There is a nice little program called MouseZoom that significantly increases the tracking speed of the Mouse in OS X. Here's the link: http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/9091
1. The person who said you might want to calibrate your monitor must be a graphic artist. Someone who needs ultra-precise color would want to buy something. For the rest of us, the built-in calibrator does quite well and does make a significant difference. Head over to the Displays System preference (Calibrate or Color tab — I'm on Jaguar and the name may have changed). Takes about 5 minutes and only uses your eyes.
2. Cmd-shift-4 can be modified. After you do that key dance, you get a cross-hair cursor to select an area of the screen. If you press & release the spacebar (after the aforementioned), it will switch to window mode. Then, click on the window you want to capture.
3. Holding command (aka apple key) down and dragging a menu icon (right side of menubar) allows you reorder.
4. The ATI Radeon 9800 has a VERY noisy fan as reported by others online. If you already have one, that may be the noise you're hearing.
5. Exposé and mouse buttons: you don't have to hold the button down when targeting something. Click, roll, click.
6. Mouse tracking speed. There is a freeware app out there
7. Finder drags. Hold down the OPTION key (not command) while dragging an item to have it copied on the same volume and not moved. In Jaguar (you ought to have Panther), if you drop an item into a docked folder witch command held down, it won't copy as stated above. Hold both to copy.
8. Change your mind while dragging something? Drop it onto the menubar at top. That cancels it. I think you can hit ESC during the drag too, but not in Classic apps.
9. It took me forEVER to get used to the mouse accel profile on windows. I prefer the mac one, as it seems to be a bit more intuitive. However, the max speed is way too low if you're using a non-Apple mouse. Get MouseZoom, freeware. MacUpdate.com or versiontracker.com have all the software pointers you would want/need. No windows user should ever use a single button mouse on a Mac. Worth every penny to go buy one that suits you. I used to be more than happy with ctrl-clicking to get to contextual menus, but even as a fellow keyboarder (command key shortcuts kick windows to the curb; making a new folder is a pain in windows: alt-f-w-f????), I found myself wanting a right click for the dock as I use a favorite apps folder to launch things.
10. Hold down the control key when clicking to bring up a contextual menu faster than click-hold. (for single button mice)
11. Instead of putting the apps folder in the dock, make an apps folder in the Favorites (or anywhere) folder and drag aliases into it of the apps you want. Cleaner that way.
12. Cmd-option drag a file to create an alias (aka winshortcut) at the destination. The beauty: no damn extra text in the filename for the alias. "Just the filename, ma'am."
13. By all means, leave your apps running. That's what virtual memory is for. Your screaming machine won't even know the hits unless you have lots of apps DOING something simultaneously (thrashing). The additional RAM you put in will probably prevent trashing, but at the price of RAM and being a multitasker, 1.5G or more might not hurt. Also, each window visible or layered on the screen takes up additional memory. There's one copy of it within the app but the window manager also keeps a copy. So, hide apps you're not using to reduce RAM usage. Speaking of that in general, unix manages VM differently. It will keep stale memory around just in case it's used again (including VM). I don't know how you specifically check, but that could skew the memory useage you're looking at.
Here is another. Connect two Macs with a Firewire cable, restart one and hold the T button down. This will boot the restarted Mac into Target Disc Mode and will mount the hard drives and optical drive on the running Mac. You can now swap files with Firewire speed!
All this advice has been great, but you best remember that sometimes the OSX experience isn't just technical, sometimes it is just about viewing the porn.
I am enjoying your recent weblog on the new G5. I've got the same model as the one you have, and really enjoy it. Plenty of great advice has been posted already on tips and tricks, so I'll keep this post short. Enjoy your new Mac, and be sure to check out http://www.xlr8yourmac.com (Mike Breedon's awesome Mac hardware review site) and http://macosxhints.com (Rob Griffith's OS X hints -- cool and geeky!) when you get a chance.
If you want to calibrate your displays (I did, had very washed out colors on my FP iMac), I very much recommend SuperCal (www.bergdesign.com/supercal). Takes some time to calibrate, but the results is very pleasing.
Wow! Lots of great tips, here (and I already knew them all ;) ).
Here's some more:
1) You can drag items onto Docked items. For example, dragging a file onto your email app will either create a new blank email with the file attached, or attach the file to an email you're already writing. you can also drag & drop items INTO Docked folders. For example, I have a folder that is located inside my Documents folder that I call my "kitchen junk drawer". We all have them in real life, and need one on our computers, just to have a place to toss the odd things and URLs you get, just to keep your desktop from getting too cluttered. Well, my junk drawer is on my Dock, and I can drop files, URLs and other folders into it.
2) it seems that Apple toyed around with configuring the Dock more than they did using the Dock. I think this because you have to use key modifiers when dragging things to or accessing things in the Dock in order to settle the damned thing down. For example, you have to WAIT when you click-hold on a docked folder before it pops-up a la Apple Menu or Start Menu. This pause exists intentionally to allow the user to un-Dock (or "poof") an item by grabbing and dragging off the Dock. Well, if you hold the Control key while click-holding, the Docked folder's contents will pop up almost immediately.
Also, if you want to drop say a file into your Docked kitchen drawer or any folder, OS X starts to dance the icons on the Dock around to try and accommodate you POPULATING the Dock with the item. you have to be very careful in aiming the held item at the intended destination folder. but, if you hold down the Command key while dragging a thing to the Dock, the icons will NOT dance around, and you can more easily drop the held item into the root of a Docked folder.
And BTW, dragging an item from one disk device to another will cause a copy of the it to be made. if you hold down the Command key, however, the item will be MOVED to the destination; NOT copied. This also applies when holding Command key and dragging onto a Docked item that resides on a different drive then the current parent drive of the item.
As far as keeping Apps open or not, keep them open. OS X can handle a boat load of Apps open at the same time. Since, the VM system is very efficient, you want it to eventually grow and take up all your RAM (Why have all that RAM if it isn't being used. Let the VM take care of moving pages of memory around. It keeps track of what is used often and what isn't. This isn't Windows so memory management issues don't require your intervention.
