Apple Tidbits

Putting your Mac’s screen to sleep

andrew — Fri, 22 May 2009 01:15:58 +0000

Instead of waiting for your Mac’s display to sleep as set in the energy saver system preference you can instantly tell your Mac to turn it off.

Press shift + control + eject and the display will sleep without the computer entering sleep mode.

Mounting disk images on the CLI

andrew — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 05:40:17 +0000

Simply use:

hdiutil attach /path/to/image.dmg

Change attach to detach when finished with the image.

23 Nov 2008: New iPod’s added

andrew — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 05:00:12 +0000

The complete refresh of the iPod range (Shuffle, Nano, Touch and Classic) was added to the iPod specification database including the iPhone 3G.

Eject tray from the terminal

andrew — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 21:39:24 +0000

Simple:

drutil tray open

Try close, or for fun make a script to do:

drutil tray open
sleep 1
drutil tray close

Stop offering to go back in time

andrew — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:45:18 +0000

Ever get sick of those pesky offers of enabling Mac OS X 10.5’s time machine feature on removable disks? Type the following command into a terminal window and you will only be kept in the present.

defaults write com.apple.TimeMachine DoNotOfferNewDisksForBackup -bool YES

Use NO to turn offers back on.

Really really big icons

andrew — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 12:42:30 +0000

Ever think that one of the Mac OS X icons is just really cool and could look good in a document? A whole bunch of icons both old school and new are stored in the CoreTypes.bundle that lives inside /System/Library/CoreServices/. Simply right click and select show package contents to navigate to the resources folder where you can copy any of the vast array of icons available.

Taking screenshots in Mac OS X

andrew — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 00:38:12 +0000

Built right into Mac OS X is the ability to take screenshots. The feature is accessed by simple key commands to take a picture of exactly what was displayed on your screen.

The most basic key command is command + shift + 3. A file will be saved on your desktop generally called Picture 1, Picture 2. To take a screenshot of a select area of the screen, press 4 instead of 3. A lesser known key command to take a screenshot of a specific item - a window, icon, the dock, the menu bar - can be performed by pressing space bar immediately after command + shift + 4. The cursor will change from the cross hair for selecting an area, to a camera and the outline of the object the command will capture.

All of the aforementioned commands will create a file on your desktop. To copy the screenshot directly to the clipboard hold down control while performing the key commands.

Included is a list of the key commands and their function:

command + shift + 3 - take a screenshot of the entire screen and save it to the desktop;
command + shift + control + 3 - take screenshot a picture of the entire screen to the clipboard;
command + shift + 4 - take a screenshot of a selection and save it to the desktop;
command + shift + control + 4 - take a screenshot of a selection to the clipboard;
command + shift + 4 and then press space - take a screenshot of an object and save it to the desktop
command+ shift + control + 4 and then press space - take a screenshot of an object to the clipboard.

macbillboard.com

andrew — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:38:35 +0000

Macbillboard.com is a unique Apple fan site where users can submit and view photos that have been snapped of Apple billboards across the world. Billboards are a form of advertisement that surprisingly go undocumented in Apple fandom yet are an important part of Apple’s advertising and branding strategies.

I was particularly fond of a first generation iPod nano billboard that shows a whole lot of album art being squeezed into the tiny iPod.

Take some time to pop over to this great website to look at the variety of billboards or even better, if you have a photo, submit it!

Screensaver hot corners

andrew — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 07:51:54 +0000

Have you ever stepped away from your computer and wished you could lock it so that only you can use it again? The built-in hot corners feature in the screen saver system preference allows you to set a hot corner that activates a password protected screen saver.

Moving the cursor to the start screen saver corner instantly launches the screen saver effectively ensuring no one can access your computer but you.

To enable password protection on the screen saver make sure require password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver is enabled in the security system preference.

Spotlight forgotten? Use it as an Application launcher

andrew — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 06:25:16 +0000

A major advancement of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger was the rapid search feature dubbed Spotlight. Once upon a time it was seen as the ultimate way to access files without browsing through folders and folders but a few years on are you actually using it like this? If you really don’t use Spotlight all that often why not turn it into an application launcher?

Hitting command+space brings up the search box where you can start to type the application’s name and hit enter when you’re happy with the result. iUseApple.com even suggests enhancing Spotlight’s results to display only applications by configuring it via System Preferences.