Posts By: Gary Rosenzweig

You don’t have to use a picture as a desktop background, or even one of Apple’s few preset solid colors. You can use any color you want by going to System Preferences, Desktop & Screen Saver, Desktop. Then select Solid Colors on the left. Look for the Custom Color button and choose any color from the standard system color picker. For a change, try a solid black.

When you create formulas in Numbers, the references to other cells are relative to the location of the formula. So when you move or copy the formula into another cell, the references follow along. But you can use absolute cell references to force the formula to always refer to the exact same cell, no matter where the formula is placed.

You can use Picture-In-Picture and keyframes to animate object movement in iMovie. Once you add an overlay you can set one or more keyframes and the object will move over time to match each keyframe. You can import transparent graphics to use this feature to highlight a moving element in your video.

The Caps Lock key isn’t something people really need any longer, unless you have a very angry email response to send. Prevent yourself from accidentally turning on Caps Lock by disabling the key in System Preferences, Keyboard. Go to the Keyboard tab and then look for the Modifier Keys button. From there you can set the Caps Lock Key to “No Action.”

Take a look at some of the different ways you can print photos from iPhoto. You can use the standard print function to print one or more photos, group them on pages, and even include titles and other information. You can also use Pages to create more interesting printouts of single photos, groups of photos, or multiple copies of the same photo. Another option is to create a book and print one or more pages from it.

OS X lets you use multiple desktops to make it feel like you have more than one display. With Mission Control, you can move apps and windows between desktops and easily navigate around. You can also make some apps full-screen, giving them their own virtual display. Learning how to use Mission Control can make working on a smaller MacBook screen much easier.

Want to know how long your Mac has been up and running since your last restart? Run the Terminal app and type uptime.

Filters let you view portions of data in your tables based on criteria. You can filter a long table by what is found in a column. You can combine multiple filters to drill down into data.

At the keynote for the Worldwide Developer Conference, Apple announced the next version of Mac OS X and iOS. The new operating systems will come out in the fall for the public and will have a number of new features. They will also work together better than ever before.

Your iOS device can read a summary of your email messages. Just ask Siri to “Read my emails” and you’ll get the subject of each message. Handy for catching up while exercising or doing some other activity.

In iMovie you can record directly from the microphone to narrate your video. You can start at any point and record your voice, then manipulate the audio track like any other. This comes in handy for regular videos, but also for photo slideshows created in iMovie.

You can easily put the page numbers for you document in the header or footer. You can also control which page number your document starts with, and use sections to skip between page numbers. Learning how to use the header, footer and sections is important if you are creating larger Pages documents.

The Dictionary app that comes with your Mac also includes the interesting front and back matter from The New Oxford American Dictionary. Just run the app and choose Go, Front/Back Matter. You’ll find things like a grammar guide, the history of English, a list of U.S. presidents, the U.S. Constitution, a guide to proofreaders marks, and even a list of clichés.

For episode number 1000, Gary Rosenzweig takes a look back at which shows were the most popular and important.

You have to ability to convert audio files to a variety of formats from iTunes. The conversion leaves a duplicate in your iTunes library, but you can also locate the file. It can be useful, for instance, to convert AAC files to MP3 if you need to play them back in players that only support MP3. You can also convert video to formats supported by iOS devices and Apple TV.

When you add a location for an event in Mavericks Calendar, you can double-click that event to see details, including a map. Under the map is a line that gives you the weather. Events for today will show a forecast icon, plus the current temperature. Events in the near future will show a forecast icon and the seasonal high and low for that day. Events farther in the future will only show the seasonal temperatures.

iMovie version 10 uses a new system for storing clips and projects. It is very easy to be able to create and use multiple iMovie libraries and move items between them. You can store archived projects in libraries, and even spread your projects across multiple hard drives.

You can use GarageBand as a basic audio editor. You can import most standard audio formats into a project and then proceed to trim, split or re-arrange the track. You can also use filters and add sound effects and loops. Then you can export the finished product as a new audio file.

If you prefer to use another browser, such as Chrome or Firefox, you can tell OS X to open this browser by default when jumping to web pages from other apps. You’ll need to launch Safari to do it, and then go into Safari, Preferences, General. Then change the Default Web Browser setting. You can change back at any time, and you can still launch each browser you have manually whenever you want.

The LaunchPad app is a quick way to launch applications on your Mac. You can use keyboard shortcuts and the search function to launch any app in seconds. You can also use LaunchPad to arrange your apps, group them, and even uninstall some apps. Learn for unusual tips and tricks for using LaunchPad.