Since many Apps are now Cocoa based (Apple's mature Object-Oriented framework, used to be NeXT) a lot of Apps are dynamically sharing the same core API frameworks. For example, Safari, Mail, Help and Sherlock all use the underlying Webkit framework. This OO nature of OS X apps means that your memory is naturally being used more efficiently. If the VM uses all your RAM, it will retire those portions of memory rarely used to disk. In effect, closing what you are not using, though the process information stays in tact to allow for that App to come back to life quicker than if you had quit it yourself.
So there is nothing wrong and you shouldn't feel like your doing something wrong by keeping many Apps open.
Command-Shift-3 takes a PDF snapshot of your entire screen.
Command-Shift-4 is similar but pops up a cursor, which you use to draw a rectangular area, which will then be PDF snapshot.
In the true Apple way of doing things, the former of these keyboard actions has worked perfectly on EVERY Apple OS since 1984, although prior to OSX it created PICT files, not PDF's. The latter of these used to print your entire screen to your default printer, but they took that one away from us some years ago!
I highly recommend Pogue's book. Much of the goodness of OS X isn't well documented by Apple - their manuals are simple, but there isn't any depth for the advanced user or for someone who is coming from the Windows or Linux worlds.
Our CTO and CEO both reacted strongly to the "worms of August" last Summer. We lost some important business and the plan was to move 1/3 of the company to OS X and 1/3 to Linux.
These aren't huge numbers as we only have 70 people in the company. The move to Linux was something of a bust as people weren't happy with Star Office. To this day we have 3 (very happy) people on Linux.
The initial OS X experiment with 6 people wasn't all that great - after two days of use 4 of the people wanted to go back to Linux.
Our CTO guessed that there were learned differences. He hired someone from the local Apple store to give a two hour seminar on platform differences. People were also given three button mouses.
The 6 people were suddenly very happy and 16 volunteers were asked to move over. A similar talk was given.
One thing led to another and we now have 2 people on XP, 6 on WIndows 2000, 3 on Linux and 62 on OS X (the numbers do not add to 70 as some have laptops too).
The transition wasn't immediate, but it did make a serious impact here.
We find
- having Office on OS X is very important
- having it just work with our office network is important
- giving people 3 button mice is important (for most users)
- giving people 2 hours of training by someone who knows both platforms is very important
To get the maximum performance from your G5, go into the Energy Saver control panel -> Options tab, and set Processor Performance to "Highest". This does make a difference in benchmarking.
Hold down the Apple key and you can drag background windows without bringing them to the foreground.
Hold down the Option/Alt key and click on another app's icon (or the desktop) and the current app will hide and switch to the app you clicked on.
Hold down the Apple key and the Option/Alt key and click on another app's icon (or the desktop) and OS X will hide *all* open apps and switch to the one you clicked on.
This one serves no useful purpose but is just 'cool'. Holding down the Shift key while using Exposé or minimising a window will make it happen in slow motion.
If you want to remove one of the menubar icons, hold down the Apple key and drag it off the menubar. It will disappear in a virtual puff of smoke.
In System Preferences, click on 'Speech'. In there is an option for 'Spoken User Interface' which will read out the text on dialogs and announce when an application requires your attention.
First, check around Apple's support site. The pattern of the blinking power button should tell you what's wrong.
Second, the modifier keys are your best friend in the Mac OS. Shift, Command, Option, and Control or any combination thereof, clicked with a mouse click are huge time savers. Quick examples: Option click the red/x close widget of an application to close all windows of an application at once. Hold the Command key in while dragging something to a Docked folder. Not only will it command the item to be copied (rather than move, on the same volume), it also locks the Dock in place as a copy/move target.
Anand, typing "defaults write com.apple.Dock pinning end" into Terminal will pin your Dock to the end of the screen. This will make it so that your Trash is always right in the corner no matter what the orientation of your Dock is. Terminal is in /Applications/Utilities/. You may also want to type "man defaults" while you're there. This should be a decent introduction to the Mac's command line.
Anand, if you like Exposé, I would highly recommend using a Logitech MXx00 series mouse with OS X, where {x | x = 5, 7, 9}. I've mapped the three middle buttons of the mouse to Exposé's functions, and my Apple-Tab time has been severely cut down because of it. :)
You'll need to do a little voodoo with USBOverdrive to do it, but the productivity boost is well worth it.
- To force a document to be opened by an app in the dock: drag the document to the dock icon and hold command+option. (I use this when Excel doesn't want to recognize .csv files)
- Make sure you try out the OS-wide spell checker. This is usually a contextual menu (right-click/Spelling/Check Spelling as you Type). It's very cool.
- When typing, you can hit F5 to auto-complete words.
- Check out the services menu and additions like Word Service. If you like keyboard shortcuts you'll love this feature.
- 1 word: Fast User Switching ;)
- Browse around in macosxhints.com
- Oh, choose a folder of wallpapers (desktop pictures) and set it to switch every few minutes. Watch the nice fade out/in as the pictures swap in the background.
Anand, typing "defaults write com.apple.Dock pinning end" into Terminal will pin your Dock to the end of the screen. This will make it so that your Trash is always right in the corner no matter what the orientation of your Dock is. Terminal is in /Applications/Utilities/. You may also want to type "man defaults" while you're there. This should be a decent introduction to the Mac's command line.
1. Open Terminal and type "killall Dock". Don't hit enter!
2. Have a window open in the background. With the Terminal window still in front, shift-click the minimize button of the background window to put in slow motion.
3. Once the minimize effect has started, hit enter.
The Finder is an application and not part of an underlying 'system' per se. Therefore, you'll find 'systemlike' settings in System Preferences, in Finder's File -> Preferences and in the Finder's View -> View Options.
