Getting the Most from Mac OS X Applications and Utilities

Backup

The Backup application actually isn't installed by Mac OS X; it's only available to subscribers to Apple's .Mac service. (If you're a member, you can download Backup by browsing to http://www.mac.com/ and going to the .Mac Downloads area.) Backup allows you to back up files, folders, or volumes to your iDisk or removable media such as CD-R or DVD-R. I talk more about using Backup (and other backup utilities) in Chapter 14.

Calculator

The Mac OS has always included a basic calculator application, but Mac OS X provides a much improved, and much more capable version. Besides the normal functions you find on your average calculator, it provides three new features:

• Advanced Functions By clicking the Advanced button, the Calculator application expands to a full-featured scientific calculator, replete with trigonometric functions, exponentials, memory registers, and log functions. (If only it provided an option for RPN entry….)

• "Paper" Tape Click the Paper Tape button and a drawer expands with a record of any calculations you've performed using Calculator. You can copy any part of the tape for pasting in another application, or you can save the entire tape to a text file by choosing File ➣ Save Tape As….

• Conversions Probably the coolest feature of Mac OS X's Calculator is its conversion functionality. Type in an amount (area, length, weight, temperature, power, etc.), then choose the type of conversion you wish to perform from the Convert menu. Calculator gives you a window to choose the unit of measurement you're converting from and the measure you're converting to, and then does the conversion for you. It will even convert currency using the latest currency exchange rate (choose Convert ➣ Update Currency Exchange Rates to make sure you have the most recent rates).

Chess

The Chess game lets you play against the computer, play against another person, or just watch the computer play itself (good for learning the game). If you play against the computer, you can choose (from the preferences dialog) how difficult the computer is to beat. You can view the board as a two-dimensional board, but using the three-dimensional setting shows off your Mac's graphics a lot better.

Chess also offers some nice extras. You can save your game in progress to finish it later. You can use Speech Recognition to play the game hands-free (e.g., "Knight b1 to c3"). Finally, if you're stuck, you can choose Move ➣ Hint to get a hint.

Clock

The Clock application is one of those applications that doesn't get used much because of Mac OS X's built-in menu bar clock. Many users figure that since they've already got a clock in the menu bar, why waste screen space with a floating clock? Here's a tip—with the proliferation of application menus and menu bar items, most of us could use a little bit of extra menu bar space. Turn off the menu bar clock (in Date & Time preferences), and set the Clock application (via its preferences dialog) to display in the Dock. You can choose analog or digital display, but the digital display has the advantage of also showing the date.

DVD Player

If you've ever watched a movie on your DVD-capable Mac, you've used DVD Player. Although most of the controls and preferences are fairly straightforward, there are a few functions and commands that most people haven't discovered.

At any time you can view information about the current movie (time elapsed/remaining, chapter/track number, audio information) by choosing Window ➣ Show Info. When the info window is visible, Show Info changes to Hide Info. You can control the color and size of the info window via the DVD Player preferences dialog.

Advanced Controls

One of the most common questions about DVD Player is how to take advantage of special controls such as scan, slow motion, and frame-by-frame advance. At first glance, it actually doesn't appear to provide such functionality, yet it really is there. To scan, simply hold down the forward/reverse track buttons; the speed of the scan is determined by the setting in the Controls ➣ Scan Rate menu.

To access other advanced controls (Figure 7.1), click on the three small dots at the edge of the controller (on the right side for a horizontal controller, at the bottom for a vertical controller). A drawer will slide out with six additional controls: Slow, Step, Return, Subtitle, Audio, and Angle (hold the mouse over a button to see a tooltip that tells you what the button does).

Figure 7.1: DVD Player's advanced controls

If you don't like showing and hiding the controller manually via the Window menu, check the Hide Controller If Inactive For box in the Player tab of the preferences dialog. Enter a time, such as 10 seconds, and the controller will disappear whenever the mouse hasn't moved for 10 seconds; to get it to reappear, simply move the mouse or press the escape key.

Image Capture

Image Capture is used by iPhoto to automatically download pictures from your digital camera; however, most users aren't aware that you can also use Image Capture by itself—in fact, for some uses it's much faster and more convenient than iPhoto, and offers features not available anywhere else.

