Category: Macintosh

If you’re using OS X, and you keep clicking the time display in the right-hand corner looking for the application switcher, then this is for you.. It’s an app called X-assist that puts the application switcher back into its rightful place, and it brings ALL windows of an app to the front when you select that app, instead of just the one you chose. Nifty.

This guy knows what’s up.. Apple saw their laptop sales rise 23% in February, leaving the rest of the industry behind at an average 2.3%.. And Compaq & Toshiba actually saw their sales drop a few points. We certainly will be eagerly awaiting Apple’s earnings announcement tomorrow… One of the only guys in the media to ‘get it,’ as we say at Alternate:

…software will never rival computers as a moneymaker for Apple. At the end of the day, it’s still cool new Macs that keep the company’s ping-pong court lit. Software such as OS X is the candy that tempts users to buy new Macs.

Yer preachin’ to the choir, man.

Interested in where the MacOS GUI (and subsequently every other OS GUI on earth) came from? I’m not talking about Xerox PARC or the Mac, I’m talking about prototypes of the Lisa interface (the Lisa was a poorly-received computer with a GUI prior to the original Macintosh). Drawn out on paper. Insane. Or should I say ‘Insanely great?’ Notice the ‘Letter to Jef’ window? Would that be Jef Raskin? Ha.

OK, so Kev has been bugging me for weeks to get this up… here goes;

Mac OS X is the newest operating system from Apple, it has a *completely* different feel and interface from *all* prior version and any other OS for that matter. This has caused massive changes in the way people work and means adjustment is something we are going to *have* to become used to (short of switching to Windows; yeah fucking right). SO here are some of my humble findings and tips:



1) Visit MacOSXApps.com and download TinkerTool: use it to set up a few of the standard hacks like Trash on the desktop and make hidden apps in the dock show up transparent a la MacOS 9.

2) Download VolumeDockling or MenuStrip so that you can control volume from the dock or desktop.

Now, on to the tricks…

3) Hold Command as you drag customizable menu items in any Finder toolbar or application toolbar to quickly re-position them.



4) You can also Command-click the wide toolbar hide/show widget in the upper right corner to switch between icon and text view (in Cocoa apps at least).

5) Command-dragging into the dock stops the excess movement of the folder and trash icons.

6) Holding option as you mouseover files that have been truncated in any view will instantly bring up a tooltip-style flag with the entire filename. Very cool!

7) Holding command and option while you drag any file onto an application in the dock will force that app to open the item you are dropping. (try telling the calculator to open HTML … mmm!)


8) Set up a large horizontal window in column view with maybe 3 or 4 columns in it, and click the Computer icon in that window’s toolbar. Close the window, and click on the Finder icon in the dock.. This will give you a wonderful starting point. Notice it is in the same place? This is very handy as it becomes the only window you need in column view and you can treat all your other windows like MacOS 9 windows by removing the toolbar from it (click the widened widget in the top-right) and using icon or list view.


9) I’m getting tired, I’ll keep at this.. and edit it later.

I just quickly figured out how to move your MacOS 9 Internet Explorer 5 favorites into your MacOS X IE 5.1 favorites.

Copy the file ‘favorites.html’ from OS9 Drive/System Folder/Preferences/Explorer/
to
OS X Drive/Users/(Your username)/Library/Preferences/Explorer/

It makes sense, when you think about it.

Does this site look as bad to you as it does on my three machines?

Here’s a rare interview with Steve Jobs. Not a Mac person? Read it, and see why we love Apple’s products as much as its CEO.

SO, I sent a polite email request to an address posted at MacNN.com that was meant to send my support for the MacOS X versions of drivers for the lucent/orinoco wireless ethernet cards. You see, my girlfriend and I are in need of these drivers in our *total* conversion to MacOS X…. so anyway here is the shitty canned reply that was sent back to me;

—- ,

Thank you for your comments.
They are being forwarded to Product Management.

“Our current position is that we do not intend to support Apple MacOS-X at
this time.



The reasons for this decision are as follows:



1. Apple computers, both mobile and desktops, are equipped with non-standard
built-in Airport slots and antennas since late 1999. Apple’s intention with
this approach is to have customers with an Airport-equipped Mac to choose
Airport Cards as their preferred WLAN client products.



2. We have full confidence that Apple will continue to support Airport under
MacOS-X on Airport G4s, iMacs, iBooks and Powerbooks. This allows Macs to
be fully respected clients on Orinoco WLANs.



In addition to that we will continue our support for the older MacOSes on
the Apple platform. (MacOS 7.5.5, 8.x, 9.x). ”

So, as you can see it was time to unleash some corporate ass kicking — yeah, well, maybe not, but at least I’m trying :-)…


DEAR MR. MARKETING DEPT.,

By the way, just to be (more of) an asshole I mailed it in ALL COPS AND BOLD and included a link to www.alternate.org.

🙂