• 10.6: See grammar suggestions on hover Snow Leopard only hintSnow Leopard has an built-in grammar checker (in Cocoa and other certain apps) that will place green dotted lines under any possible grammatical errors it detects. (You may have to enable this first, in the program's Edit » Spelling and Grammar » Check Grammar With Spelling.) However, accessing the corrections panel using Control-Click » Spelling and Grammar » Show Spelling and Grammar has always seemed cumbersome. Now I've discovered that simply hovering the mouse over the underlined word pops up a tool tip description of the error. [robg adds: The first option in the contextual menu will be the replacement suggestion, but the Spelling and Grammar box will typically have more information. Given you probably want to make the suggested change anyway, I prefer the contextual menu, so I can see and replace; the to... Add to digg Add to Reddit Add to Slashdot Email this Article Add to StumbleUpon
  • Check the status of the online Apple Store via shell script Sometimes, like today, I'm particularly interested in the Apple Store's status...as in, when is it back up so that I can order whatever it is I'm waiting to order. While sitting around pressing Command-R this morning, I figured there must be a better way. After a few minutes with curl and GeekTool, I had the solution. Because I didn't have very much time to implement this trick this morning, I just created a new 'Shell' Geeklet in GeekTool, with the refresh set to every five seconds, that showed the output of this command: curl -s http://store.apple.com/us | grep backsoon | grep australia Note that the above is specific both to the US Apple Store, and to the current version of that store. You may have to modify it for other geographies, or for future store site changes. Basically, what the command does is grab the Apple Store page via curl, suppresses the normal output (-s... Add to digg Add to Reddit Add to Slashdot Email this Article Add to StumbleUpon
  • Enhance readability of sites with very small text on the iPhone Sometimes I visit a website on my iPod Touch that is almost unreadable due to the expected size of a screen on a desktop computer. Even when zoomed in, some sites have the text continue off screen, meaning I'd have to scroll left and right to read a whole line of text. I have MobileMe and sync my bookmarks between computers and my iPod Touch. And one day I happened across just such a too-small site. Frustrated, I decided to just try my Readability bookmarklet, and was happy to see it worked! You'll need either an iPhone or iPod Touch and a computer that you sync your device to via USB or MobileMe. From a computer, navigate to Readability and set your desired options. I like Inverse, Extra Large text, and Extra Narrow margins, but pick what you like. Drag your bookmarklet to your bookmark bar, as the site instructs. (You can move it to your Bookmarks menu, anywhere, or into the sidebar of Safari's Bookmark ... Add to digg Add to Reddit Add to Slashdot Email this Article Add to StumbleUpon
  • Set photo titles to picture capture date in iPhoto The titles iPhoto chooses for just-added photos is the annoying "IMG_nnnn" serial number from the camera. This AppleScript simply takes the date of the photo (EXIF info that iPhoto knows very well) and uses it as the photo title. The format is: yyyy-mm-dd-hh.mm.ss, so it's a bit easier to read than the ISO version, but also easily sortable. Here's the code: tell application "iPhoto" -- activate -- bring iPhoto back to front copy (my selected_images()) to these_images if these_images is {} then error "Please select some images before using this script." set thename to "" set thepaths to "" set thedates to "" repeat with i from 1 to the count of these_images set this_image to item i of these_images --set this_file to the image path of this_image set thename ... Add to digg Add to Reddit Add to Slashdot Email this Article Add to StumbleUpon
  • Create Growl alerts for Address Book contacts' birthdays I have a lot of people in my Mac OS X Address Book. I thought it would be a nice idea to have the system check the birthdays in Address Book, and inform me of any forthcoming birthdays via a Growl notification. So I've created an Apple Script to do that (with a lot of help from a few other peoples). First, install Growl if it isn't installed. Also install the Terminal growlnotify command, which you'll find in the Extras folder on the Growl disk image. Next, copy and paste the following into AppleScript Editor: delay 0.5 set isRunning to 0 set timer to the time of the (current date) repeat while isRunning = 0 tell application "System Events" set isRunning to ¬ ((application processes whose (name is equal to "GrowlHelperApp")) count) ... Add to digg Add to Reddit Add to Slashdot Email this Article Add to StumbleUpon
