DV for Teachers

This is among the most disruptive aspects of Mac OS X, especially for switchers: the Help window that stays on top of all the other windows, no matter what. I cannot understand why this is the default behavior. Good news, however, from Macworld:

Fortunately, it’s possible to switch the Help Viewer to what’s called Dev Mode, which makes its window behave like any other window in OS X—if you switch to another app, the Help Viewer will recede into the background.

Hooray for Mac OS X Hints, or more precisely, its reader vczilla, for figuring out how to change this to sensible behavior. I saw it there, and Macworld reposted it to reach a wider audience.

I’m looking for a good batch file renamer for my photo workflow, and bingo here’s a how-to for Automator from the auuthoritative folks at Peachpit Publishing. They publish terrific instructional books on all kinds of applications.

Via Peachpit’s Automator for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Working with Actions Locating Actions to Do What You Want

I just love how much free hype Apple’s gotten on this. Business majors and MBA candidates, rev up your graduate theses to analyze how they generate so much press mania (which most of you poor mutts will have to write in MSWord on a Windows machine). In the meantime, here’s a nicely done (and fairly plausible) wish-list for today’s announcement from Alchemist Muffin (because all the other good blog names were taken). Via Slashdot, via popurls.

Which news feed will you follow? I’m going to try several, but Fake Steve writes that he will live-blog the keynote Going to be a fun day.

Mothers Ruin Software gives us Suspicious Package for seeing what a pkg installer file will put on your system before you run it. A nice idea. Via.

Wow. The University System of Georgia went with VMWare Fusion for Windows emulation on Macs, but that was several versions ago. MacTech testing says their competition has gotten so much better:

In the majority of overall averages of our tests, Parallels Desktop is the clear winner running 14-20% faster than VMware Fusion. The one exception is for those that need to run Windows XP, 32-bit on 2 virtual processors, VMware Fusion runs about 10% faster than Parallels Desktop.

Red the entire test report: Head-to-Head: Parallels Desktop for Mac vs. VMware Fusion. If you’re not running Windows on your Mac, and you’re considering it, there are other options as well.

David Epstein with one of the best articles I’ve ever seen for understanding differences and similiarities when moving from Windows to Mac. It’s full of screenshots and helpful advice for understanding the Finder (the file-management equivalent to Windows Explorer). Articles this good remind me that I should re-read the basics more often. I never knew about the Show Path Bar option in the Finder he describes on page two, for instance. It’s a really useful tip. There are many many other tips for seasoned Mac users, not just the new ones from the Windows side. Again, one of the best of its type I’ve found.

It’s an annoying six pages to load sequentially. Find the print-formatted version of the article here, but with none of the screenshots that make it so helpful.

There are alternatives to some of the paid apps they link to in this nice list of quick tips. Regrettably I don’t have time at the moment to link to them.Those aside, this is a good list for the Mac newbie, from TechRadar UK: 69 really useful OS X timesavers | News | TechRadar UK.

The Blog from Another Dimension offers this advice for those going From Windows to Mac: Three Biggest Tips for Switchers:

Having helped several people make the switch from Windows to Macs, I have seen pretty clearly some common problems people have when making the switch. Walt Mossberg wrote a short article on this, and his observations are pretty spot-on, albeit abbreviated and limited. I just figured I’d do my own long-winded version.

Modesty doesn’t serve this blogger well. What he calls “long-winded” I find to be thorough, with well-annotated screenshots and good explanations, and more than the three tips he promises. Most Mac users as well as recent switchers and those considering the change will find good information here.

Mac OS X 10.5 Help: Calibrating a MacBook or MacBook Pro battery

Calibrate the battery in your MacBook or MacBook Pro every month or two to keep your battery functioning at its fullest capacity.

I didn’t know this. I shall calibrate tomorrow and then I’ll get to feel all virtuous. Ah, small victories.

Update: Here’s the relevant link for Mac OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard.

OS X Help offers “Insanely simple tutorials for the first time Macintosh user.”

Welcome to OS X help. If you are new to the Macintosh, OS X, and Apple, you have come to the right place. If this is your first time here, we suggest you start at the beginning, and work your way to the current post, which you see below.

The tutorials are friendly and simple, and well well worth it if you’re a recent switcher. Recommended.

Did I say I like them? Just go, already.