Hi - Newbie with several questions/comments

[EightmanVT]

So - I finally did it. I finally bought a Mac - something I never thought I'd see myself do. I think the iPad gets a lot of credit for me becoming comfortable with the idea - and so far - so good. I'm enjoying the Mac learning curve - and the MacBookPro I bought is a beautiful piece of engineering. Since I'm starting over - a bit - I thought I'd tackle a few things at once. I want to be able to: store all my photos on a stand alone drive, access them from anywhere - but primarily my couch where I'll edit them on the MacBook. I want to have a common calendar that gets syncronized across the MacBook, iPad and possibly iPhone. Even better, I'd love to have it set up a second calendar that syncs with my work blackberry which is already OTA synced with the Microsoft Exchange Server. I forgot to add that I have at least one windows machine which will stay in use for a while - it right now has the majority of my files - and has a back up drive tethered. Who knows - if this Mac experiment continues I may eventually replace that - but no good reason right now except that it has Vista which I'm sick of wrestling with.

I'm a little overwhelmed by the potential options. I can't decide if I should use Google - as my main calendar/e-mail in the cloud. I have a trial subscription to Mobile Me which promises to do quite a bit - but I'm not sure that I want to get committed to something that needs an annual fee - but it might be worth it. I'm looking for some suggestions that might streamline the approach to getting everything consolidated across devices and platforms.

One unrelated simple question. Is there a way to change the keyboard shortcuts in Mac Mail? I really am used to ctrl+enter to send e-mails and since I use Outlook at work - adjusting to command+shift+D is awkward.

 

[MacShane]

Sounds like you answered your own question with regards to syncing your devices. I would use Google, if I didn't want to subscribe to MobleMe. MM will just be a more seamless solution across all your Apple devices.

You can make any keyboard shortcut you want. Go to the Apple Menu (upper left)=>System Preferences=>Keyboard=>Keyboard Shortcuts tab. Use the + tab to add your own shortcut.

 

[EightmanVT]

Sounds like you answered your own question with regards to syncing your devices. I would use Google, if I didn't want to subscribe to MobleMe. MM will just be a more seamless solution across all your Apple devices.

You can make any keyboard shortcut you want. Go to the Apple Menu (upper left)=>System Preferences=>Keyboard=>Keyboard Shortcuts tab. Use the + tab to add your own shortcut.

Hmmm... So - I hadn't noticed when I first found that in SysPrefs that it included access to shortcuts to apps. Thanks for pointing that out. Now - I went and tried to add a shortcut for Send message - but all I seem to have done is remove the default.

 

[EightmanVT]

Sounds like you answered your own question with regards to syncing your devices. I would use Google, if I didn't want to subscribe to MobleMe. MM will just be a more seamless solution across all your Apple devices.

You can make any keyboard shortcut you want. Go to the Apple Menu (upper left)=>System Preferences=>Keyboard=>Keyboard Shortcuts tab. Use the + tab to add your own shortcut.

Just exited Mail and restarted - which brought the default shortcut back - but not my addition. I'd settle for cntrl-enter or cmmand-enter.

 

[MacShane]

I just went in and changed the shortcut for the exact thing you want to do and it worked fine. Make sure you type the exact name of the command you want to shortcut to - e.g. "Send Again". You are in effect "programming" the shortcut in, so it is important to use correct syntax.

 

[MacShane]

And in case you do better with visuals, here you go:

Here's what your input screen should look like.

Here's what it should look like after you click "Add".

And here's what the changed shortcut command should look like in your Mail menu.

 

[EightmanVT]

Hi - Thanks for the reply and the visual aids. You can't get much clearer than that!! I had it all correct - but perhaps the syntax. Maybe I picked the wrong command - I had 'Send message'. Let me now go back and scroll through the list and try Send Again.

 

[EightmanVT]

Just for future reference - where did you get 'Send Again' from? When I scroll through the current list of Mail keyboard shortcuts - I don't see a 'Send Again' - I only see 'Send message' which has the default shortcut cmd-sft-D.

 

[EightmanVT]

Interesting...I can only seem to have partial success. I can change Send to cntrl-enter - it reflects this in the menu but doesn't work. I can change Send to cmd-enter... it doesn't work...and the menu reflects shft-cmd-enter - which does work - but I didn't include shift in the shortcut - removed and redid twice to be sure. I'll try again tomorrow.

