It’s a common symptom among new Mac users to be really ecstatic about their new MacBook, praise the speed and functionality, then after a month or so start seeing some flaws; much like in any relationship, where your passionate blind love from the first weeks starts to fade, giving way to more realistic assessments.
Some hard-core Linux geeks will probably miss their configuration files, kernel hacking and source code install. Windows users might miss their favorite software(Picasa, Winamp or Total Commander). I didn’t miss my Windows machine one bit, partly because I got used to other essential Mac software, partly because I use my Windows software from within Windows virtual machines, and mostly because I realized the Mac offers me all the productivity tools I ever wished for, out of the box or for free.

This article lists several essential but frequently forgotten configuration tips that make the most of your Mac. A future article will cover some vitally important FREE (or really inexpensive) Mac OSX software for your daily chores.

Faithful readers might have already read these tips here, on HackTheDay, but I do hope they’ll learn a few new things as well.

Use the 7 geek tricks for a fresh OSX install

The most important of them are:

1. Always download your latest updates
2. activate the keyboard shortcuts, Enable Full Keyboard Access, and try to learn the most important shortcuts: don’t miss the complex Screenshot shortcuts, the Keyboard Navigation ones (you’ll want to remember Ctrl+F2 to access the menubar, Command+comma to invoke the preferences screen for the current app, Command+Q to quit the current app) or Command+` to tab through the current’s application opened windows
3. activate “Use F1-F12 keys to control software features.”
4. activate the two-fingers secondary click

Deactivate the Mac startup chime by using the free StartupSound.prefPane application

I know, this falls into the category of vital OSX apps, but it’s so darn important that you’ll want to use it right ahead.

Open folders in a new Finder window

One of the many things novice Mac users don’t know is that in Finder, all it takes is to keep Option key pressed while double-clicking on a folder. Also, in case you didn’t know, the Undo command (Command+Z) also works in Finder, when deleting, undeleting or renaming files. Now.. does Windows know how to do this? Yeah, I thought so…

Activate your Expose Active Corners and shortcut keys

Here’s my setup: I rarely use Command+Tab to switch apps, the reflex of moving my mouse to the corner got under my skin. It’s way faster and gives you the full overview of what happens on your screen.

In Expose, quickly see the names of the opened windows

Just press Alt(Option) key while in Expose mode. See any change?

Use Spotlight to launch Apps

Spotlight comes included by default, as opposed to Quicksilver, Butler or other application launchers. You do need a bit of tweaking to successfully use it as such: first of all, change the order the results are displayed, unchecking as many file types as possible(the fewer, the more responsive Spotlight is) and changing the order to match your behavior.
Here’s my Spotlight settings:

Customize the time display in the menu bar

The above link show you how.
While you’re at the menu bar, feel free to remove any unwanted icons by pressing Alt(Option) while dragging them out.

Get comfortable with Automator and Terminal

If you’re a Linux geek, Terminal will rise to your expectations.. if only you know how to properly set it up to make it look as cool as you need.
I configured it to have a transparent background so I can see what happens in my other apps, to display ANSI colors and, off course, to use these settings as default for every new window. The fact that it allows for multi tabs is a welcomed addition. Here’s my Matrix-like setup:

As for Automator… this is one of the most powerful tools on your mac, and probably the most underrated one. Most Mac users never even opened it. I, for one, have used it to define a Multiple file rename Finder plugin, that I use now and then to rename, in 3 seconds, hundreds of selected files – a task that would have taken many annoying minutes, otherwise. Curious on how I did this? Keep tuned for a future episode.

In the meantime, you might want to take a peek under your OSX hood – there might be more amazing gems you didn’t know it has…

Quick question: what is the One and only most essential tool for any productivity fan?

You guessed it – the calendar.

There are many reasons why you’d want to use Google Calendar for your time management: first of all, it’s free; second, it’s online(you can access it from everywhere). Third, it has SMS alerts, which is probably the single feature I use most. The one major downside of Google Calendar has is… being an online tool; a less than perfect user interface, less than instantaneous responsiveness. Luckily, this all is in the past as of today:

Google announced CalDAV support for Google Calendar in Apple’s iCal(version 3.x – on Mac OS X v10.5+ ). In layman’s terms, this means seamless bidirectional synchronization of calendar events. No more awkward emails, no more missed meetings(actually.. this isn’t such a good news, as we all know it – meetings are productivity killers).

Here’s a step by step walkthrough in setting up Google Calendar synchronization:

1. First, you download on your OSX 10.5 mac the setup tool, called Calaboration. It’s in zip format, so you’ll want to unarchive it. Go ahead and run it, entering your Google login credentials, then click Sign In.

2. Select which of the Google Calendars you want to add to your iCal.
3. If you haven’t already added your Google email(login) to Address Book, you’ll want to do this, or else “You won’t be able to invite or email guests to Google Calendar events within iCal if your address is not in your Address Book.”

4. Your Google Calendar will now appear in iCal’s list of calendars, and iCal will sync any changes to and from Google Calendar.

Event information will refresh every 5 minutes; if you want to change this interval, you can do it in the iCal > Preferences > Accounts menu, from the ‘Refresh calendars’ drop-down. You can also refresh calendars manually, by pressing the Apple and R keys at the same time.

This is it. Easy and efficient, much like most of Google’s online tools.
Happy productivity everyone. And remember to keep yourselves out of meetings.

What I did was to follow TUAW’s tutorial, but here’s a quick summary, just in case you’re in a hurry:
1. in System Preferences, International, Formats submenu. Select Customize date, then chose the format you want, and COPY it (select all, Cmd+C).

