Top 10 Little Known Cool Mac Tricks

There are many lists that cover ground breaking, well publicized Mac features like Expose, and others that are fun or goofy like MacSaber which that turns your Macbook into a lightsaber. This list covers the cool tricks that fly below the radar that you might not know about yet. So without further ado, here they are:

10. OneStep DVD When you need to just transfer your movies from your miniDV video camera to a DVD without the frills, just click the OneStep DVD button in iDVD opening screen. iDVD will automatically rewind the tape and burn the video to a blank DVD in your new Mac.

9. Sherlock Movie Times Open Sherlock, click movies and see a list of movies playing near your in column view. Select a movie and see all the theaters near by that are showing it. Select a theater and it will show you all the times it is playing that day. Even though Sherlock is an orphan application from Mac OS 9, it still displays local movie times better than any widget or web site. As an added bonus, you can view a small movie trailer within the same window.

8. Full Screen Movie Trailers in Front Row Speaking of movie trailers, when only full screen will do for watching with others, use your Apple Remote to pull up Front Row and navigate to Movie Trailers under Movies. You are presented with a grid of current movie posters that you can click to see each trailer play in full screen glory.

7. Pocket Sized Address Book You can create a micro book from a group of contacts in Address book by selecting Pocket Address book in the Print dialog box. It auto-formats to make pages that have an alphabetical index along the edge. Just print and assemble.

6. Album Art Screen Saver Many aspects of the Mac are just mesmerizing to look at. The iTunes Artwork screen saver is one of those. You can select it in the Screen Saver Preference Pane by clicking on iTunes Artwork. A grid of 30-40 album covers will cover your screen, cycling through your album art by flipping the "covers" one by one. Try it out at your next party.

5. Make Anything a PDF Any file that you can print you can make a PDF of by using the PDF button/menu in the Print dialog box. One great benefit of this is that text in your new PDFs can be searched and found by Spotlight. Unfortunately, this great universal function is hidden away in a menu that looks like a button.

4. Instant Dictionary In most newer programs (ones written in Cocoa) you can get a word definition by putting your cursor over a word and pressing Apple+Control+D. This will pop up a little dictionary excerpt right below your word. Alternately, you can double click the word to select it and Control-Click (right click) and choose "Look up in Dictionary" from the pop-up menu. That will bring up the full sized dictionary where you can hyperlink click between words to get more definitions.

3. View Lots of Images Side by Side Full Screen Have you ever wanted to view and compare 10, 15, or 30 images side by side? You can by grouping your images together in a folder, selecting them, and then either Control-Clicking or using the Action Menu in the finder widow to select "Slideshow." That will bring up the first image and the slideshow controls. Using the controls, click the Index button, the icon of four boxes. This will scatter all the images in a grid set against a black background.

2. Use your Laptop as a Baby Monitor If you have a laptop and another Mac, start a one way video chat with the laptop and set it in place where it will monitor your sleeping baby. From the other Mac you can both see and hear your child.

1. Make a Personalized Wall Calendar Everyone knows you can make prints and photo albums from iPhoto, but did you know you can create a wall calendar? You can start on any month you wish and make twelve or even more months full of pictures of friends and family. You can even import events from iCal such as birthdays, as well as create new events while creating it. The price starts at $30, but I think you will find your calendar really is priceless. Enjoy!

Did we miss one of your favorites? What are some of the other great features that many people don't know about yet? Let us all know in the Comments section below!

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