Quick And Useful Mac Tips

7/24/2021Posted inTips2 Comments

I’m lazy. So, instead of writing about hideous Safari 15 tabs like everyone else, I’m going to share a few Mac tips.

App Switcher
The App Switcher shortcut (Command + Tab) is a handy tool. Want to quit an app while in the App Switcher? Type the letter Q while the Command key is still held down to quit the highlighted app. 

Copy Current URL
To copy the current URL in Safari, hit Command + L to highlight the current URL. Then press Command + C to copy the URL to the clipboard. That tip has saved me quite a bit of time.

Screenshots
Lastly, this is a new one for me. The normal screenshot shortcut is Shift + Command + 3, which takes a screenshot of your desktop. Shift + Command + 4 allows you to select an area of the screen. If you press the spacebar you get a screenshot of just that window or whatever area you have highlighted.

Bonus tip: Command + Control + Shift + 4 takes a screenshot and copies it to the clipboard.

If you have a tip to share please add it to the comments below. We are always up for new tips!

Fondly (?) Remembering Clippy

7/23/2021Posted inGeneralNo Comments

It’s an unexpected thing to say, but I feel a certain amount of warm nostalgia for Clippy, one of the first virtual assistants, as found in Microsoft Office circa the 1990’s.

Oh sure I hated him at the time. He was basically worse than useless. I recall that my only interaction was to annoyingly dismiss Clippy’s popup window. But as they say, time is the healer and we must forgive our enemies.

The recent news is that Microsoft may supplant paperclip emojis with Clippy. That’s seems like harmless fun, so long as it doesn’t affect final output (e.g. PDF). Perhaps Nisus Writer should replace the bicep emoji with classic Nisus Man. I see a certain resemblance…

Music Widget Madness!

7/16/2021Posted inGeneral1 Comment

One thing not on my bingo card this year was a faithful recreation of the Dashboard iTunes widget from Mac OS X Tiger. However, developer Mario Guzman, who appears to be of sound mind and body, has produced Music Widget for macOS for modern versions of macOS, starting with Big Sur.

I downloaded and I have to say it is pretty cool. It works just as I remember the OS X widget worked. Yes, I’m old.

Be aware that this works with Apple Music only. Spotify need not apply.

The app is in beta, and is compatible with Big Sur and above.

Thanks to Cult of Mac for the original article.

From Ancient Wax Boards to iPads

7/9/2021Posted inGeneralNo Comments

It’s interesting to think about what counts as “technology” for particular generations of people. We might consider Apple’s latest iPad Pro on the edge of what’s new in personal tech. But in centuries past wax boards (literally wooden frames filled with melted beeswax) may have been the exciting new writing technology:

“Wax boards can be seen as the iPads of yesterday … they all allow writing without ink, and the erasing and re-inscribing of written text as much as is desired.”

That’s from this article from the American Society of Overseas Research which goes into great detail about these wax boards and how they were used in ancient Near East regions like Egypt. It’s fun to think about how neat these boards must have been when they were first available. What’s new and exciting is always relative.

One tidbit that I found interesting is the possible “use of a release agent made from sesame oil, date syrup and ghee” to help prevent the stylus from sticking in the wax– delicious!

InfoClick 1.2.7 released

7/2/2021Posted inInfoClickNo Comments

We just released a new version of InfoClick, our Apple Mail search app. It provides an unrivaled view into the contents of your emails. There’s no more guessing whether or not to trust wishy-washy Spotlight search results. And InfoClick is incredibly fast. You see results and what other search terms are still available instantly.

This new version is a maintenance release with minor updates, mostly to improve stability. It’s free for all existing InfoClick users.

More Accurate Email Date Search
One small improvement in InfoClick version 1.2.7 is its handling of dates. InfoClick allows you to find all emails in a particular year, month, or day. But unfortunately the date field in emails can be unreliable for a variety of reasons. One example: spammers regularly mark an email’s date as a few days in the future. The idea is that this will sort the junk email topmost in any listings.

InfoClick now handles these erroneous dates more intelligently. If an incoming email’s date is in the future, or otherwise seems suspect, InfoClick may choose to use more trustworthy date information. That might include timestamps recorded by email servers as the email was passed around the network, or the local time of arrival.