View Stacks

Stacks are the nifty little fold icons that hangout near the trash icon in your dock. By default, the List view can look a little bland. The following command can zazz it up a little bit.

defaults write com.apple.dock use-new-list-stack -bool YES

To change it, just change yes to NO.

4. Line Up the Dock

The standard Dock preferences allow you to put it on the bottom of the screen, the left and right sides, but nothing else. You can position the Dock to your liking with the following commands in Terminal.

Pin the Dock to the Right:

defaults write com.apple.dock pinning -string "start"

Pin the Dock to the Left:

defaults write com.apple.dock pinning -string "end"

Pin the Dock to the default position (center):

defaults write com.apple.dock pinning -string "middle"

Personally, I have my dock on the left of my screen at the start since the menubar file system is always at the top left of the screen. But that’s my reasoning. Hopefully, with these Terminal commands you’ll be able to mix things up to your liking, and maybe wow your friends with your cool Terminal skills.

Got a question you’d like us to answer, tip or trick you’d like to tell us? Let us know in the comments, or post it on our Facebook wall. Don’t forget to follow us onTwitter and add us to your circles on Google+.

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Apr 201211

Tips & Tricks: Quick Access to Photo Stream

by Mat Bitner

If you’ve got an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch running iOS 5 or later, chance are you’ve signed up for a free iCloud account. iCloud is a pretty nifty little service that gives iDevice users a bunch of free options to use with their Apple gadget, one of which is Photo Stream. Once you’ve enabled Photo Stream on your device, any pictures you take or screen shots you make will automatically get uploaded to the internet on your own Photo Stream. Photo Stream can be really great when used with iPhoto because all your pictures will already be on your computer without you having to connect a cable and sync anything, pretty slick. Well, lets say that you don’t have iPhoto running all the time. That means you’ll have to wait for iPhoto to open and retrieve the new photos from your iCloud account. I’m gonna show you a cool little trick to getting Photo Stream in your Finder sidebar or even in your Dock.

1. Get Started

Assuming you have iCloud and use Photo Stream, you’ll need to access your Finder’s Library folder. The easiest way to do this is to click on the Finder icon in your Dock, then click on the word “Go” from the menubar. With the “Go” menu open, press and hold down the “option” key on your keyboard. Library will appear in the list where it wasn’t before. Click on Library and navigate to Application Support > iLifeAssesManagement > assets > sub. Within this folder are all your Photo Stream photos. In the search bar, type the word “image”.

2. Keep Going

From the Kinds menu that appears, select “Image”. Next, click on “sub” from the gray bar, and then click the “Save” button under the search bar. A little diaglog box appears that lets you rename the Smart Folder we are creating and will let you add it to your sidebar. Just leave the save location as the default “Saved Searches”. This is a great option if you want quick access to your pictures from photo stream. If you want them even faster, next, I’ll explain how to add this folder to your dock.

3. Options

Right click on the Smart Folder you just created in your sidebar and select “Open Enclosing Folder” from the menu. You’ll notice you can also remove the folder from the sidebar if you don’t want or need it there anymore. Once you’ve opened the enclosing folder, you’ll see a folder with the name you gave your saved search.

Now, just click and drag it to your dock. Because it’s a folder, you’ll only be able to put it next to other folders or next to your trash. Now you have quick one click access to the photos from your Photo Stream without having to waiting for iPhoto. Unfortunately, this is a one way process, there is now way to drag photos into this folder and have them appear on your iDevice. Nevertheless, I’ve found this emensly helpful and hope you will too.

Got a question you’d like us to answer, tip or trick you’d like to tell us? Let us know in the comments, or post it on our Facebook wall. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and add us to your circles on Google+.

 

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Apr 201204

Ask Simply Mac: Fresh Start Without Reinstalling OSX

by Mat Bitner

Dear Simply Mac,

I’ve had my Mac for a long time now. I’ve been told a bunch of times that I should do a clean install of the operating system on my Mac. The problem is, I don’t have my install discs anymore and my Mac is a PowerBook G4, so I can’t install the newer operating systems. My Mac has been great, but I want to give it a new lease on life without having to buy a new one. Can you help?

-Old School Mac User

Well Old School, that can be a tricky situation. While I definitely recommend performing a clean installation, typically once a year, not having the discs that came with your computer or any compatible OSX discs can be a problem. The biggest reason a clean installation is recommended, is because over time your computer settings, applications, and data, can become so altered that your computer does not perform the way it should. It can be a chore. Whenever I perform a clean install on my Macs, it usually takes anywhere between several hours to a day, or more. It really depends on how much data you have. The nice thing is that it gets everything back to square one, and forces you to reevaluate the applications you have on your computer. I download a bunch of applications I try once or twice and then never use again, a clean install gets those off my computer and reminds me that I don’t want or need those apps.

