Monthly Archives: December 2007

Changing Mac OS X’s Default E-Mail Application

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It doesn’t have to be Mail.

By default, Mac OS X is pre-configured with Mail, Apple’s e-mail application, set as the default e-mail client. That means clicking a link to an e-mail address or accessing your e-mail program from within another application will automatically launch Mail.

But you can easily change it to an e-mail client you prefer. Here’s how:

  1. Open Mail.
  2. Choose Mail > Preferences to open the preferences window.
  3. General Mail PreferencesIf necessary, click the General button in the preferences window’s toolbar to display General options.
  4. Choose the mail client you prefer from the Default email reader pop-up menu. If the application is not listed by name, you can choose Select from the menu and use the dialog that appears to locate and select the e-mail client you want. (Obviously, the application must be installed on your computer to select it.)
  5. Click the window’s close button to dismiss it.
  6. Choose Mail > Quit Mail to quit Mail.

Changes take affect as soon as you quit Mail.

Note that the preferences window shown here is for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. These steps also work in Tiger, although the preferences window may look different.

Chapter and Page References

Product ImageMac OS X 10.5 Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide includes more information about related topics:

  • Connecting to the Internet, Chapter 18
  • Mac OS X’s Internet Applications, page 419
  • Using Mail, pages 421-435

Powering Off with a Light Timer and Automator

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A bit geeky but effective.

My little home-based office has a lot of computer equipment in it. And since there’s always so much on my mind, I often forget to turn off certain peripherals when I’m finished using them or simply done for the day. These include two laser printers and the external hard disk I use with Time Machine.

Although I could leave them on all the time, it really isn’t a good idea. My main printer, which is about 5 years old now, seems to develop toner cartridge problems when it’s left on all the time. The darn cartridges cost $95 each. And it simply can’t be a good idea to leave a hard disk spinning all the time.

And then there’s the power. It’s not cost as much as the idea of it. Leaving devices turned on when you’re not using them is wasteful, plain and simple.

So I’ve come up with a solution: a light timer.

By light timer, I’m referring to a device you might use to turn lights on and off while you’re away on vacation to make it look like you’re home. I bought one with a three-prong outlet on it. I set it to turn on every morning at 5 AM, which is when my computer turns on for the day, and turn off every evening at 8 PM, which is when I’m usually done working for the day. I plugged a surge suppressor power strip into it and plugged the two printers and hard disk into it. Then I turned them all on.

Now those of you who know Mac OS know what happens when you turn off power to a connected and mounted hard disk. Your Mac displays a message telling you that the device was improperly disconnected and that file errors may result. So it’s not a good idea to simply turn off an external hard disk while the computer it’s connected to is still on and the disk is still mounted.

The solution to that is to make sure the disk is unmounted before it is powered down. But if I can’t remember to flip a few power switches at day’s end, what makes you think I can remember to unmount a hard disk? Obviously, I can’t.

Enter Automator. I wrote a very simple Automator Action that unmounts the disk. As shown here, it has only two steps:

  1. Automator ActionGet Specified Finder Items identifies the disk.
  2. Eject Disk unmounts the disk.

Then I used the iCal alarm trick to run the action every day at 6 PM.

So here’s how it all works. My computer is set to automatically start at 5 AM each morning. At about the same time, the light timer turns on the 3 peripherals, including an external hard disk connected to the computer. I come to work. I work. I wander out sometime late in the afternoon. At 6 PM, the hard disk unmounts using the Automator action triggered by iCal. I might wander back in, but I don’t need that external hard disk so I don’t even notice it’s gone. Or I might not wander in at all. At 8 PM the peripherals turn off, thanks to the light timer. Around the same time, computer shuts down automatically. Or maybe I shut down the computer earlier or later, depending on what I’m doing with it.

The point is, all this electronic stuff is turned off at night so I’m not wasting electricity on it.

Would it be easier to do it all manually? I don’t think so.

And one of these days I might get brave enough to explain how I set up iCal to remind me to drink a glass of water every hour all day every day. (And no, I don’t need it to remind me to head to the loo.)

Chapter References

Product ImageYou can learn more about automating tasks with Automator and AppleScript in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide. I introduce them both in Chapter 25.

Downgrading from Leopard

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Maybe you and your Mac just weren’t ready.

