There are several ways to fast-forward and rewind in QuickTime Player so here is another one, that works on 10.7 or later. Clicking and holding the Play/Pause button for several seconds replaces the control with a slider. Drag the slider to the right to fast-forward and to the left to rewind. The speed, which is displayed in the upper left corner of the video, is controlled by how far the slider is dragged. Once the mouse button is released, fast-forwarding or rewinding stops.
[kirkmc adds: And if you have a trackpad, this method is even easier.]
1. Go to: qrstuff.com
2. Select "Contact Details"
3. Select vCard & fill in your info
4. Click DOWNLOAD
This QR code will add your contact info to people's address books if they scan it. You can create QR codes that can do lots of things. For example, you can create codes that will direct people to follow you on Twitter, like a page on Facebook, or compose an email to you.
[kirkmc adds: Another hint from robleach. I haven't tested this.]
Have you ever been reading a web page and find you have to leave, but would like to continue reading on your phone? Here's a handy bookmarklet you can use to transfer the URL to your phone:
Copy this to a new bookmark. I named mine "Send to Phone." It pops up a little window with the URL of your current web page encoded as a QR code. Simply scan it directly off your computer screen with your phone's QR code reader and off you go! (I don't claim credit for this bookmarklet; I found it at http://www.masukomi.org/projects/qr_bookmarklet/.)
[kirkmc adds: Submitted by robleach; one of three hints submitted together. The others will follow.]
Sometimes, such as early this week, Apple's iMessages servers go down. If so, and you try to send iMessages, you may want to resend those messages as standard text messages or SMSs. OS X Daily had a nice hint about how to do so easily. After you've sent the iMessage, if you see that it's not delivered, or if you simply want to use a belt-and-suspenders approach to make sure your recipient gets your message, just tap and hold on the blue bubble containing the message text, then choose Send as Text Message. It will get sent as a text message, and you can tell this by the green text bubble.
For this to work, you have to have your contact's phone number in their card. However, if you only have an email address for that contact, tapping and holding the text bubble shows Send to Email Address. In my tests, this failed every time, so I'm not exactly sure how this is supposed to work. (I assume that it would try and send the message as an email…) If anyone can get this to work, please post in the comments.
If you ever want to create a reminder with an alert time, it's easy to do, and it's similar to Calendar's Quick Entry feature.
Just type something like "Dinner with grandpa at 6pm", and you will get a reminder with an alert at 6pm today. You can even specify a date, or use relative dates like today, tomorrow, etc.
[kirkmc adds: This makes sense, and it's good to remind people of it.]
When managing a server at work, I noticed my home server was showing up in the list of managed servers. Trying to see if I could connect by supplying my credentials was unsuccessful. I figured it must be showing up because I had signed into the same iCloud account on both machines. I then wondered if using the Back to My Mac URL for iCloud would allow me to connect.
To test, in Server.app I selected Manage > Connect to Server... From there chose "Other Mac." For the Hostname I inserted the Back to My Mac URL in the form server.XXXXXXXX.members.btmm.icloud.com. (see this hint to find how to construct the correct URL for your Mac), supplied my credentials and clicked Connect. The remote server came right up and I was able to manage my home server with no issues.
I have a 27" Thunderbolt Cinema Display, and I use its built-in speakers for the output of alert sounds. (In System Preferences > Sound > Sound Effects, you can choose this.) But the volume wasn't very loud, even though I had set the Alert volume slider to its maximum setting. I'd been trying to figure out why, because when I listen to music, the alert volume - and a sound I use to alert me when VIP e-mails arrive - isn't loud enough to be heard.
So I remembered that Audio-MIDI Setup has a number of tweaks for system sound settings. This app is found in /Applications/Utilities. When I opened it, and clicked on Display Audio, the two volume sliders (right and left channels) were nowhere near the maximum volume, so I raised them, and now I can hear my system beeps and other sounds.
So if you have problems with the volume of any audio outputs, you might want to check Audio-MIDI Setup and see if it can fix the issue.
Have you ever had trouble finding an application's preference file? It isn't always easy, as the name of the .plist file sometimes isn't even close to the app's name. Here's an easy way to make it show itself.
Open the /Library/Preferences folder in your user account. (In Lion or later, from the Desktop, hold down the Option key and select Go > Library to access your user account.) Set the window to list view, then click the Date Modified tab at the top so they are listed by the newest files first.
Some apps will update their .plist file every time you use the program. Otherwise, open the app and make any type of change in its preferences and save. Go back to the Preferences window and see which .plist file jumps to the top of the list.
[kirkmc adds: Good common sense. I've used this many times over the years, and I couldn't find it in past hints.]
Up until iOS 6, there was no way to remove e-mails from the "recently contacted" list when you start typing new e-mails, even if that person wasn't in your Contacts. Now, you can remove them one at a time, provided they are not in your Contacts.
All you do is start typing the e-mail address, and then when the list of addresses starts to populate the screen, scroll down to the address you wish to delete. It will have a blue arrow pointing to the right. When you tap on that arrow, you'll see a Remove From Recents button; tap that to remove that e-mail address from the recent e-mail list.
[kirkmc adds: I don't know if this is new in iOS 6, because I never really paid attention to it. What I notice is most of the addresses I see are addresses I've used on my Mac, not on my iOS devices. So, I went into Mail > Window > Previous Recipients, and deleted all those who weren't in my Contacts, and the next time I synced my iPhone, those extra addresses were gone.
Note that I sync e-mail accounts via iTunes (Info tab > Sync Mail Accounts); if you have only set up your accounts on an iOS device, and don't sync, then this my work differently. Can anyone post in the comments if they do it differently, and if e-mail addresses get deleted after removing them in Mail?]