Mac Tip Podcast – #019 – Clean the desktop clutter by hiding icons

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In this episode of Mac Tip Podcast; Clean the desktop clutter by hiding icons

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Show Notes

If your desktop is anything like mine, your background wallpaper is barely visible from a wall of icons have that been floating around since the last time you reinstalled the mac os or just cleaned then up. I guess if they weren’t piling up on the desktop it would be somewhere else, but at least then we probably wouldn’t have to look at them every day.

Luckily, we can stuff that clutter in a closet by hiding the icons on the desktop. Here’s how.

1. Open the Terminal located in /Applications/Utilities (or alternatively by searching for it in Spotlight).
2. Enter the following command at the prompt and press Enter. You can also goto mactippodcast.com and look in the show notes where you can copy/paste the command.
   defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false
3. Restart the Finder by entering the following command in the Terminal and pressing Enter.
   killall Finder

   The Terminal is case sensitive so be sure to respect uppercase and lowercase characters.

4. Exit the terminal by entering the following command and press Enter.
   exit
5. Quit the Terminal application.

Your desktop will now be clean leaving you free to admire your backgound. You may still save files to the desktop and access them using the Finder window.

Getting your desktop to show icons again is easily as simple.

1. follow the same proses as described before but this time you want to input this command
   defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool true
2. Kill the finder as before
   killall Finder
3. Exit the terminal
   exit
4. and Quit the Terminal application.

Now your done you have all your Icons back

YAY!!

and that going to do it for this episode of Mac Tip Podcast I hope you enjoyed it
Have any comments, questions or tips? Please send them to mail@mactippodcast.com Or leave a voice mail on my hot-line (304) 449-Geek
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18 Mac Tip Podcast – How to change your icons in Mac OS 10.6

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In this episode of Mac Tip Podcast;
How to change your icons in Mac OS 10.6

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Show Notes
Changing an icon in Snow Leopard is simple. You don’t need fancy software like CandyBar. Although it makes changing system icons a lot simpler than by hand, you can customize file, folder and app icons right in Finder.
First Find an icon

There are a number of different places where you can find icons and system replacements sets for your Mac. Here are just a few great resources:
InterfaceLIFT: Probably the largest Mac icon collections on the Web
We Love Icons: Icons of the finest quality
Apple Downloads: Icons and Screensavers category

Wherever you look for icons, make sure they are Mac compatible. This is usually illustrated by the  symbol.
Once you’ve downloaded the icon or set, unzip it and take a look inside. Most sets come in a variety of formats. These may include PNG, ICO, ICNS and Macintosh formats but the naming may be different depending on the author.
Here we see the contents of a typical icon set. Look for ‘Icons’ or ‘Macintosh Icons’.
Once you’ve found the icon you like, right-click it and chose Get info. Do the same for the icon you wish to change.
Open the Info window
In the info window, click on the new icon. You know it is selected when you see a glow around it. Hit ⌘+c to copy it to the clipboard. With the Info window of the target opened, click on the old icon and hit ⌘+v to paste it. If all went well, your file should now show the new icon.

and that going to do it for this episode of Mac Tip Podcast I hope you enjoyed it
Have any comments, questions or tips? Please send them to mail@mactippodcast.com Or leave a voice mail on my hot-line (304) 449-4335
Twitter users can follow the show at twitter.com/mactippodcast
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and your always you are welcome to leave comments on the website, MacTipPodcast.com
Thank you and Stay Subscribed

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Mac Tip Podcast – #017 – Resetting your Macs password using your install CD

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In this episode of Mac Tip Podcast;
Resetting your Macs password using your install CD

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Show Notes

A lot of times people forget passwords, like myself, I have a ton of accounts with all different types of passwords. with any security minded person (which you should be) remembering those passwords can be a big pain. And sometimes you forget those passwords( I can’t tell you how many times I’ve forgotten my checking account password), you may have friends that play practical jokers, or little kids that like to play around, or maybe you like to reset your password every 30 days and forget what it is. So I’m going to tell you how to reset your password for your Mac. First insert your Mac install disc Now restart your mac. Usually, you can start from the disc by putting it in your computer, restarting, and holding the C key. Or, put it in the computer and click the Install or Restore icon you see in the disc’s main window (after which the computer will start from the disc without you needing to hold C). Or, you can use Startup Manager or the Startup Disk preference pane to select the Install disc.

Choose a language, Noting that the default keyboard layout is U.S. English while starting from the installation disc. If you use a keyboard layout other than U.S English, use the Input menu (the flag icon on the right side of the menu bar) and select the desired layout before typing a new password. Click the arrow button to continue,
then choose Reset Password from the Utilities menu (or from the Installer menu, if using Mac OS X 10.3.9 or earlier).
If you don’t see this menu or menu choice, you probably have not started from the CD yet.
Select your Mac OS X hard disk volume.
and Select the user name you want to change
Do not select “System Administrator (root)”. This is actually the root user. You should not confuse it with a normal account.
Enter a new password.
Click Save.

