Cram competition winners
July 02, 2009
Here is a list of the winners of last week's competition to win a copy of Cram. These three were chosen at random from all the people who answered the question with the correct answer of iPhone.
Chris
Michael
Marina
You should receive your serial numbers by email.
Well done to everyone who got the answer right, and keep a lookout for any new competitions for the chance to win more great Mac applications.
Chris
Michael
Marina
You should receive your serial numbers by email.
Well done to everyone who got the answer right, and keep a lookout for any new competitions for the chance to win more great Mac applications.
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Multi-touch tab switching in Firefox
July 01, 2009 - Filed in: Firefox
To change the setting, just type
about:config into the address bar. A warning will appear telling you that these are advanced settings. Click the “I’ll be careful, I promise” button to continue. Don’t worry about breaking anything, you can right-click and choose reset on anything you change.Type “twist” into the filter box to filter down to just the settings we want. Find
browser.gesture.twist.right and double-click on it. Change the value to Browser:NextTab. Do the same for twist left, but use Browser:PrevTab instead. The gesture should work right away. Try putting one finger down and rotating another around it.
If you find that it is a bit slow to respond, you can change
browser.gesture.twist.threshold to a lower value.Changing the filter to “gesture” will let see all the other gestures that are available. Pinching is set to zoom, and swiping is set to go back and forward. You can change any of these to do something else if you want. For example, the twist gesture is a bit awkward, you might prefer to have tab switching set to the swipe gesture instead.
If you are looking for more settings to change in about:config in Firefox, check out this list.
[via CrunchGear]
Create double-clickable dvdmedia movie bundles
When you rip a DVD to your Mac you end up with a VIDEO_TS folder, which can be dragged to DVD player icon to play the DVD (you might find some stubborn DVDs will only play in VLC though).
As the DVD media is a folder, obviously you can't double-click it to open it in DVD Player. Instead you have to do the cumbersome open-the-app-then-drag-and-drop-to-icon procedure.
The way around this is to rename the folder with the .dvdmedia extension. This will turn the folder into a bundle, and add a nice DVD icon as well. Double-clicking this will automatically open it up in DVD player, but you can easily change this to another app like VLC for example. The easiest way is to choose Get Info on the bundle, choose the new app from the "Open with" section, and click the "Change All..." button. While you are in the Get Info window you might also want to click “Hide Extension” and rename the bundle to the name of the movie. You can also change the icon to the artwork for the movie which you can get from a site like Get Video Artwork.
One annoying side effect of this is that Front Row won't recognise dvdmedia bundles, whereas it will recognise VIDEO_TS folders. Of course, to get your movies to work well in the Finder, Quicktime iTunes, Front Row and iPhone all at the same time you might prefer to run them through a tool like HandBrake. This can also save you some space depending on how you encode them.
If you want to win a copy of Cram, a great application for studying and testing, there is still time to enter our competition.
As the DVD media is a folder, obviously you can't double-click it to open it in DVD Player. Instead you have to do the cumbersome open-the-app-then-drag-and-drop-to-icon procedure.
The way around this is to rename the folder with the .dvdmedia extension. This will turn the folder into a bundle, and add a nice DVD icon as well. Double-clicking this will automatically open it up in DVD player, but you can easily change this to another app like VLC for example. The easiest way is to choose Get Info on the bundle, choose the new app from the "Open with" section, and click the "Change All..." button. While you are in the Get Info window you might also want to click “Hide Extension” and rename the bundle to the name of the movie. You can also change the icon to the artwork for the movie which you can get from a site like Get Video Artwork.
One annoying side effect of this is that Front Row won't recognise dvdmedia bundles, whereas it will recognise VIDEO_TS folders. Of course, to get your movies to work well in the Finder, Quicktime iTunes, Front Row and iPhone all at the same time you might prefer to run them through a tool like HandBrake. This can also save you some space depending on how you encode them.
If you want to win a copy of Cram, a great application for studying and testing, there is still time to enter our competition.
