Use "shortcuts" to fix typos and paste in awkward text...

Some suggested shortcuts...

On the iPhone and iPad, there is a shortcut feature which means that instead of typing "See my website for details" I can type "smw" and it will expand to the full text.

Or instead of typing out a long complicated email address "guy.hemmings@essexmacsupport.co.uk", I can give it an abbreviation like "ghex".

Adding a shortcut

Go to the Settings App > General > Keyboard > Shortcuts. you'll see one already there "omw" for "On my way". To add a shortcut, press the [+] in the shortcuts window, type the phrase in full (or paste it in from elsewhere) and then enter the shortcut for it. Press Save.

The shortcut feature can be used to replace proper names that are also nouns or verbs e.g. when you type "peter" it can correct to "Peter" (you can always backspace over an incorrect usage of the word).

iPhone tip #2: read enlarged version of webpages

   When you see the 'Reader' icon in the menubar on iPhone or iPad, tap it to get a beautifully-formatted enlarged version of the webpage you are viewing, with no distracting adverts. Once viewing it in Reader mode, you have a lot of options including increasing or reducing the font size and sending the whole article by email.

iPhone tip #1: go straight to the top!

On the iPhone, where you are viewing a lot of data (say in Contacts) or at the end of a long webpage in Safari, tap the time display at the top of the screen to rapidly scroll right to the top of the page.

Sweet addition for Apple Mail—MailTabs

Just added MailTabs http://simplicity.fm/mailtabs/ to Apple Mail and it makes life much easier, adding tabs for opened and new emails instead of spawning new windows each time.

"MailTabs for Mail.app is a unique plug-in that organizes all your open email messages under a simple tab arrangement just like the tabs in your browser."


It's "donationware" so do consider the work put in by the developer and give a donation...


In conjunction with WideMail http://widemailplugin.com/ you get a very flexible, easy to use mail application. WideMail gives a three-pane window, showing the mailboxes, message list and a preview of the selected message.

User Library in OSX 10.7 Lion, 10.8 Mountain Lion, 10.9 Mavericks, 10.10 Yosemite

If you wonder why you can no longer see your user Library folder in any version of OSX after Snow Leopard, it's because Apple in their wisdom thought it better to hide sensitive files and folders from the user, in case their tampering upset things.

To have your user Library permanently showing again as in Snow Leopard:

Open Terminal from the Applications > Utilities folder
Paste in this command:

chflags nohidden ~/Library

and then press Return. After quitting Terminal, you will see that the folder has become visible again.

OSX and Swedish Campgrounds: the origin of the Command Key

From Folklore.org, a fascinating resource for insights into the history of the original Apple Macintosh

“We thought it was important for the user to be able to invoke every menu command directly from the keyboard, so we added a special key to the keyboard to invoke menu commands, just like our predecessor, Lisa. We called it the "Apple key"; when pressed in combination with another key, it selected the corresponding menu command. We displayed a little Apple logo on the right side of every menu item with a keyboard command, to associate the key with the command.


One day, late in the afternoon, Steve Jobs burst into the software fishbowl area in Bandley III, upset about something....”


Read more...

Tip on downloading MP3 and Quicktime movies in Safari

Safari tip: when MP3 files play in your browser window and you want to download the source file, and the link you have is directly to the MP3 file itself, you can't use the normal procedure of right-clicking on the MP3 link on a webpage.

Open the Downloads window from the Window menu, and drag the URL from the address bar into it, which will then download the MP3.