Apps & Traps Archive

 

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Apps and Traps 7/18/2011

by David Whitby

 

Going on a Lion hunt [OS X 10.7 ready apps]

Is your Mac and all of that software Mac OS X 10.7 Lion ready? Whereas Roaring Apps has compiled a long and, thereupon, one assumes fairly complete Lion software compatibility list.

First things being first, you need to make sure your is hardware compatible with Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. The short version of that story is you must have an Intel-based Mac with a Core 2 Duo or faster processor — PowerPC Macs aren’t supported:

Here’s are some Apps vetted for Lion so far….

Utilities

Cocktail 5: Swiss Army Knife of Mac maintenance utility that’s currently in beta, ships in August

ClamXav 2.2: A free, open source antivirus app that’s fast and easy on the resources.

AppTrap 1.1.7: A Preference Pane that automagically prompts you to remove associated files when you delete an app

AirPrint Activator 2.x: Adds the files needed to make almost any third-party printer AirPrint compatible.

About This Mac / System Information: A lot more Mac system and software information delivered in tasty new interface.

CandyBar, Transmit, Coda updated for Lion Panic is among the first to tweak multiple apps for Apple’s latest big cat.

As always, Apple giveth and Apple taketh away. Thereupon, there are a number of notable technologies and apps that have been excluded in OS X 10.7 with Samba (network file services), Rosetta (PPC software compatibility) and Front Row likely to be the most sorely missed.

Graphics, video

Although Apple’s highlighted feature list doesn’t include mention of under-the-hood improvements to graphics, there are plenty of graphical updates built into the operating system. Fullscreen apps, Mission Control and LaunchPad are all new and graphical ways to interact with your Mac.

Acorn 3: An affordable and very capable Photoshop replacement.

Final Cut Pro X: “[T]he biggest advance in Pro video editing since the original Final Cut Pro,” says Phil Schiller.!!!!!!!!! Wrong!

QuickTime 10.1: More file export choices, more editing tools and QuickTime 7 isn’t gone just yet.

Internet

On the web side of things, Lion brings a lot of new functionality to table. One of the more interesting and potentially useful features is Safari 5.1′s do not track. A feature that’s also available in Firefox and Chrome, do not track sends a header to servers/sites you visit telling them not to track you — whether they do or don’t still up to them, but it’s start.

Safari 5.1: Brings WebGL, Do Not Track, Reader, fullscreen mode and more.

Productivity

In addition to Dictionary, which has gained deeper system-wide hooks and user interface, another major under-the-hood features gotten a complete rewrite is Speech, OS X’s integrated text-to-speech feature which includes scores of great voices in 40 languages and dialects (a.k.a. accents).

TextEdit 1.7: Sports an updated user interface, including an improved graphic menu bar offering one-click access to text highlighting, PDF signatures and more.

Dictionary 2.2: The OS X default dictionary-thesaurus now launches in-app and features a new user interface.

Preview 5.5: There’s now a Signature tool that allows the user to capture (via the integrated iSight webcam) their John Hancock and it works well enough.

Scroll Reverser v1.3 from Pilotmoon Software (free!)

Want to start using the reversed scrolling action today in Snow Leopard? Start “training” yourself now so it won’t be a huge “learning curve” if and when you switch to Lion (btw, you CAN toggle it back to the OLD way in Lion if retraining is just too much.)

iOS

Ten ways to work smarter on your iPad

from Dennis O’reilly at CNET.com

Keyboards like this make iPads better for work, but who wants to carry them around?

Speed up text entry with these handy keyboard tricks
Scott Lewinski’s review of five iPad keyboards on the CNET Crave site.)

Despite their compact size, lugging a keyboard–or any other iPad hardware add-on–in your travel bag defeats one of the primary reasons for taking a tablet on the road: a lighter load. I manage well enough using the iPad’s onscreen along with these handy shortcuts.

Skip the period: When you get to the end of a sentence, press the spacebar twice to insert a period and a single space!!

Faster apostrophes: Anyone whose name includes punctuation (like mine) knows what a hassle it can be simply to type your name. Instead of switching to the number-punctuation keyboard, just swipe up on the comma key to insert an apostrophe.

Do likewise for quotes: Swiping up on the period/question mark key inserts double quotes.

Simple insertion of special keys: Press and hold various other letters on the keyboard to access such characters as the French soft c (as in “garçon”), the Spanish tilde n (as in “mañana”), and the umlaut i (as in “naïve”).

