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Mac 101: Use Quick Look to create an instant slideshow from your photos
Did you know that OS X has a handy feature for easily previewing a bunch photos in a slideshow format? It's a basic slideshow with no option to add music, but it is perfect if you want to quickly show a handful of your photos to your friends or family. To use Quick Look to create a slideshow, you must first open Finder and select the photos you want to add to a slideshow. Press the space bar on your keyboard to open all the photos in Quick Look with the first image displayed in the window. Use the arrows in the Quick Look window or use your keyboard's left and right arrow keys to navigate between the photos. Switch between an index view of the photos and a slideshow view by clicking the button to the right of the arrows, or pressing Command (⌘)-Return.
Mac 101: How to enable or disable automatic app downloads
Just like iOS, OS X now has an automatic update feature that allows you to install updates from the Mac App Store without lifting a finger to click. This feature was added in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and remains the latest version, OS X 10.9 Mavericks. Though Apple has embedded the option in the system preferences, you can easily toggle it on or off, depending on your preferences. Open System Preferences and select the "App Store" icon shown above Uncheck the "Install app updates" to disable automatic updates or check it as shown below to enable automatic updates
Mac 101: Using the keyboard viewer in OS X Mavericks
The keyboard viewer in OS X has been serving as a useful tool for a long time, allowing users to view keyboard characters with a few clicks of their mouse. Though Apple continues to include the utility in OS X, it has changed its location in the system preferences, moving it from "Language & Text" in Mountain Lion and earlier to the "Keyboard" preference pane. To add the keyboard viewer to the menu bar in OS X Mavericks, you must enable this option in the system preferences as follows: Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, and then click the Keyboard preference pane. Click on the Keyboard tab and then select "Show Keyboard & Character Viewers in menu bar" as shown above. Once the Input menu appears in your menu bar as a flag-like character, click on this icon and then click "Show Keyboard Viewer" to display a virtual keyboard on your screen. By default, you see the default keyboard characters, but you can easily view alternative characters by holding down the Option key, the Shift key or the Option-Shift key. When you see the alternative character you want to enter into a document, just click on it in the virtual keyboard or tap on the appropriate keys on your Mac keyboard, such as Option-Shift-K for the Apple "" icon.
Mac 101: How to use Stacks effectively in your Dock
New OS X users may not be aware of the power of stacks as only one is included in the Dock by default. If you've never used it, a stack is a Dock item that gives you quick access to a folder. Each OS X installation includes one -- the "Downloads" stock on the right-hand side of the Dock next to the Trash. Creating a stack is as easy as selecting a folder or files from the Finder and dragging it onto the right-hand side of the Dock. Once the stack is added to the dock, you can view its contents or customize how it looks and sorts the items that it contains. You can quickly and easily view the contents of a stack by clicking on it. One click will display the contents and a follow-up click will cause them to collapse. It's a quick and easy way to glance at the contents of a folder without opening up finder and browsing to the folder's location. Stacks can be customized right-clicking or control-clicking on the stack's icon in the Dock. You can change the sorting criteria for the contents of the stack as well as modify how the stack appears in the Dock, either as an icon or a folder. The most important option is how a folder contents are displayed when you click on it. You can view each stack as a fan that opens up as a series of icons arranged in fan or a simple list. You also can choose a grid which shows a scrollable matrix of icons that are arranged according to your sort criteria.
Mac 101: How to take screenshots on your Mac using OS X's built-in controls
Did you know that OS X has a little-known utility for taking screenshots? It's a small tool called Grab that's tucked away in the /Applications/Utilities folder and is exceptionally handy for taking screenshots, especially timed shots that require a few seconds of preparation. Grab is very easy to use. Just open it by going to /Applications/Utilities or by hitting CMD-SPACE and typing in Grab in the Spotlight search field. There is not much to the app; the bulk of its utility can be found in the Capture menu. You can use this menu or the shortcuts to grab your screenshot. Once you have snapped a shot of your computer screen, the image will open in a preview window. Just tap on the "Untitled" name of the file in the preview window to rename it and choose where to save it. Besides the Grab app, there are a few keyboard shortcuts that'll allow you to take screenshots of your Mac. The full window shots are nice as they preserve the window drop shadow with full alpha transparency. The resulting images look great in documentation or on the web. CMD+Shift+3 will capture the entire screen and save it as a file. CMD+CTRL+Shift+3 will capture the entire screen and copy to the clipboard. CMD+Shift+4 will capture an area that you select and save it as a file. CMD+CTRL+Shift+4 will capture an area that you select and copy it to the clipboard. CMD+Shift+4 then space will capture a full window, menu, desktop icon or the menu bar with drop shadows and save as a file. CMD+CTRL+Shift+4 then space will capture a full window, menu, desktop icon, or the menu bar with drop shadows and copy to the clipboard. Holding down the SPACE key after you start drawing an area will allow you to reposition it. Holding down OPTION right after you start drawing an area will allow you to adjust the width and height of the selected area. Hit ESC while capturing an area or window to exit the capture mode. Images captured using the keyboard shortcuts are stored on the desktop by default, but you can easily change the location using the following terminal commands. defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Pictures killall SystemUIServer This will change the default location to the Pictures folder, but you can replace "Pictures" with any other folder you prefer. I changed it to Downloads as I use the downloads folder as my catch all for items that I need for a moment, but don't want to keep.
