Mac OS X Tip of the Week: App Switcher: Not Just for Switching
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In an earlier tip, you learned that by pressing the Tab key while holding down the Command key, you get a giant Dock-like window that lets you quickly cycle through your open apps. But there&#146;s much more to this handy Mac OS X feature than that. Read this week&#146;s tip to find out what else you can do with the application switcher. [Jan 05, 2005]
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This article is from a new book published by No Starch Press: Ubuntu Linux for Non-Geeks: A Pain-Free, Project-Based, Get-Things-Done Guidebook by Rickford Grant. &nbsp;This excerpt covers using your iPod with Ubuntu and it is full of tips, tricks, and helpful pointers. &nbsp;Reprinted with permission from No Starch Press, all rights reserved. &nbsp;More information about the book and its author is at the end of the article.
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Did you know that you can access your menus without touching your mouse?
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When Steve Jobs hits the keynote stage at the 2008 Macworld Conference and Expo on January 15, he will face a ballroom full of bloodshot eyes, a sea of journalists, analysts, and bloggers knocked loopy by the culture shock of going to sleep in Vegas (where the Consumer Electronics Show was just held) and waking up in San Francisco. Talk about your tough crowd.Fortunately, Jobs doesn?t need to kick into charisma overdrive to capture minds, hearts, and wallets. This year?s conference is already a banner event, a coming-out party of sorts for a Mac platform that has seen its biggest evolutionary kick since the demise of the original Mac OS. The combination of OS X Leopard and new Macs based on Intel?s Penryn CPU will help Mac outsiders remember that Apple sells more computers than phones.iPhone, take 2 What will happen this week? Only Steve Jobs knows for sure, but here?s my best guess.Although Leopard and Penryn have pushed the Mac to dizzying heights and should thus gain some stage time, the Macworld Expo keynote will still go heavy on iPhone and iTunes. And this time, the hype will be justified. eBay will be awash in mint-condition, used iPhones the day that Apple ships the new model that links to AT&amp;T?s fast 3G network (in the U.S.). With the speed of the 3G cellular data network, lots of RAM space for cached maps, and a close partnership with Google, iPhone could blast a tunnel through the in-car navigation market. CES was packed with navigation newcomers, but none has the hook of iPhone?s multi-touch interface, much less the capability to make phone calls and purchase music from iTunes.Another indirect but even farther-reaching benefit derived from the faster cellular network is iTunes Tagging. When listeners with compatible receivers are tuned into terrestrial and satellite radio stations that have licensed iTunes Tagging, they can purchase music that catches their ear with a button press. This will see its greatest uptake among users of Mac and PC iTunes, but iPhone owners could have the song downloaded before the radio is done playing it. No more trying to figure out the title of a song from the words in the chorus.iPhone?s support for native applications will see its official debut in February, but third parties are undoubtedly already on board. If Apple doesn?t take up navigation, the likes of Telenav and TomTom surely will. Voice-over-IP would make a great keynote demo, and with native application support, Apple might not have to write it in-house.Do pre-show announcements clear the stage for new notebooks? Apple always gets what it considers to be its lesser product announcements out of the way just before Macworld Expo so that Steve Jobs can focus on the high-percentage pitches in his keynote.The pre-keynote rollouts for 2008 are Apple?s specialty machines: the Mac Pro desktop/workstation and Xserve rack-mounted server. Both have been reworked for Intel?s quad-core Penryn family Xeon CPUs, nicknamed Harpertown. Mac Pro buyers can now get 8-core systems for about $1,200 less than before, and the Harpertown Xserve is the first 8-core server Apple has ever sold. Both systems also support significantly faster front-side bus and memory speed. This sort of performance kick might go unnoticed by most home and mainstream commercial users, but Mac Pro and Xserve buyers are going to love it.With the power user, workstation and server Mac announcements out of the way, Apple has room on the Macworld Conference and Expo keynote stage for new notebooks. The story there isn?t necessarily limited to Penryn. AMD recently announced its ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3000 series GPU (graphics processing unit) for notebooks. Among the new GPU?s attributes are improved power efficiency, PCI Express 2.0, and direct HDMI output. The new ATI GPU has one other feature: on-chip decoding of HD and Blu-Ray DVD content. It may be a long shot for this Macworld Expo, but there is a high-def DVD-equipped MacBook Pro on the near horizon.What to do after the keynote Those Macworld Conference and Expo Attendees who don?t fly home after the keynote will be treated to a packed schedule of sessions targeting audiences from home users to scientists and IT professionals.Macworld Expo?s organizers -- IDG World Expo, which has the same parent company as InfoWorld -- have also managed to pack the exhibit hall. Attendees will find familiar faces such as FileMaker Pro, REALbasic, and the venerable BBEdit programmer?s editor, but they?ll also see Hewlett-Packard, Samsung, Xerox, VMware, Parallels, Iomega and, of course, Microsoft.Next to Leopard, Office 2008 for Mac will be the best-selling software for the Mac this year. It?s not only the first native version of Office for Intel Macs, but Microsoft?s first Office designed from scratch for OS X. The Mac faithful may outwardly jeer Microsoft for taking four years to catch a clue, but they?ll be buying Office along with all other commercial Mac users. Office 2008 will be just one of many new products showing at Macworld Expo that don?t need Steve Jobs to sell them. They?ll sell themselves.
