"If you tried to use the Character Viewer in Lion to insert symbols, emoticons, etc., into email, letters and documents, you may have trouble figuring out how to do it -- I did," states Jim Hamm.
He explains the frustration. "In Snow Leopard all you had to do was click 'insert.' This feature is missing in Lion. In Lion there's two choices: double click the symbol or drag and drop. Is this simpler than in Snow Leopard? No. Another example of where, seemingly, Apple designers stuck their fingers in Character Viewer, stirred the pot to make things a bit different but not better.
"Here's how to get Character Viewer to appear in the Menu Bar: System Preferences > Language & Text > Input Sources > check Keyboard and Character Viewer. I use it frequently, for example, to put a bullet point • in front of a new paragraph. Or maybe this ☛.
"Perhaps now you'll be pleased to use the Character Viewer...☺. . . Jim"
Lion Too Tough for Newbies?
This looks long, but it's worth your time. John Carter gives a lot of info on Lion. He starts out, "Jim Hamm brought an article to my attention wherein the author thinks that Lion might be too much for his senior parents to make the switch to from Snow Leopard.
"Yes, and no. There are features that have change dramatically from 10.6 to 10.7. Spaces and Expose for one (or rather two into one). When I discovered that you needed either a Magic Mouse or a Magic Trackpad on an iMac to use all those complicated finger motions, I rushed right out and bought the trackpad. I was doing just fine without it.
"In fact, for a two-finger, mouse-pushing geezer like me, a standard two-button mouse with scroll wheel is all I really need. I had trouble with the Magic Mouse when I had it, because my fingers like to tap and wiggle on the surface of things when I’m thinking about what to do next, and lo and behold if those taps and wiggles don’t mean something on a Magic Mouse - and a trackpad!
"Okay, so now my iMac has both a standard mouse right next to my keyboard and a trackpad up above it. So far, there are very few things I’ve needed the trackpad for. Let’s see if I manage to keep the trackpad past the 30-day return period.
"And my MacBook Pro? It also sports a two-button mouse with scroll wheel. That’s one gadget I can’t do without on any computer.
There's more coming as John goes on, "Anyway, back to the other features of Lion.
"If you don’t like the way Mail looks, you can switch back to the classic view.
"If you don’t like scrolling down in order to scroll up (depending on your point of view), you can change the direction of the scroll based on the direction of the scroll wheel or the direction of the fingers on the trackpad.
"If you don’t like swirling around on the trackpad to get from one Desktop to another looking for your apps, just ignore the fact that you have more than one Desktop and don’t bother trying to figure out which Desktop you’re in - it doesn’t matter as long as you know how to use CMD-Tab to switch between applications and CMD-Space to bring up Spotlight to then key in the name of an application you want to launch.
"And what does it matter that you no longer need to exit from an application when all that is needed is to close the window of an app? If the window is gone, do you really care if the app is still active or not? Well, in one way it does matter. Each app that is launched uses some memory, even if there is no window open. But, if no window is open (and that means not even hidden from view), there is virtually no processor resource used - so who cares?
"One real problem for anyone is figuring out how to get out of full screen mode so you can see that old familiar menu bar across the top of the display. Well, just press the ESC key.
"In other words, the only thing that’s changed for me so far is that I really do like the facelift in Mail.
And, wrapping it up John states, "And what about the author’s article? How did the readers take to it? You’ll have to read them to see what I mean by it doesn’t make any difference whether you upgrade to Lion or not. What you use and how you use it is all up to you. Don’t be afraid to venture into the unknown, because if you start out with fear, it will only lead to anger."
Changing Documents from Word to Pages
With a huge file of things accumulated that I wrote with Microsoft Word '97 and then Word 2004 holding up my upgrade to Lion the question is: how to change every document to Pages. More recently I’ve gone from Pages ’08 to Pages ’09, which is currently v. 4.1.
