If you’ve used Spotlight to locate and open a file, you can Command/click on the small icon in the menu bar, and you’ll then see the path to that file’s location on your hard drive. Selecting one of the items in this pull-down menu will open that window in the Finder. ~ Matt

If you’re like me, you have hundreds of bookmarks in Safari. All these bookmarks are very convenient, but can also become unwieldly. Luckily, Apple makes it easy to organize Safari’s bookmarks, including nesting them into folders and making them easy to search.

First, click on the “Show All Bookmarks” icon in the top-left corner of the Bookmarks Bar. Doing this makes the Collections column visible on the left side of Safari, where you can see all bookmarks in a list. It also adds a Search field at the bottom center of the Safari 2 window, or the top left of the Safari 3 window.

When you type search terms in this field, it only searches within your bookmarks. Thus you get super-fast (and accurate) results. I spent about an hour the other night organizing my bookmarks, including deleting some that were really old. I then backed up my Safari bookmarks by clicking File>Export Bookmarks and emailing them to myself. Needless to say, I feel very organized. ~ Ed

This is useful for quickly checking up on things without going to the keyboard. I discovered this when, on a whim, I dragged a line from Console onto Safari, and it brought up a search of that Console error.

Even easier, select text and right-click — that offers the option to “Search in Google”

You can access it two ways: (1) from within Mac OS X business apps (like Mail, TextEdit, Stickies, etc.), just go under Edit and choose “Special Characters” or click on the “Actions” pop-up menu at the bottom of the Font Panel and choose “Characters;” (2) add Character Palette access to your menu bar so you can access it when you’re working in other applications (like Microsoft Word or Adobe Page 6). You do this by going to the System Preferences in the Apple menu, under International, and clicking on the Input Menu tab. Turn on the checkbox for Character Palette and it will appear in the menu bar along the right side.

Either way you open it, here’s how you use it: When you open the Character Palette, choose “All Characters” from the View menu, then click on the “By Category” tab. The left column shows a list of special character categories and the right column shows the individual characters in each category. To get one of these characters into your text document, just click on the character and click the “Insert” button in the bottom right-hand corner of the dialog.

If you find yourself using the same special characters over and over (like ©, ™, etc.), you can add these to your Favorites list, and access them from the Favorites tab in the Character Palette.

To see which fonts contain certain characters, expand the Character Palette by clicking on the down-facing arrow next to Font Variation on the bottom-left side of the palette. This brings up another panel where you can choose different fonts. You can also ask that this list show only fonts that support the character you have highlighted.

Disk Utility will launch, and then it will immediately open a window asking you to name the new disk image, and where to save it. Go ahead and save the image to your desktop.

In the Image Format drop-down menu, choose DVD/CD master. This is especially important if you want to burn a copy of the disk, and have it function as an exact clone of the original CD or DVD you hope to backup.

Now click “Save.” A new disk image will be created on your Desktop, with the extension “.cdr,” It may take a few minutes to create this file.

If you click on the disk image, you’ll see it works just like a CD or DVD. You can store this new disk image on a hard drive. If you want to burn it to CD or DVD, you should again use Disk Utility. Otherwise, you’ll only be burning a copy of the disk image, and not an actual CD or DVD master. To burn a CD or DVD master, open Disk Utility and look for the disk image of your CD or DVD, on the left side of the window. Usually it’s at the bottom of the list of drives. Now, simply select the image, and then click “Burn.” Follow the directions to burn the disk.

This is a great way to back up expensive software titles and game titles. Many games that require a disk to run will run off of the disk image — great for traveling. ~ Ed

However, there are two things you can do that will prevent your machine from shutting down. Either one should work, assuming you have enough open applications so that the shut down process is taking a bit of time.

First, you can try launching a program from your Dock, preferably a larger app that takes a bit of time to open. The launching application will cancel the shut down process.

If that trick doesn’t work for you, it’s also possible to stop the shut down process by having a visible Save dialog box in any application.

The quickest way to get one of these onscreen is to press Command/Shift/S, which executes the File: Save As command. After realizing you want to cancel your shut down, use Command/Tab to quickly get to a still-running application that allows Save As, and then press Command/Shift/S. As soon as the shut down process reaches the app with its visible Save As dialog, the process will terminate.

