What is Exposé?

Exposé is a feature of Mac OS X that allows you to see all of your open windows at any time. All you have to do is press the function key labeled with the Exposé icon on your keyboard (F3) and all of your windows will slide around to reveal other windows behind them – shrinking when necessary. It also dims the desktop so that the windows really pop out from the background. You can then move your pointer over one to see the title of that window. Clicking while over a window will switch to that window and every window will resize itself back to normal and slide back to where it was.

This is very useful for finding the window you want to be working in at the moment. It might be better than using the Command+` keyboard shortcut depending on how you like to work. But, it has even more usefulness than that. If you’re working in one window and you want to drag something out of it into a different window, Exposé works for that too. All you have to do is:

start your drag
activate Exposé
hover over the window that you want to drop onto
deactivate Exposé
complete your drag & drop

Quickly tapping the Exposé key will reveal the windows and they’ll hang there in space waiting for you to do something. But, if you hold down the Exposé key, the windows will rearrange themselves only for as long as you hold down the key. Once you lift your finger, the windows will go back to normal. Holding the Exposé key is a good way to handle dragging & dropping.

You can also activate Exposé through a variety of ways that can be set in your System Preferences. Select the Exposé & Spaces System Preference and you can set Exposé to activate by moving your pointer to one of the four screen corners, typing keystrokes, or clicking mouse buttons.

The normal behavior for the Exposé key is exposing All Windows. Holding the Command key while pressing the Exposé key will move all the windows out of the way to reveal the Desktop. This is helpful since current Apple keyboards only have one function key labeled with the Exposé icon. Using the Command modifier key means you don’t have to remember which other unlabeled function key you may have assigned the Exposé – Desktop command to. Use the same keyboard shortcut to bring the windows back to normal (if you aren’t using the hold method from above). You can also modify the behavior of Exposé by holding the Control key while pressing the Exposé key to show only the current Application Windows. Again, use the same keyboard shortcut to bring the windows back to normal. Finally, for some fun, you can hold down the Shift key while pressing the Exposé key to watch the animations in slow-motion.

Protecting yourself and your iPhone’s data

The iPhone is a fantastic personal assistant. It gives you access to incredible amounts of your data at your finger-tips. You have all of your contacts in it, your schedule is available with a single tap of Calendar, Photos has pictures of your friends and family, Mail has all of your latest correspondence, and Safari is probably logged into your Amazon.com account. What would happen if you lost it?

Frankly, a lot could happen if you lost it. So, let’s look at the features the iPhone provides you to prevent any of your data getting into the wrong hands. You can set the iPhone to auto-lock in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 minutes or never. This basically turns the iPhone’s screen off and prevents you from accidentally making calls or doing anything else. I’ve got mine set to 2 minutes. This gives me plenty of time between actions (like reading a web page before scrolling) and is short enough to save some battery life due to the screen being off. Anyone can still pick up your phone and use it, though.

Another thing that will help protect you is to turn on the passcode lock. After turning this on you will have to enter a four digit code in order to be able to use the iPhone for anything other than answering calls, making emergency calls, or operating the iPod from the lock screen. There is a range of times you can set to require the passcode to unlock your phone from immediately up to four hours. I’ve got mine set to one hour so that I am not constantly entering the passcode to unlock my phone. After being locked for over an hour, I’ll have to enter the passcode to use it again. I feel this is an acceptable bargain between security and convenience for me, but you may wish to use a shorter period of time. If someone else were to pick up my phone within that hour and try to change this setting, they wouldn’t be able to do so unless they knew my passcode.

An additional layer of security that I recommend everyone take is to also turn on the Erase Data feature within the Passcode Lock settings. Since someone could luck-out in trying to figure out your passcode by entering a variety of different four digit codes, this feature gives them (or you) 10 tries before it erases all of your data on it as a security precaution. Think of this as the iPhone’s equivalent to the ATM taking your card if you enter the wrong passcode too many times.