From the Image Capture preferences dialog, you can decide on the action you want Mac OS X to take when you connect your digital camera: nothing, open iPhoto, open Image Capture, or open another application. (You can make a similar decision if you have a supported scanner; you can choose what application to open when a button is pressed on the scanner.)

Once you've connected your camera, Image Capture provides you with several options. First, you can choose where you want images to be downloaded (from the Download To pop-up menu). Second, from the Automatic Task pop-up, you can decide what you want Image Capture to do with the photos once they're downloaded. The default is to do nothing, but you can have it create a slide show or web page, automatically resize the pictures to various dimensions, or Preview the images (using the Preview application). Click the Download button to download all the photos on your camera using the settings you've selected.

Where the more advanced features of Image Capture come into play are under the Options and Download Some screens. Click the Options… button and you'll see several tabs. The Download Options tab lets you delete photos from the camera after downloading, as well as adding custom data (custom icons, Get Info comments, and ColorSync profiles) to photos as they're downloaded. You can also choose to have photos downloaded automatically upon connect, and to set your camera's date and time. The Device Options tab provides information about the camera or scanner that is currently connected.

The View Options tab provides some interesting settings (icon size, list view columns, etc.), but you may be wondering where this mysterious "view" is located? That's where the Download Some screen comes in. If, instead of clicking Download to download all the pictures on your camera, you click Download Some…, you're presented with an advanced screen that shows (by icon or list view) previews of all the photos currently on your camera. If you choose list view (from the View toolbar item or the View menu), you're also provided with all of the columns you checked in the View Options dialog (Figure 7.2). Some of this information is incredibly useful, and not easily viewed anywhere else in Mac OS X (aperture, exposure, shutter, f-number, etc.).

Figure 7.2: The Download Some screen of Image Capture

In the Download Some window, you can also rotate photos left (counterclockwise) and right (clockwise) before downloading them. You have the same options available in the main Image Capture window (download locations and automatic tasks), as well as quick access to the Options dialog. To choose photos for downloading, command-click on them, or drag the mouse across multiple photos. Once you're ready, click the Download button to download the selected photos.

Internet Connect

Internet Connect is a catchall application for initiating dial-up, AirPort, and VPN connections. I'll cover each of these functions in Chapters 9 and 11.

Mac Slides Publisher

Like Backup, Mac Slides Publisher isn't installed by Mac OS X; it's only available to .Mac subscribers. I mentioned in Chapter 2 that you can publish photos on your iDisk to be used as a slide show by the Screen Effects preference pane. Mac Slides Publisher allows you to do this quickly and easily. Simply select a group of photos in the Finder or in iPhoto (make sure they're all in JPEG format) and then drag them onto the Mac Slides Publisher icon. It will optimize them for size and then upload them to your iDisk (using the member name and password entered in the .Mac tab of Internet preferences).

To subscribe to another member's slide show (or your own, for that matter), open the Screen Effects tab of System Preferences. Select the .Mac screensaver, and then click the Configure button. Enter the .Mac member name, choose your preferred Display Options, and then press OK. Since you'll be downloading the pictures from an iDisk, you must be connected to the Internet for this to work, but if so, you'll now have a slide show screen saver using the pictures the .Mac member has provided.

Preview

Preview is Mac OS X's universal graphics viewer and converter. It can view all of the following image/graphics formats: BMP, GIF, JPEG, JP2 (JPEG2000), MacPaint, PDF, Photoshop, PICT, PNG, QuickTime Image Format, SGI, TGA, and TIFF. In addition, using File ➣ Export…, it can export to all of these formats except GIF. While viewing an image file in Preview, you can also zoom in and out, rotate it left or right, or flip it on either axis (making Preview a nice tool for quickly performing basic image editing functions).

If you open a multipage PDF file, or a multipage fax document, in Preview, a drawer will slide out of the Preview window, presenting you with thumbnail previews of each page of the document. You can choose to hide the thumbnail drawer by clicking the Thumbnail item in the toolbar. The thumbnail drawer is also helpful if you want to open multiple files. If you drag them onto the Preview icon one at a time, or use the Open menu item and select them individually, each file will open in a new Preview window. However, if you drag multiple files onto the Preview icon in the Finder or the Dock, a single Preview window will open, and you can switch between images using the thumbnails in the drawer.