Competition: Win a copy of Cram
June 25, 2009
Mac OS X Tips has teamed up with SimpleLeap Software to give away 3 free copies of Cram, their software for studying with flash cards and multiple choice tests. See the bottom of this post for details on how to enter the competition.
Cram is an application for creating and sharing flash cards and multiple choice tests to help you study. The interface is all very intuitive, and it comes with a few pre-made tests which are great for getting you started and showing you how everything works.
The two main ways to use Cram are to either create your own tests or to browse the tests in the online test portal.
Creating your own test is pretty straightforward. For each question you write, you can enter up to five possible possible answers to choose from. You can either manually choose these for each question, or you can create an "Answer Bank" that contains all the answers for every question in the test (and also some incorrect answers if you want) and then randomly assigns them as the multiple choice answers to each question.
Drag and drop adding of images and audio to your questions is also really simple, and you have the option of setting a time limit to your test.
Once you've created your test, clicking "Study" in the toolbar will allow you to view your questions as flash cards that you can flip over to see the answer. Then as soon as you are confident enough, you can start the test. Cram also keeps a detailed test history so you can track your progress and see if you are improving.
The Test Portal is the alternative to creating your own tests, and it's probably my favourite feature. It contains over 2000 tests on all sorts of subjects submitted by other users. Unfortunately most of them don't seem to be organised into the right categories, but the search feature works well enough to overcome this. Each test has a name and description, and once you've found what you want simply clicking download test will add it to your collection. Of course you can share your own created tests just as easily by selecting them and clicking "Share Test" in the toolbar.
Overall Cram looks like a great resource for students or anyone studying for a test where they have to memorise things. It seems particularly well suited to particular tasks like learning foreign language vocabulary or dates in history.
You can download a demo for free, and purchase the full version for $34.99.
If you want to win a free copy of Cram, just answer the following question. The winners will be chosen at random from all the correct answers.
Which other device can you also get Cram for?
a) iPhone
b) Palm Pre
c) T-Mobile G1
Once you know the answer, head over to this page to enter.
Cram is an application for creating and sharing flash cards and multiple choice tests to help you study. The interface is all very intuitive, and it comes with a few pre-made tests which are great for getting you started and showing you how everything works.
The two main ways to use Cram are to either create your own tests or to browse the tests in the online test portal.
Creating your own test is pretty straightforward. For each question you write, you can enter up to five possible possible answers to choose from. You can either manually choose these for each question, or you can create an "Answer Bank" that contains all the answers for every question in the test (and also some incorrect answers if you want) and then randomly assigns them as the multiple choice answers to each question.
Drag and drop adding of images and audio to your questions is also really simple, and you have the option of setting a time limit to your test.
Once you've created your test, clicking "Study" in the toolbar will allow you to view your questions as flash cards that you can flip over to see the answer. Then as soon as you are confident enough, you can start the test. Cram also keeps a detailed test history so you can track your progress and see if you are improving.
The Test Portal is the alternative to creating your own tests, and it's probably my favourite feature. It contains over 2000 tests on all sorts of subjects submitted by other users. Unfortunately most of them don't seem to be organised into the right categories, but the search feature works well enough to overcome this. Each test has a name and description, and once you've found what you want simply clicking download test will add it to your collection. Of course you can share your own created tests just as easily by selecting them and clicking "Share Test" in the toolbar.
Overall Cram looks like a great resource for students or anyone studying for a test where they have to memorise things. It seems particularly well suited to particular tasks like learning foreign language vocabulary or dates in history.
You can download a demo for free, and purchase the full version for $34.99.
If you want to win a free copy of Cram, just answer the following question. The winners will be chosen at random from all the correct answers.
Which other device can you also get Cram for?
a) iPhone
b) Palm Pre
c) T-Mobile G1
Once you know the answer, head over to this page to enter.
Ignore Software Updates
June 17, 2009 - Filed in: General
It's really convenient that you get get all the updates for the Apple software on your Mac by going to the Apple menu and choosing "Software Update...". However, occasionally you might want to skip an update, and you don't want Software Update to carry on reminding you to update. A common example is a printer drivers update for a printer you don't use very often or not at all any more.