You might also run into to another problem if you change your account’s password using your Mac OS X Install disc, your default keychain password (which uses the same initial password as your user account) does not change. Because of this, you will be prompted to enter a keychain password each time an application requires authentication that your keychain would normally provide.
Well how do we fix this?
Boot in to Mac OS X
Open Keychain Access (you can get to it by choosing the Utilities folder from the Go menu in the Finder).
In Keychain Access, choose Keychain List from the Edit menu, select the “login” keychain and Click Delete (-) in the window.

and that going to do it for this episode of Mac Tip Podcast I hope you enjoyed it
Have any comments, questions or tips? Please send them to mail@mactippodcast.com Or leave a voice mail on my hot-line (304) 449-Geek
Twitter users can follow the show at twitter.com/mactippodcast
If you used iTunes to download this show Please write a review it helps get this show in the ranks of all the other great Mac Podcasts out there.
and your always you are welcome to leave comments on the website, MacTipPodcast.com
Thank you and Stay Subscribed

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Mac Tip Podcast – #016 – Print what you like

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In this episode of Mac Tip Podcast;
Print what you like

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Show Notes
I am an avid lover of printing and saving documents to PDF. A nice feature built right into the Macintosh operating system is the ability to save to PDF thanks to a open source project called CUPS(Common UNIX Printing System), something Windows really needs to work on.
When printing or saving documents from a website I dont like all the needless junk on the page, for example ads, sidebars or the LONG comments. one of my favorite websites PrintWhatYouLike.com allows you to take all the needless junk within a website completely out of the page

Now to go to PrintWhatYouLike.com the link will be the show notes
Once you’re there you will see an address bar that you can paste the URL into, once pasted click start and you will be redirected to a page where you can edit everything within the page.
Go ahead click on anything, if you do the selection will highlight in yellow, this website has a ton of features and you can click anything, and delete it, remove the background image, remove all images, you can even select a certain text or image and expand just that selected part of the website you want to print. PrintWhatYouLike.com also allows you to save as a PDF or HTML file although the HTML file to include the images if you have any on the website which are trying to save. one really sweet feature on PrintWhatYouLike.com is it allows you to add other pages! for example if you have a website that you want to print or save to a PDF but you don’t want to go through all the hassle of printing each individual page PrintWhatYouLike.com allows you to add Extra pages, go ahead and click the add page in the upper left-hand corner of the page and paste the URL of the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth page and click add.
What’s also neat about this feature is if you edited the first page and then add an additional page it formats the page for you, no more editing all the other pages
One smart little bugger

and that going to do it for this episode of Mac Tip Podcast I hope you enjoyed it
Have any comments, questions or tips? Please send them to mail@mactippodcast.com Or leave a voice mail on my hot-line (304) 449-Geek
Twitter users can follow the show at twitter.com/mactippodcast
If you used iTunes to download this show Please write a review it helps get this show in the ranks of all the other great Mac Podcasts out there
and your always you are welcome to leave comments on the website, MacTipPodcast.com
Thank you and Stay Subscribed

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Mac Tip Podcast – #015 – Where is the Home and End key on your Mac

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In this episode of Mac Tip Podcast;
Where is the Home and End key on your Mac

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Show Notes
The other day I reserved an email form listener David Muller he asks;
On a PC’s keyboard there are Home and End keys. What is the Mac equivalent?

Well as you know Windows keyboards have End and Home key and Mac keyboards dont, You probably are looking for HOME & END keys or have a windows keyboard hooked up to your mac and the keys dont work. Well there is a news for you guys, So But don’t panic, Apple has their own weird way of doing things. Lets see how a few of the keys which we were using on a PC work in Mac.

The Home key has now been remapped to – Command + Left Arrow
and the End key is now – ⌘/Command + Right Arrow

The Page Up and Down keys had also changed.
They are now remapped to – ⌘/Command + UP Arrow and Command + Down Arrow

You also may have noticed that the delete button on a mac keyboard works like Backspace in a PC. So where the hell is delete button?
Press Fn + Delete. This gives you the functionality of a delete key in a PC.
Deleting a file? – Press ⌘/Command + Delete

One neat thing that might just work on your mac is these commands
⌃/Control + A this moves the cursor to beginning of paragraph, ⌃/Control + E moves to end of paragraph, and Option/Alt + left or right arrow, this moves the cursor between words.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of Mac Tip Podcast
Have any comments, questions or tips? Please send them to mail@mactippodcast.com Or leave a voice mail on my hot-line (304) 449-Geek
Twitter users can follow the show at twitter.com/mactippodcast
If you used iTunes to download this show Please write a review it helps get this show in the ranks of all the other great Mac Podcasts out there
and your always you are welcome to leave comments on the website, MacTipPodcast.com
Thank you and Stay Subscribed

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Mac Tip Podcast – #014 – Adding screensavers to your Mac

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In this episode of Mac Tip Podcast;
Adding screensavers to your Mac

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Show Notes

Back in the old windows days I remember downloading a bunch of screensavers a weekly basis but now I’m older I don’t really download that many screen savers and haven’t had to download any screensavers since and move to the Mac, but was fiddling I wanted to actually wanted to download some screensavers.

Apple provides a number of screen savers with the Mac OS, but you can never have too many As the same with Windows PCs. There are screen savers available  for almost everybody’s tastes

Adding a third-party screen saver to your Mac is a simple process. You can add it manually, or if the screen saver has a built-in installer, as many do, you can let it perform the installation for you.

Screen savers are stored in one of two locations on your Mac.

/Library/Screen Savers/. Screen savers stored here can be used by any user account on your Mac.
~/Library/Screen Savers/. Screen savers stored here can only be used by that user account. The tilde (~) character at the front of the path name represents your personal home directory. For example, if your home directory is named ‘Ben,’ the pathname would be /Users/Ben/Library/Screen Savers/.
Most Mac screen savers are smart little buggers; they know how to install themselves.

1. Close System Preferences, if you already have it open.
2. Double-click the screen saver you wish to install.
3. The Installer will start.
4. Most installers will ask if you wish to install the screen saver for all users or just yourself. Make your selection to complete the installation.
5. You can copy screen savers you download from the Internet to one of the above two locations. Note: Never move a folder or file that doesn’t end with .saver to a Screen Savers folder.

and that should do it The installation is complete, no matter which way you chose to perform the installation. You can now select and configure the options your new screen saver offers, if any,  by going to the System Preference Pane — Desktop and Screensavers

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