As evidence, I present my current iPad home screen:

Thanks to the introduction of Folders, I can easily group similar apps. Anything related to Reading (e-books, Goodreader, Zinio, Instapaper, etc.) are in Reading. My text apps are all in their own folder, as are the iWork apps. I’ve taken six or seven app screens and reduced it to one.

Creating and Organizing Folders

Creating a folder is easy: simply drag one app icon onto another icon and iOS will automatically create a folder and give it a name based on the category of app. Marry two game apps, and you’ll get a folder named Games. You can rename this folder to whatever you like, so you’re not stuck with the name Apple gives you.

You can also perform this task directly in iTunes by going choosing your iPad in the sidebar, clicking on the Apps tab at the top, and then dragging icons on top of one another in the same way you would on your iPad’s screen. For when you’re setting up folder for the first time, iTunes is the best way to move a ton of apps around.

There are a few problems I’ve run into with folders. The first is, even though there are open spaces on my home screen, when I install a new app, iOS wants to install it onto screen two. It’s also entirely possible to get into the “Where did I stick that app?” trap. Thankfully, for an easy solution to that problem there’s Spotlight search.

Using Spotlight to Launch Apps

If you swipe to the right at the home screen it will bring up Spotlight search. Type in the name of the app you want to launch and it will show up in the search results. Click on that icon to launch it. Also, while not in the scope of this post, Spotlight is a good way to search within some apps, too. Whenever I need to search for a note I’ve made in the Notes app or a specific e-mail, I also use Spotlight search.

Also, remember that double-clicking the Home button shows the apps you’ve recently used. You can run them from there, too. If the app is multitasking-enabled, it will load fast and show the last state the app was in.

Finding a Happy Medium: How I Use Folders and Spotlight

As you’d imagine, I’m a huge fan of folders. My Internet folder has Safari, Twitter, Flipboard, Reeder and other apps that rely on an Internet connection to operate. Since the folder stays open after I close the app, it’s very easy to quickly run through my Twitter and RSS feed routine. Even though my e-book readers are in my Reading folder, I’ll usually run Spotlight to open them. Same with Pages and the other iWork apps. Try out a few different folder setups and workflows, and I guarantee you’ll find that folders make your life with the iPad or iPhone is easier.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why Apple Should End Its Fight Against iPhone Jailbreaking
• Does the World Need a Cisco Energy Dashboard?
• The Future of Workplaces

Welcome to another installment of Tips and Tricks. These articles aim to teach you some handy things you might not know about your Apple stuff. Let’s continue the series by looking at Finder.

Dropping Files Onto Applications

If you have a bunch of files you want to open simultaneously with the same application, this trick will save a bit of time. Any files you drag and drop onto the icon of an application in a Finder window will be opened with that program, provided it supports the file type you’re dragging. You can drag and drop more than file at the same time, to help save time. Applications which support the files you’re dragging will be highlighted as you hover over them, and applications which don’t will stay the same. This trick also works the same way with applications in the Dock.

Changing Folder Icons

As some point, you might want to change the icon of a folder. For example, if you have a folder called ‘Movies’ on an external drive, you might want to replace the default folder icon with the same one as Movies in your Home folder. To do this is really easy. First, find the folder with the icon you want to use (in this case it’s Movies). Right- or Control-click it and choose Get Info, or hit Command-I (⌘I). This brings up the Get Info window for the item you had selected.

The part we’re interested in is the small icon in the top left, next to the folder’s name (not the smallest one in the title bar, the larger one below the ‘traffic light’ controls). Click on that to select it and it’ll be highlighted. Now simply press Command-C (⌘C) to copy the icon.

Now go back to the regular Finder window and locate the folder you want to change the icon of. Once again, open up the Get Info window and select the icon at the top. Now press Command-V (⌘V) to paste the icon from the other folder. The icon should change instantly to show the new one you’ve pasted. You can also remove any icon you’ve pasted onto a folder simply by selecting it in the Get Info window and hitting Delete. This sets the icon back to the default plain folder icon.

This trick also works for changing the icons of applications and other files, but it’s not recommended that you do it for those things. If you want to do that, I’d suggest looking into an application such as CandyBar for a safer way to do it.

Finding an Item’s Location

Spotlight, the Finder’s search tool, also has a few tricks up its sleeve. To get started with Spotlight, access the menubar item by pressing Command-Space, or access Spotlight via a Finder window by pressing Option-Command-Space.

