Magic Mouse Won’t Right-click

Recently I restarted my Mac exactly as I have done tons of times before and fired up the NYTimes on Chrome and WTF! I couldn’t right-click with my Magic Mouse. I go to CNN and the mouse won’t right-click there either. I try to right-click and the mouse behaves exactly as if I had left-clicked it. I switch browsers to Safari and still my Magic Mouse left-clicks perfectly and scrolls smoothly like it always did when I run my index finger up and down the middle of it. Double finger tap will send me to Mission Control like always. Long story short, Magic Mouse worked perfectly except for the fact that I could no longer right-click.

O.K. before you chime in and say “You can accomplish a right-click by holding down the Control Key and clicking normally.” I know that and I also know that I missed the hell out of using the left-click on my Magic Mouse.

But I managed to find out that i needed to Reset the PRAM or parameter random-access memory and here how you do that.

Turn off the Mac. Notice I didn’t say re-start your Mac. I said Turn your Mac off. Now startup your Mac and hold down Opt, Cmd, R and P keys until your hear the startup chimes sound twice. You might want to practice holding these keys down all at once because it’s quite a stretch.

After you complete the simple maneuver described above your Magic Mouse should regain the ability to right-click.

You can read more about Resetting the PRAM in Apple’s tech support pages.

¯_(ツ)_/¯

Add a Space Between Apps in Your Dock

Question: Why would I want to add a space between my apps in the Dock on my Mac?

Answer: Because I’m a geek and I can.

But really, I’ve dragged all of the apps I most often use to the left side of my Dock. It makes since to me to put a space between those and the rest of the ones I use less frequently. So here’s how to do this.

Step 1: Launch Terminal

Step 2: Type (or better yet, copy and paste) the following command and hit Return:

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add ‘{tile-data={}; tile-type=”spacer-tile”;}’

Step 3: Type in the following command and hit Return:

killall Dock

Now you’ll see a blank space in your Dock and you can drag it anywhere you want. If you want to get rid of it, right-click on it and delete it or just click and hold it and drag it off the Dock.

Sleep/Wake Your Mac with Touch ID on your iPhone

I have my iMac configured to sleep if I leave it unattended for thirty minutes. And naturally, I have it password protected. This means that some days seemingly dozens of times I had to re-awaken the Mac by hitting the spacebar on my keyboard and then typing in my password.

I no longer have to do that because nowadays I usually wake my Mac with the iPhone app MacID. The app uses the same iPhone’s fingerprint sensor that unlocks your iPhone to unlock your Mac as well.

Apple makes sure that third-party apps like MacID don’t have access to your actual fingerprint data. Even Apple doesn’t have that because it’s only stored on the phone. Using the Touch ID sensor simply checks to see whether or not the fingerprint is valid. If it is then MacID uses Bluetooth to wake your Mac.

MacID cost $4 for both the app that you download for your Mac and the one you put on your iPhone. Naturally you must have a newer iPhone that supports Touch ID and is running iOS 8 or higher and you must be using a newer iMac, MacBook Pro or MacBook Air running OS X 10.10 Yosemite.

I’ve been using this app for several weeks now and I love it. The only problem is that now and then the iPhone app won’t recognize the Mac. When that happens the fix is to r-click the app in Mac’s menu bar and Quit the app then open the app by typing MacID in Spotlight and choosing to Open it.

You can read more about this great software and download it to your Mac at the MacID website.

Adding a Signature in Preview

Sure I know that all decent photo apps allow you to put text on your edited pictures but putting your signature on a document is a little more difficult to do. But if you own a Mac it’s easy to add your signature to pics you email to friends or to any documents that you can insert an image in.

Here’s how to do it. It’s really easy. The first thing you want to do is write your name (signature) on an unlined sheet of white paper.

Then just open Preview on your Mac and if you’ve upgraded to Yosemite, click Tools on the menu bar at the top of the screen. Then mouse over Annotate > Signature > Manage Signatures > Create signature. Now hold the paper with your signature to your Mac’s camera and move it around until you’re satisfied with the way it looks and then click the Done button and and your done.

Slow Motion Window Minimizing

Holding the Shift key while you minimize a windows makes the window do a trippy, seconds-long treck to the Dock.

Make Snippets by Dragging Highlighted Text to the Desktop

On almost any program in a Mac, you can highlight text and then click and hold it with your mouse and drag it to another location in that document. If you drag it to the Desktop, it becomes a Text Clipping that you can use as a memo or drag later into a future document.

