October 2007

Tune up a new Mac
Mac Tip #313/31-Oct-2007

Bought new Mac or wiped your Mac and installed Leopard? There are a few small things you should tune up straight away to make your computing experience smoother and easier.

The first thing to do (if you can manage to wait before diving in and playing with all the software) is to call up System Preferences from the Apple menu. In Leopard the Apple icon is now in shades of grey.

Timezone and time

First look at the Date and Time System Preference. Confirm that your timezone is correct and that the correct time is set. Date and time are crucial on any computer and can affect many things including files you create, emails and backups, so it makes sense to check these details first.

Language and formats

Next look at International. Confirm that your preferred language is at the top of the list, and confirm or adjust the Formats for displaying Dates, Times and Numbers.

Cursor size

Finally go to Universal Access. If you find it hard to see the cursor, or want any other help with the physical details of your Mac, this System Preference is just for you. In particular consider turning on Zoom under the Seeing tab, and changing the cursor size under the Mouse & Trackpad tab.

Four cautions

There are 4 Preference Panes to be very cautious about, as changing information here without knowing what you’re doing could cause problems:

• Security
• Network
• Sharing
• Startup Disk

Work your way through all the various Preference Panes, checking what’s there and making changes to suit yourself.

After you’re finished with System Preferences switch to the Finder as there two settings to change: File Extensions and the Path Bar.

File Extensions

First choose Preferences… from the Finder menu item. Under the Advanced tab: check the box to Show all file extensions.

The effect is that files will now show the 3 or 4 letter extension, such as picture.jpg or index.html (a web page). This makes your Mac easier to use and also adds a touch more security.

The Path Bar

In Leopard the Finder can also show you where you are, with the new Path Bar. Open a Finder window and choose Show Path Bar from the View menu. A bar appears at the bottom of the window.

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If you select a file, the Path Bar shows the ‘path’ to that file. In my screenshot you can see that mactips.txt is in Pluto (my MacBook’s name) > Users > miraz > Documents. In other words, it’s in my Documents folder. Double click on any item in that path to immediately go to that folder.

The final changes you should make before you get to work are in Safari: to show the Status Bar and to use Tabs.

Safari’s Status Bar

Start up Safari and choose Show Status Bar and then Show Tab Bar from the View menu. The Status and Tab Bars are now displayed.

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The Status Bar appears as grey bar below the main part of the window. Now when you hover over a link the Status Bar shows where that link will take you.

Safari’s Tab Bar

Tabs make browsing easier. Go to Safari Preferences and make sure that under Tabs ‘Command-click opens a link in a new tab’ is checked.

Now when you hold down the Command (Apple) key and click on a link it opens into a new tab, and you can see and select that tab in the Tab Bar, just below the Toolbar.

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Meet the Leopard
Mac Tip #312/24-Oct-2007

Apple’s latest version of Mac OS X, 10.5 or Leopard, arrives on 26 October 2007.

Once again, this will be a leap forward in what you can do with your Mac. It introduces hundreds of new features, big and small.

But it’s not for everyone. For starters, you need a reasonably recent Mac computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5, or PowerPC G4 (867MHz or faster) processor.

Some people prefer to let the ‘early adopters’ work with the first version of the operating system upgrades and find all the problems. They upgrade a bit later on after Apple release an update (to 10.5.1) with fixes for issues that have come up.

If you are thinking of upgrading though, you can look forward to some very appealing new features.

I’ll be receiving my copy of Leopard within the next few days and will be upgrading straight away. In the next tips I’ll write about how to use some of what’s new.

Here are a few of the items Apple have told us about so far.

• Quick Look provides a preview for almost any type of file, without having to actually open it.
• Time Machine (requires an external hard drive) automatically keeps backup copies of all your files. Easily go back through all the old versions to find items you’ve lost.
• Spaces is like having a separate desk for separate activities. For example, have all your Internet activities (web browser, mail, RSS feeds, etc) on one desktop, all your photos on another, and keep another for movies and music. Or arrange what you’re working on some other way.
• (With permission) view and interact with another person’s screen.
• The Dictionary now includes Wikipedia. (Hooray!)
• The Finder becomes more like iTunes.
• Various cool things in iCal, Mail, iChat, PhotoBooth, Preview, Safari and other software — even the screensavers.

By the way: even though upgrading is as simple as putting in the DVD and clicking, do back up your whole computer before you start.

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Meet the iPod touch
Mac Tip #311/17-Oct-2007

The iPod touch is quite different from the iPods that have gone before it.

iPods have a smallish screen, and a clickwheel, except for the iPod shuffle (no screen). Spin the wheel to scroll or change volume. Click the top, right, left or bottom part of the wheel to select certain actions such as going to the menu, or the next track, or play and pause. Click the centre button to select a track.

The iPod touch changes all that: the device is all screen. There are only two physical buttons: one for on / off / sleep, and another to return to the menu. To interact with the iPod touch you touch the screen itself.

In addition, if you have a wireless network at home, or available when you’re out and about, then you can use the iPod touch to surf the web, view YouTube videos, or to access the iTunes Store.

Unfortunately though, you still have to plug in a cable to connect the device to your Mac to transfer addresses, calendar appointments, music and photos.

When you first connect the device to your Mac it copies your location, timezone, the correct time and date, Safari bookmarks, and iTunes logon information.

With most applications hold the iPod any way up and the content on the screen flips accordingly.

If you need to enter text, such as an URL to go to a web page, tap in a text entry field to bring up an onscreen keyboard. Tap the various letters to type them.

The iPod’s onscreen keyboard displays letters only as upper case, whether you’ve depressed the ‘Shift’ key or not. The Shift key itself lights up when engaged, and it’s a Shift key not a Caps Lock key, by default, though you can change the behaviour in the settings.

Most punctuation is available after tapping the punctuation key which switches to the punctuation keyboard. Some characters, such as the * are available only after a further keypress.

Scroll by putting a finger lightly on the screen and ‘flipping’ up or down — or sideways, if that’s relevant.

Zoom in by putting your thumb and finger tips together, touching them lightly to the screen and then moving them apart.

Zoom out by doing the reverse: put your thumb and finger tips lightly on the screen and ‘pinch’ them together.

See a gallery of a dozen photos of the iPod Touch in action at my Oddity 59 album. As I had to hold the camera, balance the iPod in its tiny plastic stand and operate the controls please excuse the slightly odd angles.

Some people have described the iPod touch as the ‘iPhone without the phone’. I couldn’t say, as the iPhone is not yet officially available in New Zealand and I haven’t seen one in real life. But apparently the interface is very similar.

Apple brought ‘point and click’ to the masses a couple of decades ago. Now they’ve brought us ‘pinch and flick’.

This little device can’t yet replace a laptop, but it’s one to watch. And as iPods go, it’s my favourite of all the iPods I’ve owned — and that’s a good half dozen since the first iPod several years ago.

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