If you know what you’re looking for, it’s easier to use the menubar item, but for a more advanced search, use the Spotlight window.

One of my favorite tricks in Spotlight is showing exactly where a file or folder is on my system. To do this, invoke the menu item, then search for a file or folder. Usually what you’re looking for will come up as the Top Hit, but sometimes it won’t. You can use the arrow keys to navigate up and down the list until you have what you want highlighted.

Now, instead of hitting Return to open the item you have highlighted, which would simply open it, press Command-Return. This will open a new Finder window showing you where the item you chose lives on your system. This is great if you have forgotten where you saved something, for example.

Definitions and Calculations

Another useful tip for Spotlight is the way it can give you dictionary definitions and perform calculations. To get a definition, type the word into the menu item. Most of the time the definition will be the topmost item in the list. There’s very little chance that the whole definition will fit in the Spotlight list, but to see the whole thing, highlight the definition and press Return. Dictionary.app will open and show you the definition for the word. You can also hover your mouse over the list item and the definition will be displayed in the yellow tooltip which appears.

It’s the same with performing calculations; type in what you want Spotlight to do and it will show you the answer at the top of the list. It supports powers as well, so things like 3^2 and sqrt(100) will work, too.

I hope you’ve learned something new, and don’t forget to contribute your tips in the comments!

Mac OS X offers a computing experience that, according to many, is still unparalleled by its competitors. Built on a rock solid UNIX foundation and continually adding refinements that make interaction easier, OS X has a lot of powerful functionality that many users were unaware existed. One of these is the idea of “Smart Folders” and with a little primer, you can begin using them to make your Mac experience easier (and faster).

A Brief History

The idea of these Smart Folders are not unique to OS X. In fact, the idea started originally in the mid ‘90s with the now defunct BeOS. When Dominic Giampaolo, a software developer for Be, began working for Apple in 2002, some of the best elements of the BeOS made their way into Apple’s modern operating system. We know these features as “Smart Folders” and Spotlight, both of which launched in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, two years after Giampaolo began working for Apple.

A “Smart Folder” (or “Search Folder” as Windows Vista calls them when Microsoft introduced its version in 2006) is based on the idea that this folder is basically a “virtual folder” of its actual contents. This virtual folder doesn’t physically store copies of its contents inside but rather utilizes a database to store attributes about the files (defined either by the system or the user). This offers several advantages: they have a small file size, the ability for on-the-fly fine tuning of the criteria used to define the content as well as allowing the content to dynamically update as new files meet the criteria. Whoa. What does all of that mean? We’re getting there.

Smart Folders Save Time

In short, Smart Folders save you time. You basically give them a list of rules to follow and they automatically fill themselves with content based on the criteria you’ve defined. It’s important though, to realize that these Smart Folders do not actually represent copies of the content, but merely virtually link to them. If you delete a file out of a Smart Folder, you’ve also deleted it from its original location.

How To Make Smart Folders

Making a Smart Folder is quite easy. In fact, if you’re running Leopard or Snow Leopard, several of them have already been created. You might recognize them due to their trademark purple folder icon (also used to serve the same role in other applications, but we’ll discuss that in future articles). In the left side of a default Finder window, you’ll see an area called “Search For” with entries for “Today,” “Yesterday,” “Past Week” and some more. These are built in smart folders that automatically search your entire system for files meeting those criteria. But we can do far more powerful things with Smart Folders if we make our own.

1. To get started, when in the Finder, go to the File menu and select “New Smart Folder.” You’ll have a Finder window that looks like a search window. (You can also start this process simply by searching from a Finder window.)
2. Next, using the bar beneath the title bar of the window, select the location you’d like this folder to search. The default options are your Mac, your home folder and Shared (any other computers you may connected to). If you’d like it to confine the search to a specific folder, simply navigate to that folder and use the Spotlight function built into the Finder window. (Type something into the field to bring up a search; you can then delete what you typed to move to the next step).
3. Unless you’ve specified some phrase or string in the Spotlight search region in the upper right of the window, at this point you’re not going to be seeing any search results. Let’s give it some actual criteria to search.
4. Click the round plus (+) icon on the right side of the window to show another bar beneath the search location. Where it says “Kind” and “Any” is your first search criteria. These work in pairs. You can change “Any” to documents, images, movies or anything you want. Instantly, you’ll see your search results start to populate based on your selection. Perhaps instead of searching by kind, you want to search by name, contents or date. Clicking “Kind” will allow these changes as well as a mystical “other” option which gives you tons of options for a plethora of different uses. Since OS X is media friendly, you can also select criteria that corresponds to metadata in your media files, such as aperture value of a photo, sample rate for an audio file, video bit rate for video files and more.
5. You can continue to add additional criteria by clicking the plus and adding another row of criterion. Each additional criterion further fine tunes your search. For an item to appear in the results, it will need to meet every rule you have created for it.
6. If you want to save a Smart Folder search, click the Save button in the upper right of the window. Your searches are saved in “Saved Searches” inside the Library folder of your home folder. There’s also a checkbox to automatically add your new search to your Finder sidebar.
7. Editing a Smart Folder is as simple as right clicking it in the sidebar and selecting “Show Search Criteria” or selecting the same option from the gears menu once you’ve double clicked a saved Smart Folder.