Here’s the scenario: In the months leading up to Leopard, you and many others among the Mac faithful started getting excited about the new features. Your computer has a few years on it and you wonder if it’ll run the new operating system. Then Leopard is released and you read the official minimum system requirements. Yes! According to Apple, it will run on your G4 computer! You run out and buy it, then install it and start taking advantage of all the great new features.

This is what happened to me. Although I treated myself to a brand spanking new iMac a few months ago, I still use my little 12″ G4 PowerBook extensively for mobile computing. The idea of being able to use Back to My Mac to access my iMac while I was on the road was too enticing to pass up.

According to the minimum system requirements, its 867 MHz PowerPC G4 processor and 640 MB of RAM would be enough to run Leopard. It did. But not very well.

The problem I encountered was the old spinning beach ball. Like the computer was falling asleep without closing its eyes. Sometimes I’d have to wait five or more minutes for it to get back to work. This soon drove me nuts and I decided to downgrade the machine back to Tiger.

I need to note here that I like Leopard very much. I have it installed on my production machine (the iMac), as well as the 15″ MacBook Pro I use as my “test mule.” I’m not recommending that you downgrade from Leopard to Tiger if you’re not having problems. But if you, like me, installed Tiger on an older, slower Mac — especially a G4 (what were we thinking?) — downgrading is an option you might want to consider. (A better but more costly option might be to get a new Mac.)

That said, here’s how you can get the job done. Please read this entire article before starting; there’s important information about the items you may lose after these steps are completed.

  1. Back up your Home folder to another disk. If you have a .Mac account, sync your Address Book, iCal events, and Mail settings to .Mac. (You can use this as a backup to easily restore your data after the downgrade.)
  2. Insert the Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger installation disc in your computer’s CD/DVD drive.
  3. When the Mac OS X Install DVD window opens, double-click Install Mac OS X.
  4. When prompted, click Restart and enter your password. Your computer should restart from the DVD.
  5. Follow the prompts that appear onscreen to select your language and advance through the screens until you get to the Select a Destination screen.
  6. Select your hard disk as the destination. It will probably appear with a red X, indicating that Tiger cannot be installed on that volume.
  7. Click the Options button.
  8. In the Options dialog that appears, select Archive and Install. (It may already be selected.) You will not be able to turn on the Preserve Users and Network Settings check box. Click OK.
  9. Click Continue and follow the remaining prompts to install Tiger on your computer.
  10. At the end of the installation, the computer restarts and displays the Mac OS X Setup Assistant screens. Follow the prompts to set up your computer. You will not be able to copy existing setup information from the Previous Systems folder that now resides on your hard disk or from a backup because those settings were created with a more advanced version of Mac OS than what is now installed.

In the Options dialog, you could also choose Erase and Install, but that would erase everything on you hard disk. Although this is always the best option for installing system software since it does a real “clean” installation, you must prepare by backing up all of your documents before doing the installation. Do not choose Erase and Install unless you’ve backed up your hard disk to another disk you can restore from.

When the entire process is done, you’ll have a Previous Systems folder on your hard disk’s root level. You might also have some other folders that were created by Leopard and have been left behind in the downgrade. For example, I found one called net and another named home that appeared to be empty. If these folders are empty, you can delete them.

Around this time, if you have an Internet connection, you’ll be prompted to update Mac OS X 10.4 and other components. Perform the update. It’ll bring Tiger up to the most current version, which includes security and bug fixes, as well as system enhancements.

When that’s done, you can also go through the contents of the Previous Systems folder and delete the applications and settings files you don’t need. For example, the Applications folder inside the Previous System 1 folder will include all the Leopard applications your Tiger computer can’t run: Address Book, Mail, QuickTime Player, etc. T Tiger-compatible version of most of these applications can be found in the Applications folder on your hard disk’s root level. For some reason, however, iCal 3 is left behind and it won’t run on Tiger. (I’ve reported that as a bug to Apple.) You’ll have to get a copy of iCal 2 from another source and install that on your downgraded disk if you want to use iCal.

Previous Systems

The data from your Address Book and iCal files and any mail stored in the Mail application are in a format that Tiger can’t read. If you have a .Mac account and synced before the downgrade, just sync again to replace the existing data on your computer (which should be nothing) with what’s on .Mac. That’ll restore much of the information. You may also be able to import your Mail messages from the Library folder in your Previous Systems folder (dig to find it) to the Tiger version of Mail.

