If you haven’t already heard, Apple just announced on their Q3 2011 Earnings call that Mac OS X Lion will definitely be landing tomorrow. Upgrading to a shiny new OS is exciting as you get to play with new stuff, everything feels snappier and all the eye candy makes you drool. But the upgrade story doesn’t always have a happy ending. Sometimes, there are hiccups in the process and your computer might become slow after the upgrade or your favorite apps might not work. It’s like going on an adventure trip only to come back bruised screaming in pain. Alright, that was a bit exaggerated but here is a quick checklist of stuff to do before switching to Lion so that your Lion upgrade goes as smoothly as possible.

Cleanup

AppZapper

I am pretty sure everyone’s Applications folder is filled up with hundreds of apps that have been downloaded over the years. Some of the apps you like and start using while others just lie there occupying valuable disk space. This is where AppZapper comes in handy. Manually dragging an app to Trash deletes the app, but the support files still remain on the system. AppZapper takes care of that.  It sucks the life out of useless apps, leaving no trace of it on your system. Another feature of AppZapper called Hit List lets you organize apps by size and how frequently you have used them, so use AppZapper to delete the apps you really don’t need, hence freeing up your hard disk.

DaisyDisk

DaisyDisk is one of my favorite Mac apps. It looks beautiful and works really great. DaisyDisk will scan your hard disks and present the content as an interactive chart. DaisyDisk makes it extremely easy to find out where you have been wasting your disk space. DaisyDisk even includes hidden files in the scans, so you may come across those too and delete them if they are unnecessary. Also a quick look into your Downloads folder might help free up few gigabytes as lot of junk files accumulate there if you don’t make an effort to organize the files regularly.

Update

System Update

Check if all updates Apple has released have been installed before the OS upgrade. Some of the updates Apple releases are critical and may be necessary for Lion update, so it’s recommended that you follow these steps. For most basic users, here is how updating works. Click on the Apple icon in the left corner of the menu bar and then click on ‘Software Update’. The system will then check with Apple servers for the latest updates and download them. You will be asked to install updates and restart the computer if necessary once they are downloaded.

Application Update

You certainly don’t want to end up on Lion only to find out your favorite mail or calendar apps don’t work, leaving you in the lurch. With the introduction of Mac App Store, updating applications downloaded from the store has become a piece of cake. Fire up Mac App Store and hit the Updates tab and see to it all apps are up to date. Now, there will be apps that you’d gotten from individual developer sites and they require manual update. Open every such app and manually check for updates. This is a painful process but is extremely essential to make your upgrade trouble-free.

Backup

Time Machine

There is never a bad time to do a backup and there isn’t a better one just before an OS upgrade. There is a slim chance that something may go really wrong during your upgrade and you may have to go back to your old system, hence backing up your system is extremely necessary. Apple has made system backups extremely easy for users. Just plug in your external HDD and open the Time Machine app from your applications. Time Machine will automatically back up everything to your external hard disk. You can leave out non-essential folders if you are running low on external hard drive space. And just in case anything goes wrong, you can boot from your Time Machine backup by holding down the Option key during startup.

SuperDuper

For those who want to take extra precaution, we recommend that you use SuperDuper. SuperDuper will basically clone your hard disk as it is to an external hard disk. The SuperDuper backup is also fully bootable. While Time Machine is part of Snow Leopard, SuperDuper is a third-party app that costs money but is totally worth it, if something goes horribly wrong during the upgrade.

Compatibility

Developers work really hard to make sure that the apps you use on your current operating system will work flawlessly on the upgrade too, but sometimes there are problems, and the app might need some time to work peoperly on the new operating system. If you use an application that is extremely important to you or if it is part of your job , you should check the app’s compatibility with Lion before pressing the upgrade button. The guys over at RoaringApps have done an excellent job of compiling a list of all the apps and their status on Lion. Alternatively, you can visit developer websites or their twitter feeds to check the status of compatibility.

System

Sometimes there is a chance that apps might not work properly or your system may slow down if there are permission errors. Taking care of these errors before upgrading is always a good thing to do. You can repair disk permissions using Apple’s own Disk Utility application. The Disk Utility app is located in the Utilities folder inside Applications. Open the app and select your startup disk from the list on the left. Click on the first aid tab and then click Repair Disk Permissions.