Again, the beauty and power of Smart Folders comes from the fact that once you’ve defined the rules, this folder will automatically continue to update as new files are created or saved that meet its criteria.

Folder Inspiration

Smart Folders sound great and once you’ve set one up, you’ll see the process is pretty simple. It’s also pretty powerful but, for inspiration, here’s a few examples of interesting and useful Smart Folders that you could create on your system.

Recent Documents: To view all your recent documents, set the kind to document and the last opened date to within the last 3 days.

Important Files: If you use Finder labels, select “Other” and choose “File label.” Then pick the file label that matches your desired results.

By Device: Have several cameras? You can use “Device make” and “Device model” to specify a particular camera (as well as any other EXIF data).

Do you use Smart Folders? Have any tips you’d like to share or comments on this post? Let me know what you think; I’d love to hear your feedback.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why Google Should Fear the Social Web
• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce

I have a love-hate relationship with Spotlight, OS X’s convenient and useful, but immensely frustrating search utility. Apple introduced Spotlight with OS X 10.4 Tiger, and tweaked it considerably in OS 10.5 Leopard.

Having a search engine ready and waiting all the time is seductive, and Spotlight is nice to have, but falls short of Apple’s “Find anything, anywhere, fast” claim, and I particularly dislike its find-as-you-type initiating searches from the first keystroke. I was told I wouldn’t mind any more once I got an Intel Mac. Well, I now have a Core 2 Duo and still mind.

“Too Much Information”

Spotlight is also afflicted with a Google-esque “too much information” syndrome, even with a fair bit of my hard drive’s contents excluded from indexing. It also doesn’t do simple file name searches.

No path information is revealed in Spotlight’s results window. You must resort to Get Info or Reveal in Finder. No preview of file contents either, you can’t refine your search within results, and Spotlight doesn’t support phrase searches, at least not conveniently and efficiently. You can muck around using quotation marks in the search field, but I’ve had indifferent success with that.

Some have praised the changes in Leopard Spotlight, but I actually think I preferred Spotlight in Tiger, with its readout of the number of search returns and, in my opinion, more convenient and functional “Show All” panel.

Some Alternatives

In a recent article, MacFixIt cites some of these Spotlight shortcomings and proposes alternatives like Google Desktop, Easy Find, Foxtrot, and even Command-line searching.

I’ve tried Google Desktop and find it just too ponderous, resource-hogging, and overbearing. Devon Technologies’ Easy Find is a nice little app, free like Google Desktop, but more hassle to use than Spotlight, and not being indexed — slower. I can’t comment on CTM Development’s 29 Euro Foxtrot utility as I haven’t used it. The Command-line is largely terra incognita for me — not a place I want to go for quick searches in any case.

Where I do go mostly is to SpotInside, a Spotlight-enhancer that layers several elements on top of the Spotlight engine: results preview in the interface window, decently efficient phrase searching, much more conveniently configurable and sortable results organization, searches within results, and searching doesn’t commence before you bid it to.

Well Worth the Effort

SpotInside is yet another application to run, but it starts up almost instantly, is fast, and adds little system overhead. With such a well-conceived and convenient interface, it’s well worth the extra effort.

Unlike Spotlight and Leopard’s Quick Look, SpotInside can use the Find panel and select text in your search result. It also conveniently highlights your keywords in search results. It doesn’t search as extensive a range of file types as Spotlight (eg: music files and email messages), but I’d argue that’s a good thing. For finding words or phrases within text files, PDFs and the like, it’s the best tool I’ve tried.