To ignore an update, just select it in the list and choose "Ignore Update..." from the Update menu. Alternatively you can just press the delete key. Now the update will stop showing up in the list of new software.
If you change your mind, you can all you ignored updates back by choosing "Reset Ignored Updates" from the Software Update menu. Unfortunately this will bring back all of your ignored updates, so if you only want to bring back one you will have to ignore all the rest again.
To ignore an update, just select it in the list and choose "Ignore Update..." from the Update menu. Alternatively you can just press the delete key. Now the update will stop showing up in the list of new software.
If you change your mind, you can all you ignored updates back by choosing "Reset Ignored Updates" from the Software Update menu. Unfortunately this will bring back all of your ignored updates, so if you only want to bring back one you will have to ignore all the rest again.
Easily remove preference panes
June 14, 2009 - Filed in: System Prefs.
Here’s a trick that I just learnt. You can quickly remove preference panes from System Preferences by right-clicking (or Control-clicking) on them and choosing remove preference pane. Of course this only works on the preference panes that you have installed yourself, i.e. the ones that appear in the “Other” section.
Even though you can just Trash the preference pane file yourself, this is quite a good timesaver if you can’t remember if you installed the preference pane for all users or just your user. Depending on which you chose, the file could be located in the Library folder in Macintosh HD or the Library folder in your user folder. It’s much quicker just to do it straight from System Preferences. Just like if you were Trashing the file, System Preferences will ask you for your administrator password when removing preference panes for all users.
After a bit of a clean out, I’ve managed to cut down to just the preference panes I actually need. I have
Even though you can just Trash the preference pane file yourself, this is quite a good timesaver if you can’t remember if you installed the preference pane for all users or just your user. Depending on which you chose, the file could be located in the Library folder in Macintosh HD or the Library folder in your user folder. It’s much quicker just to do it straight from System Preferences. Just like if you were Trashing the file, System Preferences will ask you for your administrator password when removing preference panes for all users.
After a bit of a clean out, I’ve managed to cut down to just the preference panes I actually need. I have
- DivX, Flip4Mac and Perian for video formats (I suspect I don’t need all three though)
- Growl for notifications
- GeekTool for displaying data on the desktop
- Secrets for tweaking all those hidden settings.
Display multiple inspector windows at once
June 12, 2009 - Filed in: iWork
Inspector windows are small windows that allow you to change settings for whatever happens to be the currently selected object. They are the ones that have a thinner title bar, they always hover above other windows and they disappear when you change to a different application.
In most applications they contain information and settings about whatever object is selected. As you select different things, the contents of the inspector window will change, so you can always go to the same place to change the properties of that object.
Now you don't want multiple inspectors popping up, containing settings for different objects, because they are designed to keep all the information and properties in one location, so you always know where to find it. However, you might want multiple inspectors that contain different sections of the settings. For example, you might want one inspector for text settings, and one for graphics settings.
In most Apple applications, there is a single inspector with tabs along the top that allow you to change between different groups of settings. If you find yourself constantly jumping between different tabs while you work, there is a simple way to separate each tab out into its own inspector. Simply hold the Option key while clicking on a tab, and another inspector window will appear with the contents of that tab.
Using this, you can arrange the different inspectors around your screen for easier access. For example, in Pages you might want to keep separate Graphic, Text and Table inspectors always open.
In most applications they contain information and settings about whatever object is selected. As you select different things, the contents of the inspector window will change, so you can always go to the same place to change the properties of that object.
Now you don't want multiple inspectors popping up, containing settings for different objects, because they are designed to keep all the information and properties in one location, so you always know where to find it. However, you might want multiple inspectors that contain different sections of the settings. For example, you might want one inspector for text settings, and one for graphics settings.