If you have lots of Text Clippings sitting around on your Desktop, you can peek inside them clicking them and hitting the Space bar to use Quick Look on them.

If you found any of this information idiotic or confusing, yell at me in the comments.

How to Type an Apple Logo in iOS

Most Mac users know that in most programs on a Mac that let you enter text you can print the Apple logo by using the keyboard shortcut Option+Shift+K. But you can’t do that on an iPad or an iPhone using iOS default keyboards. But you can make it happen and I’ll show you how.

Create an iOS Keyboard Shortcut for Apple Logo

Oh sure, there’s probably gunk that you can download to your iOS device that will allow you to type an Apple symbol using your iPad and/or iPhone keyboard. But why clutter your device with needless third party junk when you can do the same thing the geek way.

This is easy and elegant. First, on your Mac open your Mail App and compose an email to yourself and in the body of that email just type the shortcut (Option Shift K) so you have in the body of the message.

Next, open that email on your iPad or iPhone and copy that Apple Logo to your clipboard.

Now in your iPad or iPhone go to Settings > General > Keyboard > Shortcuts and tap the “+” icon in the upper righthand corner to create a new keyboard shortcut. In the Phrase dialog box tap and hold to paste the  symbol. In the Shortcut box enter any combination of key strokes you’d like to use that will cause iOS to display . I used !apl but you can use any symbol and one or more letters. But don’t forget to tap Save in the upper righthand corner and your done.

So now give it a try. Open any app that you type in on your iPhone or iPad like Messages maybe and type your new shortcut. Ta-Da you get a . Cool huh? And if you have all your iDevices synced through iCloud, setting up this shortcut on one of them will automatically set it up in all the others.

If you found any of this information idiotic or confusing, yell at me in the comments.

Writing for the Web with Markdown

What is Markdown

Maybe you know how to create webpages using HTML or HyperText Markup Language. If you do, you know what a pain it is. Markdown lets you write using plain text and later convert it to HTML to post it online. So, even if you don’t know a thing about HTML you can write webpages using Markdown.

Aside from marking up webpages with Markdown, you use Markdown to format text, add links and images to many note taking apps. And every day now more iOS, OS X, Android and Windows developers are beginning to incorporate Markdown into new applications.

Markdown Is Easy to Learn

Markdown is very intuitive and simple to use. You can write Markdown on any text editor from something as elaborate as Microsoft Word to something as simple as Microsoft’s NotePad. On a Mac you can use TextEdit, Pages or even Notes. But when you get hooked on using Markdown like I am you’re going to want an app on your PC or Mac that is specifically designed to help you write in Markdown.

You can google around and find lots of apps designed for Markdown on Windows, Androids and Macs. I use MarkdownPad on my PC. On my Mac, I’m torn between Typed which features several extras like Zen Mode that will play soothing audio for you while you compose your blog posts or whatever and Byword an equally impressive Markdown app and so for now I ‘m using them both.

Here’s How Markdown Works

In HTML to make a header i.e. headline in big bold letters you use HTML header tags styled with even more CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) code. What a hassle! In Markdown, you do the same thing using hash tags like so: # Header. Typing one hash tag followed by a space then followed by your text makes a huge, centered headline. Two hashtags followed by a space make the headline slightly smaller. Three hash tags and then a space makes it smaller still and six hash tags creates the smallest headers.

To create a paragraph in HTML you would use a paragraph tag or the letter p surrounded in angle brackets and then end the paragraph with the same symbol but with a backward slash in front of the p. But you can do the same thing in Markdown by hitting your return key twice. Meaning, putting a space between your lines of text is all it takes to create paragraphs.

Formatting is easy with Markdown. To make text bold, surround it with two asterisks like this: This is **bold text**. This is bold text or you can use the keyboard shortcut Cmd + B to make highlighted text bold. For italics surround text with underscore like so: _italicized_ and that text will be italicized.

To create a list, start new lines with a single asterisk, minus sign or plus sign and then a space. And you can create numeric lists by beginning a line of text with the number one and a period and then a space with the second line beginning with the number two (2) and a Period (.) and then a space and so on. That space between the asterisk, minus or plus sign is important. And speaking of spaces, remember to put a line of space between the last paragraph and the beginning of your list.

