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May 21, 2008

Select Boot Camp Startup Disc Sans Keyboard

If you own an Intel-based Mac, and have installed Windows on it via Apple’s Boot Camp, then you’re familiar with how you tell your Mac whether to boot into OS X or Windows :

Just Hold Down The Option Key At Startup, and then
Use The Arrow Keys or Mouse to Choose The Windows or OS X Partition.

But here’s a fun alternative — good for those situations when you can’t reach the keyboard after choosing to reboot.

Make Sure You Have The Apple Remote In Hand, and
Press and Hold the Menu Button During Startup. Just as if you were at the machine, the boot loader will appear.
From here, Use The Forward & Backward Buttons To Cycle between the two operating systems, and
Activate The Desired One By Pressing Play. No muss, no fuss, no keyboard required.

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Edited By C14

How To Fix Sluggish MacOS? - Hunt Down Process or Hogs

How To Fix Sluggish MacOS?
Hunt Down Process or Hogs

Has your Mac suddenly become sluggish? The problem may be a hidden program that doesn’t pop up in the Force Quit menu. To spot these troublemakers, you can do this tricks :

First, Launch Activity Monitor (/Applications/Utilities) and,
From the pop-up menu at the top of the window, Choose My Processes.

This shows the activity of any currently running applications (and their associated helper programs) and widgets.

Keep in mind that none of your Mac’s hidden Unix processes appear in the window (which is good, because you don’t want to mess with this stuff unless you know what you’re doing).

When you’ve located an item that appears to be gumming up the works (a helper program that didn’t quit with its host program, for example), Select It & Click On The Quit Process button at the top of the window.

Activity Monitor offers an additional advantage: it can show you what’s occupying your Mac’s mind.
Just click on the CPU column to see which applications are hammering on your Mac’s CPU.
Or take a look at the Real Memory column to view the RAM hogs you’re running.

If quitting the hidden process doesn’t solve your slowdowns, try restarting your Mac. This will usually clear out the cobwebs and get your system back up to speed.

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Edited By C14

Make Your Own Shortcuts In MacOS

You know you waste time whenever you reach for the mouse to activate commonly used commands. But what if the command’s keyboard shortcut is awkward, or there isn’t one for something you do a lot? Here are some tips, on how to create & manage your own shorcuts key in MacOS.

Open up the System Preference Pane
Go To Keyboard & Mouse Preference Pane,
Choose Create Your Own Shortcuts, and then
Change a Shortcut

It’s a snap to reassign a shortcut if it’s listed in the Keyboard & Mouse preference pane’s Keyboard Shortcuts tabs. Just double-click on the existing shortcut and then press the combination you’d rather use. You can use the Keyboard Shortcuts tab to change not only program-specific but also systemwide shortcuts.

This can be helpful if a standard shortcut is hard for you to remember, or when a shortcut in one program has a completely different function in another. Create a New Shortcut The Keyboard Shortcuts pane is also useful when you want to create shortcuts for commands that don’t have them—even a systemwide command such as Sleep.

How To Make a Sleep Shortcut

To make a sleep shortcut, just follow this instruction :

Click On The Plus Sign (+) in the Keyboard Shortcuts Tab,
Set The Applications Pop-Up Menu To All Applications,
Type Sleep (Capitalization Counts) in the Menu Title field,
Go To the Keyboard Shortcut Box,
Press The Shortcut You Want To Use, and then
Click on Add.

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Edited By C14

May 19, 2008

Securely Erase Your Hard Disk - All About MacOS Trash

Securely Erase Your Hard Disk
All About MacOS Trash

That little crumpling sound your Mac makes when you empty the Trash may sound satisfyingly final, but don’t be lulled into a false sense of security. Traces of your personal information and even entire files can easily be left behind on your machine. Follow these steps to make sure your Trash is gone for good.

Securely Erase Your Hard Disk Before you sell or give away a Mac, make sure that no personal data remains on it. After you’ve copied all your files to your new Mac, restart the old one from the Mac OS X installation disc. Open Disk Utility and select your hard disk from the list on the left. Click on the Erase tab and then on Security Options.

Next, choose one of the several erasure methods that are offered. The 7-Pass Erase option is probably sufficient for most people, but if you’re truly paranoid, select 35-Pass Erase, which will make it nearly impossible for anyone, even James Bond, to recover your files. If you’re using a laptop, make sure it’s plugged in. This process can take a long time.

Delete Stubborn Files

Have a file that just won’t delete? There are third-party solutions, such as Marco Balestra’s handy and free Super Empty Trash (donations accepted; www.faqintosh.com). Or you can use the rm -rf command in Terminal to remove the file. Unfortunately, if you mess up with that command, you might erase your hard drive.

Here’s a third method to try. It may take longer, but it’s very safe and will work on files that seem immune to all other attempts.

Start by creating a new user in the Accounts preference pane. It doesn’t matter what name or access level you give the new account; it’s going to have a very short life.
Once the account is created, move the troublesome file from the Trash into the /Users/Shared folder.
Now go to the Apple menu and choose Log Out user name, and then log in as the new user.
Open the /Users/Shared folder, and move the pesky file into the new user’s Trash.
Now log out of the new account and log in to your main account. Return to the Accounts preference pane, select the account you just created, and click on the minus sign (–), or just press the delete key.
A dialog box will appear, asking you if you’re sure you want to do this. Of the three options—Cancel, OK, and Delete Immediately— select Delete Immediately. The troublesome file, along with the new user account and the disk space it used, will disappear. Selecting OK will leave the file on your disk.

