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How to Format Your Mac's Hard Drive
Six Great TextEdit Tricks
If He Ever Had To Leave The Mac, Why He'd Switch To Elementary OS
Quicksilver 1.1 For Lion And Mountain Lion Released
How to Format Your Mac's Hard Drive
mac.tutsplus.com's Johnny Winter says that unlike personal computers that run Microsoft Windows, it should not be necessary to completely reformat the hard drive, once a year, to reinstall the operating system. You will find that UNIX-based OS X is very stable in comparison. It automatically defragments its hard drive on an ongoing basis and does not get bogged down with additional software in the way that a Windows machine does.
However, Winter notes that there may be occasions when you want to reformat your Mac's hard drive, and in his tutorial, he'll show you how to reformat the hard drive in your Mac and reinstall OS X for a factory fresh finish, observing that some may find it cathartic to get rid of a load of applications and just install the ones that they really need, or you are selling the machine or passing it on and want to revert it to factory settings, thereby assuring that none of your personal data remains and the recipient is in receipt of a Mac with an operating system that is as fresh as when it first left the factory.
But first, back up your stuff.....
You can check it out at:
http://goo.gl/wy85Ix
Six Great TextEdit Tricks
Macworld's Kirk McElhearn says if you don't write all the time, (or in some instances even if you do - personal testimony, Ed.) then you probably don't need a full-featured word processor, such as Microsoft Word or Apple Pages. But you still may want a flexible tool for handling text that lets you compose rsums and recipes, letters and flyers, and if you're on a Mac running OS X already have one: Apple's TextEdit.
This text app comes as part of OS X, and can probably handle most of your writing needs. While it doesn't offer advanced page layout features like columns and image wrap, it does provide most of the fundamentals.
McElhearn notes that simplicity comes with benefits, too. TextEdit is sleek and fast, it takes a half-second to launch, and it doesn't lag even if you have a document containing hundreds of pages. Moreover TextEdit can save documents to Apple's iCloud, so if you have a desktop Mac and a laptop, you can work on your documents at home and know theyll still be at hand when you're on the road.
Still need convincing? McElhearn offers six specific TextEdit tips that show off what this free, easy-to-use program can do.
You can check it out at:
http://www.macworld.com/article/2048573/six-great-textedit-tricks.html
If He Ever Had To Leave The Mac, Why He'd Switch To Elementary OS
Macworld's John Moltz says perhaps its a holdover from the Apple Depression of the 1990s, but he sometimes wonders where he would go if he ever needed to leave the Mac.
Moltz notes that he used Windows professionally in my work for The Man, and I hated most of it, and not long ago he experimented with Linux and it left him let down, confused, and questioning many of his initial assumptions.
Enter Elementary OS -- a relative newcomer, having first shipped in 2011, whose latest release, Luna, came out in mid-August and presents a distinctly different design sense than Ubuntu Linux, and one that Mac users might find more appealing.
Moltz cites the folks behind the project describing Elementary as "a demonstration of a desire to create a Linux-based OS that championed consistency and great design."
He notes that some of Elementary seems directly inspired by the Mac OS, such as a dock, which works just like the Dock on the Mac and is even called the Dock, and a music application that's the spitting image of iTunes.
The text editor saves your file as you type. Applications save their state on exit and restore when relaunched. Scroll bars are thin by default. The Applications menu acts just like Launchpad. On the other hand, notwithstanding the Mac-like elements, much of Elementary OS is quite different. Applications designed specifically for Elementary dont have menus, for example. Instead, options are nested inside a gear icon on the apps toolbar. Its slightly less informative, as all items are on one level and divided into groups by lines and lack an identifier for categories such as File and Edit. But its also a cleaner look, and while some of Elementary OS is inspired by the Mac, much of it also seems inspired by today's mobile operating systems.
You can download Elementary for free, as you can any other Linux distribution, but contributions are welcomed, and Moltz concludes that if you have an old Mac or PC lying around in want of a modern operating system, Elementary seems like the design-conscious computer user's best open-source choice.