I’ve written this page using Markdown instead of regular old HTML and you may have noticed I’ve provided some links. Linking to other places on the Web is really tedious using HTML and it is so simple with Markdown. Here’s how. Find the page you want to link to in your browser and copy it’s address to your clipboard. Now go to the text in your Markdown app, find the word you want to use as the anchor and put your cursor to blinking in front of it and use the keyboard shortcut Cmd + K and you’ll see your anchor word between brackets and an empty double parentheses. Click between the parentheses and paste your URL and you’re done. In Windows MarkdownPad the link producing shortcut is Ctrl + L.

Speaking of shortcuts, here are some more

• Cmnd + b makes highlighted text bold
• Cmnd + i makes highlighted text italicized
• Cmnd + c Copy the selected text to the Clipboard
• Cmnd + v Paste the Clipboard contents into the current document
• Cmnd + x Cut the selected text and copy it to the Clipboard
• Cmnd + a Select the entire contents of the current document

Posting to WordPress Using Markdown

WordPress.com supports Markdown and so supports anything written in Typed Or ByWord on the Mac or MarkdownPad on a PC.

Converting Markdown to HTML

Some Markdown text editors will show you what your Markdown document will look like in HTML. But a quick and easy way to convert Markdown into HTML is to use John Gruber’s Dingus online page. Just copy your Markdown to your computer’s clipboard and paste it into the Dingus webpage.

Markdown examples

Below are some examples of how to use Markdown. First I’ve written what you should type to make a certain thing happen followed by its HTML equivalent followed then by the keyboard shortcut for the same action if applicable. In most cases you’ll need to highlight the word or phrase before applying the shortcut to it.

• # Largest Header html: <h1>Largest Header</h1> shortcut: Cmnd + 1
• ## Smaller Header html: <h2>Smaller Header</h2> shortcut: Cmnd + 2
• ### Smaller Header html: <h3>Still Smaller Header</h3> shortcut: Cmnd + 3

You can keep making smaller and smaller headers down to the smallest which is:

• ###### Smallest Header html: <h6>Smallest Header</h6> shortcut: Cmnd + 6
• **Bold Text** html: <b>Bold Text</b> shortcut: Cmnd + b
• _Italicized Text_ html: <i>Italicized Text</i> shortcut: Cmnd + i

If you found any of this information idiotic or confusing, yell at me in the comments.

Sharing Windows Files With a Mac

If you have a Mac and a Windows PC sharing the same Wi-Fi network there’s a really easy way to share files between them. You don’t need to install any virtualization software or any additional software at all as long as you’re running at least Windows 7 and at least OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.

The method I’m about to describe works because your Mac is able to detect your PC as a server on the Wi-Fi network they both share.

First I’m going to show you how to locate your Windows folders and files on your Mac right in Finders. Later I’ll show you how you can give your Windows PC access to your Mac even though I don’t recommend doing that since Windows is so much more susceptible to malware than the Mac is.

How To Access Your PC From Your Mac

On your Windows PC go to Control Panel > System and Security > System to find your computer’s network name and the name of the Windows workgroup your PC is on. Jot these down as you’ll need them later.

On your Mac, open System Preferences > Internet & Wireless > Network (in Yosemite it’s just System Preferences > Network) and click Advanced. In older iterations of OS X you may need to choose Wi-Fi over Ethernet to find Advanced. In Advanced, click the WINS tab. Enter your Mac’s name in the NetBIOS box. The name may already be there. If it is leave it as it is. And then type your PC’s workgroup name into the Workgroup box. The default name is “Workgroup” duh. Click OK and close System Preferences.

Now it’s time to make the magic happen. Click the Desktop of your Mac to bring Finder into focus and click Go in the Finder menu and select “ Connect to Server”. Type “smb://yadda yadda and replace yadda yadda with the name of your Windows PC that you found in your Windows Control Panel. Click “connect” and you may or may not be asked for a user name and password.

Here is where a lot of people get confused. I did too at first. What’s being asked for is the name and password that you use to log on to your Windows machine. The username is probably your first name. The password is whatever you type into Windows everyday to unlock it. If you’ve never set a password to your account, you’ll probably need to go into the Control Panel on your PC to set one up in order to get this method of Mac to PC connection to work.

If you’ve followed the above instructions, you will now see your PC listed under Shared in Finders on your Mac. Click and enjoy.

In a post coming soon I’ll show you how you can access files on your Mac from your PC. In that upcoming post I’ll also talk about why you might want to think carefully about doing that.

If you found this information idiotic or confusing, yell at me in the comments.