If you are new Mac users coming from years with MS Windows, some minor adjustment is necessary due to the differences in respective operating system, but none is too intimidating. The following 14 differences highlights the essential ones to get you up to speed with Mac OS X.

1. [Command ⌘] Key

There is no [Windows] key in Mac off course. Instead you have the [Command ⌘] key. Usage however is entirely different.

In Windows, the Ctrl key is used for keyboard shortcuts for the graphical user interface elements. For example [Ctrl-c] to copy, [Ctrl-x] to cut and [Ctrl-v] to paste. But Mac has kept the Ctrl key to its default usage as per its Unix heritage, and use the Command ⌘ key instead for graphical user interface. Thus you use [⌘-c] to copy, [⌘-x] to cut and [⌘-v] to paste.

If you’re coming from Unix background, it is more logical and less confusing by not mixing Ctrl key for graphical usage. This is especially true for those who are used to using Ctrl keys, for example [Ctrl-c] to end a process, [Ctrl-a] to move to beginning of line, [Ctrl-e] to go to end of line, [Ctrl-k] to erase line etc.

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Western Digital has started selling the world’s first 2.5 inch mobile hard disk with a 1 TB capacity.

You can get the 1TB hard disk in Western Digital’s My Passport Esential SE USB-powered external storage product. Beside being the smallest and very portable external storage you can find with 1TB capacity, one main advantage for 2.5 inch hard disk external storage compared with 3.5inch desktop model is you can use the storage without additional power supply as the device draws the power from USB port.

Western Digital also launches its WD Scorpio Blue 1TB 2.5 hard drive for people who wants the bare drive. It sports 8MB cache, a fast SATA 3GB/s interface and 5200rpm spindle speed. This drive however is of 12.5mm height, which is not the typical 9.5mm height supported by most notebook computer. Initial adoption for this drive will most likely be in external storage and DVRs.

Beside the 1TB capacity, the 2.5inch mobile hard drive will also be available in 750GB. Before this release, the highest capacity for 2.5inch mobile drive is 500GB.

Seems like the Apple tablet device is a ‘more or less’ confirmed product, even the reliable Financial Times has an article which confirms a September release for the new device. Some sites has predicted an early 2010 release.

From the rumors, the much-anticipated tablet has:

• 9.7-inch multi touch screen.
• Some said it looks like a jumbo iPod touch.
• 3G-enaled. Some said it will include LTE as well.
• Will not have a phone.
• Will price between the high-end iPhone and the most affordable MacBook. Some said $800.

• Possibility of Verizon Wireless as provider for Internet access in US.

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One feature touted as selling point for Palm Pre smartphone is its ability to sync music with the ubiquitous iTunes on the desktop. This feature is not supported by Apple and is considered hack by many, a hack not by any individual hacker but by a corporation. Palm is able to achieve such feat as engineers for Palm Pre used to work for Apple.

Apple released a minor update to iTunes 8.2.1 last week, the release notes is vague about what minor patches have been applied. But Palm Pre users realized that the sync with iTunes is broken with the latest iTunes release.

Palm released its latest webOS 1.1 for the Palm Pre device on Thursday, and specifically highlighted in its official blog post that iTunes sync is back for Palm Pre with this release of webOS.

Oh, and one more thing: Palm webOS 1.1 re-enables Palm media sync. That’s right — you once again can have seamless access to your music, photos and videos from the current version of iTunes (8.2.1).

So what’s your next move Apple?

Google has optimized its Google Latitude for the Safari browser in iPhone and iPod touch. Google Latitude is a web application and requires iPhone OS 3.0 as the mobile Safari browser in this version of iPhone OS can feed back the device’s location to web application.

For the iPhone version of Google Latitude, you get basic Search and Directions functionality. However you need to fire up Google Latitude to keep your location updated to Google’s backend server since Google Latitude can not run in the background, just as any other non-Apple apps.

