Mac Moment

*shakes head in amazement*

OK, so who started laughing hysterically when they realized exactly HOW useful the dashboard was? Cute gimmick I thought. I added a chia pet and a lava lamp. I used it to check the weather once. *yawn*

Then I was poking around in preferences and realized F12 would display it. Oh isn't that nice, I don't have to mouse to water my chia pet.

Clicked a bit more, played a bit more. Hmm, I can add an iTunes controller to the dashboard. Oh and post it notes.

A few minutes later I am writing away and a song I didn't want clicks on. I hit F12, hit fast forward, escape, and I was back to work. *blink*

It seems like such a simple thing but not having to mouse over to the dock, open iTunes, hit fast forward, minimize iTunes again. It saves clicks, it saves time, it just works!

OK that's my Mac moment for the day, back to what you were doing.

(PS - Roommate has started giving me dirty looks from behind her Dell laptop.)

tandaina, and that is only the start. There are LOTS more such moments in your future.

My favorite is this. You are editing a document and you realize that you need to save it in a different folder. On Windows, you can spend forever using that tiny Save As dialog to navigate to the correct folder. On the Mac, you type in a few words of the name of the destination folder in the Spotlight area of the Save As dialog and BOOM, Mac OS X just moves there directly, no muss, no fuss. You just saved 30 seconds of annoying folder hierarchy navigation in cramped little Window.

Just one of many Wow! moments on your Mac.

There are package tracking widgets that are amazingly useful. For example:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/shopping/deliverystatus.html

You enter the tracking number once. From there, you can go to the dashboard and see how long until it is delivered. With UPS anyway you can click on the widget and a web page will open on the desktop for you to see detailed progress. No more cut-n-paste. Keep it in your dashboard when you need it, retire it once your package arrives.

Simple? Yes. Easy? Yes.

This Mac Moment was brought to you by people who actually want you to enjoy using your computer.

if you're that impressed by the iTunes widget, you'll like a program called SizzlingKeys4iTunes. It lets you assign hotkeys to iTunes controls so you don't even have to go into Dashboard to change a song. I couldn't live without it.

I'm a big fan of the WeatherBug widget and the 3-2-1 Countdown timer from baldgeeks.com.

The live Feed from Old Faithful is the coolest widget out there. It updates every thirty seconds and I can watch Old Faithful erupt from almost 1,000 miles away (in thirty second intervals, at least).

Ohh, Sizzlingkeys is making me VERY happy.

I've been using computers since they didn't have internal hard drives and I have never, ever, found an OS this much bloody fun.

Sizzling keys looks GREAT!
See, this is why I'm doing lots of reading up on Macs and OS X while I'm waiting to make my purchase. This is definitely something I'll want to use. I'm sure the dashboard widgets will turn up some other cool surprises, too.

I like "GimmieSomeTunes" best for itunes. I can use hotkeys, but it also puts translucent buttons wherever I want so I dont have to think about what button to push.

My First Mac Moment was the Expose, It's the first thing I miss when using a Windows PC.

tandaina said:

I added a chia pet and a lava lamp.

Click to expand...

Get help.

I love the SMS widget from Vazu.
Text messages without the expense

Just come across "Target Disk" mode, which allows me to connect my MacBook's hard drive on my PC (I have MacDrive 7 software) via the Firewire connection. Even better to another Mac.

Makes file transfers a lot easier & quicker.

I happen to like my bouncy ball.

My girlfriend uses long words I don't understand, so the most useful widget I've found is the Dictionary one.

Rambaud said:

Just come across "Target Disk" mode, which allows me to connect my MacBook's hard drive on my PC (I have MacDrive 7 software) via the Firewire connection. Even better to another Mac.

Makes file transfers a lot easier & quicker.

Click to expand...

please explain....

it sounds like this would have made backing my whole laptop up on the PC a lot easier when I had to get it serviced last (I transfered everything over the network)