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Edited By C14

Want To Zoom / Enlarge Your MacOS Screen?

If you find interface elements too small to read comfortably, OS X will let you zoom in for a better look. Choose System Preferences from the Apple menu, click on Universal Access, and, in the Seeing tab, enable the Zoom option.

Now when you press 1-option–equal sign (=), whatever is on your display will be enlarged. (Use the equal sign that appears at the top of the regular keyboard rather than the one on the keypad.)

Press 1-option-hyphen (–) and the display zooms out. If your mouse has a scroll wheel or scroll ball, you can also zoom in and out by simply holding down the control key while moving the scroll wheel up and down.

By clicking on the Options button next to the Zoom entry, you can set the maximum and minimum zoom levels and decide how you want the display to react to your cursor; whether it should scroll only when the cursor reaches the edge of the screen, follow the cursor continuously, or keep the cursor centered. To quickly turn the zoom feature on or off, press 1-option-8.

Zoom with the Trackpad

By default you can just hold down the control key and use your mouse’s scroll wheel to zoom in and out on your display. But how can this be accomplished on a laptop that offers no scroll wheel? Universal Access offers this cool zooming feature: on Apple laptops that allow two-finger scrolling, press control and use your two fingers on the trackpad. Drag them up and the screen zooms; drag them down and the image shrinks back to normal size.

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Edited By C14

May 14, 2008

MacOS (OSX & Above) Keyboard Shortkey (Shortcuts)

Want To Safe Your Time With Shortcuts?
Read This - MacOS (OSX & Above) Keyboard Shortkey

Always visiting the menu bar with your mouse when you want to apply a common function? Isn't it wasting a lot of your time? Well, for many common tasks you don’t need to. You can use Keyboard Shortcuts. Keyboard shortcuts use the modifier keys (the 3 to the left of the spacebar, shift, Fkeys and sometimes the Caps Lock) in conjunction with intuitive letter keys. You hold down the modifier key(s) and then type the letter. You don't hit them all at the same time. For instance, to save in almost every program all you need to do is hold down the command key (the key on either side of the spacebar, the one with the Apple on it) and type S (cmd+S). Here are the list of the MacOS Keybord Shortkey :

Four Most Common Modifier

cmd - the command key, the one right next to the spacebar. There is one on each side of the spacebar and they both act identically.
opt - the option key, well labeled
ctrl - the control key, well labeled
shft - the shift key, well labeled

FINDER KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS
They must be used from the Finder, not from an application.

cmd+N - Create a new folder
cmd+Down Arrow - Open a File or Folder
cmd+O (letter) or cmd+Down Arrow - Open a highlighted icon
Tab - Select the next alphabetical icon
shft+Tab - Select the previous alphabetical icon
Left Arrow (in icon view only)Select an icon to the left
Right Arrow (In icon view only) - Select an icon to the right
Up Arrow - Select an icon (or file) above
Down Arrow - Select an icon (or file) below
cmd+D - Duplicate a selected item
opt+Up Arrow - Open parent window
cmd+W - Close the Active Window
opt+click on folder triangle (list view) - Expand Folder and all contained within it
opt+click on folder triangle (list view) - Collapse Folder and all contained within it
cmd+opt+W - Close all open windows -(or opt+Close from the File menu or opt+clicking any window's close box)
cmd+dragging window's title bar - Move Inactive Window
cmd+I - Get Info
cmd+del - Move selection to the trash
cmd+opt while inserting disk - Rebuild Floppy Disk Desktop
cmd+opt+Tab while inserting disk - Erase Floppy Disk
opt+drag - will make a copy of the item instead of just moving it. The original will stay where it was and you will have two identical items

The Most Common Shortkey - To Virtually All MacOS Programs

cmd+A - Select All items or text in active window
cmd+C - Copy the current selection to the clipboard
cmd+O - Open a file
cmd+P - Print the active window
cmd+Q - Quit the active application
cmd+S - Save the current file or document
cmd+V - Paste clipboard contents at current cursor position
cmd+W - Close active window
cmd+X - Cut the current selection, delete it from current window and put it on the clipboard
cmd+Z - Undo the last action

Each application has many of it's own shortcuts. You will find many of them in the menus in the menu bar, more can usually be found in the help files. Here is the edit menu from the Finder. You can see the Keyboard shortcuts following the commands.

Booting Up Shortkey - Control Your Machine While Booting Up:

shft - allows you to start up your Mac without extensions.
C - allows you to force your Mac to boot from an internal CD-ROM drive.
cmd+opt - tells the Mac to rebuild the hidden Desktop file. This should be done periodically for good preventative maintenance.
cmd+opt+shft+delete - tells the Mac to skip the first device in the SCSI chain. This comes in handy when you want to force your Mac to boot from an external drive.
cmd+opt+P+R - clears the parameter RAM. One of those things to do when things aren't right and you can't think of anything else to try. This clears things like date and time, location, etc.
Spacebar - opens the Extensions Manager when starting up.
Mouse Button - will force eject a floppy while booting up.
opt (OS9&10) - will give a choice of which drive or volume to boot from

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Edited By C14