Once the shut down has been cancelled, you can do whatever it is you needed to do, then shut down again when done. And don’t worry, no harm can come to your machine by canceling the shut down process. ~ Rob Griffiths

To accomplish this, select the block of text you want to quote. Click reply and you’ll have a new message with only the selected text quoted. This is great when CC’ing someone without showing them the entire e-mail--only the part you want them to focus on.

In context, This is how I use it. There are periods of time when I do a lot of searching through log files. In doing so, I’m often looking for a particular phrase, and I also need to see the log data around that time period. Using Console just doesn’t cut it for me, because when I put the search term in, Console blocks out all other data in the file. Opening the log file in TextEdit will allow me to highlight each hit individually, which is better, but still not perfect.

When I use Safari, however, it highlights all of the hits, and grays-out the other text. This allows me to quickly find associations between the search phrase and other things happening at that time. Of course, as mentioned, I do have to get the data into a .txt or .rtf file to do this, but hopefully, Safari will support other plain text extensions in the future. (Right now, if you try to drop a .log file on Safari, it will show you where it is in the Finder.)

With OS 10.5 Leopard, several interface improvements were made to make it easier to stay organized. All downloaded files go into a Downloads folder, easily accessed from the dock, and any folder can be placed in the dock for easy access. The Documents folder is on the dock by default. Treat your dock as the quick access tool for your life and put the applications you use daily on it.

There are some downfalls to a cluttered desktop. Despite the belief that it speeds up work and play, an excess of items on the desktop will slow down boot times, create visual distraction, and make it more difficult to find items. Anytime a machine boots, every icon on the desktop has to load. We at Small Dog Service have been watching for the most icons on any desktop and the current record is 502 items. Is this you? Consider consolidating to a single folder to ease boot times.

To open the Mail Connection Doctor, choose Window > Connection Doctor within the Mail application. If a problem is found, a suggested resolution will be offered, but for a more detailed diagnostic view, click the “Show Detail” button to reveal the progress log and then click the “Check Again” button to rerun the tests. ~ Kevin M. White

A: There are many ways to do this, but I prefer the sharing method. For this to work, the two computers must be able to talk to each another over a Bonjour network.

First, launch iPhoto on both computers. On the laptop, enable the “Share My Photos” option in iPhoto’s Sharing preference pane. On the desktop Mac, turn on the “Look For Shared Photos” option in this preference pane. On the laptop, create a new smart album that’s defined by the dates when you loaded your travel pictures on your laptop — Date Is In The Last 2 Weeks, for example.

On the desktop Mac, select the laptop’s shared photo library, click on the triangle to reveal that library’s albums, choose the smart album you just created, and drag its icon to iPhoto’s Library icon. The photos will be copied from one Mac to the other. Unlike iTunes, iPhoto allows you to copy shared files.

There are other ways to accomplish your goal. You could use iPhoto’s “Share: Burn” command to burn photos to a recordable CD or DVD. You could sync a color iPod to your laptop, turn on photo synchronization in iTunes, enable the “Include Full-Resolution Photos” option, plug the iPod into your desktop computer, and copy those images from the iPod into your iPhoto library. Or you could set up a traditional network, mount your desktop Mac’s hard drive, select the album you want to export on your laptop, choose “File: Export,” click on the “File Export” tab in the Export Photos window, enable the “Full-Size Images” option, click on “Export,” and choose your desktop Mac’s networked drive as the destination for the exported photos.

OS X has a built in system for pulling words out of its dictionary, and showing you a list of those words. While not something I use all the time, it can be handy once you learn how to access it.

Type the beginning of a word, such as ‘auto’. Now press option-escape at the same time. You should see a list that looks similar to the image below.

Mail's behavior towards quoted text is often confusing, but a couple of keyboard shortcuts make it very easy to take care of. To "raise" the quote level of text, press Command-' (apostrophe). To lower the quote level, press Option-Command-' (apostrophe). Alternatively, you can select either of these from the menu bar by selecting Format and then Quote Level. These simple (and intuitive) commands make dealing with replies and forwarded emails a delight. A good trick to remembering the shortcuts is to remember that you are simply pressing Command and the button you use to signify quotes in general text.

