by on January 12, 2011 Leave a Comment

The Utilities Folder

Utilities help fix your MacTucked away in the Mac Applications Folder is another folder, the Utilities folder. I like to differentiate applications and utilities like this. Applications help you get things done with your Mac and utilities help you get things done to your Mac.

The programs in the Utilities folder help you fine tune, troubleshoot and configure your Mac system. Some of these programs you will likely never use but it’s good to know they are there in case you run into problems with your system.

The programs are listed below. Some of the programs that you will use more often have their own article associated with them. Click through the links for more information. [Read more...]

by on January 9, 2011 4 Comments

50 Killer Ways to Work Faster with LaunchBar

LaunchBar Mac Application LauncherLaunchBar, the super cool application launcher, has saved me hours each year in productivity improvements. At it’s simpliest LaunchBar lets you launch applications on your Mac without you ever having to lift the keyboard. However to call this program a mere application launcher does it a great disservice. Where LaunchBar really shines is in all of the things you can do in addition to launching applications.

I started thinking about all the cool things that I do with LaunchBar and the more I thought about it the more new ideas came my way.
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Below is a list of all the awesome things you can do with LaunchBar that you might not of realized. I describe each item along with the shortcut command to perform the action. Remember for each of these actions you need to first invoke LaunchBar (Option+Space). [Read more...]

by on January 7, 2011 Leave a Comment

Quickly Navigate In and Out of Finder Folders

Mac OS X FinderI found this by accident today. I thought it was cool enough to warrant it’s own post.

If you highlight a folder and press the Cmd plus the arrow keys some cool stuff happens. Here you go.

Cmd+Right Arrow will open the contents of the folder in your current window

Cmd+Left Arrow will close the open folder in the current window

Cmd+Down Arrow will open the the folder in the existing Finder window

Cmd+Up Arrow will open the parent folder in the existing Finder window.

Try them today. Pretty sweet.

by on January 5, 2011 Leave a Comment

DVD Ripping Software Handbrake Get’s Major Update

I’m in love with my new Apple TV so it shouldn’t be too surprising that the last few posts have been video related. I’ve talked about Handbrake before. It’s a great one stop application for ripping and converting your DVD collection to a number of Mac friendly formats. The other day it received a major overhaul.

While not apparent on the Handbrake website this new version adds some great tweaks to the existing feature set including:

  • BluRay disc structure support. (No decryption support)
  • Updated Libraries (x264, ffmpeg)
  • SSA Subtitle support. (Including burn-in)
  • MP3 audio now supported in MP4 files (Note: Limited Player compatibility)
  • VOBSUB subtitle now supported in MP4 files (Note: Limited Player compatibility)
  • Updated Presets for newer devices and better quality
  • AC3 encoding support.
  • Improved DVD Main Feature detection (when using dvdnav)
  • Universal audio downmix support (all audio types can be downmixed)
  • Point*to*Point encoding (second or frame start and end times)
  • Peak framerate option (Capped VFR)

All GUIs

  • Updated x264 Advanced Panel
  • Video Quality Slider drops % value and only shows RF for x264
  • Batch Scan (Scan Multiple files at once. N.B: Does not include multiple VIDEO_TS folders / Image files)
  • Many Bug fixes
  • Many Tweaks to improve usability.
  • Ability to edit queue jobs

Mac GUI

  • New Audio Panel supporting >4 Audio Tracks
  • VLC detection in /Applications and ~/Applications
  • Multiple instance support

The ability to read the Blu-ray disc structure. This allows Handbrake to rip Blu-ray discs much easier than it did before. It still won’t decrypt them but there are other tools for that.

by on December 30, 2010 Leave a Comment

Control What Happens When You Insert A DVD or CD

When you insert a CD or DVD player into your Mac the OS X detects the disc type and then will launch the appropriate program. With CDs it will launch iTunes, with DVDs it will launch the DVD player. In most cases, this is exactly what you want to happen. However, if you want to prevent the DVD Player application from launching when you insert a DVD or iTunes from launching when you insert a CD then you need to turn these actions off.

I have my DVD player setup so that it doesn’t launch any application when you insert a disc. You can also customize it to open a different application. The first step is to open the System Preferences. Then, click the CDs & DVD preference

When you click on this it opens the preferences that lets you set the action you want to take for each device.

CDs & DVDs Preference showing Disc menu

If you insert a blank DVD or CD you can specify whether or not to launch a disc burning application. The default, Ask what to do is generally a good setting for blanks.

If you insert a disc with content on it, music, pictures or video you can take additional actions. The options above the horizontal line are default behaviors. If you click Open other application you can browse to a specific OS X application. Run script is useful if you have any custom actions you want to perform on the disc. Finally, Ignore will do nothing. For DVDs, I prefer Ignore.

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