Following on from last week, one of our good readers pointed a few more shortcuts. Although we’ve covered these before on Macstarter, I’ll forgive myself for repeating these again. So, here goes.

The cmd + TAB shortcut is something I can’t live without. In all honesty, the last time I switched from one program to another using a mouse would be years ago. So, pressing cmd + TAB is a great way to bring up all your open programs. But something I don’t normally do (which I will do religiously from now on!) is once you’ve held down cmd and pressed the TAB button (you only need to keep the cmd button now), using the arrow keys lets you go back and forth between all your open programs. Once you’ve reached the program you want to switch to, just release the cmd key and you’ll jump to that program.

Another cool trick that was pointed out to me is that while going through your open programs (remember, you’ll be holding down the cmd key to do this) you can simply press other keys to do things to those programs. For example, you can scroll through your programs and just press the Q key, which will quit the program. You can also press the H key to hide your programs. All in all, this set of shortcuts will eventually save you hours of effort and will stop you reaching for the mouse / trackpad every time you need to switch to a different program.

By all accounts, at the start of March, Apple are going to start the world wide frenzy that is called “a new iPad”. Yes, the iPad 3 should be introduced to the public. Will you be buying one?

My iPad 1 was sold, just before the iPad 2 came out. I bought an iPad 2, and believe me folks, I have not been as impressed by a device as I was by this iPad. I’ve filmed on it, edited those movies. I’ve composed music on a Tram. There’s nothing more foolish looking by the way, than seeing some lunatic on a tram bashing away on a GarageBand drumkit with his fingers. But there’s also almost nothing as enjoyable! I normally compose my Macstarter articles on my iPad, and read, as well as do a dozen other things.

So will I be getting an iPad 3? I must admit, the thought of an iPad with a Retina display is immensely tempting. (I still give my wife evil eyes when I see the clarity of her iPhone 4′s screen).The idea that Siri might appear on the iPad 3 is far more tempting for me. The fact that there might be more storage space, faster processors, better graphics, and so on are all very tempting.

But here’s the thing. I’ve become very attached to my iPad. I can well imagine in a couple of years my daughter will be reading and playing on this very iPad. She already views it as another “thing” that sits around the house. She doesn’t need to grab a mouse, or switch on a huge box, or sit on a special seat on a special table to use it. She can simply use it.

The newest, shiniest iPad is going to have some bells and whistles. That’s what makes Apple the company it is. While other companies scramble around trying to imitate just a small amount of what Apple does, Apple themselves will simply take to the stage in March, and reveal the results of their hard work for their new iPad. And we’ll buy it. In droves. I have yet to meet an iPad owner that regrets that they bought one. For any company, that kind of satisfaction level is amazing.

So will I be buying an iPad 3? Most probably not. I used my iBook for almost 8 years. I bought a MacBook Pro only when my gorgeous old laptop started to rattle at the seams. It was out of necessity. I still miss that old laptop to this day. My iPhone 3GS is one of my most treasured devices ever. I’ve literally lost count of the number of times I’ve reached into my pocket and used my iPhone to find out some vital. My Apple TV 1 is the center of our living room. I will be buying an Apple TV 2 (or 3) as I am desperate for my iPad to be transmitted to my TV. But I won’t be throwing my 1st Apple TV away. It will be taking pride of place in my bedroom!

So, I’ll look at the people around me buying iPad 3′s. I’ll be envious. But only slightly. As long as I can read, play, compose, film, edit and all those other things on my iPad 2, I’ll be happy to have it as part of my family for as long as it lasts.

I’ve been a fan of Alfred ever since it was released. It’s now taken over my use of Spotlight, and some other “launcher” apps I’ve been accustomed to over the years. With the new update (which puts it now at Alfred 1.1) has brought with it some features that are going to knock this app up a few notches in my must-have list to got-to-have status.

I have been a sufferer of RSI for many years now. For any readers out there who have suffered from aches and pains, you’ll appreciate just how important it is for to be comfortable and safe when using your computer. Any app that lets me do things without a mouse or a trackpad is going to reduce the amount of pain I’m going to suffer later on in the day, after spending hours in front of a computer.

The new update for Alfred only really affects Power Pack users, which adds huge amounts of functionality to an already great app. With the new update, you can now not only look up, say, a contact in your Address Book, but you can also do something with that contact, such as compose an Email. The Clipboard feature (where you can save multiple snippets is worth the money alone). Add to that iTunes controls, being able to summon your Screensaver all from the touch of your keyboard, and you really do feel like you can do anything with Alfred.

I am the biggest advocate of using keyboard shortcuts on a Mac. They not only save you time, and effort, but they also make you look amazingly cool in front of other people. Alfred adds to that coolness, and then some.

Since the release of Lion, I’ve loved using my Mac even more than normal. When OS X arrived just over a decade ago, I remember that feeling of using something new. Not shiny new, but radical new. A dock. Juicy icons. New programs and Apps. It was a really exciting time to be a nerd – and it felt like we were using computers for the first time all over again.