Here’s the solution, unless you can come up with something easier that doesn’t cost $$$. Click on the title of a document in the folder to highlight it, then Control Click on the title. On the little drop down menu choose Save As and select Pages.
(Pages is a good writing tool for me, with one exception: it doesn't know how to alphabetize a list, or "sort" as Word refers to the procedure under the heading Tools.)
Learning About Lion
Yes, there's more to learn, but it's easy and it's fun -- so, of course, it's Mac! Helping us learn about Lion Jim Hamm sends us some useful links, along with relating his own Lion experiences. Read on:
"I did another install of OS X Lion on my MacBook Air (3 1/2 years old) and the download took 50 minutes and the install took 50 minutes - an improvement from my older MacBook Pro. Again, everything seems to be working -- sometimes a bit too much. I noticed my CPU on the Air was running at nearly 100% and wondered why? Two processes -- MDWorker and MDS -- were soaking up all my CPU cycles. A little research found that Spotlight was indexing everything on my Air. Looking at the small Spotlight magnifier icon in the upper right corner of my screen showed a small dot in the center, which indicated that indexing was going on. The report I read indicated just to let this indexing continue and it would stop in about 15 minutes. I did and it did.
"Occasionally there will be little blips in using Lion. For example, this morning my MacBook Pro, upon opening it, didn’t find my wifi network. A bit of fiddling got it going again. Zee had a problem in Safari when all of a sudden she couldn’t click a link and get it to do anything. I suggested a restart which fixed the problem. From our experience, and reading other blogs on the install of Lion, it seems the fix of the moment is to do a restart on these small blips.
"Adobe and Lion don’t seem to play well together. Here is an article with more about this.
"From reading various blogs and articles on Lion, most people seem to be pleased with Lion -- but not all. A couple of people have stated they want to go back to Snow Leopard. My impression of Lion? It’s fine, is probably the first thought that comes to mind -- and I’m glad we upgraded. If someone were to ask me if they should upgrade to Lion now, I’d say not necessarily unless they just want to experience the latest OS. The partial melding of OS and iOS is the way Apple is heading, so I thought we’d get on the bandwagon early-on and learn more about this new OS. Apparently the security of Lion has been improved significantly, which is a good thing. A couple of small blips -- like scrolling in a different direction than usual, and which I was accustomed to, and a missing scroll bar (which I didn’t miss, but other people did) -- were easily fixed and reverted in System Preferences.
"Mail is quite a bit different in Lion. I’m adjusting to the new format and not sure, at this time, that I like it better than the ‘old’ format. It is basically the same format as one sees in an Apple mobile device, so my learning curve isn’t as steep as it might otherwise have been." Jim also mentions an article about Mail.
Now Jim goes on to say, "Walt Mossberg, tech writer for the Wall Street Journal, likes the new features in Lion and elaborates on his opinion in this review. Other tech writers report similar impressions. And the price of the upgrade at $30 is certainly reasonable -- in fact, a bargain I’d say. Just think about all the development work that went into Lion, and we’re buying all this for just $30. A lot of ‘roar’ for the buck, I’d say." And here Jim gives us a grin.
But wait, Jim has found more good articles to read after you've installed Lion. First from techcrunch, and then from applegazette. (How to add your signature to a pdf caught my attention.)
Here is the very latest from Jim. View a 19 minute FREE video tutorial on the installation of Lion from ScreenCastsonline.
Stay tuned for more about Lion later. Jim seems to have been the first from PMUG to make the plunge.
Tips for Keychain Access
"Whether you are a guru or a beginner, what follows is something that every Mac user needs to know about Keychain Access." John Carter has some important information to share! From here on John is being quoted.
"There is a simple way to change the administrative password, and this is what crooks do when they steal someone’s computer, but you need the install disk (or a copy of it). If you don’t have the installation disk, follow these instructions to create a new admin account (you cannot use the same name as before). The instructions to reset the administrative password using the install disk are as follows:
• Insert the Mac OS X Install disc and restart the computer.