And, of course, you’ll have to find all your old preferences files from the Previous Systems folder and put them in the right place so they’re recognized and used by your computer.

As you can see, this isn’t a small task. In my case, I put it off as long as I could. But when you spend more time waiting than working, you know you’ve got to take steps to fix the problem — even if they’re drastic steps.

Changing Mac OS X’s Default Web Browser

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It doesn’t have to be Safari.

By default, Mac OS X is pre-configured with Safari, Apple’s Web browser, set as the default Web browser. That means clicking a link to a Web URL in an e-mail message or other document will automatically open that link in Safari.

But you can easily change it to a browser you prefer. Here’s how:

  1. Open the Safari Web browser.
  2. Choose Safari > Preferences to open the preferences window.
  3. General Prefs in SafariIf necessary, click the General button in the preferences window’s toolbar to display General options.
  4. Choose the Browser you prefer from the Default Web Browser pop-up menu. If the browser is not listed by name, you can choose Select from the menu and use the dialog that appears to locate and select the browser you want. (Obviously, the browser must be installed on your computer to select it.)
  5. Click the window’s close button to dismiss it.
  6. Choose Safari > Quit Safari to quit Safari.

Changes take affect as soon as you quit Safari.

Note that the preferences window shown here is for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. These steps also work in Tiger, although the preferences window may look different.

Chapter and Page References

Product ImageMac OS X 10.5 Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide includes more information about related topics:

  • Connecting to the Internet, Chapter 18
  • Mac OS X’s Internet Applications, page 419
  • Using Safari, pages 445-447

Triggering Scripts and Automator Actions with iCal

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A little-known use for the alarm feature.

I thought I’d written about this somewhere here, but I guess I didn’t. So here it is: a very easy way to trigger scripts and Automator actions on your Mac.

  1. Open iCal.
  2. iCal Event OptionsCreate a new event for the date and time you want the script or action to run.
  3. If the action should be repeated — for example, run every day at the same time — use the Repeat options to set up the frequency.
  4. Choose Open file from the Alarm pop-up menu.
  5. By default, iCal appears in a menu beneath it. Choose Other from that menu and use the dialog that appears to select the script or action you want to run. When you click the Select button, its name appears under Open File.
  6. Set the time option to read 0 minutes before.
  7. Save your settings.

From that point forward, the script or action will run on schedule with no additional effort on your part.

This works in the current version of iCal (part of Leopard) as well as the version that came with Tiger. I don’t know about earlier versions. The screenshot here is from Leopard.

A few bonus tips:

  • If you don’t want these events cluttering up your calendar views, put them in their own calendar and turn off the check box for it in the Calendars list. The events will continue to work, but you won’t have to look at them.
  • Be sure that neither Turn off alarms option is enabled in iCal’s Advanced preferences. If you turn off alarms, this alarm obviously won’t work. If alarms are turned off when iCal is not running, you’ll have to keep iCal running all the time for this alarm to work.
  • iCal 3 (which is part of Leopard) enables you to set multiple alarms for a single event. use this to run multiple scripts or to run the same script multiple times in a day.

Page References

Product ImageMac OS X 10.5 Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide includes more information about related topics:

  • Adding iCal Events, page 254
  • Setting Event Details (including alarms), pages 255-257
  • Adding Calendars, page 261
  • Using AppleScript and Automator, pages 613-636

Clearing Out Previous Mail Recipients

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A little housekeeping in Apple Mail.

If you use Mail, you know that it looks up addressees and displays a menu of possible matches as you type. So if you type in John, it’ll look up all the people with those characters in their name or e-mail address.

If you’re sharp, you’ve probably realized that the people who appear on this list aren’t just the people in your Address Book file. They’re also people who you have sent messages to in the past: previous recipients.

Over time, your list of previous mail recipients gets long and awkward. When you attempt to enter an address, unwanted — or perhaps even invalid — addressees appear. Fortunately, you can clear out these old addresses using the Previous Recipients window.

Previous RecipientsTo display the Previous Recipients window, choose Window > Previous Recipients. As you can see, it lists all people you have sent e-mail messages to. Names preceded with a tiny Address Book icon are people in your Address Book file. You can sort the list by any column; just click it.

To remove a recipient, select his or her entry and click the Remove from List button. The entry disappears. Keep in mind that if you remove an entry with an Address Book icon, you do not remove that entry from your Address Book — just from this list.

