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Updated for 2012
Changing Folder icon for Apple Mac Lion Desktop
I have been placing more and more icons on my Apple MacBook Air desktop, but some of them are shortcuts to folders so the icon is a very plain non-descriptive folder. So, I did some basic research and found that changing a folder icon is really easy. Once I got over trying to use the ctrl button and used the cmd button instead! I went to Goggle Images and found the icon images I wanted to use. Copied the image to my Mac clipboard, then right clicked on the desktop image, went to Get Info, clicked on the folder image at the top left (the folder image changes to a glow around it when selected. Then do a cmd + v to paste. Now I have some really cool desktop images.
In order to copy paste a folder icon you have to copy the actual image ~ not the entire file or it’s (preview) icon.
1. open the image in Preview
2. chose Edit > select all (cmd + a)
3. chose Edit > copy (cmd + c)
4. now open up the “Get Info” tab on the Folder
5. select the Folder icon at the top left and and press cmd + v
If you can't find the special icon you are looking for, this is a free vector icon site and has all kinds of neat things. http://www.iconfinder.com/
Speaking of tweaking your Mac, David
Johnston, with
www.nmgi.com,
recommends TinkerTool. Found it on a recommended site for making
unique changes to your Mac.
See how the iPad is made. - For ipad owners this short video is a neat watch.
Applications I like for Mac
One app I always recommend is iStat Nano. It's a dashboard widget & pulls in core system info into a widget. So you can quickly see details on battery, memory, processes, and temperature. Sounds like it makes sense if you think the machine might be running hot, but it's also cool to easily peek under the hood every once in a while. If you work a lot at night, you should get f.lux. It basically follows when the sun sets and changes the temperature of your screen accordingly. The idea is that your BRIGHT screen mimics daylight, so your brain can't really tell what time it is. So instead of just dimming the screen for night work, it actually adjusts color balance so your brain isn't tricked anymore and it eases eye strain. However, if you are looking at photos or video (or other extremely visual media), it will make the colors look weird. But for general browsing, email & documents, it works great. Personally, I like the iWork suite better than Microsoft Office, but probably because I've been working with it for 6 years. I find it to be more powerful & customizable than Word or PowerPoint. DropBox can be installed & show up in your finder. If you use it, it makes document management easier than uploading through the browser. CyberDuck is a good FTP client. It allows you to edit web docs within the FTP through a text editor and upload immediately. Slick & easy. Speaking of text editors, I like Text Wrangler. A little more powerful than TextEdit (default editor on Mac) but not overkill. For to-do lists, Wunderlist is cool. It syncs with the iPhone app too. However, lately I feel like Reminders has diminished my use of it.
Apple Mountain Lion is On its way.
The next version of Mountain Lion is expected to be more iOS oriented and App focused than any version before. Typical of Apple, they are pretty closed mouth, but more information is starting to emerge. www. acrumours.com has a number of speculative posts about the future of MAC OS and Lion.
Upgrading the Mac Air. They (being Apple) says it cannot be done, or that upgrading my Mac Air myself voids the warranty. Maybe not. Here is an article that tells you how to upgrade the SSD in your Mac Air with a faster one, and with a larger capacity one (assuming you can afford it.)
Running Windows natively on a MacBook Air.
I have elected to run Windows on my Mac Air as a Virtual Machine using VMware Fusion, and I like the setup very much, but it has it quarks. If you really love the design of the Mac Air, but have no need for MAC OS, then here is the my link to the process as posted by Mike Foster.
Updated for 2011
For Accountants who are Mac users and who love the Magic Trackbpad, but would like a Numeric Pad for all that number crunching, check out mobee, The Magic NumPad.
I have been an Apple fan since my Apple II and Lisa days. The following are a few of my favorite tips and tricks. I plan to include not only Mac but iPad, iPhone, iPod and anything else the masters of elegance come up with. Enjoy and let me know of any errors or omissions. Also, share your great solutions, tips and tricks so I can share with others.
Apple OS X Lion
 |
Here is nice
Apple sanctioned demonstration of
new features for Lion. Biggest changes
may be the infusion of IOS functionality
into X. I have been watching for a release date, but everything still says Summer 2011. |
What Can You Do With Your Apple Stuff?
Best money you can spend on your Mac is a subscription to Mac Life, www.maclife.com. Checkout their Fifteen-Minute How-To's for Macs in the January 2011 issue.
MenuMeters help you track system usage and other vital info on your Mac.
If you are a heavy user you may want to keep track of what's happening under the hood. MenuMeters may be just the "free" tool for you. MenuMeters is a set of CPU, memory, disk, and network monitoring tools for Mac OS X with a rich features set of tools.
Keyboards for the iPad
One of the items I went to CES to look for this year was a portable keyboard for my iPad. The options were limited, or not really useful (found a bunch of those.) The best option I found was the Jorno, https://jornostore.com/, which is not actually available yet, but is due out this quarter. There were a number of iPad cases with a built-in bluetooth keyboard, however having tried a few of these, I was less than happy. The problem with many of these iPad cases with keyboard, was that the keyboard did not fold out of the way when I wanted to hold the iPad as a reader. These cases were significantly thicker and heavier than standard cases so more uncomfortable to hold as well. I purchased a Keyboard Dock for iPad (with charger included) early on, but found it not exactly a portable option and uncomfortable for extended typing. I am planning to try one of the new Flexible Bluetooth/Wireless keyboards soon, but not sure it will fit the bill either as it will be great to throw in suitcase, but not practical to carry with me all the time. The ZAGG from ZAGGmate may work for many of you as it doubles as a protective case for your iPad. Finally, here is a nice collection of options, So, I am still looking for the perfect solution. Let me know if you find one!
