Check For OS Updates

Not so much a tweak as a precondition for tweaks, if you’re installing from a disk that isn’t brand new, chances are there’s been an update to OS X since you got it. The latest updates often contain important security fixes for applications, but they also occasionally add features to the OS.

How To Do It: That Apple icon at the far left side of the menu bar isn’t there just for looks (although it is pretty). It’s a system menu wherein you’ll find a number of important options. Among them is ‘Software Update.’ Select it from the menu to find out whether or not you’re up to date. If not, a dedicated update application will lead you through an easy process to get you there.

Install Quicksilver

For me this is a no-brainer, but without Quicksilver installed my Mac feels almost foreign. In short, Quicksilver lets you navigate your file system and launch apps and documents with a keystroke. Quicksilver is to my Mac as oxygen is to my body. It’s the only install on my initial checklist, but it makes completing the remainder of this checklist much quicker. High priority.

How To Do It: Head over to blacktree.com and download the application. Unzip it and run the installer. The default shortcut is Option + Space, but I like to swap with Spotlight for Command + Space access to Quicksilver.

Set the ‘Select Search Field’ in Safari to Command + K

I need a two finger shortcut for selecting the Google search box in Safari. The default Command + Option + F is a bit too clumsy. I take my cue from Firefox and go with Command + K.

How To Do It: Go to the Keyboard and Mouse pane in System Preferences. Select the Keyboard Shortcut tab and click the little ‘+’ button near the bottom of the pane. Select Safari from the application menu and type in ‘Google Search…’ exactly as it appears in Safari’s Edit menu. This will override the default shortcut.

Put the Applications Folder in the Dock

Despite my near complete reliance on Quicksilver, I still do use the mouse from time to time, especially to launch an application whose name I’ve forgotten. I keep my Applications folder in the Dock for times like this.

How To Do It: Simply drag your Apps folder from the top level of your HD into the Dock. Once you’ve done so, right click on it and select Sort by Name, Display as Folder and View Content as List. Set up like this, a click will open any app, but a Command click will reveal the app in a new Finder window.

Set Up Hot Corners

Top left – Sleep Display. Top right – Application Windows. Bottom left – All Windows. Bottom right – Desktop. If you use the mouse it’s amazing how quickly you can accomplish work with this setup.

How To Do It: Go into the Exposé and Spaces Preference pane in System preferences and click on the Exposé tab. It’s pretty self explanatory from here, but a a side note you can also set custom mouse buttons to invoke Exposé’s window management features.

Customize Toolbars

I pull Open in Dashboard and Add Bookmark from Safari. The first is accessible from the File menu, while the second with a simple Command + D. Preview also stands a bit of customization.

How To Do It: Open up the app that you’d like to customize and right (Control) click on the toolbar. Select Customize from the contextual menu. I remove everything which can be accessed by an easy keyboard shortcut. As you can see from the screenshot, I also set all but a few application windows to Icon Only display mode.

Disable Automatic Opening of ‘Safe Files’ in Safari

I’ve never gotten a virus on my Mac and I don’t intend to do so. This simple tweak (which really should be the default, Apple!) secures your Mac against any files which would automatically execute their evil on download.

How To Do It: Jump into Safari’s preferences and, under the General tab, uncheck the ‘Open “safe” files after download’ box. Small tweak but good piece of mind.

Speed Up the Mouse and Trackpad and Enable 2 Finger Scrolling

I love a super fast tracking speed, and I’m lost when I use a Windows laptop and can’t scroll with two fingers on the trackpad. I’m not sure if two finger scrolling is the default on new Macs now, but when I had my first MacBook, it wasn’t.

How To Do It: Go into Mouse and Trackpad settings in System Prefs and crank up all the dials. Next, click the appropriate checkboxes in the pane to get the most out of your trackpad (which boxes appear will vary depending on the Mac your on).

If you really want to speed up the trackpad and mouse, install MouseZoom and up the speed to “Insanely Fast.” Once you get used to it, I guarantee you won’t go back.

Move the Dock to the Side, Enable Hiding and Kill Magnification

There’s more horizontal screen space on all new Macs. A dock on the side just makes sense. And the aesthetic effect of Dock magnification is ruined for me as soon as it gets in the way, which occurs the moment I move my mouse anywhere near the Dock. I’ll add that radically change and rearrange Apple’s default Dock apps, but that’s something pretty specialized so I won’t go into exactly what I keep there.

How To Do It: Go into the Dock’s System Preference pane and uncheck Magnification. Dial down the size of the Dock, choose a Dock position (I’m a fan of the Left hand side, but your opinion may differ) and make any other mods you like. Unlike many, I’m quite fond of the Dock – as long as it’s set up the right way.