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It's easy, really -- just sync your Mac to Steve Jobs Time. In Cult of Mac.
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With just one week left before Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard becomes available, you can now take a guided tour of some of the newest features of the operating system.
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After a âswift and easyâ installation, Mark Kellner (Washington Times) found Mac OS X Leopard âsomething any Mac user will want to have.â âOffering better integration of e-mail with syndicated Internet news updates, a new backup feature likely to decrease the impact of hardware failures, and snazzy display features by the bushel, the $129 Apple Mac OS X Leopard upgrade is more than a reasonable purchase.â
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Continuing the thread from yesterday. I got absolutely nowhere, some people suggested I use a smart playlist, missing the point that I'm a developer working on a podcatcher, not a user trying to use iTunes as a podcatcher. I'm sure it's an excellent way to subscribe to podcasts, but I have my own ideas how podcatchers should work, and I want to integrate them with other stuff I'm working on. Integrating with iTunes is proving to be quite a challenge, or maybe it's an art, we'll see.  As usual Mac users are superior sumbitches.  (Quoting the James Brolin character the first time we meet him in the third season finale of The West Wing.) Anyway, the search continues, I tried another more direct tack, and looked for glue for iTunes for UserLand, and bingo, there's a match, from 2001, a well-known Frontier programmer Sean Elfstrom, apparently converted glue for the Sonic SoundJam app that iTunes used to be, before Apple acquired it.  I installed the glue in the OPML Editor. It's daunting, for sure, but let's see what I can get working.
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Mac users upgrading to Leopard will find a refinedd and improved Spotlight search feature, as our Macworld colleague explains.
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Shortly after activating his new iPhone, Michael DeAgonia  received his â first phone call. A few moments after that, I got another. I was able to swap between calls, merge them, put them on hold, and separate them without hassle. Other phones, of course, do that as well. Whatâs the difference here? The multitouch screen and interface. I can confirm what early reviewers have already pointed out: it works like magic.â The iPhone, DeAgonia indicates, â isnât a collection of features, itâs a well-thought-out multi-function device with functions bound together by a drop-dead simple, drop-dead gorgeous interface. The sum is more than the parts.â
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Whenever you want to move the Dock to a different location on your screen (left, right, or bottom), donât bother going into System Preferences. You can do it with a single click.
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Calling Leopard the âapple of my eye,â Dwight Sliverman (Houston Chronicle) tells us that as heâs played with the newest version of Mac OS X, âIâm constantly being surprised by smart, useful and convenient touches. It is a pleasure to use.â For example, he calls Spaces his âfavorite Leopard feature, because it instantly multiplies your desktop real estate. Those who use portable computers will particularly appreciate it. On my MacBook itâs a godsend.â
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Apple's update to Mac OS X 10.4.10 last week is driving some users crazy from a new popping sound.
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The near-final version of Mac OS X Leopard, unveiled today at the World Wide Developers Conference, introduces over 300 new features. They include a new Desktop and Dock with Stacks; an updated Finder featuring Cover Flow and a new way to easily browse and share files between multiple Macs; Quick Look, a new way to rapidly preview most files without opening an application; Time Machine, a new way to easily and automatically back up and restore lost files or a complete Mac; Spaces, a powerful new feature to create groups of applications and instantly switch between them; and enhanced iChat and Mail applications, which easily allow users to communicate even more creatively. Mac OS X Leopard, the sixth major release of the worldâs most advanced operating system, is scheduled to ship in October.
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Apple's beta version of its Safari Web browser -- released this week for Windows users -- is a speedy app with new features that works as promised. It also offers another glimpse of the big picture: Apple is suddenly, seemingly, everywhere.
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New beta software supports video conferencing between Mac and PC users.
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It could be a coming-out party for Mac OS X Leopard and who knows what else. Help us guess what might be rolling out on April 15. Plus: Stylin' with neon iPod headphones. In Cult of Mac.