An additional setting is the ability to turn off SMS previews if you don’t want anyone to see any of the text messages you’ve received without first unlocking your phone.

Why that application is still running

One of the things that may be confounding you in your first days of being a Mac user is how to quit your applications. With Windows, if you can’t see any application windows it almost always means you’ve quit the application. There are some newer exceptions to this behavior like instant messenging applications that still run in the system tray.

On the Mac, most applications continue to run until you explicitly quit them. You can quit the application by selecting Quit from the application’s menu in the menu bar (to the right of the Apple Menu) or by holding the Command key while pressing the Q key while the application is the front-most one. You can tell which application is front-most by looking for its name in bold in the menu bar on the top left of your screen.

There are some Mac applications that deviate from this, like iPhoto, but they are almost always single-window applications. The applications that do deviate from this will quit when you close their last or only window.

Below is a quote from Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines that developers use to help design their applications to be consistent with other applications developed by Apple or other third-party developers.

In most cases, applications that are not document-based should quit when the main window is closed. For Example, System Preferences quits if the user closes the window. If an application continues to perform some function when the main window is closed, however, it may be appropriate to leave it running when the main window is closed. For example, iTunes continues to play when the user closes the main window.

How to take screenshots with iOS

Did you know you can take screenshots with iOS? Taking a screenshot is pretty easy to do. All that you have to do is simultaneously press the Lock button (on the top-right, sometimes referred to as the Sleep/Wake button) and the Home button. You’ll see the entire screen flash white and hear a camera shutter sound indicating that you’ve successfully taken a shot.

But where is it? There isn’t a desktop or a clipboard for the shot to be placed on. Instead, press the Home button and select the Photos application. You’ll find your screenshots in the Camera Roll photo album.

So, what can you do with it? They are synchronized to your PC just like you can with normal photos you’ve taken while out and about. But, you can also use it from within some of your apps like Twitterrific so you can your upload images to Twitter.

How to take screenshots on your Mac

Taking a screenshot in Mac OS X is very similar to the way you do it in Windows. There are two kinds of screenshots to take in Windows. You can take a screenshot of your full screen by pressing the Print Screen key. You can also take a screenshot of just the current window by pressing Alt and then pressing the Print Screen key. Both of these keyboard shortcuts place the image in the clipboard so that you can paste them wherever you like. Some people like pasting them into a Word Document while others paste them into Paint to save them or simply just paste them wherever they need to use it – like an e-mail.

Keyboard shortcuts for taking screenshots

On the Mac, you basically have the same two kinds of screenshots. You can take a full screenshot by holding the Shift and Command keys while pressing the 3 key. Doing so will result in the screenshot being saved to your desktop as a PNG image file.

You can also take a partial (or selective) screenshot. But, on the Mac you’re not limited to just taking a shot of your current window. Holding the Shift and Command keys while pressing the 4 key will change your pointer into a cross-hair with two sets of numbers indicating the coordinates of the current pointer position. You can click-and-drag the cross-hair to draw a rectangle on the screen that frames whatever portion you want a screenshot of. If you’d rather just take a screenshot of a window, simply move the cross-hair over the window you want a shot of and press the Spacebar. Your pointer will turn into a camera and the window that you’ll take a shot of will be highlighted. Click to take a shot of the currently highlighted window.

Both of these methods will will result in the screenshot being saved to your desktop as a PNG image file. But, if you don’t have a need to save the shot as an image and just need to use it temporarily, you can modify either of those two keyboard shortcuts by also holding down Control before hitting either 3 or 4. This will place the shot into your clipboard and you can then paste as you usually would wherever you’d like. Using the extra Control key modifier will give you a behavior more like Windows.

Dropped MacBook Pro

Daniel Collins was carrying his MacBook in a laptop bag through a parking lot one day when he unexpectedly tested just how well built it is. Daniel’s MacBook Pro fell out of his laptop bag from about three feet high and crashed onto the hard asphalt surface.

