Mac: Character Map

Being a long time Windows user, coupled with at least 8 hours of usage 5 days a week. There are small things that are overlooked when considering making a switch to Mac. One of the things that just crossed my mind today – Character Map, or CharMap.

In Windows, all you need to do to bring up this box to insert symbols is go to Start > Run > “Charmap”.

On a Mac, I was stumped. But not for long..

While I can’t say which I prefer, it is a useful tool, and both are just as easy to access.

For starters, you will need to activate it first.

1. Under System Preferences > Keyboard & Text.
2. Tick the check box next to “Keyboard & Character Viewer”.

Once done, every time you need it,

1. Click on the dotted square next to your battery meter, and select “Show Character Viewer”.

Happy Mac-ing! ☺

Display Chinese Characters in iTunes

Having jumped onto the Jay Chou bandwagon recently (albeit a little late), I was ecstatic to have found a complete download of his albums from 2007 to present. The best part was they there were all nicely labelled in Chinese characters as opposed to their lesser hanyu pinyin counterparts.

However, imagine my horror when I dragged all my fresh new songs into iTunes, and in that instant, turned to gibberish.

Thankfully, there is a solution to restore this. Though I don’t know the mechanics behind it, but it works.

And that’s all that matters to me. At the moment.

So to get from gibberish back to Chinese characters..

First, you will need to change the language option to chinese. (Drag it right to the top of the list.)

Quit, and re-open iTunes. Select all the affected songs, right-click.

Choose the option with “…ID3…”. Select the last option.

 

Once all that is done, the songs should appear fine now. However, there is still one more step to ensure that they stay that way.

Again, select all affected songs, right-click and select the “…ID3…” option. This time, use the first option, and select v2.4.

And you’re done!

All you have to do now is just switch back the language to what you’re used under system preferences.

Note: If you do not do the last step of converting the songs to v2.4, your songs will revert back to their gibberish state once your language setting is no longer chinese. You need to do the conversion to ensure that the chinese characters stay that way, regardless of the system language being used.

 

Mac: Home/End, Page Up/Down Button

Growing up with Microsoft and making the switch to Apple’s Mac is still not as easy a task as I thought it would.

A few posts back, I talked about the [Del] button that Microsoft has, but appears to be missing on a MacBook.

Today, I wondered about where these fellas are,

• Home
• End
• Page Up
• Page Down

These are the keys which people tend to glance over, but proves to be oh so useful – especially when catching up with a week’s worth of net browsing.

Well, good for me that a little trial and error got me the answers, so here you go –

• Home: ⌘ + Up
• End: ⌘ + Down
• Page Up: fn + Up
• Page Down: fn + Down

Happy Mac-ing!

Delete on a MacBook Pro

Yes, I hear you – the MacBook Pro only has a “delete” button; equivalent to a Microsoft “backspace”.

So, where is the Microsoft “delete” button on a MacBook that deletes the character before the cursor?

Ans: fn + delete.

Happy Mac-ing!

 

MacBook Pro 99%

If you love your MacBook Pro as much as I do, you may have noticed a very small and slight peculiarity  – the 99% battery charge.

There’s something about seeing that fully charged plug in the battery, yet with a display of only 99%. Where is my 100%?!

Is there something wrong with my battery?

Thankfully, the answer is no.

According to the guys over at Apple Support, this is a safety feature that actually prevents your battery from over-charging, and in turn, preserve the life of your battery!

Now, 99% isn’t that bad after all, isn’t it?

On a side note, to get your battery fully charged to 100% – allow the charge to drop to below 93% and your battery will resume its way to charging till 100%.

Sigh of relief.