Step 1: Cables

First off, you need to make sure the right cables are plugged into your Mac. The most important is the video cable connecting the display to the laptop. For a recent Mac, you’ll need a Mini DisplayPort cable if you’re using a new 27-inch Apple Cinema Display, or some kind of adapter, such as Mini DisplayPort to VGA or DVI. Older Macs will most likely require Mini-DVI adapters.

The next cable you need is your laptop’s MagSafe Power Adapter (the charging cable). Without having that plugged in, your laptop won’t stay awake when you shut the lid. Having the charging cable plugged in all the time shouldn’t harm the battery of your portable, but if you’re worried, you can always unplug it when you turn off the computer.

Finally, you’ll also probably want an audio cable so that you can channel sound through either your display’s speakers or a set of external speakers. While this isn’t necessary, the audio from a laptop’s built-in speakers doesn’t sound too good when the laptop’s closed. Usually you’ll audio cable is plugged into the headphone jack of your laptop, which is one of the small circular ports at the end of the row.

Step 2: Peripherals

If you want to continue working when the laptop is closed, it’s essential that you have an external mouse and keyboard, since you won’t be able to access the internal ones once the lid is shut. It doesn’t matter whether they are wired or wireless; as long as they are connected and working before you shut your laptop, it’s fine to carry on. Before continuing to step three, make sure your input devices are connected, and that they are working properly. Wireless devices can sometimes be notorious for not connecting straight away, so make sure you check.

If you’re using wireless input devices, open System Preferences and navigate to the Bluetooth pane. Click Advanced… and you should see four checkboxes. Make sure Allow Bluetooth devices to wake this computer is checked. This ensures that clicking the mouse or pressing a key on the keyboard will wake the computer from sleep mode.

Step 3: Shut the lid

Next is the all-important part: actually closing the laptop. It tends to work best if the Mac is already up and running when you do this, so if your computer is turned off, I’d recommend powering it on before continuing. While your computer is running, simply close the lid. At first your Mac will enter sleep mode, and any connected displays will go blank. This is fine, since Mac portables automatically go to sleep when they’re shut. Once your computer is completely asleep, either tap a key on the keyboard or click the mouse to wake it up. After a few seconds, your external display should come back on and be displaying your desktop. Be patient, since your Mac could take 30 seconds or so to wake back up.

If your display doesn’t come back on, double-check that you have the power cable for your Mac plugged in. Also check that the display hasn’t turned off completely when the Mac went to sleep, rather than entering standby mode. Now you can use your Mac portable as a home theatre PC, or as a makeshift tower for your home computing needs.

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So you’ve just installed tons of apps from the Mac App Store, but now you realize you don’t really need that fifth Twitter client. How to uninstall it? Unlike Windows, OS X doesn’t have a “Remove Programs” tool, but the answer is actually simpler than that.

All you have to do is navigate to [Your User Name]/Applications, locate the app you want to remove, and drag it to the Trash icon on your dock. You can also use the keyboard shortcut Command+Delete. Since Mac applications are all packed into bundles (that’s the icon you drag to the Trash) just deleting the bundle removes the app.

However, there is one catch. A lot of apps leave behind external files, such as preference files, dotted around your system, which don’t get deleted when you send the application bundle to the Trash. You could hunt around and manually delete those files, but it would be very time-consuming and there’s no guarantee you’ll find every one. Luckily, there are some third-party apps that will handle this for you.

AppZapper is one of those apps. When you want to uninstall another app, fire up AppZapper. Instead of dragging the application to the Trash, drag it to the AppZapper window. AppZapper looks through your hard drives for any files related to the app you’re deleting. It presents you with a list, and you can uncheck any items you’re not sure you want to delete before finalizing the process. All files are sent to your Trash bin, too, so if you have second thoughts you can also recover them there.

Version 2.0 of AppZapper introduced a new feature called Hit List which lets you see all your installed apps, and filter them according to when you last used them and how much space they’re taking up on your drive. It’s a great addition for those who’ve neglected their Applications folder for a while and aren’t sure where to start cleaning up.