iOS 7 power tip: How to swipe through the multitasking view much faster
It's hard to believe that it took Apple until iOS 4 to finally add multitaksing functionality. But you know Apple, always preferring to take its dear sweet time and make sure that a new feature is up to snuff rather than releasing something half-baked. With iOS 7, Apple completely re-imagined the iOS interface. In doing so, the multitasking pane was completely revamped into a much more aesthetically pleasing card-like interface reminiscent of webOS on the Palm Pre. While iOS 7 undoubtedly has its fair share of critics, most would agree that the new multitasking view in iOS 7 is much more useful and intuitive. Accessing the multitasking pane is as easy as tapping the home button twice and casually swiping through the list of open apps until you find what you're looking for. But there's a power tip lurking right beneath the surface. If you have a lot of apps listed in your multitasking view -- and they sure do add up quickly -- you can swipe through them at warp speed (read: much, much faster) if you swipe to the left or right with the icons themselves instead of using the actual preview screens. The video below, at about 29 seconds in, provides a clear demonstration. And here's one last multitasking tip on the house: As you likely know, removing an app from the multitasking pane is as easy as swiping an app card upwards. If you have a large number of apps open, however, you can speed up the process by selecting (i.e., tapping and holding) up to three cards simultaneously and removing them all at once. via Reddit
Mac 101: Supercharge your dock in OS X with these simple key combinations
The OS X dock is invaluable to any Mac user. It's a dedicated spot for you to place shortcuts to apps, files, and folders that you access on a regular basis. Besides just clicking on an icon in your dock to launch it, there are a variety of key combinations you can use to extend the utility of your dock. Command-Option-D to hide/show the dock Press Command-Option-D to hide or show the dock. You can accomplish the same task by choosing dock from the Apple menu and then Turn Hiding On or Turn Hiding Off from the submenu. You can also set the dock to automatically hide or show in the dock Preferences. Click on a dock item to open it Clicking on a dock item brings the item forward, or opens it if it is not already open. It also opens minimized windows. Shift-click on a dock item to slowly open it (minimized windows only) This will open a minimized window in slow motion. You can also minimize a window in slow motion by pressing Shift while minimizing it. Command-click on a dock item to locate the item in Finder Press Command and then clicking on a dock item will reveal the original item in the Finder. Control-click on a dock item to view contextual menu Control-click on a dock item reveals the contextual menu for that item. What you see in the contextual menu varies based on the application or file. You can also long press or use a two-finger press on a dock item to reveal the contextual menu. Use Option to change items in the contextual menu Pressing option when viewing the contextual menu allows you to replace "Quit" with "Force Quit" and "Hide" with "Hide Others." The "Hide" option will hide the app on the screen, while "Hide Others" will hide all other apps. It's very useful when you are working with multiple windows and want to focus on one. Command-Option-click on a dock item to hide other open items Command-Option-click will bring the app that you clicked on to the front and hides all other open items. It's very useful when you are working with multiple windows and want to focus on one. Control-click on the dock separator to access dock preferences Press control and then click on the dock separator to reveal the dock preferences. There you can turn magnification and hiding on or off, change the position of the dock on screen, and change the minimization effect. You can also use a two-finger press on the dock instead of control-click to access the dock preferences. Shift-drag on the dock separator to move it Press shift and then hover your mouse over the dock separator. When the dock arrow appears, you can drag your mouse to any side of your screen to move the dock to a new position (left, bottom, right). Option-drag on the dock separator to adjust its size in pre-set increments Press option and then hover your mouse over the dock separator. When the dock arrow appears, you can click and hold and then use a pinch gesture to adjust the size of the dock. Using the option key sets the dock to common icon sizes (128 by 128, 64 by 64, 32 by 32, 16 by 16). You can also adjust the dock to a custom size by clicking and holding on the dock separator and then using a pinch gesture to adjust the size. Drag a file to an application's dock icon to open it In Finder, you can select a file and drag it to a dock icon to open it. You can only drop the file onto an app that supports that file type. Command-drag a file to an application's dock icon to open it In Finder, you can select a file and use command-option-drag to drag the file to a dock icon. OS X will attempt to open the file with the application you selected, regardless of file type or what application the file is associated with (if any). The application may or may not be able to open the file. Command-drag a dock item from the dock to another location Select command, then click and drag a dock item to another location in Finder. This allows you to copy a dock item to another location without removing it from the dock. This key combo is handy if you have a folder in your dock and you want to move the contents to another folder on your Mac. Command-drag an item to the dock to put it into a folder When you drag items to the dock, sometimes it will move (slide) existing dock items to make room. If you want to drag an item to a folder on the dock, for example, you should select command before you select the file you want to drag to the dock. This command-drag option will allow you to add a file to a folder without accidentally shifting other dock items.