Today, Apple announced the new OS X to the family, named Mountain Lion. Now, Apple have in the past name released Snow Leopard, as a kind of “update” to Leopard which came before it. Now, after Lion, Apple are releasing Mountain Lion. This will be seen by some as a minor update to Lion, but if you browse Apple’s own site about Mountain Lion, a few things will become apparent very quickly.

Firstly, Apple seem to have a plan. And this plan is going to change a few things. Let’s go through them.

iMessage

My wife and I tend to take little video snippets of our little monkey (daughter) and send them to each other. There’s no better remedy for a bad day than a video of your child getting up to what children get up to. With iMessage this is now built into a messaging service. With the cost of MMS in Holland being criminally high, iMessage took care of that immediately. No more emails. So, what to do next with iMessage? Put it on your Mac, and bring text messaging across all your devices. This in my opinion is huge. Start a conversation on your phone, log into your Mac and carry on right there on your screen. For me, this alone is a game changer. Imagine being able to keep in touch with your loved ones while you’re on your Mac. I truly believe this cross-over from iDevice to Mac is going to be huge.

Notification Center

I must admit, when iOS 5 brought the notification center to the iPhone, I was a bit dubious about what it would actually accomplish for me. I had seen my friends’ Android phones, and seen screen after screen full of info, such as weather, emails, texts and for my own personal tastes this was just too much information on the screen of a phone. Now, I’m a die-hard Notification Center fan. I found that fine tuning it to show you what you need to be notified about was key for me to fall in love with it. Now, Mountain Lion is going to bring this to the Mac. I’ve been a fan of Growl for many years, and I can actually see a place for both Growl and Notification Center on my Mac’s screen.

Airplay Mirroring

I don’t own an Apple TV 2. Since Apple brought out Airplay for the iPhone and iPad on the Apple TV 2, I’ve been jealously watching other people show their videos, photos and anything else they want to wirelessly from the devices to their TV’s. And boy have I been jealous by this feature. Now, in my day job, there’s been many a time I’ve wanted to throw the contents of my Mac’s screen onto a big screen for everyone to be able to see. Of course, I can plug in my Mac to a projector, but with Mountain Lion’s Airplay Mirroring, this is going to open up the possibilities to the next level. Being able to bring in a iPhone, iPad or Mac and throw your screen up onto a bigger screen is something I personally can’t wait for.

Reminders, Notes, Sharing

When you start to add other features like Reminders, Notes and Sharing to the mix, you might start to confuse whether you’re using a phone, a pad or a Mac. But, these very features which (4 years after my first touch of an iPhone) still give me the “wow” factor are going to make me love my Mac even more. I myself can’t see any problems with overlapping my devices with my Mac. Of course, the cherry on the cake would be to see Siri, or a version of Siri appear on my MacBook. That would be for me, the ultimate killer feature.

For this week’s advice, I thought it would be good to get a few Finder shortcuts out there. I’m the world’s biggest shortcut fan. If I could do away with the trackpad / mouse altogether I would, although I know that wouldn’t be practical for everything. But certainly, opening, closing of folders and files doesn’t ever need you to let go of your keyboard. So here’s the lowdown.

cmd + O will open up any folder or file.

cmd + W will close an open window (but not quit the program you’re using)

cmd + Q will quit the program you’re currently using.

cmd + TAB will show you which programs you have open, and let you cycle through them. Let go of either key and you’ll switch to that program

spacebar - will open up a quickview window. Don’t underestimate this. You can check the contents of a file in less than a couple of seconds, without ever having to open up a program. Once quickview is open, use your arrow keys to move through your files, and you’ll end up previewing lots of files without opening up a program. Simply brilliant.

Here’s a really cool tip for you all out there. Open up a Finder window, such as your Documents folder. Now, rather than scrolling around trying to find a file, type a couple of letters from the file’s name. You’ll end up jumping directly to that file. This little tip has saved me literally hours of jumping around trying to find files.

With Dropbox, iCloud and other cloud services, you’d think that we’d gone past the point of worrying about our files and backups. Obviously that’s not the case, because external hard drives still sell by the millions. Until cloud services can cope with hundreds of gigabytes worth of data at a time, our Music, Photos and files cannot be fully backed up online. More than that, backing up home movies and photos can take forever online, whereas it only takes minutes on a hard drive.

When you’re setting up a new drive as your backup drive, or have to requisition a drive for backup purposes, you’ll end up having to reformat the drive.

Although this is just a formality, formatting a drive is vital to get the best out of it. Formatting a drive is important if you want to use a drive as a Time Machine drive, or need to use it on a Mac as well as a Windows machine.