In your case, you can make the most of it by creating a new user on your computer. Click on the Apple logo at the top left corner of the screen and choose System Preferences. Click on Users & Groups, then click on the lock icon towards the bottom left of the window, to unlock the preference pane. Type in your computer password if you have one. Click on the plus icon to create a new user. Be sure to choose Administrator from the “New Account” option. Then just fill in the information with whatever you like, and click on “Create User”.

Now that you have a new user, backup any and all files and folders you want to bring to your new user and log out. Make sure you’ve closed any open programs, as you won’t be returning to this user. Click on the Apple logo again and choose “Log Out”. At the login page, click on the new user you just created. Type in your password if you made one. Here is your new user profile. It’ll be like starting up a brand new Mac. Now go back into the Users & Groups section of your System Preferences and unlock the preference pane by clicking on the lock icon. Now, click on your old account and click on the minus icon. This will present a new window giving you a few options for what to do with the user. You’ll want to choose “Delete the home folder” or the equivalent for your operating system. This will wipe out your old user and all that account’s altered settings and wonky preferences.

It’ll take a bit of work before you’re up and running with your new user profile, but all of your applications will be there, as well as any settings that are system-wide, like network settings and other various system settings. It may not offer the same level a clean install would, but this method works well when you’re without that option.

Got a question you’d like us to answer, tip or trick you’d like to tell us? Let us know in the comments, or post it on our Facebook wall. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and add us to your circles on Google+.

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Mar 201228

4 Simple Ways to Speed Up Your Mac

by Mat Bitner

So you’ve had your Mac for a while now, and love how great it was when you got it home. Everything seemed so snappy, it was beyond comparing it to your old computer. You notice, however, that little by little the computer seems to lag a bit. The problem only seems to get worse the more you use your computer. What’s the deal?

As with most things in life, your Mac needs to be maintained. If you don’t maintain the hardware and software, you may become very frustrated with what used to be an amazing piece of technology. Here are a few ways to maintain or even boost your computer’s performance.

1. Desktop Backgrounds

One nifty feature that comes standard with all Mac computers is the ability to change your desktop’s background wallpaper automatically. In the “Desktop” section of System Preferences under the “Desktop & Screen Saver” setting, there is an option to have this automatic feature happen at different intervals. If you’ve selected “Every 5 seconds” or “every minute,” you can be taking away a hefty amount of system resources from your Mac. I’d say “Every 5 minutes” is even a stretch. The less frequent you have your Mac changing your desktop background picture, the more responsive it’ll be with all the other activities you have it doing.

2. De-Clutter Your Desktop

If you’ve tranitioned from a PC to a Mac, you’re probably used to loading up your desktop with icons. After all, they’re just little icons. Because of the way OSX handles its graphical system, the icons on your desktop take up a lot more of your resources than you may realize. Finder has all the organization you should need right within your user folder. Put all your documents in the documents folder, copy your photos to iPhoto, move your files around so that they fit an organization that makes sense to you. Give your files a home, and don’t keep them on the desktop for too long.

3. Get more RAM

RAM, or random access memory, also referred to as memory, (not hard drive storage) is one of the best ways to boost your Mac’s performance. Depending on how long you’ve had your Mac and how much came with it, you may or may not need more RAM. However, it’s always a fair bet that increasing your RAM will give your Mac a noticeable speed boost. Upgrading RAM usually shortens shutdown and startup times, and drastically limits how often you see the spinning beach-ball when accessing files, like pictures or videos.

4. Upgrading Your HDD

HDD stands for hard disk drive, and is the device that stores all of your digital delights. Documents, movies, pictures, music, apps, all of it is stored on your hard drive. The thing is, the more stuff you’ve got, the more the space on your hard drive gets used up. I tend to lean towards the notion that if you have less than one tenth of your hard drive’s original capacity remaining, it’s time to look for a bigger hard drive. You can also backup the files you use less frequently to an external hard drive or flash drive, or delete the files you no longer need, to recoup more space on your hard drive.

Try out these tips the next time you notice your Mac acting sluggish. Got a suggestion for speeding up your Mac that I missed? Add your input to the comments section, or post it on our Facebook wall. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and add Simply Mac to your circles on Google+.

 

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Mar 201226

What Do All The Symbols Mean?

by Meredith Carlile

Sometimes transitioning from a Windows operating system to a Mac OS is a little tricky. One of the things I struggle with are the symbols and hot key combinations, like this: ^⌘J. What does this mean?

Here’s the low down on what it all those symbols mean.

⌘ = command

⌥ = option

⌃ = control

ñ = shift

⏏ = eject

So, now you are all set to learn some super cool hotkeys, because really, what isn’t cool about hotkeys?