One of the features of this is a pop-up menu which, when you first see it, is labeled “Copies & Pages.”
No matter which application you’re working with, or what sort of printer you have, you’ll find groups of other useful settings in this pop-up menu. The first one is “Layout,” where you can choose to print multiple (reduced size) pages of your document on a single sheet of paper — very handy for saving paper when printing long documents, as long as the font size is large enough to remain legible when there are two pages of it on each sheet.

There are several more groups of settings that you can investigate for yourself. Some of them are common to all printer and application setups, while some apply only to the current application/printer combination. There will often be one group that carries the current application’s name (e.g. AppleWorks), where you’ll find settings that apply specifically to that application.

Other settings to look for are those that enable you to tell the software what kind of paper you’re printing on (plain, matte, glossy, etc) and how you want color management to be handled. Often, you can tweak the printer’s color settings in this area.

If you want to print documents using only black ink (to help avoid using up your color cartridge quite so quickly), there’s usually a relevant setting here.

Especially note that if you establish a particular combination of all these options and settings, you can save it with an identifying name. Click on the “Presets” pop-up and choose “Save.” Give your preset a name and in future, you’ll be able to recreate that combination of settings simply by choosing its name from the Presets pop-up.

However, some fonts, including several installed with Mac OS, ignore these typographic traditions, and their em-dash is quite long.

Generally, use a hyphen (-) for hyphenating words and groups of words; just press the hyphen key. Use an en-dash (–) for separating numbers and dates (25–30, May 19–20); press Option/hyphen for an en-dash. Use an em-dash (—)where uneducated users place double-hyphens; press Shift/Option/hyphen for an em-dash. Using a space before and after an em-dash is optional.

Exceptions: you’ll notice that the width of the en-dash and em-dash vary by typeface. If the em-dash looks too long, try an en-dash instead.

This great tip comes from Apple:
First create a new folder and give it a descriptive name. Now put the files you want to burn into that folder. Go to your Applications folder and open the Utilities folder. Double-click on the Disk Utility application.

After it launches, in the menu bar at the top of the screen choose File > New > Disk Image from Folder. When the “Open” dialog box appears, find the folder you created earlier with the data you want to burn, and click “Image.” A “Save” dialog appears. You can leave the name as is or choose a new name (ignore the other options in this dialog box). Click Save. In a few moments, a disk image of your folder’s contents will appear in the list on the left side of the Disk Utility dialog. Click on that icon, and then click the burn button at the top left of the Disk Utility application.

When you click the Burn button, a dialog will appear asking to insert a disc. Do so, then click once the blue downward-facing triangle on the right side of this dialog to show more options. Click on the checkbox for “Leave disc appendable.” Now Click the “Burn” button.

Your data will now be written to that CD. To add more files later, just insert that same CD and use this same process all over again. Note that when you get to that final burn dialog, the button won’t say “Burn” this time, instead it will say “Append” because you’re adding these files to the same disc.

Don’t forget to remove the files you already burned to this disc from the folder you created above (and the DMG file it creates) before you make your next disc image.

Note that this is different than using a CDRW (compact disk re- writable). A CDRW can be erased and re-burned multiple times (however it’s not recommended to do this more than 10 times per disk). However, CDRWs don’t work in all drives, and are expensive. This tip is designed for cheaper and more durable CDR’s. ~ Ed

Here are two ways to empty the trash moderately fast, and a third way to empty the trash in a flash.

Method one: Make sure you are in the Finder. Then hold down Command/Shift/Delete (the Command key is the one with the Apple on it on Mac keyboards.) A warning will pop up before you can empty the Trash.

Method two: You can also click on the Trash icon in the Dock, hold your mouse button down until a menu pops up with an “Empty Trash” message, and then choose “Empty Trash.” Your files will be deleted without a warning.

Method three: If you want to empty the Trash even faster, again without a warning, make sure you are in the Finder, then hold down Command/Option/Shift/Delete (the Command key is the one with the Apple on it on Mac keyboards.) Again, if you use this command, the Trash will empty immediately, with no warning. Even large files stored in the Trash will be deleted immediately.