Broaden your punctuation horizons: You’ll find a wider selection of punctuation marks by using the same technique on the number-punctuation keyboard. For example, insert an upside-down exclamation or question mark by swiping up (or pressing and holding) those respective keys.

Add ellipses by swiping up on the period key (only in the number-punctuation layout). Insert various monetary symbols by pressing and holding the dollar sign, or swipe up on the zero key to add a degree symbol. Perhaps my favorite of these shortcuts is the ability to add an em-dash by swiping up on the hyphen key.

Activate–or disable–Caps lock: Tap either Shift key twice to type in all caps. If you’re not the online-shouting type or you just want to avoid accidentally switching to all-caps mode, deactivate the feature by opening Settings, choosing Keyboard in the General category, and switching Enable Caps Lock to OFF.

An Introduction to Jailbreaking your iPhone or iPad – is it worth it?

What does this mean? Is it Illegal? What are the advantages/disadvantages?

Live demonstration to follow: Cydia, Cydia Apps, How to UN jailbreak? The first step into this unknown realm is to go to the Jailbreakme.com (on your iDevice) website and download the App that will “Jailbreak” your device.  You will then have a “Cydia” App installed that allow access to the contents of the Cydia App Store (just like Apples “App Store”)

As you can see from these 3 screen shots, there is a full panoply of “apps” that you can purchase to “enhance” the iDevice experience.

Of course, since Apple is not interested in supporting an alternative to their “App Store”, each revision of the iOS usually kills the ability to access Cydia’s “App Store”.  Enterprising programmers usually have a “hacked” or access App ready within days of this release.

 

Advantages:

1. Fabulous “New” and exciting apps that Apple has not yet “Blessed” or included in their iOS.

2. A place for Developers to earn a living (not at what some think is an exorbitant 30% cut to Apple thru their App Store.)

 

Disadvantages

1. NO automatic backups thru the iTunes Store!

2. Many “Beta” or NON Vetted Apps with dubious reliability.

3. Access to programs that allow the downloading of “Free” (read, illegal) software.

 

If you have “Jailbroken” your iDevice… can you return it to an “Apple Approved” state?  The answer is yes, by merely plugging it into iTunes and hitting the “Restore” button.  This will return your iDevice to the state it was in the LAST time you did a Sync in iTunes.

Apps and Traps 6/20/2011

by David Whitby

Snow Leopard Application Switcher Tricks

(From MacWorld by Sharon Zardetto, Macworld.com)

 

1. Quit all open applications

Say you want to install new software that requires you to quit all your programs. There’s no need to move to every program and quit each individually. Press Command-Tab for the Application Switcher and then, keeping Command down, press and hold Q. Each application quits in turn; you’ll be notified if there are any unsaved changes in documents.

2. Bypass the Clipboard

You select a swath of text from a Word document to transfer to a document in InDesign, and realize you can’t Copy and Paste because you’ll lose what’s already on the Clipboard. You can transfer the selection using the Application Switcher instead.

 

Drag-and-drop a piece of selected text to another application using the Application Switcher.

 

Start dragging the selection in the Word document (move it a little bit and then stop). With the mouse button still down, press Command-Tab. Holding Command down to keep the Switcher open, drag the selection into the InDesign icon. You’ll be switched to InDesign, where you’ll see the usual “ghost” of a dragged selection, just as if you were dragging it within the InDesign document itself. Drag it into position and let go of the mouse button.

The target window isn’t frontmost in the destination? Hang on to the selection by keeping the mouse button down, and press Command-~ (tilde) to cycle to the correct window. You can also use Command-N to create a new window as a drop target.

 

The Mac OS X Delete Key: It Goes Both Ways

Why don’t we have a convenient way to Delete Text going FORWARDS as well as Backwords?Well we do, albeit thru a keyboard shorcut.

• If you have a Laptop or Keyboard with an “F” or Function Key then deleting text in front of the cursor with the regular Delete key can be done by holding down the Function, or fn key while pressing it.
• You can also do this by pressing Control + D.
• You can delete the entire word behind the cursor by pressing Control + Delete or Option + Delete.
• You can delete the entire line of text or paragraph behind the cursor by pressing Command + Delete.

