Change The Boring Default Login Screen Wallpaper In OS X Lion. Sick and tired of seeing the same old linen wallpaper on the login screen every time you boot up your computer? It can get pretty boring after a while. In this video, I’ll show you how to change Lion’s login screen wallpaper to whatever you’d like. Related. Scroll In Super Slow Motion In OS X. News It’s emoji time, thanks to fresh iOS 9 and OS X updates that bring a ton of new pictograms to the Apple universe. In this week’s edition of Cult of Mac Magazine, we’ve got great emoji how-tos, Apple news, and product reviews, plus the story of a Mac developer who schemed up a brilliant way of battling software pirates, Klingon-style.
All this and more awaits you in Cult of Mac Magazine – be sure to download our fantastic app today. Here are this week’s top stories. Use Three Fingers And Revolutionize Using Your Mac. If your Mac has a multitouch trackpad, there’s a simple but amazing tweak you can make that could revolutionize the way you use your computer. This is another great tip from Mac Kung Fu, a new book full of over 300 tips, tricks, hints and hacks for OS X. The perfect Christmas present for the Mac-lover! Open System Preferences (Apple menu->System Preferences), click the Trackpad icon, make sure the Point & Click tab is selected, then put a check next to Three Finger Drag.
Doing so activates the best-kept secret for Macs with a trackpad. Ignore the simple description: “Move with three fingers.” Coasting windows: Place three fingers on the trackpad when the mouse cursor is over a title bar and move it a little. There might be other benefits I’ve not spotted. You can select multiple entries in a list using three fingers and a touchpad Related. Check Your Grammar As You Type. Your Mac will check your spelling as you type in many applications, underlining mistakes in red, but did you know that it can also check your grammar?
This is another great tip from Mac Kung Fu, a new book full of over 300 tips, tricks, hints and hacks for OS X. The perfect Christmas present for the Mac-lover! To activate the feature in any application where you want to use it (such as Safari, TextEdit, or Mail), open the application and click Edit->Spelling and Grammar->Check Grammar with Spelling. It will remain active when you quit and restart the application until you deactivate it in the same way. Not all apps are compatible but many are, especially built-in OS X apps. What OS X considers bad grammar will be underlined in green, but beware that grammar checking is nowhere near as accurate as spell checking, and—quite simply—OS X will probably get it wrong a lot of the time. Sometimes OS X's corrections are spot on, as illustrated here Related. See Forgotten Passwords [OS X Tips] OS X remembers and autocompletes passwords for you, but what if you forget them? And then what if your hard disk should suddenly shake itself apart and you have to start with a fresh installation?
Here’s how to view any password that OS X stores for you, for applications and websites. This tip is extracted from Mac Kung Fu, a new book containing over 300 tips, tricks, hints and hacks for Mac OS X Lion. Often your Mac will ask if you want to let it remember your login details for websites and even applications like Yahoo! Messenger. I make such heavy use of this feature that I often forget what the password was, or even the account name in some cases. All passwords are stored in a secure keychain file, and you can use the Keychain Access program to get to it. In the dialog box that appears, put a check in the Show Password box. Related. Making the switch: a Windows user's first MacBook. Welcome to part one of our feature for switching to Mac.
Once you're done, if you'd like to further your learning we've also got a second part, and a third for getting you up to speed on all things OS X. So, you've succumbed to the shiny and bought yourself a new MacBook — but things aren't quite as familiar as your Windows world. CNET Australia is here to help with the adjustment! We'll tackle this from the point of view of having opened your new Mac and walked through the set-up process, and you're now looking at your first desktop. After you've gone through the sign-up process, this will most likely be your first sight.
(Screenshot by Craig Simms/CBS Interactive) Make yourself more comfortable For the first-time OS X user, long-time Windows user, being presented with the OS X desktop can be a little jarring. Icons on the desktop OS X likes to hide elements of its file system — let's open it back up for the power user. We'll want to be using Finder, OS X's version of Windows Explorer. Making the switch: a Windows user's first MacBook (part 2) - Laptop & Notebook computers. In part one, we changed some OS X settings to make a Windows user more comfortable, went over touch pad gestures, window management, apps and the dock. If you've just secured a new Mac, it's best to start there!
Welcome to part two of our feature on switching to Mac. Here we'll delve into keyboard shortcuts, give you some tips on text editing, get OS X to write to NTFS volumes, cover file management, codecs and network connectivity. Keyboard shortcuts and strange symbols You'll need to find your way around your new keyboard. (Credit: Apple) By now, the fact that the Control button seems to do nothing will be highly frustrating to you. Command + C will copy, for instance, Command + V will paste and Command + X will cut. Show me a sign You'll also notice strange symbols in the menus, which represent keyboard shortcuts, but short of the Command key they don't actually appear on your keyboard. Shortcut heaven Screenshots Text editing and the Mac keyboard (Credit: Apple) But what of navigation?
Video. Making the switch: a Windows user's first MacBook (part 3) - Laptop & Notebook computers. In part one, we changed some OS X settings to make a Windows user more comfortable, went over touch-pad gestures, window management, apps and the dock. In part two, we went over keyboard shortcuts, screenshots, text editing, writing to NTFS, file management, codecs and network shares. Welcome to part three of our feature on switching to Mac. This time, if you truly miss Windows, we'll walk you through dual booting your laptop so that you can head back to the familiar blue OS. We'll be using Windows 7 — others should work, but we recommend you stick to the newest version of Microsoft's OS. Boot Camp Assistant(Credit: Apple) Heading to Boot Camp You'll need a few things before embarking on your Windows mission: If you have all of these things, carry on.
