But now, over the last six months, in ways little and large, Apple has begun to stumble.
That’s about where they lost me.
The New Yorker: Does a Company Like Apple Need a Genius Like Steve Jobs?
Manually change the default interval of Apple’s Time Machine backups
By default, Apple’s Time Machine performs backups every hour. For many people, this simply isn’t necessary. And for those who actually do alter numerous files (especially large ones) every hour, your probably don’t want the system using resources for backups every hour.
Apple really should offer a way to adjust the backup time in the System Preferences, but they don’t. Fortunately, you can still do it using the Terminal app in your Utilities folder.
Open Terminal and paste the code below into the Terminal window and hit the Return key (make sure you copy the exact text below.) Enter your Admin password when it asks and hit return again:
sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.backupd-auto StartInterval -int 7200
The number at the end of that line is the amount of seconds between backups. By default, it’s 3600 (one hour). In the code above, I have it set to two hours, but you can enter any amount of seconds you wish, such as 10800 for three hours, or 14400 for four hours, etc.
The iMac 27″ for graphic designers: part 1
After six years of using the original Mac Pro as my main workhorse, I finally took the plunge this past Christmas and upgraded to Apple’s latest 27” iMac. It’s the first Mac I’ve owned since the Quadra 650 back in the mid 90s that wasn’t a tower model. It was a scary decision for me, but one I’ve been delighted with so far.
The first thing I had to come to grips with is the revelation that I don’t NEED all the expansion that the Mac Pro has to offer. In the distant past, the days when a 16GB stick of RAM took you a year or so to save-up for, the Mac tower models were the only way to go for pro designers. The desktop models simply weren’t made for people like us.
But times have changed. With NO exception, every Mac model available today can easily be used by the most demanding print and web designers—this includes the MacBook Air and the MacMini. If you think you NEED more, you’re most likely overestimating your needs. Today’s Macs are powerful enough for working with Gigabyte sized files with as little as 8GB of RAM.
Now I didn’t say that every Mac model is a perfect fit, far from it. And that’s where my decision got difficult. (more…)
Design Advice: Naming your Photoshop layers
For the love of God, PLEASE NAME YOUR LAYERS. There’s nothing worse than opening a Photoshop file with 50 layers that are named Layer 1, Layer 2, Layer 1 copy, Layer 4 copy, Layer 4 copy 2 (you get the idea). It makes it extremely difficult to work with later on; especially if that Photoshop file was created by someone else.
Name your layers in a short but descriptive manner. And don’t be afraid to group things into Layer folders. Photoshop even has a Note tool you can use (found under the Eyedropper tool). You’ll have a much easier time editing it later, and anyone else that has to work with the file will thank you.
Free icons: De Anza by Louie Mantia
You can download the De Anza icons here, in standard icon or iContainer format. The set includes 44 icons in blue and beige colors.
Free font: Dummies
How to add an email to OS X Reminders app
Add an e-mail to your Reminders list on OS X to ensure that you remember to reply or complete a task. Here’s how.
[zilla_alert style=”green”] Since the Cnet article I linked to appears to be having issues, I’ll tell you that it’s quite simple. Just drag the email from Mail to the Reminders app icon in your Dock. Presto, you now have a reminder titled with the subject line of the email and a link to the email itself in the reminder note. [/zilla_alert]
Free font: Bira
Keyboard shortcuts for selecting text
Being the fan of keyboard shortcuts that I am, I rarely pass-up the opportunity to use them. Here are a few keyboard shortcuts for selecting text in virtually any Mac OS X application that allows text entry.
Placing your cursor at any point in a line of text, you can:
- Select text one letter at a time by hitting Shift + Left/Right Arrow
- Select text one word at a time by hitting Shift + Option + Left/Right Arrow
- Select all text to the beginning or end of a line (from wherever your cursor is currently located) by hitting Command + Shift + Left/Right Arrow
I knew there were other similar shortcuts, and a quick search brought up this great set of Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts for navigating and selecting text at OSXDaily.
The Graphic Mac’s new look
As I looked through the analytics for The Graphic Mac over the last year it became increasingly obvious that more and more users were viewing it on iPhones and iPads. Unfortunately, the old theme of the site didn’t work as well as I had hoped on mobile devices. It was also quite cluttered in general. So I started looking for something a little cleaner to use. Today, you see the results.
The categories are listed in menus (when applicable) at the top in a desktop browser, but when you view it on a mobile device (or simply by resizing your browser window to be really thin), it places the navigation in a small drop-down style menu. The content is a lot more readable on mobile now.
Do you want comments?
The next step is deciding whether to allow comments on blog posts. I’ve had them turned off for a few years now, but I’m considering turning them back on (as I have for this post.) If I do turn them on, I won’t be using native WordPress commenting. Instead, I’ll be using either the Facebook Commenting System (like you see on many sites such as BuzzFeed), Disqus (which is used by the guys over at The Loop), or LiveFyre (which TechCrunch uses).
I’m leaning toward Disqus. It allows you to log-in using Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or a Disqus account. It also allows you to up vote or down vote comments, as well as share those comments via Twitter or Facebook.
[zilla_alert style=”green”] Ultimately, it’s up to you. I’ve turned on comments for this post, so let me know what you think below, or send me a note via the contact page (found under the About link at the top of the page). [/zilla_alert]
As you can see, the new site drops the sidebar, and reduces the lower half of the homepage to small summary-style boxes for the posts. It is my hope that the new design puts the focus squarely on the content. It’s not perfect, and I hope to fix small issues along the way, but I wanted to go live with it as soon as possible.
I hope you like the new site. And I also want to thank everyone for visiting the site for the last 10 years (starting with the original CreativeGuy blog). While the site was never designed to make me money, I do thank anyone who has ever clicked an ad (of which there is currently only one found down in the footer). It is my intention to keep the site as ad-free as possible.