 

ChromaTunes! – $10

Veenix ChromaTunes | Mac OS 10.6 or Greater | Mac Intel CPU Smart Music Player for Macintosh!   ChromaTunes is a smart, elegant and easy-to-use music player for the Mac that organizes your music by energy-color. Hear exactly what you’re in the mood to hear with a single click!   ChromaTunes also features “Smart More Like This Tune” technology which allows you to select a tune and instantly create a playlist of similar tunes.   Note: ChromaTunes performs a real sonic analysis and does not use outside reference databases or socially aggregated data. No internet connection is necessary.   Features: Tasteful, easy-to-use music player HPE Energy-Color analysis and organization “Smart-More Like This Tune” technology Automatic artist, album and genre playlist creation Smart-Play tracking feature And more!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Security “Hardening” Guide for Snow Leopard! full document

A worthy replacement for Apples “Activity Monitor” – atMonitor 2.1.5

 

 

iOS Apps for 6/20/2011

i3D- Head Motion Detection and Feedback Technology that Apple has an interest in.

 

7 Words! – Simple and yet Addicting Word Game for people who might like scrabble.

Maps+ – Whats the Plus? Alternate Routes!!

 

 

 

 

 

A Little iOS 4.3 Magic….;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=LAhP-yLJJ9s

Click on the above screen image to download a formatted PDF of this month’s presentation

May 2011 Edition

Snow Leopard Tricks

Allow Dashboard Widgets to be Dragged Onto the Desktop

Sometimes it’s useful to keep one of you Dashboard widgets around after you close Dashboard, so paste the following into Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES && killall Dock

To use this ability, click and hold a widget and then close Dashboard using your keyboard hotkey (usually F12? on newer Macs).

Enable ‘X-Ray Folders’ in QuickLook

The QuickLook feature of Finder is great, but if you use it on a folder, you won’t see anything except a folder icon. Using this hidden setting, you’ll be able to see the contents of the folder when you use QuickLook.  If there are more than 5 items.. the Icons will Animate, rotating thru the entire collection!

defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableXRayFolders 1 && killall Finder

To turn off, replace the ’1′ with a ’0′.

http://secrets.blacktree.com/ … for even MORE Secrets!

Faster WIFI?

With the New Thunderbolt Macs you have the ability to speed up your WIFI transfers by 50%.  Here’s how….

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/05/06/mac_os_x_10_7_lion_to_support_450_mbps_wifi_on_2011_thunderbolt_macbook_pro_imacs.html

 

iOS Apps for 5/16/2011

RoadAhead, Diagnostic PADD, Star News, Qwiki, Zite, Crackle, Catalog Spree, robick, Vintate-Radio, Planetary, The Mountain

 

 

Click on the above screen image to download a formatted PDF of this month’s presentation

10.6.7 – Snow Leopard Apps

PinPoint

Big Screens Lose Mouse Pointers

Unlike Windows PCs, it’s not so simple or an elegant process to change the size of your Mac’s mouse pointer to make it more visible on today’s massively large screens.
Even the MacBook Pro models have plenty of pixels to push around.
What’s your tried and true method to find your Mac’s mouse pointer when you come back to your Mac and the screen comes alive?
I cheat. Instead of swishing the mouse back and forth (or whipping fingers across the Mac’s trackpad), I use a neat Mac app that locates the pointer on the screen in a jiffy. PinPoint is useful, inexpensive, and entertaining. Setup is a breeze.
Start by selecting a pointer which will appear onscreen when you tap the magic key combo.
You can choose the color and transparency, the size (very important option on multiple screen Macs) and the behavior (I prefer Always On).
There are also options for Show Icon in Menu Bar, but that’s rather moot since you’d need the mouse pointer to get there.
And, of course, there’s an option to center the mouse pointer on screen so it’s
much easier to find.
PinPoint remains out of the way, completely unobtrusive while you’re working on your Mac.
When you’re back and need to find the mouse pointer, the magic key combo brings it front and center with one of a variety of entertaining, animated pointers.

Calendar

The Menubar Is Your Friend

Apple might have a a practical limit to the number of Mac Menubar
apps but I don’t know what it is. For me, half the time I can’t
remember what the app’s icon is supposed to tell me.
If you’re an iCal user then you know the benefits and the quirks.
It’s a decent calendar, of course, but it requires effort to open, scan,
and review the day, month, week events. Is there and easier, faster, cheaper way?