How to: Disabling iTunes song notifications
Was it only a year or two ago that we posted instructions on how to add "what's playing" notifications to iTunes? These days, we're fielding requests on how to turn the darn notifications off. Yesterday, our own Ilene H was haunting the TUAW back channel trying to figure out how to de-Mavericks her iTunes, so they wouldn't keep popping up as she was working. Fortunately for Ilene and other iTunes users, there's an easy fix. Just hop into iTunes and navigate to Preferences > General. In the Notifications section, uncheck the "When song changes" box and bob's your uncle. Those iTunes updates will stop popping up and you can get on with your work.
Help family members keep track of Apple ID/iCloud details with TUAW's fill-out form
Now that the gift-giving season is winding down, you may have a less tech-savvy relative who has suddenly found themselves with a shiny new Apple product. Whether they're getting started with an iPhone, iPad or MacBook, there's one thing they'll be needing (aside from apps): their Apple ID and iCloud account setup information. iCloud will help them keep track of their contacts, calendar, email and documents; an App Store account (which, of course, uses the same Apple ID credentials) will allow them to load up that iPad with great apps. But setting up an account requires first providing quite a bit of personal information. That information -- including easily researched or guessed answers to security questions, which, for safety's sake, should be faked anyway -- is something your family may need again someday, even if your relative has forgotten it or is no longer around to provide it. Apple even lets you include a rescue email address, which could be set to go to the "family IT lead" if that person is willing to take on the responsibility of screening password reset attempts. To that end, we've created a small PDF form; print it out and go over it together with your family member to keep track of all the important account setup info. Then, you may take a photo of it or scan it to hold onto (put it on an encrypted disk image, if you like) and your relative puts their copy in a paper file in a locked drawer or cabinet, with the house deed and the passports. You can't hack a piece of paper, and in the unlikely event that a password is forgotten or a security question misremembered, you can easily get back into the iCloud/App Store account with a minimum of heartache and recriminations. You can preview and download the form right here. Best of luck! Apple ID Account Details This post was inspired by J. Thanks!
Five tech things you can do for your family today
There's no place like home for the holidays, and certainly no place else where you're likely to encounter so many of your family members at the same time. Chances are, the advice and assistance you provided last year on the technology front has faded into memory just like a wilted poinsettia plant -- but there's still time to get folks off the naughty list and onto the nice list for 2014. Here's a quick few suggestions for low-impact, high-value help. Check the backups. Is Time Machine in play? CrashPlan, Backblaze or Carbonite online backups more your thing? Whichever approach your folks are using to protect their data, please check the setup, verify the backup drive and make sure nothing has gone off track since you got it working originally. Test restores are always a good idea, or make a quick clone of the Mac boot drive for offsite safekeeping with Carbon Copy Cloner, SuperDuper! or ChronoSync. iWish you a merry iCloud. Has your mom's iCloud storage allocation filled up with video clips and zillions of photos? Make sure that Photo Stream is landing someplace other than just the phone, and that iCloud backup is turned on for any iDevices (unless they're syncing locally, which is a good idea at least once a year). If your relatives don't already have Find My iPhone turned on, insist that along with the figgy pudding they have an ounce of device loss prevention. Apps and iOS updates. Just like visitors and uncooked fish, stale apps begin to emit an unpleasant reek after some time has gone by. Take a moment to verify that the folks are running the current iOS, OS X and app versions available. If they tolerate change well, you might even turn on automatic app updates in the Mac and iOS App Store to help keep them current. Scanning for Santa. Document scanners from Neat or Doxie may have shown up under the Christmas tree, but even the lowly iPhone's camera can help organize files and photos when paired with a savvy app like Evernote. Take a few minutes to discuss where key family documents are stored, and see if you can work out a better system than "somewhere in the basement near the water heater." Passwords be with you, and also with you. Using the same three passwords for every website is like walking under a ladder carrying a broken mirror on Friday the 13th. Get those cousins and kin thinking about a better way to manage their website credentials with 1Password, LastPass or iCloud Keychain, and suggest that they consider two-factor authentication for those critical accounts like Google or iCloud. If they really want to feel like they're living in the future, show them the device unlock magic of Clef plus Waltz. We wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and a happy New Year -- enjoy the day, travel safe, and tune in this afternoon at 5 for our handy helping Hangout, where Doc will gladly answer any questions he can about setting up Macs, iPhones, iPads and more!
