As part of a longer article about hidden features in hardware and software, Mac OS X is mentioned by Katie Hafner for The New York Times:
Some hidden features, though useful, are too obscure to merit space in a manual, printed or otherwise. Consider the summarizing service that is part of Apple Computer’s OS X operating system. The program will take any document and reduce it to a pithy precis. Yet Apple does not advertise the feature and mentions it only briefly in its online manual.
The summarizing feature is only one of many that are left for the consumer to discover. Each new Macintosh comes with what Apple calls an “up and running” manual, a 30-page booklet that points out basics.
“There are so many hidden gems,” said Ken Bereskin, the director of OS X product marketing at Apple. One such nugget resides on the calculator that comes with the Macintosh. Not only is the calculator buried inside the applications folder, but deep within the functions of the calculator is a currency converter that automatically updates conversion rates.
Full article here.
This reminds us of our article (9/25/2002) about “How to use Mac OS X to zoom in and out with ease” which we will repeat here for those who don’t yet know about this “hidden feature.”
Ever want to peer at something a little more closely, but don’t want to stop, change display properties to a lower resolution, look at whatever it is, then change display properties back to your normal resolution? You don’t have to – if you have Jaguar or Panther. Mac OS 10.2 introduced a lovely new Zoom feature designed for people who need the ability to zoom in and out at will, which covers pretty much all of us:
[Command,Option,*] toggles Zoom on and off. That’s “Apple, Option, Asterisk” in English.
[Command,Option,+] zooms in, centering on the cursor position when Zoom is on. “Apple, Option, Plus Sign”
[Command,Option,-] zooms out. “Apple, Option, Minus Sign”
That’s it! And it zooms waaaaaaaaaaaaay in. Try it. It will zoom out to your display’s current resolution, as you would expect. If you move the cursor while “zoomed” in, you will scroll around the screen. By the way, it’s a neat trick to play on a fellow Mac OS X user – just jump on his or her machine when they’re not looking and zoom really far in, leave it that way and watch them try to figure it out. More options for other accessibility capabilities are in the “Universal Access” pane of System Preferences.
To mike:
I don’t know what language you speak, but I speak English. Here is what marketing means:
v. mar�ket�ed, mar�ket�ing, mar�kets
v. tr.
To offer for sale.
To sell.
Thank you for you attention.
Mike
mike is right though.
More crappy features from the mac maker…If these features were useful, they would have made them known…
i love how they hype it saying
“but deep within the functions of the calculator is a currency converter that automatically updates conversion rates.”
You actually have to go to convert/ update currency exchange rates
There is nothing “automatic” about it
Advertising is just a tool of marketing [figuring out what your market should be, and how to reach and satisfy them]. And Apple is doing a stellar job except in certain markets.
If the car companies marketed their autos like apple markets its osx and computers, ford, gm, & others would never tell customers about the air conditioning, fold down seats, cup holder, spare tire, trunk, cruise control, etc., etc., etc. in their vehicles….
What are you saying – where does one find these options in my car?
Air conditioning?
Cup holder?
Cruise control?
Please tell me – is there a PDF?
A popup?
The [CMD-OPT-*] doesn’t make sense. Wouldn’t it have to be [CMD-OPT-SHIFT-*]?
I’m using OS 9, can’t test it out.
A paperclip?
Zoom is cool, nice tip. I had heard of summarize before, it’s a good thing it’s not advertised — it’s totally worthless.
For those of you that want a manual for your Mac and/or OS X.
This is the Mac people! We don’t need no stinkin’ manuals.
The OS is intuitive. The programs all work the same way. Been that way since ’84. OS X is no different.
If you were hunting for easter eggs, like you should, you would have found all of these goodies by now.
>> We don’t need no stinkin’ manuals
Keep dreamin’ Al.
you should all go and get blogs, and write your useless drivel there, instead of wasting feedback space, otherwise I will continue to waste all of my time reading it, since I can’t just stop reading it.
Sorry about my rant. I promise to be better from now on. However, I think the breadth of business applications covered by the marketing department at you average corp would really shock you. It ain’t all tv ads
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” />
“This is the Mac people! We don’t need no stinkin’ manuals.”
That could be a passable truth when the Interface Group was an active division at Apple in the classic OS days. Nowadays even Apple’s own Final Cut Pro DTV suite is an utter mess of interface and keyboard shortcuts conventions (don’t want to think what Motion will bring to the table). The whole Finder/Dock/Toolbars thing is absolutely uncoherent (just see the drag’n’drop/springloaded folders issues). Plus, all the baggage Unix has brought to Mac OS X (accounts, multiple Libraries, permissions, fsck, etc.) means an overcomplex OS. Sophisticated, yes, but overcomplex.
What really irks me is that Apple provides so poor documentation: the Help system is a laugh (Windows’ is actually far better organized), not even PDFs. And one remembers those disks that came with our Classics and LCs that were an interactive guide to the Finder and Apps’ conventions. When one thinks they could be done as DVDs now…
A better feature than ‘summarize’ would be ‘elaborate’. I type in four sentences and the ‘elaborate’ command turns it into a two page report.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” />
Yuk, you ever take a math class? If you don’t think it’s automatic, get out your pencil and paper and do it without your computer.
XABEX, you must be a student!
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” />