2. Press Ok, then from the same window, Customize for the Times part. Move the cursor before the time format, press Cmd+V(Paste). Press OK.

Easy peasy.

On the 1st of January I had a skiing accident resulting in the injury my right arm – actually my right shoulder. After about two weeks of waiting for the pain to go away, I got the guts and visited a doctor who didn’t think twice before putting my entire right arm into a tight bandage and forbidding me to use my right arm for the upcoming 10 days.

Easier said then done – after all, I’m a work-from-home software developer, right-handed on top of that. Medical leave being out of the question, how am I supposed to get my job done by typing with only my left hand?

Luckily, I managed to work something out, and here’s a couple of the tricks I did for it, just in case they might help other imprudent skiers out there:

1. System Preferences -> Universal Access -> Keyboard -> Sticky Keys – this is the single greatest mobility impaired aid on the Mac: all special keys become sticky and appear on the screen as you type them, thus allowing you to single-handedly type complex, 2, 3 or more “simultaneous” keys combinations. Option+Backspace, Fn+Backspace, Cmd+Option+Escape and many more contorted keys combinations become now available to anyone
2. Quicksilver – I never really understood the full impact Quicksilver has on my productivity until now – launching an application without a mouse becomes really a life saver when you can only type with your left hand…
3. Textmate – luckily for me, I’m a Ruby(on Rails) programmer using Textmate on a daily basis. Although no longer being able to use the complex keyboard shortcuts that trigger all kinds of snippet generations, I was still able to remain productive using its built-in code completion and the tab-triggered snippets.
4. Terminal – a ROR programmer can’t get any kind of work done without the command line – be it just to change the working dir to the project’s one, or to start a server or.. many more. But typing in Terminal becomes an annoying pain when you need to run the same commands on and on. So I edited the .bash_profile and added a couple of alias for the most common commands I use on a daily basis. The .bash_profile is to be created(if not already existent) in the User’s home directory (just run cd ~ in Terminal and you’re there); here’s a couple of the aliases I defined for my daily use:
   
alias pr='cd ~/Work/MyProject/'
alias prr='cd ~/Work/Projects/MySecondProject/'
alias matem='mate .'
alias ss='./script/server'


There are more to say about tricks that made my programmer life better these last days, but I’ll take a little break for now; hopefully I’ll get back some day with more cool Tricks for the Mobility Impaired Programmers

(image by The Pack)

So, if you are a new Apple owner, here’s my list of 9 tips for you to do on a fresh OSX install:

• First of all, download the updates. Look carefully for the available updates and only install those for the apps you actually use. If, for instance, you’re not a music composer, then perhaps you might not need the latest updates for Garage Band. Similar, if you’re not into video editing, then the latest updates for iMovie might not be for you. Updating apps you never use will only add garbage on your system.
• Declutter your Dashboard. Press F12(by default) or the dashboard icon in the doc, and you’ll get to see the nice list of preinstalled and preactivated widgets. You’ll be surprised, but a Dashboard widget takes out about 4-10 MB of your RAM. So, 10 opened widgets will take A LOT of memory. Simply close all those that you don’t use, and your computer will be happier – more RAM available for apps you actually use.
• F1-F12 Keys. First thing is first – I am a geek and, especially on my MacBook, use the shortcuts intensively. No wonder I trigger up System Preferences, the Keyboard & Mouse menu, and activate the “Use F1-F12 keys to control software features.”
• Keyboard Shortcuts Still in the same window, in the Keyboard Shortcuts tab, I activate most of the available shortcuts. I’ll never use most of them, but there are some I couldn’t live without: For instance, Ctrl+F2 to access the menubar, or ⌘+Shift+4 to take snapshots of the selected screen area.
• Enable the Full Keyboard Access I got so used to having, in most dialog boxes, a blue hallo around some buttons(usually the “Cancel” one), that I never quite remembered how I got it in the first place. The blue halo around a control makes it accessible by pressing the Space key. So, for instance, in an OK/Cancel dialog, the OK would be blue and Cancel would be gray, but with a blue halo. Pressing the Enter key would then press OK, while the Space key would mean Cancel. It’s a neat and addicting shortcut.
  In order to activate this, in the same Keyboard Shortcuts window, you’ll have to select the “All controls” checkbox.
• Two fingers Right Click (Seconday Click) I mentioned this before as well – Apple laptops only have one mouse button; in order to do “the right click”, you usually need to press “Ctrl” while clicking. The alternative is to select, in the Trackpad tab of the same Keyboard & Mouse System Preference, the checkbox saying “Tap trackpad with two fingers for secondary click”
• Ignore accidental trackpad input – If you have an Apple laptop and you don’t select this option (in the same window as above), you’ll be deeply sorry: every time you type something, the slightest touch of the trackpad will make the cursor jump to some other place. So.. it’s a great thing to prevent this.

For a more geek insight into Apple’s OSX shortcuts (some of them extremely important), this is the page you want to go to. I’ll only quote a couple of them:
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Press X during startup Force Mac OS X startup
Press Option-Command-Shift-Delete during startup Bypass primary startup volume and seek a different startup volume (such as a CD or external disk)
Press C during startup Start up from a CD that has a system folder
Press Shift during startup start up in Safe Boot mode and temporarily disable login items and non-essential kernel extension files (Mac OS X 10.2 and later)
Press Command-V during startup Start up in Verbose mode.Option-Command-esc Force Quit
Control-Eject Restart, Sleep, Shutdown dialog box
Control-Command-Eject Quit all applications and restart
Option-Command-Eject or Option-Command-Power Sleep
Command-` Cycle through windows in application or Finder (if more than one window is open)

Happy Mac geeking!