Dear Aunt TUAW: ZDnet switcher has some wires crossed
Auntie knows that some of her correspondents don't get around to sending in their questions promptly -- in some cases, not at all. This week, she's handed over the perfumed stationery to nephew TJ, who has a bit of a bee in his bonnet over Ken Hess's account of his first week with the Mac, published last week by ZDnet. Dear Ken, After your rather colorful piece about wanting to trade in your iPhone 5 for an iPhone 4, I was curious to read your account of switching to the Mac. The challenges you're facing are surmountable; I believe I may be able to give you a few pointers to make the transition smoother. I went through this exact process about 10 years ago, and I've never looked back. While things may feel easier on Windows, as someone who spent time and has done tech support on both platforms, I think it's fair to say that really depends a lot on what you are used to. For example, when I bought my PowerBook, I hooked the Ethernet cable to it. Then I started searching for the equivalent of Windows' "Network Wizard" to start configuring -- whether or not this was a public network, a home network, or a work network. After several minutes of searching I finally gave up and thought, "Wait, you don't suppose that it's just that easy? I plugged in the network cable and I'm on the network?" But that's how it worked. Click to close ... when it makes sense. You wrote: "[W]hen I click the X on an application, I expect it to exit." At the risk of frustrating you further, some apps on the Mac do close when you close their window, and some don't. For example, if you close the "Contacts.app" window, there is really nothing more for you to do with that app, so the app closes. However, if you are in a word processing or text editor and close the last window, maybe you want to create a new document. If you close the last window of your web browser, maybe you want to go somewhere else. But here's the thing: the way that Windows does it isn't better, necessarily; it's that it's familiar. If you want to quit an app on Mac, just quit the app using the File menu's Quit command, or the handy Command-Q keyboard shortcut. (Yes, you can control the Mac using the keyboard.) Most apps will resume right where you left off, including re-opening windows just like you had them before. If you don't want an app to save its windows, you can even tell it not to. Aside: Force quitting iOS apps You also wrote: "A similar thing happens on the iPad and iPhone. My daughter never quits any apps, so she always has twenty or more 'minimized' apps on her devices. Of course, everyone in my family also makes fun of me because I want them to close the doors when entering or leaving the house. I must be the one that's wrong. I like to close doors and apps. Deal with it." You are, of course, welcome to use your devices however you like. However, your analogy to closing doors when entering or leaving the house doesn't really fit, because background apps on iOS will automatically quit when the OS needs to reclaim the memory they're using. Force-quitting apps on iOS is like standing at one of those automatic doors at the grocery store and pulling it shut behind you. You can do it if you want, but don't expect other shoppers to compliment you for your diligence. When you re-launch an iOS app, it will pick up where you left off, so it appears as if you never quit it at all. (Sounds familiar? Apple is trying to introduce that convenience into Mac OS X too.) Free and Bundled Apps You wrote: "If you haven't noticed, I really like free applications." That was a strange thing to say after mentioning, twice, that one of the first things you installed was Microsoft Office, which is probably the most expensive "app" most Mac users will ever install, unless they decide to spend $20 on Pages instead. Fair warning, Pages isn't filled with oodles of overcrowded toolbars reworked into a 'ribbon' either. In fact, the default look of a new document in Microsoft Word compared to the default look of a new document in Pages.app may be a good illustration of the difference in mindset between the two platforms -- Word first: vs. Pages: That's after Microsoft updated Word with the "ribbon" feature to "simplify" it. Now, is one of those better than the other? No, they're just different approaches. Personally, I prefer Pages because it shows me a small subset of commonly needed features, whereas Microsoft Word looks like a bad case of UI overreach. Let's move on. The next concern you raised was about the perceived lack of bundled apps on OS X: "At the price that Apple charges ($800), you'd think I'd get a free copy of PhotoShop Lite or some other 'lite' versions of something with it but, no, it's pretty bare bones." First, "the price that Apple charges" for its operating system is $20. The rest is for the hardware. Microsoft doesn't bundle third-party apps with its operating system, either -- that's down to the PC manufacturers. Second: Really? You're complaining that Mac OS X doesn't come loaded down with the free applications and utilities commonly derided by Windows users as "crapware?" You may have noticed that there is no Mac version of PC Decrapifier, either. This is generally considered to be a feature of buying a Mac -- not a flaw. Instead, Apple has created the Mac App Store, which is conveniently bundled with OS X and accessible at all times, via the "Apple Menu" as shown here: Fire that up and you will find more apps that you could ever hope to use. Many of them are free, and those that aren't free are generally pretty inexpensive. When you buy from the Mac App Store, you also know that the app developer has met Apple's standards for inclusion in the store, so it won't muck up your computer. (The question of whether those restrictions, particularly the "sandboxing" rules that control which areas of your Mac an app can access, are overly restrictive is a question for another post.) Oh, and there are no license codes for apps from the Mac App Store, and you can use them on all of your Macs. In fact, you can also set it up so that whenever you download an app from the Mac App Store, that newly-purchased app will automatically be downloaded and installed on all of your other Macs. On paying for software I find it disheartening to hear a tech writer claim that he doesn't have any money to spend on software. (Even more so when that tech writer is "a full-time Windows and Linux system administrator with 20 years of experience with Mac, Linux, UNIX, and Windows systems in large multi-data center