J Taylor Design Lehigh Valley Website Design

We have been meaning to write up this post since the iOS 5 update was released for the iPhone this past October. Upon upgrading our iPhones, we noticed a nice new feature to create shortcuts, or ‘frequently used phrases’ when sending text messages. This certainly is not a new feature for cell phones in general, but it is a new feature for the iPhone that can come in handy.

This week we have been test driving iTunes Match, the latest service from iTunes where you have the ability to store your music collection in the iCloud for access via your iTunes ready devices. All in all it works great.

It is pretty easy to setup. Simply have all the music you would like to include in iTunes on your computer. To sign up, click the Store menu in iTunes and choose Turn On iTunes Match. Then choose Subscribe to iTunes Match.

Today you are able to upgrade your iPhones and iPads to the latest operating system from Apple, iOS 5. I plugged in my iPhone 4 an hour ago to make the upgrade and ran into a small issue.

Change is a good thing. Technology brings us advances constantly which help make our lives easier. Apple recently released its latest operating system called OS X Lion. Honestly, it was something that I was pretty excited for. After watching the 2011 Keynote which featured exciting additions to the Mac OS as well as additions to iOS 5 for mobile, I have been pretty anxious to get those additions installed on my devices. When July 20th rolled around and Apple updated its website with the release of Mac OS X Lion, I jumped right in and started upgrading.

I ran into a small problem a couple days ago. I had purchased an album on my iPhone while I was on the way back from a client meeting. When I got back I wanted to transfer the purchased album to my iTunes on my computer that way I could enjoy the lovely sounds at the office as well. When I plugged my phone into the computer and tried to drag the purchased album to my iTunes, it wouldn’t let me. I wasn’t too surprised as all of the iPhone / iPod devices are setup so that you can’t drag and drop your friends music from their devices onto your computer to try and avoid paying for the music. I tried a couple quick things until I found the solution.

A good friend of mine showed me a nice little Mac application called Anxiety a couple years ago. At that point I was playing around in multiple applications to try and find a really simple tool to help with project management. After playing around with apps like OmniFocus and Things (which I really did like, by the way), I was finding that many of the applications had just a little bit too much going on. Now that doesn’t make these applications bad or anything, actually both those listed above are really great applications that I would highly recommend. However, they weren’t what I was looking for.

When working on a computer it becomes imperative to learn keyboard shortcuts, or key commands to keep things moving, and moving quickly! Being that I’m on the computer what feels like 24/7 I’ve picked up a few that I use constantly! Below is just a short list of some of the basic Mac key commands that we use constantly when either setting up folders for client files, sorting through tons of running applications, or browsing the web. These are just a handful of useful keyboard shortcuts that we put together.

So I’ve been using this method since I’ve realized that I don’t always remember everything; and what I’m talking about is using the Mac Screenshot to measure pixels. If you’re like me and use ‘px’ as your measurement rather than ‘em’ then this may be a technique that you can use as well. So lets jump right in…