Hide the Macintosh Hard Drive on the Desktop

By default, a shortcut to the root level of your file system will appear on the Desktop on a clean install of OS X. Considering that the same is accessible from the Finder’s icon in the Dock, such a shortcut is superfluous and just takes up space on an already crowded workspace. It’s easy to hide your Macintosh HD.

How To Do It: Open the Finder and bring up its preferences (Command + ,). Uncheck Hard disks from the menu and your shortcut disappears. If you want new Finder windows to open up your root HD level, you can easily set that in the dropdown menu directly below the checklist.

Remove Unwanted Printer Drivers

Apple is obsessed with plug and play. Hook up almost any printer in existence and OS X will automatically recognize it with zero configuration. But this convenience comes at a steep price: HD space. Delete the printer drivers that you’ll never use and regain up to 3 GBs of hard drive space back.

How To Do It: Some will tell you that it’s a bad idea to mess with files in your root level Library, and generally I agree. However, here I think you can make an exception. Find the folder called ‘Printers’ in Your HD/Library. Find the folder for your brand of printer and delete the others.

As said, it’s good to exercise caution when modifying the contents of files in your root Library. To make sure I don’t mess anything up, I first burn my Printer driver folder to a DVD in case I need to install a new printer in the future. Right click on the folder and select ‘Compress “Printers”‘ then drop the resulting .zip file into a Burn Folder and back it up. It’s a safe way to regain some space for your movies, music and pics.

Although I consider removing unwanted printer drivers completely safe, I want to emphasize that you are deleting files from an important directory. Again, back it up and you’ll be fine.

So there it is – a rough guide to how I get my Mac just how I like it after a reinstall. I hope you’ve found a trick or two you didn’t know about.

What about applications? Here’s the first 10 apps to install on a fresh Mac and here’s the second 10. If you’re looking for something you haven’t heard of, try Lesser Know Mac Freeware – 10 Apps and Utilities. If you’ve got a few bucks to burn, these 10 shareware apps are worth considering.

Thanks for reading and I hope you’ll subscribe to the RSS feed for future updates.

Download Missing Album Artwork from the iTunes

Cover Flow may not be the most useful iTunes view, but it certainly looks awesome. Every track or album that you buy on the iTunes store includes album artwork to make sure it looks great when you flip to it in Cover Flow. But if you’re like most people and a good portion of your music has been imported from CDs or some other source, you may suffer from significant visual gaps in your library when scrolling through Cover Flow. When this happens Cover Flow’s effect is ruined.

Happily, Apple has added to iTunes the ability to automatically download artwork for music in your library even if of wasn’t purchased from the iTunes store. To add the missing covers, first make sure that you’re signed in to your iTunes account. Go to the Advanced menu and select Get Album Artwork. iTunes will scan your library for tracks with missing artwork and add it for you automatically. After it’s finished (it can take a bit of time if your library is large) you’ll see a big improvement when using Cover Flow view.

iTunes’ Get Album Artwork feature is great, but if you’ve modified any of your track or album names in your library, iTunes likely won’t find the correct artwork. To finish the job, you’ll have to roll up your sleeves and add the missing artwork by hand.

Gather Artless Songs into a Playlist

But before you begin, it may be a good idea to size up the magnitude of the task. The best way to do this is to gather all of the songs and albums without cover art into a playlist. And the easiest way to to that is with the help of one of Doug’s AppleScript’s for iTunes.

Doug’s Tracks without Artwork to Playlist script combs your library for faceless albums and creates a playlist with the results. If your library is large, this will take some time, and unfortunately the script doesn’t give you much in the way of status updates, but be assured that it is doing its job and in a few minutes (or 10) you’ll have all your blank albums in one spot.

Once you’ve rounded up all your coverless albums, you can use a few more scripts to search the net for your covers. Try some more of Doug’s scripts for this:

• Search CD Universe for Album Art
• Sloth Radio for Artwork
• MusicOutfitter for Artwork
• Find Album Artwork with Google Image Search

For each of the above scripts, simply select a song in iTunes with no art and run the scrip and a new Safari window will open with your missing art. Adding the art to iTunes is easy: select the correct artless songs and then drag the artwork from Safari onto the aptly named ‘Drag Album Artwork Here’ drop panel in the bottom left corner of iTunes.

Amazon Album Art Widget

Adding album art by hand is certainly no picnic whatever way you look at it. An alternative route to AppleScripts is with the excellent Amazon Album Art widget. In my experience, this is the most convenient way to get the job done quickly.