SpotInside searches ever major text document format (including Pages). It can display PDF previews as images or as plain text, and will also find the folder the desired document is located in with a click of the “Reveal in Finder” button, and open it with the “Launch” button. There is a Zoom slider for adjusting the size of the preview contents.

I haven’t found another desktop search engine that has the uncanny ability to efficiently and quickly zero in on just what I’m looking for, as SpotInside does. If you’re frustrated with Spotlight, or even if you’re not, SpotInside is worth checking out.

SpotInside requires OS X 10.4 or later, and is free.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

This must be “Update iTunes Content” week at Cupertino or something, because Apple keeps making changes to the music player. First it introduced iTunes Pass, which provides superfans with heaps of exclusive content released on a staggered schedule over a brief subscription period, and now it’s launched the Indie Spotlight.

The Spotlight is a new subcategory of “More in Music,” a subsection along the right side of the iTunes store home page. You can find it right under the other new category, “Original Songs from Idol,” which is oddly its antithetical opposite.

Clicking on the link will bring you to the Indie Spotlight home page, complete with banners for three categories splashed across the top, all of which are very indie-looking, thanks to some nifty weathered Photoshop effects. I kid, but I genuinely do appreciate the new portal, which offers nice bonuses like a free music video of the week.

There’s also a dedicated Indie Spotlight podcast, which is organized by genre and comes out at a rate of one episode per week. Glancing through the catalog available via the Spotlight, I came across some of the bigger names like Cat Power, Bright Eyes, and Neko Case, but also a lot of hidden gems like Laura Gibson and Matt & Kim. The Artists’ Playlists displayed at the bottom left also offer some great mixes by the people who know best who to look out for; Hercules & Love Affair’s is particularly interesting.

It makes sense that Apple would try to cash in on the popularity of indie music, it’s really just surprising that it’s taken this long. Check out the offerings — at the very least, you’ll get a nice break from the Jonas Brothers.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Cloud in the Forecast For Apple
• Report: Monetizing Digital Content
• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era

I quickly became addicted to Spotlight when I upgraded to Tiger back in 2005, but why, I wondered, did Apple have to ruin easy filename searches in the Tiger Find dialog, after just finally getting them working right in Panther?

Of course you can run filename searches in Tiger (and Leopard), but it involves configuring tedious pull-down menus, and I find that often a name search is the quickest way to hone in on a file I’m looking for without the “too much information” returns that Spotlight indexed searches yield.

Perceiving a need, Thomas Tempelmann has authored an excellent little freeware replacement for the pre-Tiger OS X Find utility called Find Any File. Unlike Spotlight, Find Any File doesn’t use an indexed database; it taps into the file system driver’s own fast search operations, letting you search for file properties like name, dates, size, etc., but not for file content, for which you can, of course, still use Spotlight.

Find Any File is thus not a Spotlight substitute or replacement. Rather it compliments it by providing a function that OS X doesn’t perform very well. It works quite similarly to the Classic Mac OS’s “Find File” (or Sherlock) utilities, which I frequently miss in OS X. It also consequently finds files that Spotlight doesn’t, such as  those inside bundles and packages and inside folders that are usually excluded from Spotlight searches (eg: system files).

Some other things Find Any File can do:

• Hold down the Option key down while choosing Find, type in your administrator password, and Find Any File will restart with root permissions, and the ability to find any file on your Mac’s local volumes (something Spotlight won’t do)
• Display a new hierarchical view of found items which is toggled by pressing Command-2 or clicking on the icon at the top right of the results window.

I’ve found Find Any File even more useful than I thought I would, and I’ve been using it a lot since downloading it. The searches are reasonably swift, although perhaps not quite as fast as Spotlight, but I find the results tend to be more zeroed-in on what I’m actually looking for in many cases.

New enhancements in the latest Version 1.1 of Find Any File include the ability to search non-HFS volumes (although not as quickly), options to filter hidden items and package contents, more details of items displayed on mouseovers, and a new “Delete Immediately” menu command.

It seems almost churlish to complain about an excellent piece of freeware like this, but the range of search configuration options cold be a little broader. Tempelmann acknowledges this, but he says he had to stop adding features at some point.

