I was adding a Smart Playlist to iTunes (10.7) and could not find the option to add nested rules... until I held down the Option key and the plus icon became an ellipsis which then provided the ability to add a nested rule.
[kirkmc adds: This isn't new in iTunes 10.7, but rather iTunes 10. However, I see that it's not on the site, so it's worth mentioning. Apple has a technical note about smart playlists, and they call the ellipsis button the "Nest" button.]
I've occasionally seen issues where Mac App Store downloads failed, with a message saying "The product distribution file could not be verified. It may be damaged or was not signed." Topher Kessler writing at CNET showed a way you can resolve this issue.
When this download problem occurs, it is generally the result of a corrupted file in a cache folder. If you run this command in Terminal:
open $TMPDIR../C/
a folder will open in the Finder showing a number of cache folders for different applications. Delete the com.apple.appstore folder, then quit and relaunch the App Store application and try the download again.
I recently tried to download an episode of a podcast on my iPhone, but the download failed. Nevertheless, the podcast was listed on my iPhone, with one episode, but trying to play that episode did nothing. There was no way to delete it. When I deleted it from within the Podcasts app, it seemed to go away, but when I deleted the Podcasts app to use the Music app for listening to Podcasts, it was still there.
I tried turning off syncing of podcasts in iTunes, syncing, then turning it back on, but it was still there. There was no obvious way to delete this "phantom" podcast.
I finally tried going into Settings > General > Usage > Music, and saw the podcast listed in the Podcasts list. A swipe to the right on its name, a tap on the Delete button, and it was finally gone.
If you use Calendar (née iCal), you can copy all visible events in any view and paste them in text form into any application. For example, if you're in Day view, you can copy all your events and paste them in an e-mail to send to someone, to show them your schedule. Press Command-A to select them all, then Command-C to copy them.
The name of the event will be in bold, and the date will display like this:
scheduled October 5, 2012 from 8:00 AM to 9:00 AM
Calendar will warn you if you are copying repeating events that only the currently visible event will be copied.
Unfortunately, this doesn't work with my calendar application of choice, BusyCal.
I sometimes have several duplicate Finder windows open at the same time. I wrote this AppleScript which quickly closes any duplicate windows, leaving only one of each open.
A number of people, including some I know, have had a problem with iTunes not recognizing their iPhoto libraries, and not being able to sync them to their new iPhones. It turns out, as explained in this Apple support forum thread, that extraneous ampersand characters (&) are causing the Album Data2.xml file to be parsed incorrectly. One friend showed me that in his case it was an & in a song title. Removing the & characters seems to fix this. So if you're having problems syncing photos, this may be the reason why.
Glenn Fleishmann, writing for TidBITS, had a problem getting his phone number to work with Messages on Mountain Lion. He tried a number of things to get it to work, then finally found out that he had to log out and back in on his iPhone. He tapped Settings > Messages > Send & Receive, and then tapped Apple ID. He then tapped Sign Out, then tapped Use Your Apple ID for iMessage, and logged back in.
If you have this problem, try the above. And see the original article for more details and screenshots.
Search as follows: search_terms site:itunes.apple.com. For example, Einstein on the Beach site:itunes.apple.com. You'll get a number of hits, for the different countries where the iTunes Store or Mac App Store are available. If you want to limit the search to a specific country, you can do so like this: Einstein on the Beach site:itunes.apple.com/us/, where the two letters between the slashes are the code for the country where you're searching.
I have a LaunchBar search template set up as follows: http://www.google.com/search?q=*%20site:itunes.apple.com. You can do this in other programs as well.
Follow-up: I removed the link above; for some reason, it looks lIke I can't create a link to a Google search from here. I'll look into it.
I just read this hint, about creating Outlook-like reminders for Mail, and thought I would submit my variation on this that I created a few weeks ago. I liked the functionality of creating reminders from e-mail messages and having the link for the message in the reminder, but the requirement of dragging and dropping killed it for me.
So I created an Automator service and AppleScript that gives me the exact same result but with a keyboard shortcut so I never have to leave Mail.
Create a new Automator service.
Select "Service receives no input."
Add Get Selected Mail Items and select Messages in the drop down menu.
Add Run AppleScript and paste in the following script:
on run {input, parameters}
tell application "Mail"
set _sel to selection
set _links to {}
set the _message to item 1 ¬
of the _sel
set theSubject to subject of _message
set message_id to the message id of the _message
end tell
set message_url to "message://%3c" & message_id & "%3e"
set end of _links to message_url
set the clipboard to (_links as string)
set theBody to the clipboard
tell application "Reminders"
set theReminder to make new reminder with properties {name:theSubject, body:theBody, priority:1}
end tell
return input
end run
Save the service, add a shortcut, and you're done.
Here is my stackexchange post on the subject along with my solution .
User Kevin Oneill provided an AppleScript that I haven't played with yet but he says it will add the body of the e-mail to the Reminder's entry which some people may prefer, since it would be viewable on an iOS device as well.
Browsing the Mac App store and iTunes Store can be annoying if you're used to using tabs in your web browser. You can only view one page at a time in either store, so if you want to check out a number of items, say, after you've run a search, it's click, back-arrow, click, back-arrow…
The Finer Things in Tech web site notes a nice trick to make this easier that I hadn't thought of before. Just drag icons from the Mac App Store or iTunes Store to your web browser, or on your browser's icon in the Dock. You can see most of the same information in Safari as you can in these stores, as they are simply collections of HTML pages. If you want to view multiple items in your browser, open a new tab before dragging an icon; if not, it loads the most recently dragged icon in the frontmost tab, rather than in a new tab.