ehMac links to Switch to Mac | Mac Help | Apple Support | Mac Pro Tips
Here's the story: you switch to use a Mac, get basic help, find the support you need, and then you want to explore the tips and tricks of Apple professionals. All wrapped up in one neat little package.
What's your favourite switching story, help tip, support solution, or professional time-saving strategy?
My favourite tip is, after a search to see if the answer is already posted, "ask on ehMac first." Chances are you'll get help here faster than elsewhere.
Want the fastest way to put your Mac right into a deep, sleepy-bear hibernation-like sleep (no whirling fan, no dialogs, no sound — nuthin’ — just fast, glorious sleep). Just press Command-Option and then hold the Eject button for about 2 seconds and Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz. It doesn’t get much faster than that.
That's cool, thanks. I tried it - yup it makes my G5 sleep quickly, but I noticed that it won't wake up if I press any key on the keyboard; even a mouse-click won't do it. The machine will only wake up if I touch the power button on my Cinema Display (ancient clear-frame model, 20"). Is that normal behaviour for this sleepy-bear hibernation-like mode? With normal sleep (whether timed, selected from the Apple menu, or via a touch of the power button), use of the keyboard or a mouse click will awaken the computer. Just wondering.
That's cool, thanks. I tried it - yup it makes my G5 sleep quickly, but I noticed that it won't wake up if I press any key on the keyboard; even a mouse-click won't do it. The machine will only wake up if I touch the power button on my Cinema Display (ancient clear-frame model, 20"). Is that normal behaviour for this sleepy-bear hibernation-like mode? With normal sleep (whether timed, selected from the Apple menu, or via a touch of the power button), use of the keyboard or a mouse click will awaken the computer. Just wondering.
It looks like that is indeed the behaviour for waking from deep sleepy-bear hibernation. On my MBP anykey waking won't work, I must hold the power key for a second.
Going _into_ deep sleep, though, was instantaneous.
Let’s say you’re reading an article online, and you read a sentence that you want to email to a friend. Don’t do the copy-and-paste thing. Instead, just highlight the text and drag-and-drop it right on the Mail icon in the Dock. It will open Mail and put that sentence into a new mail message. This tip also works in other Cocoa applications like TextEdit, Stickies, and Safari. For example, if you’re reading a story and want to do a Google search on something you’ve read, just highlight the text and drag-and-drop it on the Safari icon in the Dock. It will launch Safari and display the Google Search Results.
This whole thread, but particularly HowEver's starting post, should be made a permanent sticky.
Since we're sharing tips, here are two a lot of people -- even longtime users -- don't always know:
1. If you have a lot of windows of the same app open (for example in Safari or Word) you can close all of them instantly and simultaneously by holding the option key down when you close any one of them. Works in every app I've tried.
2. Related to HowEver's tip above, if you want to send a page URL to a friend you can simply "drag" the URL from Safari by grabbing the icon at the beginning of the URL and drag down to the Mail icon. Mail will open a new message with the URL as the first line of the message. (There is also a service to do this if you want to do it that way, but I find the drag technique faster.)
Here's a tip from elsewhere. I haven't tried it, and it's not for the faint of heart, as they say, but it seems like a cool modification. You need to have Developer Tools installed and know how to use same.
>Open the Browser NIB (inside Safari) in Interface Builder (part of the dev Tools), select the tab bar and move it to bottom. You may need to move the webview up to get room at the bottom.