Learning OS X

Dashboard is an application that is used to display mini applications known as widgets. Think of these widgets as little helpers that provide you information at the push of a button.

The Dashboard program runs at system startup and is hidden in the background until you activate it. When you do, the desktop dims and the widgets float into view on top of the applications. OS X comes with some default widgets for displaying the time, calendar, control iTunes, the Weather, sports scores, etc. In addition, 3rd party developers also make widgets that you can download and install into your system.

You can typically invoke the Dashboard in three ways:

• Key press – pressing F4 on your Mac keypard, or F12 if you are using a Macbook
• Clicking the Dashboard Dock icon
• Moving the mouse to a corner of your desktop. This only works if you have setup the System preferences to allow it.

You can move a widget by clicking it and dragging it around the desktop.

You can close a widget by pressing the Option key and moving the mouse over the widget. When you do, an X will appear. Click it and the widget goes away.

I like the Dashboard. It enables me to keep at a keypress alot of useful utilties. My favorite Dashboard widget right now is the Tempo time logging widget. There are times that pressing F12 is a bit too inconvenient. I sometimes want to leave a Dashboard widget on the desktop so I can always see it. Oddly, OS X doesn’t give you an easy way to make Dashboard widgets stick to the desktop.

Not to be deterred, I did some poking around and found a neat trick to allow you to do this. Before we begin, you must be comfortable using the Mac Terminal application.

1. Open Terminal (Application->Utilities->Terminal)
2. Type defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES
3. Type killall Dock

Your Dock will disappear for a few seconds and then reappear. Once it does, you can move Dashboard widgets onto the Desktop.

1. Press F12 to display the Dashboard
2. Pick a widget and hold down the mouse button
3. Press F12 again

You’ll see the widget now is on the desktop. You can stick it wherever you want. You can put the widget back into the Dashboard by clicking it first, pressing F12, then releasing the mouse.

If you want to go back to the defaults, do this:

1. Open Terminal (Application->Utilities->Terminal)
2. Type defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode NO
3. Type killall Dock

Pretty handy trick eh? If you have any other interesting OS X hacks, please let us know in the comments.

I recently had some severe Windows XP flashbacks. If you’ve switched from a PC to a Mac, you probably were accustomed to random crashes that you could not track down to any one particular component or application. Your only solution was to reformat and reinstall Windows. This, was the experience I faced recently with OS X.

I gradually began noticing random lockups while using the system. Sometimes, while surfing the internet, I would get the spinning  ball and the entire OS would become unresponsive. Sometimes, when switching screen resolutions the screen would go blank. Sometimes, my system wouldn’t come back from sleep.

To troubleshoot this problem, I removed all running services, uninstalled as many applications as I could. Still, the problem persisted.

I then decided to use the hammer. I reformatted and reinstalled OS X. I regularly backup my system so this step wasn’t too painful. I reformatted the disk and reinstalled the OS X 10.6. My machine started up clean, I was able to surf the web, my problems looked like they were solved – until I ran Software Update. I applied the combined 10.6.3 patch, restarted the computer. Within 5 minutes of using the newly patched system, the problem returned.

I Googled, 10.6.3 lockup and came across a number of people on the Apple forums that were experiencing similar problems. I reformatted the system and turned off the Software Updates. I also applied the 10.6.2 patch which is available on the Apple Website directly. I’ve been running for a few weeks now without issue.

If you have an iMac, and are experiencing problems. You’re not alone. If for some reason you haven’t applied 10.6.3 yet, you may want to wait.

Regular readers of this blog might swear I work for the folk at 1Password. Honestly, I don’t! It is just one of my favorite OS X applications.

I’m also gradually loving Google Chrome. It’s fast compared to Firefox and is developing a rich ecosystem around plugins. The only thing keeping it from becoming my primary browser was the lack of support for 1Password.

All this changed about  today when I discovered that Agile Web Solutions created a 1Password Chrome extension. I don’t believe it was very well publicized so I’m hoping this post remedies it.

It’s a little rough around the edges but you can download the 1Password Chrome Plugin here.

Have fun!

Mail.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