Have you ever noticed that little dark circle that appears within the close button of a document window in OS X when you have unsaved changes? Yeah, me neither. After years of diligent Mac use, this subtle little element somehow escaped me until now. I guess I remember noticing it at times but never realized it was telling me to save my work. It’s a nice touch and got me wondering about what other subtle elements I might have missed over the years.

I spent some time gathering up a number of these hidden gems and figured I’d list them here in the hopes that our readers could add to the list in the comments.

Save Dialog

When saving a file you can press / at the save dialog box to choose from any point in the file system via a file path.

Displays

You can press Shift + Ctrl + Eject to put external displays to sleep. On a MacBook this will force the system to sleep without having to close the lid.

Airport

Pressing the Option key when clicking on the AirPort icon in the menubar will display some detailed information about your wireless connection, including the transmit rate.

Finder

Pressing Control while clicking on the current location icon at the top of the Finder window opens a menu to let you select any parent location along that particular file path.

Screen

Pressing Ctrl + Option + Command + 8 will invert the color of your screen.

Dictionary

Pressing Ctrl + Command + D while hovering over a word in any Cocoa application (Safari, Mail, etc.) will automatically look up that word in the OS X dictionary app.

This list just scratches the surface of what I know are a huge number of hidden gems buried inside OS X. If you have any others you want to add to the list, please share it with us in the comments.

Brazil wins, however: The price of one MacBook Pro 17″ there buys you two identical models in the US. It’s the same with other Apple products, so if you can’t live without your Apple fix, you better move to another country.

I’d take the caipirinhas and the beaches, thank you very much. [cmyplay—Thanks]

You can actually download a trial version yourself before you hand over your $50. Keep in mind that you’ll need to have a machine with one of these processors in order for this to work: Intel Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, i7 or Xeon Nehalem. We haven’t tested Rebel EFI, so we can’t say how well it works. Let us know if you’ve had luck with it. [Psystar via LoopInSight]

Today, I’m happy to announce that we’re releasing Picasa 3.5, a new version of our free photo editing software. Since we launched it as a beta Labs product 9 months ago, we’ve been steadily improving Picasa for Mac. Now that it has almost all the same features as the PC version, we’ve decided it’s time to remove the beta label once and for all.

If you haven’t tried Picasa for Mac, the new version gives you the ability to add name tags to your photos so that you organize them by what matters most: people. Picasa groups similar faces and lets you easily add a name tag to dozens of photos at once. After you’ve tagged some photos with names, you can do creative things with your tagged photos, like quickly finding all the photos with the same two people in them, making a face collage for a friend, or simply uploading and sharing people albums.

In addition to name tags, Picasa 3.5 has integrated Google Maps so you can more easily geotag your photos. And using our redesigned import process, you can now import photos from your camera and upload selected photos to Picasa Web Albums in one easy step.

Of course, Picasa for Mac is also designed to “play nice” with iPhoto, taking a special read-only approach to editing photos stored in the iPhoto library. It duplicates instead of changing files as needed, so your iPhoto library isn’t ever affected when you use Picasa.

Picasa 3.5 is available in English (for now; more languages to come). You can download and try it today at picasa.google.com.

If you are an experienced professional, chances are you have a good set of tools and a work process that you repeat on a daily basis to handle your work. That’s good; it’s how you become more productive, and become an expert. But with repetitive processes come repetitive mechanical work. Whether it’s opening a file in Photoshop to change the format or adding an iCal to-do item based on an email you received, these little tasks can be streamlined. That’s the purpose of AppleScripts.

AppleScript is a scripting language developed by Apple to help people automate their work processes on the Mac operating system. It accomplishes this by exposing every element of the system’s applications as an object in an extremely simple, English-like language. AppleScript is to the Mac OS as JavaScript is to browsers.

Quite a few AppleScripts are available on the Web, ready for you to use, so you don’t even need to look at their code. This article presents you with 17 of the most useful ones.

If you’re interested in learning this language, here are some good resources to get started:

• Official AppleScript Website
  Apple’s page on AppleScript.
• AppleScript Language Guide
  Apple’s in-depth guide to AppleScript.
• MacScripter
  The greatest AppleScript forum.
• Learning AppleScript
  Macworld’s article on the fundamentals of writing AppleScripts.
• AppleScript Users
  AppleScript Mailing List.

First, Where To Put Your AppleScripts

After you download a script, you have to know where to put it to start using it. For this purpose, let’s say that there are three different kinds of AppleScripts, each of which is used for a different purpose.

Simple Scripts

You put these scripts in a special folder and call them when you need them. You can invoke them just by double clicking on them, but calling them contextually is a lot more effective. Using the Script Menu is one way to achieve this.