For the full report visit here:
http://goo.gl/DSDk5F
Quicksilver 1.1 For Lion And Mountain Lion Released
Quicksilver is a fast and free Mac OS X launcher utility and productivity app that gives you the power to control your Mac quickly and elegantly. without thought. An introduction to Quicksilver's abilities include:
• Accessing applications, documents, contacts, music and much, much more.
• Browsing your Mac's filesystem elegantly using keywords and 'fuzzy' matching.
• Managing content through drag and drop, or grabbing selected content directly.
• Interacting with installed applications through plugins.
Find and Do
Quicksilver gives you quick access to all your important things. With only a few keystrokes, you can get to your applications, files, contacts, bookmarks, music, etc. Dont get distracted though; although Quicksilver finds and launches things quickly and extremely well, it's more about doing, not finding.
Launching is a gateway drug
Saying that Quicksilver is an application launcher is like saying a car is a drinks holder. You can do almost anything with Quicksilver. Quicksilver's art is in learning what you like doing, and turning your chores into two-second thoughts. By knowing your habits, Quicksilver blurs the line between thinking about something and simply getting it done.
Type it like you think it
Using OS X's Spotlight or a similar app to find the contact 'John Smith' requires you to search for say john. What if you want to just type js? Quicksilver lets you abbreviate using letters from anywhere in the name, and that means anywhere. Use ps to find Photoshop or tun to find iTunes.
Use abbreviations that make sense to you.
Do it like you think it
Quicksilver lets you do things how you think of them, adapting to however you think.
You can Google search for 'some text', or find 'some text' with Google search.
You can select a contact and e-mail them a file, or you can select a file and e-mail it to a contact.
No thinking. No planning. No adjusting. Just doing.
Stay where you are
With Quicksilver, you never need to stop what youre doing to complete simple tasks. Move the file you just downloaded to your Documents folder without leaving your browser. Add something to your To Do List as soon as you think of it. Quicksilver allows you to process your thoughts instantly, and lets you get right back to what you want to be doing.
Grab and go
Select files or text and act upon them immediately. Quicksilver can grab the current selection from almost any application. Grab selected text to search for it on the web or append it to a file. Grab files and delete them, move them or send them. Grab pictures to resize them or change their format (above), the options are limitless.
Keep Finder at arms length
Quicksilver allows you to do all sorts of things with files: move, copy, rename, delete, whilst also letting you navigate your entire file system. Just add a few important top-level folders to the catalog and you can browse through your folders from there.
Still not fast enough?
If you find yourself doing something frequently, you can speed up the task even further by assigning a trigger to it. Triggers give you the power to assign regular tasks to keyboard shortcuts or mouse movements; you don't even need to activate Quicksilver.
Extend Quicksilver & do more
There are many plug-ins that extend Quicksilver's functionality even further. Interact with your installed applications; Mail, 1Password, Microsoft Office and more. Access information from web-based services. Access your browsers bookmarks and history.
Check out the 'Plugins' section within the Quicksilver preferences to see the all the entire plugins list; containing over 100 plugins.
Numerous Interfaces
Customise Quicksilver with one of the many interface plugins, or alter the colours, bezels and font sizes.
What about Spotlight for Mac OS X?
Spotlight is fantastic and it certainly has its place, but its no substitute for Quicksilver.
Spotlight knows about everything on your Mac. Quicksilver also knows about everything, but concentrates on the things you care about.
Spotlight is about finding things. Quicksilver is about finding things (faster) then doing something with what youve found.
Spotlight can show your dads entry in the Address Book. Quicksilver can show your dads work phone number, call it or send your dad a file.
Spotlight forces you to think as you search. Quicksilver allows you to just start typing to get what you want.
Quicksilver 1.1 drops support for Mac OS X 10.6 (which, along with previous OS X versions is still supported by an older Quicksilver version) and adds an improved updater for plug-ins, improved management and display of clipboard history items, Retina display support, improved recognition of URLs and email addresses, and other improvements.
Freeware/Donationware
For more information, visit:
http://qsapp.com/
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