Step-by-Step Know-How for Macheads

Normally, the typical Mac user will not have to install Mac OS very often. Personally, I’ve gone from one Mac to the next simply by using Migration Assistant to move my data over and I’ve never installed a fresh Mac OS on any machine except my MacBook, when I replaced the hard drive.

Anyway, if you happen to need or want to do a fresh install of Mac OS X, there are some tweaks you can apply after installation that will improve your Mac experience right out of the gate. Don’t get me wrong: Mac OS doesn’t really need any tweaking (unlike Windows, where you usually spend the first day after a fresh install turning off all those annoying speech bubbles, teaching Explorer to stop hiding files and generally making Windows stay out of your way). But there’s a handful of things you can do to optimize usability, which you can read up on over at MacMembrane.

Peter has put together a comprehensive set of tips for tuning a freshly installed Mac OS X. Tips include, among other things, making sure your Mac stays up to date, making frequently used items readily available and generally tweaking settings to improve productivity.

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Sometimes you find a file in your Downloads folder and you want to know where you downloaded it from. So you search through your Safari history, but apparently the download is too far back in time. Next thing, you try googling the filename, but that doesn’t turn up anything either. As a last resort, you then rack your brain to try and remember where you downloaded that file from. Of course, this last effort is as futile as the first two.

But all is not lost.

If you were smart enough to download the file with Safari, you’re in luck: Safari adds the download URL of every file it downloads to the file’s Spotlight comments. Simply right-click the file in Finder, select Get Info, and there in the Spotlight comments is the original URL from where the file was downloaded.

This only works for files downloaded with Safari, though. If you’re using Firefox, Flock or any other Mac browser, you’ll have to resort to racking your brain, I’m afraid.

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If you happen to have a secondary monitor you might have noticed the rather annoying way Safari handles new windows. For example, if you open a window and then drag it to the second monitor, any new window will then open on the secondary monitor too, no matter which monitor the currently active window is on.

This is due to how Safari handles the creation of new windows. It always opens new windows a bit lower and a bit to the right of the previous window that was opened. Think of Safari’s windows as a stack: each new window goes on top of the previously opened one and the position of a new window is determined by the window immediately below it in the stack.

The only way to get Safari to open new windows on the primary screen again, is to open a new window and drag it from its undesirable location to where you want to have. Any subsequently opened windows will then again open on your primary monitor - until you drag a window to the second monitor again, that is.

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Macsteps maintains a watchlist of interesting, useful and popular software and keeps up to date with their development. Here’s the list of software updated in week 49, 2008.

• iTerm 0.9.6.1201
• Pagico 3.2.1.104
• Mouseposé 3.1
• Speed Download 5.1
• ScreenSteps 2.1.2r26
• iCompta 3.0
• WhatSize 4.4.1
• Bookpedia 4.4.1
• CDpedia 4.4.1
• DVDpedia 4.4.1
• Gamepedia 4.4.1
• Merlin 2.6.3
• Together 2.2.3
• Art Text 2.0.3
• Coda 1.6.1
• GraphicConverter 6.3
• VoodooPad 4.02
• Money 3.2.1
• Things 0.9.6.1
• VueScan 8.4.97
• 1Password 2.9.5
• Saft 10.5.6
[Click here to view full list and details...]

By default, the Finder shows the name of the current folder in its window’s title. This is OK in most cases. But what if you happend to have folders with identical names on your Mac, only they’re sitting in different parent folders? If you can only see the name of the folder in the Finder’s title bar, you’ll have to click it to see which folder you’re currently in.

A better way is to make the Finder display the full path of the folder it is currently showing. Here’s how to do it:

1. Launch Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal.app
2. Enter the following text:
   defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YES
   and hit Enter.
3. Enter killall Finder and hit Enter.

