Mac Apps thread

[melvbot]

Right vidjo time. Services works with Cocoa based apps like Mail, Safari etc. I used Text Edit as its on every Mac and its easy to see whats going off by making the text big.

[melvbot]

I love keyboard shortcuts, the less I have to rely on a mouse the quicker I seem to get things done with a lot of apps.

First here a list of the keys used
⌘ is the Apple key
⌥ is the Option key
⇪ is the Shift key
⏏ is the Eject key
ctrl is the Control key

Control+Eject......................Shut Down, Sleep, or Restart Options

Apple+, (comma key)................Preferences for active app

Apple+O.............Open Document

Apple+S.............Save Document

Apple+Shift+S.........Save Document As

Apple+W...............Close Window

Apple+Option+W.............Close All Windows

Apple+I.............Get Info (file info if selected in Finder)

Apple+Q..............Close Application

Apple+Delete...........Move Highlighted Items To Trash

Apple+E...............Eject

More to come

[melvbot]

This works in Safari 4, not sure about earlier versions. You can do a quick Google search by highlighting a word/block of text and just dragging and dropping the text onto the Safari icon in the dock.

[melvbot]

I sometimes come across YouTube videos that I want to watch at a later date, tutorial for something or whatever. Firefox has add ons to do this and Im sure there are some standalone apps that do it as well but Safari can do it pretty easily without any add ons or plugins.

To play YouTube videos (.flv) all you need is VLC which will play them straight away.

Heres how to do it.

[Butterfly]

tutorial for something

hum, that video above doesn't look right or is it ?

[melvbot]

tutorial for something

hum, that video above doesn't look right or is it ?

Its an instructional video for the wife.

[The Fresh Prince]

Melvbot, are there any mac virus's out there at the moment? I've just had a email from one of our web servers saying that our site has been infected with a "Gumblar Attack" To me it seems more likely that it was their server that was attacked and not our website.

I know that in the past Macs couldn't get virus's but I wasn't sure about these days.

I just want to make sure its not me making the problem before I update any more pages from my mac.

[melvbot]

Melvbot, are there any mac virus's out there at the moment? I've just had a email from one of our web servers saying that our site has been infected with a "Gumblar Attack" To me it seems more likely that it was their server that was attacked and not our website.

I know that in the past Macs couldn't get virus's but I wasn't sure about these days.

I just want to make sure its not me making the problem before I update any more pages from my mac.

Yes there are nasty things that can get onto Macs but I dont think theyre quite as easy to catch as on Windows. There was some sort of dodgy code/virus/malware/whatever aimed at Macs on a popular porn site not long ago but the site I read it on (BBC or something) didnt say which one so it was pretty useless info.

There are trojans out there as well which seem to be planted in torrents of software but Ive no idea how bad they are, how they spread or what damage they cause.

Gumblar seems like a server attack that then gets on the computer somehow.

Experts: Gumblar attack is alive, worse than Conficker | Security - CNET News


Theres a free virus scanner for Mac here

ClamXav

[The Fresh Prince]

Cheers, If I run that virus scan though, will it become an annoying pop up thats always on my computer?

[The Fresh Prince]

Also, links not working.

[melvbot]

Also, links not working.

Just tried the link and it works fine for me. Ive used it once or twice and its never nagged me, you just run it and let it do its thing.

[The Fresh Prince]

Mucho's gracious, I'll try again later when I get home. Maybe its my dodgy work connection.

[The Fresh Prince]

Ok I managed to get it from a different link, I downloaded it, un-archived it and installed it.

Where did it go and how do I run it? I can't find it anywhere in my applications or utilities folder.

[melvbot]

Ok I managed to get it from a different link, I downloaded it, un-archived it and installed it.

Where did it go and how do I run it? I can't find it anywhere in my applications or utilities folder.

Easiest way would be to use Spotlight (top right, magnifying glass thingy) and type in the name and it should show a load of results.

What link did you use?

[The Fresh Prince]

Turns out the link I used was no good. Anyway, got the correct download sorted out and got it up and running.

One more question, I set it to quarantine any bad files into a separate folder, it found 3 Trojans, what do I do with them now? Chuck them in the bin or keep them in their own little folder?

[melvbot]

Turns out the link I used was no good. Anyway, got the correct download sorted out and got it up and running.

One more question, I set it to quarantine any bad files into a separate folder, it found 3 Trojans, what do I do with them now? Chuck them in the bin or keep them in their own little folder?

I'd delete them. Thing is nothing actually gets "deleted" it just get marked as disc space to be overwritten. What I would do is delete them, run it again and if nothing shows up delete the free space on the HDD. This overwrites the free space (where deleted files end up, I think) with zero's and ones.

[The Fresh Prince]

run it again and if nothing shows up delete the free space on the HDD

How do you delete the free space?

[melvbot]

How do you delete the free space?

Funny you should ask that

[The Fresh Prince]

Cool cheers! Does that refresh your hard drive in anyway too? mines been getting a bit slow recently.

[melvbot]

Cool cheers! Does that refresh your hard drive in anyway too? mines been getting a bit slow recently.

Not really, nothing noticeable anyway. Do you leave it turned on for long periods? i.e days/weeks?
Do you use any system maintenance software?

[The Fresh Prince]

I do leave it on for weeks at a time. I had the free trial with Xslim but never purchased the full copy. I don't really use any system maintenance software apart from what comes on the mac. What would you suggest?

[melvbot]

Theres load of these around. Theres built in maintenance that should occur at a certain time of day (0200-0500?) but only if its on and awake, if its sleeping then they dont get carried out.

MainMenu | Keep your Mac in shape

IceClean

Titanium Software

Main Menu is probably the easiest, when its open it sits in the menu bar, click on it an look for "Maintenance Scripts" then there the option to run the daily, weekly, monthly or all maintenance scripts. You can check and repair permissions with it as well which might help a bit, could be a myth for all I know.

This isnt a one shot solution to speeding up a drive, it could well be something else but thats slowing it down but this is the basic stuff to keep it running a bit leaner.

[The Fresh Prince]

Nice one. I'll give them a go. Its not super slow, but no where near as good as it was when it was new. I upgraded the ram to 3gig which made it a bit better but I do usually work with large files of up to 1gig.

[melvbot]

Have you got lots of files/icons on the desktop like this?

[The Fresh Prince]

Nah, I keep a very clean desktop. I t only has my hard drive and one folder called 'torrents in use'.