systempreferences
Latest
Latest iOS beta shows how battery health settings will work
In a letter to Senator John Thune, Apple confirmed that it would bring transparency to the way its iPhones handle CPU slowdowns due to aging lithium-ion batteries. If you have an Apple Developer account, you can check out the solution the company has baked right into its upcoming iOS 11.3 release. As first noticed by 9to5Mac, the iOS 11.3 beta has a new "Battery Health" system preference screen, with a "Performance Management" section.
10.7.2 update adds some Lion interface tweaks
Amid the flurry of software updates Apple released yesterday was OS X Lion 10.7.2. The big feature of the latest delta release of Lion was, of course, iCloud. But the 10.7.2 update also brought other features, such as a speedier Safari web browser and stability improvements. However, there are also some small, very welcome, interface changes I've been noticing as I've been using 10.7.2 over the last 24 hours: Launchpad icons got bigger. The most noticeable UI change is that the size of the icons in Launchpad got much larger. About 60% larger actually. This is a very welcome improvement for those with less than perfect eyesight. It makes finding and launching an app in Launchpad that much easier and faster. Desktop preferences got iPhoto Places country flags. Another small, but useful, tweak is in the Desktop & Screen Saver System Preferences pane. Since OS X 10.6, you have been able to navigate your iPhoto photos by Places in the Desktop pane, but now under 10.7.2 Apple has added country flags that sort where you photos were taken. You can then navigate down through the hierarchy by State/territory (highway sign icon), city (building icon), and location of interest (globe icon). Before 10.7.2 you had the navigation hierarchy, but it was much harder to distinguish between countries because of the lack of flags. Remove apps from purchase history in the Mac App Store. A final tweak I've noticed is that now you can remove purchases from your Purchased history in the Mac App Store. Click the Purchased button at the top of the store then move your cursor over an app from your purchase list. You'll see a small X appear at the far right. Click it to delete the app from your purchase history. Deleting a currently-installed app from your purchase history won't delete it from your computer. If you've found any other unadvertised interface tweaks in 10.7.2 let us know in the comments!
Ask TUAW Video Edition: Geeking on GeekTool
It's Tuesday, which means it's time for another edition of Ask TUAW video! On the heels of our AppleScript episode, we are going to talk today about GeekTool. GeekTool is a great way to have information displayed on your desktop, without it being too intrusive. First thing, you need to download GeekTool here. I have posted some example GeekTool scripts, which can be downloaded here. As always, the video is in the second half of the post, and please ask questions -- that's what we're here for!
Mac 101: Adjusting your mouse and trackpad speed
More Mac 101, our series of tips and tricks for novice Mac users. If you've ever used the trackpad on a PC laptop connected to an external monitor and noticed how many times you have to swipe your finger across the pad to get the mouse cursor from one screen to the other, the end result can be quite frustrating and tiresome. Of course, the same thing can easily happen if you hook up an external display to your MacBook or iMac, although it usually is not as obvious thanks to the larger surface area that Apple has designed into recent trackpads. Luckily, this can be easily corrected on any Mac in just a few simple clicks. Before we dive into the settings, though, let's talk about what is causing this to happen in the first place. Although we often take it for granted, one of the most astonishing aspects of using a mouse with a computer is the fact that you only have to move your hand by a couple of inches, while the pointer on the screen moves from one end of the screen to the other -- even if the screen is over 20" wide. This feat is accomplished by a simple mathematical conversion being done in the background that measures the distance the mouse (or your finger, if using a trackpad) moves and multiplies that by a specific factor to determine how far -- and in what direction -- to move the cursor on the screen. Read on to find out how to give your mouse (or trackpad) a speed boost.
Mac 101: Use Archive Utility preferences for control over archives
Most users know that you can easily create .zip files in OS X by selecting a file in Finder and choosing File » Compress "FileNameHere" or by control+clicking the file and choosing the same option from the context menu. You can open .zip (and other archive formats such as gzip, tar, and bzip2) simply by double clicking on them. You may not have known that additional options are available. For example, after you make a .zip file, you could have the original files moved to the trash automatically, or you could have all .zip files that you create automatically saved to the same folder. Similarly, you can have all archive files that you expand open to the same directory as the archive, or have them saved to a specific folder. The feature that I was looking for was this: after I expand an archive, just move the original file to the trash so I don't have to, because I don't want to keep it. If the default settings work for you, great! But if you'd like a bit more control, there are two ways to do it. (Note: these system paths are current for Snow Leopard. Previous versions of Mac OS X may be different. See note at bottom of this message.)
