Mac posts

An anonymous tipster has sent an image to our friends across the hall at the Engadget HQ and what a treat it is. The image appears to be of the upcoming MacBook Air that is likely to be announced at Wednesdays "Back to the Mac" event.

Features include a re-designed case, more internal room for battery packs, and a 0GB hard drive. Wait, what? In this particular example, there doesn't appear to be a hard drive. This leaves us to speculate that there must be multiple models of the Air and this particular SKU is probably making use of some sort of flash-based storage device.

The MacBook Air hasn't received a substantial hardware upgrade in quite some time and the newer Unibody MacBooks have many features not found in the MacBook Air. Whether this is the new MacBook Air or not, this Wednesday cannot arrive quickly enough.

I was leafing through some emails this afternoon and came upon one with an extremely attractive signature block. So attractive, in fact, that I promptly stopped doing the writing I was working on and decided to create my own new signature to replace the ugly one I had been using.

I wanted to have three major components to the signature: my name in color so that it stood out, links to the websites that describe my work (TUAW being one of those sites), and the ever-popular links to my Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn pages. The final product looks like this:

It's nothing too fancy, but it provides links to the locations that are important to me and also to the social networking sites I use. So what's the secret to doing this? Easy - use a blank new message as your canvas for creating the signature you want, and then copy and paste it into a new signature block in Mail preferences. Follow along as I create this signature block.

Mac-loving engineers, drafters, designers, and students have been waiting for a Mac-native version of AutoCAD to reappear on the platform for many years, so when Apple and Autodesk announced AutoCAD for Mac 2011 in late August, there was a lot of excitement.

Autodesk reported today that AutoCAD for Mac 2011 is available for purchase. The application isn't cheap -- the MSRP for the software is US$3,995, although one online retailer is offering $500 off that price. Upgrades from previous versions of AutoCAD on other platforms are $1,995. There's a free trial available, and students and educators can get a free copy of the application.

Several designers I have talked to are thrilled about the availability of the Mac edition of AutoCAD, as it takes advantage of the features of Mac OS X and the Mac hardware, but uses the native DWG file format for cross-platform compatibility. AutoCAD for Mac also features integration with the free AutoCAD WS app for the iPhone and iPad.

Full system requirements are listed here, and include both minimum and recommended Mac systems.

You may know that you can expand and collapse Finder folders in a tree view using the left and right arrow keys. But did you know that you can expand or collapse all of the root-level folders at once? It's a cool trick that can save you a lot of time when navigating your Mac's files. With the Finder window focused (click anywhere inside the file view), just type Command-A to select all, then use the left or right arrow to collapse or expand all of the folders simultaneously. Neat, right?

You can also expand a folder recursively (expand all of its child folders) by selecting it and holding down the Option key when you click the triangle next to it (or press the right arrow key when the folder is selected). This works in reverse for collapsing, too. You can also drill down into a folder with Command-Down Arrow, and back up to the parent folder with Command-Up Arrow.

Now, not to blow your mind or anything, but you can combine two of the tricks above: select all (Command-A), and then hold down the Option key while you hit the right arrow key to expand every folder in the view, and every folder inside of those folders, and every folder inside of those folders.... If your hard drive is anything like mine, you just made a fine mess of your Finder window. Normally, you can quickly jump to files in the list by typing the first few letters of their name, but good luck finding anything quickly when all of your folders are expanded. Reverse the process by selecting all and using Option-Left Arrow to restore sanity.

Now, use Command-Space to open Spotlight and enjoy the relief of having the file you were looking for in that folder hierarchy (mess) just appear with a couple of keystrokes!

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If you're anything like me you have lots and lots of information. Endless folders and files are scattered about, and while Spotlight in Mac OS X is very helpful, it's not a perfect fit for every situation.

One solution I've found very helpful is Tags, from Gravity Apps. Our own Brett Terpstra took a look at version 1 of the program back in January of 2009, and now the app has been updated to make it even more useful. Click here to see what's changed in this new version.

Tags is a system-wide method of tagging just about anything on your Mac for easy retrieval. The real power comes from associating different file types that you may want to relate, like a web page, photo, contact and note. The tagging easily takes place from within the application, and requires a couple of keystrokes. Control-Space bar brings up the tagging GUI, and Option-Space bar triggers the search menu. If those hot-keys conflict with something else you use, they can be easily changed.