To add recipient to your Address Book file, select his or her entry and click Add to Address Book. The entry is created in your Address Book and a tiny Address Book icon appears next to the name in the Previous Recipients list.

Page References

Product ImageMac OS X 10.5 Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide includes more information about related topics:

  • Creating Messages (including addressing messages), page 425
  • Replying to messages, page 430
  • Adding Address Book Cards, pages 241-242
  • Editing Contact Cards, page 243

Removing Words from Word’s Custom Dictionary

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It’s a bit involved, but doable.

Yesterday, I explained how you can “unlearn” a word that you mistakenly added to Mac OS X’s user dictionary. Of course, applications other than those developed by Apple probably don’t use Apple’s dictionary.

Microsoft Word is a good example. It stores the words you add to it in a Custom dictionary file. To remove a word you added by mistake, you have to manually edit this dictionary. Here’s how you can do this in Word 2004 for Mac OS; the technique is similar in Word 2003 for Windows.

  1. In Word, choose Microsoft Word > Preferences. (Note that a document window must be open to choose this command.)
  2. In the Preferences dialog that appears, choose Spelling and Grammar.
    Spelling Preferences
  3. Click the Dictionaries button.
  4. In the Custom Dictionaries dialog that appears, select the name of the dictionary you want to edit.
    Custom Dictionaries
  5. Click the Edit button.
  6. A dialog like the one shown next appears. Click OK.
    Spelling Turned Off
  7. A Word window named Custom Dictionary opens. It contains all the words in your dictionary, in alphabetical order. Make changes as desired in this file, adding or removing words as you see fit.
    Custom Dictionary
  8. Choose File > Save to save the modified file.
  9. If a dialog like the one shown next appears, click Yes.
    Save Changes
  10. Click the Custom Dictionary’s close button to dismiss it.
  11. If you had Check spelling as you type turned on before you started this process, go back into the Spelling and Grammar preferences and turn it back on.

From that point forward, Word will recognize only the words in its main dictionary and the custom dictionary as you edited it.

Page References

Product ImageMicrosoft Word 2004 for Mac OS X: Visual QuickStart Guide offers additional information related to this topic:

  • Enabling Automatic Spelling Checking, page 143
  • Checking Spelling as You Type, page 144
  • Setting Spelling and Grammar Preferences, pages 380-382

Learning (and Unlearning) Spellings

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Tips for using Mac OS X’s spelling checker.

One of the great things about Mac OS X is its built-in spelling checker. It makes it a lot tougher to spell a word incorrectly.

With Check Spelling While Typing enabled, a dotted red underline appears under each word Mac OS X doesn’t recognize. When faced with this, you have several options:

  • Spelling Contextual MenuManually type in a new spelling for the word.
  • Use the contextual menu to choose a different word. (I didn’t realize there were so many options for the spelling of my last name!)
  • Use the contextual menu to choose Ignore Spelling to remove the red underline.
  • Use the contextual menu to choose Learn Spelling to add the word’s current spelling to the Mac OS X user dictionary. This is the option I recommend for a word that’s correctly spelled that you use often.

If you use the Ignore Spelling option, the word’s spelling is ignored in that document only. If you choose Learn Spelling, the word is ignored in all documents. And since Mac OS X’s spelling check feature works in all Apple applications, the word is ignored everywhere that Mac OS X might flag it as a possible error.

So what happens if you accidentally “learn” the incorrect spelling of a word? Simple. Tell Mac OS X to unlearn it.

Unlearn CommandRight-click (or Control-click) on the word you added to the dictionary in error. Then choose Unlearn Spelling from the contextual menu that appears. The word is immediately flagged as a possible problem again.

And remember, no spelling checker will flag a misspelled word if that spelling spells another word it knows.

Page References

Product ImageMac OS X 10.5 Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide includes more information about related topics:

  • Checking Spelling & Grammar, pages 230-233
  • Using Contextual menus, page 21


Using Leopard’s Mosaic Screen Saver

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A very cool screen saver for folks with a lot of photos stored on their Macs.

One of the very cool and almost hidden features of Mac OS X 10.5′s improved screen saver is the photo mosaic screen saver module. This screen saver tells your computer to use all of the photos stored on it to create mosaic images of photos stored in a specific folder or an iPhoto event or album.

If that description doesn’t really help you visualize what this screen saver is doing, this post includes a video that not only shows you how to set it up, but it shows you the screen saver in action.