In most Apple applications, there is a single inspector with tabs along the top that allow you to change between different groups of settings. If you find yourself constantly jumping between different tabs while you work, there is a simple way to separate each tab out into its own inspector. Simply hold the Option key while clicking on a tab, and another inspector window will appear with the contents of that tab.
Using this, you can arrange the different inspectors around your screen for easier access. For example, in Pages you might want to keep separate Graphic, Text and Table inspectors always open.
Exposé and Spaces tricks
May 19, 2009 - Filed in: Dock/Exposé/Dashboard
Most people are aware of the different application and window switching tricks in OS X, but real power in tools like Exposé and Spaces is when you start combining them and using them together to really save time.
Firstly lets quickly go through the different ways to switch between applications and windows. The most basic way is to use the keyboard shortcut Command-Tab to cycle through your open applications, and Command-~ to cycle through the open windows of the current application. On top of this, you have the three different options for Exposé: Show all windows (F9), show current application windows (F10) and show desktop (F11). Your function keys may be different if you have one of the newer MacBooks, or if you have changed them in System Preferences. Finally, there is Spaces (F8), which allows you to switch between collections of applications and windows that you have organised into workspaces.
Using some of these techniques simultaneously is a great way to save time. My personal favourite is combining Exposé and Command-Tab. Start by invoking Exposé for current application windows (F10). Once all your windows are shown, you can hit Tab to make Exposé cycle through showing windows for each application individually.
If you are anything like me, when you have applications running in lots of Spaces you occasionally lose track of things. If you have completely lost a window, a great way to find it is to first invoke Spaces (F8) and then Exposé for all windows (F9). First, all of your spaces will appear, then Exposé will rearrange all the windows in every space so you can see them all. You can still drag windows between spaces, and as you do, other windows will automatically rearrange so you can still see them all. And as always with Exposé, hovering your cursor above one of the windows will give you its name.
The best way to find out what combination tricks work best for you is to just try hitting the different function keys in different situation. If you find any other great time-saving combinations, let us know in the comments.
Firstly lets quickly go through the different ways to switch between applications and windows. The most basic way is to use the keyboard shortcut Command-Tab to cycle through your open applications, and Command-~ to cycle through the open windows of the current application. On top of this, you have the three different options for Exposé: Show all windows (F9), show current application windows (F10) and show desktop (F11). Your function keys may be different if you have one of the newer MacBooks, or if you have changed them in System Preferences. Finally, there is Spaces (F8), which allows you to switch between collections of applications and windows that you have organised into workspaces.
Using some of these techniques simultaneously is a great way to save time. My personal favourite is combining Exposé and Command-Tab. Start by invoking Exposé for current application windows (F10). Once all your windows are shown, you can hit Tab to make Exposé cycle through showing windows for each application individually.
If you are anything like me, when you have applications running in lots of Spaces you occasionally lose track of things. If you have completely lost a window, a great way to find it is to first invoke Spaces (F8) and then Exposé for all windows (F9). First, all of your spaces will appear, then Exposé will rearrange all the windows in every space so you can see them all. You can still drag windows between spaces, and as you do, other windows will automatically rearrange so you can still see them all. And as always with Exposé, hovering your cursor above one of the windows will give you its name.
The best way to find out what combination tricks work best for you is to just try hitting the different function keys in different situation. If you find any other great time-saving combinations, let us know in the comments.
Terminal commands for improving Spotlight
April 29, 2009 - Filed in: Terminal
Add a file to the Spotlight index
In theory, all files are added to the Spotlight index when they are created. However, every now and again something goes wrong and a stubborn file might refuse to show up. To manually add it to the index, you can use the following command. Start by opening up Terminal (located in Applications/Utilities). Type in
mdimport and then hit the space bar. Next, find the file you want to add in the Finder, and drag it onto the Terminal window. Terminal should automatically type in the path to the file for you. Of course, if you know the path you can type it in manually yourself. Finally, hit return and the file should now show up in you Spotlight searches.Add a folder to the Spotlight index
Adding a folder works in exactly the same way as with a file. However, in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and earlier, the command is slightly different if you want the contents of the folder to be indexed too. In that case use
mdimport -f instead. You might want to use this to add the System folder with mdimport -f /System as it isn't searchable by default.Search Spotlight from the Terminal
Considering Spotlight is so quick and easy to access, you will probably only use this if you are already working in the Terminal and want to find a file, or if you want some extra options. To do a search, just type
mdfind query where query is what you want to search for. To limit this to a specific folder, instead use mdfind -onlyin ~/Desktop query replacing ~/Desktop with the path to your folder. To run a "live" search which will update the results as users add files, use mdfind -live query. Control-C will stop it updating. To see all the other options, look at the man page by typing man mdfind into Terminal.