• When you hear the startup tone, hold down the C key until you see the spinning gear.
• When the Installer appears, choose Utilities > Reset Password. [Look in the Menu bar at the top of the screen for Utilities.]
• Follow the onscreen instructions to change the password.
• Quit the Installer and restart your computer while holding down the [left] mouse button to eject the disc.
Be sure to change your login password in Keychain Access to match your new admin password. Here’s how to do it;
• Open Keychain Access located in Applications/Utilities, and select the keychain in the Keychains list (click Show Keychains if the list is not open).
• Choose Edit >"Change Password for Keychain 'login’.” (The name of the keychain in the menu matches the name of the selected keychain. If you selected the keychain that unlocks when you log in, the name you see is “login.”)
• If the keychain is locked, type the password to unlock it.
• Type the current password for this keychain.
• Type a new password, then type it again to verify.
• Click OK.
You can use Password Assistant to help you choose a new password. Click the key button to the right of the Password field to see how secure your new password is.
When you open Keychain Access, you will notice something like the following in the left panel:
You have several keychains in Keychain Access. Each of these keychains can have its own password. The keychain you need to change the password on is the login keychain. Make sure it is highlighted (selected) when you choose “Edit > Change Password for Keychain ‘login’.” If it is not selected, then the word ‘login’ will be replaced with the name of one of the other keychains in the above list.
All of the entries in the right panel are for storing the passwords for different applications, services, or Internet accounts. Do NOT mess with these unless you are absolutely sure you know what you are doing. The only way anything in Keychain Access gets deleted is if you do it manually, so be aware that things can hang around forever there. For example, if you closed your account with your bank, then you can safely delete the keychain entry for that account. If you changed your password for a specific Internet account, you will have two keychain entries for that account and you can safely delete the older one, but there are exceptions to what appear to be duplicate entries.
A keychain entry might be appear to be duplicated more than once, but each keychain entry was for a different web page for that same website (my bank has several different pages for logging in, and each page needs its own keychain entry). So be real careful about deleting entries. When in doubt, don’t.
In one case, I couldn’t quite remember the right password for one Internet account, so as I entered each password they were being “remembered" in Keychain Access. It’s a simple matter of deleting all the wrong passwords and keeping the right one.
Every keychain entry has two sections. The first section you see when you open the keychain entry. This is the Attributes section. The other section is Access Control. When you click on that button, a list of Names shows in the panel. These are the applications that are allowed to use the password without needing your specific permission. All other applications access the password depending on the settings in this section.
When you click on the plus (+) button, you can actually add other applications to the list that don’t need permission to access that password. Highlighting the name of an application and clicking on the minus (-) removes that name from the allowed list.
For more on this topic, simply search with keywords like, “mac 10.__ how to ___” and fill in the blanks with your own criteria.
And here John lets us catch our breath. His quotation is completed -- at least for now.
FREE Video Tutorials
"Are you hungry for more video tutorials for your Mac, iPhone, and iPad?" John Carter asks. Read on, and note that wonderful word FREE.
Here's what John wants us to know: "ScreenCastsOnline posts a new video tutorial every week. Don McAllister is the host and founder of ScreenCastsOnline.
"You can get three FREE tutorials just for the asking — and no obligation. To become a member and be able to download and keep as many tutorials as your hard disc and brain can hold will cost you $57 for a 3-month membership (marked down from $249) and renew for 12 months for just $45. The tutorials are DRM FREE and yours to keep.
"Don has already published over 300 tutorials covering 60 topics since 2005, and I imagine you can download every one of them well within that 3-month period.
"Don also has a blog that you can follow, and his most recent blog expresses his disappointment over the latest release of Final Cut Pro X. This particular blog is a 10-minute video that he recorded, probably with his iPhone, as he drives home from a training session on FCP X. Remarkable!"