The Lion upgrade is going to be delivered via Mac App Store, so there is no standing in line at the Apple Store this time. If you follow the above-mentioned advice, you’ll make sure Lion upgrade process is super smooth. If you still hit a snag or have any questions, just call us out @smokingapples and we’ll try our best to help you. And when the Lion update finally releases, connect your Mac to a stable internet connection, pour yourself a glass of your favorite drink, sit back and enjoy.

Almost everything can be done with the Terminal. At least that’s what the experts tell you. We find glorious “Terminal Hacks” which unlock some special features of the Mac. While for most part it’s fine not knowing, it wouldn’t hurt to know what exactly is going on behind those lines. Here’s a short crash course in using the Terminal, from a total newbie at that. Though I did do my homework, my less than exceptional knowledge of the Terminal might produce some errors in this guide. I have tried all the commands myself, so I don’t suppose anything should happen to your system, but do always backup before messing around with your system. Always.

Where’s the Terminal?

Use Spotlight to launch it, or you’ll find it in the Applications/Utilities folder.

Navigating the Terminal

The Terminal will generally launch with your home directory selected. To navigate down a folder, enter “cd foldername”. To navigate up to the containing folder, enter “cd ..”.

You can even directly navigate to a specific folder. Enter something like “cd users/myhomefolder/documents”. “cd ~” takes you back to the Home folder. The tilde key (~) stands for home folder. You can enter “cd ~/music” to go into the music folder within your home folder. If you just want to get the job done, Cmd+C any folder in Finder, and Terminal will paste in its path.

To know that you’re in the correct directory, hit “ls” to bring up a list of file names. I’m guessing ls stands for list. While you’re writing out commands, you might want to navigate that line itself. ^a to get to the start of the line, ^e to the end. Option+Click on any part of the line to move your cursor there. ^w (Ctrl+W) to backspace on any word, while ^u will clear out the entire line prior to the cursor. ^k is the inverse of ^u.

One important command: ^r will allow you to cycle through your history of commands. So if you can’t remember which command it was that enabled some setting (and you want to disable it now), this is a good way to go back in time. You can also type in history to get a list of your past commands.

Sudo

Very often one comes across this command ‘sudo’, which is generally appended at the start of a string. ‘sudo’ stands for ‘super user do’. The sudo command provides logging for individual commands run and some cases it has completely supplanted the root logon for administrative tasks. That is, it runs the command as root user, which is useful if the system isn’t allowing you to perform some tasks such as deleting, etc. To get into root mode, type in “sudo -s”. To test whether you’re in root mode, type in whoami (follow by a return, of course). To get out of root mode, type in exit.

Creating Symbolic links

Symbolic links allow you to create aliases that behave like normal files and folders. Which means you can have a symbolic link to a folder in your projects folder, that’s also present in your dropbox folder. Dropbox will think that symbolic link is a real folder, and sync the data up into its cloud, not realising that the files are in a totally different location. In this example, we’re going to create a symbolic link to Things’ database:

ln -s ~/Li- brary/Application\ Support/Cul- tured\ Code ~/Dropbox/Library/ Cultured\ Code

ln stands for link name, and -s stands for creating a symbolic link. The reason for those reverse slashes, is because there’s a space in the names of those folders. There are so many use cases for symbolic links, so be creative.

Nano: The Terminal text editor

If you’re feeling extra geeky, you can bring out the Terminal text editor to create new text documents or edit existing plaintext files — all in monospaced font and UI straight out of the 80s. Simply type:

nano “my filename.txt”

If it finds a matching filename in the current directory, it will open it. If not, it’ll create it for you. Navigating inside of the text editor is solely via the keyboard, where the bottom row shows you the available commands. It’s fun.

Splitting large files using the Terminal

It’s always bad timing, where you have to copy that large file over, but your flash drive is still in FAT32 format, or your email service doesn’t allow large files, or .

After navigating to the folder your file resides in, enter “split -b 10m filename.dmg part_”. Here ‘split’ is self explanatory; tells the computer to split the file. “-b 9m” stands for the file size. In place of 9 you enter whatever size in MB you want the file to split into. Replace m with k for kilobytes. Then comes the filename itself, and lastly “part_” is an appendage to the split files.

To join the files, “cat part_a[a-g]>filename.dmg”. I assume ‘cat’ stands for the house cat, which then specifies which files you need to rejoin. “[a-g]” is the last letter of the files that the previous step spits out.

