I recently switched over to Mac due to work reasons and did not find it very difficult to switch from a Windows world (except maybe for missing the right click on the mouse). Anyways, I was always a fan of the Google Chrome browser since its launch and could not wait to try it out on Chrome as soon as a beta came out.

When I first installed and fired up the browser, it gracefully imported all my bookmarks from Safari. The problem was later though. When I started using Chrome regularly & started adding more bookmarks, I, being a human, inadvertently made some mistakes & Chrome did not offer me with a way to rectify the mistakes as the Bookmarks Manager was disabled.

The disabled Bookmarks Manager proved to be a big annoyance to many people.

Although as of the latest update from Google, version 5.0.307.9, the Bookmarks manage is active. But believe me, it was not active before that.

I searched a lot on the internet to figure out a way to edit my bookmarks, but the best suggestion I found on the internet was on a Google Chrome Support group forum was to go to the location where the configuration file is stored and edit it there. I am reprinting the same from the forum.

OK, I figured it out.
1) Close Chrome.
2) Open Finder to: Your Home Directory / Library / Application Support / Google / Chrome / Default.
3) Copy the file called Bookmarks to a new file called Bookmarks.now so that you have a backup in case you accidently destroy the current imported bookmarks file.
4) Open "Bookmarks" file with TextEdit
5) You will see 2 sections in the file under "roots", one called "bookmark_bar" and one called "other", take the line from bookmark_bar which will look like this:

"children": [  ],

if you don't have any bookmarks in it yet, and cut and paste it into the "other" section. Take the "children" section from "other" and cut and paste it into "bookmark_bar" including all of your bookmarks between the open and close brackets (will be many, many lines of bookmarks), effectively swapping the children sections between "other" and "bookmark_bar".
6) Save the Bookmarks file.
7) Load Chrome and you should see all of your imported bookmarks in the bookmarks menu, not under the "Other Bookmarks" sub-folder.
8) If you have no bookmarks, go back to that folder and delete Bookmarks and rename Bookmarks.now to Bookmarks to restore your bookmarks to what they were in step 1.

But this method would quickly become cumbersome and ungainly, not because of the amount of work required but because a normal (non-techie) person would forget the location of the file and would have to search for it all over again and may get confused by the syntax.

The star is a shortcut to add a website to your bookmarks.

However, while researching this issue I noticed that the star next to the address bar turns yellow. Clicking on the star opens up a dialog window that allows a user to quickly edit the bookmark properties without a lot of effort. Although the activation of Bookmark Manager has made things a lot more simple, but still using my trick may save people a some time if you want to quickly edit a bookmark  

Some time ago in the last blog post, I had mentioned that my transition to Mac from Windows had been largely seamless. The transition would have been completely seamless had I not missed the right click on the mouse. Though in Mac the right click context menu is largely ineffective as compared to in Windows, it is a force of habit that one clicks on the right side of the mouse to get the context menu.

Being used to a right click button and the context menu, it was hard at first to adjust. But with the Mighty mouse correctly configured, everything is happy.

I was getting exasperated on not getting that menu. I first started with the plain MacBook Pro in built touchpad mouse & then graduated to the Apple Mouse without the scroll ball (the unmighty mouse). After voicing my exasperations to my wife, she pointed out that on pressing the control key while clicking brings up the context menu & I was happy. Although this was not an elegant solution, it was sufficient for me to work around the inconvenience of not having the right click button. Then I upgraded to the Mighty Mouse. This is the mouse that comes with the little scroll ball and two pressure points on its side. First I was unaware of the function of scroll ball except for scrolling (Duh!) and completely unaware of the function of the force sensing buttons on the sides.

One day when I had a little free time, I was exploring the Mac system preferences. There came the enlightenment to me on how to configure the different buttons on my Mighty mouse to make optimum use of the mouse. The below graphic shows the current configuration of my Mighty Mouse to simulate the right click (Secondary Button). I have no complaints with my Mac and I am very happy with it.

I was talking to my wife a little while ago and we were just thinking about ordering the new iPhone (despite all the negative press it has garnered so far). Although we are far from people who do impulse shopping, I was just curious to see how much it would cost me more and whether the delivery lead time of 3 weeks has improved or not.

Not only has the lead time not improved, the Apple website itself has broken down and it prevents ordering. I am sure it is not my computer that's broken but when I went to Apple's site and tried to create a new account for the iPhone, it immediately timed out my session and didn't let me get back in. I am sure there is something wrong at the Apple back end servers.

Not only is the front end throwing tantrums by failing to acknowledge the issues, the back end is also acting up.

I captured a video of it on my computer just to show case.

On an unrelated observation: I think instead of trying to pretend to be magnanimous and giving away free cases to people (read subjects), I think Steve Jobs would do a lot more better to focus inside and trying to do better, like maybe try to FIX the problem with the antenna. It really stinks that a grown up person and a grown up company would behave in such a childish manner by first trying to ignore the problem, then blaming some silly piece of software and the totally and completely denying that problem exists and giving away freebies instead. I am sorry but that's not how problems are solved. But whatever little knowledge I have of inside workings of Apple and such, this is the way they behave. Just throw some morsels (freebies, gift cards) to the subjects (customers) having issues and buy off the problem.

As announced by Steve Jobs during his Back to the Mac keynote. Apple has already introduced the App store in Snow Leopard in anticipation of the launch of the Mac App Store. The Mac App store is available as a part of the latest update (10.6.6) for Snow Leopard.

I downloaded and installed the update and immediately saw the App Store icon in my dock. It really is cool to have it all at your disposal at one click. It has all the eye candy it promised like the application that your purchase flying out & placing itself on the dock. Check out this cool video I captured.

All this is really good. But in midst of all the goody goody feeling I had a dark thought. Now that Apple is moving (or controlling) the application delivery through the App store, I just hope that Apple will not block the third party apps unless they are *signed* by Apple. Which would eventually mean that people will require a jail break option for Mac as well... I just hope that Back to Mac does not include this.