environments," as your ZDnet bio states. Sysadmin wages are, by and large, better than writer's pay.) I assume that you get paid for your work, and that you pay your mechanic, accountant, and doctor for their work, not to mention either mortgage or rent. I'm not sure how you expect software developers to pay their mortgage or rent or their mechanic, account or doctor if they aren't getting paid for their work. But that's a whole other conversation. Crashing You wrote "Pinta, for example, won't allow me to cut or copy a bit of a drawing. I get an exception when I try. That's a significant fail for that product." Wow. You ran into a bug in a free, cross-platform image program? I'm shöcked. (By the way, we call that a Sarcastic Umlaut.) I'm not sure what this has to do with a review of your purchase of a Mac. "I get some app crashes -- far more than I should for a brand new system. So far, the App Store app has crashed multiple times, Pinta has crashed, and a few others that I can't recall have crashed on me." Seems like you've run into more crashes on your new Mac than I have on all of my Macs in the past 6 months or more. In fact, I purchased that exact same Mac mini about 2 months ago and I'm not sure I've seen any crashes on it, and certainly haven't seen any crashes of apps from Apple. Do third-party apps sometimes crash on Mac OS X? Sure. Do Apple's own apps sometimes crash too? Sure. Does that happen on Windows too? Yup. Desktop Publishing You wrote: "I've always wanted a Mac for Desktop Publishing, for Graphics creation and editing, and for movie editing. All those things are now available for Windows and I'm not convined [sic] that the Mac versions are any better these days. Twenty years ago, they were. Today, not so much." As someone who has used Microsoft Word and Pages extensively, I can tell you that doing consumer-level desktop publishing in Pages is much easier than it is in Word. Have you actually tried any Mac graphics programs? I don't mean "Mac versions of Windows programs" or "free app that tries to work on Windows, Linux, and Mac," I mean actually developed-for-the-Mac applications like Graphic Converter or Pixelmator? Because it sounds like you've tried a bunch of Windows-based or Windows-centric apps on Mac and then declared that a Mac is no better than a Windows machine. That would be like me switching to Windows and complaining that iTunes and Safari aren't any better than on the Mac (which they're not, but it's hardly a fair assessment of the whole platform). The menu bar is better. No, really. It is. You wrote: "That weird application bar thing at the top is application focused." It's called the "menu bar." Not to put too fine a point on it, but maybe it'd be worth taking an hour or two to learn the Mac-specific terminology before declaring yourself ready to write an post for a major tech website dismissing an entire mainstream operating system that you have used for "a full week." [This is a strong real-world example of Michael Chastain's legendary General Motors Help Line joke. "Motor? Engine? I don't want to learn technical terms, I just want to go places in my car!"--Ed.] The menu bar is better. It works consistently across all applications. No longer will you have to blindly click around some application to try to figure out where the menus are. They are at the top. Always. Yes, if you find yourself clicking randomly around the OS (any OS) then you might get unexpected results. The difference is that OS X offers you consistency. In sum ... You started off by saying that you had been using Mac OS X for "a full week." I expected you meant that you were just getting started -- after all, you've been using other operating systems for decades -- but you seem to have already given up. Of course Mac OS X seems strange; it's different from what you are used to! There is still a lot out there to discover, such as the fact that you can get free screen recording built-in using QuickTime X (as pointed out by our own Megan Lavey-Heaton). Is it as good as Camtasia? No, but it's free. And if you want Camtastia, it's available for Mac (for a price), along with Jing and other products from TechSmith at several price points. There's also iShowU and ScreenFlow and probably some others that I'm forgetting. If you're seeking software tools and Google doesn't turn up what you are looking for, there's always Alternative.To. As a new Mac user you might also greatly benefit from checking out AskDifferent, Mac OS X Hints, and our own Mac 101 series. Of course, mainstream social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Google+ are good places to seek out help; so are Apple's own support forums. Even the most experienced Mac users were beginners once. Unlike the bad days of the 1990s, however, now you've got a lot of company; reach out, ask for help, get what you need and enjoy. But maybe the first step towards the comfort zone is learning -- and accepting -- that you don't know what you don't know. Anyway, we're here to help. Good luck with week two of your Mac experience... and beyond.
Mac 101: The history of the Command key "pretzel"
You've probably tapped it at least a few times today without ever knowing exactly what it is or what it's called; I'm talking about the strange, swirly square emblazoned on the Command key (that's Unicode U+2318, for the font fanatics). So just what exactly is it, and who decided it would be the symbol for such an important key? The shape itself, which has appeared in different forms for thousands of years in Europe, may have its origins in a heraldic symbol called the Bowen knot. As a glyph, it goes by several different names including the Gorgon loop and Saint John's Arms. The symbol has come to symbolize many things over the past 2,600 years or so, but it didn't become an iconic part of computing culture until 1984. As related by Folklore.org, the story goes that when Steve Jobs first saw the keyboard command list for MacDraw he was unhappy with the number of Apple logos cluttering up the list, as the Apple symbol was used on the keyboard's action key. He demanded that his team find a suitable symbol to replace it. Apple's bitmap artist, Susan Kare, immediately began browsing for a new icon and stumbled upon the familiar symbol, which is used on modern roadside signs in Scandinavia to highlight a point of interest or cultural heritage. She presented the symbol to the team, they squealed with delight, and the Command key as we now know it was born. What's your preferred nickname for the wee squiggle? Let us know in the comments below.
