Archive for the 'Apple' Category
Turning Tricks
February 9
Since I’m a stay-at-home dad now (not that I’m not looking for work!), I’ve had to adapt how I use my computer. You can’t just plop down on the couch (or, more likely, our new recliner) with the iBook in your lap and go crazy.
The external USB keyboard that Elaine got me for Christmas last year (an old strawberry iMac one that’s been rekeyed to Dvorak) works great. The keys are a little loud, but not so bad that it wakes Monkey up if I keep the typing sane and calm. And Quicksilver eliminates the need for a mouse to launch programs.
Still, a few things bugged me. For one, I couldn’t always know or remember the keyboard shortcut for something in some obscure app that I only use every 3 months. Enter KeyCue. This awesome little app shows all the keyboard shortcuts for any app when you hold down the Command key for a (configurable) brief period. It even changes the highlight depending on your modifier keys.
If that’s not quite enough for you, Apple has something a bit more roundabout built-in. Hit Control+F2 to focus on the menubar. Esc will take you out of it if you don’t chose something.
Window-switching is another area. Yes, I know I could use Exposé, but having learned most of my Mac on an iBook, the function keys aren’t always the most useful (you have to hold down a second key to, for instance, go to Dashboard). I’ve used Witch and it works great if you need to jump from one application’s windows to another’s. If you just want to switch around the windows in a single app, though (like TextMate which has great shortcuts for almost everything else), Witch makes it a bit difficult, as the list is presented in alphabetical order, which is, I now see, configurable. Now, though, I know why TextMate didn’t build that in; Command+` rotates between all the windows open in a given app. Does Apple love you or what?
And, lastly, I’ve been using Firefox for quite awhile since Safari isn’t the most stable on my computer (probably my fault) and I’d really rather work with something more cross-platform. It is, however, a bit annoying to have to reach over to my trackpad just to switch tabs (Command+Shift+Left/Right, or Command+Tab number), switch to the search bar (Command+K) or address bar (Command+L), or switch the search engine (Command+Up/Down when in the search bar). Thankfully I’ve found all of those in the last couple of days. Oh, and to just search through the links on a page, hit ‘ before you start typing.
So I seem to be pretty well set for all of this mouse-less, keyboard-only computing. Now if only I could figure out someway to get my computer to fetch me a drink. Do you have any awesome keyboard/usability shortcuts that you want to share?
Shooting Out the Spotlight
July 14
So I’ve been trying out the amazing TextMate application for my Rails development needs. It’s a great little text editor that has a nice feature of saving a project. You open up/create all the files that relate to a particular piece of work, be it XHTML and CSS files or Ruby documents or even whole folders. Folders auto-update, too. Add something new to a folder and it’s new contents are added into the project listing. You save projects so you can pull them back up with a double-click on the file. Saves a lot of time.
Well, being that I’m using OS X Tiger, and I have this supposedly-nifty new feature of Smart Folders, I thought to myself “I’m going to make this easy and have a Smart Folder of all of my TextMate projects.”
Now, for those of you not familiar with Smart Folders, they’re basically a saved Spotlight search. Spotlight is, of course, the much-lauded new search feature in OS X Tiger that searches through little tags attached to all of your files (as well as their contents, filename, created date, modified date, etc…) giving you really fast access to them. Just hit the hotkeys/click the icon, type in what you want, and away you go.
Yesterday I decided to give it a go and hit my Finder’s File menu and chose “New Smart Folder”. It brought up a window and I typed “TextMate project” into the text box I was given after choosing “Other” for the Kind. The little circle spun, the beachball spun. Nothing came into the window. It actually crashed Finder after about 10 minutes. “Wow,” I thought. So I decided to give good ol’ Spotlight a chance on it’s own.
Clicked the icon, typed in “TextMate project.” A few minutes go by, nothing. Typed in the name of the project, “Gaming.” Another few minutes, nothing. The word in my head was anything but “wow” at this point.
So, I decide to give my best friend a try. I hit the Quicksilver hotkey and when it’s comforting bezel popped up, I typed in the name of the file. Something like 0.666543 seconds later it was showing me my file. A single return launched TextMate and pulled up the file I wanted.
Now, granted, I did go back and search on Quicksilver for “TextMate project” and nothing came up. But Quicksilver isn’t made for searching fileTYPES like Spotlight supposedly is.
I got on my computer around 7:30 a.m. this morning. At probably 7:35 a.m. I decided to try the Smart Folder of TextMate projects again. It’s now 8:15 a.m. and it’s yet to return a single result.
Spotlight just became about as useful as the dock.
Rawr
May 13
So, I made the plunge. When Tiger arrived in the mail on Wednesday, I knew it would have to be installed soon. So, Thursday morning I sat down, hooked the iBook into the Linux box and started backing stuff up. Once I had documents, photos, and MP3s securely copied over to the Ubuntu machine, I stuck in the Tiger DVD and double-clicked the installer. The machine restarted and the upgrade dialog came up.
I know you’ve read my site before and you’re expecting a horror story. You are, aren’t you?
Well, sorry, but I have to disappoint you. The upgrade was amazing. Took about an hour and a half to answer all the questions and do the install (which is mostly just watching progress bars grow). Another reboot and there was Tiger. The first bootup took a little longer than I expected, but that’s probably due to Spotlight starting to index everything.
After checking to make sure everything was still where it was supposed to be (it was), I started playing with the system. I know before that I’ve said (probably not on here) that the Dashboard is a stupid idea. I still stand by that, but some of the widgets may actually prove useful. Currently I’m using the countdown (counting to my birthday, a bit of vanity), the weather widget and weather map widget. The last two take the place of a menubar item I used to use that was great, but not very space-saving. I also see myself using the dictionary widget, Yellow Pages widget, and TV listings widget in the future. So, stupid idea that turns out to have some use in it. Mostly I think it’s useful ’cause of it being hidden. If you had to see them all the time, on this 12″ screen, they’d be more annoying than any use I could get from them.
Spotlight, though…. So pointless when I have Quicksilver installed. Spotlight does pretty well for searching emails and files, but it’s not a launcher. Every once in awhile it’ll pull up an app and let me launch it, but usually not. If it was a launcher, I’d probably go over to it completely, as something built into the system is going to work faster than something third-party. It doesn’t, though, and Quicksilver does all the searching I need of files and email and it’s a launcher. So I’m sticking with that.
Mail’s new interface is horrible. Those buttons belong in Longhorn or some equally disgusting interface. Thankfully Cage Fighter exists to turn them off.
Safari seems to be a lot faster than before and I’m stuck using it now as OmniWeb doesn’t perform great in Tiger. Hopefully that gets sorted out soon. Firefox works fine, but it just feels laggy to me lately. So I’ll stick with the OS X native browser.
All in all, I’m pretty happy with this upgrade. It was well worth the money spent on it and doesn’t seem to have any major bugs. Good job, Apple.