You can easily and quickly preview fonts within Mac OS X by navigating to the font directory in /Library/Fonts/ and changing the Finder view to Cover Flow mode. Now flicking through all your available fonts is easy as can be.

An alternative method to preview fonts is navigating to /Library/Fonts/ (Hit Command+Shift+G in the Mac Finder and type in the path) and then selecting list view, and then hit the Spacebar to enter into Quick Look mode, you’ll now be able to scroll through every font and see the full alphabet rendered in the selected font in lowercase and uppercase.

You can view .PSD Adobe Photoshop files directly in Mac OS X with no additional software, thanks to Quick Look and Preview.

To get a fast preview of a PSD file, simply select the document within the Finder and hit the Spacebar to launch the PSD file rendered in Mac OS X’s very own Quick Look. If you want a bit more control over viewing the PSD file (zoom, resize, whatever), you can take it a step further by opening the PSD document within the Preview app, just drag and drop it onto the application icon and away you go (note some versions of Mac OS X will automatically open PSD files within Preview if you just double-click on them, assuming Photoshop is not installed on the Mac).

If you want to edit a PSD file with the same type of capabilities as Photoshop without paying for it, you could try using Gimp, a free open source Photoshop clone. It’s not perfect but works pretty well for image editing, and if you’re not trying to do anything overly complex, it’ll save you a few hundred bucks.

I came across this barebones Mac setup while browsing around Flickr and found the simplicity appealing. MacBook Pro, some notes, headphones, keyboard, and a guitar. What else do you need?

[ via Flickr ]

Why is Apple so successful? Look at what, and how, they sell.

* You walk into a beautiful Apple Store

* You’re presented with amazingly attractive machines

* The packaging is clean, minimal, and enticing

* The operating system is simple to use yet amazingly powerful

I came across a post simplifying this on MinimalMac and found myself completely agreeing. Buying an Apple product, especially a Mac, is an experience from the start to the finish.

It’s an experience I’ve never been able to replicate when buying a PC, which typically comes from a loud and generic electronics store with product overload, and that sensory overload never ends: open the PC box and you have stacks of paper warranties and user manuals, various driver disks, promotional offers for this and that, a ton of cables and cords haphazardly thrown in a box. Then you finally boot the thing up just to be overwhelmed with a Windows install that has been bloated up a storm with OEM garbageware and 20 icons on your desktop… there is just no comparison, you don’t get that from Apple and you never will.

This is exactly why they’re so successful, Apple just gets it.

Now, MinimalMac does a more elegant job of telling the story than I do via fewer words and a few pictures, so be sure to scroll through them, it’ll only take a second and for four pictures, it does a good job of capturing the Apple buying experience.

MinimalMac: What Apple Sells

Did you know you can pause any application download or update on the iPhone and iPod Touch? This is great when you’re in a bandwidth bind or have low bars of reception.

* Pause the download/update by just tapping on the app’s icon while the download is going
* You’ll know the download is paused because the name will change to ‘Paused’ (see screenshot)
* Tap the icon again to resume the download or update

You learn something new everyday! I’ll bet this tip works for the iPad too, but since they aren’t in the wild yet we don’t know for sure.

[ screenshot and tip via MacObserver ]

It’s fun to see Mac’s in the media, and it looks like Conan O’Brien uses a MacBook… at least when he’s making jokes about his writers. Posted on Twitter was the following quote and a link to the above picture of Conan on a MacBook surrounded by a team of people.

‘This is how many people it took to write today’s tweet: “Jumbo” shrimp? WTF!!’

[ via Twitter ]

If you’re a developer and you haven’t found out about FileMerge yet, you are missing out on one of the more useful apps included within Apple’s XCode installation. FileMerge lets you select any two files and it will compare the two, pointing out any differences between the files. If you’re a developer you already know why this is wildly useful, as it makes tracking down major and minor code changes remarkably easy. Apparently FileMerge is a survivor from the days of NeXTStep, and once you see how useful it is, you’ll see why it was saved and bundled with XCode.

XCode can be installed from the CD/DVD’s included with your Mac, or downloaded for free from the Apple Developer site. Once XCode has been installed, FileMerge will be located at /Developer/Applications/Utilities/FileMerge

[ FileMerge screenshot from Schwehr.org ]

Want to quickly setup a free proxy server? This article and video from Labnol.org is about as easy as it gets. The walkthrough is geared to Windows users but the technology, software, and setup is practically identical on a Mac, just download the Mac versions of python and Google App Engine SDK rather than Windows versions.

Labnol: Setup a Proxy Server in 5 minutes

You can quickly Get Info on any file or application from within Spotlight, simply highlight the file you want to Get Info on and hit Command+i to pull up the Get Info window. Very handy!

Apple’s Mac OS X operating system is continuing to grow in popularity, with a recent survey showing that Apple’s Mac OS X now accounts for nearly 11% of web usage, vs 86.8% with Windows and 1.3% for mobile based browsers.

What’s even more interesting though is that Apple’s share has grown 29.4% over the past year, while Microsoft’s Windows share actually shrunk 3.8%!

You can read more at VentureBeat: OS X slowly chipping away at Microsoft