Another jaw-dropping feature of Mac OS X when showing off to your friends – open the Terminal (~/Applications/Utilities/Terminal ) and type say command, followed by any text.
For example type: say I like silvermac and press return. Your computer promptly does what you asked it do do, it says I like silvermac.
[tags]OSX, terminal, cool, say[/tags]
I just helped a friend to install LaunchBar 4 on his Mac and he wanted to run it invisible, but for some reason it just kept coming back.
I searched the internet forums and the way to do this is to add a few lines to a plist.info
Close LaunchBar and then locate it in your Finder. Right-click and select ‘Show package contents’, open the Contents folder, select info.plist and open it with TextEdit.
Add this to the file:
<key>NSUIElement</key>
<string>1</string>
Save the file, log out and then log in again. Even though this should work now, for some reason it doesn’t work on Tiger.
What you need to do is this: Close LaunchPad if stil running, go to Applications folder, move the LaunchPad somewhere else (e.g. Desktop) and then move it back again to the Applications folder. Log out and log in again. Enjoy.
[tags]LaunchBar, invisible, OS X, Tiger[/tags]
We tend to say “If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it”. But would someone please tell Apple - It’s broken, please fix it!
Earlier this evening I was writing an article about some cool stuff on Mac, and I needed to capture the screen when selecting the application using Command-Tab, see below.
Whatever I tried it wouldn’t work, as I wasted my valuable keys onto switching applications function. I needed to press Command-Tab, then while the image is on the screen – capture it. The way to do it would be Command-Shift-3, but the Command key was already in use.
Then I thought – Grab ! Yes, Grab has that function where you can start the ticker and you have 10 seconds to get your screen ready before it fires off. I was in Firefox, so I just clicked Firefox / Services / Grab in the menu bar, and three options popped out; Screen, Selection, and Timed Screen. But I’ve got all three Grab options grayed out. (?)
Quick jump to Google and a few forums suggested that this will work only with cocoa applications. So I opened Safari, Mail, iCal – same story. Someone said, you need to select something before it will work, so I selected a few lines of text – same result, just greyed out. Even suggestion of having TextEdit open wouldn’t work.
Finally I thought I could open Grab as an application, couldn’t I? So, surely there it is, in the Applications / Utilities folder. Once you open it, just select Capture / Timed Screen (or Command-Shift-Z on your keyboard) and the ticker starts.
Funny thing is that the generated file is actually a TIFF, but since I need to crop and resize it, it really isn’t a big deal.
When I think back, I’m pretty sure the Grab worked as service just fine in Panther, but not in Tiger (10.4.8) Can someone with Panther check this and let me know? Or even better – let Steve know.
[tags]Grab, OS X, screen capture[/tags]
We all know about Command-Tab function on Mac and Alt-Tab on Windows. But what if we have multiple windows of the same application, Safari for example, and want to switch between them?
Command-Tab won’t be of any help as it will give us only one window of each application to deal with.
I guess quite a few people didn’t know this, myself included. You simply press Command-~ (tilde). That’s the key just above the Tab key on your keyboard. Sweet and simple.
Another cool thing I figured out while fooling playing around with my Mac. If you are in any cocoa application and select some text, press Command-Shift-Y and the text is automatically stored in a sticky note on your desktop. A perfect reminder right before your eyes.
Not only this works with the text, but the hyperlinks will be stored as well, which is nice.
Images? Well… yes, see below. I was really surprised to see it capturing an image and also being able to save it.
Another way of capturing the selection is if you click on Application name in the menu bar, select Services and then Make New Sticky Note.
And no, it doesn’t work in Firefox.
Read my earlier article Cool things you can do on Mac for more tips.
[tags]OS X, Cool, Stickies, windows[/tags]
Isn’t it beautiful when using your MacBook / MacBook Pro, you just close the lid and the computer instantly goes into the sleep mode? Even better, you just open it and in a few seconds you are where you were before.
And the coolest of all is when you’re in a hurry, you just shut the lid, put the computer into the bag and run downstairs, or jump on your bike and off you go. Right ?
Wrong!
What I just described above is a big no-no if you have a MacBook, MacBook Pro or the very last model PowerBook (late 2005).
The reason for this is SafeSleep, a technology Apple introduced to all portable computers since October 2005.
What happens when ‘normal’ computers are put into sleep mode is that the memory is supplied with a very small amount of power to keep its content ‘alive’. When you wake up the computer, it will be in the state you left it before. But in case of a power failure, or battery going completely flat, the memory will lose the power and therefore your data is gone. Game over.
Apple’s SafeSleep works similar to this but it has something else for when the disaster strikes. When you close the lid the computer goes to sleep mode, but not instantly. Firstly, it copies entire content of its memory onto the hard drive, and then goes to normal sleep mode. Once you wake up the computer, the memory is already loaded and you can use it straight away.
If you lost the power/battery, once you power on the computer again, the memory content that was stored onto the hard disk will be loaded, so you take it from where you left it before. You will see the black and white screen while this is happening, so don’t panic, your display is just fine.
And this is exactly where the problem is. You must not move your computer while the data is written to the hard drive. You have to wait until the sleep light on the front starts pulsing. This may take anything between 10 and 30 seconds, depends on the amount of memory you have installed in your computer.
This is what Apple’s MBP manual states:
Warning: Wait a few seconds until the white sleep indicator light on the display latch starts pulsating (indicating that the computer is in sleep and the hard disk has stopped spinning) before you move your MacBook Pro. Moving your computer while the hard disk is spinning can damage the hard disk, causing loss of data or the inability to start up from the hard disk.
So, you wonder – what difference does it make, Apple notebooks have the Sudden Motion Sensor and will prevent any data loss or disk damage ?
Wrong again! The Sudden Motion Sensor has no effect in this situation, so you’ll be better off to leave your computer to finish the job it has to do.
Update 03-Aug-2008: There is a glimpse of hope that you can still save your data and get your hard drive running again, read my article How to revive a dead hard drive.
We all know about that jellybean on the top right corner of OS X windows. And we also know that clicking it will toggle the toolbar on and off.
For example in Finder, clicking the jellybean we go from this…
…to this.
Or the other way around, which is very handy when installing applications on OS X.
But what if we wanted to customise the toolbar even further. Sure, we can right-click on it, select ‘Customise toolbar’ and go from there. But there is something else we can do. Way easier and rather cool.