John closes with this: "I viewed one of his videos on ForkLift2, and I am impressed both with ForkLift2 and Don’s professional presentation."
On Reading SD Chips with Adapter
David Passell passes along this information: "For a long time I have been copying a friend's SD chips to archive-DVDs and also using iDVD, iPhoto, etc. to make playable DVDs. I went through a time though when I thought I was getting corrupted chips. They wouldn't load, I couldn't copy them, and when I tried to play videos (AVI) from them I would get 'end of file errors,' etc. Even with the SAFE/LOCK key in place I would have problems. The underlying problem was that I was plugging the SD > USB adapter into a hub. When I plugged it directly into a Mini USB connector, the problem went away.
Basic principle:
• To avoid corruption, or changes on photo dates, always put the little key on the SD chip to the SAFE/LOCK position.
• Always plug the adapter directly into a USB port on the computer.
• Don't use a hub, not even a powered one.
• Before removing the chip, EJECT the image of the SD, just like a large Hard Drive or USB thumb drive."
From his MacBook Pro at the Sunnyvale, CA public library we hear from John Carter on the subject: "Pam Wickstrom was told by Apple support that you cannot use a USB hub (powered or not) on an Airbook to connect to an external hard drive - the external hard drive has to be connected directly to the Airbook. David’s experience with an SD chip is similar, but I don’t know if he was using an Airbook. So from this we might conclude that you can’t read any external media through a USB hub on an Airbook. This needs to be confirmed."
Upon receiving this info from John here's David Passell's reply, "I'm not sure what an 'airbook' is, I think it means the MacBook Air. However, I am using a Mac Mini. I have three hub-type devices. A Gigaware four-port (powered), a Targus four-port (unpowered) which is in turn conected to a TrendNet KVM switcher which has two USB ports. I have never had a problem with hard drives or USB thumb drives through a hub. I do have my TimeMachine drive connected directly to a Mini USB port. The problem appears to be when I use my Targus USB to SD adapter. SDs apparently do not read properly when plugged in through a hub."
Keyboard Shortcuts for Mail
Expanding on his earlier tips on Mail John Carter sends this info:
I tried to find something that could
show all the keyboard shortcuts for Mail.
I couldn’t find one place that showed them all.
I found that Command-K was shown in two
different places with different functions. That’s not helpful.
The best place to look for the keyboard
shortcuts for any application is to look at the Menu list:
Here's the list of keyboard symbols. Double click to enlarge.
Conserve Battery Life
It started with a tip about conserving battery life for your iPad, but Jim Hamm goes on to tell about laptop battery life, too.
"Here's a tip for your iPad. I took a workshop on the iPad 2 at the Apple store yesterday. The gentleman presenting the workshop said that a person should close all open apps occasionally to conserve battery life. Every time you open an app that app stays running in the background unless you specifically close it.
"Double tap the home button. All those apps you see along the bottom are open and running. To close them put your finger on one and hold till it starts wiggling. Close all the open apps along that bottom row.
Jim explains, "I took a look at mine and practically every app I have on my iPad 2 was open and running in the background. Take a check on yours and see how many you have running. How often to close open apps? Perhaps at the end of the day might be a good time -- at least that's what I plan to do."
But is that a factor in battery life for our laptop computers, I wanted to know. Jim said, "If the laptop is running on battery, then I think yes, probably each app might draw a bit more juice from the battery. A bigger problem might be using up RAM. Every app uses RAM, and Safari and Mail will continue to grow the longer one keeps them running. Having a few apps open probably wouldn't affect streaming, though."
My final question was about the Apple workshops. Jim furnishes us with this Scottsdale store link.
Fix Your Mac
He calls it fun! Allen Laudenslager sends this: "Some of us go back to the days when we literally built our own computers from parts. My first 'ready-made' computer came with three books about an inch thick with troubleshooting and repair guides. Now you are supposed to send it back to the manufacturer if anything goes wrong.
