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Use the Keychain to find passwords

rgray — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 20:31:01 +0000

We all forget passwords or they momentarily elude memory. To find a password open Keychain Access.app in the Utilitiesfolder nested in the Applications folder. Once there, scroll through the list of keys until you find the one that you’re looking for. Double click on it and check the box that says, “Show Password.”

You will have to authenticate with your user credentials, your forgotten password will be displayed in the text box.

ref. Mac 101: Retrieve your Keychain passwords, TUAW Sep 25th 2008

Locked file error in Mac OS X Lion?

rgray — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 16:43:50 +0000

New Lion user’s quickly discover an odd aspect of the Lion versioning system that means that files that haven’t been recently edited require an extra step before work can be done on them. The fix is fairly simple.

When a locked file is accessed this message appears.

You can turn off the locking or change the time factor. Go to System Preferences and click on the Time Machine icon in the System row.

In the Time Machine Preference Pane Select “Options”.

From the Options window you can uncheck the locking or change the time interval as suits you.

Mastering the iPad keyboard

rgray — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 11:54:47 +0000

A recent Cult of Mac article (Michael Steeber (May. 29, 2011)) entitled Unlock The Potential Of Your iPad’s Keyboard [Video How-To] illustrates a number of very useful keyboard shortcuts for the iPad virtual keyboard.
Note the comments about the Settings required to bring these features to life.

iPad Troubleshooting (iOS device)

rgray — Mon, 16 May 2011 17:34:46 +0000

In particular, this May. 06, 2011 Cult of Mac (D.W.Martin) article addresses recovering from bad update experiences, but it is useful in sorting out aberrant iOS behaviour whenever it occurs. ‘Force quitting” apps, hard and network resets are discussed. This is the equivalent of understanding the concept of a “clean” install. Refreshing the system can cure a lot of minor niggling ills and is worth doing once in a while.

iPad “Tab” key in Pages app

rgray — Mon, 16 May 2011 17:09:30 +0000

This is another one of those iPad tips that seems to be something of a weird kind of secret…… Like the author, Matt Tinsley, of the referenced article (May 13th 2011, TUAW) I was taken aback to find no Tab key on the iPad virtual keyboard. No cursor keys either! A picture being worth a thousand words, voila….

Location of Tab in pages

In one of the comments, it is suggested that carrying a bluetooth keyboard will get you usable cursor keys but I haven’t had a chance to try this out for myself. It certainly would make editing a lot less fussy than the native iPad method and a lot easier if you are trying to use your iPad for any amount of production word processing.

Setting up a Mac

rgray — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 18:34:34 +0000

This Macworld article offers some useful setup suggestions.

In particular, the Finder section notes explain some of the Preference options available.

Fix the Finder
I like to have immediate visual feedback when I insert, attach, or remove media to and from my Mac. That’s why I like to see all attached volumes on the Desktop. I need my icons!

While I’m in the Finder’s preferences pane, I also turn off the annoying warning when you change file extensions. (I sometimes need to change, say, a .txt file to a .html file, and don’t want a warning every time I do.) Then I change the default behavior for Spotlight folder searches—that is, the searches you perform with those in-line search boxes in the Finder window toolbars. I prefer that those search the current folder by default, since I use the global Spotlight search when I need to look more broadly.

How to do it Finder -> Preferences, General tab, toggle checkboxes for Show These Items on the Desktop. Switch to the Advanced tab and uncheck Show Warning Before Changing an Extension. On the same tab, change When Performing a Search to Search the Current Folder.

iPhoto & Trackpad: two finger crop and rotate

rgray — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 20:51:34 +0000

In iPhoto “you can drag two fingers on your MacBook’s touchpad (or your Magic Trackpad) to control the various edits with better precision than just dragging around a mouse. (TUAW, 11-02-24¹)

The details of these ‘gestures’ were given in a Mac OSX Hints tip (iPhoto Gestures, 11-02-24²) which TUAW cite as source.

“… open a photo in iPhoto and enter Edit mode.
While in Straighten Mode:

You can fine tune the amount of tilt using the ‘rotate’ gesture in either direction. Rotate Left to decrease the angle, Rotate Right increases the angle (it feels backwards whenever I do it).

While in Crop mode (with constrain turned on):

If you pinch inwards the crop frame gets smaller and retains its shape.

If you pinch outwards the crop frame gets bigger and retains its shape.

If you keep both fingers in approximately the same configuration and move them about, the entire crop frame will move without changing size (unless you run into an edge, in which case the crop frame will shrink if you continue to push it against the edge).

When you un-check constrain, things get a little crazy. Since the crop corners map directly to your fingers, you can change the overall crop shape from rectangular to square, or vice versa.

Suppose you set your right thumb and pointer on the trackpad (thumb bottom left quadrant, pointer top right).

If you move just your thumb (still in the bottom left quadrant) then just the bottom left handle moves in the same manner.

If you move just that pointer finger (in the top right) and the just top right handle moves.

