College: A Mac survival guide (Pt 3)
By Triston McIntyre
Week one of classes is nearly over, you will most likely overlook tonight’s homework in favor for hours of careless debauchery at the local watering hole, and you finally feel like you are getting familiar with your Mac. However, if you feel like you’re still not all there, here is the next installment of tips and tricks to really make you feel like a member of the Mac family.
Let’s dig into a few practical applications that should make your college Mac experience better.
Though OS X comes standard with a very lovely little web-browsing application most know to be called Safari, there is always room for improvement. I’ve found that, although flashy and the bearer of the loved brushed metallic skin, Safari is not the best way to go about your Facebook and MySpace stalking.
An excellent (and I believe to be the best) web browsing application available for Macs is called Camino. Though many switchers are familiar with the organization Mozilla for their popular web browser Firefox, do not let yourselves fall into the trap that is keeping Firefox on your Mac!
Admittedly, there is nothing wrong with Firefox for Mac; however, Camino is optimized specifically for Macs, wehre Firefox is not. Camino is free, fast, and problem-free. Try them both out and see which fits you best, but Camino is my own pick for third party browser application.
A fantastic application that will similarly enhance your web-browsing experience is called 1Passwd. I don’t know about you, but I keep quite a handful of passwords for different websites, not to mention passwords that universities require you change every month or so.
1Passwd effectively gives you one master key (which you shouldn’t forget), and from then on, any password you enter will be stored permanently in the bank of passwords; after entering a website’s password once, you must only enter the master key to access the website.
Now, the unspoken beauty about such a tool is this: when your friends are over and feel like checking their Facebook or MySpace, you can just alert them that they won’t be able to use the internet without the master key, so they should probably wait until they get back to their respective places…thus keeping their grubby, dirty collegiate fingers off your beautiful ivory keys.
Though this program does cost money, I highly recommend making this purchase as it greatly eases the worries of losing or forgetting passwords; if you forget or need to change a password, you simply open the program up, enter your master key, and view all the passwords for your respective websites.
I will leave you with one last gem before the next installment: though I love my white MacBook passionately, occasionally I am disheartened by the rubbed and faded look certain areas take on after a certain amount of hand oils have tainted them. If you want a way to quickly clean all those marks off on the keys, hand rest and trackpad area, go buy a 2 pack of Mr. Clean Magic Erasers.
Drip a little water into one eraser, wring it out, and do some scrubbing. With very little effort, all those grease marks should come off in a few minutes.
That’s all for today, but be sure to keep your browser tuned to Mac.Blorge.com for the next installment of College: A Mac Survival Guide.
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on Thursday, August 30th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
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August 31st, 2007
Thanks for including 1Passwd in your Survival Guide! I know I had troubles living without it
BTW - using 1Passwd as a way to deter others from using your beautiful Mac is pure genius! I never thought about it in that way before
On the other hand, if you ever did want to allow your friends to use your machines, you can lock the 1Passwd keychain and turn off autosave; this would keep your secrets safe and prevent their passwords from being recorded.
Of course, if you don’t want their “dirty fingers” on your Mac, you don’t have to tell them that last part
Cheers!
–Dave Teare (Co-author of 1Passwd)