Download the widget and install it in the daahboard by double clicking the file. Select an album in iTunes with no cover art, open Dashboard and click the little iTunes icon in the Amazon Album Art widget. Your album’s information will automatically populate the search field and send a request up to Amazon for the artwork. To add the art to iTunes, simply click the Set As Album Art in iTunes button and the widget will add it for you to the selected tracks. It’s quick and satisfying.

Fix Unsightly Track Titles with Automator

By now your music library should be looking great. Here’s a final trick to make it look its best.

Occasionally when importing tracks into iTunes, track names will inexplicably show up in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. If this bothers you as much as it does me (i.e., a lot) use this simple Automator action to rewrite them in a more sane fashion.

Open up Automator (in Applications >> Automator) and drag the two actions from the source list (you can filter the list by typing a few characters into the search box). Select the deviantly named tracks in iTunes and run the action from within Automator. Automator will capitalize the first letter of each word and set the rest to lower case.

Adding artwork to your iTunes library can be a daunting task. Nevertheless, as Apple continues to focus on the visual elements of your media library, the steps described above will have your iTunes library looking beautiful when its time to show it off to friends.

If you want freeware (and who doesn’t?) here’s 10 Apps for a Fresh Mac. And here’s ten more.

1Password

The internet is a scary place! As the monsters become smarter, you need to take precautions against their sinister designs. 1Password is a password manager for your Mac. Safari already saves passwords for you in your keychain, sure, but 1Password enhances this inbuilt capability ten-fold. Smartly save your new passwords from web forms in its database and autofill them the next time you visit. When it comes time to create a password for a new site or service, use 1Password’s strong password generator to make sure your form is secure. All of my passwords are now 28 characters of mixed letters, numbers and symbols – strings that I could never remember, but 1Password makes it so that I don’t have to. Peace of mind.

Download 1Password from Agile Web Solutions. 34.95 USD after a free trial period.

MarsEdit

I love blogging. But I love blogging even more because of MarsEdit. Far and away the best blogging client for the Mac, MarsEdit is akin to a plain text editor that lets you apply custom markup macros to your writing and send your work up to your weblog with a single click (or keystroke, in my case). Set up is dead simple, and despite MarsEdit’s power under the hood, the application is extremely intuitive and easy to use. And if your into scripting your apps, MarsEdit’s extensive AppleScript support won’t let you down (read about my MarsEdit workflow, with scripted goodness, here). Perhaps best of all, MarsEdit’s developer consistently releases maintenance builds between major updates and adds significant features almost monthly.

Get MarsEdit from Red Sweater Software. It’s 29.55 USD after a 30 day trial.

CSSEdit

CSSEdit lets you edit CSS (cascading style sheets) and preview the results of your experimentation instantly in its integrated browser. I can’t speak for experienced CSS mavens, but if you like to experiment and want to learn one of the most important aspects of the new web, CSSEdit is an amazing teacher. Install the included bookmarklet and open up any site you’re viewing in Safari in CSSEdit. Examine the code. Modify the code. Learn. View style hierarchies in the preview window, set new classes and ids via an HUD pop up and apply styles using comprehensive drop-down menus. When you’re satisfied, send your creation up the server via your favorite FTP application without leaving CSSEdit. The app may cost 30 Euros, but to me that’s cheap tuition.

Download CSSEdit from MacRabbit. It’s 29.95 Euro after a time unlimited demo with crippled saving.

WriteRoom

WriteRoom is the application in which I am writing up this post. Beautiful and fully customizable full-screen mode! I’ve tried the excellent Scrivener, but that application has far more firepower than I need – WriteRoom is simply full-screen, distraction free goodness. But WriteRoom has replaced TextEdit for me in most cases, and not because I need full-screen for everything I write, but because even when editing documents in a discreet window the application is completely soothing on the eyes. A nice, black text editor! WriteRoom’s extensive options let you set your text color and background to whatever you like, moreover, so if black isn’t your fancy, change it up. This is something of a luxury application, but whatever increases your ability to crank out words is worth the money in my opinion.

Download WriteRoom from Hog Bay Software. It’s 24.95 after a demo period.

Airfoil

If you have an Airport Express and haven’t heard of AirFoil, your time has come. The Airport Express comes equipped with AirTunes, which can send audio from iTunes to remote speakers over your network. Amazing! But what about Safari? Songbird? Or GarageBand? Install AirFoil and send audio from any application to your Airport Express. What about video? If you’re sending sound alone to your Airport Express, your Mac will buffer the output in maintain a clear signal. This makes video impossible to watch – you’ll see someone talking and hear what they say 3 seconds later. But Airfoil 3 comes with Airfoil Video Player, a full featured video app that syncs video with its audio output. It’s brilliant. Airfoil completes Apple’s Airport Express.