Useful Terminal Commands

Every software release from Apple brings out some new terminal commands. I don’t know how they find these commands, but they always make their way into the Apple community. They’re usually just boolean commands, meaning you have a string of text with a YES or NO at the end. Either way enables or disables the feature.

Enable path bar.

If you want your Finder window titlebar to always show the directory structure, you can enable it using a single command:

defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YES

QuickTime X

With QuickTime X we lost all power over its preferences. Thankfully there are still some settings in the player; they’re just not accessible via a GUI.

Always hide titlebar:

defaults write com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX MGCinematicWindowDebugForceNoTitlebar 1

Unfortunately, this means you can’t close the movie window or minimise it.

Keep fullscreen while App Switching:
If you Cmd+Tab or somehow interact with another app while QuickTime X is playing something, it’ll automatically exit fullscreen mode. This command ensures your fullscreen stays intact.

defaults write com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX MGFullScreenExitOnAppSwitch 0

Autoplay movies:
If you’re tired of hitting the play button every time you launch a movie, this command will do the obvious.

defaults write com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX MGPlayMovieOnOpen 1

There are more commands for QuickTime X, if you feel the need.

List view stacks

If you’re not already using this feature, you’re missing out. Instead of the showy stacks or the extra large grid, you can have the best of both words, in a slick list-stack. Once you’ve enabled it, hit the + or – buttons on your keyboard to increase or decrease the icon sizes.

defaults write com.apple.dock use-new-list-stack -bool YES

Global text substitutions

If you want to enable all the text substitution features for every app that supports it, just blindly copy paste it in. On the other hand, if you want just one of the features enabled, read through the command and remove all that you don’t need. You don’t need this command really, since you can very well manually enable text substitution on a per app basis.

defaults write -g WebAutomaticTextReplacementEnabled -bool truedefaults write -g WebAutomaticDashSubstitutionEnabled -bool truedefaults write -g WebContinuousSpellCheckingEnabled -bool true

Dock tricks

The Dock responds well to terminal commands. You can move your Dock to the left or right by entering:

defaults write com.apple.dock pinning -string start

Replace start with end if you want it on the right. Replace with ” ” to restore position. You need to run a killall Dock for any of the settings to take action.

There’s also a command to make hidden application icons show translucent:

defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -bool YES

You can also add a free moving spacer to your dock icons by entering the command from this txt file.

And finally, to get the 2D dock:

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES

Hide desktop icons

This one I’ve found really useful. With just one command all my desktop icons are always hidden from view.

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false

That’s it for now

We’ll continue posting cool terminal commands as and when they surface, but till then this list should do. There are a lot more commands, but most of them are for nerds (more so than you and me), or things that make your Mac look ugly. If you have any killer commands, shoot them into the comments and we could even add them into the article.

One of the things that immediately identifies a person who puts effort into their work, is if they write with proper punctuation, like “smart quotes” or “curly quotes” instead of "inch marks". Most word processors have got smart quotes figured out, and even most blogging platforms support plugins [1. We’re using by John Gruber.] that will automatically replace your inch marks with smart quotes — the lazy way out, but it works. But a lot of platforms aren’t curly quote friendly, so it’s the OS’s job to make it so.

The Mac has recently become curly quote aware, though it’s not turned on by default (and doesn’t work in all apps). Go to Edit » Substitutions, and turn on Smart Quotes. This works in Mail, TextEdit, Safari, and some other core apps. It doesn’t work in Notational Velocity, which is a bummer. I found out about this trick on MacOSXHints that enables text substitutions for even more Cocoa applications, though still no luck for Notational Velocity [2. If someone has figured out how to use TextExpander or something else to automatically produce curly quotes in NV, do enlighten us.]. To type a curly quote on the Mac, it’s Option + [ for the opening double quote, and Option + Shift + [ for the closing double quote (“”). Replace with ] for a single curly quote.

iOS has been stubborn in this regard. Let me first stay that I’m thankful that it does include the ability to key in curly quotes, but then why not have the OS automatically implement them? It’s been done for ages on computing platforms, so why not this modern OS? Even its auto-correct will replace ‘whats’ with ‘what's’, instead of using a smart one. This problem is very apparent on the high pixel density display on the iPhone 4 (ever since I laid my eyes on that screen, I’ve been careful about my quote marks).