The Finder will relaunch and now display the full path to the current folder in its title bar. If you want to turn this off again, simply replace YES with NO in the above command.

via http://tippsblog.ch/2008/12/06/pfad-im-finder-unter-mac-os-x-im-titel-anzeigen/

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This has to be one of the creepiest screensavers ever. Check out http://ideas.veer.com/post/2680; this screensaver displays vintage picture frames on a wall. After a couple of seconds, the paintings’ eyes slide away and reveal “real” eyes peeking at you, as if someone behind the wall (or your monitor) was spying on you. Really nice effect and a welcome change.

Here’s a short preview:

via http://twitter.com/fredrikeliasson

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I might have mentioned it elsewhere, I favor using the keyboard over clicking the mouse. Fortunately, most apps offer keyboard shortcuts for the majority of available commands. The only problem is: how remember which shortcut does what in which application? I use maybe one or two dozen apps regularly and probably another several dozen occasionally. In the apps I use most often, I have the majority of shortcuts I use daily memorized. But when working in an app I use only maybe once a month, I usually have to peek into the menu to find out the shortcut for a particular command.

Enter KeyCue from Ergonis. KeyCue is a keyboard addict’s heaven on earth. In any application, simply press and hold (or press it twice and hold; this is configurable in KeyCue’s preferences), and after a user-configurable delay a menu with all the current application’s keyboard shortcut pops up. You can then either select a command with the mouse, or simply use KeyCue as a reference sheet and execute the desired command by hitting the keyboard shortcut. In any case, after either executing a command or letting go , KeyCue disappears until it is launched again.

KeyCue can be tweaked to your liking via its preferences. You can set it to launch at login, configure which menus to show in which way and choose its visual appearance via themes.

A trial version of KeyCue is available at http://www.ergonis.com/downloads/dnld_keycue.html. The full version costs 19.99 Euro.

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• TaskPaper 2.0
• Path Finder 5.03
• Safari 3.2.1
• Transmit 3.6.7
• iShowU 1.6.9
• Stomp 1.9
• Default Folder X 4.1
• NoteMind 1.5.10
• Money 3.2
• MacGourmet 2.3.6
• Pith Helmet 2.8.4
• Flock 2.0.2
• Bento 2.0.3
• Pixelmator 1.3.1
• Cocktail 4.2.1
• DVDpedia 4.4.0
• Bookpedia 4.4
• CDpedia 4.4
• Gamepedia 4.4
• iShowU HD 2.1.0
• Call Recorder 2.3.4
• MacPilot 3.2.1
• Librarian Pro 1.3.9
• Fluid.app 0.9.5
• Alarm Clock Pro 8.5.7
[Click here to view full list and details...]

The Logitech MX Revolution is an ergonomic (at least if you’re right-handed) mouse with a host of buttons that you can configure via Logitech Control Center. The default configuration of the buttons and the wheel doesn’t work that well for me, so here’s how I configured my MX to fit my needs. First, I figured out what functions I use most and if it would make sense to put them on a button on the mouse. I wanted to minimize switching between the mouse and the keyboard for the most commonly used functions. After some pondering, these are the functions I use most often:

• Switch between applications
• Exposé (current application)
• Back button in browser
• Jump to the top of a browser page

I tried to figure out the most intuitive and natural way to assign these functions to buttons on the mouse, here’s what I came up with: This setting works really well for me. Using the One-Touch Search button, switching between applications is a breeze. No more Alt-Tab for me. And since I tend to accumulate a lot of windows in Safari, launching Exposé at the click of a button is much more efficient than trying to find a specific window by any other method.

IMHO, this is the real power of Exposé: Seeing all windows of a specific application makes much more sense than seeing the windows of all applications at once. In most cases, you’ll have too many applications and windows open to allow for a decent size preview in Exposé for all apps. But in a single application, Exposé works perfectly, especially since the other ways of switching through the windows of an app (either via the Window menu or via keyboard shortcut) are much less efficient.

These are the settings that work pretty nicely for me. If you have a different configuration for your MX, feel free to add a comment below.

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