Jan 20, 2008

Find (and delete) previous email recipients

Want Apple Mail to unlearn your friend's defunct email address?

In Mail, go to Window > Previous Recipients

Click on the one you want to ditch, and click Remove from List.

Alternately, if you have someone's old address in the To: field of a message, click the white drop-down triangle to the right of the address (inside the blue oval). Remove from Previous Recipients List is in there, too.

Jan 18, 2008

Maybe my favorite hidden Mac feature

Did you know about the built-in dictionary? This is in OS X since Tiger: It's a weird key combo, but it's sooooo cool: In Mail or TextEdit or Safari -- any good Mac app (which excludes, par exemple, MS Office 2004 but includes Office 2008) -- put your cursor over any word, and hold down ctrl-command-D. Cool, huh? (The "command" key is now called that on newer keyboards; it used to be the key with an apple and a squiggly thing.)

Now move your cursor over other words while holding down those keys. Notice that there's a thesaurus in the drop-down that says "Dictionary." Now tell me that's not friggin' sweet.

Jan 17, 2008

Finally: real Mac speech-recognition software!

MacSpeech Dictate, shipping in February. I just saw a demo at David Pogue's Macworld Live. It's still young, but it works!


Shipping in February. It's by the folks who did the less-than-perfect iListen, but it's based on the Dragon NaturallySpeaking engine. This is really great news.

Jan 16, 2008

Macworld keynote: the Cliff notes

My impressions are the same as everybody else's, I suppose. So here's a quick recap.

Yay, movie rentals!

Boo, 24 hours to watch 'em!

Yay, movie rentals and other shit on Apple TV, justifying the money early adopters (including your humble) paid.

Yay, iPhone updates!

Boo, lame iPhone updates!

Yay, MacBook Air!

Yaaaaaaaaay, MacBook Air, although the maximum of 2Gb RAM is a smart move by Apple to prevent it being used for serious work like graphics or photo manip. (I make grandmas buy 2Gb for their Macs.)

Yay, Time Capsule!

Boo, not letting existing Airport Extremes use their Air Disks for Time Machine backups! (Although one can do it with Mac OS X client or server.)

Yay, Manhattans at Jilian's next door to MacWorld............!