Mac 101: Finding your Mac's UUID
Most Apple owners are familiar with the UDID, aka serial number, for their iOS device, but did you know that your Mac has a similar hardware UUID too? In this post, I will show you where to find it, so you can use it in beta testing. If you ever volunteer to test a beta Mac app, you will likely need to provide the developer with this hardware UUID. This alphanumeric value is used by the developer to provision an Adhoc version of the software specifically for your Mac. Finding your UUID is not too difficult once you figure out where it is located in OS X. To find you UUID, you must start with the Apple icon in the top left corner of your Mac menu bar. Click on the Apple and then select "About This Mac," as shown above. This will pull up the basic details about your Mac hardware, including its processor, memory and startup disk. Click on "More Info..." to view the detailed system information. This system information box provides additional details on your Mac, but you have to dig one step further to find your UUID. Click on "System Report" button, highlighted above in blue, and then "Hardware" at the top of the screen. Look in the right-hand pane and you will find your hardware UUID towards the bottom of the list as shown below. Once you locate the UUID, you can select it and copy it to the clipboard.
Mac 101: How to retire a Mac with an iCloud account
When you want to retire, sell or give away a Mac, you should never just pass it on to someone else as-is. There are many apps that only allow you to use your serial numbers a limited time, most notably from Adobe and Microsoft. You should deactivate the software so that you can reuse your serial numbers on a new Mac. There's other data you should save and remove also. In his article "iCloud services can make decommissioning your Mac more complicated," our good friend David Morgenstern at The Apple Core on ZDNet alerts us to an update to an Apple support article that deals with just that issue. The first critical issue, as noted on The Apple Core, is to not manually delete any of your data while signed into your iCloud account. Your iCloud account stores your files that sync with all of your devices and removing anything while signed in means your other devices will also have that information wiped. The safe steps to take are: Open iTunes and deauthorize the Mac from your iTunes account. Next, Apple recommends you back up your data. The Mac Basics: Time Machine support article, covers how to backup your Mac. You can also use other backup software, such as Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!. Both programs are used religiously by TUAW staff members. No matter what you use, the point is to make sure you have a copy of all of the data on your computer, so that you experience no surprises when you add a new Macintosh into your hardware mix. Open iCloud from your System Preferences. Uncheck the Find My Mac preference (the last one in the list), and then click the sign out button on the left side of the iCloud preference window. Your system automatically removes all of your iCloud data at this point. If you've backed up your data though, you still have it all neatly stored away on your backup drive. The balance of the information on Apple's support article covers reformatting your hard drive and how to return it to its original "out-of-the-box" state. This is especially useful for the recipient of your old and their new Mac. I recently had a relatively new iMac go belly-up on me and can say that having a current backup is the only thing that saved me from weeks of frustration trying to resurrect files. For my iTunes account, I just had to deauthorize all my machines and reauthorize them one by one. If I had not activated my iCloud account, I would have lost all my contacts, calendars and years of carefully organized Safari bookmarks. In addition, I found that Microsoft's phone support and Adobe's chat support were most helpful in returning my lost activations for their software. TUAW Stories Related to Backing Up Your Data Getting ready for Mountain Lion: Backups World Backup Day 2013: Don't be an April Fool!
Mac 101: Upgrade to SSD
If you are looking for a way to get more out of your MacBook or MacBook Pro, consider a solid-state drive (SSD). SSDs offer faster data read and write speeds, fast file transfers, speedier boot times and will save you some battery life. In the past, SSDs were considered somewhat pricey upgrades and out of reach for many users. Today, prices are dropping and quality drives can be had for a song through retailers like Amazon and OWC. Today I will show you how to install an SSD, specifically the Samsung 840 series into a June 2012 MacBook Pro. The proceedure in this tutorial video will work for any SATA-based Mac notebook with a few monior adjustments to the physical installation of the disc. Keys to Success Remember: before doing a full hard-disc transplant, make a full backup of your computer. Rather than restoring from a backup to a new drive, I used Carbon Copy Cloner and a Seagate Thunderbolt Adapter to clone my internal drive's contents before installing the new SSD. If you don't have a Seagate Backup Plus drive you can pick up a universal drive dock or Notebook Hard Drive Upgrade Kit for about US$30. They're nice to have around anyway. This whole upgrade process is super easy and you should be able to complete it in a few hours depending on how much data you need to transfer. Now go forth and do yourself a solid. Disclaimer: Note that opening a new MacBook Pro won't void your warranty, but replacing stock parts with your own third-party parts will void the standard Apple warranty.