Unfortunately, since there is no mechanism for applications to run in the background on iPhone (which applies to browser-based web apps as well), we’re not able to provide continuous background location updates in the same way that we can for Latitude users on Android, Blackberry, Symbian and Window Mobile. Nevertheless, your location is updated every time you fire up the app and then continuously updated while the app is running in the foreground. And, of course, you can check in on where your friends are, so we think there’s plenty of fun to be had with Latitude.

Google is launching Latitude for iPhone in US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand at the moment, with more countries coming soon.

To visit Google Latitude, point your Safari browser on your iPhone or iPod touch to google.com/latitude.

Yahoo! has launched its new home page design starting with US users. The revamp is expected to roll out to all Yahoo! home page around the world.

Yahoo! old home page:

Yahoo! new home page:

The main change to the redesign is the links column on the left. It used to contain links to Yahoo! services. This column is now called “My Favorites” and users can customize it with widgets and apps by Yahoo! and third parties. Example third party widgets/apps are Facebook and New York Times, allowing you to access the services without leaving Yahoo! home page.

By adding this “My Favorites” feature, Yahoo! is expecting more users will make Yahoo! their default home page. This is certainly appealing to existing users who uses a number of Yahoo! services such as mail and Flickr. However for users who rely heavily on services such as Facebook, Twitter, last.fm etc, nothing beats using the services directly on respective websites.

Yahoo! is working to let users sync this customizations between the website and the mobile versions of Yahoo!.

Visit Yahoo! to take a look!

With the launch of iPhone OS 3.0 and iPhone 3GS last month, one noticeable missing announcement is a new iPod touch which is a target platform of iPhone OS 3.0. We probably will see the new third generation iPod touch sooner than later, if the Wired.com post is right:

A well-connected source tells us those rumors are on the money, and that Apple’s factories in China are already manufacturing iPod Touch models with integrated cameras and microphones. An Apple spokesman declined to comment when reached by phone.

What we hear so far about the third generation iPod touch:

• look similar to current iPod touch
• 3M camera with VGA video, same as iPhone 3GS
• will spot a microphone which will make it a capable voice-over-IP device
• supports higher Wi-FI speed with 802.11n
• uses the same cpu and graphics processor as iPhone 3GS

Universal Studios has announced the Fast & Furious iPhone app that can be used to control the bonus feature content of Fast & Furious movie Blu-ray disc. The iPhone and iPod touch app will launch on App Store on July 28 as free download, coincide with the release of the 2-Disc Special Edition Blu-ray of the blockbuster Fast & Furious.

The is a ground breaking move from Universal Studios by integrating the two platforms for more enhance home entertainment experience. For this feature to work, your Blu-ray player needs to be BD-Live capable and is connected to the Internet. Playstation 3 and newer Blu-ray players are BD-Live ready.

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Photo JPG files from modern digital camera has a high resolution that is often not necessary if you are posting the photos on the web for viewing. For example a 10M pixel camera typically produces photos in 2816×2112 resolution. For web viewing purpose, you might want to scale down to 1024 or 800 pixel for faster uploading and viewing.

You can use iPhoto or Preview to scale JPG file, but Automator can help you automate the process if you have large number of JPGs.

For this tutorial, we are getting Automator to automate the following:

• Prompt to ask us to choose the photos
• Copy the photos to Pictures>output folder so that original photos are not changed
• Apply resize action to the photos in the Pictures>output folder.

We are going to create an Automator workflow for this task, and will drag the necessary actions from the library to the workflow to achieve the above tasks.

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There are more than 50,000 apps in Apple’s App Store, many doubt if it is still possible to make money developing apps for the iPhone and iPod touch. If you are exploring programming for the iPhone as an option, the following frequently asked questions by beginners might be useful to you.

1. What kind of app can be run on iPhone?

You can develop native app to run on iPhone, or you can develop web app that runs on mobile Safari browser on the iPhone. In general, iPhone app refer to the native app. iPhone native app is the only app you can sell on iTunes App Store.

Native iPhone apps are by far the dominant apps on the iPhone with native iPhone touch interface and experience. Many vendor develops native iPhone app for their website, such as Facebook, MySpace and NY Times. On the other hand, popular web apps customize for iPhone include GMail and Flickr.

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