 

[MacShane]

Okay, I wasn't quite on the same page with you there. When I opened Mail and went into the Message menu, the only command there with the Shift+Cmd+D keystroke was "Send Again" (since Mail usually opens with the top message highlighted), so I assumed that's what you were referring to. No matter, when you have a message ready to send, that command changes to just, "Send". It should work as you did it above, simply typing "Send" into the Menu Title box. I tested it by sending myself an email and it worked fine. If the keystroke isn't exactly as you programmed it, it's usually because the keystroke you wanted is being used by another command.

 

[EightmanVT]

I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I can get everything as you've described - even changing the shortcut and having it show as such in the menu - but it won't actually execute the command.

 

[EightmanVT]

Ugh - Sorry - Trying to get the picture embedded in same fashion you did. I used flickr as the web host location - is that the problem?

 

[chas_m]

While you guys wrestle out that issue, let me just add something about Google vs MobileMe for syncing stuff.

I prefer MM a great deal even though it costs. Without the whole long spiel, three reasons:

1. Apple does not data-mine everything I do looking for new ways to throw ads at me. No ads with MM.

2. Beautiful integration with various Apple software, giving me many useful services.

3. Syncs flawlessly across all my devices.

 

[MacShane]

So just to confirm, when you compose a message and hit Ctrl+Enter, nothing happens? Is the Send command in the Message menu black (not shaded out) when you have a message ready to send, like this?:

If so, all you should have to do is hit the keystroke to send it. If it's not working, I'm at a loss as to why. As I said, it works fine on my end.

BTW, to embed a pic, all you have to do is copy the image address (right click or double tap on the image to bring up the menu), hit the image button above the reply box, paste it in the dialog that comes up, hit OK and viola!

 

[EightmanVT]

While you guys wrestle out that issue, let me just add something about Google vs MobileMe for syncing stuff.

I prefer MM a great deal even though it costs. Without the whole long spiel, three reasons:

1. Apple does not data-mine everything I do looking for new ways to throw ads at me. No ads with MM.

2. Beautiful integration with various Apple software, giving me many useful services.

3. Syncs flawlessly across all my devices.

I started setting up Mobile Me today - but not quite sure I have the hang of it. I did get Calendar events to sync to the online calendar as well as get pushed to my iPad. The iPad changes didn't show on the web version though. Just getting started with it - so don't have a good feel for it yet. I was hoping that whatever I had in my iCal would be synched - but unless I actually put it in the mobile me acct calendar - it didn't show up. Point taken regarding Google's constant quest for greater advertising revenue. If Mobile me works the way I want it to - then I'll probably be happy paying for it.

 

[EightmanVT]

BTW, to embed a pic, all you have to do is copy the image address (right click or double tap on the image to bring up the menu), hit the image button above the reply box, paste it in the dialog that comes up, hit OK and viola!

That is what I had done - unless for some reason I made an error in pasting. I'll check. I thought it might because I had use Flickr to host the picture. If you reply to that post - with quote - you can see the link I pasted.

 

[EightmanVT]

So just to confirm, when you compose a message and hit Ctrl+Enter, nothing happens? Is the Send command in the Message menu black (not shaded out) when you have a message ready to send, like this?:



If so, all you should have to do is hit the keystroke to send it. If it's not working, I'm at a loss as to why. As I said, it works fine on my end.

Yes - Exactly.

and then I can see it reflected in the menu...as in here...

But then if I hit cntrl-enter...it just does a carriage return in the e-mail...but the default keyboard shortcut is wiped out. Odd!

 

[EightmanVT]

it must be Flickr for some reason...I've tried several flavors of linky...with no joy

 

[MacShane]

Does your Keyboard dialog box look exactly like this, after programming in the keystroke?:

If so, it should friggin' work.

Also, it shouldn't matter where your image is hosted, as long as you can link to the address. That's also a bit peculiar.

If all is how it should be, I must now humbly bow out of this thread and hand the baton over to a more experienced Mac user. I apologize for not having been able to help you.

 

[EightmanVT]

Yes it does. I'm not sure why I can't get the image to show. I can upload it to the this site - so you can click on it - or you can browse there using the links...

by default 2011-01-25 at 7.24.45 PM | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

by default 2011-01-25 at 7.26.11 PM | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

So you can see I'm not making it up. I don't know why it's not working for me. No apologies necessary - I appreciate the effort. Trying...is one way for me to learn...