What’s even more frustrating is that the iPad’s smart quotes are completely fucked up. With single curly quotes, the opening and closing quotes are in logical order. But with double quotes, they’re on opposite sides (which is why I took that picture above). A lot of fanboys will be quick to point out some clever little things that Apple has done, calling out their ‘attention to detail’. But they’re very selective when it comes to choosing them; huge oversights like this one have been floating around for months, unnoticed. Perhaps they’re waiting to feature-pad their next OS release. /End pointless rant.

While I’m at it, I thought why not dispel some knowledge about writing other kinds of commonly misused punctuation. There’s a difference between a hyphen (-), and an em-dash (—). You use hyphens to join to words, but em-dashes are used — it’s got quite a few use cases, really — to create that break from a sentence, like I just demonstrated. Snow Leopard will automatically convert double hyphens -- into an em-dash if it’s in a supported application. To manually type an em-dash, it’s Option + Shift + – (minus). And while we’re at it, an en-dash (half the width of an em-dash) can be keyed in with Option + – (minus). You use an en-dash to specify a range, such as Monday – Thursday or 100 – 200. If you’re not familiar with the concepts, I highly recommend you Bing them; I admit I myself haven’t yet figured it all out.

Another common character that’s often misused, especially on sites like facebook, is the ellipsis or the three dots. It signifies an incomplete thought, and is a character by itself, not three full-stops. You type it by hitting Option + ; on your Mac. Now, if only we could get this message across to the facebook people …

I’ll now rattle off a few more off the top of my head. To type in a bullet •, it’s Option+8. To type in the degree° symbol, it’s Option+Shift+8. To get über, hit Option + u and then u again (or another supported character). To get an accent over the é, type Option + e, and then the e (or a supported character). Option + g produces a ©, Option + r produces a ®, and Option + 2 for ™. And lastly, you can command your Mac to produce an  with an Option + Shift + k.

For even more characters, see this little guide on how to find them yourself. If you want to quickly type shortcuts the pretty way (e.g., ⌘ + ⌥ + K), check out this pretty shortcut generator. If you’re on iOS, just tap and hold keys to spring out any available special characters. For the special-special characters on iOS, you can check out Unicode or Glyphboard.

Hope that helps. Oh, and sharing is caring.

[tweetmeme]The other day I saw a new article on a Mac blog titled ‘Mac menubar explained’. I wanted to link to it, but apart from the title there wasn’t much in that article worth mentioning. But the menubar does need to be explained to new users. It’s one of the most confusing UI changes when you switch over from a PC. Because it’s just as similar as it is different from the toolbar. This article is beginners only—very basic—so if you’re the type who yawns while reading kiddy articles, I’d recommend you skip past this one.

Where does the menubar begin? 1983. With Lisa. It was then incorporated into the Macintosh, and has been part of the system, performing various different functions along the way. I’ve never used the previous Mac menubars (except for a brief experience with OS 9), so I’ve grown to know and love the menubar of today—the one on Mac OS X. Mac users, new and old, are quite used to how it works. The menubar is a stretch of UI that’s non-dynamic in its approach, providing a familiar way to interact with practically any well written Mac application. Its ever presence makes it practically invisible, almost part of the hardware. In fact, Apple has adapted the menubar to suit the tones of their current generation hardware. There are however some tricks you might not be familiar with, which is where this guide comes in.

How hideous that Apple logo looks at the center of the menubar; Mac OS X public beta.

The menubar can be divided into four aspects. The Apple menu; the application menus; the menubar applications; and system functions. Let’s start with the most static of all items, the Apple menu.

Denoted with its characteristic  logo, it pretty much defines the Mac desktop.

The Apple menu has been a feature in Apple’s Mac OS since its inception. It is the first item on the left hand side of the menu bar. The Apple menu’s role has changed throughout the release history of Mac OS, but the menu has always featured a version of the Apple logo. In System 6.0.8 and earlier, the Apple menu featured a Control Panel manager, as well as Desk Accessories such as a Calculator, the Scrapbook and Alarm Clock. If MultiFinder (an early implementation of computer multitasking) was active, the Apple menu also allowed the user to switch between multiple running applications. Mac OS X features a completely redesigned Apple menu. System management functions from the Special menu have been merged into it. The Apple menu was missing entirely from the Mac OS X Public Beta, replaced by a nonfunctional Apple logo in the center of the menu bar, but the menu was restored in Mac OS X 10.0 due to negative user feedback. – Wikipedia

The Apple menu is so crucial to the Mac look and feel, that Mac skins for Windows most definitely changed the start button to the Apple logo. But the Apple menu is vastly different from the Start menu. It deals with functions related to the full system, and has almost nothing to do with third party applications, or any other customisations you may have applied. Sleep, Restart…, Shutdown…, and Log Out adorn the bottom of the screen. Notice how some items have an ellipsis (…) tailing it. This is menubar language for “has a dialog before an action is taken”. If you hit Sleep, the Mac will shut down without warning. Restart on the other hand will ask you if you’re sure. If you don’t want a dialog, hold down the Option key with the menu visible. Notice how the dots disappear.