Re-index an entire drive
If you are having problems with your Spotlight index, you might want to start over and re-index your hard drive. In the Terminal, type
sudo mdutil -E / and hit return. You may have to enter your password. The existing Spotlight index will be deleted, and Spotlight will start creating a new index in the background. You can re-index other hard drives by changing the command to include their name, like sudo mdutil -E /Volumes/OtherHardDrive.Re-index a specific file format
When Spotlight adds a file to the index, it checks to see if it recognises the file type and then uses an mdimporter plugin to index the contents if it does. Each file format has it's own plugin, and most are located in Macintosh HD/System/Library/Spotlight or Macintosh HD/Library/Spotlight. Double clicking on a plugin will give you the option to re-index all the files associated with it. Alternatively, you can do this from the Terminal with the command
mdimport -r. For example, mdimport -r /System/Library/Spotlight/Chat.mdimporter would cause all of your chat files to be re-indexed.Add a new file format to the Spotlight index
One of the great things about Spotlight is that it will index the contents of many types of files. For example you can search for a word written in a PDF document or the telephone number of one of your contacts. Many third party applications require plugins to make Spotlight index their file's contents, which are available on the Apple Spotlight plugins page.
Make Spotlight index source code
Apple's developer tools come with a source code mdimporter plugin that allows Spotlight to search the contents of your source code. However, if don't want to install the developer tools (it's a big download) then you can just modify the rich text mdimporter plugin to handle the same job. Go to Macintosh HD/System/Library/Spotlight and find the RichText.mdimporter file. Right-click on it and choose "Show Package Contents". Inside the Contents folder, double-click on the info.plist file to open it in TextEdit. Near the top you will see a list that looks like this:
<string>public.rtf</string>
<string>public.html</string>
<string>public.xml</string>
<string>public.plain-text</string>
<string>com.apple.traditional-mac-plain-text</string>
<string>com.apple.rtfd</string>
<string>com.apple.webarchive</string>
<string>org.oasis-open.opendocument.text</string>
<string>org.openxmlformats.wordprocessingml.document</string>
You can add any of the following lines to the end of this list to enable Spotlight to index the contents of the specified format:
<string>public.c-header</string>
<string>public.c-plus-plus-header</string>
<string>public.c-source</string>
<string>public.objective-c-source</string>
<string>public.c-plus-plus-source</string>
<string>public.objective-c-plus-plus-source</string>
<string>com.sun.java-source</string>
<string>public.perl-script</string>
<string>public.python-script</string>
<string>public.csh-script</string>
<string>public.shell-script</string>
<string>public.ruby-script</string>
<string>public.php-script</string>
<string>com.netscape.javascript-source</string>
When you are done, you will want to double-click on RichText.mdimporter to re-index all these file formats.
If you have another file format that is a really just a text file under the hood, you can find out what to add to the info.plist file by running mdimport -n -d1 somefile.ext in the Terminal. The output should contain a "type" that looks something like the items in the list above.
Remove something from the Spotlight index
This is really straightforward, but I thought I'd include it for completeness. Simply go to System Preferences and click on Spotlight. In the Privacy tab, click the plus (+) and choose your file or just drag it from the Finder.
10 tips for using Mac OS X like a pro
Here is a collection of 10 tips that are slightly more advanced than usual. They are aimed at those who want to become more expert Mac users - and of course those who think they already are experts... In general these tips will help you save time and effort when carrying out day to day tasks and hopefully introduce some concepts and applications you may not have come across before.