Mac 101: Beef up your spam filters in Mail (video)
Nobody likes spam, but if you use Apple's Mail on Mountain Lion, at least you have some tools to deal with it. Plenty of Mac users rely on Mail to read, manage and process their emails... and spam messages. If you use email, you have spam -- that's just the way it works. Following up on Kelly's how-to from a few months back, let's take a look at some ways to manage spam efficiently and decrease your email processing time. Built-in Spam Filtering Mail's built-in spam filtering is enabled by default. You'll find it in the Junk Mail setting in Preferences. Make sure that the box labeled "Enable junk mail filtering" is selected. You can also determine where spam messages go after detection, or add exemptions to your filter. [Note that some online mail services -- Gmail in particular -- recommend disabling Mail's onboard spam filtering. Be sure to check the setup instructions for your service provider. --Ed.] In the Viewing preferences tab, disable "Display remote images in HTML messages." Some spammers send out messages with web bugs -- invisible images linked to the specific message you received -- that notify the spammer that your email is an active email account once you click on the message. From the spammer's perspective, this "validates" you as a real, live address, which then generates more spam for you. Not good. Turning off this feature prevents the spammer from recognizing your email as an active email account. Creating Rules Mail lets you create rules to fine-tune your spam filtering. One helpful method is to create a new mailbox for messages that meet your spam criteria. Once your new mailbox is created and properly labeled (i.e., "Spam-ish"), go to the Rules setting under Preferences and create specific actions based on a predetermined set of criteria. For example: If all the Content-Type Contains 'multipart/related' then Move Message to [the mailbox you just created]. Now that you've set that rule, messages that meet your criteria are moved to that mailbox. Fine-Tuning No spam filter is completely foolproof, so you will get false positives and false negatives. Mail allows you to select a message and click on "Not Junk" or "Load Image" which will correct the labeling of the message. The more times you correct these errors, the better Mail gets at reducing them. A good rule of thumb is to review your Junk Mail folder periodically to make sure valid messages haven't slipped through the cracks. Cloud Mail If you're not using Mail on your Mac, you still have options in the cloud. An iCloud or Gmail account can act as a buffer between malicious spam and your computer. In some cases, the cloud service filters may be a bit too aggressive; if you suspect some of your inbound mail is being blocked incorrectly, be sure to check the support page for your provider and test with another account. Third-Party Spam Utilities Several third-party spam utilities are available to further enhance your spam-squashing powers, including SpamSieve from C-Command Software. It's been around for quite a while and works very well. A single license will cost you US$30; a free trial is also available. SaneBox is an online application which helps to sort your email into proper boxes and reduces your email processing time. An added feature is that it runs through spam amazingly well. The Smart filtering feature of SaneBox reads your email messages, determines the level of importance and moves unimportant messages out of the inbox. The @SaneBlackHole will not only delete your spam messages but makes sure you never receive email from the sender again and automatically unsubscribes you from the mailing list. You can also defer processing your email by placing your email in the "@SaneTomorrow" or "@SaneNextWeek" folder and it will automatically pop back into your inbox when the time comes. The cost for SaneBox is US$5/month but if you refer other people you'll receive extra credits. The free Mailstrom.co service also can help you reduce spam along with unwanted subscriptions, newsletters and so forth. Mailstrom groups your email by big-picture criteria (sender, subject, size, etc.) and lets you archive or delete in bulk with a single click. For catalog emails or newsletters, you can also unsubscribe in only a few steps, rather than having to track down and confirm individual unsubscribe requests. By using these techniques, hopefully the only place you will see spam is in your musubi.
Mac 101: Checking your Mac's warranty status
More Mac 101, tips and tricks for novice Mac users. Every newly purchased Mac comes with a one-year limited warranty and 90 days of complimentary telephone technical support from Apple. Of course, by purchasing AppleCare with your new Mac, you can extend this warranty and telephone technical support to three years, but it will cost you extra. How do you find out if your Mac is still in its first year of warranty or covered by AppleCare for an additional two years? Simple! Go to Apple's Service and Support Coverage page and enter your Mac's serial number. You'll get a break down of your warranty based on the date your Mac was purchased. Where do you find your Mac's serial number? You'll find it in About This Mac (here's how). Or for an even easier way -- because remembering and grabbing your Mac's serial number can be a bother -- download WozWas's Mac Warranty Status Script, which grabs your Mac's serial number and enters it into Apple's Service and Support Coverage page for you. All with one simple click. Knowing whether your Mac is in warranty can be really helpful, should something go wrong. It's also particularly useful to know the status of a Mac's warranty if you're planning on buying second-hand. Remember, warranty and AppleCare coverage stays with a Mac until it expires. There are different views on whether AppleCare is worth the cost, but regardless, a general rule of thumb is that if you can afford it, you should get it. Though Macs are great, if / when something goes wrong, it can be expensive to repair. AppleCare provides you with peace of mind and first-rate support from Apple.
