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Digital Life

Apple, Tech & Musings

Improved Dictionary Choices in Mac OS X Lion

Dict

A great tip from Macworld

Until 10.7 was released, the only English language options in the Dictionary utility were for US English. 

We've now got options for British English. There are now both the Oxford Dictionary of English 3rd edition © 2010 and the Oxford Thesaurus of English 2nd edition © 2006. 

It's not immediately obvious that more options exist due to the new scroll bar display. 

Open Dictionary (it lives in /Applications in case you didn't know) and select Dictionary » Preferences. Scroll down the list of options and enable the two British options. Then click on them and drag them to the top so they take precedence. 

You can leave the two existing American options enabled for the odd occasions that they might be useful. This tip pre-supposes, naturally, that British English is a better choice for you than the US dialect. 

The other options previously available in Snow Leopard appear to remain largely unchanged. (The New Oxford American Dictionary has been upgraded from the 2nd edition to 3rd.) 

Text to Speech in Mac OS X Lion

Speech
The great thing about a new Mac OS, is the unearthing of hidden features.

Especially those that are not usually hyped.

Lion has brought with it, a host of new voices to utilize in text to speech functions.

These will be of particular interest to international customers, especially Non-English countries.

I was thrilled to find a local South African voice, Tessa !

To enable these, open System Preferences -> Speech -> Text to Speech -> System Voice

And choose "Customize" where you will see the generous range of options.

Enjoy !

Status of Hard Drive after Lion Install

As you probably know, Mac OS X Lion, installs a hidden recovery partition on your hard drive. 
If you open disk utility, you won't see this partition listed.

So fire-up "About This Mac", then "More Info", (which is changed and is far more useful and aesthetically pleasing than on Snow Leopard),
And "System Report" and check under Serial-ATA (if applicable), and you will see the recovery partition as well as a further hidden firmware-related (EFI) partition.

The big cat is full of surprises !

  Detachable Drive: No
  BSD Name: disk0
  Rotational Rate: 7200
  Medium Type: Rotational
  Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
  S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified
  Volumes:
disk0s1:
  Capacity: 209,7 MB (209 715 200 bytes)
  BSD Name: disk0s1
  Content: EFI
disk0s2:
  Capacity: 749,3 GB (749 296 615 424 bytes)
  BSD Name: disk0s2
  Content: Apple_CoreStorage
Recovery HD:
  Capacity: 650 MB (650 002 432 bytes)
  BSD Name: disk0s3
  Content: Apple_Boot

As you can see, I updated my drive to a 7200 rpm one. If only SSD were cheaper ...

Is the iPad a Pen-based Tablet

Why the iPad is a Pen-Based Tablet

"In a few years, everyone will forget about the Microsoft-is-for-pens, Apple-is-for-touch dichotomy that exists right now in the public perception of how their platforms differ, and as an erroneous explanation for why the one has failed and the other has succeeded"

Some good points, but the iPad is not a pen-based tablet. Apple is even pushing Mac OS to a gesture-driven OS.

iOS 4.2 Fonts

I've always had a soft-spot for fonts. 

The design and beauty of the various fonts are a work of art that one learns to appreciate.
I'm always on the look-out for good readable fonts and appreciate it when a reading app allows you to change fonts.

It's the one thing I like about the eReader Software for Mac 
And about the only thing I don't like about the Kindle Software.

Apart from the numerous updates iOS 4.2 brought, another lesser publicized fact is the increased font library for iPhone and iPad.
There are now 40 Font families for iPhone and 57 Font families for iPad.
For a detailed list, check :

Should be useful for programmers and desIgners !

For monthly inspiration from Font Creators, have a look at :

Sane Licensing Model

Screen_shot_2010-11-23_at_4

One of the great things about the Mac community, and in particular, Mac software developers, is their "Sane Licensing Model".
So, instead of licensing the computer, they license the user.

I have recently come to appreciate this when I added an 11" Macbook Air as my secondary, "mobile" computer. Looking at the various bits of software I had purchased, I started wondering if I would need to re-buy them again.

This led me to actively search the software developer's websites and in some cases email the developer to see if I could use the same license on 2 machines. So far, my queries have led to polite responses from the developers saying that I was more than welcome to do so !

Quite refreshing in this day and age.

Here's my list of "Sane Licensing" Software thus far (Still working my way through the rest) :

4. Divvy
5. Watts

Now if only Apple would apply a similar model to iWork ....
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