Boot Camp Assistant The application we want is called Boot Camp Assistant, and it can be found in the Utilities folder under your Applications folder. (Screenshot by Craig Simms/CBS Interactive) What's a partition? Installing Windows We're here! Making Hidden Folders In OS X. The best ways to format an external drive for Windows and Mac. If you need to expand your storage space with an external hard drive and you use both Mac and PC, you'll likely run into a few obstacles. Hard drives advertised as being compatible with Windows and Mac OS may have misled you into thinking you could actually use one hard drive for both computers. You can, but not out of the box. Most external hard drives (HD) are sold in a format called NTFS, which is designed to work with Windows. Macs read and write to a different format, called HFS+.
Another format, called FAT32 is compatible with both OS platforms. Isn't FAT32 the obvious solution? According to the list above, formatting your hard drive to FAT32 so that you can read and write on either OS seems like the obvious solution. FAT32 offers no security, unlike NTFS, which allows you to set permissions. If you've considered these issues and would still like to use FAT32, this video will guide you through the process of formatting your HD to FAT32 using a Windows or Mac PC:
Edit And Combine Movies In QuickTime Player. Want to quickly edit a movie file but can’t be bothered battling with the complexity of iMovie or Final Cut Pro? Here’s how to use QuickTime Player, included with every Mac, to trim movie files and merge movie files together. This is another series of tips from Mac Kung Fu, the new book containing over 300 tips, tricks, hints and hacks for OS X Lion. QuickTime Player is actually a cut-down version of the (not free) QuickTime Pro, but it’s pretty powerful in its own right. For example, you can edit movies within QuickTime Player, at least in a primitive way, as follows: Open the movie in QuickTime Player and click Edit->Trim.
You can trim the edges off any movie file using QuickTime Player You can also combine two or more movies into one file. When you’ve finished trimming or merging movie files, click File->Close. Related. Amaze Your Friends With Mac OS X Lion Improved Smart Folders. Smart Folders in Mac OS X Lion are finally something to talk about. In earlier versions of Mac OS X they were frankly kind of dumb, but not any more. They now act and work just like regular folders in Finder and they are incredibly fast.
That is why Apple made a Smart Folder, All My Files, the default folder when you open a new Finder window in Mac OS X Lion. All My Files - the default new window in Finder is a Smart Folder. Smart Folders work together with Spotlight to help you not only find particular files, but to also gather them into one spot (visually not physically). As a writer I work with a variety of file types: MS Word documents, JPEG images, PNG images, text files, etc. You can set up your own Smart Folders by going to the Finder File Menu and selecting New Smart Folder or by pressing Option+Command+N.
The first thing you can do is to enter something in the search box. The second thing you’ll need to do is to select the search scope: This Mac or All My Files. Related. Must-Have Apps For Any New Mac. Little Snitch is one of the most useful apps your Mac doesn't feature out of the box Got a new Mac? You’ve probably realised that OS X provides an excellent out-of-the-box experience. Unlike with Windows, few add-ons are required. There’s a great browser, for example, and full PDF support. But there’s still some tools that most experienced Mac users download the minute they boot-up a new Mac.
Here they are, listed for possibly the first time… This is another great tip from Keir Thomas, author of Mac Kung Fu, a new book containing over 300 tips, tricks, hints and hacks for OS X. Transmission: There are a variety of BitTorrent clients for OS X, but this is perhaps the most fully featured and is frequently updated with new features. VLC will play just about any media file you throw at it VLC: Your Mac’s support for video and audio files is pretty good but there’s still a handful of files that catch it out. Know of any more essentials? Related. Here Are Your Top Mac Apps Of 2011, Now Choose Your Number One [Best of 2011] As we reminisced in our previous poll, 2011 has been a monumental year for the Mac App Store.
There have been countless new releases and updates that we’ve covered on the site, and the Mac app ecosystem has reached a whole new level of excellence. We told you to choose the 10 most innovative Mac apps of this year, and your votes garnered some interesting results. Here are the 10 most innovative Mac apps of 2011. And now we need you to choose your number one. Evernote If you aren’t already using Evernote, you’re missing out on a robust, streamlined productivity tool for managing your digital life. The note-taking/to-do app is available on every platform imaginable, and the Mac app acts as the hub for collecting information and entering large amounts of data. 1Password As the ultimate password manager, 1Password on the Mac acts as your personal vault for storing sensitive information like passwords and credit card numbers. Pixelmator Think of Pixelmator as Photoshop for the rest of us. Alfred. Fix Your Spotlight Search Results By Forcing Spotlight To Re-index.
I’ve had a few friends experience a problem with their Spotlight search results after upgrading to Mac OS X Lion and at other times for other reasons. They claimed to search for items that they knew were somewhere on their computer, but Spotlight wasn’t able to find them in both cases. Here’s a down and dirty fix for Spotlight that is useful when Spotlight seems to stop providing the results you expect. It is also useful when you just want Spotlight to re-index your system. Open System Preferences.Click on Spotlight.Click the Privacy tab.Drag your Macintosh HD (startup drive) to the list.Wait a moment.Remove Macintosh HD from the list. This will force Spotlight to re-index the contents of Macintosh HD. If you prefer to not do something as drastic as this you can drag a folder and its contents to the list in place of Macintosh HD in the steps above. This will cause Spotlight to re-index only the folder and its contents.
Related David W. Email the author| Read more posts by David W. See Bigger Thumbnails Of Wallpapers.