Oh, I second LaunchBar - its the sweetest thing. Download, run it and it works without setting up or configuring it. http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/
In response to ghub: as you mention, the acceleration profiles on the two OS's are diametrically different, with the MS system being linear, and the mac proportional. Which is better is largely a matter of habit, but it may be worth a trial to see if the proportional model is a good fit after all.
The MS model personally drives me nuts, and IMHO, the proportional model has the advantage of better fitting my work, which combines both pixel-level manipulation and large scale movements. Linear acceleration cannot adapt as well to the two extremes, and I go nuts trying to do pixel-level work on windows.
I also have the mouse settings on max, and combined with a probably learned flick of the wrist, I don't have a sense that the mac mouse is anyway slower.... but much better for fine work.
I'd just like to echo the guy who said to install the Microsoft intellimouse drivers. That's one of the things I did shortly after buying my first mac system last year.
The Apple mouse has a completely different acceleration profile to the one used in windows (and a strangely low maximum tracking speed). The intellimouse drivers on the other hand give a very good approximation of a windows mouse and allow for much faster tracking.
I'll second the recommendation for Launchbar - it's absolutely vital. Instant access to all your apps, documents, and bookmarks within about 3 key presses...
Don't forgot to pin the dock too using an app like Tinkertool. If you like to tab to every form element ala Windows Safari 1.2 supports that now. See http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/ for more info on the feature that the vast majority of OS X users don't even know about.
You sure are getting lots of tips anand! Most of the osX basics have been covered already, but i'd just like to add one thing. If you haven't already, put the dock on the left of the screen. It really makes much more sense there, and doesn't take up as much screen space. Also, i've gotten in the habit of using the dock to switch applications, quit and otherwise control apps by right-clicking the icons.
Open apps that have no open windows most certainly do consume RAM, as is plainly visible in Activity Viewer or top! Most apps are good about not consuming CPU power, though.
Anand, be sure to look at some of the following: versiontracker.com and macupdate.com, which are awesome sites for searching for Mac applications. Use those to look for Safari Enhancer, which enables Safari's debugging menu which, among other things, lets you view a page with all of Safari's extensive keyboard shortcuts.
Apple has a nasty habit of hiding some really cool features and never documenting them. For example: hold command (apple key) and click on the title of a finder window and it will show you a menu with the folder hierarchy. You can navigate anywhere beneath it instantly with that.
With LaunchBar installed, simply typing Command-Space brings up a small textbox where you can type in the application, document, URL, etc. that you want to start. You can customise which folders you want it to look in.
Question answered answered by others--put it to the right. Sorry about that. Folders will go down four levels. You can also drag onto Dock icons. For instance, a file to force-open with the "wrong" app, or a thumbnail from iPhoto directly into Photoshop. And so on. Experiment!
There are some other useful things for navigating in an unfamiliar place. If you want to be Mac-ish and have many folder windows open note several handy things: click the right-hand oblong widget to hide all the browser-style controls; cmd-click the window title to bring a popup of the path and open any enclosing folder along the way; use the li'l icon in the title bar to manipulate the folder without opening the enclosing one. (Hold on the little proxy icon for a moment so the system doesn't think you're just moving the window, then drag the folder as usual. Great for copying without going back and opening the enclosing folder.)
Also look at hiding options with the Dock: option-click to hide the app you're leaving, right-click to hide any one from the menu; cmd-opt-click to hide all others. Between Docking, Exposé and hiding you should be able to manage 40 windows. ;-) For that matter, don't miss the Dock menus, especially iTunes and Mail.
One more: don't overlook Preview, the cheesy little picture viewer. It'll RIP raw PostScript.
You can put pretty much anything into the right side of the dock (or the bottom, if the dock is on the side- you change this [and more] by right-clicking the divider line in the dock). I put in folders like Apps, Utilities (a sub-folder of Apps), Hard Drive (just drag it over from the desktop), Docs, and the Desktop (in your user folder...). With this, just about everything is a right-click away! You really should invest in a book or two: The Missing Manual by David Pogue (10.3), OSX Power Tools by Dan Frakes, to name but a couple. Also, web sites such as macosxhints.com are invaluble resources. Have fun!
You must drag folders onto the right side of the dock (to the right of the vertical divider). And once you have a folder there, you can right click (or hold a click for single button mice) and it will pop up something like a start menu and you can see what's in that folder. Try it with your applications folder.
Since you're using a Microsoft mouse, you may as well install the Microsoft drivers for OS X, if you haven't already. Microsoft has excellent OS X drivers.
I have the Microsoft Optical Desktop (with wireless mouse) and use the MS IntelliPoint 5.0 driver. It says it's only for X.1 to X.2, but it works great with X.3 Panther. Here's a screengrab of the preference pane for the driver in OS X:
Same goes if you end up using a Microsoft keyboard. Using the Microsoft drivers is a must. The drivers remap the Windows/ALT keys for Mac use and they map all the extra buttons to the appropriate apps.
I've gotten so addicted to Exposé that I'm constantly throwing my mouse to the corners of my screen when I'm working on my Windows systems. It really is such a productivity enhancer, and it looks so cool to boot.
There's a JEDEC document linked from here that outlines the specific values that should be stored in the SPD of G5-compatible DDR SDRAM : http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Hardware/... The OCZ probably has some non-standard memory timings since it's faster than PC3200, and Apples tend to stick to the standards very strictly. I wouldn't be surprised if all that's causing the memory not to work is a SPD that's missing a small amount of information.
If you have some time to spare, Apple has some free videos up of last year's World Wide Developers Conference, including a session that goes into great detail about code optimization for the G5 due to its long and wide pipeline. That might be right up your alley. The session in particular is "CHUD—Performance Optimization Tools in Depth". The lecturers take a simulation that some person had programmed and put on his web site, and speed it up by 16x by multi-threading it, adding Altivec support and other neat tricks. There are also videos about other Mac OS X-related things. It might be something to watch while...oh I don't know...you're in class or something:-) You'll have to join the Developer Connection (it's free) at http://developer.apple.com.