"For most users this is just fine, but some of us old timers still like to dig in and fix things ourselves. I just found the ultimate Mac Fix-it Yourself site. It includes a troubleshooting guide. Fun even if you aren't planning to fix your Mac yourself."
A Handy Summary of Tips
Yesterday Jim Hamm sent us a summary of 26 OS X tips that might be useful, with the notation: "To get to the rest of the tips on the website, look to the right of the 'Tap to Click' tip and you'll see an arrow to click to get you to the 2nd tip, et al."
I asked for details: Which tip did you think was best for you? "I liked tip #24: how to force quit a program." Any tip you didn't already know? "I had probably read most of them over time, but had forgotten some. This was a good refresher." Any tip of yours that they didn't have listed? "One I use all the time in Safari to quickly send a URL link to someone in Mail by doing a Shift plus Command plus I."
So there you go, your morning is launched with ideas to try!
Prevent a Hard Drive Catastrophe (updated 8/26/2015)
John Carter to the rescue! This article on protecting your Mac against a catastrophic hard drive failure is still worth looking at. John refers to Macworld Hints as "THE place to look for tips and techniques about the Mac. However, you can spend a whole lot of time filtering through the thousands of submitted articles and comments to get a concise answer for your question. You might find just what you’re looking for or you might feel like you’re wasting your time. "For example, I did a search for 'time machine backup' (using the advanced search and searching titles only) and got 516 hits, the first 14 were comments and the rest were hints about different aspects of using Time Machine in connection with backups." John advises, "One of the best hints is 'Make a Bootable Backup.' This is one way to protect yourself against a catastrophic hard drive failure, but it doesn’t give you the option to boot up from an external hard drive and continue using the Time Machine disk for backups." So, read how to do it, and then do it. It's easy and it's logical.
Apple Support Communities Welcome You
Take a look at the new and improved Apple Discussion feature. Formerly the "Discussion Forum," it's been replaced with the Apple Support Communities. Art Gorski comments that when he was looking for the solution to a Mac problem that was the place to search, but this new system is a more social set of forums. Thanks, Art, for this link.
Spring Cleaning for Mac
How do you keep your Mac keyboard - trackpad - Mighty Mouse - etc. clean? With spring cleaning in mind I queried Ruth Davis who spoke to PMUG last year. She passes along info from support.apple:
Scroll down the page for cleaning tips for iPads, iPhones, iPods, Displays, Computers and Peripherals.
Thanks to Macintosh trainer Ruth Davis, who publishes the Mac to School Tip of the Week for more than 400 subscribers. In closing she adds, "If you want to feel more confident and be more productive on your Mac, sign up for a FREE subscription to the tips at www.mac2school.com."
Function Keys Can Help
Making good use of those function keys or a combination of several keys? Both John Carter and Jim Hamm passed along some tips today. Want to know a lot more? Maybe ask them to do a PMUG presentation?
Jim started off with this: "Here's a Mac tip I just discovered. To turn the display screen off (and not put the Mac to sleep): Shift + control + keyboard eject button. Moving the cursor brings the screen back on.
"When might a person use this, you ask? Say, for example, your Mac is in your bedroom and you want to stream and copy something into your Mac in the middle of the night and don't want the bright screen on. Or, say you're using a laptop, not plugged in to electricity, and want to conserve the battery. Turn the screen off.
"Here's another tip I occasionally find useful: to minimize all open windows quickly, press the shift button. For example, I may be typing an email and want to look at something on the desktop. Tap shift, take a look, tap shift again to return to the email. There are other ways to do this, as well."
Trying to replicate this didn't work for me. A query to Jim brought a quick reply, "At this point, I don't know or recall how I did this. I checked all my settings and don't see anything about this setting. It works just on the right shift key, but not the left. The left 'shift' key does the normal shift function. If I come across the setting I'll let you know.
"Here's something to look at. One might be able to click the desktop, then +, then add shift key to see if that would work. Or look at this one."
