Champagne Wishes and Caviar Dreams-A reboot of the MacValley Blog and introducing the Computer Uncle

 

Champagne Wishes and Caviar Dreams to all of you. It’s the week of my birthday. I won’t say how old I am, but I’m not a kid. I remember when Nixon ran for President in 1968. I remember seeing Abe Ribicoff nominate George McGovern at Chicago in 1968. I existed before cell phones became ubiquitous as cockroaches and when only Greeks and health food enthusiasts ate Greek yogurt. So I’m bloody well old!

 

If you’ve come to this Web site, I expect you need help with your Macintosh and/or iPad. You may have bought a Mac or received a Mac as a present for your birthday or retirement or as a holiday present.  Now you wonder, "What the Hell am I going to do with this thing?”

 

I’m going to assume that you’ve had some experience with personal computers. I’m going to assume that you have used a Windows computer at some time in the past. Windows is as ubiquitous as the cell phone. 

 

Whether good or bad, you’ve had experience with Windows. Now it’s time to move to OS X, the secret sauce behind your shiny new MacBook Air or Pro. I’m taking you from befuddled noob to a power user who sits down before their Mac and uses it as a familiar tool. 

 

I will write these columns from my new MacBook Air with 4Gb of RAM and just 128 GB of storage space. That's right, the minimum Mac notebook you can buy for less than a thousand bucks.  Your family loves you, but not enough to buy a maxed-out MacBook  Air or Pro.

 

How can I find stuff on the Internet?

 

You can use the default Web browser provided by Apple, Safari. No, you can’t get Internet Explorer on the Mac unless you jump through some hoops.

 

If you prefer Google's Chrome browser or Mozilla's Firefox, you can get them from  Chrome's website or Mozilla's website. If you use Chrome, just log into Chrome with your Google e-mail account and synchronize with your old bookmarks and settings from the prior computer you used Chrome with.

 

Anyway, just type your inquiries into Safari. Safari is smart enough to tell that you have a question to ask.

 

 

I want to write a letter, but Text Edit and Pages differ from Word for Windows.

 

If you wrote with Microsoft Word for  Windows, you changed fonts by hitting Control+D. That's the Microsoft standard. Word for Mac uses the Command+D shortcut to bring up their font menu.

 

With products adhering to the Apple way of doing things, you bring up the font menu by pressing Command+T in a word processor, spreadsheet,or presentation program. Try it in TextEdit, Pages, Numbers and Keynote.

 

For Microsoft Word/Excel/Powerpoint, you would use Command+D to bring up the Font menu

 

 

You use Command +T to bring up the Font menu for Pages

 

 

You would use Command + T for Apple Stickies’ Font Menu, too

 

If you want to copy or cut text and paste it somewhere else, you would alter the Word defaults of Control+C, Control+X, and Control+V to use Command+C,  Command +X, and Command+V. 

 

To save the file, you would hit the Command+S keys. That's right, use your thumb instead of your pinkie to reach the Command key, not the Control key. 

 

To print out a hard copy, you would press Command+P instead of Control+P. 

 

How do I save copies of something I see on the Internet? 

 

I'll first give you the standard way and then a Mac shortcut.

 

You can save an article you see on the Internet by going under the File menu for Safari and selecting Export as PDF…

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can also export to PDF by going to the Print menu (or pressing Command+P) and going to the PDF menu. You can open the Internet item in Preview. You can save it as a PDF or a PostScript file.

 

As for Edit Menu… I'll go into that in a subsequent article. If you like to save clippings in PDF format, this is one way to do it.

 

But I promised you a Mac shortcut. 

 

You can save a Web item as a Stickie note by selecting as much of the article as you want, then pressing Shift+Command+Y. That opens the Stickie Note application and saves your Web item as a Stickie note.  This is handy if you want to save several articles, such as chili recipes.

 

Save the whole article by pressing Command+A for  Select  All then pressing Shift+Command+Y. 

 

The Stickie Note application is more than just a computer equivalent to that pad of Stickie notes on  your table top. I wrote this article as a  Stickie Note. It's the equivalent of TextEdit in many respects. But that's for a future article.

 

Tom Briant 

Editor, MacValley Blog (And Now the Computer Uncle at (818) 964-3601)

The Computer Uncle is the name of my new computer tutoring service. If you want personal attention and “recipes” as Client #1 calls them for your reference, then call me at (818) 964-3601 or E-mail me at thomasbriant1@gmail.com. The first session is free.