If you often have several Safari windows open, you should consider opening those pages as tabs in a single window instead.

Tabs are especially useful while researching, where you’d traditionally have many related windows open on a topic. Instead of a collection of unruly windows, tabs gives you a single window focused on that topic:

Without tabs	With tabs

If you’re researching multiple topics simulaneously, you can have multiple windows open, one per topic perhaps, each with many tabs per topic.

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Ignore the scrollbar in Safari—there are better ways to scroll through a Web page:

1. Press the spacebar and up/down arrow keys. Press Space to scroll down a page, and shift-Space to scroll up. And the up/down arrow keys scroll the page a line at a time.

2. Roll the center mouse button/wheel on your mouse.

3. Drag two fingers simultaneously on the MacBook or MacBook Pro trackpad. Drag one finger to move the cursor, two to scroll.

These scrolling methods work in many other applications too.

Apple’s new patent application for wireless point-of-sale commercial transactions obviously builds on the existing Starbucks-on-iTunes venture—the patent description even mentions coffee—but the proposed system for placing orders from your iPhone or iPod appears to be a lot bigger than Starbucks.

Here’s how it works: you walk within range of a store and place an order right from your iPhone or iPod. The store receives and processes your order, then places it in a queue. That’s one of the benefits right there: you don’t wait in the queue—your order does.

Another benefit is that complicated orders can be reduced to a single button on your device. Hmm, will today’s button press be “cheeseburger-no-onions-no-mayonnaise, large fries, and small strawberry milkshake” or “turkey-on-rye-extra-pickle, cole slaw, and decaf-coffee-two-sugars”?

Wells Fargo already does something like this. Sign in to some Wells Fargo ATMs and you’ll see a button that more or less says, “same as last time?” If you withdrew $120 from your checking account last time, pressing that button will do the same thing with a single button press. Like Amazon’s patented One-Click purchases—which Apple licensed for the iTunes Store—it makes the transaction pleasant and wonderfully simple.

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Have you ever wanted to change a system preference but you couldn’t remember where it is? Say you want to assign a password to your screensaver—where is it? You check in the obvious place, the Screen Saver panel, but it’s not there.

When this happens, remember to click in the search field in the upper-right corner of the System Preferences window, and type screen saver.

Oh, there it is—in Security, of course!

In Leopard, you can use Spotlight to do the same thing:

New software updates from Adobe and Apple appeared this morning with surprisingly different user experiences. Let’s compare them. And yes, this won’t be good for Adobe.

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Apple’s Get a Mac commercials have been running in the U.S. for about a year and a half now.

Each commercial promotes a clear Mac advantage and tells viewers that Macs are…

Some of the commercials also mock Vista, but most focus on the Mac to tell you that Macs are better than PCs.

At least, that’s what they seem to say.

But by showing two people onscreen rather than two computers, the message is made personal. Beyond anthropomorphising the computer hardware, showing the Mac and PC as people shifts the focus to the users and plays to one of Apple’s acknowledged strengths: focus on the user. Like Apple’s new video guided tours used to promote iPhone and iPod touch, and like Apple’s product names themselves, these Get a Mac commercials are easy to use from the user’s perspective: have a quick laugh with two familiar faces, and learn about a Mac advantage.

Long ago, Apple popularized the graphical interface over the command-line by showing users their available choices rather than forcing the users to choose arcane commands. These commercials provide a similar and simple choice to (young?) style-minded users: do you want to be like Mac, or PC? Not “which do you want to use?”, but which do you want to be like? A video menu of sorts: choose one of these people.

And while you watch the commercials, you subconsciously choose Mac.

You already know that Apple thinks different about design:

“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like,” says Steve Jobs, Apple’s C.E.O. “People think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
— Steve Jobs, New York Times, November 30, 2003

But Apple thinks different about product names too.

As blogged recently by columnist Seth Weintraub, Apple’s product names are simple and clear, unlike most of the names competitors use. Being simple and clear makes the names easy to recognize and easy to pronounce. It makes them easy to use.

“Contrast this with Nokia, which sells its solid N-series phone lineup from N70 to N95. Ask all but the most hardened geek what differentiates each one and you’ll get little more than a confused expression. How about the Toshiba G900 or the Samsung F700? – both great phones with forgettable names. It’s hard to have a relationship with an anonymous number.”
— Seth Weintraub, Computerworld, November 26, 2007

Apple’s formula is simplicity itself:
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