One of my biggest complaints about the thumbnail drawer is that it really slows Preview down. Luckily, you can choose whether the thumbnail drawer provides an image of each page (and the size of the image), the page/graphic name, or both, from Preview preferences. I set mine to show only the page/graphic name, and Preview is much faster.

QuickTime Player

QuickTime Player allows you to play multimedia files, including such common audio and video formats as MP3, MPEG-4, WAV, AIFF, AAC, and AVI (and QuickTime, of course). You can view or listen to multimedia files stored on your own computer, or you can play back streaming multimedia content over the Internet.

If you click on a link for a supported streaming media format in your Web browser, Quick-Time Player will open automatically and begin to play it. If you have the URL of a streaming media file, choose File ➣ Open URL in New Player… and type (or paste) the URL into the dialog box. You can control playback options such as the size of the playback screen using the Movie menu, and you can save your favorite movies and streaming URLs as favorites using the Favorites menu.

Each QuickTime Player window has its own volume and playback controls, but there are a couple hidden controls, as well. If you click the mouse in the progress bar in a Player window, you can jump directly to any part of the file. (If the file is located on your computer, playback will resume immediately at the chosen location; if it's a streaming file, it will take a few seconds to re-buffer the content at the new point of playback). If you have a mouse with a scroll wheel, rotating the scroll wheel during playback will enter frame-by-frame mode; you can use the scroll wheel to advance or rewind one frame at a time (click the play button or press the space bar to resume normal playback).

If you're playing a file with audio content, you'll see a graphical audio display on the right side of the progress bar. If you click on this display, the progress bar will switch to an audio control panel with balance, bass, and treble controls (click the display again to switch back).

Finally, if you find that you just can't get QuickTime Player to play loud enough, hold down the shift key as you press the up arrow key (volume up). When the volume slider is all the way to the right, keep pressing the up key and you'll find that the volume continues to get louder!

Script Editor

The Script Editor application is actually located inside the AppleScript folder (inside the Applications folder). It allows you to write, record, and run scripts, as well as to view the AppleScript Dictionary for any application that supports AppleScript. I talk about Apple-Script in the Online Bonus Chapter. If you end up learning how to write your own scripts, chances are you'll start out using Script Editor.

Sherlock

Depending on what version of the Mac OS you're using, Sherlock is one of any number of different applications or utilities—Apple seems to change their mind about what they want it to be with each system release. As of Mac OS X 10.2, it's Apple's Internet information search tool, which, when connected to the Internet, allows you to search for information via channels. Although it has an Internet search channel that scours a number of the major Web search engines, as well as a Picture channel that uses those search engines to search for images, most of the channels are, in fact, very topic specific (Figure 7.3).

Figure 7.3: Sherlock's channels

Some examples of information you can gather using Sherlock's channels are movie times and locations in your area (and even view movie trailers); the latest stock updates and news; business information using the local yellow pages, word definitions and translations; and items for sale on the eBay auction site. You can even get the latest flight status information from major airlines.

Sherlock doesn't do any of this searching itself; rather, it queries available search engines and then returns the results to you from within its own window. You won't get "better" results than if you used these engines yourself, but you get a nice, neat, all-in-one interface to many different search engines and data sources on your Desktop.

Sherlock sounds like a great utility, and it is; however, I really don't use it much. Overall, I prefer the shareware Watson.

My Dear Watson: A Better Sherlock

The shareware Watson (http://www.karelia.com/watson/) is a utility that looks and works similarly to Sherlock; in fact, with their toolbars configured similarly, as in Figure 7.4, it's a bit difficult to tell them apart. Whereas Sherlock offers "channels," Watson provides "tools"—both being content-specific modules that allow you to gather information via the Internet. However, Watson offers most of the features of Sherlock, plus many more.

Figure 7.4: Watson, Sherlock's more capable twin

As Table 7.1 shows, Watson's tool list is quite extensive, and provides access to many additional types of information, from news to recipes to weather. Watson is also extensible via a plug-in architecture (some of the currently available modules were provided by third parties), so new tools are available regularly.