To quickly move a file into the Trash, click on the file once to highlight it, and then hold down Command/Delete. The file will immediately jump into the Trash. ~ Ed

1. When the printer software is running, right click on its icon in the Dock (click and hold will do the same thing).
2. Select “Auto Quit”.
3. That’s it! The printer software should now quit automatically after it is done printing.

First of all, open the folder/directory where the file is located. Trash the current “version” of the file as you normally would. Next, while you’re still in the window, click on the Time Machine icon in your dock to enter Time Machine “mode.” Click back once to the previous backup version of that window, and you’ll see the file you just deleted. Click once on the file to highlight it, then go up to the actions (”gear”) pull down menu, and select “delete all backups.” Voila! That annoying file wont bother you again! Obviously, you’ll want to use this function with care, since there’s no turning back once you’ve deleted something in this manner. That being said, it’s a great little feature that might not be obvious when first using Time Machine.

A: For people who don’t know, those vertical lines represent quote levels in Mail. The more lines you see, the more times an email exchange has included that bit of text. While Mail doesn’t offer a command to eliminate them in one fell swoop, you can remove them one level at a time. Just select the quoted text you’ve excerpted, hold down Command/Option, and press the apostrophe (’) key. With each press, one level disappears. (This is also available via a menu command — Format: Quote Level: Decrease — but having to invoke a menu command multiple times is less than convenient.)

If you want to remove the quote levels by hand, select the quoted text, drag it to the desktop to create a text clipping, and drag that clipping into a new email message or text document. This process strips the text or quote-level formatting.

Don’t leave laptops and iPods plugged in all the time. The electrons inside these batteries need to be banged around every so often, and they do that only when the device runs from battery power. Apple suggests that you charge and discharge the battery at least once a month.

If your laptop serves as your desktop computer and remains plugged in all of the time you may wish to charge its battery to about 50% and then remove the battery and store it. Again, run the laptop from the battery once a month and then remove the battery at 50% charge.

Don’t completely drain the battery and then let it sit for long periods of time. If you let a battery drain completely and then let it sit for weeks and months on end, you’re not doing the battery any favors. It could enter a deep discharge state, at which point it won’t be able to hold a charge.

Don’t fret too much. I’ve issued this advice a time or two and maybe it’s time to do it again. As long as you avoid the kind of extreme behaviors I mention above, don’t worry too much about how you use your batteries. They’ll eventually die and frankly, to me, the time you spend fretting about using them in exactly the right manner isn’t worth the limited extra lifetime you’ll get out of them. Plug the devices in when they need charging, it’s convenient, or when you anticipate you’ll need a full charge (when a long plane ride is in your future, for example), use them as you like, and charge them when necessary.

Plist files are listed according their host application: for example, TextEdit’s plist file is named com.apple.TextEdit.plist (The beginning part of the name, “com.apple,” indicates the vendor that created the application, insuring that no two plist files will have the exact same name.)

If you have a problematic application, you may have a corrupt plist file. Here’s what you can do.

Start anew: Remove the application’s plist files. The next time you launch that app, new plist files will be created with default application settings. Presumably, a new file will no longer have the corrupted data of the original file, thereby eliminating the problem.

Check for intruding apps: In some instances, more than one application may be writing to a plist file. For example, Safari’s plist is often used by Apple’s Mail.
If you are experiencing repeated corruption of the com.apple.Safari plist file or another plist file, investigate the other applications that could be writing to the file.
To do this, navigate to the plist file that you want to inspect, select its icon, and press Command/I on your keyboard.

Next, launch some of your routine applications and check to see if the “Get Info” window closes. This tells you that the app you just launched is using that plist file. Reinstall (or consider replacing) the offending application.

In iPhoto, from the File menu choose “New Smart Album.” Name the album “Not Backed Up,” and set the Condition: “Date is after.” Set the date to the last date you backed up your photos, whatever that was. Now click the “Not Backed Up” album and select all the photos in it. Drag them to a “Burn Folder” on your desktop and burn a CD.

Now reset the date in the “Smart Album” (File > Edit Smart Album) to be the date on which you just backed up, and you’re ready to start the process again.

