Tag Archives: apple

My Favorite OSX Software

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My first computer was the black pismo laptop, with the removable and interswappable batteries and CD-RW drives, it actually looks remarkably similar to my current MacBook. Soon I was using AOL to connect to the internet through our home phone and downloading scenarios and mods for my then favorite computer game, Command & Conquer. Over the years I have seen software evolve, many trends emerge, and ideas radically change the way software was not only used, but created as well. Anyways, what you’ve all been waiting for, my favorite OSX software!

Billings

The best looking invoicing solution I have ever witnessed. This app is full featured and works very well for a freelance contract worker. It supports multiple currencies, tax rates, gas milage, invoicing, statements, time tracking, and more. If you want to keep records of your billing with a breathtaking UI and workflow, it’s hard to beat Billings.

FileMaker Pro

My mom would be happy to know that I am including FileMaker Pro. She developed software using FileMaker for many years and introduced me into the world of programming and database design. FileMaker is a solid foundation for any type of business software you could imagine.

Sequel Pro

I used to use phpmyadmin, until I discovered Sequel Pro. Now I view my MySQL databases in a native cocoa app that is very thoughtfully designed and full featured. If your a web designer or developer I would not wait any longer, and just download it. You will thank me I am sure. Oh you really want to thank me? How about following me on twitter and finding something you really can’t resist retweeting.

TextMate

My favorite text editor for many years, even though I switched to Sublime Text 2, I recently reverted back to TextMate. The clean UI, lightning fast performance, and the huge array of helpers and tools called Bundles, it’s hard to beat. And ST2 has an ugly icon, and I can’t have an ugly icon in my dock.

Terminal

The only app included in my list that is a preinstalled app, the Terminal is the window into the system that powers your computer. It is based on unix and your terminal is by default a bash shell, so any commands that work on *nix bash should probably maybe work on your mac. It took me a long time to start using command line for common tasks, but now that I do it is a huge timesaver. Take for instance the common task of navigating to a specific file. Instead of 5 clicks and the time spent waiting for the UI to render, I type open /where/I/want/to/go and I’m there. It’s also the place where I can run…

GIT

If your not using version control or backing your stuff up, your not a professional. While using version control is not essential to building software, it definitely can save you and your teammates a lot of time and hassle and more importantly save you from a serious loss of data. Using GIT alone is not enough however, you need to backup your repo’s remotely, and I recommend BeanstalkApp for just that.

5 widely unknown Mac OS X features.

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Not My DeskI love Apple computers, they are in my opinion the best quality materials with the best Operating System. Based on unix, Mac OSX has tons of features, is very secure, and is intuitive and easy to use. But their are so many options and configurations it is easy to get lost or simple overlook some pretty cool features. I will keep adding more to this list so feel free to bookmark it or add it to your favorite social site using the Sharing link above.

  1. Make your mouse scrolling wheel slower

    2. Sometimes while reading a large article on a website you use your mouse scroll wheel which goes way past your spot and you have to search to get back to the place you left off. It is a pain and can ruin your concentration and train of thought. Some mice come with software to adjust the tracking and scrolling speed, but usually they only run on Windoze!

    Well, Apple thought of that and if you hold command (apple) while scrolling the page will go much slower than the default speed.

  2. Zoom into anything

    3. Apple has a really cool feature which allows you to zoom into anything with just a few keystrokes. It is a great way to get full screen video on sources that don’t allow it (I am looking at you, Quicktime Non-Pro).

    Simultaneously press Command (Apple) + Option (Alt) + 8 to toggle zooming on and off; Then to zoom in use Command (Apple) and Option (Alt) and = (the equal and + sign) to zoom out use Command (Apple) and Option (Alt) and - (the minus and hyphen sign)

  3. Make your mac a web server

    4. This was one of my favorite things before I had purchased hosting. This allows you to use all the power of the Apache Web Server to host html, css, and images to others through the internet. Install MAMP for PHP and MySQL and you have a functional development server.

    Go to System Preferences and Choose Sharing. Then turn on Personal Web Sharing.

  4. Quickly find files

    5. What used to be Command + F (Find), then Sherlock, has turned into spotlight. Spotlight is great at finding stuff (if you have a powerful computer if not, turn it off since it is a memory hog. But what if I don’t want to search through every folder or scroll all the way to the top right?

    Go to System Preferences and Choose Spotlight. From there you can choose which folders spotlight will search through by default. You can also create your own keystroke commands to highlight the Spotlight search field or bring up a Search box. They default as Command and Space or Command and Option and Space, accordingly.

  5. Make animations slow motion

    6. This is not so much as useful as it is cool, but is definitely one of my favorite features and sure to impress people who do not own a mac. You can see this in action in a movie with all the cool effects.

