If you use a new MacBook, or an iPhone/iPad/touch, you know how cool the new touch gestures are. Now you can add a trackpad to your iMac or Mac Pro. The new, wireless, Apple Magic Trackpad is designed to fit perfectly with the Apple wireless keyboard. Multi touch technology lets you click, scroll (360 degrees), pinch, flip, navigate your Mac like no mouse ever could. The entire surface of Magic Trackpad is one large button, so you can click and double-click anywhere. Magic Trackpad also supports a full set of gestures, including two-finger scrolling, pinching to zoom, rotating with your fingertips, three-finger swiping, and activating Exposé or switching between applications with four fingers. My order is in! $69
Trackpad for your desktop Mac?
July 29th, 2010
Super Efficient Battery Charger – Apple? – $29
July 28th, 2010
When I first looked at this new Apple product, I wondered why Apple would build and sell something as mundane as a battery charger. When I mentioned it to our service manager, Patrick told me to take a closer look and showed me why. This little device is over 10 times more efficient than the average charger. When the batteries are full, it goes into a sleep mode that only consumes 30 milliwatts. (average charger is 310mw) Then consider that the NIMH (Nickel Metal Hydride ) batteries have a life of up to 10 years. With 2 AA’s for your keyboard and 2 for your mouse (plus 2 spares ready and waiting) this little charger will keep a bushel basket of batteries out of the landfill! Plus, keep a little more green in your pocket.
Apple Battery Charger – $29
comes with charger, wall plug and 6 NiMH AA batteries.
You’ve Got Options!
July 1st, 2010
Ever wonder what that Option key was for, tucked between your Command key* and the Control key**? It has several hidden tricks up its sleeve!
1. Diacritical marks. As I discussed in last month’s Tip and Trick, hold down the Option key, type a vowel to get a diacritical mark, let go, then type the letter you want that mark above. For example, “Option – e – let go – a” gives you an “á”.
2. iPhoto’s Rotate. By default, the Rotate button turns your picture 90° counter-clockwise. Hold down the Option key and it will change to clockwise.
3. Degrees and other special characters. Notice that degree symbol in #2 above? I held down the Option key when typing the asterisk. “Option-Shift-8” gave me an “°”. This will work on several keyboard combinations. ¡E??e®îmeñ†! (Experiment!)
4. Switch your speakers or microphone. Hold down your Option key and click on the Speaker icon in the upper right corner of your screen. If you have speakers, a microphone, or headphones plugged in, you’ll be able to choose them off a list. So if you want to switch back to your computer’s internal speakers, you can do so in a flash.
5. Open System Preferences. Hold down your Option key and tap on any of your F keys, the top row on your keyboard. You can immediately open up System Preferences directly to Brightness, Expose, Keyboard, or Sound.
6. Jump down a page. Right now, if you click in your scrollbar above or below the blue bubble, it will either jump you up/down a page, or to that place in the document. Hold down the Option key and it will reverse the setting. Find a long page in Safari or Word and give it a try! Very handy!
7. Open up new Inspectors. This trick works in Keynote or Pages. Open your Inspector, the panel that contains all the commands. Option-click on one of the buttons across its top, and you can have your Text pane open at the same time as your Object pane!
*for keyboard commands
**for right-click shortcut menus