Keeping apps open uses no memory. Take a look at Activity Monitor (/Applications/Utilities). Appa will drop out of RAM moments after closing the last window. When you click Word (for example) in the Dock it should make a new document on the spot. Most "productivity" apps do this, turning most Dock icons into stationary pads of a sort. Adobe apps don't do this presumably because document size is all over the place with those.
This works great with the Finder. Click its icon, set the new window up the way you like it *without navigating* and close it. Presto--that's your new default Finder window. I suggest column view. Pop up a new one with a click when you need it, close it when done. cmd-click or dbl-click in the Finder to open a new window from something. A column-style main Finder window with individual folders set to appropriate views and cmd-opened as needed==cool setup.
Also, Dock folders for hierarchial menu access. Applications --> Dock = instant Start Menu replacement.
Speaking of views, Quartz will render most raster files right in the folder window. Use View Options to crank the icon and switch on icon preview and more info.
512mb of RAM is minimum. one gig is very comfortable. I would buy from Crucial and specify Micron chips. Panther is extremely stable. Multitask day to day with the Apps you plan to test. Wait until you start jamming with itunes, downloading photos from your camera, processing in photoshop,using iChat and email, all at the same time with no hiccups while connected to a Win 2K network of shared printers and WIn 2K boxes and high speed internet. I may get kicked off the network from time to time but never my internet connection and I NEVER crash, True!! Don't forget permissions repair from time to time and get a copy of TechTool Pro 4 or Disk Warrior or both. Have fun!!
Make sure you ask ATI for their Radeon 9800 Pro SE Mac Edition. It has 256 MB VRAM and a higher clock (though not as high as the XT) than the Mac Radeon 9800 Pro. Also, it has ADC, one of the few non-OEM Macs cards to have it.
As for the mouse wheel scrolling, you may want to check your mouse preferences. For my Logitech, scrolling at the highest setting is insanely fast. You may also want to check out OS X's smooth scrolling support, to see if you like it.
Also, you can assign mouse buttons to Expose actions so there is less of a need for the keyboard. Also, you should try Expose-ing a playing full screen DVD or several playing QuickTime movies (or both) if you really want to see multitasking.
Exposé is nice. I mostly use it for the show desktop feature, but being able to map the show all windows feature to a mouse button makes it much better. just click-hold then move the mouse to the window you want and release.
Also, you can drag and drop between windows when exposéing. grab what you want, use exposé to bring the window you want forward and drop the item. great for moving stuff between many full-screen windows.
The memory problems aren't surprising; Apple holds some pretty tough standards as far as components , so it's not unheard of to have the machine reject RAM that doesn't nessisarily meet Apple's standards. Overall, generic RAM is hit and miss on a Mac; the only stuff that's garunteed to work is the stuff labeled as so, but I have to admit, I've never heard of a Mac user having memory problems with garunteed stuff.
Mushkin sells some nice looking memory for G5s specifically call Graphite. 1GB dual pack is only $290, althought being you, you may be able to get a "evaluation" package from them :)
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striker - Thursday, March 4, 2004 - link
There is a nice little program called MouseZoom that significantly increases the tracking speed of the Mouse in OS X.Here's the link:
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/9091
JOE - Wednesday, March 3, 2004 - link
Magnifycommand option 8 toggles on/off
command option + or - controls magnification
one of my favorites
PecosBill - Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - link
Some things:1. The person who said you might want to calibrate your monitor must be a graphic artist. Someone who needs ultra-precise color would want to buy something. For the rest of us, the built-in calibrator does quite well and does make a significant difference. Head over to the Displays System preference (Calibrate or Color tab — I'm on Jaguar and the name may have changed). Takes about 5 minutes and only uses your eyes.
2. Cmd-shift-4 can be modified. After you do that key dance, you get a cross-hair cursor to select an area of the screen. If you press & release the spacebar (after the aforementioned), it will switch to window mode. Then, click on the window you want to capture.
3. Holding command (aka apple key) down and dragging a menu icon (right side of menubar) allows you reorder.
4. The ATI Radeon 9800 has a VERY noisy fan as reported by others online. If you already have one, that may be the noise you're hearing.
5. Exposé and mouse buttons: you don't have to hold the button down when targeting something. Click, roll, click.
6. Mouse tracking speed. There is a freeware app out there
7. Finder drags. Hold down the OPTION key (not command) while dragging an item to have it copied on the same volume and not moved. In Jaguar (you ought to have Panther), if you drop an item into a docked folder witch command held down, it won't copy as stated above. Hold both to copy.
8. Change your mind while dragging something? Drop it onto the menubar at top. That cancels it. I think you can hit ESC during the drag too, but not in Classic apps.
9. It took me forEVER to get used to the mouse accel profile on windows. I prefer the mac one, as it seems to be a bit more intuitive. However, the max speed is way too low if you're using a non-Apple mouse. Get MouseZoom, freeware. MacUpdate.com or versiontracker.com have all the software pointers you would want/need. No windows user should ever use a single button mouse on a Mac. Worth every penny to go buy one that suits you. I used to be more than happy with ctrl-clicking to get to contextual menus, but even as a fellow keyboarder (command key shortcuts kick windows to the curb; making a new folder is a pain in windows: alt-f-w-f????), I found myself wanting a right click for the dock as I use a favorite apps folder to launch things.
10. Hold down the control key when clicking to bring up a contextual menu faster than click-hold. (for single button mice)
11. Instead of putting the apps folder in the dock, make an apps folder in the Favorites (or anywhere) folder and drag aliases into it of the apps you want. Cleaner that way.
12. Cmd-option drag a file to create an alias (aka winshortcut) at the destination. The beauty: no damn extra text in the filename for the alias. "Just the filename, ma'am."