Keep in mind that the mosaic screen saver works best if you have a lot of photos in your iPhoto file.

Setting It Up

Here are the step-by-step instructions for setting up this screen saver on your Mac. These instructions are repeated in the video, but you might want to read through them quickly to get an idea of what to expect.

  1. Choose Apple > System Preferences.
  2. In the System Preferences window that appears, click the Desktop & Screen Saver Icon.
  3. In the Desktop & Screen Saver preferences pane, click the Screen Saver button.
  4. In the Screen Savers list on the left side of the window, scroll down to the Pictures list and select one of the picture folders, iPhoto events, or iPhoto albums in the list. This will be the folder full of images that are created with the mosaic tiles.
  5. Under the Preview area, click the Mosaic Display Style button.
    Screen Saver
  6. Screen Saver OptionsClick the Options button and use the dialog sheet that appears to set options, including whether slides should be presented in a random order, how many rows of mosaic tiles should make up the image, and the speed at which the mosaic image should be built. Click OK to save your settings.
  7. Set screen saver Start options as desired, using the slider in the main Screen Saver window.
  8. To see what your screen saver will look like on a full screen, click Test. (You can press Esc when you’re finished previewing.
  9. Click the Desktop & Screen Saver preferences window to save your settings.

Seeing It In Action

Okay, here’s my home movie of the setup process, as well as a full-screen test with a number of images. To keep the video small, I downsized my computer display’s resolution. You’ll need QuickTime installed on your computer to see this video.

Two quick notes about this video:

  • To make the file size smaller, I’ve set the screen rate a bit low for this. As a result, the screen saver’s transition appear a bit jerky. When you use the screen saver, you’ll see that the transitions are actually quite smooth.
  • This is a 17 MB file. The quickTime controller may not appear immediately after you click, especially if you have a slow connection to the Internet.

[Note: I removed the full-size video I'd linked to here in addition to showing the movie above. It was choking at least one offline RSS reader with its 72+ MB size.]

Page References

Product ImageMac OS X 10.5 Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide includes more information about related topics:

  • Screen Saver, pages 166-169
  • Using System Preferences Panes, pages 547-549
  • Preview, pages 304-308

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Shortcut Keys, Part III: Spotlight

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A list of shortcut keys you can use with Spotlight.

Spotlight, Mac OS X’s search feature, can be accessed and used with a number of shortcut keys. Here’s a quick rundown for reference.

Opening Spotlight

Spotlight MenuCommand-Spacebar activates the Spotlight menu on the far right end of the menu bar. You can then type your search word or phrase into the field at the top of the menu.

Spotlight WindowCommand-
Option-
Spacebar opens the Spotlight search window. You can then type your search word or phrase into the search box at the top-right corner of the window.

Selecting Items in the Spotlight Menu of Search Results

Spotlight ResultsReturn opens a selected item.

Command-Return opens the window for the Top Hit item on the Spotlight menu or, if another item is highlighted, that item. This is the same as Command-clicking on a selected item. (Thanks to reader Tom for clarifying this.)

Command-Click displays the item you clicked in the Finder but does not open it.

Down Arrow or Up Arrow selects the next or previous item in the menu.

Home selects the Show All option at the top of the menu.

End selects the Spotlight Preferences option at the bottom of the menu.

Command-Down Arrow or Command-Up Arrow selects the first item in the next or previous category.

Option-Down Arrow or Option-Up Arrow moves the insertion point to the end or the beginning of the text in the Spotlight menu’s search box.

Note that Apple’s Help feature includes a few additional shortcuts. These don’t seem to work with Leopard, so I haven’t included them here.

Chapter References

Product ImageChapter 5 of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide covers Spotlight in detail. It explains how to use the Spotlight menu and the Spotlight Find window, as well as how to create, save, and reuse saved searches. Chapter 5 also explains how to set Spotlight preferences to set the order of search result categories, add or remove categories, and exclude folders from searching.

Seeing Related Words in the Dictionary Widget

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It’s as easy as clicking a button.

I use the Dictionary widget a lot. In fact, it made my list of “Ten Dashboard Widgets I can’t Live Without.” This little widget can not only define a word and provide synonyms, but it can also display a clickable list of related words.