  • Avoid a potential issue with voice control on iPhone 3GS If you have entire albums, artists, or playlists excluded from shuffling in iTunes (The 'Skip when shuffling' flag is set), your iPhone 3GS will fail to play these albums, artists, or playlists when you select them using Voice Control if it has shuffle play mode enabled. The manner in which it fails makes it seem as if something is seriously amiss (hence this hint): It acknowledges your voice input, indicating that your selection is about to play (e.g., 'Playing album Avatar'), but then returns to whatever had been playing before. If nothing had been playing before you gave the voice command, the iPhone will remain resolutely silent after acknowledging your input. The solution to this 'issue' is, of course, to simply to turn off shuffle play mode. Unfortunately you can't do this with a voice command (as far as I know). Add to digg Add to Reddit Add to Slashdot Email this Article Add to StumbleUpon
  • Experiment with GIMP's new single window mode Are you curious, like me, about the new Single Window Mode (most excellent; see this article at Ars for more details) available in the newest unstable 2.7.x GIMP releases? Well, sadly, the final and stable GIMP 2.8 release won't come out before the end of this year, and there are still no experimental 2.7.x binary releases available for Mac OS X (via X11). One could always try to compile everything from source, but that might be quite complicated and time-consuming. So, let's look at another, definitely easier way of running GIMP 2.7.x on Mac OS X: not (semi) natively through X11, but through virtualization. First of all, we need a virtual machine with the latest Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic), or even 10.04 (Lucid, in Alpha at this time) installed: you can create a 32- or 64-bit Ubuntu VM in... Add to digg Add to Reddit Add to Slashdot Email this Article Add to StumbleUpon
  • Use one bookmark to load different versions of a site I have several sites that I access on both my iPhone and desktop, so I like to have quick access to them via the Bookmarks Bar. However, these sites have different versions for the desktop, for mobiles, and, in some cases, yet another version for the iPhone. Usually, the full version doesn't work so well on the iPhone, and the iPhone version is undesirable on the desktop. Instead of creating a plain bookmark, a little Javascript can make a bookmark context-sensitive, and allow you to have one bookmark that opens the right version of a page, depending on which platform you're browsing from. The basic idea is to use some client-side Javascript to check the browser's platform (a.k.a. operating system), and then tell the browser to access a URL based on that check. The code looks like this: javascrip... Add to digg Add to Reddit Add to Slashdot Email this Article Add to StumbleUpon
  • Poll updates - iPad results and new Intel/PowerPC survey Two poll updates today. First, I've posted a new poll about the mix of Macs you're presently using -- Intel (via Apple), Intel (via build-it-yourself), PowerPC, or some mix of the above. I'm curious to see not only the mix of Intel and PowerPC, but how many are using self-built Intel powered Macs. The second poll update is that the iPad interest poll has now closed, with just over 10,000 votes. Of those who voted, nearly 44% are planning on buying iPad 1.0 when it comes out in April, with a virtual tie (two votes' difference) between then cheapest and the most expensive versions for the most-popular spot (11.3% each). In total, Mac OS X Hints readers will be buying at least (as the poll didn't allow for more than one purchase) $2.92 million worth of iPads! An additional 29% claim they'll buy the second gen... Add to digg Add to Reddit Add to Slashdot Email this Article Add to StumbleUpon
  • Disable AirPort when Ethernet cable is connected At my office, I needed to find a way to turn of the wireless network when someone plugged in their network cable. I also did not want them to be able to turn the wireless network back on until the network cable was unplugged. I came up with the fallowing solution. I created a launchDaemon called com.companyname.ethernetmonitor, and saved it in /System » Library » LaunchDaemons: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> <plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>Label</key> <string>com.companyname.ethernetmonitor</string> <key>ProgramArguments</key> <array> <string>/Library/Scripts/CompanyName/turnOffAirp... Add to digg Add to Reddit Add to Slashdot Email this Article Add to StumbleUpon