Get Airfoil from Rogue Amoeba. 25 USD after a demo which overlays noise on transmissions longer than 10 minutes.

Hazel

I wrote about how I use Hazel to keep my desktop organized and since I’ve taken the pill, I can’t imagine my Mac without it. Hazel is folder actions on steroids, without all of the AppleScript effort. It can monitor any folder on your Mac for incoming files and ‘do stuff’ with them – almost anything. Move jpegs from your downloads folder into Pictures, Mp3s into Music or PDFs into Documents. Set colors to your new folders an files or after a defined time, move or delete older files. Auto empty the trash at a certain size, delete your applications as well as all their associated files, trigger Automator actions, shell scripts or AppleScripts when the contents of a folder changes… I feel that there’s so much here that a discerning user will undoubtedly find new ways to use this diamond of an application. Amazing app.

Download Hazel from Noodlesoft. 21.95 USD after a two week trial.

XScope

If you do any kind of visual designing on your Mac, XScope is something you should check out. XScope is a color picker, on screen ruler set and light browser emulator rolled into one. XScope also allows you to draw Photoshopesque grids on your screen if you need to line things up vertically or horizontally. The application’s most novel feature, however, is a kind of smart measuring tool that lets you quickly (very quickly!) find the distance between two screen elements using an expanding ruler. XScope’s keyboard shortcuts are extensive and a bit of a learning curve must be overcome, but the application is designed thoughtfully and moreover is quite pretty in itself. If you use a bunch of separate tools to pick colors, take measurements and compare screen elements, XScope will replace them all and give you new tools that you never knew you needed.

Get XScope by The Iconfactory. It’s 26.95 USD after a 40 hours of usage.

FastScripts

Readers of MacMembrane know that I am an enthusiastic if amateur AppleScripter (check out my collection of free scripts). Your Mac comes with a built in menu-bar utility to access your scripts on the fly and that’s great, but once you try FastScripts you will see the poverty of Apple’s script menu. FastScripts lets you assign scripts to context specific folders which will only show up when their parent application is active. When I’m in Safari, for example, only my Safari scripts will be fully exposed in the top menu. To access your other scripts, just scroll down to their folder. More importantly, however, is that FastScripts lets you assign shortcuts to any or all of your scripts – hence the name of the application. There are, of course, freeware methods by which you can assign shortcuts to scripts or anything else (Quicksilver is my favorite), but it’s FastScripts’ elegant management of your AppleScripts that makes the application one of my favorites. If you script your Mac, FastScripts will make you smile.

Download FastScripts. 14.95 after a 30 trial. A free FastScripts Lite version is also available (download link near bottom of page).

QuickTime Pro

QuickTime Pro is a small up-sell that Apple sneaks into OS X. If you only have QT installed, have a look through the menus – many will be disabled until you shell out the cash for QT Pro. The upgrade gives you a wealth of export options, as well as a super quick way to slice up a video, adjust it’s sound or color range, or export it for the web. QuickTime Pro, as is to be expected, integrates tightly with all of iLife, so, for instance, you get a bunch more options when you export from iMovie. For small edits and tweaks to your movie files, QuickTime Pro is a great investment.

Get QuickTime Pro from Apple. It’s 29.95 USD.

TextExpander

TextExpander is a productivity tool that lets you reuse common snippets of text without retyping them over and over again. The utility sits in your menu bar and provides you with a folder organized list of your text snippets which you can insert into any document. I’ve heard it used most for replying to stock emails, but I use it whenever I’m working on a new website. When I open a blank CSS file, I enter into TextExpander all of the values that I will use over and over again in my style sheet. This makes it easy if I need to jump over to Photoshop to create an image using like colors or dimensions. It’s a quick way to work, and you can even download a bunch of stock snippets relating to XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc. from the developer’s website. Amazing time and sanity saver.

Get TextExpander from Smile on my Mac. 29.95 USD after a 30 trial.

There we have it! There are so many sweet applications for the Mac that I could write a hundred posts like this. What are your favorites? Let me know in the comments!

Disk Inventory X is a utility that combs your drive or a hierarchy of folders therein and delivers up a pretty and colorful representation of how your files are filling up your drive.

It’s easy to spot which files are eating up drive space, as well as glean a quick understanding of which file types are most prevalent on your Mac. When you find something interesting, right click to reveal the file in the finder, or move it to the trash from within Disk Inventory X. Super easy to use and really useful.