Table 7.1: A Sherlock and Watson Comparison

Sherlock "Channels"	Watson "Tools"
Internet	Google, Yahoo
Pictures	Image Search
Stocks	Stock Tracker
Movies	Movies
Yellow Pages	Phone Book (white, yellow, toll-free)
eBay	eBay Watcher
Flights	-
Dictionary/Thesaurus	Reference
Translation	Translation
AppleCare	-
-	Amazon.com
-	Baseball Scores
-	Epicurious (recipes)
-	Exchange Rates
-	Football Scores
-	Meerkat (tech news/information)
-	Newsblaster
-	Packages (tracking for Airborne, FedEx, UPS, USPS)
-	PriceGrabber (shopping price comparisons)
-	Recipes
-	TV Listings
-	VersionTracker
-	Weather
-	What's Better? (whatsbetter.com interface)
-	Zip Codes

Note

Both Watson and Sherlock accept plug-ins to add additional search tools, so the feature comparison in Table 7.1 is by no means exhaustive.

The channel in which Sherlock has a clear advantage over Watson's tools is AppleCare. You can search and view the entire AppleCare Knowledge Base of articles, making Sherlock a quicker way to access this content than even Apple's own website (although if you click on a link within a document, it will open in your web browser). Sherlock's Yellow Pages channel also has a few nice touches. Once you locate a business, Sherlock downloads a local map showing you the location of the business, and (if you've entered your address in the preferences dialog), can provide you with specific driving directions. Finally, whereas Watson used to have its own airline flight status tool, it was removed in a recent version.

However, apart from these channels, I find Watson's tools to be either comparable or preferable. For example, Watson's Phone tool searches white pages, yellow pages, and toll-free directories; its Reference tool searches many more databases, and many more types of databases, than Sherlock's Dictionary channel; and its Translation tool lets you choose between multiple online translation engines, compared to Sherlock's one. Sherlock is free with Mac OS X, but if you do a lot of online searching and information gathering, Watson is well worth the price.

Note

There's actually a bit of controversy surrounding Sherlock and Watson. When Watson was first released, Sherlock looked and worked much differently (truth be told, it wasn't very popular). Watson got rave reviews, and even won Apple's own "Most Innovative Mac OS X Product" award. Come OS X 10.2, Sherlock got a major makeover that left it looking (and working) suspiciously like Watson. The two utilities aren't exactly the same, but they're close enough to raise some eyebrows.

Stickies

The Stickies application is the Mac OS X adaptation of the old Mac "Post-It Note" standby. You can quickly create notes and "stick" them on the screen. Although many users consider Stickies to be something of a novelty with limited functionality, those who haven't yet used OS X's version may be surprised by what it can do.

As with Classic Stickies, you can create as many notes as you like, each with styled text and the "paper" color you choose. You can also import text from a text file or export the contents of a note to a text file (although in OS X's Stickies you can also export to RTF and RTFD, which is an RTF file with graphics).

However, the similarities stop there. Stickies now supports text colors, character-level formatting (the old version would only allow one format and font for an entire note), inserted graphics (drag any picture or graphic into a note), and unlimited note size (the old version limited notes to 8,000 characters). It also provides Find and Replace functionality that works within a single note or across all notes.

In addition, Stickies also sports some OS X touches. From the Note menu, you can make individual notes translucent, and you can also choose to make certain notes "float," meaning that they float above other application windows (making them behave like real notes stuck to your screen). Stickies also take advantage of OS X's Cocoa spell checker, available from the Edit menu. Finally, in any Cocoa or Services-compatible Carbon application, you can select text and then choose Application Name ➣ Services ➣ Make New Sticky Note to create a new note with the selected text as its contents. (I'll talk more about Services later in this chapter when I talk about working with text.)

TextEdit

If you ever used SimpleText in Mac OS 9 or earlier, you know that it was (1) the built-in text editor; and (2) not very powerful or functional. TextEdit is similar to SimpleText in that it's Mac OS X's built-in text editor, but that's where the similarities end. TextEdit is an extremely powerful text editor with enough functionality to actually be called a word processor. It supports files of unlimited size, complex formatting (such as colors, kerning, ligatures, and super/subscripts), paragraph-level justification, find/replace, and graphics. It can open, edit, and save RTF formatted documents, supports Unicode text, text-to-speech, and can even render HTML and PDF files (drop an HTML document on TextEdit and watch it render the page, including linked graphics). Like Stickies, it supports Services and Mac OS X's spell-checking features, but unlike Stickies, you can enable on-the-fly spell-checking (via the preferences dialog), just like Microsoft Word. Finally, when working in rich text format, you can view and use a formatting bar and a ruler with tab stops and margin settings. You probably didn't even know about half of these features, right? Here are a few more tips.