To activate the Script Menu, first open the AppleScript Utility app in the /Applications/AppleScript folder and check “Show Script Menu in menu bar.”

The Script Menu will show a list of AppleScripts that come with Mac OS X, plus your application-specific scripts. To add a script to an application, simply put it in ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/<NAME_OF_THE_APPLICATION>. If that folder doesn’t exist, you can create it.

For example, if you had a Safari AppleScript, you’d put it in ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Safari. From then on, if you clicked the Script Menu when Safari was active, your script would appear at the top of the list for you to use.

Droplets

Droplets are AppleScripts that live in the Finder’s toolbar. To use it, all you need to do is drop a file or folder into it. This is very useful for when a script affects a file or the contents of a folder, because all you have to do is drop the target of the action onto the script’s icon.

To “install” a Droplet, first save it in a folder of your choosing: ~/Library/Scripts/Droplets is a good place. Then just drag the script to the Finder’s toolbar.

Folder Actions

Folder Actions are AppleScripts that are “attached” to a folder. They are executed every time you perform an action with that folder. Folder Actions can get triggered every time you add a file to a folder, remove a file, modify its items, etc. The behavior depends on how the script works, but you can imagine how useful that would be.

To add a Folder Action to a folder, right-click it to bring up the contextual menu, and click Attach a Folder Action. The default location for Folder Action scripts is /Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts, but if you want to keep all your custom-installed scripts in one place, ~/Library/Scripts/Folder Actions is a good place to keep them.

Multimedia Processing

1. ConvertImage

This is a great example of how Droplets are useful. Just drop an image file into ConvertImage, and you will be prompted to choose from a list of file formats. Pick a format, and it saves it in the same folder as your original file.

ConvertImage
Type: Droplet
Requirements: OS X 10.4+, Image Events

2. QuickTime to Photoshop

Exports QuickTime frames directly to Photoshop. All you have to do is pause a video at the frame that you want to export, and then invoke the script. If Photoshop is closed, the script will activate it for you. After it imports the frame, it will ask you if you want another frame from the QuickTime file.

QuickTime to Photoshop
Type: Simple Script
Requirements: Adobe Photoshop CS4

3. iPhoto to Photoshop

This opens the currently selected iPhoto image in Photoshop. It is a simple automation leap that gets you where you want without intervening steps.

iPhoto to Photoshop
Type: Simple Script
Requirements: Adobe Photoshop CS4

4. Rampage

Drop an image file or a folder with image files in Rampage, and you get a text file with a lot of information about the file(s): size, resolution, color mode, ICC Profiles and more. It also reports warnings and errors about the file(s). The script currently supports TIFF, GIF, BMP, PNG and JPG image formats.

Rampage
Type: Droplet
Requirements: None

5. SWF Extractor

This extract SWF files from Flash projectors (Windows or Mac executables) that are dropped into it.

SWF Extractor
Type: Droplet
Requirements: None

Safari Tools

6. Safari Web Site Validator

Safari Web Site Validator gets the HTML or XHTML from the current active Safari tab and sends the code to the W3C Markup Validation Service in a separate window. It then asks if you want to validate the page’s CSS file as well.

Safari Web Site Validator
Type: Simple Scripts
Requirements: OS X 10.4.4+

7. Tiny URL

Despite its name, the Tiny URL script doesn’t use the TinyUrl application. It’s based on another URL shortening service called Metamark. It goes to the currently active Safari tab and puts the shortened URL directly in your clipboard.

Tiny URL
Type: Simple Scripts
Requirements: None

8. Safari Cleannup

This automates the deletion of Safari icons and cache and plist files. Getting rid of these extraneous files can boost Safari’s performance.

Safari Cleannup
Type: Simple Scripts
Requirements: None

9. Scour Web Page

This script scans the current Web page in Safari looking for MP3, AAC and PDF media files. If it finds multiple files, it prompts you to select the ones you want to keep, and then downloads them and adds them to your iTunes media library.

Scour Web Page
Type: Simple Scripts
Requirements: None

Mail And iCal

10. Fuhgeddaboutit

In Sopranos-speak, fuhgeddaboutit means “forget about it.” Indeed, one of the purposes of GTD is to free your brain from having to keep track of everything. Just relax, forget about it now and be confident that you’ll remember when you need to.

This script make that possible by making iCal To-Do items from an Apple Mail email. Just invoke the script with the email you want, and it will create an iCal item with a due time set relative to the email’s arrival.

Fuhgeddaboutit
Type: Simple Scripts
Requirements: None

11. Send Attachment Droplet

Just drop a file into this Droplet, and it will make a new Mail email with the file as an attachment and the subject set to the file’s name. If the Mail app is closed, the script will open it for you.