Here’s what to do:

Open up Disk Utility, and plug in your USB drive. At this moment it doesn’t matter if it’s a drive or a stick. The principle is the same. Once

Once you find your drive on the list on the left, you can click on the top most name of your USB drive. In the picture above you can see it’s the 16.03 GB SanDisk Cruzer name that I’ve clicked on. Now, in the main window you can click on the “Erase” tab. Now comes the moment of truth. If you need a Time Machine or Mac specific drive, go for Mac OS Extended. The top most option should be good for most purposes. If you will be handing over the drive to Windows folk, you really need to choose MS-DOS (FAT). The Mac OS Extended option is great for just Mac use, as it lets you save humungously big files (such as generated by iMovie) without fuss. MS-DOS on the other hand could throw up errors.

In the next article, we’ll talk about the next option, which is Partitioning your drives.

When you buy a Mac, regardless of how big or small it is, you are joining a group of people who share a love of Apple. Maybe that’s overstating it a little, but as far as I can tell, buying a Mac brings with it a certain amount of pride. One of the great things about owning a Mac, aside from how good they are to use, is that they are re-sellable. You’ll only have to visit eBay, Craiglist or other similar sites to realise that MacBooks, iMacs, iPads and iPhones sell very well.

So why would you sell your Mac? Well, I very recently sold my 24″ iMac. It was not just a computer, but part of the family! It has lived for a couple of years in my living room, and never let me down. Not once. But, also owning a MacBook Pro, and having a MacBook Air from work meant that it was used very little. Ultimately, I decided that it needed to go to a loving home and be used the way it should be.

So, how do you sell your Mac? Firstly, if you want to sell your old Mac, make sure that you have looked after it. If it’s a laptop, make sure you treat it properly, more than anything, make sure you have protected the screen from being imprinted on by the keyboard. Keep a sheet of paper between the screen and the keys at all times during transit. If it’s a desktop, you have much less risk of damage, but they still need a little tender care. Make sure you keep them dust free and clean.

When it comes time to sell, make sure you have checked out prices of other similar Macs. Macs come in a variety of specs and configurations. It’s worth doing research and finding out what other people are charging.

Ultimately, selling a Mac is like selling anything else. You can either accept or turn down an offer to buy, but you have to be able to live with the money you get, and having one less Mac in your household.

I love my iPhone. I didn’t line up for mine, I don’t have a name for it, and I don’t wave it in the air when I walk down the street. But I love my iPhone. I still use my 3GS model every single day. It wakes me up, and buzzes every time I receive an email.

Over the last few months, I noticed that the battery life was less than brilliant. Now, I’ll accept that my old phone needed charging once a week, but it didn’t have a full colour screen, with WiFi and 3G and video and photos and everything else I love. So, charging my iPhone overnight used to work well, but recently, my phone was actually dying by about 7pm. So I made a tough decision. I decided that I would replace my iPhone’s battery.

Before reading any further, please note that Macstarter does not suggest in any way that you should do what I did. Really. I was lucky enough to grow up with an electronic engineer for a father, who also moonlighted on the side as a “genius”. Therefore I grew up staring at the insides of TV’s and Radios and all manner of electronic devices.

Opening my iPhone was a very bizarre operation. On one hand I was just in awe of the workmanship of every little component. It is truly a marvel of modern technology. On the other hand I was petrified that one false move, and the my phone would be toast.

Having changed the battery, I was horrified to see that my phone was no longer charging. It was a truly heartbreaking. I went over my steps, and then again. I could have tugged too hard at a wire, or accidentally broken something. But, being the son of an electronic engineer, I had to trust that I had learned something in all those years I sat at his table watching him do his magic. So, I removed the battery, contacted the website I had bought it from, and asked them to send me a replacement.

The happy ending is that having installed the replacement battery, my phone sprung to life, and my phone now has a much better battery life during the day.

So what’s the moral of this story? Actually there is none. I guess, sometimes it’s worth getting the last ounces of life out of your device than ditching and buying the next great thing. I would love iPhone 4S, right now, but I couldn’t imagine letting my 3GS go. Equally, I bought a MacBook Pro only when my gorgeous (8 year old) white iBook was just too darn slow for me to use for my day to day work. You might want to buy something shiny and new, but a simple replacement of a battery, or a hard drive, or even using it for something different might just breathe some life into something you thought was dead.

You know I’m a great fan of the alt / option button. It’s the one key on my keyboard which I never underestimate. It can do just about anything. For this week’s advice of the week, try clicking the Apple logo on your Menubar. From there you’ll be able to log out of restart. But now press your alt / option key and you’ll notice that now you’ll be able to do an instant restart / logout without a dialog window getting in your way.

I’ve made no secret for my love of full screen apps. Some apps (GarageBand, iMovie, Mail) just rock in full screen mode. Other Apps, don’t really work for me at all. As well as not being able to get to the desktop from full screen apps (hence my love of Yoink). The other thing which used to get on my nerves seemed to be the fact while you’re using a full screen app, you couldn’t see the dock.

This would mean that you would have to scroll out of the full screen app, go to the dock, open up a program and then scroll back  to the App.

The secret to getting to the dock while you’re in a full screen app is to move the mouse down to the bottom of the screen, and then go down a little further. As if by magic, your dock will appear.