Next, come the application menus. These are basically toolbar items, but instead of residing in every window of the application, they adjust dynamically to the application/window selected. You knew this already. There are some things that generally stay static though. The Application menu, the one with the name of the app, generally holds the Preferences, Check for Updates, and the Services menu. Services are great, you can read about them here. The other important menu here, is Help. Since Leopard, help has been integrated into the application menus. Not only can you search for help articles from the documentation, you can also locate items from the menu. So if you can’t find where the Levels setting is in Pixelmator, just search for it in the Help menu. This can also be used to keyboardize your workflow. Just hit the shortcut Command + Shift + / and type in the name of the command. Select, and hit return. You can also select the menubar with the Ctrl+F2 shortcut, but I wouldn’t suggest using that. And that’s because…

The Application menus are completely keyboard friendly. While most application will ship with standard shortcuts, you might want to change some shortcuts or even add new ones. So if you want to assign a shortcut to the “Adjust Size…” item in Preview.app, just go to your System Preferences (from the  menu) » Keyboard » Keyboard shortcuts, and add a new shortcut. Enter the exact name from the menu (including the ellipsis), specify the app as Preview, and without even a restart your new shortcut is active.

Moving on, Menubar apps. These are apps that don’t want to run in the Dock, sometimes for stupid reasons, but mostly because they show you some additional information that wouldn’t be possible from the dock. There’s not much I can say about these apps, other than recommend you a few important that would appeal to everyone.

Tune Instructor: Get iTunes controls and much more in your menubar, for free.

I Love Stars. If you like to have your iTunes tracks to have stars, this is the tool to have. I Love Stars makes it superbly easy to rate the currently playing song, but most importantly, will flash a reminder when an unrated song starts playing.

Caffeine. Ever have your display go dim while playing a video in the browser? Caffeine puts an icon in your menubar, which when toggled, will keep your display on no matter what your system settings. It comes in handy in way more situations than that YouTube scenario I described.

iStat Menus: Have all your system stats like processes, CPU cycles, uptime, right in your menubar. Slick, too.

Notify: If you’re a Gmail user and need to be notified of new email, nothing beats this slick floater, with support for multiple accounts, and if you go Pro, even reply to mail.

HyperSpaces: Adds the ability to customise your Spaces like never before. Each space can get a separate wallpaper, a floating name, and a lot more. A great tool for just $13.

Droplr: Merely drag images, urls, text, and more into its menu icon, and it automatically uploads it to its own web server, and copies a shorturl to your clipboard. Brilliant functionality, for free.

Clipmenu: A clipboard organiser right in your menubar. With support for multiple clipboard types and history, its easy access might just win you over. It’s also free.

BashFlash: If you’re running Snow Leopard on a 64-bit system, here’s an effective way to kill Flash whenever it behaves badly.

Ejector: Sure you can drag the disk image from your desktop into the trash eject button, and it’s fun when you’re starting off, but for super fast ‘pro’ workflow, you can’t go wrong with Ejector. You’ve got to have it.

Right alongside menubar apps, to the extreme right, are the system functions, also known as Menubar Extras. Time Machine, Bluetooth, Wifi, Time, and Spotlight are the usual suspects. You can add more items by looking find them in your Macintosh HD » System » Library » CoreServices » Menu Extras folder. Just drag things from here onto the right side of your menubar, and they should slide in. If you need to rearrange or remove system functions, hold down the Command key and drag them around or out of the menubar.

One of the features you can’t access from the Menu Extras folder, is the lock screen function. For that, you need to open up Keychain Access from your Applications » Utilities folder, jump into its preferences (Cmd+comma), and check mark ‘show status in menubar’.

That’s it. I don’t think there’s anything more I can think of. I hope it was in the least bit useful.