AppZapper isn’t the only ‘uninstaller’ for the Mac. There are others, such as AppDelete. Whichever you choose, it’s a good idea to use one to make sure your Mac is clear of potential ‘bloat’ left behind from apps you don’t even have any more.

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Before you start, it’s always a good idea to do a backup of your system, or at least your sensitive files. These are very basic steps that don’t incur much risk, but you’re always better off having a backup than not.

Do It Every Day: Empty the Trash

It might seem obvious, but emptying the Trash is a great way to claim back hard drive space, which can, in some cases, speed up your Mac. To do this, simply click and hold (or right-click) the Trash icon in the Dock. Then click Empty Trash in the pop-up menu which appears. You’d be surprised how often you might forget to do this for days or even weeks at a time.

Do It Once a Month: Give Your Battery a Break

If you’re like me, and you never completely shut down your MacBook, instead only closing the lid occasionally to put it to sleep, then your battery might be getting a bit worn out. It could even be losing the ability to charge completely. Once in a while, turn your laptop off completely to give the battery a rest. Apple even suggests regularly running the charge down until the notebook turns off, then waiting a while to let it run out completely before recharging.

You can check the condition of your battery if you’re running Snow Leopard (10.6.x) by holding Option and clicking the battery status icon in the Menu Bar. If it shows ‘Replace Soon’, your battery may be losing the ability to hold its charge. If “Replace Now” or “Service Battery” is displayed, you should contact Apple about getting the battery replaced, especially if you’re still covered under warranty or AppleCare.

Do It Once Every Couple Months: Verify and Repair Disks and Permissions

Repair Disk Permissions
Repairing disk permissions can sort out strange goings-on, particularly those related to starting up your Mac. Open up Disk Utility (Found in the Applications>Utilities folder) and click on the disk you’re interested in using the source menu on the left. Click the button on the left, Verify Disk Permissions. Disk Utility will automatically take care of the rest.

If you need to, you can click Repair Disk Permissions to iron out any errors that get picked up. I’d suggest doing this before restoring and erasing disks and so on. Oftentimes repairing permissions will sort out the problem, without having to resort to a disk repair.

Verify and Repair Disks
If something strange starts happening on your Mac, it’s a good idea to verify that your startup disk is okay. If the structure of the disk’s file system is changed in some way, then your Mac might start behaving strangely. In order to check that everything is as it should be, you can once again use Disk Utility. Select your startup disk from the list of drives on the left and hit Verify Disk. Disk Utility will go ahead and check the status of the disk you selected. Don’t worry if your computer is unresponsive during the test; that’s normal.

If Disk Utility finds an issue with a disk, you can use the Repair Disk button to have your Mac try to repair it automatically. Most of the time, a simple repair will sort out any issues you’re having with a disk.

Sometimes, though, you will have to boot your Mac from your OS X install disc in order for Repair Disk to work. To do that, make sure your OS X install disc is in your Mac’s drive, reboot your computer, and hold C. Don’t reinstall OS X, but instead choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu and try to verify and repair once again.

Getting It Done Automatically

It can be a pain to remember to carry out maintenance on your machine regularly. Luckily, there’s an application, OnyX, which can perform maintenance such as checking permissions and cleaning out temporary files automatically. OnyX can perform daily, weekly and monthly scripts which do all the boring things for you. Plus it’s free. OnyX can’t empty the Trash, but it can clear caches and temporary files. It also checks the status of your startup disk whenever you launch the application.

Got any maintenance tips of your own? Share them in the comments.

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On Microsoft Windows, the application is the window, and you can use either alt-tab, win-tab, or the task bar to switch between windows. On the Mac, there are three main ways to manage windows, here’s a rundown of each, and how to use them to play up the strengths of OS X.

The Dock

The first way most new users to the Mac try to manage windows is the Dock. Clicking on a running applications icon in the Dock will bring that application’s windows to the front, which works great for apps that are only using a single window.

