What you’ll need

You’ll need an iPhone 4S with Siri turned on to get started, of course; TouchPad by Edovia from the iOS App Store ($4.99); and Alfred running on your target Mac, which you can pick up for free from Alfredapp.com. You’ll also need to make sure Screen Sharing is enabled on your Mac, which you can set up by going to System Preferences > Sharing and then checking the Screen Sharing box.

How it works and what you can do

Alfred basically allows you to quickly accomplish tasks through typing queries, application and filenames, instead of having to use the mouse to navigate through folders and your Launchpad application manager. With TouchPad, you can dictate text instead of typing it, which, if you’re operating a media Mac from your couch, for example saves you a lot of time and potential for improper entry via your iPhone’s software keyboard.

To get started, make sure Alfred is running (after the first run, it should be configured to launch at Login). Then, using TouchPad on your iPhone 4S, select the target Mac as the server, and use the software keyboard to type “Alt (⌥) + Space,” which calls Alfred up. Then, tap the microphone icon on your iOS device’s virtual keyboard within TouchPad, and simply say the name of any application you want to find. It should then transfer the text to Alfred, which will show if it found a match, and you can hit “Return” on your iPhone to launch it.

You can dictate any text you like, and options for searching the web will pop up, including Amazon, Google and Wikipedia by default. In Alfred’s preferences under the Features tab, you can also set up a custom search for any URL of your choosing, such as Facebook for instance.

Under the Features tab, you can set keywords to trigger actions related to certain files. By default, saying “Find xx” will locate files in Finder that match whatever term you use; “Open” followed by a keyword launches the file using its default associated application; and using “in” will find specific instances of a term within a file. Keywords allow you to control system features like shutting down your Mac, restarting or emptying the trash.

Even more possibilities

With the paid Alfred Powerpack for £12 ($18 USD), you can add more features to your Siri-enabled voice commands, including the ability to launch and control iTunes, email a contact or open Address Book, and enter specific URLs that launch automatically in your default browser.

Of course, this is all about Siri basically replacing typing, and you still have to hit the software “Return” key to make the magic happen, but it’s a lot easier than fumbling with VNC or virtual trackpad software when trying to navigate a Mac set up as a media center. If you’ve found other neat ways to use Siri on your Mac, please share them in the comments.

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At the heart of the issue is a little database file named dynamic-text.dat that is stored in the “mobile” user directory located in /private/var/mobile/Library/Keyboard. But unless you plan on jailbreaking your iOS device, you aren’t going to be directly updating this dictionary of acceptable words. Instead, here are a few tricks to master the list of words in that dictionary without hacks.

Search from Safari

After refusing to accept the auto-corrected version of the word you just typed by canceling the suggestion a few times over, iOS should add that word to the dictionary automatically. But this trick won’t work in every app.

Most have found that repeating this process takes at least three consecutive times in Safari’s search bar before the word is added to the dictionary.  No matter how many times you attempt the same thing in the Notes app, you won’t succeed, however. So if you want iOS to learn from your frequently used terms, spending a lot of time browsing the mobile web can be an effective means of getting it done in the background.

Create a contact

If rejecting the suggested correction over and over does not do the trick, try creating a new user in your Contacts list that contains the words you are having difficulties with. It doesn’t have to be the name of the contact, and you do not have to create a separate entry for each word you want to add.  You can add the words in the notes field of the contact if you like. Information in your contact list will add words to the dictionary that iOS uses to check against.

Add an international keyboard

Why not just add the word to the dictionary directly? To access the dictionary, you first have to add the “Japanese Ten Key” keyboard as an additional international keyboard. Once added, you’ll expose a “hidden” feature of iOS that enables you to “Edit User Dictionary…” and add words to the auto-correct dictionary from the Keyboard Settings on your device.

Use TextExpander

As a last stand, you can use an app called TextExpander to create your own endless list of user-defined dictionaries. TextExpander offers a number of predefined snippet groups, like the auto-correct group that has 100 common misspellings.  You just have to use TextExpander’s built-in touch notes to copy and paste text for apps that do not support TextExpander.

Turn off auto-correct

Finally, you may just have to surrender, and disable the Auto-Correction feature in the Keyboard settings of your iOS device.  This is an extreme measure, and likely only applicable if you keep running into multiple frequently used words that keep getting corrected whenever you use them.

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What you’ll need

• A Mac with at least 2 GB of RAM and at least 20 GB of free hard drive space.
• A disc burned using the ISO of the Windows 8 preview, available to download here, with a burning program such as Toast.
• A hard drive backup, in case everything goes pear-shaped.

Method

1. First, open the Boot Camp Assistant, which can be found at Applications > Utilities > Boot Camp. Once opened, you’ll see a screen explaining what Boot Camp does, and warning you to make a backup.
2. After clicking Continue, you’ll be asked whether you want to download Windows support software or if you have it on a CD or DVD. Make sure to select the second option; you won’t actually be installing the support software, since it won’t work with the Windows 8 preview. Then click Continue again.
3. The next step is to choose how large to make the Window partition on your hard drive. A Boot Camp operating system must be installed on a partition of your internal drive; it can’t be used on an external drive. The partition you create should be at least 25 GB in size, so there’s enough room for the OS and anything extra that might end up there, like files or applications. Next, click Partition.
4. Once your drive is partitioned, it’s time to install Windows. Again, the Windows 8 preview needs to be burned to a disc in order to install. Boot Camp should detect the disc once it’s inserted and allow you to continue installing. Click Start Installation. Your computer will now restart and boot from the Windows disc.
5. Follow the instructions on screen. When the installer asks you where to install Windows, select “Disk 0 Partition 3 BOOTCAMP” and then click Drive options (advanced). Choose Format from the options that appear to format the partition to NTFS, the file system Windows requires.
6. Follow the onscreen instructions again. Once Windows has installed, your Mac will automatically restart into Windows.

Since the Boot Camp support software for Windows won’t work with the developer preview, you won’t be able to install the Boot Camp tools on Windows. That means that to boot back into your OS X partition, you’ll need to restart your Mac with the Option key on the keyboard held down. You’ll be shown a list of available startup drives, from which you can choose your main partition where OS X is housed.

Remember this is a developer preview version of Windows 8. That is, it’s essentially alpha software, so things could go very wrong when you use it. Just as Apple suggests when using developer previews of OS X, you might not want to install Windows 8 on your main computer, and make sure to back up before you do any installations.

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1. Create a service-only account

Often repair work involves administrator-level access to your Mac’s operating system. While I’ve never heard about privacy violations at Apple Authorized Service Providers, I like putting an extra barrier to protect my personal data, since I’ll sheepishly admit my account password is used in a few other places, and I’d rather nobody know it.

For added protection, I have another administrator account prior to sending my Mac in for service. An extra administrator account is good for testing purposes, so I already have one. If you don’t, then go to System Preferences, and then to Accounts and click the plus button and under “New Account.” choose “Administrator.” Create a full name and unique password and then click “Create Account.”

When checking in your computer at the repair shop, give them this password. Yes, your original account’s password could be reset and your data read, but at least this makes it a bit more difficult to do so. Even if your primary account’s password is reset, they still won’t have easy access to your keychain or be able to find out where else you use that admin password.

Now that your Mac is safely backed up and ready for service, here are two tips for an often overlooked part of the job — physically transporting your Mac.

2. Dress your iMac in a t-shirt

The iMac’s screen in particular can be easily scratched when lifting it in and out of the car. Shirt buttons and jewelry are common items that could cause scratches on your person, too. A large towel is a common protector for transport, but it’s difficult to keep that in place. My solution is an old t-shirt. If your screen size exceeds your shirt size, go to a thrift store and pick up an XL. Old shirts tend to be extremely soft and stretch easily, thereby protecting your iMac screen and keeping that protection in place during transit. The bonus is that your computer looks absolutely adorable.

Once you’ve got the T-shirt wrapped around the iMac, lift it carefully, making sure to grasp it firmly with two hands at the bottom and press the protected screen against your body. Don’t try to carry it by the stand. Unless you’re a weightlifter with unusually long arms, avoid carrying an iMac under one arm.

3. Keep it in the backseat

Just like people do with their other most precious cargo (ie., children and pets), keep the Mac in the backseat. Have the screen face backwards and strap it in with the shoulder and waist restraints. I typically place the shoulder strap over the back of the iMac and then use the waist restraint close to the base. This will not keep it in place as well as it will a child in case of an accident, but it serves to slow the Mac down, and if it does hit the back of the passenger seat, the screen is less likely to crack and the hard drive is less likely to get jostled. For an extra ounce of prevention, I push the passenger seat as far back as I can and brace it with a pillow if needed. This will also help if you have to make a sudden stop, or if you hit a few potholes long the way.

Any other tips for getting your injured Mac to and from service-related visits?

Photo courtesy of Flickr user kaikajus.

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Skip the click-and-hold

Mac App Store apps that are in your Launchpad can be moved by clicking and holding their icons, and deleted then clicking the ‘x’ that appears in the corner of each icon. It’s possible to delete and move them without waiting for that delay, though. Instead of clicking and holding an icon, simply hold the Option key on the keyboard. The icons will start to wiggle instantly, and you’ll be able to delete and move the apps.

You can also move the icons without them being in the ‘editing mode’. You can move them around simply by clicking or tapping and dragging; the icons don’t have to be wiggling to be moved.

Clear Launchpad and start again

If your Launchpad is anything like mine, it has all sorts of applications listed that you’d rather not see, such as Adobe help apps, or uninstallers. If you’d like to only have Launchpad show the apps you actually use, you can clear Launchpad completely and add the apps manually. It may be time consuming to add all the apps again, but it should stop Launchpad feeling so bloated.

1. First off, make a backup of the current Launchpad database. That way, if something goes wrong, you can restore Launchpad back to how it was. To do this, open [Your username] > Library > Application Support > Dock and make a copy of the file that’s in there. In order to get to the Library folder, you may have to use the Finder’s Go menu with the option key held down, since Lion hides it by default.
2. Now open up Terminal from Applications > Utilities. Once it’s open, paste the following command:

   sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock/*.db "DELETE from apps; \
     DELETE from groups WHERE title<>''; DELETE from items WHERE rowid>2;" \
     && killall Dock

3. Launchpad should now be empty. You can add apps back in by dragging them from the Applications folder onto the Launchpad icon.

If you’d like to restore Launchpad to how it was when you first installed Lion, simply delete the file you made a copy of from the Application Support > Dock folder. Next time you launch Launchpad, it should be back to normal.

Hide certain apps

If you’d rather not delete everything from Launchpad, or you aren’t comfortable using the Terminal, there is a preference pane you can download which allows you to select certain apps to hide from Launchpad. It’s called Launchpad-Control, and can be downloaded from this website.

Once you’ve downloaded and installed the preference pane, you can find it under “Other” in System Preferences. In the Launchpad-Control pane, you’ll find a list of apps that are currently in Launchpad. You can uncheck the box next to an app’s name to hide it from Launchpad. Click apply, and you’ll briefly see the Dock disappear. Once it returns, open Launchpad and the apps you unchecked will no longer appear there.

Set up a Launchpad keyboard shortcut

Unless you bought a Mac after Lion was released, your keyboard probably doesn’t have a shortcut key for opening Launchpad. It’s very easy to set one up using System Preferences.

1. Open System Preferences and open the Keyboard preference pane. In there, select the Keyboard Shortcuts tab.
2. From the source list on the left, select Launchpad & Dock. Now find Show Launchpad from the list on the right.
3. Double-click on the right hand side of the entry for Show Launchpad. A small text field should appear. Now type the shortcut you’d like to use for showing Launchpad. You can now use that shortcut to show and hide Launchpad using your keyboard.

Especially f you don’t like having Launchpad in the Dock, this makes it much easier to open it. You could even remap the Dashboard key to open Launchpad, if you wish.

Do you know of any other time-saving or organizational tips for Launchpad? Tell us below in the comments.

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Take Photos of the Current Time in Safari

First, you’ll need a photo of the current time taken from each camera whose internal clock is out of sync. Be sure to disable the flash to avoid screen glare before you complete these steps:

1. Launch Safari on your Mac and open the URL of an established “time authority” that will display the current time  (http://www.time.gov/ for example).
2. Using each camera, take a photo of Safari as it displays the correct time.
3. Import the photo of the correct time from each camera into your iPhoto Library.

Create Smart Albums for Each Camera Model

Now that you have photos of the correct time imported into your iPhoto Library from each camera you own, you will need to isolate the photos for each camera:

1. From the File menu on iPhoto, create a new Smart Album (one for each camera).
2. Use the drop down list to set the “Camera Model” condition of the Smart Album to match the relevant camera model for each album you create.
3. Keep creating Smart Albums until you have a unique Smart Album for each camera.

More Than One Camera of the Same Model

If you happen to have multiple cameras of the same model, then you must add a second field, “Any Text”  to the conditions of the Smart Album and set the value for this field will be set to the serial number of the camera as follows:

1. Select one of the photos for each camera of the same model.
2. From iPhoto’s File menu, select “Reveal in Finder” to show where the original photo is located in the Finder and open the photo using the Preview application.
3. From Preview’s Tools menu, select the “Show Inspector” menu item and navigate to the EXIF tab to find the value of the serial number.
4. Enter the serial number as the value for the “Any Text” condition of the Smart Album.
5. Again, keep creating Smart Albums until you have one unique Smart Album for each camera.

Determine the Time Adjustment for Each Camera

By comparing the time represented in the photo to the time stamp on the picture itself, you can determine the amount of the adjustment that must be made.  To determine the adjustment for each camera:

1. Select only the photo of the correct time as it was displayed in Safari within each Smart Album.
2. From the Photo menu in iPhoto, select the “Adjust Date and Time…” menu item and copy down the time difference between the time shown in the photo and the time stamp of the image file.
3. Click cancel, and repeat for each camera’s Smart Album.

Adjust the Time for Each Camera

Now that you have a unique Smart Album defined for each camera, and you know the exact time adjustment required for each camera, all that’s left to do is adjusting the time for all photos in the iPhoto Library for each camera.

1. Select one of the Smart Albums you created and select all of the photos in the same Smart Album.
2. ‘From the Photo menu in iPhoto, select the “Adjust Date and Time…” menu item and modify the date/time of all of the photos in these Smart Library, using the interval you discovered when comparing the time displayed in the image to the time stamp of the photo from that camera.
3. Be sure to check “Modify original files.”
4. Click Adjust, and repeat for each camera’s Smart Album.

It may seem like a lot of work, but once you’ve done it once, it should hopefully help keep your iPhoto Events in chronological working order for a long time to come, without requiring you to make manual changes each to the metadata of each photo you add.

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1. Use TidyUp To Purge Duplicates. TidyUp (download link), by Hyperbolic Software is a great way to search your iPhoto library for duplicate items. Every now and then, my iPhone will re-import photos, or forget it already imported them. TidyUp lets you search using some fairly granular criteria to eliminate duplicate files.

2. Keywords are your friends. I tend to go a bit keyword crazy. Every photo or image I import has keywords. A presentation image of a clock might have the keywords “presentation, time, clock, timepiece” assigned to it. A photo of my friend Mindy in Boston will have “Boston, Mindy, harbor” attached to it. Using keywords will make the next step, Smart Albums, a lot easier.

3. Use Smart Albums. I’m not a big fan of iPhoto’s Event-based organization. For starters, I hate how events are created by day. I don’t know about you, but the amount of true events (weddings, vacations, etc.) I shoot on an annual basis is minor. Instead I get a lot of onsey-twosie photo events that are a pain to organize. Also, a lot of images for me are multipurpose. Earlier, I mentioned I tag images I might use in presentations, so I’ve got a Smart Album built on the presentation keyword. I don’t like to rely on iPhoto’s Faces and Places intelligence, so I will also build Smart Albums based on areas I shoot a lot; I’ve got albums for Boston, Boothbay, and New York.

You can also use multiple keywords or criteria to create yet more specific albums. For example, you could create a Smart Album of wallpapers with the Apple logo you’ve created in the last year, that also have a ranking of five stars or higher.

4. Keep Events Window Clean. Like I said, most of the photos I take are random shots off my iPhone. My OCD really kicks in when I see events that aren’t events, so I keyword them and move them into a miscellaneous general purpose event. Periodically, I’ll go through that holding bin and, since most of the time my “I don’t know what else to do with this” event really is an “I don’t know why I took this photo” and I’ll purge 99 percent of the images there.

5. Empty the Trash and Purge. iPhoto has a separate trash can from the rest of OS X. Deleting an image won’t immediately delete the file from your hard drive. Instead you need to go in and manually empty the trash. Checking the trash periodically will let you permanently get rid of bad or duplicate photos, and might reveal some lost gems that look much better than you remember.

iPhoto is a great program, but it isn’t yet so perfect that it can’t stand improvement. These small changes take only a little time but add result in a markedly different user experience. Any other iPhoto tips you care to add?

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First things first: Don’t buy your app gifts in advance if you want them to be a surprise, unless you opt not to send the gift as an email, and instead choose the “Print gift myself” option in the app gifting screen in iTunes. If you send the gifts via email, your recipient will receive them right away, unless you can somehow convince them to not open their email until Dec. 25.

If you do select the option to print the gift, it’ll give you the added benefit of having something to actually present the giftee. But while Apple’s presentation and formatting are nice enough (see below), they won’t win any design contests.

I suggest getting more creative. For instance, I’m giving the gift of Angry Birds to many friends and family members this year. I’m lucky enough to be surrounded by people who’ve somehow never experienced the joy of Rovio’s physics puzzler. Along with the app, I’m putting one of the Angry Birds plush toys in the box for one lucky recipient. In this case, the prop actually cost around 15 times the gift itself, but considering how cheap the game itself is, and how happy the stuffed bird will make the little guy getting it, it’s well worth it. It’s a little late to get this shipped in time, but you can grab an Angry Birds iPhone case from Best Buy or the Apple Store as a nice replacement. Works better for grown-up kids, too.

Of course, not every app has a companion stuffed toy to give away with it. I’d be hard pressed to find a plush animal that’s appropriate for Reeder, for instance (okay, maybe an owl with a mortar board and glasses). Instead, if I’m giving a selection of apps to one individual, I get a little crafty. Get ready to tap into your inner Martha Stewart.

First, grab screen captures of the icons for the apps you want to give, either from iTunes directly or from the iTunes preview page on the web for each app. In case you don’t know, on a Mac this means hitting Shift+Command+4 and then clicking and dragging to specify the area you want to grab. A .PNG named “Screenshot” followed by the date and time it was taken should appear on your desktop.

Once you’ve got all your apps taken care of, arrange them on a page using your photo editor of choice and print them out, at a fairly large size. Try to get six on a page, with plenty of white space between. I like to use a heavier stock paper, for better durability. When the pictures are printed, get out the scissors and cut out each app icon.

Now take a piece of cardboard (cut to whatever shape you desire) and wrap it in festive wrapping paper. You could use ribbon to mimic a tied package at this point, complete with bow. Use a glue stick to fix the app icons you cut out on your wrapped cardboard backing. I’m planning to cut my backing into stocking shapes, and maybe hanging them on the tree in advance of gift giving.

Another quick and easy idea is to print app icons, along with a brief description or personal message, and the code iTunes provides when you buy the gift on printable business cards. It’s easier for less crafty individuals, takes far less time, and makes your gift easy to slip into a card or stocking.

One more tip for those gifting apps this season: make sure the app is compatible with your giftee’s device in advance. If they have an iPhone 3G running iOS 3.1 and you give them an app that requires 4.2 or higher and is exclusively compatible with iPhone 4, their disappointment will be palpable.

So long as the app is compatible, and you give them a little more than just a stock email, though, giving apps as gifts should result in a lot of smiling faces come Christmas morning. Unless your loved ones are too busy flinging birds to smile.

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We’ll walk you through how to set up, enable, and tweak all 10 items so you can get the most out of your Mac right from the start.

Below is a sample of the video. The full screencast clocks in at just over 11 minutes.

I’m still waiting to see how the dust settles, and also looking for a time window to drive to my “local” (24 miles round-trip) library’s Wi-Fi hotspot and cool my heels for a couple of hours while the 729 MB OS 10.5.7 standalone Combo Updater downloads over their none-too-speedy wireless LAN. In the meantime, OS 10.5.6 is giving me nothing in particular to complain about on either my Intel unibody MacBook or my 17″ G4 PowerBook, so there’s no compelling reason to be in a tear about updating.

“Belt & Suspenders”

I have never allowed Software Update to upgrade an OS install on any of my computers. It’s a moot point anyway on my glacial-drift-slow home dial-up connection, but I wouldn’t be inclined to let something as crucial and potentially problematical as an OS update run in the background even over the fastest broadband connection. I keep Software Update turned off.

I know millions do take the SU route without experiencing difficulties. But there are also those who will encounter contretemps like stalled installers, blue screens, and a variety of post-upgrade issues of the sort that get reported on MacFixIt, MacInTouch and other forums, including Apple’s, after every OS upgrade or security patch release. MacFixIt has flatly stated that “Apple’s Software Update, as presently implemented, is inherently dangerous.” On the other hand, over the course of dozens of OS X installs, upgrades and updates since OS 10.1 on my machines, I’ve never experienced a serious problem, and I attribute that, at least in part, to my “belt & suspenders” approach to updating.

That said, I’m less obsessive than I used to be about preparation. I used to do disk optimizations, or even defragment using AlSoft’s highly regarded Disk Warrior utility before running major system upgrades, but I haven’t been doing that for the past couple of years, and so far so good. With today’s larger hard drive capacities, the time investment involved in that sort of disk maintenance has become more prohibitive.

Maintenance and Backup

Before updating the OS, I do at least bring my Time Machine backup up to date (easy, and something we should all keep current anyway) and run a suite of system cleaning and maintenance routines — Repair Permissions, cron scripts, dump various caches, and so forth with my favorite system maintenance app, OnyX. I don’t believe the world would necessarily come crashing down around my ears if I skipped these preparations, but I like to proceed with things in an orderly and unhurried fashion if possible.

Maybe I would have done just as well using Software Update, but the thing about precautionary principles is that you take pre-emptive action before there is a problem so you don’t have to spend more time fixing one later. If all goes well, as it has for me till now taking this tack, at least one has done no harm.

You could argue that most of the time, running system and disk maintenance software is an act of faith, with no tangible evidence to indicate that it’s doing anything at all. But sometimes it does fix obvious problems, which suggests that stuff can also go wrong “under the hood” without any notable symptoms. Whenever I do find the time to run Disk Warrior, it almost invariably finds directory damage and files that need repair.

Common Sense Prudence

I also prefer to use the Combo updater if I’m not absolutely pressed for time on the download, which is the mode MacFixIt and other experts recommend. The standalone installer is especially useful if you have multiple computers to update and only want to download the software once. The full Combo standalone update is a more fail-safe and superior alternative to the incremental version offered by SU.

I think it’s simply common sense prudence to at least minimize use of the computer during OS updates. If one has the time (I concede that I usually don’t do this) it’s a good idea to boot the Mac into Safe Boot Mode (hold down the Shift key during a reboot) before running the installer. Be aware that starting up in Safe Mode takes a long time because it runs a media scan during the boot process, so be prepared to wait about five minutes or so before the login screen appears, which it will even if you have automatic login configured.

Happy Medium?

Is there a happy medium to be struck between “What, me worry?” and obsessive compulsive take? Neither approach is necessarily “wrong.” It really depends on your comfort level with risk, and to some degree, on the amount of time you can invest in running upgrades. However, a failed upgrade will usually burn a lot more time than an ounce of preparation.

What’s your preferred OS upgrade/update approach? Do you rush right in, hang back and take it slow, or use multiple strategies for different machines?

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