This method gives you a simple way to keep backups of all your photos, even though not the iPhoto organization of them — good at least for a “last ditch” backup in case of disaster. I’m informed that you can apply similar logic to iTunes music tracks. Try it for homework! ~ Dick Johnson

First, insert the CD or DVD you want to backup into your Mac. Next, drag the icon of the CD or DVD to the Disc Utility application (which is usually stored in the Applications Folder > Utilities Folder.) In other words, drag and drop the CD or DVD icon on top of the Disk Utility icon. (Or, launch Disk Utility, and select the CD in the menu bar at the left margin of the Disk Utility window.)

Disk Utility will launch, and then it will immediately open a window asking you to name the new disk image, and where to save it. Go ahead and save the image to your desktop. In the Image Format drop-down menu, choose DVD/CD master. This is especially important if you want to burn a copy of the disk, and have it function as an exact clone of original CD or DVD you hope to backup.

Now click “Save.” A new disk image will be created on your Desktop, with the extension “.cdr,” It may take a few minutes to create this file.

If you click on the disk image, you’ll see it works just like a CD or DVD.

You can store this new disk image on a hard drive. If you want to burn it to CD or DVD, you should again use Disk Utility. Otherwise, you’ll only be burning a copy of the disk image, and not an actual CD or DVD master.

To burn a CD or DVD master, open Disk Utility and look for the disk image of your CD or DVD, on the left side of the window. Usually it’s at the bottom of the list of drives. Now, simply select the image, and then click “Burn.” Follow the directions to burn the disk.

This is a great way to back up expensive software titles and game titles. Many games that require a disk to run will run off of the disk image - great for traveling.

Doc sez, you can also easily do this with Roxio’s Toast, my favorite tool for copying information to CD/DVD as well as to a disk image. The details differ slightly, but the doing so is quite intuitive.

If you succeed in moving your home folder out of this location or renaming it, the Mac will be confused to the extent that next time you start it up, it will create a brand new (essentially empty) home folder for you, and ignore the original one entirely. You will have the impression that all your personal documents, music, photos, settings, and whatever have gone west. They haven’t, but it’s surely a shock to the system (yours, not the Mac’s).

But does the Mac OS even allow you to move your home folder to another place or to rename it? Insanely yes, as long as you’re an Administrator user, which most of us are. Correcting the situation after a restart is not so easy!

Unless you want to pay someone to sort out the consequences, do not move or rename your home folder.

A: As you’ve discovered, your deleted iPhoto images don’t appear in the Finder’s Trash. Instead, you’ll find them in iPhoto’s own Trash. To truly remove iPhoto images from your hard drive, select the images that you want to delete from your iPhoto library and press the Delete key on your Mac’s keyboard. This transfers the pictures to iPhoto’s Trash, which you’ll find at the bottom of the Source list. To really get rid of the images, Control/click on iPhoto’s Trash icon and choose “Empty Trash.” This gets rid of the images for good.

Notice that I said to select each image in your iPhoto library. If you select an image in an album or a slide show and press Delete, you remove the image from the album or slide show but not from your iPhoto library.

There’s a trick for this as well. Select an image and press Command/Option/Delete; the image will disappear from all albums and slide shows, as well as from the iPhoto library, and will then appear in iPhoto’s Trash. Again, empty this Trash to delete the image from your computer.

Such “well informed” people have somehow missed the basic principle that if a problem appears and you can’t figure out what’s causing it in a pretty short time, the first “shot-gun fix” you should apply is to try restarting the Mac. The command is right there in the Apple menu, for goodness’ sake!
Restarting the Mac will resolve a problem that has occurred as the result of some unique combination of circumstances that will never (or rarely) be seen again. This happens more often than you might suspect. If restarting fails to fix the problem you haven’t lost anything but a couple of minutes of your time, and you can go on to investigate more complex possibilities.

If the Mac has frozen and you can’t use the Restart menu item, most modern Macs can be forcibly shut down by holding down the power button for about six seconds. After than you can restart the Mac normally. ~ Steve Cooper

Hold down the Option key and the complete file name will show without a pause. The Option key trick also works in icon view.

