Archive for Mac-OS-X tag
Hidden menu options on the Mac
Apple tends to hide away unusual functionality in order to keep the user interface easy to use.
Here are a few hidden menu options that magically appear when you press the Shift, Alt or Ctrl modifier keys.
Standard menus
Apple menu
- Alt > System Profiler… (Leopard only)
- Alt > Shut Down (with no confirmation)
- Alt > Restart (with no confirmation)
- Alt > Log Off (with no confirmation)
- Shift > Force Quit ? (current application)
File menu
- Alt > Close All (in some applications)
Edit menu
- Alt > Deselect All (in some applications)
Window menu
- Alt > Minimize All
- Alt > Zoom All
- Alt > Arrange in Front
Finder
Finder menu
- Alt > Empty Trash (no confirmation)
- Alt > Secure Empty Trash (no confirmation)
File menu
- Alt > Always Open With
- Alt > Show Inspector (like Get Info but changes to reflect whatever you select)
- Shift > Slideshow (Leopard only)
- Shift > Add to Favourites
- Shift > Find by Name… (Leopard only)
- Ctrl > Open in this Window (Leopard only)
- Ctrl > Get Summary Info
View menu
- Alt > Clean Up
- Alt > Keep Arranged By (Leopard only)
Go menu
- Ctrl > Enclosing Folder in this Window (Leopard only)
Dock
Application running menu
- Alt > Hide Others
- Alt > Force Quit
Safari
Application menu
- Alt > Private Browsing (no confirmation)
File menu
- Alt > Close All Windows
- Alt > Close Other Tabs
Bookmarks menu
- Shift > Add Bookmark to Menu
Pages
Edit menu
- Alt > Delete Page (no confirmation)
Insert menu
- Alt > Custom Footmark…
QuickTime Player
Window menu
- Alt > Show Movie Info
iPhoto
Photos menu
- Ctrl > Hide Flagged Photos
- Ctrl > Move Flagged to Trash
- Alt > Clear All Flags
Events menu
- Alt > Merge With Next
iChat
Buddies menu
- Alt > Send Direct Message
Window menu
- Ctrl > Logout Jabber List
Xcode
File menu
- Ctrl > New Empty File
- Ctrl > Close Project
- Alt > Open in Separate Editor
- Alt > Reveal in Finder
- Alt > Show Inspector
- Alt > Save All…
- Alt > Save a Copy As…
View menu
- Alt > Zoom Editor In Fully
- Alt > Split View Horizontally
Project menu
- Shift > Ungroup
Run menu
- Alt > Step Into Instruction
- Alt > Step Over Instruction
Find menu
- Shift > Find Previous
- Shift > Replace and Find Previous
- Alt > Find Select Regex in Project (Damn useful!)
- Alt > Replace All
OmniWeb
File menu
- Alt > Save As…
Bookmarks menu
- Alt > Open Bookmarks Window
- Ctrl > Open All Changed Bookmarks
OmniGraffle Pro
Edit menu
- Alt > Select None
Arrange menu
- Alt > Bring Forward
- Alt > Send Backward
Note: OmniGraffle Pro also toggles various toolbar buttons on alt including lock/unlock and which side the utilities drawer slides out.
OmniOutliner & OmniFocus
View menu
- Alt > Expand Line Completely
- Alt > Collapse Line Completely
VMWare Fusion
Virtual Machine menu
- Alt > Start Up Guest
- Alt > Shut Down Guest
- Alt > Suspend Guest
- Alt > Restart Guest
Colloquy
View menu
- Alt > Show Inspector
- Alt > Mark All
Window menu
- Alt > Select Previous Active Panel
- Alt > Select Next Active Panel
Camino
View menu
- Alt > Reload All Tabs
- Shift > Force Reload Page
Bookmark menu
- Shift > Bookmark Current Page
- Shift > Bookmark Current Tabs as Tab Group
If you like keyboard short cuts you might also want to check out KeyCue which can display all of an applications short cuts on in a single list when you hold down the Apple key including these key-modified options.
Heavy keyboard users may also want to head to the Keyboard & Mouse preferences pane where you can switch on full keyboard navigation allowing you to tab through all controls in a window. It also shows a number of useful key-navigation options you may not be aware of such as pressing Ctrl-F3 to select an item from the dock.
[)amien
Font rendering philosophies of Windows & Mac OS X
Jeff Atword asked What’s Wrong With Apple’s Font Rendering? and as I answered in the comments it comes down to philosophy:
The primary difference is that Microsoft try to align everything to whole pixels vertically and sub-pixels horizontally.
Apple just scale the font naturally – sometimes it fits into whole pixels other times it doesn’t.