 = ⌥ñK

Instantly turn off your display = ⌃ñ⏏

Home & End = Home: ⌃A, End: ⌃E

Zoom in/out = ⌘+ or ⌘-

Open Computer = ⌘ñC

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Mar 201221

New iPad Battery Boot-Camp

by Mat Bitner

During the time I still had it, my first generation iPad was the king of maintaining its battery charge. To me, the iPad defined what a mobile device should be. Nearly limitless utility without needing to charge it when it wasn’t convenient. On a single charge I could use my iPad for days to check email, browse the web, read news, listen to music, or whatever I wanted to do. If my iPhone or MacBook needed to be charged, I turned to my iPad to provide all the entertainment and utility I needed.

Now that the latest iPad has arrived, there are a number of new iPad users who may or may not be too savvy with ways to conserve battery life. While the new iPad is no chump in how long it can maintain its charge, it’s worth sharing some of the more obvious and subtle ways to use your iPad for longer periods of time before the need to recharge.

Whether you know it or not, the third-generation iPad’s battery grew by 70 percent over the iPad 2 in order to supply the pixel dense retina display. Because of this beefier battery, it will take longer to charge than the iPad 2, or what you might expect if you’re new to the iPad in general. Generally recharging my new iPad takes over four hours to go from dead to fully charged. However, despite the significant increase in battery, the new iPad still touts the same battery life as the iPad 2, roughly 10 hours. Here are a few ways to keep your iPad battery maximized depending on your use.

Not Too Bright

The new screen on the new iPad is pretty stunning, but that doesn’t mean you should go all out and crank up the brightness. Adjusting the brightness setting beyond mid brightness is a sure-fired way to kill your battery. I keep mine right at the mid point and keep the auto-adjust brightness feature enabled. Go to Settings > Brightness & Wallpaper.

Where Are You?

Location services for your applications can be disabled without you losing too much, if any, functionality associated with whatever app it’s associated. While it’s a little tougher to argue whether the location services for an app is good or bad, they all put a dent in the battery, and if you’ve got a bunch of apps all pulling for your location, it might be a good idea to turn them off. Go to Settings > Location Services > Turn off any apps that don’t need location services.

Wireless Needability

The iPad is all about staying connected to what matters most to you. That being said, do you use a speaker or headset with your iPad that uses Bluetooth? No? Then you should probably turn off Bluetooth. The same can be said for the Wi-Fi and 4G connections. If you can load movies, books, music, and other entertainment from your computer onto your iPad, you’ll save some battery by turning off any wireless connections you don’t need or use. Go to Settings > Airplane Mode > On

Do You Ping?

One item that surprisingly uses up battery, even if your not using it, is Ping. To find out what Ping is, click HERE. While it isn’t known how much battery Ping drains from iDevices, I recommend disabling it unless you really like to share your iTunes purchases with other Ping or Twitter users. Go to Settings > General > Restrictions > Enable Restrictions > Ping > Off.

Pushy Notifications

Do you really need to be notified every time someone likes or comments on your Facebook status? While up to the second updates from the few to hundreds of apps you can have on your iPad may seem like a neat way of staying up to date on games, utilities, and social networks, they can put a serious drain on your battery. Turning off some or all of your push notifications from the notification center is a great way to conserve even more life from your iPad’s battery. Go to Settings > Notifications > Turn off all the notifications in the apps you don’t need.

In The Background

Then there’s the multitasking drawer. The multitasking drawer can be accessed by double tapping the home button on the iPad. All of the apps that appear are the ones you have most recently used. While these apps aren’t all running all the time, having multiple apps running can drain the battery a bit. Just tap and hold on any app in the multitasking drawer until a red circle appears at the top left corner of the app. Now you can tap on the red circle to close the app completely. Properly maintaining these apps will help to give back what battery life they may have been siphoning off.

iCloud & Reporting

While iCloud can be handy in syncing music, television shows, movies, or documents, it can leech away at the battery. If photo stream isn’t necessary, disable it. If your iPad never leaves your side, you can probably disable “Find My iPad.” If you have a computer that you sync to your iPad, you can also disable backing up your iPad to iCloud. Go to Settings > iCloud > Turn off all the features you don’t need. Next, you might as well disable the Diagnostic & Usage Reports. Go to Settings > General > About > Diagnostic and Usage > Don’t Send.

Don’t Be Cheap.

Recently, some finger pointing related to battery drain has been aimed at free apps. Many app developers build two versions of their apps, one free so you can demo the app or game, and one that you pay for. The free apps ususally will be supported by some form of advertisement. Some sites like Gizmodo.com say that these advertisements can contribute to a sharp decline in battery life that can be avoided by simply buying the full version of the app.

While you may not want to disable all of these features, it helps to know that if you want to get the most battery our of your iPad you can change your settings to cater to your use.

Got any additional battery saving tips that I didn’t cover? Post it up in the comments section, or add it to our Facebook wall.

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