  • Clean .DS_Store, .Trash, and ._resources files prior to copy Frequently we need to clean a directory before zipping it or copying it to an external USB drive to be used by Windows or Linux users. Apple Finder has the custom of populating directories with those unavoidable .DS_Store files, volumes with .Trashes, and some files (especially pictures) with ._resources. The following interactive script will safely remove these files prior to copying. #!/bin/sh # bash script to clean (delete) Finder .DS_Store, .Trashes and ._resources # Use cleandsstores.sh # juanfc 2010-03-06 if [ $# != 1 ] then echo "ERROR: use\n\t`basename $0` dirtoclean" exit 1 fi res=`find "$@" \( -name ".DS_Store" -or -name ".Trashes" -or -name "._*" \) -print` if [[ -z $res ]]; then echo "nothing to delete" exit 0 el... Add to digg Add to Reddit Add to Slashdot Email this Article Add to StumbleUpon
  • Create SuperDuper! backup reminders using Growl and cron I use a couple of shell scripts that use Growl to remind me to run SuperDuper backups. The first script (backupcompleted) is set to run after each SuperDuper backup. It writes a timestamp into an invisible file called .lastbackup in my home directory; here's the script: #!/bin/bash # This script is run by SuperDuper each time a backup is completed. date "+%s" > ~/.lastbackup The second script (lastbackup) reads the .lastbackup file and calculates the time elapsed. It takes one argument: the desired number of hours to wait before showing an alert. If the elapsed time is greater than the time suppled to the script, it shows a Growl notification. If the elapsed time is greater than twice the time suppled to the script, it also increases the priority of the alert (so you can set a diferent colour for it in Growl preferences). Here's the script: ... Add to digg Add to Reddit Add to Slashdot Email this Article Add to StumbleUpon
  • 10.6: Use AppleScript for precise trimming in QuickTime X Snow Leopard only hintMost of us know that Quicktime X, included with Snow Leopard, can trim movie and audio files. However, this trim is less than precise, as you cannot specify an exact trim start and stop point. Worse yet, if you want to make 10 minute segments for YouTube, you have to write down the last trim end time, undo the previous trim after uploading, and hope the trim slider will let you select the same trim point to start your next clip. What a pain. Enter AppleScript -- trim is a scriptable function. Open your movie in Quicktime X, and open the AppleScript Editor in the Application » Utilities folder. In the AppleScript Editor enter this script: tell application "QuickTime Player" activate trim document 1 from start_trim to end_trim end tell Replace start_trim and end_trim with the time, in seconds, at which you wish ... Add to digg Add to Reddit Add to Slashdot Email this Article Add to StumbleUpon
  • One solution to finding missing free space on an iPod Over the weekend, I plugged in my old-style 80GB iPod for the first time in, well, a long time -- so long that the battery needed to be charged a bit before it would even sync. Once the sync started, things seemed to go well, but near the end of the photos section, iTunes displayed a message telling me there wasn't enough room to copy all my photos. This was a bit odd, because best as I could recall, my iPod had about 20GB of free space the last time I synched. And while it had been a while, there's no way I took enough photos to fill 20GB -- especially at the iPod's resolution (I don't sync full-sized copies). I noticed that the Other (orange) section of the Capacity gauge in iTunes was huge -- basically all the remaining space was used up by Other. Switching to the Finder, I quickly scanned through the iPod's various folders (it was set to enable disk use) with the Inspector open (Command-Option-I), and they all looked normal in size ... until I got to Photos &r... Add to digg Add to Reddit Add to Slashdot Email this Article Add to StumbleUpon
