Six tips for using the Dock...

Pick the perfect view optio...

When you want to examine your iTunes library, you have a choice of different views—ways to display the content. You can choose a different view for each part of your iTunes library, whether it be for the sub-libraries (such as Music, Movies, TV Shows, or Audiobooks) or for playlists, and iTunes remembers these views for each part of its display. Here’s a look at the three different views, when you might want to use them, and which options each one offers.

Rip audio tracks from your ...

If you’re a music fan, you probably have a number of DVDs of concerts by your favorite artists. And you may want to listen to the music from these DVDs, say, on your iPod. In many cases, the “soundtracks” of concert DVDs are not commercially available (and even when they are, you already own the DVD, so why pay twice?). So why not rip the audio yourself, and make your own live album from those favourite DVDs?

Get quick access to recentl...

Your Mac is full of files, folders, and applications, and it’s always an annoyance to spend time looking for the items you need. OS X offers many tools (for instance, the Dock and the Finder’s sidebar) that can help you access things you use day in and day out, but there are also a number of ways you can quickly get to items you’ve used only recently. Learning these techniques will streamline your work.

Five System Preference twea...

Mac OS X’s System Preferences program is the one-stop shop for customizing many aspects of your operating system. Open System Preferences by choosing Apple menu -> System Preferences, or by clicking on the Dock icon that looks like a set of gears. Each preference pane is labeled to give you a clear idea of what type of elements it lets you change: Appearance, Spotlight, Displays, Network, and so on. Many of these preference panes contain settings that can help you save time and make your computing experience better or more efficient. Here are five of my favourites:

Four essential PDF tips for...

PDF files are practical and easy to work with, not only because they retain the layout of your documents, but also because users on any platform can view them. When you want to share documents with others, even if they don’t have the software you used to create the documents, PDFs are the natural choice. Here are four tricks everyone should know for using this versatile file format with OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard).