Apple Macintosh Computer Tips - Free Computer tips and tricks.

Apple Macintosh Tips, tricks and shortcuts.

Below are some of the first, and most important topics that I teach my clients when they are learning the Apple Macintosh operating system.

These tips and tricks will help to enhance your productivity in Mac OS X.

I hope that they will make your experience with Apple, and the Apple Macintosh computer and Mac OS X operating system more enjoyable.

I also offer training and repair on Apple Macintosh computers in the Jupiter, Tequesta, Palm Beach Gardens, West Palm Beach, Juno Beach, Florida areas.

Apple Macintosh Tips, tricks and shortcuts.

MOUSE RELATED TIPS

Q: How do you “right click” on a Macbook or Macbook Pro?

A: The newer Apple Macbook’s and Macbook Pro’s introduced in 2009, included the new Multi-Touch Trackpad. With this new addition, the whole trackpad is the mouse button. There is no secondary mouse button.

To “right click” on a 2009 and newer Apple Macbook or Macbook Pro:

Figure 1

1.Hold the “control” button and click on the trackpad at the same time or;
2.Go to System Preferences>Trackpad and put a check in the box labeled “Secondary Click”. Then select which corner you would like for this option to function, or; (See Figure 1)
3.While touching the Multi-Touch Trackpad with one finger, (just touching, not pushing down), use another finger on the same hand to push down and “click” the trackpad. The option menu should pop up.

How to “right click” on an older Macbook, with a separate button on the trackpad:

While touching the Multi-Touch Trackpad with one finger, use another finger on the same hand to push down and “click” the trackpad’s button. The option menu should pop up.

Q: How do you “right click” with an Apple Mouse, Apple Magic Mouse or Apple Mighty Mouse?

A: As a first time Mac user, this baffled me, although it is actually a very simple fix.

1.Go to System Preferences>Mouse and put a check in the box labeled “Secondary Click”, and choose “Right” or Left”. If you choose “right”, your mouse will now work just like any other conventional 2 button mouse.

KEYBOARD RELATED TIPS

The following are the most useful shortcuts that I find that I use on a regular basis that I can not live without.

Apple Macintosh Keyboard Shortcuts

Note: When you see a “+” symbol in the following shortcuts, it means to HOLD or HIT these buttons together at the same time. The “=” symbol simply means that this is the result that you will get.

Command or ⌘ + C = “Copy”

Command or ⌘ + V = “Paste”

Command or ⌘ + X = “Cut”

Command or ⌘ + Z = “Undo” or Undo your last step.

Command or ⌘ + Option + Esc = “Force Quit Applications” dialog box. This is where you can kill or quit a hanging, stalled, or “Beach Balled” application.

Command or ⌘ + F = “Find”. This will bring up the “Find” box in almost any application. Very useful for locating a word on a page or in a large document.

Command or ⌘ + Shift + 3 = Screen Capture (Take a screen shot of your whole screen.)

Command or ⌘ + Shift + 4 = Screen Capture a selection (Select a portion of the screen to capture.)

Another cool little trick that you can perform in Mac OS X, is to preview just about any file with the space bar.

Let’s try it now. GO to FInder and go into your “Home” folder. Find and select a document, video, picture, or song by clicking it just once, to highlight it. Now hit the space bar. It will give you a preview of the file instead of actually opening the program associated with it. This saves a ton of time when it comes to viewing Microsoft Word documents for instance.

Let’s talk about the “Dashboard”.

Dashboard in Mac OS X is just a cool little program that you can personalize until your heart’s content. You can add widget after widget in Dashboard by clicking the “+” down in the lower right corner of the dashboard screen. This is how you add those widgets. Dashboard comes with a default set of widgets, but you can also go to Apple’s website at http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/ and select from tens of thousands of free widgets.

Note: The live radar application that I am using below is called RadarInMotion, and can be found at the link above on Apple’s website.

This is what my dashboard looks like.

To open dashboard, hit F4 on most Mac keyboards, or click the Dashboard icon in your dock, or, if neither of those options work, go to Finder>Applications>Dashboard.

You can see that in my dashboard, I have temperatures, live radar, stocks, calculator and so on. You can add or delete these by clicking the “+” down in the lower right corner of the dashboard screen. Upon doing so, you will see an “X” appear in the corner of each widget on your screen. Just click the “X” to close or delete that widget from the dashboard screen.

And this, is Exposé.

The most useful option in Mac OS X to me, is something called Exposé.

Six open windows using Exposé in Mac OS X.

With Exposé, it makes it easy to move between several open applications and windows.

For instance, in Microsoft Windows, many windows users have to, normally, minimize several windows to get to the one that they want to work with. But in Mac OS X, users can simply hit the F3 key and all of your windows will expand. Then simply select the window or application that you want to work with at the moment, and it will come to the front.

Here is an example of how all of my Macs are set up.

Go to System Preferences and select Exposé & Spaces, then select Exposé again at the top of that window.

Notice the top section called “Active Screen Corners”. When you set these, they make that corner of your screen perform the action that you choose in the drop down list for that corner.

Upper Left Corner (All Windows)

So as you can see in the picture above, I have the upper left corner set to “All Windows”. Now when I move my mouse the the upper left corner of my screen, all of my windows spread out in Exposé.

Upper Right Corner (Start Screen Saver)

Another setting that I have enabled here is “Start Screen Saver” in the upper right corner. This setting is great for privacy and security. Here is how, and why I use it.

I have a 2 year old son. Often I will be working on an important project and will walk away from my computer. Now, kids being kids, will often walk up and start banging away on your keyboard, not knowing the damage that they are causing to your precious project that you have spent hours upon hours working on and perfecting. This is why I utilize this setting daily. When I walk away from my computer nowadays, I simply throw my mouse cursor into the upper right hand corner of my screen and let the screen saver activate. And after you enable the “Require password” feature, your child cannot harm anything, because upon waking the Mac back up, you are prompted for a password to resume your project. (This is also good if you are doing some financial tasks and don’t want prying eyes when you walk away from your Macintosh too.)

To do this, go to System Preferences and select “Security”. Now put a check in the box that says “Require password” and choose “immediately” from the drop down menu.

(Note: Make SURE that you know your MAC OS X login / password credentials at this point.)

Lower Right Corner (Desktop)

Next, you will see that I have my lower right corner set to “Desktop”. This is the second most useful feature that you will use (in my opinion). This essentially drops all of your open windows to a minimized state, and brings you instantly to your desktop. VERY helpful.

Lower Left Corner (Dashboard)

This enables the Dashboard.

Thanks for reading. I will be adding more Apple Macintosh tips and tricks in the near future. If you have a suggestion for me, I would love to hear it. Please email me here.

This article was created and written by Jason Roberts, owner and head technician of Cobalt Computer Consulting and Computer Repair in Jupiter, Florida. Jason is an Apple Certified Macintosh Technician [ACMT], as well as an A+ Certified IT Technician, and provides Apple Macintosh repair and Apple Macintosh training, tutoring and setup in the areas of Jupiter, Tequesta, Palm Beach Gardens, West Palm Beach, Juno Beach, and more. Please contact Jason at 561-880-5685.

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