Silvermac

We all know by now that Exposé can be activated via F3 on the new aluminium keyboard, but this is only to show all windows. If you want to ‘show the desktop‘ or only ‘windows in current application‘, you can use the old F11 and F10 respectively, and you will have to hold the Fn key down if your keyboard is using multimedia functions for F keys.

But there’s some good news about that F3 key, you can still use it for all Exposé functions, here’s how:

F3 – show all windows
Ctrl-F3 – show all current application windows
Cmnd-F3 – show desktop
Option-F3 – show expose preferences.

For some reason the brightness control on the new silver iMacs won’t let you dim your screen beyond certain point. While this is OK during the daytime, I find myself quite annoyed sometimes when using my computer late at night, when the only light in the room is a small table lamp. I’d like to reduce the screen brightness even further, but it doesn’t work.

I just came across this handy little application conveniently called Brightness Control, and it does exactly what I need, it lets me reduce the brightness of my screen even further.

Another thing that I love about it is that it adjusts the low light gamma of your screen. When I reduce the screen brightness on my iMac to the minimum, the contrast and the colours become somewhat pale and not so vibrant, when comparing to those at the higher brightness level. However Brightness Control takes care of this automatically and the contrasts and colours are still OK even when the brightness is all the way down to the wee hour levels.

Interested? Then go to the Splasm Software website and download the Brightness Control, it’s free.

iMovie HD (06) has a nice little function that splits the video clip at any point you want.

With iMovie 08 there is very little reason you would want to split the clip, so the oh-eight doesn’t have this option. But if you really want to do it, there is a way around. The entire work is done in the event pane, the lower half of the screen.

Here is a clip that we want to split in two.

First, we need to spread the clip wide in order to enhance the selection precision, continue reading…

I was watching the Australian TV series Home and away and noticed something Apple has been hiding from us all the time. An all wireless iMac, employing the latest wireless power transfer technology.

Oh good old TV, they never stop amusing me.

If you’ve got the all new 20 inch silver iMac, you may have noticed how beautiful the colours on that glossy screen are. You may have also noticed that they are more beautiful on the top of your screen than on the bottom.

It’s not only that colours are washed out as you go towards the bottom of the screen, they also change as you change your viewing angle. This makes the new iMac very much useless for any half-serious graphical designer. (see the video on the bottom of this page)

The reason for this is that Apple has used TN displays, which are the low end displays and are very cheap. 24 inch model comes with IPS displays, just like the old 20 and 24 inch white iMacs, and they are perfectly fine.

Take a look at the first picture below. Two Finder windows, none of them selected, positioned right at the top of the screen. The colour of the toolbars is identical. continue reading…