Stumbling upon Mac Essentials

I was surfing the web today and came across this site: All Work and Play

Basically, Apple have a page dedicated to teaching you the day-to-day basics of using a Mac.

Generally its pretty easy to pick up a mac, turn it on and start clicking away here and there to see how things work. But that’s only going to take you so far. In fact, its a big source of frustration for PC users (myself included) that things aren’t “like a PC”, but in many ways, there are so many ways in which your perseverance will be rewarded.

In their article, Apple talks about creating user accounts, installing and upgrading software, ejecting media, saving files…the little things they call Mac essentials.

Lesson 1: Mac Essentials – Gives you a general overview of some of a Mac’s main features, the “essentials”.

Lesson 2: Automator – Learn how to automatically perform tasks, one thing thats possibly not covered here, but is definitely worth exploring is also the built in “Folder Action” functions.

Lesson 3: Dashboard – How to organise, and manage your dashboard, customise it, play with it, add widgets, and do-hickies and all sorts of things

Lesson 4: Boot Camp – No, this isn’t in any way related to that new year’s resolution you have to loosing weight, but it is a nice way to have the best of both worlds. Boot camp is going to help you run Windows, on your Mac.. Yes you heard me correctly.

Lesson 5: Address Book – Never leave home without one, and with one, it makes your iProduct that much more useful!

Lesson 6: Safari – Its the internet explorer of the Mac world, and it has some fricken cool functions which I dreamed of even before Microsoft upgraded to IE9 and left those functions out. To name one, grab a tab, drag a tab, and easily create a new window!

Lesson 7: Time Machine – Sorry its not a real time machine, but if you are like 90+% of the rest of the world, you’ll probably one day be kicking yourself if you havent thought of a nice way to back up your files. This do-hickie does it in a very flashy way, and if you are so inclined, there are tutorials on the web to show you how to hook it up to your NAS!

Lesson 8: iCal – Know where you are, and where you are meant to be at all times, and remind yourself of when you need to get there!

Lesson 9: iChat – Well, honestly iChat is a bit of an iLetdown, but hey its a chat program, and it does what other chat programs do. Feel free to stick to your guns with your usual choice of Windows Live messenger (yes available on mac), yahoo, or whatever floats your iBoat.

Lesson 10: File Sharing – What would life be without sharing? I don’t know, I’d probably wouldn’t be sharing this link. But if you want to share files, read this one. Piece of cake.

Lesson 11: VoiceOver – Nice one for those with visual or learning difficulties, or even if you want to see how Siri reacts when you feed her a synthesised voice.

Lesson 12: Preview – It opens (nearly) everything!!! And its easy to use, and it can help you convert those BMP’s to JPEG’s, etc.

Lesson 13: TextEdit – Its like microsoft’s wordpad, nuf said!

Lesson 14: QuickTime Player – Its available on a PC too, so it probably requires little to learn.

Did you find these links useful? Please feel free to leave a comment.

 

First iPhone App on the horizon.

Ology Interactive is nearly there, with our First iPhone App on the horizon..

Sometimes the answer to a problem is to bring in the big guns. So I’m quietly optimistic that our gun’s are big enough!

Mac OS X Hot-keys – For the beginner

Converting to a Mac, or even learning to use one after many years of PC indoctrination, is something akin to learning a new language.

First and foremost, everything seems different and within a few weeks, despite being able to do some basic things, you’ll find yourself thinking “it would have been easier if I’d had done this on a PC”.

Mostly because, like any mastered language, you’ve already learnt the most efficient way of expressing yourself, and this brings me to.. Shortcuts!

A Mac has it’s own special style of keyboard, with new icons that need a bit of explaining. Here they are;

 /  (Command key)

^ (Control key)

 (Option / Alt key)

 (Shift key)

 (Caps Lock)

fn (Function key)

“That’s great” I hear you say, “so what?”, I hear you follow. Well lets take a few classic shortcuts, and perform them on the Mac.

Key combination	What it does
Command-A	Select all items
Command-C	Copy selected item
Command-F	Find
Command-I	Get Info
Command-K	Connect to Server
Command-L	Make alias of the selected item
Command-M	Minimize window
Option-Command-M	Minimize all windows
Command-N	New instance of the current object
Command-O	Open selected item
Command-Q	Quit the current application
Command-V	Paste
Command-W	Close window
Option-Command-W	Close all windows
Command-X	Cut
Command-Z	Undo / Redo
Option-Command-Esc	Force Quit application
Command-Tab	Switch application–cycle forward
Shift-Command-Tab	Switch application–cycle backward
Command-Delete	Move to Trash
Shift-Command-Delete	Empty Trash
Command key while dragging	Move dragged item to other volume/location
Option key while dragging	Copy dragged item
Option-Command key combination while dragging	Make alias of dragged item

Enable iPhone’s Personal Hotspot (iOS 5)

If you’re anything like me you’ve had to reset your iPhone at least once in your life, and doing so, may have led to some unforseable outcomes. One such thing I experienced, was the sudden disappearance of the Personal Hotspot option in my Settings menu.

Here it is, just as it should be…

Now dont be alarmed if you realise your Settings Menu is also missing the Personal Hotspot. Its not actually missing, but rather hidden. Probably because Apple decided that most people wont need it, so they dont clutter up your interface with options you haven’t indicated an interest in or need for.

Enabling the Personal Hotspot turns out to be quite simple in fact. In the Settings Menu, navigate as follows:

Settings > General > Network > Personal Hotspot

Once there, change your password.. P.S. “password” is a BAD password, I’d recommend a mixture of Upper Case Letters, lower case letters, and Numbers, and if you wanna go crazy some of these &*(%#!

And for the Settings-Menu-Challenged individuals out there.. Here’s what you’ll see as you look around for the right options.

Seeking Illustrators / Artists

I’ve just finished work on the second iPhone application developed for Ology Interactive and have a working prototype ready for Beta testing.

The problem is we are looking for Graphic Artists / Illustrators who are willing to sit down with a lot of coffee, a bucket of ice-cream, or whatever it takes to fill the absolutely massive database with images.

Details of the job are on Ology’s Website here..

http://ologyinteractive.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/seeking-illustrators-artists/

我剛剛寫完第二個iPhone App。它現在已經可以開始Beta測試， 不過我的公司Ology Interactive加上我的App需要一些形象藝術家或以圖例解釋者來幫忙。如果你就是這種人，如果你有興趣幫我們發展，提供一些圖像。請你到以上貼的網址來看是否適合你的機會。