[tweetmeme] The core difference in workflow when switching from Windows to the Mac, is the file manager. It’s called Windows Explorer on Windows, and Finder on the Mac. The Finder does things a little differently from what one is used to on a PC, even though on the surface it’s all just files and folders. I asked a bunch of new Mac users what kind of problems they had with adjusting (along with some searches on Forums), and here’s my view on how best to deal with it. I don’t mean to portray myself as an expert on UNIX and file systems, this is just the way I see things. Experts, feel free to correct me.

Organisational Structure

Starting at the top, there is no C drive to deal with. The Mac mounts logical partitions with their names, right on your desktop. The C drive equivalent here, is the startup disk. Owing to the non existence of a boot table, the Mac can pretty much boot into any logical partition as long as it’s bootable and has an OS loaded. Back to the Finder, ‘Devices’ are shown in a single column right at the top. It will show any hard drive partitions, flash drives, disk images, and network servers. There is a way to get right to the top of the directory structure however—the “My Computer” equivalent—and that’s to hit Cmd+Up right till you hit the “YourName’s Mac” with all your drives listed in the main Finder window. Drag that icon into your Devices, and you can have ready access to every disk, thereby being able to delete any aliases in your sidebar you don’t usually require.

So that’s how partitions are organised at the top level. But what about directory structure? Our family PC is a mess of things. There are a bunch of logical partitions, each of which have folders ‘organised’ for different types of data. This requires the need for having to display huge directory trees, sprawling over even an HD display like maggots. I got a little carried away there, I know. I’ve seen many a switcher store files in the Macintosh HD—their pleas for multiple partitions unanswered by Disk Utility. And that’s the wrong way to go about things. You want to store your files, in your user folder and nowhere else (unless you know what you’re doing). Your user folder is located in your MacHD » Users » YourHomeFolder folder. The Mac comes with folders for Documents, Music, Movies, etc, and while each of these may appear to be you average folders, they provide hooks into other applications which can tap into them. For instance, adding video files into the Movies folder makes them available via Front Row, the media center front end. Stick to the organisational structure provided by OS X, and you’ll be greatly repaid (in kind).

There is one thing I should warn you about, before we move on to anything else. Don’t ever attempt to rename the home folder, as you will end up losing all your data. If you rename it, there won’t be any issues until you restart. OS X will find there’s no home folder of the name in its record, and will create a new folder in place. There are ways to recover your data, but you still don’t want to play around. It’s best to leave it as it is.

Another note about organisation, and that’s about virtual aliases. Unlike aliases, or ‘shortcuts’, these aren’t real existing files, but entries in some database. These reside in your Finder sidebar, your Dock, or even the Finder toolbar (yes, you can Cmd+Drag files and folders there). If you accidentally or purposely move one of the places or devices out of the sidebar, it goes *poof*. The real files and folders will never be affected by this action. To restore any lost devices to the sidebar, either drag it from the desktop, or hit up the Finder preferences (Cmd+,), and uncheck and recheck that type of device in the Sidebar tab.

Navigating Finder

There are four main views in Finder. Thumbnail, which is great for viewing pictures; column, to get a detailed view of your files; column, great for moving around; and Coverflow, the glorified view that presents your files as 3D tiles. If you’re ever in need of serious moving around, I’d suggest switching to the Column view. It allows you to drill deep into folders while still keeping a perspective on where you are. It’s also the best view on smaller displays like a 13″ MacBook. Those with the newer iMacs can definitely afford to splurge on the Coverflow view; it’s gorgeous.

How about moving around? The beauty of the Finder sidebar, is that it’s static. No matter which folder you drill down into, you don’t have to navigate back out to get to your flash drive. This makes the absence of “Cut and Paste” totally forgivable, as drag and drop is definitely the superior way to go about things. In fact, we’ve compiled a whole article with screencast on the awesomeness of Drag and Drop on the Mac.

While you’re in Finder, be sure to make use of one of Leopard’s better innovations—Quick Look. Just hit spacebar on any file, and it will immediately spring out with a preview of its contents. You can expand Quick look with easy to install plugins, as listed on a previous article. You can quick look multiple files, even presenting slideshows without having to open images up in an image viewer.

One major UI change in OS X, is the change in the ‘maximize’ button behavior. In fact, on the Mac it’s called the ‘zoom’ button. Instead of taking up the entire screen and wasting screen space, it resizes itself to take up just enough space to display contents. If you zoom while in the “list” view for instance, it will only resize vertically. Column views resize far more, taking as much horizontal space as required. The only problem with the zoom behavior is that it’s not predictable—at first. Once you get the hang of how exactly it functions, it’s all appreciation. You can however, get ‘maximize’ functionality if you check out these third party apps by Irradiated Software. Here’s a little sidetip for the column view. If you need to resize the width of the column to fit display the complete filenames, double click the little resizer at the bottom of the column divider. If you want all columns to display the complete filenames, Option+Double-click on it.

