This is an impromptu post but based on circumstances that occurred earlier today I decided to make it. For reasons beyond this blog I needed to boot my old Windows PC today to retrieve some information from it. It has been a couple of weeks since I last turned the machine on but at that time there were no warnings of failures or anything out of the ordinairy. When I turned the machine on today it continually rebooted time and time again, I thought all information was lost. But then I remembered I had my trusty Mac and an external hard drive enclosure in which I can try to connect the drive from my PC to my MacBook Pro in order to retrieve the data.

I removed the non-booting drive from my PC — scope is beyond this article — and set it up inside my external hard drive enclosure. I recently purchased an enclosure along with an internal drive as a way of making my own external drive. This route is a lot cheaper than buying one of the prebuilt solutions and is quite easy to assemble. Anyway, I removed the drive I was using for backups (which is an upcoming article) and attached the drive from my PC. I connected this new drive to my MacBook Pro and instantly it was recognized and the drive icon appeared on my Desktop.

I was still worried for a bit because this drive was formatted as NTFS, a filesystem that Mac’s are not supposed to be able to see. But luckily enough I was able to not only see the data on the drive but move the needed files over to the Mac in a matter of seconds. It really is as easy as copying and pasting or dragging and dropping.

When you are done with the drive make sure to unmount it first by dragging it to the trash can. This will change the trash icon to an eject icon and you will hear the hard drive power down letting you know it is safe to be disconnected from the Mac.

I will discuss this process in more detail at a later date but wanted to inform everyone that it is possible and extremely easy to set up as long as you have the equipment available — which included a screw driver and a external hard drive enclosure with cables to connect to the Mac (these cables will come with the enclosure).

In Part 1 of this two part series I talked about using the keyboard shortcuts for taking screenshots. Part 2 of this series will deal with using Grab, an application/utility built into Mac OSX.

Grab can be found in your Applications folder under the Utilities folder. An easier way of launching is simply typing Grab into Finder and selecting it from the list that appears. There are other ways of launching this as well but I won’t get into them here. Find a way that suits you best.

The main features you’ll use of Grab is found in the Capture menu item found in the menu bar (these options also have keyboard shortcuts which can be seen beside the option).

As you can see the first three options are similar to the options available to you from the keyboard shortcuts. Because of this I do not think they need any more explanation here. The keyboard shortcuts change while Grab is launched but essentially do the same job. The difference is Grab has a window that opens up letting you know you are taking a screenshot and gives you some instructions on what you should do.

Two other main differences between Grab and the general shortcuts are that Grab puts the screenshot into it’s own window; the file is not saved to the Desktop or to the clipboard. It is up to you to decide what you want to do with the screenshot from the window it appears in. The other difference is that you have the option of selecting Grab to also capture the mouse pointer and the type of pointer that it will capture. To enable this option you will have to select it from the Preferences menu found under Grab in the menu bar.

This brings us to the last option on the Capture menu - Timed Screen. Timed Screen is what definitely sets Grab apart from the general keyboard shortcuts that most of us should be used to. It is also one of the main screen capture techniques that I use for grabbing screens for this site. By selecting Timed Screen from the Capture menu a window will appear with the option to Start The Tiimer and this will start a ten second countdown. When the countdown finishes anything that appears on the screen will be captured into the image.

Using this technique is how I am able to get screenshots of open menus and different elements that are not set windows or screens. This is also how you would capture the mouse pointer that you set using the Preferences menu.

Other Screenshot methods:
In the comments to Part 1, fcodc from Mac Recon mentioned a widget called Screenshot Plus which he uses for the majority of his screenshots. I have yet to use this widget so try it out for yourself to see what it’s capable of — I will try to experiment with it soon and post my findings.

In Mac OSX there are two built-in ways of taking screenshots, the first being keyboard commands and the second being an application/utility called Grab. Today we will look at the keyboard shortcuts.

If you are venturing to the Mac from the Windows world you probably noticed the lack of the “Print Screen” key on the keyboard. In Windows to take screenshots you would hit the Print Screen key to grab the entire window or Alt+Print Screen to grab just the active window. Mac OSX doesn’t have that feature but has many more built in which offer a wider array of options.