If, however, you have multiple windows open at once, like several TextEdit windows for example, clicking on the TextEdit icon will bring all of the windows to the front, which may not be exactly what you want.

The trick to using the Dock to manage windows is by clicking and holding on an icon. This will trigger Exposé in “Application Windows” mode, hiding all other applications and thumbnailing all of the open windows for that application. Then you can just click on the window you want to come to the front.

Exposé

Now that you’ve seen one part of Exposé in action, it’s time to see how the rest of it works. Open up System Preferences and click on “Exposé and Spaces”. You can think of this part of the preferences as the command center for managing windows.

At the top is “Active Screen Corners”, followed by keyboard shortcuts. Make note of the function key set for “All windows;” on mine it’s F3 to match my Apple Bluetooth keyboard. Open up a few different applications (it helps if one is a movie), and press F3. In one smooth animation, all of the open windows will shrink into thumbnails, with open windows at the top, and minimized windows at the bottom. From here you can click on any window you like to bring it to the front. If there are still too many windows open, you can press the tab key to cycle between the windows of running applications.

Having a function key is great, but too often I find that I need to look down at my keyboard to find the right key. That’s where the Active Screen Corners come in. Each corner of the screen can activate a function of window management. I always assign the bottom left corner of my screen to activating Exposé for All Windows, and the bottom right to Desktop. Then I put my Dashboard in the top right corner, and leave the top left blank. This gives me super quick access to all of my windows, widgets, and files I’m working with on my desktop.

You can also drag files into Exposé. For example, here’s a common workflow I run into all the time. To get a file from my desktop into a window open in the background, I’ll flick my mouse pointer to the bottom right corner to show the desktop. Then, I’ll drag the file to the bottom right hand corner to activate Exposé. Finally, while still dragging the file, I’ll select the window I want to bring it to the front, and then drop the file onto the window. Super easy, and super useful, once you get used to it.

Spaces

If, however, you still find yourself drowning in windows, or you just like to keep things clean and organized, you can enable Spaces. Spaces gives you extra desktops to work with. The default number of spaces is four, but you can assign up to sixteen. Personally, I’m normally happy with just two. I’m a developer, so I work in Xcode all the time. Some development tools, like Interface Builder, open up several windows, and can clutter up the screen quickly. So it’s nice to keep Xcode and Interface Builder in separate spaces. I always assign the CMD+Arrow Keys to switch between the spaces, and F8 to activate the spaces overview.

Once in the spaces overview, you can activate Exposé to see all of your windows, in all of your spaces.

Exposé, Spaces, and the Dock are the three main elements for window management. You can also use CMD-tab to switch between applications, or optionally, check out a third-party application like Witch that can give your keyboard even more control. If you’re new to the Mac, I hope this article helped, if you are experienced and think I missed something, feel free to mention it in the comments.

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Apple’s primary document explaining Target Disk Mode covers nearly every Firewire equipped Mac beginning with the slot-loading iMac back in the PowerPC G3 days of 1999. Today, there are over 150 docs on Apple’s Knowledge Base that incorporate the use of Target Disk Mode in troubleshooting.

Apple obviously notices the trend that its customers are not using this powerful tool any longer. Two of Apple’s current Macs don’t even include Firewire (MacBook and MacBook Air) and this technology simply won’t work over USB.

Why would someone need this anyway? Let’s say you start up your Mac and nothing happens. There’s no login window and no boot screen at all. You hear the hard drive whirling around but that’s it. After inserting the Mac OS X disk, you can see the HDD is mounted and you only have two options. The first is to erase the disk for an OS reinstall and the other is to scan the drive for errors. Well, an error check doesn’t help and now you’re stuck with a non-booting Mac and a few important files that weren’t backed up.

