Here an overview of the latest tips and tricks from Mac OS X Hints:

- Remote Control Your DHCP Connected Laptop from Your iPad
- Repair MacBook Pro cooling fan rattling
- iOS Text selection tips
- 10.6: Disable Spaces workspace change animation
- Google Chrome duplicate tab shortcut
- Extract audio from Flash video
- Disable New Mail Notification Sound for Certain Rules
- 10.6: An Automator Service to enter special characters
- Another way to enter special characters
- 10.6: Using the Purchases Tab in Mac App Store
- Collect movies with a Smart Album in iPhoto '11
- Maintain both original and optimized footage in iMovie
- Quickly tag faces in iPhoto
- Total iPhone Backup - requires jailbreaking
- Simulate Airport Express network audio
- iPhoto Gestures
- Adding Additional Files to an iDVD Project
- Keep attempting reconnection to wireless network
- Quickly confirming or rejecting Faces in iPhoto
- 10.6: Enable AutoAnswer in FaceTime for the Mac
- Numbers: edit existing data without using the mouse
- 10.6: Scroll through apps with Exposé and Tab key
- 10.6: Google search in Terminal contextual menu
- Getting Pages to cooperate with the keyboard page up and page down buttons
- Changing iPhone DTMF Tones to Work with Some IVRs



Remote Control Your DHCP Connected Laptop from Your iPad

I work in a growing school district with multiple campuses. Each week I find myself in different buildings for one reason or another. Like many people, I've realized it's much handier to grab my iPad and go, rather than lug the laptop. However, there are times when it's necessary to access information or applications on my laptop when I'm out and about.

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Repair MacBook Pro cooling fan rattling

The little cooling fans inside of Mac notebooks run upwards of 6000 RPM, and they can eventually wear out. People report symptoms of rattling and even loud grinding. Well, the fan MAY need replacement. Or perhaps it just needs to be relubricated.

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iOS Text selection tips

Yesterday I found some shortcuts to text selection while using the notes application in the iPhone (iOS 4.2.1).

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10.6: Disable Spaces workspace change animation

I ran across this tidbit in the HyperSpaces FAQ and I know I haven't seen it here before (and I'm quite the avid OSX Hints follower)

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Google Chrome duplicate tab shortcut

You can open the page you are currently viewing in a new tab or window without closing it, using this shortcut. Basically you are duplicating the tab.

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Extract audio from Flash video

This is the old issue of extracting audio from Flash video (YouTube, etc.).

There are many hints involving this issue, but having gone through most of them, they all involve purchasing something at some point in the process, which is galling if you only need this facility rarely, so here's a totally free method.

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Disable New Mail Notification Sound for Certain Rules

In Mail.app I have a number of rules that reroute incoming mail to certain folders. The messages sorted into those folders are not particularly important, so I don't like hearing the new mail sound unless the message makes it to my inbox.

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10.6: An Automator Service to enter special characters

Here's how to use Automator-based Snow Leopard Service along with an AppleScript to present a popup window from which you may choose from a list of special character symbols to input. The Service gives you quick access to OS-related (or other) characters for quick entry into documents.

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Another way to enter special characters

Today I saw a hint on using AppleScript and Automator to enter special symbols into a document.

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10.6: Using the Purchases Tab in Mac App Store

While looking through the App Store, I stumbled upon something useful about the Purchases tab. If you use the same Apple ID across two or more computers, you may logically want apps purchased with the same Apple IDs installed on those computers as well. You can do this.

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Collect movies with a Smart Album in iPhoto '11

This is an update to this previous hint about creating a smart album that gathers all of your video files that are stored in iPhoto.

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Maintain both original and optimized footage in iMovie

I shoot a lot of HD video of my kid, and at first I struggled to find a good balance between maintaining the full-resolution original footage and having something a little more reasonable and lightweight to work with. For example, even on my one-year-old iMac, I can't smoothly scrub the full HD video clips in the editor -- but if the clips have been 'optimized' to 960 x 540, they're smooth as butter (and still look good enough for almost every output scenario).

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Quickly tag faces in iPhoto

I love the Faces part of iPhoto but I got tired of clicking 'Accept' on the hundreds of photos it found for each person in my family.

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Total iPhone Backup - requires jailbreaking

iTunes never seems to backup all the data I need on my iPhone. So what I wanted was a way to access the root level of the device, and be able to copy everything, even all system and invisible files, to a backup on my computer's hard drive. The way to do this is to use a combination of the great iOS mount utility, PhoneDisk, and Rsync run from the Terminal.

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Simulate Airport Express network audio

Have you ever wanted to wirelessly stream all audio from your Mac to the Unix/Windows/Mac box in your cupboard connected to your beefy stereo? Here is an alternative to buying an Airport Express for the purpose.

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iPhoto Gestures

Here are some fun gestures you can use in iPhoto that I couldn't find documented anywhere. When in edit mode, two finger gestures do some nifty things! First, open a photo in iPhoto and enter Edit mode.

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Adding Additional Files to an iDVD Project

When creating a DVD in iDVD something you would like to add additional content or files to the DVD that you distribute. Maybe some pictures, a link to your website, or maybe a iPod/iPhone/iPad sized version of the movie. I distribute highlight DVDs of my son's football games and I add a HD version of the video to the disc.

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Keep attempting reconnection to wireless network

Having trouble automatically reconnecting your unattended Mac to a wireless network because of unreliable signal quality? If you would like to have it keep reattempting reconnection until it manages to connect it's fairly simple to setup.

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Quickly confirming or rejecting Faces in iPhoto

When confirming wether faces recognized by iPhoto '11 are actually correct, some will be wrong and need to be rejected.

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10.6: Enable AutoAnswer in FaceTime for the Mac

My previous solution to auto answering FaceTime calls involved AppleScript, which required 'Access to assistive devices' to be enabled. I thought this method , while it worked, was too cumbersome, so I began to dig into FaceTime to find a way around the whole AppleScript approach. I fired up the Terminal to start hacking away at FaceTime.

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Numbers: edit existing data without using the mouse

Here's how to edit a cell in Numbers that already has data in it, but without moving your fingers from the keyboard to the mouse.

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10.6: Scroll through apps with Exposé and Tab key

This tip combines the use function of scrolling through applications as if you were using the Command+Tab keys and use of Exposé. Just how you can activate Exposé then select an application from the dock to only see the windows from that app. You can also activate Exposé then hit the Tab key to scroll through windows from that app.

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10.6: Google search in Terminal contextual menu

Safari installs a Service which lets you use text selected in any application as a search query in Google. If you've enabled it in System Preferences & Keyboard » Services, normally the service appears in the contextual menu option when you Control-click on some text. However for some reason it doesn't show up in the contextual menu in Terminal.app. I found a way to enable it in Terminal as well.

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Getting Pages to cooperate with the keyboard page up and page down buttons

For some strange reason, the page up and page down buttons on my keyboard never cooperated with Pages. What I wanted to be able to do was to simply hit those keys on the keyboard, and have Pages scroll up or down to the next page.

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Changing iPhone DTMF Tones to Work with Some IVRs

Some IVRs have difficulty recognizing the long DTMF tones from iPhone. Although not a permanent solution, you can force iPhone to use short DTMF tones when needed. I have not seen this documented here and it has helped me with interaction between my iPhone and my GE Simon alarm.

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