MacMost: Archives

Lion includes Launchpad, a new way to find and run applications. You can view the icons of all your applications quickly by running Launchpad and flipping between pages of icons similar to the Home screens on the iPad and iPhone. You can organize your icons in app folders. Apps purchased in the Mac App Store are automatically added to Launchpad. But using Launchpad is optional as you can still run applications using the Dock and other methods.

The AirDrop feature of Lion allows you to send files between Macs. It works without a shared wifi connection, but requires two Macs that have very recent wifi hardware.

Get to know the new Lion gestures. You can use a trackpad on a recent MacBook or a Magic Trackpad to navigate around in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. You can also do some gestures with a Magic Mouse. See where to enable and customize gestures.

Check out Mission Control, a new feature for Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. Mission Control combines some features of Spaces and Expose and creates a new interface in Mac OS X for navigating between apps. You can give apps their own screen and flip between screens easily.

If you have trouble reading text on your computer screen, there are lots of ways to adjust the size of text on web pages, email messages, word processing documents and other applications. You can quickly adjust text, even just temporarily with keyboard shortcuts, without changing the text itself, just how it is displayed to you.

Many iMovie users wonder why they get black bars on the sides or above and below an image that the drop into their movie. This is caused when the picture is a different aspect ratio than the video. You can use cropping in iMovie 11 to select the area of the image you want to use, and whether to include any black space around the image.

Sometimes computer users stress too much about disk usage. They worry when they see varying amount of free and used space and their computers and when they notice those numbers change even though they haven't done anything. Find out what Mac OS X does that uses disk space on a regular basis.

Apple users can sometimes stress about when is the best time to by a new Mac, iPhone, iPad or iPod. Rumors are always around that a new device is on the way. But putting off a purchase isn't always that important. Learn to research the validity of rumors and don't stress about getting your new Apple hardware at the exact right time.

In this special episode, learn to now stress about your MacBook or iOS device battery. It may not be worth it to expend a lot of time and stress to extend your battery's life by only a little bit.

Take a look at four extensions that you might find useful. You can discover web page-specific keyboard shortcuts. You can select and jump to links using only your keyboard. You can lock tabs. You can make it easier to generate shortened URLS.

Learn how to look up the serial number for your Mac, and then use that number to get the official model number for your Mac. You must have that model number to purchase memory upgrades. Find out about the Tech Specs section of the Apple web site where you can learn more about your Mac and other Apple devices.