I’m very impressed that the new glass screen was in pristine condition after the drop. The limited damage to the rest of the computer is also very good to see, but is to be expected if you know about Apple’s new manufacturing process for their MacBooks.

Thanks to John Gruber at Daring Fireball for the link.

Green Notebooks from Apple

green-macbook Apple has been getting pressure from various sources to reduce their environmental impact. As a result, it is something the company has been talking about more frequently lately. Years ago a noticeable improvement was in the size of their packaging. The iPod packaging went from a sizable cube to much slimmer, more form-fitting boxes. The same thing happened with Apple’s software boxes.

Well, they’ve stepped up their game with the latest line of MacBooks. They feel so good about their efforts that they’ve created a new advertisement about it and a web page documenting their improvements to go along with it.

They’ve worked to reduce harmful toxins that their older notebooks had. Moving to LED backlit displays not only helps improve the image quality on these new computers, but it also means that their new displays are now mercury and arsenic free.

The new manufacturing process they piloted with the MacBook Air and went full scale with the new MacBook and MacBook Pro allows them improve the recyclability of the computer. In addition to the aluminum monocoque, the new glass display is also highly recyclable.

The new LED backlit display and other changes earned the new Mac Book line ENERGY STAR certification. Their new MacBook can run on one quarter the power of a single lightbulb – with the right settings and conditions.

And, bringing this all the way around, Apple has reduced the MacBook packaging by 41%. Not only does this mean less material to either recycle or throw away, but it also means they can fit more computers in the planes and boats they use to transport them which results in fewer CO2 emissions per computer.

What is Time Machine?

Time Machine is one of the features that Apple added to the most recent version of Mac OS X known as Leopard. It’s basically a very simple and easy to use backup feature.

mac-os-x-leopard-time-machine2

All you have to do is connect an external hard drive to your Mac, and the system will ask you if you want to use it for backups. Tell it that you want to, and you’re done. The next thing you know the computer is performing the first backup of all of your data. After this is complete, Time Machine will backup any changes (including new files) every hour that your computer is active.

Restoring files from Time Machine is also extremely easy. Just click on the Time Machine icon in your Dock, or start Time Machine from your Applications folder. Time Machine will whisk into view presenting you with the current state of your application. You can scan back in time to look for lost files by either clicking the back arrow or picking a particular time from the timeline on the right. Select the files you want to restore and click the restore button. Time Machine then slides out of view and your restored files are available again in your application. You’ll probably most often use Time Machine from the Finder, but it also works with other applications like iPhoto or Mail.

You can tell Time Machine that there are folders that you don’t want to backup, if you’d like. A good use of this is excluding your podcasts from the backups. My podcasts folder (located in your iTunes Music folder) is currently 8.4 gigabytes in size, so preventing them from being backed up saves space on my backup volume. Especially when you consider that the contents of the podcasts folder could be changing daily or hourly and if you lose them, you can probably get them back from the original source if it is that important.

Ease into the switch

I became a Mac user in 2001. Before that I primarily used Windows. In this article (and in future ones on this site) I’m going to show you how to make the switch yourself.

Apple’s Get a Mac ad campaign has driven a lot of Windows users to Apple stores as well as to Apple’s Web site in search of more information about the platform. Apple tells us that over half of all Macs sold at Apple retail stores were to customers who were new to the Mac.

I also believe that Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) is a big draw for new users. There are a lot of great features it has that are enticing to people used to Windows. Mac OS X was the driving force in my interest in the Mac platform and I bought my first Mac, an iBook, when Apple started preloading it on their computers instead of Mac OS 9.

So, if you’re contemplating a switch to Mac, or if you’re just getting frustrated with Windows, this article is for you. It should also prove beneficial to new Mac users. And finally, if you know someone who is thinking of taking the leap, send them a link to this article. My hope is that this information will help people make the right decision.