John shed some light on the function keys with his input. "The action of the function keys, whether you have to press the fn key plus the function key or just the function key to get the desired action is determined by a preference setting. With a standard Mac keyboard, in System Preferences > Keyboard, you should see a box like this:
"So, if you press the F12 key and this increases the sound volume, that box is not checked. With the box checked, pressing the F12 key brings up the Dashboard.
"The is different for different keyboards used. I use the Logitech diNovo Keyboard Mac Edition on my iMac. That box is not even available for that keyboard.
"So what’s the ideal setting? If you look at the function keys on your keyboard, the symbols for the special features are large and the letters for the standard features are small. To some, this would indicate that the default action when pressing a function key would be for the special feature, not the standard feature, so the box would not be checked. The choice is really yours."
And John concludes with this additional information about assigning keyboard shortcuts, "Assigning any of the modifier keys (Shift, Control, Option, Command) to perform a special function with a single press is contrary to the 'normal' and 'customary' method of using those modifier keys (aka meta key). The developer’s intended usage is that one or more modifier key is always pressed with one or more other key which is not a modifier key (a-z, A-Z, 0-9, space, symbol, function key). To see all the keyboard shortcut assignments, open System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts. Unlike the modifier keys, the function keys can be reassigned to suit your own needs, but such reassignment is best done for use with a particular application."
Six Ways to Clean Your Mac
No, not soap and water! Jim Hamm suggests we read the helpful article from MacWorld on how to get rid of old files and make more room on your hard drive.
100 How-To Tips
Reading the article in Macworld recommended by Art Gorski (below) the words "Helps & Tips" beckoned. Clicking on that tab at the top of the page brought up 100 how-to articles. Take a look and see what you might find to enhance your Mac experience.
Let It Sleep
This tip from Small Dog Electronics newsletter tells us to give your laptop up to a minute for "safe sleep" before moving it. Thanks to Jim Hamm for this info. You'll want to read the whole thing, but here's a part of the article:
"A hard drive is like a record player. There are platters inside that spin anywhere from 4,200 revolutions per minute to 15,000 revolutions per minute. If you’ve ever bumped into your record player or otherwise jarred it while it was playing music, you know that it doesn’t sound very good, can damage your stylus, and can damage the vinyl. The same holds true in hard drives.
"Perhaps the easiest and most effective thing you can do to protect your laptop hard drive is to wait after closing the lid. When the sleep light begins 'breathing,' your computer is truly asleep. If the light is solid or off entirely, your hard drive is still spinning. Take a deep breath and wait until the hard drive spins down; your data will thank you, and so will your wallet."
Mac Mail Tip
Is there an easy way to know that an email contains an attachment without opening the message? John Carter tells us, "Yes. There is a column that can be made visible in Mail that will show a small paperclip image if a message contains an attachment, and in addition, it will be accompanied by a number identifying how many attachments are in that message. If you don’t see that paperclip for a message that has an attachment, then you can set up Mail to show it.
Right click on any column header in Mail to open a menu. You should see something like the following menu (using Mail version 4.4):
Notice that the top item is “Attachments.” If it isn’t checked, click on it.
After activating that column, it will appear on the far right of the column list (above all the message headers).
You can drag that column to any position in the header I like it closer to the far left:
Here's an example of what you could see:
The blue dot shows me which email I haven’t read.
There you are. Enjoy knowing which message has an attachment and how many it contains."
Note: John sends me an attachment and the icon says "tiff." But I can't use it; I need a "jpeg." I drag the attachment by its icon over to the desktop. Clicking on it there opens it in Preview. I go to the menu at the top, choose File, then Save As. From the drop-down Format list I choose "jpeg" and I choose to save it to the desktop. Now I can copy the "jpeg" to the blog.
Drag and Drop
A quick tip from Jim Hamm sends us to this site to find how to drag and drop a copy of file or text from one application to another. You can also sign up to receive a daily Mac tip.