One important addition in Leopard, is the Path Bar functionality. It’s not enabled by default, but you can turn it on from the menubar at View » Show Path Bar. You can then drag and drop files onto the path bar, almost negating the need for the column view. In fact, I hardly ever move out of the List view. Yes, I think the List view is the best view, and that’s why Apple chose it to go along with Coverflow.

Keyboard Shortcuts

The Enter/Return key shows the biggest, most surprising change in behaviour to Windows users. Instead of opening files as it does on Windows, it triggers the rename-file behavior. I mean, which kind of a stupid entity would do such a thing? There’s more to it than meets the eye. The Mac uses Cmd + the arrow keys to effortlessly navigate through the entire directory structure. Cmd+Down to drill down into folders and, ultimately, open files, while Cmd+Up takes you up a level. The shortcut to delete is Cmd+Delete, so you don’t have to deal with an ‘are you really sure?’ confirmation.

Don’t be harrowed by the ‘extra’ Command key. In general, the Command (⌘) key is crucial to Mac operation. While it seems extraneous at first, it becomes a natural extension to the way you work on the Mac. Cmd+W to close windows, +Q to quit, +H to hide, +1,2,3,4 to switch between Finder views, and so many more. And while I don’t mean to sound fanboyish, its position on the keyboard is far better than Control can ever hope to be. Right beside the spacebar, so the idle thumb pretty much rests on it. And then there’s the myriad uses of the Option key, an article written even before we launched SA.

Shortcomings

There are some shortcomings on the Mac however. First of all, is the lack of ‘currently focussed item’. It rarely affects the user, but it’s very annoying nonetheless. If you’re selecting files with keyboard (Shift/Cmd+Arrow keys), and you accidentally select an extra file in that list, reversing the action doesn’t go back a step but instead starts selecting more files from where you started.

Second, is the lack of separation of folders from files. The only way to have folders show up separate is to arrange by Kind or Size. There is also no ‘list-column’ view like in windows, where you have rows of files in columns. On the Mac you have to scroll down.

It’s just a matter of time

When you’ve switched to the Mac, the only way you’ll get comfortable with it is to go with the flow. Trying to find Windows on OS X will only lead to more pain. To me the Finder is clean, uncluttered, and minimal. It doesn’t want to take up your entire screen, and while it certainly forces you to work in a particular way, at the end of the day the little things make up for all of its shortcomings.

Lastly, if you’re looking for more power, you might want to check out Forklift or PathFinder, both very capable file managers.

Any serious Mac user has at some point in their workflow been touched by Quicksilver. Back in the days of Tiger, you pretty much had to use Quicksilver, without which you couldn’t even launch apps without having them in the Dock. Leopard got better with app launching, and soon the interest in QS started waning. Blacktree stopped developing the app, made it open source, and the last update was sometime no one even remembers.

A few days ago I was informed that a new update to QS is out, so what better than to write a post about what’s possible with this stunning workflow enabler.

Even without customising QuickSilver, it’s ready to work. Just hit the global shortcut you set while installing, and start typing away. Results show up 10 times faster than spotlight. Want to launch a file in your documents folder? Type in “docu…” and wait for the results pane to show up. Hit the right arrow key, and navigate through those files. If you know the name of the file, you can type in that name, and get it selected in the target window. Hit enter to launch. Quicksilver also ‘learns’ from your past choices, so it will automatically select Photoshop on hitting “p” if that’s what you constantly launch. In fact, once you’re sure of the first choice, you can press and hold the key to launch the file/action.

To perform an action other than opening (or the default for that particular file type), tab into the “Action”, and hit the right arrow key to see available actions. You can delete, rename, move, “Open With…” and (with plugins) perform a whole set of actions. Once you’re familiar with what actions are available, you just need to type in “del…” instead of searching for it in the actions pane.

Quicksilver can also be used as a file manager. Sort of. Unlike Spotlight, QuickSilver doesn’t index every bit of data on your hard drive. It won’t drive through and grab the names of all your folders, nor the contents of your text files. It also expects you to know where things are. So, you have a bunch of movies in your movies folder you want to copy to a flash drive. Launch QS, type in “Movi…” to bring up the Movies folder. Once in there, type in the name of the movie in question. Hit comma (,). This allows you to tack on additional files for the action. Type in the name of the next movie. you can even navigate into another folder if you want. Once you’ve collected your files, hit tab, “Copy…”, and then type in the name of your flash drive.