Send Attatchment Droplet
Type: Droplet
Requirements: None

12. Remove iCal Duplicates

When you sync and share many calendars in iCal, you often end up with a lot of duplicates. This simple script helps you remove those. But once you ask it to delete duplicates, there’s no undoing. So, be sure to back up your calendar first.

Remove iCal Duplicates
Type: Simple Script
Requirements: None

13. iCalculate

Invoke this script, create an iCal calendar item and start date, and it will generate a text file reporting how many hours you have worked on the project. It even calculates the total cost of the project, based on the hourly rate your specify. Especially suited to freelancers.

iCalculate
Type: Simple Script
Requirements: None

Finder Utilities

14. Pack’em

Pack’em takes one or more items from Finder, packs them with tar, compresses them with either bzip2 or gzip and saves the compressed archive in the same folder as the original items. A great companion to the Send Attachment Droplet. With these two AppleScripts, you can compress and email a set of files or folders directly from Finder.

Pack’em
Type: Simple Script
Requirements: None

15. Rename Files

Just drop a folder into this Droplet, and it will give you a lot of options to batch process its contents. You can rename the files according to names specified in a particular text file or change the files individually. Either way accomplishes your task much faster than by changing every file name independently.

Rename Files
Type: Droplet
Requirements: None

16. Websafe Name

If you develop websites, you are probably accustomed to giving your files Web-friendly names. But there are times when you have to upload a whole set of files sent to you by a client, or upload things that you weren’t expecting to use. Websafe Name is very useful for this kind of task. You don’t even need to look through the list of files; just drop them into this script, and it will rename them to something Web-friendly.

Websafe Name
Type: Droplet
Requirements: None

17. Tagger

The “folder” is a computer interface paradigm that is a very powerful way to organize files. But it’s neither the only paradigm nor the best solution for all scenarios. Many sub-folders nested deep is a sign that a folder structure may not be appropriate. Another great paradigm, coming straight from the Web, is “tagging.” You keep all your files flat in a common location, but group them by tags so that you can retrieve or filter them by tags. It so happens that the Mac OS X has very good support for this. You can use Spotlight Comments to tag files and Smart Folders to dynamically retrieve them. All you need now is an easy way to do this, and this Folder Action does exactly that.

To use Tagger, attach it to a folder. Then, every time you add a file to that folder via Finder, the script will prompt you to tag that file. It also automatically creates Smart Folders for all of your defined tags.

Tagger
Type: Folder Action
Requirements: None

Further Resources

If you like the scripts above, you may also be interested in the following articles and related resources:

• ScriptBuilders
  A forum in which script authors post their scripts.
• Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes
  A huge collection of AppleScripts for iTunes.
• Macs in Chemistry
  AppleScripts aimed at scientists.
• Studio Log
  Scripts and discussion on how to make them.
• AppleScripts on Github
  A search list of AppleScripts hosted on Github

Should Smashing Magazine publish more Mac-related posts?

Please let us know in the poll below and in the comments to this post!

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About the Author

Diogo Terror is a Web developer doing PHP work when the sun is up and Ruby on Rails when it gets dark. In between, he writes about Macs and posts random thoughts on Twitter.

(al)

© Diogo Terror for Smashing Magazine, 2009. |
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Post tags: apple, applescripts, mac

Picasa, the popular free photo management software made by Google, has finally made its way to the Mac. The application has long been noticeably absent on the Macintosh – especially given the fact that it has been available for Linux (which typically lags behind Macs and Windows) since 2006. It’s also a direct competitor to Apple’s long running iPhoto product, which has come with all new Macs for years. So how does it stack up?

In my brief testing the application seems to be very snappy (much faster than iPhoto), though it lacks the sleek look of Apple’s products. Photos import quickly, effects are easy to find and apply, and most things are intuitive, though the folder browsing can be a little confusing. It might not be as pretty as iPhoto, but I won’t be surprised if power-users make the switch (or at least consider it).

One of the biggest differences between Picasa and iPhoto is that Picasa doesn’t move or reorganize images, but instead keeps track of where your images are scattered across your hard drive and allows you to view them in one place. For users that manually manage their photos by sorting them into folders, this is a very welcome change. In contrast, iPhoto has long transfered your photos to its own library, and encouraged users to sort their photos through the app itself.

Given that iPhoto has come preinstalled on every Mac for years, Google is doing doing everything it can to make Picasa play nice with your existing library. While users can typically modify any image on their hard drive directly from Picasa, all images in iPhoto’s library are treated differently: the application will copy these images to a new location, and only then apply edits. The application also allows users to revert back to previous versions.

Picasa is a welcome alternative to iPhoto, but it’s still premature to drop iPhoto entirely. It’s highly likely that Apple will unveil a new version of iPhoto at tomorrow’s Macworld keynote, and you can be sure that it will include some significant enhancements.

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