It’s called Calendar, a Menubar app that gives you—drum roll, please—iCal with a click. It’s yet another way to use iCal. One click to the Calendar icon in the Menubar on your Mac and you get a quick look at your schedule.
Simply hover your mouse pointer over a specific day and see more details of scheduled events.
Edits are a snap. Or, rather, a click. To edit an item in iCal from Calendar’s pop-down menu, simply click on a day or month, and iCal fires up, ready to be edited.

QuickCal

By SmellyPup

Description

Use plain text to create events and todos on any of your Mac OS iCal
calendars! Tap a hotkey, type what you want, and done! Use plain natural
language , like:
“Pick up Joe @ LAX tomorrow 8p”
“Pay taxes before 4/15!”
“Lunch tomorrow at noon”
“Cycling class @6 for 1.5h”
As you type, QuickCal will show you what it is thinking, as well as pointing out any schedule conflicts with events you’re about to create! You’ll be amazed how much quicker you can create events than using any other calendar app (native or otherwise). Nothing is faster than typing what you want!
In addition to this, QuickCal supports “Smart Reminders”, which will create alarms at configurable time intervals, specific to how far in the future the event is. A meeting tomorrow? Reminder 15 min in advance. A meeting in 6 months? Remind a few days in advance.
The QuickCal menu icon also will show you all events on your calendars for the current day! Quickly see what’s going on at a glance.

New exciting features being actively developed!
(Also check out “QuickCal Mobile” for iOS!)

10.6.7 – LION’s new features…

1. Application Renovation

Mail 5 will bring the iPad’s beautiful drop-down look to our Macs.
In Lion, applications can go full screen with a click to get the most from
your screen’s real estate, and you can easily swipe from one full-screen
app to another. Even regular windows will learn new Multi-Touch tricks;
you can tap and pinch on your trackpad to resize content without
affecting other apps, for example. Expect Mail 5, bundled with Lion, to set
the bar high for this brave new world. Its streamlined design organizes
mailboxes, messages, and full-size message previews in iPad-style
vertical columns, and threaded email exchanges will be easier than ever to
follow thanks to the new Conversations view.

2. Revise and Relax

Versions lets you see incremental changes you’ve made to your files,
and say good-bye to multiple drafts.
Working in documents will be more hassle-free thanks to features like
AutoSave. Sure, it saves your files as you work, but there’s more: you can
lock files to manually preserve their states, and documents lock
automatically after two weeks to prevent accidental edits down the road.
In the short term, a Revert feature lets you zap back to a document’s state
as you last opened it. And since states are saved in single files, multiple
copies won’t clutter your Mac. That’s where Versions comes in—it’s Time
Machine for document changes, saving copies of your files every time you
open them and every hour you work. You can revisit earlier drafts to
replace entire files or just the sections you want, all in a cool 3D interface.
And thanks to Resume, all your documents (and apps) will be as you left
them after restarting your Mac or relaunching applications.

3. Giant Leaps for Mac-kind

Mission Control is like Exposé done right.

Managing apps and windows is overhauled in Lion, too. Launchpad lets
you organize applications in customizable iPad-style Home screens, swipe
among them, and even create and name folders, just like you do in iOS.
Mission Control is a brand-new environment that puts Exposé,
Dashboard, and your full-screen apps in one place. Windows are grouped
by application and—finally!—tagged with their app’s icon to make it easier
to find the window you want. When you do, you can call it up with a click
or a tap. To share files locally, you’ll just drop—AirDrop, to be exact. With
AirDrop, you can drag files onto usernames in your Finder window’s
sidebar, then drop them to beam files wirelessly to another user’s
Downloads folder.

ManyTricks’ Moom (Mac App Store link).

Like many similar utilities, Moom’s goal is to make it easier to put windows in
commonly used configurations—specifically, taking up exactly half or a quarter of the screen, or zoomed to fill the entire screen. But Moom’s standout feature is that it uses Mac OS X’s own interface for zooming windows: the green “zoom” button in the upper-left corner of every window.
Moom’s zoom-button display lets you quickly resize and position windows (left); once you’ve done so, you can easily revert back to the window’s original size and location (right).
Move the mouse cursor over this little green circle, and after a short delay—1/10 of a second by default, but you can make the delay shorter or longer—a small row of iconic buttons appears, each illustrating one of Moom’s standard window layouts: full-screen, or filling exactly half of the screen on the left, right, top, or bottom. Click the button with the desired window layout and, like magic, the window is moved and resized appropriately. If only the zoom button really worked this way.
But there are a couple not-so-obvious options here, as well. Click-drag one of Moom’s half-screen buttons, and its icon changes ever so slightly to indicate that you can reposition the window to fill a quarter of the screen. You can choose either of the corners contained in a button’s half of the screen. So, for example, the “top half” button gives you options to put the window in the top-left or top-right corner.
Similarly, if you’ve got multiple displays, click-dragging a button towards a different display gives you the option of zooming the current window to a half- or quarterscreen size and a particular screen location, but on the other display.
You can also zoom a window to fill a particular corner of a screen, and even move the window to a different display.