On most modern Macs, pulling out the HDD and putting it in a 2.5″ external HDD enclosure will do just fine but you need those files now. All you must do is plug in a Firewire cable and connect the other end to another Mac with Firewire. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that you must be lucky enough to have a spare Mac with Firewire laying around.

Once the two computers are connected, simply boot up the healthy Mac login. On the other computer, hold down the “T” key and hit the power button. With a little luck, the previously non-booting machine’s HDD will appear on your functioning Mac’s desktop. Voilà, you can now successfully copy those files to your working Mac and run the dead machine to an Apple Store.

Target Disk Mode is a powerful utility that can really help out in a bind. What other users for it have you found?

Setting up two Macs to network and share files can be done wirelessly or wired (if you do it wired just run a regular network cable between the two computers). The following steps are generally the same for both Leopard and Tiger users. There will be a few interface differences, so if you have any trouble just post your question in the comments.

1. Open System Preferences on the computer that you want to share files from.
2. Under the Internet and Network section open the “Sharing” folder.



3. In Leopard, click the box that says “File Sharing”. In Tiger there should be a prompt stating “Personal File Sharing is Off” on the right hand side of the sharing folder. You should always turn personal file sharing off when you are not actively using it to protect your personal information. Under the prompt there should be a button that says “Start.” Click the start button.



4. Now that you are sharing your personal files with the other Mac (and any other computer around you) can see your public folder in Username/Public. Anything you put in that folder your friend will be able to get.
5. After your done sharing, be sure to turn file sharing off.

I often use this technique to quickly move mp3′s from my laptop to my desktop because it’s faster than ziping and uploading them to a server.

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An onscreen keyboard can be a powerful tool for screencasters. This tutorial will show you how to turn on the onscreen keyboard that OS X has built in.

To turn on the onscreen keyboard:

1. Go to the System Preferences panel
2. Select the “International” icon



3. Go to the “Input Menu” tab
4. Select the “Keyboard Viewer”



5. You now should have an American flag in your menu bar. Click on the American flag and select “Show Keyboard Viewer”



6. You now should have a keyboard on your desktop that displays whatever your press on your keyboard. Quick, easy, free!

* If you click the plus arrow in the upper left hand corner of the keyboard it makes it much larger.

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To create a zip file in OS X (Tiger or Leopard):

1. Right click on the file or folder you would like to zip
2. Select “Compress … ” or in Tiger “Create an Archive of …”

Creating zips is great if you heavily rely on email for your main form of communication; instead of attaching several documents to an email I make a new folder, name it properly, drop in all of my files, and zip it. Then I log into my favorite email client and attach the one zipped file instead of several single files, which saves me time and is easier for both me, the sender, and the receiver who now only has to download one file.

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When I have a large photo set I would like to look at in OS X the quickest and easiest way is to open them with Preview. Unfortunately, when you click on one picture that is in the same folder as the rest of the pictures, Preview doesn’t automatically recognize the photo is a part of a set and let you scroll through them all at once (you have to open each one individually).

To open photos as a set in Preview all you have to do is:

1. Highlight all of them (click the first picture in the set and while holding shift click the last photo in the set)
2. Right click on them
3. Chose “Open with” > Preview

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1. Click “crtl+Mouse button”
2. A right click menu should pop up

To enable right click on an Apple desktop with an Apple mouse connected:

1. Go to “System Preferences”
2. Click “Keyboard & Mouse”



3. Click the “Mouse” tab
4. A picture of the mouse will show up. Click the drop down menu on the right hand side and select “Secondary Button”



5. Now whenever you click on the right hand side of the mouse, a right click menu will appear

To enable right click on newer Apple laptops:

1. Go to “System Preferences”
2. Click “Keyboard & Mouse”



3. Click the “Trackpad” tab
4. Click the checkbox “For secondary clicks, place two fingers on the trackpad then click the button”



5. Now whenever you have two fingers on the trackpad and click the mouse button, a right click menu will appear

To enable right click on certain older Apple laptops please see this article (The article was written about enabling two-finger scrolling, but the software also allows two-finger right click).

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