Yes, it works with multi-button mouses

Let’s start by dispelling a myth. Macintoshes work with multi-button mouses. They’ve supported multi-button mouses in every version of Mac OS X that has shipped. And they have sold the Mighty Mouse, a four-button mouse with a multi-direction scroll ball, since August 2, 2005. Today, the Mighty Mouse is the only mouse sold by Apple or shipped with any Mac.

Making the best Dock

One of the first things you’ll want to do is drag your Applications folder to the Dock. The Dock is the strip of icons located at the bottom of your screen by default. This will provide you with a quick way to launch your applications in a way that is similar to the Windows Start Menu.

Click on the Finder icon in the Dock (it’s the first icon on the left) to launch a Finder window. Select Go from the menu-bar (at the top of your screen) and then select Computer. Double-click on the hard drive icon – it should be labeled Macintosh HD. You’ll see a folder labeled Applications, which has a make-shift letter “A” on it. Drag that folder to your Dock and place it to the right of the dotted line. From now on you’ll have easy access to all of your Applications.

Once you’ve dragged the Applications folder to your dock, I recommend setting it to display as a folder so that it is easily recognizable by the Applications’ folder icon. You can do this by context-clicking (right-clicking) on the Applications stack in the Dock and setting it to display as a folder.

If you have folders in your Applications folder that you want to be able to quickly launch applications from, you should display a list when you click on your Applications stack. You can do this by context-clicking on the Applications stack in the Dock and setting it to view content as a list. After doing this, simply hovering over the folder in the list with your pointer will reveal the contents of that folder.

The Applications Stack list

Some other folders that you may or may not find handy to have in the Dock are your Home folder (it’s named after your username) and your Documents folder. There should already be a stack for your Downloads folder in the Dock.

Another neat trick is to turn on magnification, yet set the magnification to a low level. I have mine set somewhere below 25 percent. This causes magnification to kick in only when you’ve placed enough icons or minimized enough windows to make the size dip below the threshold. You’ll never have to worry about icons in the Dock being too small. Setting magnification is easy. Simply context-click on the Dock (use the dividing line as a target) and select Dock Preferences… then adjust the sliders to meet your preferences or set it similar to what you see in the screenshot.

Preferences for the Dock

To put new applications in your Dock all you have to do is drag the application file to the Dock and it’ll be there from then on. You can also context-click on the icon of any running application and select Keep In Dock. Removing applications from the Dock is just as easy: simply drag it out of the Dock and the icon will disappear in a puff of smoke – literally. Don’t worry, your application will still be fine. It’s merely the icon in the Dock that has vanished.

Switching tasks as well as computers

Task switching in Mac OS X is a bit different than in Windows. You’ll need to use Command+Tab instead of Alt+Tab to switch between applications. Thankfully, the keys are in about the same location. All you have to do to switch to the last used application is hit Command+Tab. Hold down Command and repeatedly hit Tab to go further down the list. Holding down Shift reverses the direction with each repeated press of the Tab key. You can hit Q while you have an application icon highlighted to quit it and H to hide it.

Something the Mac does that Windows does not is give you the ability to quickly switch between open windows for your current application. Simply press Command+` (the ~ key) to cycle through the active application’s windows. This behaves similarly to switching between applications. Check out what happens when you repeatedly hit the ` key or begin holding down Shift.

Do you see the signs?

Apple takes advantage of using symbols to represent certain key-presses in menus and elsewhere in the operating system. However, if you don’t know what these symbols mean, you’ll be lost, as I was for at least a week or so. That’s why I created this cheat sheet for you. Below you’ll see an image I created that you can save for reference in your first few days of Mac use.

Symbols representing the Command, Option, and Shift keys

Symbols representing the Shift, Command, and Option keys

When you read Mac articles and books, you’ll see these symbols. Depending on your keyboard, they might not be that easy to figure out, so here’s a key you can refer to.

Get the combinations

Windows borrowed a lot of key combinations from the Macintosh, so it shouldn’t take you too long to get used to them here. However, there are several other combinations that Apple has standardized, which are missing from Windows. Next you’ll see a layout of many useful commands with their corresponding key-press symbols.