Command+Shift+3 will take a picture of the entire screen and put the output directly onto your desktop. If you hold the Control key down before hitting the 3 the screenshot will be stored to your Clipboard.

Command+Shift+4 will turn your cursor into a crosshairs icon which will allow you to make a selection, whatever is inside the grey box becomes your screenshot (seen in the picture below). If you hold the Control key down while making your selection the file will go onto the Clipboard instead of the desktop.

Command+Shift+4 then Spacebar will turn your cursor into a camera which then allows you to take a screenshot of the current screen and place the results on your desktop. Holding down the Control key while doing this will put the screenshot onto the Clipboard instead of the desktop for use elsewhere.

I use these commands while creating the screenshots for I’m A Mac, I also use Grab for some of the more advanced screenshots and this will be discussed in the next article.

One of the first things I did on my new Mac was go online and download Firefox as it is my browser of choice. The download process was the usual download to your computer but the file had a DMG extension, something I wasn’t familiar with. Being from the Windows world I equated this with an EXE extension and clicked the file assuming the installation would begin. I assumed it was a general installation as an EULA appeared and I accepted then saw the following screen:

I clicked on the Firefox logo assuming this would launch the program and that this window was just showing me Firefox in a folder. I proceeded to use the program believing it was installed and removed the DMG file that was downloaded as I thought it was no longer needed (such as Windows install files). However the next time I went to use Firefox it wouldn’t load, the problem was I didn’t install it.

The DMG file actually “mounts” an image of the program onto your Desktop which looks like this:

If you click on this image it will open the same window as you saw above. What that window is showing you is to move the Firefox icon on the left into your Applications folder — you accomplish this by simply dragging the icon into your folder. You will then see the program start installing. After the installation is complete you are free to move both the DMG file and the Firefox drive image icon into the trash. When you drag the drive image to the trash the trash icon will switch to an eject button and this will be discussed in a later post.

Most programs downloaded from the Internet will have this DMG extension and will feature an install window which varies by program. Some are more intuitive on what you should do and some are a little more abstract such as the Firefox one. For example, below is the install window for Adobe Lightroom Beta 4.

As you can see, this install shows the movement of Lightroom into the Applications folder with a bolder arrow. However if you didn’t know that you actually had to drag the icon into the folder you still might make the same mistake I did when I first tried installing my first downloads on the new Mac.

Installation of programs is as simple as dragging the icon into the Applications folder, no further steps are needed. It really is that easy.

In Windows you’re used to the Start menu, anything you need to do you go to the start menu. In Mac OSX there is no start menu there is however a Dock. I don’t want to confuse by saying the Dock is the same as Windows’ Start Menu but if you get used to the Dock you’ll forget all about your old reliability on the Start Menu.

Pictured above is the current Dock on my system. I still haven’t fully customized it but I have removed programs I haven’t used and added programs I frequently use. The Dock is used as a launch pad for your programs. Any icon you click in the dock will open that program up, if you see a black triangle under the icon it means that program is currently running. For example, the icon for Firefox has a triangle under it as Firefox is currently running. If you open another program which isn’t in the Dock by default its icon will appear in the dock with a triangle underneath it.

Hovering over an icon and holding down the mouse button will open up an options window. The options window will vary depending on the icon selected (seen in the picture is the menu for the Firefox program icon). From here you have different options which are self explanatory. The top option “Remove From Dock” would say “Keep In Dock” if the program doesn’t currently have its icon in the dock by default.

The Dock has its own main menu which is accessible by clicking the Apple icon in the top left of the screen. From this menu you are able to position your Dock as well as set if you want your Dock visible at all times or only when you hover over the area where your Dock is positioned. Feel free to experiment with the options available in this menu to find a customization that works best for you. My Dock is very minimal in customization with the only feature I have turned on being hiding.

Spending a few minutes getting acquainted with the Dock will help you start to master your Mac.