MACinations June 04 - Tips & Tricks

Panther Tips

Of the 150 new features in Panther (http://www.apple.com.au/macosx/newfeatures/), one of the most useful is the re-vamp of the Application Switcher which allows you to quickly flit between the various open applications. You invoke it with Command -Tab and a translucent window pops up centred on your monitor. Tab between the icons to quickly select the app you want to go to. While this window is open you can hide the highlighted app by holding down H or Quit an App by holding down Q (You need to have the Command and Tab keys still held down). A quick use of Command Tab switches to the last used application. The Shift key allows you to tab backwards along the list.

Sherlock 3

One of the features I feel Apple stuffed in OS X was the new implementation of Sherlock. You get a basic set of Apple supplied "channels"only some of which are useful because they are heavily USA biased. As usual Apple Australia appears to have done nothing to encourage equivalent Australian sites, or make it easy to remove the default channels which are useless.

There are some web sites which list Sherlock channels, again a pretty patchy resource.

Eudora Expert Advice

Eudora is a stand alone email application available in three versions paid, sponsored (you get ads, and no Spam Watch) or free (basic features only). Although relatively easy to set up and use a lot of the advanced features can be quite esoteric to find out about. An excellent source of advice is the Eudora mailing list. http://www.listmoms.net/lists/eudora-mac/.
Download from http://www.eudora.com/download/ (6MB)

Eudora 6.1 for Macintosh supports direct import of mailboxes and address books from Apple Mail, Microsoft Outlook, and Claris Emailer. In Eudora 6.1, go to File: Import. Select the account(s) you wish to import.
While Eudora cannot import from all programs, there are many options to help get your old mail and address books into Eudora. Andrew Starr's conversion information page provides online information on how to convert from Netscape Communicator, QuickMail, and Pegasus Mail. http://www.emailman.com/conversion/

Drag to Dock to send an email

If you drag a document in the Finder to your email application's icon in the dock, it will automatically create a new message and attach the file to that new email. If you didn't know that one--try it out! Eudora, Entourage and Apple's Mail application support this terrific timesaver.

A further enhancement is the trick to "auto-attach a document" to a message without leaving the application that the document is created in. Let's say you have an image open (and saved) in Photoshop CS. Up in the title bar (just left of the document filename) is a document icon. Drag that icon to your email app icon in the doc and you'll auto-attach it to a new message.

PowerBook G3 Logo Upside Down?

Those of use with older PowerBooks like the G3 models, have to put up with Apple's idiosyncratic design decision to have the Apple logo facing the "right way" when the lid was closed and facing you. Of course as soon as you open the PowerBook to use it the logo is upside down when viewed from elsewhere in the room.

But some PowerBook owners have a fetish about things being "right" and Philippe Helman is one of them. He decided he'd "right" the logo. Kiddies don't try this at home unless you have a large drill press and some engineering experience! The details are located here: http://www.sterpin.net/pismologouk.htm

Is your Mac vintage or obsolete?

Apple has updated its list of "vintage and obsolete" products, defined as follows: Apple has discontinued support for certain technologically obsolete and vintage products. Vintage products are those that were discontinued more than five and less than seven years ago. Apple has discontinued hardware service for Vintage products with the following exception:

1. Products purchased in the state of California, United States, as required by statute. Owners of these products may obtain service and parts from Apple Service Providers within the state of California, United States. Obsolete products are those that were discontinued more than seven years ago. Apple has discontinued all hardware service for obsolete products with no exceptions. Service providers cannot order parts for obsolete products.

The Canadian, European and Asia-Pacific operating regions follow the U.S. product list, but make no distinction between vintage and obsolete. When applied to these regions, all products on the list are considered obsolete. http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=112142

Q. What happened to the Internet Preferences in Panther?
Without it there is no way to set a default Internet Browser."

A.The default browser is now set within a browser's preferences. In Safari, go to Safari->Preferences->General->Default Web Browser.

Similarly with Internet Explorer's preferences.

Alternatively, the freeware Default Apps prefpane (aka RCDefaultApp) lets you easily set the default web, email, news and FTP applications from System Preferences. http://www.rubicode.com/Software/RCDefaultApp/

Pasting Paths in Terminal

When you paste a copied file path into a Terminal window, be aware that paths containing space characters must be either escaped or quoted. On Mac OS X 10.3 you can use Terminal's "Paste Escaped Text" command (Command-Control-V) for that purpose.

MACinations June 04