Zooming in TextEdit

You can actually zoom in on and out of a document in TextEdit; this can be useful for examining small details or for seeing the big picture of how a document looks as a whole. (By zooming in, you can also see how beautiful text rendering is in Mac OS X—no matter how much you magnify text, is still looks sharp and smooth.)

To use this feature, choose Format ➣ Wrap to Page. The document view will change to a page layout orientation, and a zoom menu will appear in the lower-right corner. Select a zoom amount (from 10% to 1600%) and the page will be reduce or enlarged accordingly (Figure 7.5). To get back to window view, select the same menu item (which now reads Wrap to Window).

Figure 7.5: Using TextEdit's zoom function

AirPort Admin Utility and Setup Assistant

These two utilities allow you to set up and manage AirPort networks. If you have a Mac with an AirPort card installed, the AirPort Setup Assistant walks you through the steps needed to join an existing AirPort network or to set up an AirPort Base Station from your computer.

The AirPort Admin Utility allows you to manage an AirPort Base Station. Using the Admin Utility you can restart your Base Station, upload firmware, upload a saved Base Station configuration file, set up an AirPort network password (Equivalent Network Password), and configure various other AirPort Base Station settings (e.g., DHCP, NAT).

Apple System Profiler

Apple System Profiler provides comprehensive information about your Mac. The information available via Apple System Profiler is divided into six general areas:

• System Profile Provides information on the version of the Mac OS your computer is running; the current user; general information about the computer itself; the amount of installed RAM and the RAM configuration; and the current network.

• Devices and Volumes Provides information about the various buses on your computer (IDE, PCI, USB, FireWire, etc.) and the devices connected to each bus (including hard drive/volume information).

• Frameworks Provides information on installed frameworks (function-specific portions of the OS), including version numbers and modification dates.

• Extensions Provides information on installed kernel extensions, including version numbers and modification dates. The Get Info String column can sometimes be used to identify which kernel extensions were provided by Apple and which were not.

  Note

  Under OS X 10.1, the Extensions tab provided very specific information about which kernel extensions were provided by Apple and which were not. Strangely, under OS X 10.2, Apple removed this functionality.

• Applications Provides details on every non-Classic application installed on your computer, including version numbers. This tab can be an extremely useful quick reference guide when you need to check on application versions.

• Logs Provides quick access to system and application crash logs generated by the Console utility (see "Console," later in this section, for more details).

You may find that a developer requests an Apple System Profiler report if you request technical support for their products. You can save such a report (in several formats) via Apple System Profiler's File menu; you can also open and view saved reports.

Bluetooth File Exchange

If you have a Bluetooth wireless adapter and another Bluetooth-equipped device (such as another Mac with a Bluetooth adapter), you can send files to the other device using the Bluetooth File Exchange utility:

1. Make sure both devices are set as "discoverable" (in Mac OS X, from the Settings tab of Bluetooth System Preferences).

2. Drag the file onto the Bluetooth File Exchange icon in the Finder or the Dock.

3. Click the Search button to locate any Bluetooth devices that are in range.

4. When the other device is found, click the Send button. (If the device is password-protected, you'll need to enter the device password to proceed.)

ColorSync Utility

The main function of the ColorSync Utility is to verify and repair any ColorSync/ICC device profiles on your Mac. These profiles, for displays, printers, scanners, cameras, and other ColorSync-compatible devices, ensure color accuracy across devices. You can verify or repair profiles via the Profile First Aid panel.

You can also view any installed profiles from the Profiles panel. Click on the disclosure triangle next to any group to view the contents of that group of profiles; clicking the small triangle in the upper-right corner of the Profile window allows you to group profiles by location, class, or space.

Finally, you can view information about connected devices from the Devices panel. Click on a device (a display, scanner, camera, printer, etc.) and you'll be presented with information about the device to the right. From the info area you can also select a different ColorSync profile for the device.