13. By all means, leave your apps running. That's what virtual memory is for. Your screaming machine won't even know the hits unless you have lots of apps DOING something simultaneously (thrashing). The additional RAM you put in will probably prevent trashing, but at the price of RAM and being a multitasker, 1.5G or more might not hurt. Also, each window visible or layered on the screen takes up additional memory. There's one copy of it within the app but the window manager also keeps a copy. So, hide apps you're not using to reduce RAM usage. Speaking of that in general, unix manages VM differently. It will keep stale memory around just in case it's used again (including VM). I don't know how you specifically check, but that could skew the memory useage you're looking at.
ed garcia - Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - link
Here is another. Connect two Macs with a Firewire cable, restart one and hold the T button down. This will boot the restarted Mac into Target Disc Mode and will mount the hard drives and optical drive on the running Mac. You can now swap files with Firewire speed!teenwolf - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
All this advice has been great, but you best remember that sometimes the OSX experience isn't just technical, sometimes it is just about viewing the porn.Let the man view his porn in peace people.
Krishna Sadasivam - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
Hi Anand,I am enjoying your recent weblog on the new G5. I've got the same model as the one you have, and really enjoy it. Plenty of great advice has been posted already on tips and tricks, so I'll keep this post short. Enjoy your new Mac, and be sure to check out http://www.xlr8yourmac.com (Mike Breedon's awesome Mac hardware review site) and http://macosxhints.com (Rob Griffith's OS X hints -- cool and geeky!) when you get a chance.
-Krishna
Anonymous - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
If you want to calibrate your displays (I did, had very washed out colors on my FP iMac), I very much recommend SuperCal (www.bergdesign.com/supercal). Takes some time to calibrate, but the results is very pleasing.MacDuff - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
Wow! Lots of great tips, here (and I already knew them all ;) ).Here's some more:
1) You can drag items onto Docked items. For example, dragging a file onto your email app will either create a new blank email with the file attached, or attach the file to an email you're already writing. you can also drag & drop items INTO Docked folders. For example, I have a folder that is located inside my Documents folder that I call my "kitchen junk drawer". We all have them in real life, and need one on our computers, just to have a place to toss the odd things and URLs you get, just to keep your desktop from getting too cluttered. Well, my junk drawer is on my Dock, and I can drop files, URLs and other folders into it.
2) it seems that Apple toyed around with configuring the Dock more than they did using the Dock. I think this because you have to use key modifiers when dragging things to or accessing things in the Dock in order to settle the damned thing down. For example, you have to WAIT when you click-hold on a docked folder before it pops-up a la Apple Menu or Start Menu. This pause exists intentionally to allow the user to un-Dock (or "poof") an item by grabbing and dragging off the Dock. Well, if you hold the Control key while click-holding, the Docked folder's contents will pop up almost immediately.
Also, if you want to drop say a file into your Docked kitchen drawer or any folder, OS X starts to dance the icons on the Dock around to try and accommodate you POPULATING the Dock with the item. you have to be very careful in aiming the held item at the intended destination folder. but, if you hold down the Command key while dragging a thing to the Dock, the icons will NOT dance around, and you can more easily drop the held item into the root of a Docked folder.
And BTW, dragging an item from one disk device to another will cause a copy of the it to be made. if you hold down the Command key, however, the item will be MOVED to the destination; NOT copied. This also applies when holding Command key and dragging onto a Docked item that resides on a different drive then the current parent drive of the item.
Mike - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
Also..Cmd-Shift-4, then press Space. This allows you to select any 'pane' (window, icon, Dock, Desktop etc) to take a screenshot of.
Press Tab while Expose is activated, this takes you through the windows of each app.
While Cmd-Tabbing, you can press Q to quit the app, H to hide it, or you can also use the mouse to click one.
stingerman - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
As far as keeping Apps open or not, keep them open. OS X can handle a boat load of Apps open at the same time. Since, the VM system is very efficient, you want it to eventually grow and take up all your RAM (Why have all that RAM if it isn't being used. Let the VM take care of moving pages of memory around. It keeps track of what is used often and what isn't. This isn't Windows so memory management issues don't require your intervention.Since many Apps are now Cocoa based (Apple's mature Object-Oriented framework, used to be NeXT) a lot of Apps are dynamically sharing the same core API frameworks. For example, Safari, Mail, Help and Sherlock all use the underlying Webkit framework. This OO nature of OS X apps means that your memory is naturally being used more efficiently. If the VM uses all your RAM, it will retire those portions of memory rarely used to disk. In effect, closing what you are not using, though the process information stays in tact to allow for that App to come back to life quicker than if you had quit it yourself.
So there is nothing wrong and you shouldn't feel like your doing something wrong by keeping many Apps open.
maxplanar - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
Command-Shift-3 takes a PDF snapshot of your entire screen.Command-Shift-4 is similar but pops up a cursor, which you use to draw a rectangular area, which will then be PDF snapshot.
In the true Apple way of doing things, the former of these keyboard actions has worked perfectly on EVERY Apple OS since 1984, although prior to OSX it created PICT files, not PDF's. The latter of these used to print your entire screen to your default printer, but they took that one away from us some years ago!
aristotle - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
I'm not surprised that the G5 rejected the RAM. The IBM NetVistas at work are also finicky about the RAM you put into them.Pete - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
The area to the right of the divider on the dock is where you place folders, files, and where windows minimize to.steve - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
I highly recommend Pogue's book. Much of the goodness of OS X isn't well documented by Apple - their manuals are simple, but there isn't any depth for the advanced user or for someone who is coming from the Windows or Linux worlds.Our CTO and CEO both reacted strongly to the "worms of August" last Summer. We lost some important business and the plan was to move 1/3 of the company to OS X and 1/3 to Linux.
These aren't huge numbers as we only have 70 people in the company. The move to Linux was something of a bust as people weren't happy with Star Office. To this day we have 3 (very happy) people on Linux.
The initial OS X experiment with 6 people wasn't all that great - after two days of use 4 of the people wanted to go back to Linux.