The application’s user interface may look a bit old school to some, as it is inspired by the Classic Mac OS’ Find File application, but I remain a Classic OS fan so it’s perfectly all right by me.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why Google Should Fear the Social Web
• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce

Many people use Quicksilver as a replacement for Spotlight, but if you’re happy with the native file search and app launcher in Mac OS X, then why change? You probably know that you can access Spotlight quickly with the Command-spacebar keyboard shortcut, but here are a few more tricks you might not know exist.

• Spotlight makes a great calculator and dictionary. Just open the search box, type an equation, and watch the answer appear as you type. It works on long equations with several steps (623+191*87-4), as well as mathematical terms like square root or power. Type a word in the search box and its meaning appears in the results — so you can search for the definition of pi or the numerical value of pi, your choice.
• By default, Spotlight shows the first 20 results of a search. While you can’t change the number of returns, you can eliminate some of the categories the app checks so the results you get are more pertinent. Select Spotlight in the System Preferences, and click on Search Results. If you typically use Spotlight to search documents and email then uncheck categories like Webpages and Music so they’re ignored in the future.
• Do you tag your pictures with keywords in iPhoto? Use Spotlight to snag images and drop them right into an email without even opening iPhoto. If your photos contain metadata on what type of camera was used, start your search with the keyword make to get a list of all pictures taken with that camera (for example, make:Nikon).
• Spotlight can search inside the public files of other Macs on your network, if they’re running Leopard. If they’re running an older version of OS X, or another operating system entirely, it can only search for specific file names.
• Many popular third-party apps, like OmniOutliner and Intaglio, have plugins for Spotlight to make their files searchable too. Check here for a full list of what’s available, and to find out if your favorite app has a plugin you didn’t know about.

What’s your favorite Spotlight trick? Let me know in the comments.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why Google Should Fear the Social Web
• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce

If you are a heavy user of either Google Bookmarks or Google Docs, you now have a way of searching your content via the OS X built-in Spotlight tool.

Written by Stuart Morgan and available for free (open source, in fact!), this simple application makes a local copy of your files on your machine that are then imported by Spotlight. Precipitate periodically checks in with the “cloud” and updates the local files to reflect any changes. The developer notes that changes may take up to an hour to be visible in local searches.

If a Spotlight search finds an indexed Google Docs file, it will open it up in your browser with the appropriate Google Docs application, so you are always editing the “cloud” copy.

While making a local copy is not ideal, it does facilitate greater integration into your local workflows and fills a niche where you would otherwise have to use the OS X version of Google Desktop Search (or just operate completely online). While I am not a heavy user of either Google Docs or Bookmarks, this solution may just give me more impetus to go that route. Curious/security-minded readers may also like to know that Precipitate stores the cached documents in ~/Library/Caches/Metadata/Precipitate.

If you use or try Precipitate, drop us a note and if you have alternate ways to locate your cloud data from OS X, let other TAB readers know by posting in the comments!

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

First and most importantly, decide what system of tagging will work best for you. What’s your general use of these files? I tend to be a project-centric person. So my tags tend to be more about the project name, than a category that the file may fit into. What’s your end-game?

Once you know what you’re aiming for, decide on the vocabulary you’re going to use. STICK TO IT. Pluralize your tags or DON’T. Use descriptive verbs, or just basic nouns. However you decide to use your tags, stick to a system so you don’t end up with a bunch of one-offs. (pic, pictures, photo, photos, photograph, photography….) It’ll be easier if you don’t have to use wildcard search queries to bring back all the results you’re looking for.

Also, decide on how specific you want to be with your tags. Should you use ‘lettertoeditor0206′ or just ‘letter’? Will a shotgun approach of 10 simple (general) tags be more useful to you than 1 or 2 super-descriptive ones? If you’re not sure, do some testing for a couple weeks and find out what works best for your needs.

These things should get you thinking a bit. They may lead you on to other thoughts that will be even better for determining what you really need to do. If so, let us know. We could always use better processes.

On the other hand, maybe you want to follow something fairly well established, such as del.icio.us. There are tons of ‘best practices’ posted to blogs out there, so Google around a bit. That said, my del.icio.us tags are a mess – I was young and stupid, ok?!

So I skimmed some of those aforementioned Google results to see what they had to say. “Be liberal in your use of tags.” Follow what some of the more prolific del.icio.us users are doing. A study of del.icio.us tagging in a social environment.

Approach it however you feel suits you best. I find that some of the more ‘successful’ del.icio.us methods out there aren’t ideal for my Spotlight Metadata Tagging needs. Your mileage may vary.

Happy Tagging!

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks