eaves.ca

Hi David:

A few tips that may be helpful:

1. In the Mac OS there is a concept called Services, which is not well known but fairly useful. For instance, if you select a file in Finder and choose Finder–>Services–>Mail you will see three options: Send File, Send Selection, and Send To (which copies the file path) to a mail message. Services are generally accessible from a wide range of applications. Many applications provide their own system wide services. On my system, for example, I have submenus for TextWrangler, Skype, WriteRoom, OmniFocus. I presume that you are using Snow Leopard, so you have the advantage of being able to customize and configure services and assigning keyboard shortcuts: http://www.macworld.com/article/142419/2009/08/...

2. I prefer Google Quick Search Box to Spotlight for both finding things and launching applications.

3 & 4. I no longer use Mail or iCal and prefer Gmail/GCal.

5. You can change what those keyboard shortcuts do in the Keyboard & Mouse section of System Preferences.

Let me know if you run into any other issues. Macs are very customizable in my experience, although it takes some practice to get the most out of your Mac.

Jesse

The best thing to do in the Mac vs. PC battle is to have one of each.

You can use your mac to surf the web (which looks better anyway), do graphic design and use interactive applications.

Use your PC for writing word docs and downloading music, because you're bound to get a load of viruses on it anyway.

1. Drag and drop your file onto the Mail.app icon in the dock. Presto, new mail with file as attachment.

2. Do a Command-Click instead of a Click on the spotlight results to open the containing folder.

3 and 4 I dunno :)

Paul – thanks! Super helpful.

Jesse – Thank you for these! Going to dive deeper into the Services article. I did notice services in the finder (and even used it once to attach a doc to a new email) the problem is that it isn't convenient – the “attach to new email” function is three steps, not one click, away. Hopefully there is something there that changes that (although just dragging it to the Mail icon in the dock does seem the simplest way).

I've met a lot of people who have migrated to Gmail/GCal. I totally understand where you are coming from and can't seem to do it for two reasons. One, I like have my data on my machine, data I can back up and do what I want with (plus I haven't figured out how to sync my BB with gcal). But more importantly, I find Gmail frustrating because I can't sort mail by subject line or sender. This is critical because I get a lot of false positives in my junkmail folder with Gmail and the easiest way to scan junk mail is to sort my subject and then quickly delete anything that references a sexual organ, drug or dating service. I'd never thought that feature was important until Gmail took it away – and it seems to simple, I don't know why they don't add it. It's like they feel you should HAVE to search for your mail…

Anyway, again, thank you for that link and the advice… super helpful!

Thanks Paul, had a mac for 4 years and did not know about the Cmd-CLick on spotlight result thing.

After a quick play you can kind of create the “Send to” functionality if you have Snow Leopard.

1. Open Automator
2. Select “Service” template
3. Set “Service receives selected” to “Files or folders” in “Finder”
4. Drag the mail action “New Mail Message” into the area marked “Drag actions or files here to build your workflow.”
5. Save it and call it “Send to”
6. In finder select some files and right click. “Send to” should be there.

This should give you a tough example to polish.

David — I kind of took the lazy way by just dropping the link about services in Snow Leopard. You may find the click-and-drag option to be the most efficient for you. It is a good idea. But I prefer keyboard shortcuts, so once I get Snow Leopard, I will assign the Finder Send File service a keyboard shortcut. Then all I will have to do is select the file(s) and press the keyboard shortcut to attach the files to a new message. I will also make the service show up on the right-click contextual menu in case I need it. In previous versions of the OS, customizations to the contextual menu were generally accessible in two clicks rather than one click, which rendered them rather useless.

Regarding Mail, I do use it at work as my primary e-mail client. I use it at home to mirror my personal Gmail via IMAP because, like you, I want to have my data in several places. Since you are handling so much e-mail, I would recommend looking into 1) Smart Mailboxes and 2) Mail rules, especially those that use Applescript to interact with non-Mail apps. Similarly, you may find Smart Folders within Finder to be helpful (e.g, PDFs or Word documents that were modified in the last two days and are stored in your Documents or Downloads folders). Once created, you can then drag these Smart Folders to the sidebar in your Finder window. These are a few big timesavers for me.

For example, at work I pipe all event invitations to a separate Gmail account using an a Mail rule & basic Applescript (which opens Gmail for me, so I can easily accept and modify the event). I use Calaboration to sync the Google Cal and my work iCal. Alternatively, one could use the CalDAV method described here (http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answ...), which seems more elegant.

For 1, Paul is quite right. Drag and drop is very versatile in Mac OS, for example you can drag an image out of safari and into a drawing application rather than saving it as a file.

You can also do 2 from the keyboard with command-return on the result, which will open a finder window with the item selected. This also works in many applications that manage files, like itunes.

For 3, if the email contains a date and/or time, you can hover over that to get a small drop-down. This is called a data detector, and the menu will contain items for creating ical events using that info. Not quite what you're talking about, but a half step away.

For 4, I can't think of anything that would change that behaviour. I'd be a steak sandwich that in a few weeks you won't notice it anymore, though. The mind is way more fluid in habit forming and dropping than we expect.

Getting to the menu bar using the keyboard is control-f2, (control-fn-f2 if you're on a macbook).

Congrats on the mac.

I use something very simple that solves 100% of my “find” problems.
Quicksilver!

it's also an app launcher.
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/14831

It *seems* daunting in the begining. But it's a tool I cannot live without.

My girlfriend said the same thing: replace Spotlight with Quicksilver. The latter is like the former on steroids.

Right-click wasn't one of your peeves? First thing that annoys me when I (very) occasionally have to fix other people's Macs.

Dave,

Do you know where the thread under my original comment went? I see them in the RSS feed but not on page for the blog post. Odd.

Jesse

I'm thinking switching to Mac too:)