Give it a try:

  1. Display the Dictionary widget.
  2. Enter a word and press Return. (In this example, I entered the word apple.) The word’s definition appears.
    Dictionary Definition
  3. Click the letter in the half circle on the left side of the window. (In this example, it’s the letter A.) A list of related words appears.
    Related Words List
  4. To get more information about one of the words, click it.

This also works with the Thesaurus and Apple dictionary features of the Dictionary widget.

One Way to Speed up Word’s Launch Time

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It works but it’s not for everyone.

Tired of waiting for Word to optimize its font menu each time it launches? Tell it not to. This will speed up the launch process — especially if you have many fonts installed — but it will also stop Word from displaying font names in their typefaces.

Give it a try and see if it’s worthwhile for you:

  1. With any Word document open, choose Microsoft Word > Preferences.
  2. In the Preferences dialog that appears, click the General option in the list of categories on the left side of the window.
    Word General Preferences
  3. Turn off the WYSIWYG font and style menus option.
  4. Click OK.

Try this for a while and see if missing out on the WYSIWYG menus bothers you. If it does, you can always turn this feature back on.

Shortcut Keys, Part II: Starting Up

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A list of shortcut keys you can use at startup.

There may be times when you want to alter the way your computer starts up. These shortcut keys will do the job.

C

Holding down the C key as your computer starts tells it to look at the CD/DVD drive for a startup disc. If it finds one, it will start from that.

Keep in mind that a startup disc must have a valid System folder for your computer. A good candidate is always the System Software or Restore disc that came with your computer or an installation disc for the latest version of Mac OS.

Option

Holding down the Option key at startup should display a plain screen with buttons representing the available startup disks. Choose the button for the startup disk you want to start from that disk. Keep in mind that this doesn’t work on all Macs.

Command-X

Pressing Command-X right after the startup tone on a computer with both Mac OS X and Mac OS 9 installed will start using Mac OS X. As you can imagine, this feature is only supported on computers that support Mac OS 9 — otherwise why would it be installed?

T

Holding down the T key as your computer starts starts it in Target Disk mode. To take advantage of this feature, the computer should be connected via Firewire cable to another Mac OS computer that is already running. When the Target Disk mode computer starts, its hard disk appears on the other computer’s desktop and can be accessed like any other disk. The Target Disk computer cannot be run like a regular computer until it is restarted with Target Disk mode disabled.

Startup Disk Preferences PaneIf you know in advance that you want to start a computer in Target Disk mode, you can click the Startup Disk Mode button in the Startup Disk preferences pane, shown here. This immediately restarts the computer in target disk mode.

Shift

If you press and hold the Shift key (either one) right after the startup tone and release it when you see the spinning gear progress indicator, you’ll start the computer in “safe mode.” This loads only essential Mac OS X software. This is useful for tracking down software conflicts, but your applications may not work correctly until you perform a normal restart.

If you press the Shift key (either one) after clicking the Login button at the login screen, you prevent login items and Finder windows from opening when logging in. This can speed up the login process and prevent unwanted applications from starting up.

Left Shift

Holding down this key as the spinning gear progress indicator appears onscreen disables automatic login for the current session. This is handy if automatic login is set up for a user account but you want to go directly to a different user account.

Mouse Button

Okay, so it isn’t a shortcut key. But if you hold down the mouse button as the computer starts, it will eject any removable discs. This is a good trick if your computer insists on starting from a CD that you can’t otherwise eject.

Command-Option-P-R

This combination of keys at startup will reset parameter RAM. Hold them down until you hear the startup tone at least twice. You might want to reset parameter RAM (or PRAM) if you’re having network related problems. You can learn more about PRAM in Mac OS X in the “Mac OS X: What’s Stored in PRAM?” article on Apple’s Web site.

A Few More Seldom-Used Shortcuts

Here are a few more startup shortcuts that the average user will probably never use. But since they exist, I thought I’d list them for reference.

  • N starts the computer from the default NetBook disk image. Of course, you need a NetBoot disk image for this to work. (Anyone out there using NetBoot? If so, leave a comment here to tell us why.)
  • V starts the computer in “verbose mode,” which displays detailed status messages.
  • S starts the computer in “single user mode,” which enables you to troubleshoot the computer using Unix commands.

Page References

Product ImageMac OS X 10.5 Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide includes more information about these topics:

  • Startup Disk preferences pane and Target Disk Mode, pages 581-582
  • Login Items, page 511
  • Ejecting discs, page 105