Mac 101: Inserting or typing uncommon characters
As a Mac consultant, I'm often asked some pretty bizarre questions. One that I frequently hear is "How do I type <some special character> on my Mac?" A good example of this is people who want to type fractions that look like this -- ½ -- rather than like 1/2, or plop a character like an umbrella -- ☂ -- or a skull and crossbones -- ☠ -- in the middle of a sentence. It's actually quite easy to do this, although finding these uncommon characters isn't something that's readily apparent, especially to new Mac users. Follow along as I show you how to insert or type characters that won't be found on your keyboard.
Mac 101: taming Safari toolbars with shortcut keys
As you've probably noticed, there are suddenly a lot of Safari Extensions floating around, thanks to the new features in Safari 5. PimpMySafari is ramping back up, and the Safari Extensions Tumblog is doing a great job of keeping track of all of them. I'm going to wait until the dust settles, the cream rises, and several other clichés come to pass before I dig in and start featuring my favorites. I do, however, want to offer a quick tip for dealing with Extensions that add toolbars. Most of the Extensions I've tried that add a toolbar to Safari don't make it easy to show and hide it (and I don't really need every extension I install polling my keyboard, anyway). Aside from my url bar, my bookmarks bar, and my tabs, there's no toolbar in the world that I want to have open all the time. What is this, Firefox? Fortunately, there's a simple way to add shortcuts to show toolbars when they're useful, and hide them when they're irrelevant.
Manage your DNS settings for faster web browsing
In the Network Settings pane of your System Preferences, you may have noticed that you can manually set the DNS servers your connection will use. There are a few reasons for doing this, namely speeding up the time it takes to look up any given website, but also to bypass some annoyances in your ISP's (or IT department's) default name server. Such annoyances could include domain blocking, censorship and other things you may or may not know are even happening. For the most part, though, you'd change your DNS settings to make sure you were using the fastest possible server from your current location. Read on to find out how!
Fluid lets you embed webpages as your desktop or in menu bar
I refer to my calendar a lot during the day, but I don't always have my calendar program running. Most of the time I just want to glance at something to confirm the time/date of an upcoming event, or just double check a date: "What is the last Sunday in May? Oh right, the 30th." It occurred to me today that I could make life a little easier if I could have my calendar embedded in my Desktop. Those of you who remember Microsoft Windows' "Active Desktop" feature may shudder in fear at the idea because, at least in my experience, Active Desktop was a complete and utter disaster. It never worked well, if you could get it to work at all. There are extremely geeky ways of doing this but MacOSXHints.com had a simple solution I didn't even know was possible: Fluid.app. Now I've used Fluid.app for a long time, but I never knew what the "Embedded SSB" or "MenuExtra SSB" actually did. Turns out that either of them are a potential solution, not just for calendars, but for any web page. [Editor's Note: Fluid just recently went open source, and though the blog hasn't been updated yet, we're told the SSB creator is now open source as well.]
Snow Leopard Creator Codes: one more time, with feeling
I recently wrote about Ross Carter's Snow Leopard Creater Code discoveries and his solution, LaunchCodes. It turns out there were a few issues with the initial implementation, such as Apple Events not being passed along. Normally when you find a file in Spotlight, a PDF for example, opening it launches Preview and the query that was used to locate the file shows up in the search field in Preview. This was no longer working in LaunchCodes, though Ross says he's working on that right now. In the meantime, Michel Fortin has produced Magic Launch, and it solves the majority of the issues that have been presented. Magic Launch installs as a System Preferences pane, and you can drag and drop applications to it to register their file type. Then, you can choose a default application, but optionally specify that it should launch in it the application which created it, when possible. Probably the coolest feature, though, is the rule handling. Similar to rules in Mail.app, you can set up a series of criteria to determine when a different app should open the file. You can have multiple rules, and each rule can check things like file location, file name or extension, text contents, hex contents and/or ASCII contents. That's pretty nifty, and goes beyond the default functionality that was available before we even needed apps like this. Magic Launch is free to try out, and costs $14US for a license. If you're still finding documents annoyingly launching the wrong applications, go download it and give it a try.