Common Keyboard Shortcuts you can use almost anywhere

Feel free to print this image out and tack it up to your wall for a few weeks.

The Finder

The Finder is the Mac equivalent of Window’s Explorer. Most users don’t even know what Explorer is in Windows because it is normally accessed via the My Computer icon. On the Mac you access the file browser through the Finder icon in the Dock, or alternatively, from disks you may have mounted on your desktop.

In Explorer, pressing Enter while you have a file selected will either open the file or run it. In Finder, pressing Enter allows you to rename the file. To open the file, you should use the Command+O key combo. At first this may sound counter-intuitive to a Windows user – as it did to me. The explanation I have heard is that Macs tend to have the default action be one that is non-destructive. Using Enter to open a file could be seen as disruptive, if not destructive, and if for some reason you enter rename mode by accident, hitting Enter again will end rename mode with no changes made. I’ve come to enjoy the quick access of renaming a file because I do that rather frequently, and Command+O is easy to use and remember.

You’ll get a lot of use out of the Command key while using Finder. Command+O also opens a folder if it happens to be the selected item. You need to use the key combination Command+Delete instead of simply hitting the delete key to delete files. It’s great. Apple has made deleting files deliberate without the use of annoying prompts. Command, when used in conjunction with the [ and ] keys will issue back and forward commands respectively. This will function much like the buttons in any web browser. Speaking of web browsers, these same key-presses will also work in Safari and most other web browsers on the Mac.

While Finder is active, clicking on its menu in the menu-bar will give you access to the Finder preferences. I would advise settings the option to have New Finder windows open Home. It will give you fast access to all of your documents and files, and since your Applications folder will be in the Dock you’ll rarely need to access other folders on your hard drive. In the same vein, I would uncheck the option for showing hard disks on the desktop–unless you just can’t get away from having something like Window’s “My Computer” on your desktop.

The Mac OS X Finder gives you four ways to view your files: as icons, in a list, as columns, and Cover Flow. Icon view shows icons of any size from 16-by-16 pixels (that’s pretty small) to 128-by-128 pixels (mammoth in relation to Windows’ icons), along with labels displaying the filenames below or to the right, and optionally, some additional information about the file. Folders are intermixed with files according to your configured arrangement order.

List view lists all the file and folders in your current folder and places a disclosure triangle next to folders. You can expand folders and the triangle will point down to reflect the fact that Finder is now also displaying the folder’s files indented below it.

Column view is very useful – it has one column for each folder. Deeper folders are displayed to the right and more shallow folders to the left. If you have a file selected, the right-most column will display a preview of the file. I’m using this view as I write this article to sample some MP3 files, without having to run iTunes or QuickTime.

Cover Flow combines list view with another area on top of it that shows high quality previews of whatever file you have selected. If you have a movie selected, you can even play it through this view.

You can type Command+J to access the options for any of these views in the Finder.

You can copy and paste files in the Finder just like you do in Windows via the Command+C and Command+V combinations or the menubar. However, you cannot cut files. That’s a good thing. Microsoft chose to implement cut in a way that is inconsistent with the standard cut, copy, and paste metaphor. The only way to do it so that it is consistent is also dangerous. You don’t want to cut files and wind up losing them because you forgot to paste them.

Using applications

Installing applications is very easy on the Mac. When you first begin using one, you may think to yourself that it is too easy. If you were to download OmniGraffle for instance, all you have to do to install it is drag the OmniGraffle icon to your Applications folder.

Installing applications is as easy as dragging and dropping

One of the most difficult things for me to initially understand when I switched to the Mac was uninstalling an application. During my first week I wanted to remove an application from the system and immediately opened System Preferences to look for an uninstaller. I searched around for quite a while trying to find an equivalent to the Add or Remove Programs control panel I was familiar with in Windows. I finally figured out that all you have to do is drag the undesirable application to the trash. Now this is the way computing should be!