Why your colleagues…

Ever wonder why some IT colleagues still look askance at you using a Macintosh in the Windows dominated office, but don’t seem to have much trouble with you pulling out an iPad? Why is that? Because the Macintosh is a full-bodied complete operating system and environment that competes directly with (or to be honest, devastates) the brain-dead Windows that BDC IT has invested in for the last 30 years.

And the iPad? I think there are two reasons. First, they don’t yet see the iPad as a real, complete tool to get things done. (They’ll change that opinion over time…) But mainly, because for the iPad, there is no competition. Heck, most of the IT guys have their own iPads, and LOVE them.

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It’s a Power Tool. It’s an Advantage.

In Safari on Macintosh, you can create a folder of bookmarks that open with a single click. What does that mean? Think about it for a second – you have, let’s say, five web pages that you look at all the time, maybe even all day long. Maybe news sites, maybe social media or blogs, maybe “dashboards” of stocks, or equipment you administer, a document control system, or knowledge base, Evernote, webmail, or some combination of the above. Every day or so, you load these sites from Bookmarks or a “Favorites” page of some kind (depending on your browser). Up one menu, down the next, open this panel, click, click, click, click. But wouldn’t it make sense to just launch them all with one button? Let’s do it.

First, Folders Full of Tabs on the Bookmarks Bar

You probably know you can add Bookmarks to Safari on the “Bookmarks bar”. You may even know that you can have a folder full of bookmarks accessible there, which drop down in a menu (indicated in the image above, after “Hot”, by the little disclosure triangle—formerly known as a “twistie”.) But, did you know you can create a special folder (marked above with the little square) that will open all the bookmarks inside when you click it? “Workbench” is my folder full of bookmarks that open with one click!

ONE button, ONE click all my tabs in ONE window.

All my “dashboards” and other web-based Admin tools available in one browser window.

How? Safari Help – it’s “Easy, but not Obvious“.

Apple people, Macs are not perfect. Safari is not perfect. You have to work hard to figure out how to make this happen, and the option has been here for years! (And please, don’t get me started on the CRAZY interface in Safari and how you have Bookmarks and Favorites available in so many places and so many ways that you you can just get lost. Simplify THAT, Jonny Ive! Please!) Anyway…

You need to know how to Edit your Bookmarks in Safari.
Hint: Go to Bookmarks > Edit Bookmarks…

1. Create a new Bookmark folder
2. Put the Bookmarks that you want to group together in that folder
3. Put the folder in the Favorites bar
4. [Control]-[click] the folder name, then choose “Automatically Open in Tabs”

Now, tell me how you do this in Windows and Internet Explorer? I know you can, sort of, with a lot of work. Way more work. Go ahead. Choose your tool.

 

CLI

CLI: Command Line Interface—How people controlled computers PM (Prior to Mac). THERE WAS NO MOUSE. A “prompt” – that is, a colon, or carat, or some other obscure character from your (physical) keyboard – appeared on the screen. This was equivalent to your dog looking up at you with THAT LOOK. If you knew the commands, you could TYPE one in and probably press [Return] or [Enter], and the computer would DO something. For example, in MS-DOS, if you typed in DIR (which stands for “directory”), you would get a list of FILES, with names like: CONFIG.SYS, AUTOEXEC.BAT, WORD.EXE, and HELPME.TXT. Whoopee. Believe it or not, a lot of people STILL enjoy this kind of interaction with a machine. “Geek Speak Review”, February 5, 2001

Unpredictable Issue #5 

New Report: Snowden Revelations Hurt U.S. Companies – Digits – WSJ

New Report: Snowden Revelations Hurt U.S. Companies – Digits – WSJ.

Ah, the power of words. From this headline you would think that Edward Snowden was directly responsible for the damage done to US technology businesses. What a brilliant master criminal. Because? Because businesses (especially foreign businesses) are wary of companies who leave the door open for the NSA to come snooping around. Or give the NSA the keys to the house. Or throw the stuff into the back of the NSA truck parked in the driveway. So to speak. It’s all in how you phrase it, right? The Wall Street Journal has a certain Murdochian perspective on this. A somewhat more objective news organization might have titled the article, “Study Confirms: Discovery of NSA Spying Hurt U.S. Companies”.

And that’s the difference.

Penelope and the Suitors

The Suitors – Many of Penelope’s suitors, eager for her hand and longing greedily for her desirable estate, themselves returned unscathed from, or in their shameful cowardice, having never participated in the war itself, and inclined to remain in the comfort of their homes, downplayed Oddyseus’s role in the glory and tragedy that was Troy. – See more at: UnpredictableMac #72  09/17/2004

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