A pawful of quick Snow Leopard tips
As all of us are starting to get familiar with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, we're starting to find little features that aren't immediately visible and are pretty cool! My first surprise came when one application asked me to make sure that my date and time settings were correct. I dutifully popped into System Preferences, clicked on the Date & Time preferences pane, clicked on the Time Zone tab, and noticed a couple of things that were different: First, the time zone I'm in (Mountain) was highlighted and as I moved my cursor left and right, a "ghost" appeared for whatever time zone I was currently over (see arrow above). That in itself wasn't anything great, but the check box at the top -- Set time zone automatically using current location (see oval above) -- was intriguing so I clicked on it. The map went to shades of gray, and then Snow Leopard used the SkyHook Wireless's Wi-Fi positioning service to figure out where I was.
Getting ready for Snow Leopard: Think about your applications
Ahhhh, there's nothing quite like the feeling of knowing that tomorrow I will be spending much of the day upgrading the Macs in my house to Snow Leopard. I received an email from Apple this morning telling me that Snow Leopard had shipped, so now I just need to be available to sign for the package tomorrow. Regardless of how many Mac OS upgrades I've done over the years, there are always one or two drivers, application enhancers, or full applications that just don't run properly on the newly installed OS. With Snow Leopard, these situations should be rare as many developers have already done compatibility checking and worked out the bugs. Before you slip that Snow Leopard DVD into your Mac tomorrow and start doing the upgrade, there are a few things you may want to consider.
Make your display's gamma in Leopard match Snow Leopard
John Gruber mentioned in a recent post about Apple's Snow Leopard list of Enhancements and Refinements that one of the small adjustments to Snow Leopard will be that the default gamma on displays will switch from the typical 1.8 value to 2.2, which is what is used on TVs as well as being the long-standing default gamma value in Windows. Gamma affects the visual contrast you see on your screen, and a higher value indicates a higher level of contrast. The cost of this higher contrast is that you lose some detail on the less luminous parts of your screen. If you're interested in seeing what this is going to look like in Snow Leopard, or switching your gamma setting now so that you're used to it ahead of time, here are the steps to do it using the Display Calibrator Assistant: Head into System Preferences, and click on the Displays icon. Click on the Color tab, and press the Calibrate... button. On the Introduction window that opens, click Continue On the next screen, "Select a target gamma", choose "2.2 Television Gamma" Click Continue leaving your Target White Point set to Native (or whatever yours is set to) Now name the new profile you've created, click Continue and then Done. Lastly, you can now choose to switch between your default color profile, and your newly created profile with the gamma set to 2.2. I realize this might seem terribly obvious to some users, but for others playing with color profiles is not ground they've previously covered. If you're one of those people, this tip is for you.
Mac 101: How to set a default printer
Over time you may wind up with several printers set up for your Mac. This results in a list of available printers every time you go to print. If the default (the first one selected) isn't to your liking you can always change it. To do so, bring up System Preferences and go to Print & Fax. Now right-click (you can hold the Ctrl key down if you don't have a 2-button mouse) on a printer in the list and choose: Set default printer. There you go!Note the plus and minus signs below the list of printers. If you're just getting started, click the plus to add a printer. If you've sold a printer, click the minus to delete one after selecting it. Apple has an excellent 101 of their own about setting up a printer on your Mac.Want more tips and tricks like this? Visit TUAW's Mac 101 section.
Apple's System Preference icon goes "Green"
With the introduction of EPEAT Gold rated MacBooks and MacBook Pros last week, Apple has definitely been warming up to the environmental movement lately. So, it was only fitting that they would change a small part of System Preferences to reflect the EPEAT rating. That's right, the Energy Saver icon has changed from an old incandescent bulb to a newer, more energy-efficient fluorescent bulb. Now you will only have to change the energy saver icon every 7 years, but be careful when you dispose of the old icons because they contain mercury (just kidding). This change has only shown up on the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros. Do you think Apple will eventually update their entire line to have this new icon (and, of course, be EPEAT Gold rated)? We definitely hope so! Thanks to everyone who sent this in!