This means Windows looks sharper at the expense of not actually being a very accurate representation of the text. The Mac with it’s design/DTP background is a much more accurate representation and scales more naturally than Windows which consequently jumps around a lot vertically.
Jeff and Joel both wrote follow up posts agreeing that it is one of philosophy but both are of the opinion that the Windows pixel-grid approach is the better whilst our displays are only capable of low dots-per-inch (DPI).
What they don’t seem to appreciate is the compromise this causes.
Here is an example of Times New Roman on Windows (left) and Mac OS (right) scaled over whole point sizes with sub-pixel precision:
The two thing to note here arising from this “pixel-grid is king” approach are
- Windows does not scale fonts linearly as the rough line points out
- Windows scales the height and width but not the weight of the font
Neither of these may matter to a casual user but for professionals preparing material destined for high DPI (film or print) then it’s a world of difference. How can you layout a page on-screen and expect the same result on the page when the font isn’t the same width?
The issue is reminiscent of the “I hate black bars on wide-screen films” brigade who believe that the film should be chopped, panned, scaled and otherwise distorted from the artists original intention simply so that it fits better on their display.
Typography has a rich and interesting history developed and honed over centuries. It is a shame to misrepresent typefaces especially as the pixel-grid approach becomes less relevant as displays reach higher resolutions.
Update
Some additional comparisons and a note that the gamma differences between Windows and Mac will affect how you see the “other” systems rendering on your machine.
Further update (21 August 2007)
Thanks to Daring Fireball and ZDNet we’ve had a few more great comments which I’ve summarised here:
George thinks the philosophy idea is wrong because “What percentage of Mac users sit around all day doing nothing but pre-press work?” but as Fred points out Microsoft’s desktop-user optimised rendering ends up on images and videos all over the web, thus escaping the environment for which it was crippled.
George also claims that Vista’s rendering is improved, I can’t vouch for that one way or another but from looking at his screen shots the difference there could simply be the contrast level as adjusted by the ClearType tuner.
Nathaniel believes that it’s not Microsoft’s job to manipulate a typeface and that if you want on-screen readability then choose a font designed for that such as Microsoft’s own Tahoma or Apple’s Lucida Grande.
I’d go further and say that Microsoft’s own aggression in sticking to the grid kills font choice at the regular reading size of 10/11 point by optimising everything to a generic sans or serif look:
Windows XP
Mac OS X
James points to an article called Texts Rasterization Exposures that proposes a combination of using vertical hinting only and calculating horizontally to 256 levels and has some convincing screenshots showing the benefits. Probably too late for Leopard or Vista SP1 though.
[)amien
What next for Mac OS X?
Well obviously the hot item for the next major release of Mac OS X will be Intel compatibility but I’m hoping they’ll get a chance to squeeze some new features in too. Here what I’d like to see next:
FrontRow
Apple’s new iMac-only media centre interface seems to gave garnered quite a bit of a attention. So much so that enterprising individuals have hacked it onto their Mac. Apple should make it available to non-iMac users, possibly as part of 10.5, the next iLife or maybe even bundled with the optional remote control.
User interface unification
Every new app Apple release seems to have a new user interface now. While the look is merely cosmetic the behaviour is often affected leading people to expect one result and get another.
Here’s hoping the iTunes 6 UI trickles across through the whole system, perhaps even with a switch in control panel that lets people choose between that and Aqua. In the mean time check out Uno which sorts out as much as it can visually, behaviour needs to be done by Apple.
If you feel like stealing what little Longhorn still had, check out the Ruler Aero theme instead.
Uninstaller
Back when OSX was still called OpenStep it featured a rather nice install system called Package Manager. OS X still has the installer part of this and indeed records the receipts for use by an uninstaller… That has never existed. Come on Apple, sometimes we need to uninstall apps and we’d rather not trudge around the /Library/ to clean up after them.
Microsoft Windows in a window
Apple have already claimed they will be encouraging dual-booting with Windows on their new Intel boxes even if not actively supporting it.
A better approach would be something similar to their Blue Box virtual machine running Mac OS 9 apps under OS X. As 10.4 will use their new Rosetta technology to run PowerPC apps on Intel this should be simple by comparison. The problem here is that they may need to get Microsoft to licence them portions of VirtualPC.
iTunes DVD audio-track ripping
If Apple want to shift more of their higher end iPods whilst keeping the record labels in check, why not introduce a function to rip the audio soundtrack from DVD video’s to iPod’s. I for one have a bunch of comedy shows and stand-up material I’d like to have on the go and I’m sure not paying for them again.
[)amien