Mac 101: How to back up your Google Reader account
Google is sunsetting its Reader service in July and you may be on the hunt for a new RSS service and client to use. Before you fire up that new client, you should take a few minutes to back up your current Google Reader feeds as you may need to import them into your new app. Importing your feeds will be a lot faster than manually re-subscribing to each one. It's also a good idea to have a copy stored locally as a backup. Here's what you need to do to pull your feeds down from Google Reader: 1. Login to your Google Reader account and click on the gear on the right-hand side of your web browser. Select "Reader Settings" from the drop-down menu. 2. Click on the Import/Export tab in the Google Settings page. Here you will find a link to "Download your data through Takeout." 3. Click on the link to "Download your data through Takeout" and you will be brought to Google's Takeout service. Login again to your Google account, if needed. 4. Make sure the "Choose Services" button at the top of Takeout is selected and Google Reader is noted in the box on the center of the screen. Click on the "Create Archive" button at the bottom to create a backup of your Google Reader account. 5. You will then jump to the download screen where you will see the progress of your backup. My backup was small so it was already completed by the time the page opened. The files for your Google Reader account will be bundled into a zip file and can be downloaded to your computer. 6. Click on the download button to start transferring the Google Reader files to your computer. I use the default download settings in my browser, so my zip file was saved to the "Downloads" folder on my Mac. Depending on your settings, your file may be saved to a different location. You may also be prompted to open the file with the archive utility or save it to your drive. I recommend saving the file directly to the drive. If you download the file and forget where it was saved, you can locate it by opening the "Downloads" window in your web browser or clicking on the Downloads icon in your OS X Dock. 7. Locate the downloaded zip file on your Mac using Finder and double-click on it to extract the files to their own folder. The Reader folder will contain a handful of .json files and a subscriptions.xml file. You can ignore (but not delete) the .json files. 8. Open your new RSS client and use it to import the subscriptions.xml file that you just downloaded and extracted. Please note that this backup contains your RSS feeds and folders (subscriptions.xml) as well as your starred articles (liked.json), shared articles (shared.json) and more. Though stored in the backup, these starred and shared articles are not always transferred into other apps.
Mac 101: Schedule event details in the event title with Calendar
More Mac 101, tips and tricks for novice Mac users. Let's say you've just got off the phone with a friend. You've arranged to meet later for coffee, but you don't want to forget, so you go to Calendar on your Mac to schedule the event. You double click the date you're going to meet, enter a title, like "Meet Martin for Coffee" and hit return. The event has been created, but all the details still need to be populated. So you double click the event again, to open it and enter further details, like time, location, etc. Or do you? With the Calendar app in Mac OS X, you can schedule event details in the event title. The Calendar app will intuitively read those details and populate the appropriate sections. For example, let's say you're meeting Bob Jones for breakfast tomorrow at 8 AM at 23 Commercial Street. Simply enter "Breakfast with Bob 8 AM 23 Commercial Street" in the event title and Calendar will populate the time and location for you. Unfortunately, you can't schedule alert or note details like this, but this neat trick is really helpful for quick and snappy Calendar entries. This tip works for most computerized calendars out there (including web-based ones like Google's Calendar), but I'm always surprised at just how many people don't know they can do it.
Mac 101: Use Automator to extract text from PDFs
More Mac 101, tips and tricks for novice (and expert) Mac users. Have you every tried to copy and paste text from a PDF into a word processor document like Pages or Microsoft Word? Most of the time the text loses all its formatting from the PDF, which can be a real pain. Too often I've spent a frustrating amount of time putting text back into a coherent order after copying it from a PDF, while wondering why there isn't a simpler way of doing this on my Mac. Thankfully, a friend (who discovered how to from MacWorld) showed me, using Automator. And provided the text in the PDF is formatted correctly (and you're not trying to extract text that is actually an image), it's foolproof as well as free! Here's how. On your Mac, open Automator from Applications. Automator will ask you to select a type for your document. Select Workflow, then hit return. In the far-left column of Automator, click on Files and Folders. In the second column, select Ask for Finder Items and drag and drop it into the far-right space which reads "Drag actions or files here to build your workflow." This becomes your first action. Now click on PDFs in the far-left column and select Extract PDF Text from the second column. Drag and drop Extract PDF Text into the space to the right, where you dragged Find Files and Folders. You'll now see that Automator has created a workflow or one action following another. You're almost there. In the Extract PDF Text bubble of the workflow, select Rich Text instead of Plain Text (next to Output -- this will retain formatting like italics and bold) and choose where you want Automator to place your extracted text files from Save Output To. To finish, simply title and save, but make sure you've save as an application and not a workflow. Now open your new Automator application and select the PDF you want to grab the text from. A new Rich Text document will be created. From there, simply open this document and copy and paste the text into your preferred word processor.