Download Disk Inventory X. It’s freeware.

Fortunately, there is an easy way to force an application to quit even when you can’t access the command from the menu bar. First, bring any application to the front which is still working fine and click on the Apple menu in the far left of the menu bar. Select Force Quit from this menu and a floating window will appear where you can select the delinquent application and kill all its processes (unresponsive applications will have a red alert beside their name which you can’t miss). If, for whatever reason, you can’t select the Apple menu (this sometimes happens when Finder itself enters into some repeating loop labyrinth), just press Cmd + Opt + Esc and the Force Quit window will jump to the front. Force the culprit to quit or restart Finder and you’ll be up and running again.

A more troublesome situation is when a background application – that is, an application that doesn’t show up in the dock when running – begins to misbehave and eat up CPU cycles or becomes generally aggressive. This sometimes happens with menu bar applications and the force quit menu will be of no help to you in this case. Not to worry. Open up Activity Monitor (in Applications >> Utilities >> Activity Monitor). Here you’ll see a list of all the processes running on your Mac. If you know the name of the offender, start typing its name in the “Filter” field at the top right of the window and it should bubble up to the top and be highlighted in red. If you don’t know the reason why your fans began running in overdrive, click on the CPU process organizer at the top of the main pane. The most aggressive process will filter to the top and then you can force quit it by hitting the big quit button at the top left of the window.

The above two methods should take care of most situations when your Mac’s performance suddenly grinds to a crawl. If everything freezes up, then you’re left with no choice but to hold down the power button for a few seconds and force the system to reboot. I can’t imagine how this is good for your Mac, but fortunately you’ll need to resort to it only in the most extreme of situations.

All of these applications are freeware, but donations are usually accepted.

Update: I have written a second post, 10 Outstanding Freeware Apps for your Mac, as a compliment to the below list. 10 didn’t seem like enough to give a true sense of the range of excellent freeware for the Mac. Make it 20!

Adium:

The most versatile and customizable chat client for the Mac. Doesn’t do video, but whatever the protocol of your preferred chat network, Adium will support it out of the box. Really beautiful interface, too.

Download Adium.

Azureus:

Azureus is the most advanced bit torrent client for the Mac. It’d be difficult to describe the app as light-weight, but Azureus’ feature set can’t be beat. I’ve tried a good number of alternatives, but Azureus has never let me down.

Download Azureus.

HandBrake:

HandBrake is hands-down the best tool to rip DVDs for use on your Mac or iPod. Some of its conversion options are a bit arcane, but the application comes set up with sensible defaults. It’s also a great tool to get your DVDs onto your Apple TV.

Download HandBrake.

iSquint:

The little brother of Visual Hub, iSquint will convert most popular video formats for viewing on your iPod and iPod Touch without hassle. Even if you don’t have an iPod, iSquint can format videos for the AppleTV, too.

Download iSquint.

Senuti:

Senuti (that’s iTunes spelled backwards) lets you download music from your iPod back onto your computer. It’s a great tool to have around should you fall victim to corruption in your iTunes library. It even works with Windows formatted iPods.

Download Senuti.

Flip4Mac and Perian:

Two plugins that allow QuickTime Player to play a wide range of popular video formats that are unsupported out of the box. With these two installed, both DivX and WMV files should play without problem. (Pictured to the right is the Perian icon. I think it’s prettier.)

Download Flip4Mac and Perian.

VLC:

The media player extraordinaire, VLC will play pretty much anything you throw at it, including lossless FLAC audio files. If you ever find yourself confronted with an obscure video or audio format, give VLC a try.

Download VLC.

Skype:

Cross-platform VoIP client. Skype lets you make worldwide audio and video calls to other Skype users for free, and you can call normal phones for a fraction of the cost most telephone companies charge you.

Download Skype.

Miro:

Miro is an all-in-one torrent client and media player that lets you search for Creative Commons torrents from within the app itself. With a bit of effort, you can even set Miro up to automatically download all your favorite mainstream TV shows.

Download Miro.

iStat Pro:

An awesome Dashboard widget that gives you a ton of information about the current state of your Mac. Battery charge, top processes, network usage and lots more. A menubar version is also available.

Download iStat Pro.

Firefox:

A bonus application (Firefox makes eleven, if your counting): I am a Safari user, but it’s bad karma to be running a Mac without Firefox installed. A standards compliant, cross-platform and highly extensible web browser.

Download Firefox.

This list assumes nothing about the user beyond a general interest in music and video and that they have a few friends that they’d like to communicate with online. The list can be easily extended to cater to any individual’s computing needs, but the apps listed above should be a really good start for the majority of users.