  • Batch update Faces in iPhoto to match Address Book entries I bought a new iMac and went crazy with Faces in iPhoto. Two days later I had a lot of tagged photos in Faces. Then I noticed that since I synced my Address Book with Google Contacts, Address Book entries were appearing as suggestions in Faces. I didn't want to re-tag all my existing Faces photos, but there didn't seem to be an obvious way to link a new Address Book contact to an existing Face. So I took the only honorable course of action and starting messing around. I discovered that you can transfer a Faces collection to an Address Book contact very quickly. Assume you're working on John in your Faces collection, who has the entry John Doe in your Address Book. Go into Faces and pick any photo of him, double-click to view it and then click name. Start retyping John and John Doe should be one of the suggested values, with an Address Book icon next to the name. Click to select it. Go back to the Faces cork board and you should now have your original John ... Add to digg Add to Reddit Add to Slashdot Email this Article Add to StumbleUpon
  • 10.6: Type accented characters without the Option key Snow Leopard only hintIf you regularly use a language that requires letters with diacritics -- such as ?, etc. as they are used in Spanish, French or Portuguese -- and you recently switched from Windows to Mac OS X as I have, you might find this hint useful. In Windows, while there were various ways to enter these characters, the best one of them was just to enter a ' and then the vowel, and you would get the accented version of that letter (in this example, the letter with the acute diacritic). In Mac OS X however, if you set the keyboard layout to a language that has these letters (such as Spanish), you cannot use this trick; the only way of inputting these letters is the standard way supplied in Mac OS X (Option-e then e for ?Option-e, then i for ?etc.). I personally found this very annoying, and searched for... Add to digg Add to Reddit Add to Slashdot Email this Article Add to StumbleUpon
  • Pay with an AmEx (Gift) Card in the iTunes Store A few days ago, I wanted to get iTunes to accept my AmEx Gift Card, but somehow it always said the security code was invalid. Different from VISA and MasterCard, the security code from an AmEx Card is on the front and is four digits long. There was no doubt this code was in fact valid, and I was typing it correctly. Obviously I wasn't the only one with this problem -- Apple's Support Discussion Board was filled with people complaining about that, and the "hints" there weren't working at all. As for me, it worked after I put an empty space after the last number on the card. The reason: iTunes wanted to have 4 4-digit parts (16 digits) of the credit card number, but the AmEx had only had 15 digits. This was causing the invalid security code. However, you couldn't tell that in the first place, because all iTunes showed after rejecting the code was **** **** **** 4123. In fact, 123 were at positions 13 to 15 in the real credit card. But iTune... Add to digg Add to Reddit Add to Slashdot Email this Article Add to StumbleUpon
  • 10.6: Copy URLs from downloaded files Snow Leopard only hintIf you download a file with Safari or certain other programs, you may be able to copy its download URL from its Get Info window. Select the file in the Downloads folder (or elsewhere) and press command-I. Find the Where From ntry in the More Info section of the Get Info window. Hold down the mouse button and drag across the URL listed there to select it, then choose Copy from the Edit menu (or press Command-C). [robg adds: This will only work in 10.6; 10.5 won't let you select the text in that field. I'm not sure which browsers/apps other than Safari record this data; Firefox does not.] Add to digg Add to Reddit Add to Slashdot Email this Article Add to StumbleUpon
  • Do some basic image manipulation via a free AppleScript app Want to do quick and dirty image editing on the fly? Let Image Events do the work for you. I created a free AppleScript app, which I've named uPad; download the script (112KB) (macosxhints mirror -- but use the original link as long as it works.), and then read on for some notes on how to use it... uPad is an image manipulation utility that can convert, crop and pad, scale, and rotate images. It's an AppleScript that uses the Image Events process to read and manipulate images. For convenience, use a launcher to launch the AppleScript -- I'm using Spark. Or, for access from the menu bar, enable Show Script menu in menu bar in AppleScript Editor's General preferences, and put uPad in ~/Library » Scripts » Applications » Finder (you might have to create some of those folder... Add to digg Add to Reddit Add to Slashdot Email this Article Add to StumbleUpon

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