Step 1
Start up from a Mac OS X Install CD. This hardest part of this technique may be laying your hands on a Mac OS X Install CD when you need one. Use a version that is closest to the version of Mac OS X you have installed.

Hold the “C” key as the computer starts to boot from the CD.

When the installer starts, choose your language, and you’ll proceed to the welcome dialog.

Step 2
Choose “Reset Password” from the Utilities menu. Tip: In previous versions of Mac OS X (10.2 and 10.3), you can find the “Reset Password” option under the Installer menu instead.

Step 3
Select your Mac OS X hard disk volume. Select the user name of your original administrator account.

Important: Do not select “System Administrator (root).” This is actually a reference to the root user. Do not confuse it with a normal administrator account.

Enter your new password and click “Save.”

Step 4
Quit the “Reset Password” tool, and restart your Mac. Once your Mac has restarted, you should be able to log in with the newly changed password.

To do so, open Photo Booth. Don’t select any effects. Hold your object — box, document, business card, or whatever — up to the camera. Move it as close or as far away as you need; the iSight will quickly put it in focus. (Don’t worry if you’re trying to capture text and it reads backward on screen; you can take care of that later.) Hold your object steady by resting your elbow(s) on the table, and click on the Camera button to begin the three-second countdown.

Once the picture is taken, drag it to your desktop from Photo Booth’s tray. You’ll see that it’s a JPEG file. If you aren’t trying to capture text, you can use that JPEG as is. If you are trying to capture text, double-click on the image to open Preview, select Tools: Flip Horizontal, crop as needed, and save the file.~ Jay Lindell

To fix this problem, select the image file, hold down the option key, and select File -> Always Open With. In the menu that appears, select DiskImageMounter. If this application is not in the menu, select Other and navigate to the /System/Library/CoreServices folder. You’ll find the DiskImageMounter application there.

• Typing in a U.S. street address in Google gets you a link to a map of the location. Yahoo goes one step better – it actually shows the map on the Results page.

• Entering a U.S. landline phone number in Google or Yahoo gives you the name and address of the person to whom it belongs.

• Current weather conditions for U.S. cities can be displayed in Yahoo by typing the city name followed by the word “weather.” In Google, type the word “weather” first, followed by the city name.

• In Yahoo, type in the name of a sports team and the word “scores,” for the current score of a game in which the team is involved.

• In Google, type in certain fact-based questions, like “population of Boston” and you get the answer, not just a link to the answer.

• Type simple math problems, like 5 x 8.1999, into the search boxes of either engine, the sites act like calculators, spitting back the results.

• Both sites will also perform conversions of weights and measures, and currency conversions, right in the Search Box, In Google, you just type in questions like “37 centimeters in inches.” In Yahoo, you begin such questions with the word “convert,” as in “convert 7,000 yen to dollars.”

• Both sites will let you type in certain kinds of numbers, like package-tracking numbers, to get immediate information. A vehicle identification number will get you the links to basic information about the car and an offer to buy more detailed reports on the vehicle.

Google has a guide at www.google.com/features.html. Yahoo has a similar guide at http://search.yahoo.com/shortcuts ~ Walter Mossberg

A: It depends on how finely you care to parse “adverse effects on my applications or system operations.” If you dump the contents of this folder your applications will continue to march along as they always have and you won’t notice a difference in system performance. Until…

…you run Software Update or one of your applications checks for an update. The items in the Receipts folder are exactly that, receipts for updates you’ve installed. OS X’s Software Update, as well as other application’s updaters, drop these smallish files into the Receipts folder so that when they next look for an update, they know what’s already installed. Should you toss out these receipts, Software Update and other applications may attempt to download and install software you already have—even versions of that software earlier than what you have.

In most cases it’s best to just leave these files alone. They don’t take up a lot of space—I’ve got 191 of the little suckers and they eat up 258MB—and the confusion caused by trashing them isn’t worth it.

However, if you feel like an update didn’t “take” you can trick Software Update into giving it to you again by tossing that particular update’s receipt. Or, if you’d like to have a copy of the updater file, you can move its receipt, open Software Update, enable it for download, and then choose Update -> Download Only. Do this and the updater downloads to your Mac without installing.

