The real power of OS X lies in all of the hidden gems beneath what you see at first glance. Technologies like Expose, Spaces, Stacks, Spotlight and others help users tap the power of their Mac, while keeping the experience sleek and elegant. Aptonic’s Dropzone, a third-party application designed to further simplify your Mac experience, [...]
An attribute of Apple’s OS X operating system that I love above nearly all others is that there’s so much power beneath the simple and elegant interface. Although there are many undocumented features of OS X, we’re going to look at some that are fairly well publicized, but that you may not be familiar with [...]
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 [...]
So, as indicated, I finally switched to Leopard (went from 10.4.11 to 10.5.1 to be precise). As with previous operating system installs, I also took the opportunity to upgrade the internal drive in my MacBook Pro, this time kicking it up to 320GB with the new WD Scorpio WD3200BEVT (it has turned out to be [...]
With the announcement of Leopard’s release date, there were plenty of comments that the Leopard upgrade is nothing but a few bells and whistles added to Tiger. Some think that there is no reason to upgrade from Tiger to Leopard. After all, Tiger is a very refined version of OS X. Why [...]
I’ve written at length about putting metadata to good use on OS X. There are many benefits to ‘tagging’ files, but topping the list are probably quick retrieval of files, and more intelligent storage methodologies. But the features I’ve put together on the topic have been aimed a little more at the advanced [...]
I think we’ve covered a lot of ground in the past 4 weeks, talking about Metadata in OS X. While it’s clearly a large step in a new direction, attacking that new way of thinking can really pay dividends as you hone that system to your own needs. In this wrap-up post about [...]
The Metadata Screecast that I posted yesterday generated enough questions that I felt it necessary to address them in a post, rather than a HUGE comment, buried at the end of the comments. So here it is. Each Answer references the number of the comment it relates to.
I will continue to update this [...]
A dead drive created a minor slow-down in getting this out, but an extra drive and a quickly restored backup and I’m back in action. (Along these lines, an answer to a question: The tags – Spotlight Comments – do in fact survive backups and such. Everything’s in perfect order post-backup/restore.) [...]
Last week I began talking about using metadata effectively in OS X. I think I stirred the honey pot a bit by leaving things hanging – eg, not explaining my process – but felt it would be better organized and prepared in a series of posts. So here we are with Part Deux.
Q [...]
A Long Time In The Making
Not quite a year ago I wrote a feature on LifeHacker talking about the use of Metadata in place of a folder-based organization scheme. Since then I’ve received many emails and inquiries asking for more on the subject. Inevitably I’ve responded with short answers and the promise of [...]
Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of Quicksilver coverage. Periodically I start to ‘pen’ new pieces on Quicksilver here on The Apple Blog – but then I compare it to some of the other things I’ve read across these great internets and I bow to their superiority. So rather than bore everyone with [...]
Yesterday was a month from the start of my Metadata-centric Experiment. Those eagle-eyed readers amongst you watched it come and go with nary a word from me – I apologize folks.
To Recap:
For a month now I’ve been dumping everything into an empty Documents folder. No directory structure to speak of what-so-ever. However, [...]
It’s my impression – from various reading around the internets – that of the many new features that came with Tiger, Spotlight hasn’t lived up to the hype it initially generated.
While my filing habits have slipped slightly, I still don’t use Spotlight as much as I expected I would almost a year later. Spotlight [...]
While Spotlight is definitely cool, it doesn’t quite fit my workflow. Quicksilver remains the supreme app on my Tiger installation. At a glance these tools may seem similar – even potential competitors – but in the end they’re VERY different tools. Alas this is a discussion/argument for another day. Let’s set that aside and move on to the point of this post.
Spotlight has made itself a little home in my workflow by including Spotlight Comments. If you’re unaware, Spotlight Comments are a new section in each file or folder’s Get Info screen. You can add your own information to each item indexed on your system for additional Spotlight specificity.
For me, Spotlight Comments represent a way to tag my files a la Flickr, del.icio.us, etc. This is immensely more useful for me than the default full text indexing that Spotlight offers. I want a narrow result set most of the time. Adding tags that make sense to me accomplishes this nicely.
But there’s a problem. I’m lazy. I don’t want to have to click each file, CMD I to Get Info, enter my Spotlight Comments for that file, close the window, and move to the next file. That’s like 5-10 seconds of mouse movement and typing and, well, I’m tired just thinking about it. Enter my faithful sidekick, Quicksilver. (Hi-Ho Quicksilver!)
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