Our CTO guessed that there were learned differences. He hired someone from the local Apple store to give a two hour seminar on platform differences. People were also given three button mouses.
The 6 people were suddenly very happy and 16 volunteers were asked to move over. A similar talk was given.
One thing led to another and we now have 2 people on XP, 6 on WIndows 2000, 3 on Linux and 62 on OS X (the numbers do not add to 70 as some have laptops too).
The transition wasn't immediate, but it did make a serious impact here.
We find
- having Office on OS X is very important
- having it just work with our office network is important
- giving people 3 button mice is important (for most users)
- giving people 2 hours of training by someone who knows both platforms is very important
- our support costs have dropped dramatically.
enlitn - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
Anand,get Launchbar. also get SuperCal (http://www.bergdesign.com/supercal/) and make precise profiles for those cinema displays!
play with iTunes and iPhoto sharing.
download VLC (www.videolan.org) for when Quicktime won't open a file.
use iCal.
check out the work done by the OmniGroup (www.omnigroup.com)
use Mail.app!
you can use your mouse when using command-tab.
play with everything in the Sharing preference pane!
use Sherlock.
use Address Book.
etc etc.
Lucian - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
Here are two tips related to hardware:To get the maximum performance from your G5, go into the Energy Saver control panel -> Options tab, and set Processor Performance to "Highest". This does make a difference in benchmarking.
Also, some G5 owners have reported success in quieting their G5s by install Apple's CHUD tools (ftp://ftp.apple.com/developer/Tool_Chest/Testing_-... and turning on the "Nap" mode.
If you have any trouble getting in contact with the ATI Mac team (which I doubt you will), let me know. =)
Andy - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
If you're a keyboard junkie then you really need to try out Launchbar : http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/Mimizuku no Lew - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
A few more of OS X's nice features:Hold down the Apple key and you can drag background windows without bringing them to the foreground.
Hold down the Option/Alt key and click on another app's icon (or the desktop) and the current app will hide and switch to the app you clicked on.
Hold down the Apple key and the Option/Alt key and click on another app's icon (or the desktop) and OS X will hide *all* open apps and switch to the one you clicked on.
This one serves no useful purpose but is just 'cool'. Holding down the Shift key while using Exposé or minimising a window will make it happen in slow motion.
If you want to remove one of the menubar icons, hold down the Apple key and drag it off the menubar. It will disappear in a virtual puff of smoke.
In System Preferences, click on 'Speech'. In there is an option for 'Spoken User Interface' which will read out the text on dialogs and announce when an application requires your attention.
pbrice68 - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
Just a few quick notes to help out:First, check around Apple's support site. The pattern of the blinking power button should tell you what's wrong.
Second, the modifier keys are your best friend in the Mac OS. Shift, Command, Option, and Control or any combination thereof, clicked with a mouse click are huge time savers. Quick examples:
Option click the red/x close widget of an application to close all windows of an application at once.
Hold the Command key in while dragging something to a Docked folder. Not only will it command the item to be copied (rather than move, on the same volume), it also locks the Dock in place as a copy/move target.
Michael - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
Anand, typing "defaults write com.apple.Dock pinning end" into Terminal will pin your Dock to the end of the screen. This will make it so that your Trash is always right in the corner no matter what the orientation of your Dock is. Terminal is in /Applications/Utilities/. You may also want to type "man defaults" while you're there. This should be a decent introduction to the Mac's command line.Damien Sorresso - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
Anand, if you like Exposé, I would highly recommend using a Logitech MXx00 series mouse with OS X, where {x | x = 5, 7, 9}. I've mapped the three middle buttons of the mouse to Exposé's functions, and my Apple-Tab time has been severely cut down because of it. :)You'll need to do a little voodoo with USBOverdrive to do it, but the productivity boost is well worth it.
Brazuca - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
Just want to add some of my tips:- To force a document to be opened by an app in the dock:
drag the document to the dock icon and hold command+option. (I use this when Excel doesn't want to recognize .csv files)
- Make sure you try out the OS-wide spell checker. This is usually a contextual menu (right-click/Spelling/Check Spelling as you Type). It's very cool.
- When typing, you can hit F5 to auto-complete words.
- Check out the services menu and additions like Word Service. If you like keyboard shortcuts you'll love this feature.
- 1 word: Fast User Switching ;)
- Browse around in macosxhints.com
- Oh, choose a folder of wallpapers (desktop pictures) and set it to switch every few minutes. Watch the nice fade out/in as the pictures swap in the background.
- Terminal.app
Michael - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
Anand, typing "defaults write com.apple.Dock pinning end" into Terminal will pin your Dock to the end of the screen. This will make it so that your Trash is always right in the corner no matter what the orientation of your Dock is. Terminal is in /Applications/Utilities/. You may also want to type "man defaults" while you're there. This should be a decent introduction to the Mac's command line.Ripoff - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
Here's a stupid fun trick I saw at MacNN:1. Open Terminal and type "killall Dock". Don't hit enter!
2. Have a window open in the background. With the Terminal window still in front, shift-click the minimize button of the background window to put in slow motion.
3. Once the minimize effect has started, hit enter.
4. Use distorted window
:D
Anonymous - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
In some things, Apple is annoyingly consistent.The Finder is an application and not part of an underlying 'system' per se. Therefore, you'll find 'systemlike' settings in System Preferences, in Finder's File -> Preferences and in the Finder's View -> View Options.
Oh, I second LaunchBar - its the sweetest thing. Download, run it and it works without setting up or configuring it. http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/
AC
cbum - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
In response to ghub: as you mention, the acceleration profiles on the two OS's are diametrically different, with the MS system being linear, and the mac proportional.Which is better is largely a matter of habit, but it may be worth a trial to see if the proportional model is a good fit after all.
The MS model personally drives me nuts, and IMHO, the proportional model has the advantage of better fitting my work, which combines both pixel-level manipulation and large scale movements.
Linear acceleration cannot adapt as well to the two extremes, and I go nuts trying to do pixel-level work on windows.
I also have the mouse settings on max, and combined with a probably learned flick of the wrist, I don't have a sense that the mac mouse is anyway slower.... but much better for fine work.
Anonymous - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
Ctrl-Tab = Apple-L ****SeraphsSati - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
Ctrl-Tab = Ctrl-Lghub005 - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
I'd just like to echo the guy who said to install the Microsoft intellimouse drivers. That's one of the things I did shortly after buying my first mac system last year.The Apple mouse has a completely different acceleration profile to the one used in windows (and a strangely low maximum tracking speed). The intellimouse drivers on the other hand give a very good approximation of a windows mouse and allow for much faster tracking.
Catfish - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
I'll second the recommendation for Launchbar - it's absolutely vital. Instant access to all your apps, documents, and bookmarks within about 3 key presses...Paul - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
Don't forgot to pin the dock too using an app like Tinkertool. If you like to tab to every form element ala Windows Safari 1.2 supports that now. See http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/ for more info on the feature that the vast majority of OS X users don't even know about.Cooncat - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
You sure are getting lots of tips anand! Most of the osX basics have been covered already, but i'd just like to add one thing. If you haven't already, put the dock on the left of the screen. It really makes much more sense there, and doesn't take up as much screen space. Also, i've gotten in the habit of using the dock to switch applications, quit and otherwise control apps by right-clicking the icons.Billium - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
^^^ I'll be damned. Well, I keep fifteen open for months at a time with 340MB light Net cruising, so...tooki - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
Open apps that have no open windows most certainly do consume RAM, as is plainly visible in Activity Viewer or top! Most apps are good about not consuming CPU power, though.Anand, be sure to look at some of the following: versiontracker.com and macupdate.com, which are awesome sites for searching for Mac applications. Use those to look for Safari Enhancer, which enables Safari's debugging menu which, among other things, lets you view a page with all of Safari's extensive keyboard shortcuts.
Anonymous - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
Where in the hell is the Raptor article?Paul - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
Apple has a nasty habit of hiding some really cool features and never documenting them. For example: hold command (apple key) and click on the title of a finder window and it will show you a menu with the folder hierarchy. You can navigate anywhere beneath it instantly with that.NeutronMonk - Monday, February 9, 2004 - link
Ah, I see I can't get the little unicode apple symbol here,,,( Option+Shift+K)... :)NeutronMonk - Monday, February 9, 2004 - link
?(command)+L is the keystroke in Safari to highlight the address bar for url typing...MrKungFu - Monday, February 9, 2004 - link
Use command-L in safari (and most other mac browsers) to take you to the address bar.Leaf - Monday, February 9, 2004 - link
Anand - Since you love keeping your hands at the keyboard, be sure to check out LaunchBar.http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/
With LaunchBar installed, simply typing Command-Space brings up a small textbox where you can type in the application, document, URL, etc. that you want to start. You can customise which folders you want it to look in.
Seriously, this is one of those must-have apps.
Billium - Monday, February 9, 2004 - link
I can't believe nobody's mentioned this one yet: hold shift when minimizing or using Exposé. It's useless but fun.Billium - Monday, February 9, 2004 - link
Anand,Question answered answered by others--put it to the right. Sorry about that. Folders will go down four levels. You can also drag onto Dock icons. For instance, a file to force-open with the "wrong" app, or a thumbnail from iPhoto directly into Photoshop. And so on. Experiment!
There are some other useful things for navigating in an unfamiliar place. If you want to be Mac-ish and have many folder windows open note several handy things: click the right-hand oblong widget to hide all the browser-style controls; cmd-click the window title to bring a popup of the path and open any enclosing folder along the way; use the li'l icon in the title bar to manipulate the folder without opening the enclosing one. (Hold on the little proxy icon for a moment so the system doesn't think you're just moving the window, then drag the folder as usual. Great for copying without going back and opening the enclosing folder.)
Also look at hiding options with the Dock: option-click to hide the app you're leaving, right-click to hide any one from the menu; cmd-opt-click to hide all others. Between Docking, Exposé and hiding you should be able to manage 40 windows. ;-) For that matter, don't miss the Dock menus, especially iTunes and Mail.
One more: don't overlook Preview, the cheesy little picture viewer. It'll RIP raw PostScript.
Have fun!
(Am I coming across as a fanboy? :-) )
Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, February 9, 2004 - link
Ah I should've thought of that, thanks guys :)One more question, in IE under XP hitting CTRL+TAB will take me to the address bar for me to type in a URL. Is there any equivalent under Safari?
NeutronMonk - Monday, February 9, 2004 - link
You can put pretty much anything into the right side of the dock (or the bottom, if the dock is on the side- you change this [and more] by right-clicking the divider line in the dock). I put in folders like Apps, Utilities (a sub-folder of Apps), Hard Drive (just drag it over from the desktop), Docs, and the Desktop (in your user folder...). With this, just about everything is a right-click away!You really should invest in a book or two: The Missing Manual by David Pogue (10.3), OSX Power Tools by Dan Frakes, to name but a couple. Also, web sites such as macosxhints.com are invaluble resources.
Have fun!
jasonsRX7 - Monday, February 9, 2004 - link
Anand,You must drag folders onto the right side of the dock (to the right of the vertical divider). And once you have a folder there, you can right click (or hold a click for single button mice) and it will pop up something like a start menu and you can see what's in that folder. Try it with your applications folder.
Virgil - Monday, February 9, 2004 - link
look for the divider line in dockfolders go to the right
Eug - Monday, February 9, 2004 - link
Folders are draggable only to the right side of the dock, to the left of the garbage can. (I'm assuming the dock is at the bottom of the screen.)Eug - Monday, February 9, 2004 - link
Since you're using a Microsoft mouse, you may as well install the Microsoft drivers for OS X, if you haven't already. Microsoft has excellent OS X drivers.I have the Microsoft Optical Desktop (with wireless mouse) and use the MS IntelliPoint 5.0 driver. It says it's only for X.1 to X.2, but it works great with X.3 Panther. Here's a screengrab of the preference pane for the driver in OS X:
http://www3.sympatico.ca/eug/Apple/MSIntelliPoint....