NetworkLocation brings WiFi positioning to the Mac
Since the introduction of the 1st-gen, GPSless iPhone and the iPod touch, the WiFi location awareness of those devices has been a continuous source of delight to me -- with the underlying technology from Skyhook Wireless, that brave band of cross-country wardrivers, these handhelds manage to know where they are remarkably well (at least, most of the time). Having the same capability on your Mac certainly seems like a logical next step... and what would you do with that location data? Maybe you'd like to find your friends or hunt for restaurants with the Loki plugin for Firefox, but the real power of location awareness comes to bear when you can have your Mac automatically act on that information: to optimize your configuration, or change your settings to the appropriate choices for the place you're at.Enter the newest offering from centrix.ca, the Skyhook-enabled version of NetworkLocation 3.0. This $29 settings management utility (we've covered it before) can perform all the necessary changes to your settings: tweaks to network, email, proxy, sound and screen, or even arbitrary modifications via triggered AppleScripts or Automator actions (much like similar apps Location X or WiLMa). With the connection to Skyhook's database, NL3 can now switch profiles when you're in proximity to a known point, along with the previous options to flip over based on network connection or the presence of a specific device. Plugins add support for launching a VPN connection or changing Entourage or Mail's SMTP config. It's a beautiful thing.You can check out the gallery for a peek at some of NL3's options. For anyone who uses a portable machine in a large campus or corporate environment and wants to take the aggravation out of changing settings for each spot you sit in, this tool is definitely worth a look.%Gallery-31712%
Mac 101: Remove unwanted System Preference panes
Sometimes applications can install extras in the form of System Preference panes. However, when you remove the app from your Mac, you might be left with extraneous System Preference panes. To uninstall System Preference panes, just right-click (or control + click if you have a one button mouse) on the preference pane icon and select "remove x preference pane."When you click "remove," the preference pane will be instantly moved to the OS X Trash can where you can completely remove it from your system by emptying the trash. Please note that this will only work on System Preference panes located in the "Other" section of System Preferences.Want to see more tips and tricks like this? Visit TUAW's Mac 101 section today!
Mac 101: System Preferences
This is another entry in our continuing Mac 101 series, aimed at new Mac users. These tips are old hat for veteran Mac users, but will save some people a lot of grief.I know several people who have switched from Windows to the Mac over the past year. While they're happy with their decision, they all tell me the same thing: "I don't know where to find anything." Typically, the topic arises when they're looking for the "control panel" to change a system setting. Since Apple's System Preference panel looks different that the Windows Control Panel, it isn't immediately helpful. Until they ask it what they're looking for.There's a small search box in the upper right-hand corner of the System Preferences window. Typing a keyword or two into that field reveals just where that function lives with a "spotlight" effect. For example, if I want to adjust my alert volume, typing "volume" highlights the Sound panel. This method also provides helpful text. For example, typing "email" produces this list Email faxes Email and chat restrictions (parental controls) Limiting email and instant messages Sending permission emails Each is accompanied by a link in the preference pane. The search results aren't flawless, of course, but they're better than staring at a field of unfamiliar icons, and have brightened the Mac experience for many a switcher.
New screenshots of Snow Leopard appear, show desktop web apps
A German site, Apfeltalk.de has posted screenshots of the forthcoming version of Mac OS X, 10.6 (a.k.a "Snow Leopard"). Most of the screenshots show off the Safari 4 developer preview that will include the "Save as Web Application" option in the File menu. The website also shows off the next version of Address Book.app that will bring Microsoft Exchange support to the Mac platform. We do however have to speculate about the System Preferences.app screenshot that shows two Time Machine icons with one labled "Dock" and another labeled "Time Machine" -- this seems out of place and unlike Apple. You can see all of the screenshots (before Apple's legal team gets a hold of them) on the Apfeltalk.de site. [via Engadget]
System Preference changes, new Preview toolbar in latest Leopard build
The latest Leopard build has dropped, and screenshots, legal or otherwise, are making their way out into the world. Over the weekend, we posted what looks like the opening movie, and here's a shot of Leopard's System Preferences screen. There are a few changes in there-- the Dashboard and Exposé panel is now called "Exposé and Spaces," and quite a few of the icons, including the Dock, Displays, and Sharing icons. And as reader Dave told us, the Command key on the Keyboard and Mouse icon no longer has the Open Apple. Sad.Apparently there's also a new toolbar for Preview.app as well, but I haven't yet seen a screenshot of that one yet. October is just over a month away!