1. Download Quicksilver
This is really the most important pro app for Mac OS X. The principle of Quicksilver is simple, but it is amazingly powerful: Hit a hotkey, then start typing what you want to do. You can open an application. Send an email to a certain contact. Pause iTunes. Anything (more or less). But what makes this so incredible is that Quicksilver learns over time so you can get what you want faster and more efficiently with less and less effort. Head here for a more detailed explanation, or if you've got some time to spare, watch this demo video. Download it from the Blacktree site.
2. Get to grips with keyboard shortcuts
This may seem like a really simple tip, but far too often I watch supposedly experienced computer users take forever performing simple tasks like copying and pasting. The fact of the matter is keyboard shortcuts make everything easier, but not only do you have to learn them, you have to get into the habit of using them. There is a hugely extensive list here, but to be honest nothing will save you more time than getting into the habit of using shortcuts for quitting, closing windows, copying and pasting and switching applications.
For the more adventurous, you can create your own keyboard shortcuts in the keyboard and mouse section of System Preferences. And if you want to go even further, here are 10 AppleScripts that you can assign keyboard shortcuts to using Quicksilver.
3. Drag and drop everywhere
This is often a problem that comes from working in Windows a lot, where drag-and-drop doesn't quite have the same power. However in Mac OS X, you can use it almost anywhere. Dragging folders onto open/save dialogs will make it display that folder. Dragging text selections onto icons in the Dock does all sorts of useful things. And you can just drag files onto "Choose File" buttons in web pages.
4. Change hidden settings with Terminal commands
Often developers choose not to include some settings in the preferences of an application in order keep things nice and simple for the user. Luckily, they often leave these hidden settings accessible via the Terminal. Although this will scare off a lot of people, being comfortable with the Terminal is really useful and it's the best way to get a higher level of customisation and enable hidden features on your Mac. Luckily, modifying preference files is one of the easiest things you can do in the Terminal - just paste in a line of code and hit return. Simple! Here are a list of Terminal commands that will work with every version of Mac OS X, and here are some ones just for Leopard.
5. Download VLC
VLC is a multipurpose media player that can play pretty much any movie file you throw at it. While Quicktime will serve you for most needs, VLC will handle anything that Quicktime struggles with, as well as stubborn DVDs and VIDEO_TS folders. Download it here.
6. Understand the concept of packages
In Mac OS X, packages are just folders disguised to look like single files. In fact, almost every application is a package. To look inside packages, just right-click on one and choose Show Package Contents. Why would you want to do this? Inside application packages are all the files it needs to run. Once inside, you can tinker about and change things. Here's a previous tip with a collection of things you can do, including changing the unexpectedly quit message, the iCal alarm message and the layout of System Preferences.
7. Quickly kill accidently opened applications
If you are clumsy like me, you will often accidently click the wrong icon in the Dock. Or maybe you occasionally want to stop iTunes opening up when you plug in your iPod. If you are quick enough, you can just right-click (Control-Click) on the icon in the Dock and choose Force Quit. If you are too late, pressing the Option key will change Quit to Force Quit so you can close the unwanted application even faster.
8. Make rectangular selections (Cocoa apps only)
This is one of the best tricks for saving time when you are moving round chunks of text. If you want to select a column in a table or remove the numbers from the start of each line in a list you would normally have to go through every line individually. This can be hugely time consuming if you have a long list. To get around this, just hold the Option key while making the selection. Now you can draw a box around the stuff you want to copy or delete etc. and not worry about having to select entire lines.
9. Learn some AppleScript
Don't be put off by the idea of a programming language - AppleScript is about as close to normal english as you can get. AppleScript's real power is it's ability to automate repetitive tasks - in fact Automator is basically just a visual way to create AppleScripts. The best way to get familiar with AppleScript is to download some example scripts, try and figure out how they work, and then try and extend them or customise them for your own needs. If you are looking for scripts, I've written loads of tips that use a small bit of AppleScript to solve a problem.