<www.wifimaps.com> and <www.jiwire.com>

Sometimes, it is such the simplest tips that are the most useful. I really wondered when I saw this tip why I never actually figured it out before this. When you are using the calculator widget that comes with the OS, it is so much faster to use the numeric keypad (even for the +, -, * or / symbols) than to use the mouse.

What really bothered me is that I always had to go back to the mouse to clear it and start again. Well it turns out that no, instead of pressing the “c” button on the calculator with the mouse, you can simply hit “c” on the keyboard.

It will clear up what is currently in there and you are ready to start calculating again! Thanks for the great tip Elizabeth!

Now, let’s suppose you lose track of a particular user name or password. (this isn’t hard since, once they’re in the Keychain, you rarely have occasion to see them.) How can you find out what they are?

While the following procedure might not be of immediate use, following along will help you understand what the Keychain does and how it does it.

As an example, suppose that you need to find out the login name and password that you used for Apple Product Registration when you first set up your Mac.

1. Launch Applications/Utilities/ Keychain Access.

2. If necessary, click the lock at top left and provide your keychain password (which will normally be the same as your login password) to unlock the keychain.

3. If necessary, click the “Show Keychains” button at bottom left of the window.

4. Click the name of the primary keychain (usually “login” or your user name).

5. Click the heading of the column “Kind” to group all the “Web form password” items together.

6. Scan these for the one you want — it’s probably named “register.apple.com.” Your login name for Apple registration will be shown in parentheses at right. (It’s most likely your email address.)

7. Double-click this to open up an info window, and if necessary, click the “Attributes” tab.

8. Put a tick in the box “Show password.” You’ll be asked for your keychain password, which should be the same as your login password.

9. The registration password will be revealed.

Did you know that when you add an image to iPhoto, by default it’s actually copied into your iPhoto Library? Let’s say you download an image from the internet to a folder on you Mac. Later you want to add the image to iPhoto, so you drag the image from the folder and into iPhoto. You now have two identical copies of the image – the one in the folder on your desktop, and the one in iPhoto. If you delete the image from your Mac’s desktop, it will still exist in iPhoto.

Many people keep a copy of the images they download (or have emailed to them), even after adding (and copying) the images to iPhoto. Over time, these copies can gobble up hard drive space.

Thus, it’s typically best to delete images after they are imported into iPhoto. Of course, don’t forget to backup iPhoto (or your Mac) often.

What if you don’t want to copy the images into the iPhoto library? In iPhoto 6 preferences, there is an option to deselect “Copy files to iPhoto Library folder when adding to library.” If you deselect this, images will NOT be copied into iPhoto. In most cases, I don’t recommend this. I prefer to have all images copied into my iPhoto library, where they can easily be titled, duplicated, keywords can be added, etc. Also, it’s easy to back up iPhoto.

Note that iTunes works in a similar manner – by default, when you add a song, video, music loop, podcast, album art or even a PDF, it’s actually copied into the iTunes library. Also like iPhoto, there’s an option in iTunes preferences to “Copy files to iTunes Library folder when adding to library.” If you deselect this option, iTunes will play back music or videos without copying them into the iTunes library folder. The disadvantage to this is that you might erase the original file, causing a broken link in iTunes. Also, it’s easier to backup your iTunes music when it’s stored in one single folder – in this case, the iTunes library folder.

iMovie and Garageband are a little different. When you add data to these applications – a video clip or photo in iMovie, a drum loop or instrumental track in Garageband – that data is copied into the project file. There is no option to deselect to get around this. That’s part of the reason Garageband and iMovie projects can quickly get huge, in terms of gigabyte size. On the other hand, these projects are easy to back up, because all the data is stored in one place.

OS 10.4’s Disk Utility makes it easy to make an exact copy of a CD or DVD that can be stored on a hard drive as a disk image, or burned to a CD or DVD for future use. First, insert the CD or DVD you want to backup into your Mac. Next, drag the icon of the CD or DVD to the Disc Utility application (which is usually stored in the Applications Folder > Utilities Folder.) In other words, drag and drop the CD or DVD icon on top of the Disk Utility icon. (Or, launch Disk Utility, and select the CD in the menu bar at the left margin of the Disk Utility window.)