Let’s get to the plugins now…

Open up the QS preferences » Plugins, and go through the list. ‘Check’ to install plugins that interest you. There’s even a bunch of different user interface ‘modules’ in there. Each of these modules have a slightly different way of using them, which you’ll intuitively get to know once you understand the whole philosophy behind how QS works. There’s even plugins outside of the QS database, like this Remember the Milk http://www.binaryminded.com/qsrtm.html plugin for instance.

iTunes module. This is a great and quick way to play music. From the main QS interface, simply type in “Arti…” to bring up the artists list. You can then type in the artist in question, navigate to the song, and play it. But that’s the long way. With QS you can set ‘triggers’ for separate actions. I’ve set Opt+Shft+A to bring up “Artists”, so when I hit that, all I need to do is type in “Cold…” and hit enter to start playing tracks of Coldplay. I’ve got a separate trigger for Songs, and Playlists. You can even have triggers for specific actions, like for instance pausing and playing a track.

Setting up triggers is easy. To go the QS Preferences » Triggers, and add a new trigger. If you’ve installed the iTunes module, the iTunes triggers will be listed separately. Checkmark the ones you want to execute. Then click the “i” icon at the bottom to bring up the info. Set a hotkey, and you’re done.

Here’s something that behaves much different from the rest of the modules. Clipboard. I had reviewed a bunch of clipboard viewers, but it didn’t strike me that QS can serve as an excellent clipboard manager. First, install the Clipboard module. Then, in the QS Preferences, select the Clipboard tab, and check mark the ‘Capture History’ setting. Now when QS is active, just hit Cmd+L to bring up the palette. It should show you a tall window without much going on. Copy a few text clips from here and there, and you’ll see them adding up. You can also access the clipboard items by typing in “Clipboa…” for to bring up the Clipboard History right within the QS interface.

Here’s another trick. If you move the window to the edge of your desktop, it will disappear leaving a faint line along the edge. Moving your mouse cursor to that position will spring it out, effectively making it one superb clipboard manager.

Text Manipulation is another great feature. You may use one of those ‘anything buckets’ like Yojimbo or Evernote, but for simpletons, it’s sometimes necessary to have a single text file containing randomness. This is a great way to have a ‘todo.txt’ file displaying a list on your desktop that you can instantly add stuff to. Install the Text Manipulation module. Then, type in your todo.

In QS, to type in text, you hit the . (period) upon launch. So, launch QS, type in your todo, tab, “Appe…” to bring up the Append to… action, tab, navigate to the file in question, hit enter.

Here’s a random one that’s real handy. If you want to display a message on your screen while you’re away, simply hit ., type in your message “Don’t close my tabs!”, and making sure “LargeType” is selected in the action, hit enter.

One of the best plugins for QS is the Shelf module. It’s a sort of a more permanent clipboard, but less permanent than a folder. Get your content in the first pane; it could be anything from a file, bookmark, or arbitrary text. Tab, and select “Put on shelf”. Once you’ve added some items to your shelf, it’s time to access them. Type in “Shelf” as your first action, and hit the right arrow key. From there you can perform any other action on those temporarily shelved items. You can even set a trigger for it. Better still, you can hit Cmd + Option + S, to bring up the Shelf in a palette similar to the clipboard. This even allows you to delete stuff from the shelf. [Note: I haven't been able to get the shelf to function properly in Snow.]

A customised ‘cube’ interface, which is available in the plugins folder. This image is via Macrumors.

Like I said earlier, you can add different skins to QS, some of which are available in the plugins list. While there aren’t all that many third party skins, Julius Eckert created two stunning pieces of work, both based on Core Animation for some fancy superfluous effects. They aren’t all that heavy on the CPU, but they aren’t lightning fast like the stock ones.

[tweetmeme] Lastly, QS is a complex ‘organism’, that needs to be understood before you give it up. If you’re already a QS user, I can say the new version is far more stable on Snow Leopard (although not stable enough). If you’ve never attempted QS, I’d highly suggest you do. If you have any QS tricks or workflows, we’d love to hear them.

[Big thanks to @Ian_Wright for the heads up]