    Hold shift while minimizing windows, collapsing or expanding a stack from the dock, or anything else that is animated in OSX. Leave comments if you find any cool ones I may have overlooked.

Blip.tv is awesome

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I really like watching video’s online. I just wanted to give a shoutout to Blip.tv for allowing video-bloggers or people who want to start their own show a wonderful outlet to do so. Blip.tv is in beta right now but it works great and has been out for awhile.

Blip.tv allows users to create their own shows with their own “channel” and upload as many shows as they want. It is super easy to use and almost anyone could figure out how to create their own show. Their are thousands of great shows on blip.tv. The thing that I personally like about blip is the varied content. Some shows are about drawing and some about web culture. I am sure their are gardening shows on blip! Their are some huge reasons why blip.tv is better than YouTube, and other video hosting sites or having your own video site. With blip.tv almost every feature you could ask for is available and it is free.

The really cool features:

  • Choose which format to play the video in, I always choose quicktime since it plays so much smoother than flash flv.
  • Allows you to choose your shows copyright license
  • Stats for your own shows
  • Commenting system built in
  • Download videos
  • Auto post your videos to social media accounts or blog
  • Optional advertising on your videos with profit-share

I think the only thing I dislike about blip is the favicon. The one on the left is the current favicon and the one I made is on the right. Which do you like more?
Blip.tv should change their favicon

If you would like to create your own show I really suggest watching this episode from Epic FU. It covers everything from lighting to special fx. Epic FU is also my favorite show on blip!

I have an show I just started a few days ago. Currently it only has a small video of a really cool apple OSX feature that does slow motion. If your using OSX hold shift while minimizing windows, its awesome. You can find my show here.

Apple Safari 4 Beta Review – Hacks, Tips, Mods & More

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First off, this was an awesome upgrade from firefox on my mac. Safari 4 public beta is about as revolutionary as when apple first introduced Safari in 2003. As you can see from the official website’s feature page their are over 150+ new features! Most of them are performance or usability tweaks so I’ll only talk about the coolest ones.

One of the coolest is the new top pages feature. It is a lot like Opera & Chrome’s first page. It finds your most visited sites and displays them when you open a new tab. You can “stick” them as well or block pages you don’t want displayed. This is great for people like me who are opening the same pages up over an over again.

My other favorite thing is the coverflow for history and bookmarking. It allows you to visually see the pages so you can find what your looking for out of your history. It makes looking for that page you were on an hour ago a breeze. No more looking through line after line of description tags!

The address bar has been transformed into being more helpful than ever with different categories sectioned off, you can see recent pages you’ve visited, bookmarks, google search all by typing a few letters.

They also started to use a sensible text zoom much like how Firefox does it, increasing the whole page not just the text! This is key to keeping website layouts from breaking and is going to be accepted really well by web designers!

Safari upgraded to the newest version of webkit which supports CSS3 and HTML 5, which are going to be the new standards in my opinion. It passed the ACID2 & ACID3 test with no errors, wow! It has built in RSS, amazing bookmark functionality, auto-fill, developer features.

Safari 4 has a built in developers toolbar you can enable from the preferences. For firebug users like me it has an alternative called Web Inspector. Also their is an option to disable cache on certain pages which will be nice when I am working on a live website.

Now for the fun stuff, these are some command line hacks you can do to Safari 4 Beta to make it more your style. These are all done using the Terminal (Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal) in OSX, not sure if this is even possible on a PC.

To put tabs on back on the bottom:

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4TabBarIsOnTop -bool NO

To make links open in a new tab instead of a new window:

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true

To go back to the old toolbar (refresh, blue loading bar, graphite):

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeToolbarRedesign -bool NO

To turn off coverflow in bookmarks & history: (I wouldn’t)

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeFlowViewInBookmarksView -bool NO

To turn off topsites in new windows & tabs: (Again, I wouldn’t)

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeTopSites -bool NO

Turn off the dimming of topsites switch to a website with a current one: (…..)

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4TopSitesZoomToPageAnimationDimsSnapshot -bool NO

If you want an easier way to change the settings here it is:

Go to your Applications folder, right-click Safari app and click “Show package content”. Go to Contents -> Resources -> English.lproj and replace MainMenu.nib with the same file from this archive. That will modify your Safari menu to show new options.

Restart Safari and you should see a new menu “Safari > Tweaks”

Safari 4 Hidden menu tweaks

Safari 4 Web Inspector - Firebug alternative

safari-topsites

safari-topsites

10 OS X Terminal Commands

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I was trying to flush my DNS cache on my apple since my host rerouted the IP address and found this page in the process: ten-os-x-command-line-utilities-you-might-not-know.

My favorite ones on the list are definately TOP & screencapture, however I never knew about lipo or say.  Screencapture is definately useful for taking screenshots of my websites to email to clients.

Source:

Go to OSX Daily Website

Go to OSX Daily Website