10. Get comfortable using the command line
While you might be fine pasting a single line into the Terminal to change some hidden settings, you might not be comfortable actually working from the command line. I guess the whole point of Mac OS X is that it is a pretty graphical interface placed over the command line, but in reality some things are faster from the Terminal, and some things aren't possible without it. Learning about using the command line requires a whole tutorial in itself so I won't go into it here. O'Reilly have a great series of tutorials for beginners, and OSXDaily have a list of common commands.
1. Download Quicksilver
2. Get to grips with keyboard shortcuts
This may seem like a really simple tip, but far too often I watch supposedly experienced computer users take forever performing simple tasks like copying and pasting. The fact of the matter is keyboard shortcuts make everything easier, but not only do you have to learn them, you have to get into the habit of using them. There is a hugely extensive list here, but to be honest nothing will save you more time than getting into the habit of using shortcuts for quitting, closing windows, copying and pasting and switching applications.
For the more adventurous, you can create your own keyboard shortcuts in the keyboard and mouse section of System Preferences. And if you want to go even further, here are 10 AppleScripts that you can assign keyboard shortcuts to using Quicksilver.
3. Drag and drop everywhere
This is often a problem that comes from working in Windows a lot, where drag-and-drop doesn't quite have the same power. However in Mac OS X, you can use it almost anywhere. Dragging folders onto open/save dialogs will make it display that folder. Dragging text selections onto icons in the Dock does all sorts of useful things. And you can just drag files onto "Choose File" buttons in web pages.
4. Change hidden settings with Terminal commands
5. Download VLC
VLC is a multipurpose media player that can play pretty much any movie file you throw at it. While Quicktime will serve you for most needs, VLC will handle anything that Quicktime struggles with, as well as stubborn DVDs and VIDEO_TS folders. Download it here.
6. Understand the concept of packages
In Mac OS X, packages are just folders disguised to look like single files. In fact, almost every application is a package. To look inside packages, just right-click on one and choose Show Package Contents. Why would you want to do this? Inside application packages are all the files it needs to run. Once inside, you can tinker about and change things. Here's a previous tip with a collection of things you can do, including changing the unexpectedly quit message, the iCal alarm message and the layout of System Preferences.
7. Quickly kill accidently opened applications
If you are clumsy like me, you will often accidently click the wrong icon in the Dock. Or maybe you occasionally want to stop iTunes opening up when you plug in your iPod. If you are quick enough, you can just right-click (Control-Click) on the icon in the Dock and choose Force Quit. If you are too late, pressing the Option key will change Quit to Force Quit so you can close the unwanted application even faster.
8. Make rectangular selections (Cocoa apps only)
This is one of the best tricks for saving time when you are moving round chunks of text. If you want to select a column in a table or remove the numbers from the start of each line in a list you would normally have to go through every line individually. This can be hugely time consuming if you have a long list. To get around this, just hold the Option key while making the selection. Now you can draw a box around the stuff you want to copy or delete etc. and not worry about having to select entire lines.
9. Learn some AppleScript
Don't be put off by the idea of a programming language - AppleScript is about as close to normal english as you can get. AppleScript's real power is it's ability to automate repetitive tasks - in fact Automator is basically just a visual way to create AppleScripts. The best way to get familiar with AppleScript is to download some example scripts, try and figure out how they work, and then try and extend them or customise them for your own needs. If you are looking for scripts, I've written loads of tips that use a small bit of AppleScript to solve a problem.
10. Get comfortable using the command line
While you might be fine pasting a single line into the Terminal to change some hidden settings, you might not be comfortable actually working from the command line. I guess the whole point of Mac OS X is that it is a pretty graphical interface placed over the command line, but in reality some things are faster from the Terminal, and some things aren't possible without it. Learning about using the command line requires a whole tutorial in itself so I won't go into it here. O'Reilly have a great series of tutorials for beginners, and OSXDaily have a list of common commands.