Customize your Mac Startup
OnyX is a free multifunction utility for Mac OS X which allows you to verify the Startup Disk and the structure of its System files, to run misc tasks of system maintenance, to configure some hidden parameters of the Finder, Dock, QuickTime, Safari, Mail, iTunes, Login window, Spotlight and many Apple’s applications, to delete caches, to remove a certain number of files and folders that may become cumbersome and more.
Circus Ponies - Strange name, great notebook!
For those of you who are looking
for a OneNote tool for your Mac, consider a look at Circus Ponies'
Notebook $49.95,
http://www.circusponies.com/notebook/stay-organized.
There is also
iTeleport Let's you control any computer from either an iPhone or iPad.
iTeleport has a number of products which allow for remote device management. For more information on using your iPad or iPhone to manage a remote computer, check it out http://www.iteleportmobile.com/.
Anti-Virus Software for Apple Mac - Tell me it isn't so!
While in the past Mac hardware is considered less exposed to malicious software attacks, rising popularity apparently has its drawbacks as Mac computers become more and more the target of vicious attacks. The good news it that Sophos is offering Sophos Anti-Virus software for Mac users for free for life. Free is such a tough profit generator, but you can read more about the threats to Mac, or download the software from http://www.sophos.com/. By the way, if you are a Time Machine user, there have been some issues reported with this product and Time Machine, so back up and check it out first.
Using a Mac in a PC World
New users to the Apple Mac OS, or those who want a quick refresher, this
is Val Steed's and
Bob Spencer's seminar handout. I also highly recommend you
pick up Running Windows on your Mac by Dwight Silverman. The book is
published by Peachpit Press and is easy to get from Amazon. Really a
good tool for those going from Windows to Mac, as well as Mac users who
suddenly find themselves working on a Windows. Other highly rather
primers for Windows users headed to the Mac include; Switching
to the Mac by David Pogue, Switching to a Mac for Dummies
by Arnold Reinhold, A Newbies Guide to Switching to the Mac, by
Huner Travis.
Looking for some cool Mac tools! Checkout this review by InfoWorld's Mitch Wagner as he looks at 13 Mac Productivity Tools from Merlin Mann and others.
Multiple Monitors for Your Mac Notebook.Can you connect more than one external monitor to their new Mac Notebook. The answer is, of course, yes. However, not all multiple monitor solutions are Mac friendly. Kensington solutions come to mind, and Targus may not work well either.
My favorite solution for the Mac I think is the Matrox products best. These are the DualHead2Go and TripleHead2Go. Dual will power two external monitors; triple will do three. You can get them in VGA or DVI versions. Just run a cable from your DVI output into the box. Pricing, is around $150 to $200 depending on the version you go to. SideCar from Digital Tigers looks awesome, promising to let you run up to four external displays, but with at $1300 price tag, maybe not. VTBook is another solution, this is a CardBus solution that gives your laptop a second external monitor or even three external monitors, if you get the right cable. Price is around $250 and since the MacBook Pro takes the smaller 34mm ExpressCard format, you have to purchase an adaptor like this. I will move this to the Mac@Work page in a few days. But, I thought you would want to know the answer too.
If you want to use your Mac in the Windows business world here are a few products you need to know about!
1. Boot Camp is slow and limiting and requires that you restart your computer to go back-and-forth between your Mac OS and Windows OS. Consider using a Virtual Machine instead and run all those accounting and business application in a Windows Virtual Machine on your Mac. My favorite is VMware Fusion, http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/, $49.99 plus the cost of your Windows software licenses. VMware Fusion is not only easy to use, but you can move Virtual Machines back and forth between Apple and Windows host OS, so you can run a standard issue corporate VMware VM on your Mac. Parallels for Apple is another virtual machine option that is very popular with Mac users, which is highly respected and the latest version sports improved performance and stability as well as many new features.
2. One real headache for Mac users in the Windows world is that Apple computers are not NTFS compatible out of the box. This makes moving large files nearly impossible, including those VM's mentioned above. The solution, Paragon NTFS for Mac gives you read-write access to NTFS volumes; $20 from www.paragon-software.com.
3. Finally, you may want to leave Outlook behind and mind your Contacts, Appointments, and e-Mail with the Mac's programs, so spend $10 and get the tool for converting Outlook .PST to Apple Calendar, Contacts and Mail files from http://www.littlemachines.com/ called O2M. Best $10 you can spend.
Now remember, between fixing your Fixed Assets and Debiting your Credits - a little Garage band can't hurt! More tips coming on how to take your Mac to work, so stay tuned to Bob in the future.
Quick Tip; Stranded on vacation with no wifi for your iPhone!!! OH NO! Turn your Mac into a Wireless Access Point and don't worry about it.
The History of Bob on Mac
I, of course, had an early Apple IIe, back in in late 1977 and tried to develop educational graphical software, which went no where, so there you go. I also had an Apple Lisa when it first came out and traded up for a Macintosh the next year. I began my life long love affair with the Macintosh. It was heaven, but I also had a Radio Shack TRS 80 and later an Osborne and then a KayPro, followed by assorted other DOS based systems as the came and went. When DOS, and that other company from Redmond, began to dominate the business market I had to leave Apple behind and pursue my destiny in the business world (four kids to feed helps one make those decisions!) For the full treatment (see how many of these you owned) visit http://oldcomputers.net/.
My latest Mac is the Air, 13", 256GB SSD, 4GB RAM running Snow Leopard and Windows 7 via VMware. Of course I have an iPhone, iPad, and assorted iPods. I run the Airport Express Wireless but do not run Time Machine as I use other means for backup. So that's it. come back and visit often and share you great ideas and tools with me so I can, in turn, share with others.
bob