Disk Utility will launch, and then it will immediately open a window asking you to name the new disk image, and where to save it. Go ahead and save the image to your desktop.

In the Image Format drop-down menu, choose DVD/CD master. This is especially important if you want to burn a copy of the disk, and have it function as an exact clone of original CD or DVD you hope to backup.

Now click “Save.” A new disk image will be created on your Desktop, with the extension “.cdr,” It may take a few minutes to create this file.

If you click on the disk image, you’ll see it works just like a CD or DVD. You can store this new disk image on a hard drive. If you want to burn it to CD or DVD, you should again use Disk Utility. Otherwise, you’ll only be burning a copy of the disk image, and not an actual CD or DVD master.

To burn a CD or DVD master, open Disk Utility and look for the disk image of your CD or DVD, on the left side of the window. Usually it’s at the bottom of the list of drives. Now, simply select the image, and then click “Burn.” Follow the directions to burn the disk.

This is a great way to back up expensive software titles and game titles. Many games that require a disk to run will run off of the disk image - great for traveling.

Need to share an iPhoto library between accounts on your Mac? It’s easy: Go to System Preferences > Sharing, click the “Firewall” tab, and tick the box to allow “iPhoto Bonjour Sharing.” Then in iPhoto choose iPhoto > Preferences > Sharing, and tick the “Share my photos” box.

Switch to the other account, launch iPhoto, and you should see your photo collection in the Source column. If you don’t, check that “Look for shared photos” is ticked in iPhoto > Preferences > Sharing for that account.

Many applications, such as word processors, are oriented vertically, so scrolling up and down with the scroll wheel is intuitive. But what about applications like Microsoft Excel and ProVUE Development's Panorama database, which often require scrolling horizontally? Just hold down the Shift key and your scroll wheel switches to controlling the horizontal scroll bar instead of the vertical scroll bar. Applications must support this Mac OS X feature explicitly, so it may not be universal to all applications with a horizontal scroll bar.

Hold down the Control key while you scroll with the scroll wheel and Mac OS X 10.4.8 or later will zoom the screen smoothly. Mac OS X has long provided screen zooming (see the Universal Access preference pane), but it required keyboard shortcuts that were awkward and jerky.

Screen zooming isn't just for those who have trouble reading too-small text or for presenters who want to focus on a particular part of the screen, though; it's also great for zooming tiny Internet videos up to full-screen size. Of course, they pixelate more at larger sizes, but that's fine if you're sitting further back from the screen anyway.

The only downside is that it's hard to get the mouse pointer out of the picture when you're zoomed in on a video; normally you want the pointer to stay in the zoomed screen.

A further tip: if you take a selection screenshot with Command-Shift-4 or Snapz Pro X while zoomed in, the screenshot reflects your zoom level properly (trying to take a screenshot of an entire window while zoomed doesn't work, though).

It's all too common to run across a Web page with text that's too small to read (Geoff Duncan explained this in "Why Windows Web Pages Have Tiny Text," 1999-02-15). All Web browsers make it easy to expand or shrink text, usually with Command-+ and Command--, but you can also use the scroll wheel to do this in Firefox and Camino. Just hold down Command-Control and scroll to adjust text size.

If you’re looking to put your Mac to sleep as quickly as possible, it couldn’t be more simple…

Command-Option and then hold the Eject button for approx. 2 seconds.

Your system will be out like a light.

A good tip if ever you lose your digital camera. Maybe you will have a better chance of it being returned to you. Simply make a large-type word document on your computer that includes the following: IF FOUND, PLEASE RETURN THIS CAMERA TO: (insert name/address/tel/fax/email). THANK YOU!

Print it out as large as possible on a sheet and then photograph it with your digital camera as the first image on your memory card(s), and do not delete them! This way, if you and your camera ever get separated, hopefully whoever finds it will see the image and be kind enough to return it to you!

You could also hand print the wording on plain paper, blackboard, living room wall, or whatever to accomplish the same thing. An added advantage of the tip is that if someone only loses the memory card (and not the camera), there’s a good chance the memory card (if found) will be returned.