Move both simultaneously and both handles move.

iPhoto seems to map the finger locations as relative, rather than absolute, though. Following our prior example, moving the thumb to a location where it is higher up the trackpad than the pointer finger, but still to the left of it, would cause the top left (as opposed to bottom left) handle to move. Similarly, the pointer finger would now relate to the bottom right (instead of bottom left) handle. This happens when you move one finger past another with regards to left and right as well. Two finger scrolling seems to lock in the crop frame, just as before.”²

A three-finger swipe in iPhoto will “move forward/backward through photos”.¹

References

Set up a backup drive or a drive for external use.

rgray — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 16:39:15 +0000

Basic requirements for “Mac compatibility”: Do not pay extra for so-called “Mac compatibility”! You should be able to find a 1T drive – this is for backup so get a 3.5 inch drive in a case with an external power supply – for less than $100. USB2 is fine. The drive may come with a disk of software or software preinstalled. We are going to ignore these proprietary “Mac setup” softwares (that may open the first time you plug the drive into your Mac). I G N O R E! All the software needed to do this properly came with your Mac – it is called Disk Utility and can be found in the Utilities folder inside the Applications folder. We are going to make the drive “Mac compatible” in the following steps.

1. in Disk Utility, select the Partition tab:

under Volume Scheme select 1 partition
for Format select Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
for Options select GUID
give it a name
click the Apply button (lower right)

it should warn that it is about to erase all data or something similar – tell it to go ahead as you don’t have any data on it anyway as it is a new disk.

if this step fails it is a bad drive and should be returned.

the drive will now be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

A#1 iPad power tip: Multi-tasking bar

rgray — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 19:01:04 +0000

Learning the power of double-tapping the Home button has changed my iPad life. Why have I only just heard about it?

Some time ago I came across an article on Macworld (Posted Mar 7, 2011) (using their iPad app) entitled “Ten tips for mastering the iPad“. I should have paid more attention immediately but instead sort of filed it ‘for later’ consideration. Somehow tip 6 in particular ate it’s way into my attention.

6. Closing background apps
On other occasions, though, you may want to close apps that are still (quietly) running. Ever since iOS 4’s introduction of multitasking, some of your apps can keep on running in the background, even after you’ve closed them. Generally, that’s fine; the iPad does a great job of killing apps when memory limits require it. Some apps, however—particularly GPS and VoIP apps—can eat up quite a bit of memory and battery life if they remain open when you no longer need them. To quit apps running in the background, bring up the multitasking bar, press and hold on an app, and then tap the red minus sign that suddenly appears.
To make sure power-hungry apps that you don’t need don’t gobble your battery, you can force them to quit: double-tap the Home button to bring up the multitasking bar. Then, press and hold on any one app until all the apps start jiggling. Tap the red circle on the running apps in your multitasking bar that you’d like to quit. (emphasis mine) (illustration)

Multi-tasking bar? Double-tap Home to bring it up? I tried it and low and behold across the bottom of my screen appears the so-called “Multi-tasking bar”!!!! Looks a lot like the “Dock” on my MacBook!! and works pretty much in an intuitively similar manner. Just tap the icon of the program to which you wish to jump. Touch the main part of the screen – the “Multi-tasking bar” disappears.

Duh! Why had I no heard off this before now? There is nothing about any Multi-tasking bar in Apple’s iPad Guided Tours.

If I (single)-tap Home I go to the Home screens there to hunt around my ineffable Home screen structure for the icon I want. I then tap that icon and the app loads.

If I double-tap Home I get the Multi-tasking bar where the icons are organised in temporal queue, most recent to the left, and I tap the icon.

To me, the latter double-click approach not only seems easier (less finger/hand movement if marginally so) but also to be a natural intuitive extension of the way I work with my Macs. Perhaps this says something about the way I “organise” my Home screens…… Cutting and pasting and editing between apps seems so much smoother now… YMMV.

Tip 7 revealed more useful stuff about the Multi-tasking bar. Swipe said Multi-tasking bar hard right to reveal the extreme left end. (illustration). Several controls are revealed, namely, Reverse, Play/Pause, Skip and sliders for brightness and volume.

Tip 5 explains how to abort an app exit. In the author’s words, “Sometimes, you notice something you’d like to check out more closely in an app—at the same instant you press the Home button. Instead of letting the app close, then finding its icon and waiting while the app relaunches, you can tell your iPad to abort your now-unwanted Home button press. Doing so is hilariously simple: don’t let go. If you hold down the Home button extra long—just a few seconds needed—your iPad will abandon its plans to close the current app, and you tap on that enticing link instead.”

Tips 1 and 2 will improve your facility with the iPad keyboard.

Make Dock icons show Hidden apps as hidden.

rgray — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 20:04:34 +0000

In the Dock, icons for ‘hidden’ apps can be rendered semi-transparent like so

How? to: in Terminal at the prompt, type the line below (or copy/paste), and hit Enter

defaults write com.apple.dock showhidden -bool true

To restart Dock, in Terminal at the prompt, type the line below (or copy/paste), and hit Enter

killall Dock

ref:http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20031027022943749