Moom’s keyboard options

In addition, you can configure the Return, Space, and Tab keys to perform actions whenever the Moom overlay is displayed. The options for each include zooming the current window to fill the screen; moving the window, at its current size, to the center of its current display; or reverting the window to its original size and location.

IOS Apps (Bringing some of Lions Functionality

to Leopard!) First Up.. MultiTouch!

(Hybrid)

Overview – $4.99 App Store

Remote Conductor turns your iPad into a productive multi-touch peripheral for your Mac*. Remote Conductor was carefully designed to leverage the power of the iPad to put the things you do most on your Mac right at your finger tips.
Remote Conductor was built around three common tasks: Track, Launch and
Switch:
. •Use your iPad as a large, wireless, multi-touch trackpad – with secure
keyboard
. •Find and launch Mac applications easily from your iPad
. •See all the open windows on your Mac and quickly switch between them
Remote Conductor makes you so productive, you may never use a mouse again.

How It Works

Remote Conductor runs on your iPad and communicates over Wi-Fi with a free server program called Conductor Server running on your Mac. You may install the Conductor Server on as many Macs as you like.
Remote Conductor was built from the ground up to be secure, all network traffic is encrypted with industry leading technology.
Remote Conductor’s powerful, yet easy to use interface works in any orientation.
Switching modes is as easy as tapping an icon or performing a gesture.

• Track
• Launch
• Switch

In Track mode your iPad becomes a large multi-touch trackpad.
The trackpad supports most modern multi-touch gestures as well as some that are unique to Remote Conductor. Here is an example of the most commonly used gestures:

• To move the mouse, drag one finger

• To left click on item, single tap on the iPad

• To right click, tap with two fingers

• To scroll, drag two fingers

• To drag (moving a window for example), drag three fingers

Remote Conductor also has convenient gestures for doing common things
on your Mac such as bringing up Expose, Spaces or the Dashboard.
In Launch mode you use your iPad to start applications on your Mac.
Your Mac’s applications and utilities are organized as pages of icons. If you know how to launch apps on your iPad you already know how to use Launch Mode.

Applications that are pinned to your Mac’s dock are presented as a scrollable
row at the bottom of the view so your favorite apps are always just a tap away.
Remote Conductor automatically finds all the programs in your Mac’s
Applications, Utilities and Developer folders, but you can add more locations if you like.

In Switch mode your iPad becomes a powerful application and window switcher. Remote Conductor is the only iOS app to support individual window switching on a Mac! It even works with Spaces!

Hot off the press.. in version 1.1.6 you will see..

Also, here are 3 Remote Conductor promo codes:

KMMMWPXFFH67; KXFA33FFYXT6; 4NFP49M3TT9A

Another Lion like app available now from
the App Store

Jumper (Icon Window for popular Applications) – $5

DropZone ***** – $14 (Previously covered)

Todos – Free

HyperDock – ****(Previously covered – Allows Full

Screen Display when dragging windows to the edge of
your monitor, previews Apps Open Windows or Tabs! and
Window movement/size control from the keyboard.)

Zoom – Honorable Mention (specially for pre Snow Leopard
systems) for AutoSave..(saves version changes for all
documents on a System Wide basis) try….

ForeverSave – $15 (30 Day free Trial)

DropBox – *****

(3 Current Copies, All Sync’d across multiple
machines/devices)

Witness (Another Hybrid)

These days, would-be thieves steal gadgets at their own risk. While yesteryear’s TVs and stereos resulted in big money, today’s laptops and smartphones — what with their GPS tracking and Web connectivity — typically result in quick arrests. And, thanks to a new program called Witness (which turns your Mac into an Internet-connected security camera), you can watch somebody stealing the computer you’ll inevitably get back the first time he logs onto Facebook.

Farenheit – Live Temperature Badge on your Home Screen! – $.99

SoundPrism Free! (Music App from Audanika.com)

Graphical Sound Creation on the iPad.