Get Your Mac Working Better
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Get your Mac working better

No doubt, Apple Mac really is a very good product for user experience. Mac OS X Lion has many great features, but even the best operating system can be made better with tweaks. Lion is no different in that sense from Windows or Linux. Since it's so now many of us are struggling with getting used to it and trying to figure out how to get the most out of it.

 

Here are some tips and apps to help you get better with Mac. Go ahead.

 

Hide Your Desktop Debris

If you find yourself constantly embarrassed or distracted by your messy desktop habits, download Camouflage, a free app that quickly hides everything on your desktop.

 

Sync Application Libraries Across Macs

Use the previous tip to create a new library for an application and place that library in your Dropbox folder. Then choose this library with the same application on any other Macs that you own and all the application data will remain synced between the two Macs!

This trick is completely free, just be sure to watch the size of the libraries you are syncing as it’s really easy to eat up all your Dropbox space. Or you want to play video on your ipad, this ipad video converter for mac can help you. Take a gook look and try it.

 

Quick Look Zoom

While Quick Look is launched, hold down the option key to turn your cursor into a magnifying glass. Then click to zoom in. Hold shift and option to zoom out.

 

Show your home library folder

Type in “chflags nohidden ~/Library” in the Terminal. Or open Finder, open the Go menu and then "go to folder." Type ~/Library/ and you should see the folder.

 

Blank Screen in a Hurry

For those college students out there who like to check out the scores on ESPN.com during lectures, there’s a shortcut that will help you hide your obvious inattention as the professor walks by.

Hit ⌃⇧+eject to immediately dim your screen to zero brightness. This will effectively put your display to sleep so that inquiring eyes find only darkness. Be careful though, moving your mouse or hitting any key will bring it all right back up.

 

Safari Extensions

The most recent iteration of Safari has a new extension system similar to that of Firefox. To install an extension, simply download the file and double click it.

 

Note that MobileMe calendar syncing is set in iCal not in the System Preferences pane.

 

Take Screenshots

To take a picture of your entire screen, hit Command-Shift-3; you'll hear a shutter sound and the screenshot will be saved to the Desktop. For more control, Command-Shift-4 brings up crosshairs to let you manually capture a certain part of your screen.

 

Here are the apps. You should give it a try.

Joost

A very hot application that lets you watch free TV. Beautiful application even though the amount of TV stations are a bit small.

 

HandBreak

An open source application that can quickly convert DVD’s to Mpeg-4. Also, you can extract audio from video on mac in such a way.

 

Theme Park

A great little app which lets you delve into the resource files for applications and lets you change them. Not as powerful as Shapeshifter but lets you tweak little bits of your operating systems interface.

 

Fish

A simple little program that shows you little fishes swimming around.

 

Rulers

Put a ruler on your screen. This application lets you measure nearly anything on your screen, great if you are in the design world.

 

Growl

A very useful tool that is used by many applications to show a clean way of displaying messages to you. Like the bubbles in Windows except a hell of a lot better.

 

Cha-Ching

A simple money program that helps you organise your accounts, budgets and finances.

 

 

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