OS X Mavericks: The Missing Manual

Power Typing

Something strange has been quietly taking place at Apple: Typing has been getting a lot of attention.

It began when Apple created system-wide spelling and grammar checkers. For the first time in computer history, the operating system took over typos and grammos. You didn’t have to maintain a separate spelling checker for each program you used. Now there’s just one, and it works in most programs: TextEdit, Stickies, Messages, Mail, Calendar, Safari, Pages, iPhoto, iMovie, and so on. Add a word to the dictionary in one program, and it’s available to all the others.

Today, there’s much more. There’s text substitution, where you type addr and the system types out “Irwina P. McGillicuddy, 1293 Eastport Lane, Harborvilletown, MA, 02552.” (The same system autocorrects common typos like teh instead of the.) There’s also a case-flipping feature that can change selected text to ALL CAPS, all lowercase, or First Letter Capped. Both of these features are available in most Apple programs and in any other programs that tap into OS X’s built-in text-processing circuitry (although not, alas, Microsoft programs).

GEM IN THE ROUGH: Instant Accented Characters, Courtesy of the iPhone

It’s been a problem since the dawn of computing: How do you produce accented characters—lïké thêsë—on a keyboard with only 26 letter keys?

For most of computing history, the answer has been: You bring up some special palette on the screen, or you memorize key combinations. And yes, those options are still available ...