Tag Archives: Snow Leopard

Mac Tutorials

How to Take Screenshots in Mac OS X

Mac OS X has this great ability of working right out of the box. This tutorial will show you how to take screenshots of the whole screen or a part using in built keyboard shortcuts in your Mac. Absolutely no need to download additional tools.

Unlike Windows, there is no Printscreen on Mac Keyboards. Another advantage is that by default the screen shot is saved in a file and not just copied to clipboard like Windows. These things really make Mac win. You should also read why else I prefer Mac over Windows.

If you take a lot of screenshots you should also like Desktop Curtain for Mac, which will provide a clean clutter free background picture or single colour. No need to hide desktop icons while taking screenshots.

This tutorial works for all Macs be it the Macbook Pro or the iMac.

Taking Screenshots on Mac:

Whenever you need to capture an image of the screen use the following two keyboard shortcuts:

Command-Shift-3: Pressing these three buttons will capture the whole screen.

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Command-Shift-4: This will show a crosshair on your screen, which you can drag to capture any specific part of the screen.

Press Space after pressing Command-Shift-4 to turn crosshair into a camera, which you can use to capture a specific window, menu, dock etc.

Take Screenshots in Mac

Screenshots Save Location & File Name:

By default the screenshots will be saved on your desktop in .PNG format. The time and date of screen capture is included since Snow Leopard. You can see the file naming structure in the following screenshot.

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Copying Screenshot to Clipboard:

If you want to directly copy screenshot to clipboard and not save it in a file you can press Control key additionally while using any of the two shortcuts above.

Read more about taking screenshots on Mac here:

Mac Tutorials

How to Edit Hosts File in Mac OS X using the Terminal

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Your mac has a hosts file which contains a list of IP and domain addresses. Whenever a URL is accessed on the Mac using the browser or other apps, the system first checks for entries in the hosts file and fetches the IP address if found. So one can edit Mac’s hosts file to block specific domains like those sending ads or malware. It can be used to block unsafe sites on a Mac or even help downgrade iPhones to older firmware.

Continue reading How to Edit Hosts File in Mac OS X using the Terminal →

Mac Applications

Read/Write NTFS Drives on Your Mac with Paragon Software

If you have an external drive in NTFS format or a BootCamp partition, you must have run into this inability to write to NTFS drives on Mac. While Snow Leopard allows you to read NTFS file systems you cannot create, delete or modify files or folders natively. Paragon’s NTFS for Mac OS X offers a solution.

Firstly, Why do we need NTFS write access?

FAT32 drives don’t let you transfer files larger than four gigabytes over USB so what if you have larger files to transfer or store this system fails. So, you could go for either HFS or NTFS. While NTFS atleast can be read on Macs HFS will not even be detected on your Windows PC. So, NTFS does seem like a better option here. All we need is write access.

In another scenario, if you have Windows installed in your Mac notebook or desktop you might at times want to write some files to the NTFS partition while you are running Snow Leopard.

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NTFS for Mac OS X 8.0 provides you full read/write access to NTFS with the same high speed as native HFS+ files. The built-in “HFS+ for Windows” (read-only version) completes an effective two-way communication channel between Mac® OS X and Windows. NTFS for Mac® OS X 8.0 is the first NTFS driver to support Snow Leopard in 32 and 64-bit mode!

Key features

  • Full read/write access to NTFS. Mac® OS X provides limited support of NTFS, the primary file system of any Windows PC. With Paragon’s NTFS for Mac OS X, you’ll get full read/write access to any version of NTFS under Mac OS X
  • Let Windows start up at the next launch. Choose your Windows volume in the Mac® System Preferences pane to start Windows at the next launch
  • Easy to install. The driver is easily installed through a user-friendly wizard, the same way it’s done under Mac® OS X
  • Easy to use. Mount any NTFS partition like a native one – no need to perform special commands to get access; just attach a disk or other media with NTFS partition and use it as you wish
  • Create and repair NTFS partitions under Mac® the same way you usually do with HFS/HFS+
  • Non-Roman characters and languages. File and folder names in national languages, including Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Russian
  • No limitation to maximum file/partition size (within Mac® OS X and NTFS specifications)

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How It Works

Easy to install:

The drivers are easily installed under both Mac® and Windows through user-friendly wizards, the way software is usually installed under each operating system. No additional configuration is required after installation. Just restart your computer and let it go to work for you!


Easy to use:

Under Mac® OS: After installation every Windows partition works like a native Mac® partition! Mount any NTFS partition like a native one – no need to perform special commands to get access – just attach a disk drive or removable media formated as an NTFS partition and use it as you wish.
Under Windows® : After you’ve installed the dirver, you get access to Mac-disks to browse contents, read and copy files and folders on HFS/HFS+ partitions under Windows.

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Verdict:

I’ve been using this software for more than a year now and it has never brought up an issue so far. Never failed a data transfer. So far I haven’t come across a cheaper alternative which does the job just as well. So I would recommend this to every Mac user who needs NTFS write operations. You can go for a free trial of the software and see what it is like for yourself here. The license costs $39. 95