Console

While your Mac is running, OS X is quietly keeping track of low-level system errors and messages. When you launch Console, the console.log file shows these errors and messages. (Don't worry—even though it looks like there are a lot of problems, it's normal for the log file to be filled with incomprehensible messages.) More importantly for most users, Console lets you track application crashes and view the logs of those crashes. This functionality is disabled by default, but I recommend enabling it, as it can often provide you with clues as to the cause of an application crash (useful if you're trying to track down a persistent problem), and many developers will request a crash log if you request tech support. To enable crash reporting, choose Console ➣ Preferences, click on the Crashes tab, and check the box next to "Enable crash reporting." You can also choose to have crash logs displayed automatically; I personally find this option annoying, because each time an application crashes, Console will launch and pop up a window with the resulting crash log.

After an application crash, you can manually view the crash log from within Console (choose File ➣ Open Log…), from any text editor, or via Apple System Profiler. The log files themselves are located in ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter, identifiable by the name of the offending application. (If a developer ever asks you to send a crash log, this is where you get it.) The log file will tell you what the "Exception" was (what caused the crash), and will tell you which of the application's threads actually crashed ("Thread # Crashed"). Most of the time this info won't make much sense to the average user; however, a couple times I've been able to make educated guesses about what the problem was (a corrupt font is one example).

CPU Monitor

CPU Monitor provides several graphical representations of the load on your Mac's CPU(s), which can be enabled from the Processes menu (Figure 7.6). The Standard window provides a single meter (0–100%) that rises and falls with CPU usage. The Expanded window provides a moving representation of CPU use over time, and separates processes (via color) into system, user, niced, and background processes. The Floating window provides the same data as the Standard window, but presents it in a thin, translucent meter that can be arranged horizontally or vertically. Since CPU Monitor is something you would probably have running all the time if you used it, you can also choose to hide its icon from the Dock via its preferences dialog.

Figure 7.6: CPU Monitor displays (left to right)— Standard, Expanded, Floating

DigitalColor Meter

Used mainly by those in the graphic arts and design fields, DigitalColor Meter allows you to translate colors anywhere on your screen into color values in RGB, CIE, or Tristimulus format. From the pop-up menu in the DigitalColor Meter window, choose the color value format, and then move the mouse over any item or pixel on the screen to see its color value. You can control the aperture size of the selector using the Aperture Size setting, and the degree of magnification of the DigitalColor Meter inspector window from the preferences dialog.

Once you've found a color you want to use, press shift+command+H to "hold" it—you can then copy the color using the Color menu, or drag it from the color swatch to the storage area in Apple's Color Picker window. You can also save the contents of the inspector window for later use. If you're a graphics professional, DigitalColor Meter has a number of other useful features (and you're quite likely to already know exactly what they are and how to use them).

Directory Access

The Directory Access utility is used to configure access to directory services such as AppleTalk, LDAP, SLP, NetInfo, and Rendezvous. If you're using your Mac at home and these terms mean nothing to you, don't worry. Directory access is pre-configured for use in small networks such as a home or small office, and you can safely ignore it. If you're connected to a larger network that takes advantage of such services, chances are your network administrator will tell you how to set up Directory Access, or will do it for you.

"Disc Burner"

If you're looking for this utility, you won't find it, because it's not really an application. "Disc Burner" is what Apple used to call the Finder's ability to burn CDs and DVDs directly from the Finder. It's really a function of the Disk Copy utility. However, since it works a bit differently (and more simply) than Disk Copy, I'm going to talk about this functionality separately.

If you have a Mac or Mac laptop with a CD-R or DVD-R drive, inserting a blank CD (CD-R or CD-RW) or DVD brings up a dialog box asking you what you want to do with it. If you choose Open Finder, the blank disc will appear in the Finder. You can drag items onto it (up to the point where you fill it to capacity), and they will be "copied" to the disc (they actually aren't being copied to the disc; they're being copied to an invisible image of the disc which will later be burned). When you're ready to burn the disc, select it in the Finder, and then choose File ➣ Burn Disc… (Or, even easier, drag the disc to the Dock's Trash icon, which will turn into a "burn" symbol; dropping the disc on the symbol will burn it and then eject the finished product). You'll be asked what speed you want to burn the disc at (choose one equal to or less than the blank disc's speed rating, usually printed on the face of the disc), and then you can burn it.

If you instead choose to open the blank CD or DVD in iTunes or (if you have a Super-Drive Mac) iDVD