by on January 15, 2011 6 Comments

Synchronize Two iTunes Libraries

iTunes Home Sharing feature is a great way to listen to content in other iTunes libraries around your house. It’s also pretty simple to copy individual songs. In my case though neither of these options are quite good enough.

I am a multiple Mac household. I have a MacBook Pro for work, my wife has a MacBook and my kids and I share an iMac as the family computer. I was keeping my iTunes library on my iMac but since I’ve begun using my MacBook Pro I’ve wanted to have my music there.

What I really want to do is have an easy way to keep both the iTunes library on my iMac and MacBook Pro synchronized. After doing some searching around I found that it’s pretty easy to do with some features built right into Mac OS X.

At the end of this article you should be able to sync your iTunes library from one Mac to another. [Read more...]

by on July 24, 2010 Leave a Comment

DVD Player

Watching DVDs on your Mac is easy with the built in DVD player. You can launch it two ways.

1. Pop a DVD in your Super Drive and the DVD player launches.
2. Open the Applications folder and click the DVD Player icon.

The DVD Player has an on screen “remote control” that has a button layout similar to a real DVD player. It’s shown below.

However, if you are a real power user, you can use the keyboard shortcuts to control the DVD player.

Transport Controls

If you want to play or pause the DVD player you can do so by pressing the Space Bar. You can fast forward and rewind the DVD by pressing Shift-Command-Right Arrow and Shift-Command-Left Arrow. If you just press the left and right arrows, you can jump backward and forward a chapter.

The volume is controlled by pressing Command-Up Arrow and Command-Down Arrow. You can Mute and Unmute the volume with Option-Command-Down Arrow.

You can go into full screen mode by pressing Command-F. You can bring up the Main Menu by pressing Command-~ (It’s the upper left key of most keyboards).

Finally, the DVD player application has built in support for the Apple Remote that is shipped with some iMac and Macbook computers.

by on April 23, 2010 4 Comments

Remove Previous Recipients from Mail.app

Mail.app OS X Mail ClientMail.app sometimes is a little too smart, especially when it comes to completing addresses as you type them in the address fields.

When you send an email to someone Mail.app stores it in a list called Previous Recipients. Then, each time you send an email, the software tries to guess who you want to send an email to as you type it in. This generally works well. If, however, you have old email addresses that you know longer use, it will sometimes show up first in the completion field. This adds a few extra keystrokes to finding the right recipient, slowing you down.

It is however possible to clean up this list. This is one of those tips that is super easy but bugged me for sometime until I found it.

  • Open Mail.app
  • Choose Window -> Previous Recipients.

Inside this window you can do a number of things including:

  • Adding a recipient to your address book
  • Removing them from the list
by on November 16, 2009 Leave a Comment

Using Automator for Education

automator-iconIf you’ve used Mac OS X for a while now, you may of discovered Automator, the drag and drop scripting system that allows you to automate tedious tasks very easily. I’ve used it to create an “Send to Email” script which allows me to select an attachment in the Finder and send it via email.

Totally Apps has posted a guide written by Apple’s Production Manager for Apple Automator Sal Soghoian. He is one of the names behind Apple’s Automator Workflow application he shared the stage with Steve Jobs while introducing this whole new way to work.

by on November 7, 2009 5 Comments

Print Envelopes and Mailing Labels from Address Book

I’ve been using OSX for a few years now but every once in a while I run into one of those obvious features of the OS that I never knew about. This happened just the other day with the Address Book.

The Mac Address Book has a very full featured print facility which lets you print envelopes, mailing labels, even a pocket address book. You just need to select a card or range of cards and select Print from the menu. Check out the video below to see the entire process.

Have you come across anything about OSX that you never knew existed, tell us about it here.

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