Same goes if you end up using a Microsoft keyboard. Using the Microsoft drivers is a must. The drivers remap the Windows/ALT keys for Mac use and they map all the extra buttons to the appropriate apps.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, February 9, 2004 - link
illiumAm I missing something? I can't seem to drag any folders onto the dock - only actual applications.
Take care,
Anand
jasonsRX7 - Monday, February 9, 2004 - link
I've gotten so addicted to Exposé that I'm constantly throwing my mouse to the corners of my screen when I'm working on my Windows systems. It really is such a productivity enhancer, and it looks so cool to boot.GL - Monday, February 9, 2004 - link
There's a JEDEC document linked from here that outlines the specific values that should be stored in the SPD of G5-compatible DDR SDRAM : http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Hardware/... The OCZ probably has some non-standard memory timings since it's faster than PC3200, and Apples tend to stick to the standards very strictly. I wouldn't be surprised if all that's causing the memory not to work is a SPD that's missing a small amount of information.If you have some time to spare, Apple has some free videos up of last year's World Wide Developers Conference, including a session that goes into great detail about code optimization for the G5 due to its long and wide pipeline. That might be right up your alley. The session in particular is "CHUD—Performance Optimization Tools in Depth". The lecturers take a simulation that some person had programmed and put on his web site, and speed it up by 16x by multi-threading it, adding Altivec support and other neat tricks. There are also videos about other Mac OS X-related things. It might be something to watch while...oh I don't know...you're in class or something:-) You'll have to join the Developer Connection (it's free) at http://developer.apple.com.
illium - Monday, February 9, 2004 - link
Keeping apps open uses no memory. Take a look at Activity Monitor (/Applications/Utilities). Appa will drop out of RAM moments after closing the last window. When you click Word (for example) in the Dock it should make a new document on the spot. Most "productivity" apps do this, turning most Dock icons into stationary pads of a sort. Adobe apps don't do this presumably because document size is all over the place with those.This works great with the Finder. Click its icon, set the new window up the way you like it *without navigating* and close it. Presto--that's your new default Finder window. I suggest column view. Pop up a new one with a click when you need it, close it when done. cmd-click or dbl-click in the Finder to open a new window from something. A column-style main Finder window with individual folders set to appropriate views and cmd-opened as needed==cool setup.
Also, Dock folders for hierarchial menu access. Applications --> Dock = instant Start Menu replacement.
Speaking of views, Quartz will render most raster files right in the folder window. Use View Options to crank the icon and switch on icon preview and more info.
Whew. Enjoy.
Tom - Monday, February 9, 2004 - link
512mb of RAM is minimum. one gig is very comfortable. I would buy from Crucial and specify Micron chips. Panther is extremely stable. Multitask day to day with the Apps you plan to test. Wait until you start jamming with itunes, downloading photos from your camera, processing in photoshop,using iChat and email,all at the same time with no hiccups while connected to a Win 2K
network of shared printers and WIn 2K boxes and high speed internet. I may get kicked off the network from time to time but never my internet connection and I NEVER crash, True!! Don't forget permissions repair from time to time and get a copy of TechTool Pro 4 or Disk Warrior or both. Have fun!!
Jon - Monday, February 9, 2004 - link
Make sure you ask ATI for their Radeon 9800 Pro SE Mac Edition. It has 256 MB VRAM and a higher clock (though not as high as the XT) than the Mac Radeon 9800 Pro. Also, it has ADC, one of the few non-OEM Macs cards to have it.As for the mouse wheel scrolling, you may want to check your mouse preferences. For my Logitech, scrolling at the highest setting is insanely fast. You may also want to check out OS X's smooth scrolling support, to see if you like it.
Also, you can assign mouse buttons to Expose actions so there is less of a need for the keyboard. Also, you should try Expose-ing a playing full screen DVD or several playing QuickTime movies (or both) if you really want to see multitasking.
bames53@srstechnica - Monday, February 9, 2004 - link
Exposé is nice. I mostly use it for the show desktop feature, but being able to map the show all windows feature to a mouse button makes it much better. just click-hold then move the mouse to the window you want and release.Also, you can drag and drop between windows when exposéing. grab what you want, use exposé to bring the window you want forward and drop the item. great for moving stuff between many full-screen windows.
ViRGE - Monday, February 9, 2004 - link
The memory problems aren't surprising; Apple holds some pretty tough standards as far as components , so it's not unheard of to have the machine reject RAM that doesn't nessisarily meet Apple's standards. Overall, generic RAM is hit and miss on a Mac; the only stuff that's garunteed to work is the stuff labeled as so, but I have to admit, I've never heard of a Mac user having memory problems with garunteed stuff.Steve - Monday, February 9, 2004 - link
Mushkin sells some nice looking memory for G5s specifically call Graphite. 1GB dual pack is only $290, althought being you, you may be able to get a "evaluation" package from them :)http://www.mushkin.com/epages/Mushkin.storefront/4...
UlricT - Monday, February 9, 2004 - link
I'm curious as to whether you notice any display quality improvement when switching from the ADC-DVI converter to direct ADC.Also, I hope you have SETI running on that beast.. the TeAm could use all the help it can get :)
anand lal shimpi - Monday, February 9, 2004 - link
Robin,Thanks so much, that helps tremendously - I can't believe I didn't see that :)
Take care,
Anand
Robin Miller - Monday, February 9, 2004 - link
You mentioned that your desktop icons were too big for your liking. They are fully adjustable, however.Click on the Desktop, and hit Apple-J, or go 'View' -> 'Show View Options' in the Finder
That will bring up the window preferences for the desktop. You can adjust icon size and other things in there.
Hope that helps.
-Robin