Tag Archives: overview

What is Spotlight?

Spotlight is a feature that was added to the Mac a while back with the release of Mac OS X Tiger. It is a way to search your hard drive to find the file you need. That sounds pretty simple doesn’t it? Well, it is.

Spotlight always knows what is on your hard drive. It doesn’t have to go through a periodic process to update its index. If you have a Finder window open with “aubergine” in the search field, and let’s just say you don’t have any files that refer to eggplant as aubergine, the window will be empty because it could not find that word in anything. Now add a new document named “ratatouille” and type “aubergine” in the document somewhere. Immediately after you save that document, the ratatouille file will appear in your Finder window.

That example was meant to illustrate how quickly Spotlight knows about what is on you computer. But, it also illustrates another feature of Spotlight. The ability to search for stuff inside of files. And it does that just as swiftly. But it doesn’t end with finding text inside of a document, you can search to see which photos you took with a Nikon camera instead of your Canon. You can search for anything on one of the cards in your Address Book. You can search for almost anything.

The easiest way to use Spotlight is to click on the magnifying glass icon in the right side of your menu bar – Apple has a guideline of always putting the search field in the top-right corner of a screen or window. A search field will drop down that you can start typing into. Wait… now might be a good time for me to explain what I mean when I say “search field.” Everyone knows what a text field is, it’s a place to store some text that the user types in or that the computer fills in. Apple has a distinct version of a text field that they call a search field. They’re immediately recognizable because they have rounded sides giving them a pill-like appearance. There will be a magnifying glass in the left side of some of them. If that icon has a little downward facing triangle next to it, you can click on the icon to select recent searches you’ve made.

OK, with that bit of exposition out of the way, lets get back to the Spotlight menu. As I was saying, it is in the top-right corner of the screen. Click on the Spotlight icon and type something into the search field. As you are typing Spotlight will begin searching your computer and returning results. For example, aubergine begins with “au.” If I have anything about Australia, it will show up in the Spotlight menu until I type the “b” in aubergine. Yes, it’s that quick. The Spotlight menu categorizes everything it finds and will return the first few items for each category. If what you’re looking for isn’t there, select the Show All item at the top of the menu. This will open a Finder window with all of the results. By the way, you can rearrange categories and eliminate specific ones from the Spotlight menu by changing your System Preferences for Spotlight. There is also a preference for hiding specific locations from Spotlight.

Get familiar with the Spotlight menu, it's a real time-saver

I said this is the easiest way to use Spotlight. It is and it is also one of the easiest and quickest ways to launch an application. If Spotlight finds an application that’s name matches your search term, that application will be the Top Hit. For example, when I want to launch Pixelmator, I use the Command+Space keyboard shortcut to open the Spotlight menu and then type “pi” followed by the Return key. Since Pixelmator is my Top Hit, it is already highlighted and hitting Return will open it. If I wanted to open my contact card for Fuel Pizza, I would use the down arrow key to move the highlight down until I had selected Fuel Pizza and hit Return. You can also select items from the menu with your mouse.

Have you ever tried to open a file from inside an application and had trouble remembering where it is? No need to answer; that was a rhetorical question. I know the answer is “yes” because it happens to all of us. With Spotlight, you don’t need to remember where it is. Just remember enough about the file so that Spotlight can find it. Every File Open window in Mac OS X has a search field in the top-right corner. Enter your search terms in there and the contents of the sheet will show the results. As with the Finder, you’ll also see a little Spotlight toolbar at the top of the results area. This will allow you to refine your search. It will have a few file locations that you can limit the results to. But, it also has a plus button that adds additional layers of refinement to your search. Clicking that plus button allows you to refine your search by all sorts of things like the kind of file, the camera aperture setting for each photo, and the bit rate of audio files.

This should get you well on your way to becoming a Spotlight guru. Let me know what questions you have about Spotlight and I’ll answer them.

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.

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!