I switched to Apple last july after working dual, mac at office, pc at home for two years. I wanted portability and the best OS on the market, so an MBP with the new Leopard was the best choice. Unlike many creatives I don’t blog about Apple because I’m not a zealot—or maybe because of my inborn stubborness in doing the opposite of what the majority of my kin is doing :) Besides, my colleague Kit is a lot more well informed than me, not to mention passionate — his MBP review is quite thorough.

But since I’ll always have geek tendencies, I do enjoy shortcuts, tips and especially hidden stuff the Apple guys like to put into their machines. Here’s two of them:

1. Getting fast to the Video panel in System Prefs — especially useful when using a second monitor, there is a strange bug that f*cks up the colour profile usually after the screensaver sets on, making the colours on your MBP screen bluer. Everything returns to normal when you open the Display System Pref panel, but that’s some annoying clicks away unless you press Alt(Option)+F2 (the brightness button — works just as well with F1). The same type of shortcut works for other panels, like the Sound, Expose, Spaces when pressing Alt plus the corresponding F.

2. Zooming in Quick View — the classic Photoshop zoom, Cmd+/- works only in PDF files, so it’s quite annoying that such a great tool doesn’t let you zoom in while viewing jpg or other formats. Well, it does, all you have to do is to keep Alt pressed and you’ll have a magnifying glass to click your way through the picture. Alt+Shift for zooming out, of course.

I hope you’ll find them useful enough, I know I use them daily. And while I’m at it, don’t forget the fun Ctrl+Alt+Cmd+8, which inverts all the colours on your display (sometimes quite useful), a fun prank to play on less experienced users :D Cheers!