Episode #271
This week on For Mac Eyes Only: Mike and Gary share Menu Bar Favorites, Edu IT Wants Bonjour Fixed, Google’s FTC Fine, eBizcuss Closes, Password Policy Changes, 1Password Holds Barbarians at the Gate, Apple Top Brand in China, Macintosh Team Talks Mac.
EDITORIAL LINKS
> Default Folder X
> ScreenSharingMenulet
> Hazel
> JumpCut & ClipMenu
> Activity Monitor It’s MenuMeters!
> AccessMenuBarApps
> Bartender
> Evernote
> CoverSutra
> Caffeine
> ReadWriteWeb’s Mac Geek Menu Bar Apps
NEWS
> Education IT Petitions Apple to Improve Bonjour
> Google Fined for “Lying” to Safari Users
> French Retailer eBizcuss Goes Under
> Apple & Amazon Change Password Reset Policies
> AgileBits: 1Password vs Password Cracker
> iNEWS: Apple’s iPhone Help Apple Reach Top Brand in China
> FUN NEWS: Hertzfeld Shares 1983 Interview with Macintosh Team
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Running Time: 1:02:15
Menu Bar – Devon Technologies has a group of excellent Freeware Apps they call “Needful Things”
xMenu sits in the user Menu and can replace the Dock as well as LaunchPad. I put my most commonly used Applications in xMenu’s Pull Down. They stay in Alphabetical Order and don’t wander around, as they can on the Dock depending on what’s going on on your Mac. I also put Alias Links to my most used Folders in xMenu. By leading the Folder Name with an underscore, (e.g., _FolderName) they alpha sort to the top of the list.
It is VERY handy. xMenu does a lot more. Snippets if you want.
One Application I have come to rely on in the free “Needful Things” download is Easy Find. It will find ANYTHING on your Mac or mounted drives. Very powerful, very fast. A necessity when you “absolutely, positively, must find that file NOW.”
http://www.devontechnologies.com/download/products.html
If the link pasted above is blocked by your blogging software, here it is with spaces after the /
devontechnologies.com/ download/ products.html
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One change I just noticed in Mountain Lion. The “make cursor larger” slider that used to be in the Mouse/Trackpad section of Universal Access is now in the Display Section of Accessibility
Just discovered that Mountain Lion erased / disabled the Dymo LabelWriter Program.
Maybe I was just lucky, but I did not have my labels in the “standard” folder. So I don’t know if they would have been erased with the LabelWriter Program.
I downloaded a new version of program from the Dymo Website. It installed, and actually looks to be improved.
Since I’ve turned off GateKeeper (Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here) I don’t know if the Dymo program is “signed.” I did scan it with Clam X.
I’ve also grown very quickly weary of the animation effects which were in Lion and now Mountain Lion. They are slightly less bothersome on a MacBook Air than on my desktop with two giant monitors. Had to turn to Mountain Lion Tweaks to turn ’em off.
I’m sure that kid has made a fortune in donations. But I just sent him more!
http://tweaksapp.com/app/mountain-tweaks/
Interesting. Installing Mountain Lion left my Dymo Label app alone.
I don’t particularly care for the new Dymo Label app. It LOOKS nice enough, but there are horrible display bugs when pulling up the list of Label Templates under the new version. However, I could never get the OLD version installed under Lion on my iMac at the office, so I’m stuck with the new. BUT at home, my upgraded Mac Pro running Lion very happily runs the old version without a hiccup.
Go figure.
Mike
Mike, you may be right about the LabelMaker. I have created a buncha’ labels, and just open one of them to change it rather than using all the templates from Dymo.
Next up is my Brother P-Touch, the one that makes “film” labels. In the past it has been more trouble than the Dymo.
On the “Animation” effects. Titanium has released Onyx for Mountain Lion. It does a much more through job of squashing animation effects than the Mountain Lion Tweaks app.
Just finished using it, and, boy, on the SSD Mini, do the Windows pop open and closed. Hope that persists through the next reeboot.
I had a beta version of OnyX for Mountain Lion installed for a short while. I must have removed it because it wasn’t complete yet so I’ll need to grab the new one. I love OnyX and am downloading the new release as I type. (http://www.titanium.free.fr)
So far the window animation hasn’t bothered me too much EXCEPT with Firefox. It does kind of a “double zoom” when I restore the window. I hoped the new release would squash that bug but no dice. Annoying.
Mike
More reports from the Mountain Lion Conversion.
Good news: the ScanSnap and all its programs work just as they did before the upgrade (from SL).
Less Good News: the Mountain Lion workflow slows me down.
The Export Function works fine to let me rename a file and put it in the correct “Bills Paid” Folder.
But where in SL Flle>Save>As left the original file intact on disk, and left onscreen a version of the renamed file, ML continues to display the old original un-renamed file. To be sure I’ve done it right, I’m having to open the Bills folder and actually check the file.
Wasting time.
As I am working on downloading the kind of statements I address above, I created a new workflow.
Still not as easy as Snow Leopard, but improved.
1. Download the statement as always to Downloads. Be sure Downloads is open on the Desktop.
2. Either before or after the Download, open the Folder where you want the File to ultimately go.
3. Drag or copy the file from Downloads to its permanent location.
4. Open the file you just put in its permanent location.
5. Of course, pay attention that it’s the RIGHT file.
6. Use File > Export to Export the file to the same folder it is already in. Since you have that folder open, you can more easily verify your nomenclature is correct.
7. When done, delete the files you don’t need. From your “final folder” and from downloads.
I save myself (or I believe I save myself) a LOT of time by keeping Downloads on my Dock as Folder using Grid View.
I then have it sorted so the most recent Downloads are at the top of the “grid”.
I also do this with my Home folder and Applications folders too.
(There’s no need for Launchpad if I have an Applications stack. It’s faster and neater than Launchpad!)
Some ways this might help you:
1) You can drag and drop directly from Downloads to wherever you’d like by popping open the Downloads stack vs opening the Downloads folder in Finder first.
2) Pop open the Downloads stack and hover cursor over the downloaded file in the stack and with the tap of the space bar, you can Quick Look the file to see if you’re working with the correct one.
3a) You could put other frequently accessed folders on the Dock too to make moving files to common folders easier. Pop open Downloads stack, find downloaded file, and drag to other folder on Dock.
OR
3b) You could create Finder Folder Actions via Automator that you could plop on your Dock or Desktop to drag Downloads to. This might partially take care of steps 3-6?
Just a few thoughts off the top of my head to MAYBE eliminate some of the extra steps?
Mike