A few days ago my brother-in-law asked me if there was a keyboard shortcut for fast user switching. He and his wife share their iMac and he wondered if there is a way to do it without the extra mouse clicks. Being ever the optimist, I told him I was sure there was and I would look into it.

If that was all there was to it, it wouldn’t be worth blogging about. Turns out, there isn’t a built in keyboard shortcut for Fast User Switching (FUS). Keyboard shortcuts are generally available for accessing menu items of the current window. In addition, there are keyboard shortcuts for Spotlight, Exposé, Dashboard, and other Operating System-ish commands. Although I think there could be room in the OS shortcuts for FUS, it’s not and that’s not as much fun. A little Google-ing brought me to a macoshints.com article where they wrote a little applescript app to do FUS from the Terminal application. Now my brother-in-law is an OK Mac user, but asking him to open Terminal and type in commands would be a big step backwards (not to mention take longer). So I borrowed the code from macosxhints.com site and produced my own User Switcher app.

The app is pretty simple, it opens a small window and prompts you to type in the account name you want to switch to. If you type in a recognized account name, then the login window appears, you type in the password and presto, you’re FUS’d. If the account can’t be found, the app quits. So instead of a keyboard shortcut for FUS, all you need is a keyboard shortcut for the User Switcher app.

Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t have a keyboard shortcut for launching applications, at least not one for that specific purpose. But Apple does have Spotlight, which is a generic keyboard shortcut that can launch any application. All you have to do is drop the User Switcher app into your Applications (or Documents) folder and Spotlight will do the rest. Once Spotlight “learns” where it is, FUS can be as easy as cmd + space + u. Enjoy (User Switcher is provided as is; enjoy at your own risk). User Switcher.app

Over the last few years the blogging community around the internet has grown at an outstanding rate. Blogs can be found on almost any topic and the number of Blog readers seems to increase daily.One individual who has come to experience a great deal of success with his Blog is J.D. from GetRichSlowly.org.

His blog is devoted to personal finance and includes a continual update of interest approaches to managing your money. J.D. writes of his own experiences, reviews personal finance books, and invites other knowledgeable bloggers post articles on GetRichSlowly.org to share with other individuals ways to control your personal finance.

GetRichSlowly currently has roughly 47,000 RSS subscribers.J.D. often mentions his use of Apple products in his financial posts so I asked him if he could share some of his thoughts with others about Macs and how they play a part in his blogging efforts. Below is his responses to these questions:

I’ve noticed in a number of your posts you mention your fondness of Apple products. How long have you been a Mac user and what products do you currently have?

My father bought our family’s first Apple in 1978: an Apple II. He wouldn’t buy me any games, though, so I had to program my own. I learned Applesoft BASIC and even some Assembly Language!I bought my first Mac in 1989, during my sophomore year of college. (In retrospect, this was a dumb move: one of my first steps into debt.) I’ve owned a variety of Macs since then (including my beloved Apple Macintosh Peforma 640CD DOS-compatible personal computer from 1995). The two active machines in our household are a refurbished single-processor 1.8ghz g5 desktop and a 2.33ghz 17″ MacBook Pro. We have a couple other older machines that are gathering dust. (My wife uses an old 12″ Powerbook in the kitchen exclusively for recipes!)As a Mac fanboy, I have the requisite support products: Airport Extreme, an iPod, an iPhone.

Since you started blogging, a lot of new hardware and software have been created. What tools do you use that you couldn’t do without now?

The only “I can’t live without it tool” for me is BBEdit. I work almost completely in this text editor. It’s where I live. (I purchased BBEdit during that brief lull during which Bare Bones didn’t have a free product. If I were starting now, I’d be frugal and go with TextWrangler.) I also use Photoshop frequently. (Though, again, if I were starting now, I’d just use Photoshop Elements.) Finally, Transmit is my FTP client of choice.

Now that you’ve got a number of different web sites going (GRS, GFS, AI, Foldedspace) have you tried using iWeb or any other Macintosh based web authoring tool? If so, what have you thought of them?

I have not. Well, I did try iWeb briefly, but it gave me the willies. I think and compose in HTML, and want to work directly with the text files. I don’t want things abstracted.

You’ve mentioned a Podcast in the past, and I remember listening to you testing out some software on your Forums. As you move towards a professional blogger, is a podcast something we’ll be seeing in the near future for GRS? If so, while you use Garageband, different software, or a combination of both to help you make your podcasts?

Yes, I do hope to produce a podcast in the future. I’m completely ignorant when it comes to podcasts, though, and so my idea of what they sound like is NPR-esque. (I think of “This American Life”.) People tell me this is wrong, but I don’t know in what way it is wrong. I need to learn more about them before I actually do one.I intend to use a setup like the one Matt Haughey uses. Matt lives nearby and has been a great help — I’m hoping he’ll let me pick his brain once again.

Since one of your most popular sites, Getrichslowly.org, is based on being thrifty, eliminating debt, and controlling finances; have you had any struggle with owning an Apple Computer given the higher price tag than many PC options?

Yes and no. I don’t actually struggle with the price vs. equivalent PC options. I’m willing to pay for the relative peace of mind. (Macs aren’t perfect, as I tell my friends who are considering purchasing them. They crash. I dread that slow-scrolling “grey screen of death”. And Safari crashes a lot, though less often than it used to.) I often say of the Mac, “It just works”, which is essentially correct. My computer just does what I want it to do without a lot of messing around. For me, this is worth any premium I pay over the PC world. Also, the user experience is more to my taste.The problem I do have with spending on Macs, however, is that I always want the latest and greatest. Since starting Get Rich Slowly, I’ve been able to resist my yearly urge to upgrade. I bought a 17″ MacBook Pro early in the blog’s existence, but since then I’ve resisted the pull to purchase a new machine.

Do you use software like Pages or MS Word to draft your blog posts, or do you write them online using your blog’s post editor?

NEVER draft a post online. I learned that years ago when I was first using blogger. NEVER draft in your blog software. Draft elsewhere and then cut-and-paste.As I mentioned earlier, I draft completely in BBEdit. It’s actually a head-ache when people send me guest entries as Word files. I have to convert them to text, hand-formatting everything.

If you could have any Apple Product right now, what would it be and why? What makes it of more interest to you than other Apple products?

An actual Apple product? I’d probably take a pimped-out 15″ MacBook Pro. I work on a laptop. After using this 17″ machine for nearly eighteen months, I realize that it’s too big and bulky. (Also, to be honest, the fit and finish on this computer are below Apple’s standards.) I’d rather have the next size down.The theoretical Apple product I’d like to have right now is a 12″ MacBook Pro, but with a similar screen resolution to this 17″ machine. Yes, I know things would be tiny. I don’t care! I’d want for this theoretical machine to have 4gb of RAM. Give me more RAM!

How important have RSS feeds been to the success of GRS? What RSS Software do you use to keep up with site you subscribe too? What do you like about it?

Interesting question. The feeds that I subscribe to were instrumental in the site’s early success, I think. They allowed me to track new and interesting stories about personal finance. I still use them to mine for things when I’m stuck. I have a couple of clever (but secret) techniques for finding non-obvious stuff via RSS, which is nice. I’m kind of on RSS overload right now, though, and I need to severely prune. I need to subscribe to only the essentials.On the flip side, encouraging GRS readers to subscribe has been instrumental to the site’s continued success. It’s enjoyed tremendous growth because I feature the feed prominently.

Is there anything else about Macs that you’d like to add?

As I mentioned earlier, Macs aren’t perfect. They crash. They can seem expensive. Apple’s software may be lovely, but it’s frequently so “intuitive” that it becomes counter-intuitive — it can be impossible to figure out how to do even the simplest things. That’s not good. Mostly, though, I love my Mac because it lets me work the way I want to work, where I want to work, when I want to work. The OS doesn’t get in the way of my productivity. I’m never having to fight with it. (I recently set up a new Windows Vista machine for our new salesman at the box factory. I’ve been fighting with the OS for the past week trying to get things right.)I’m not a Mac zealot. I like them, but I think either a Mac or a PC can do the job for most people. For me, however, the Mac feels like home.

Apple updated their website and online store today with increase in the amount of memory available to the high end iPhone/iPod touch.

For $499 you can now pick up a 16gb iPhone. Many people were suprised this move didn’t come earlier as the iPod Touch was selling with a 16gb model. Now people will wonder why the iPhone doesn’t come in a 32gb option as the iPod touch can now hold that much memory for $499. I’m sure Apple believe that an iPhone model at 32gb for what one can only guess would cost $599 wouldn’t sell as much as the lower, cheaper model.

Both the iPhone and iPod touch updated models are shipping in a 1 - 3 day time frame. So, if you were hoping for a little bit more space on your portable devices, your wish has been granted.

As the first Macbook Air’s started making their way to early purchasers the reviews around the internet seem to be popping up. After reviewing most of them it becomes clear that the Macbook is what most people expected it to be after the announcement at Macworld 2008.

HOW THIN?

The notebook is thin. Extremely thin! Everyone seems impressed with the engineering behind the Macbook Air and Ars Technica provides visual evidence of how thin the Macbook Air is when compared to other Apple Notebooks. With its thinest parts being .16 of an inch the Thin is even described as an impressive iPod:

“One way to look at the MacBook Air is as the largest and most capable iPod in Apple’s line—think of it as an iPod touch Extreme with a built-in keyboard.”- Jacqui Cheng Ars Technica

I personally love my iPod touch, and can imagine how much I’d enjoy having the Macbook Air as a travel companion.

WHAT ABOUT PORTS?

Again, early assumptions were accurate and the lack of multiple USB ports, Firewire, and most other communication points may be a breaking point for many people. Engadget points out that the USB port is even more limiting than originally expected as many external USB devices won’t fit into the space available to insert your USB cable.

While converting cables or extension cables will provide you with a way to hook up your USB devices, it is a bit disappointing that a few extra dollars will need to be spent to get some hardware to work.

WHAT ELSE MAY BUG ME?

Other issues the reviews have with the Macbook Air include a less than expected battery life, difficulty migrating from other Macs without Firewire, and slower speed than other Notebooks. These are all issues for anyone looking to use this as their main computer but something that may be looked over if you’re planning on using it more as a mobile computing device. This fits into line with most reviews conclusions.

Macbook AIR FOR YOU?

Gizmodo explains that the Macbook Air would fit into your life as “secondary” computer, but that role shouldn’t be underestimated.

“It’ll never be my primary, that’s obvious. And while I usually use my old machines as secondaries, I find myself every day more and more unable to resist buying one of these first, and figuring out where it fits into my life second.” - BRIAN LAM GIZMODO

The Macbook Air may be the perfect device to push us towards a complete mobile computing market. With its thin form factor and light weight it is a perfect fit for a secondary computer for quick and simple computing tasks. So if you’re looking for just such a device and its lack of ports and battery options don’t bother you, this may be the perfect notebook.

The past few years I’ve always done my taxes on my PC. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust the Apple computers to be able to do them correctly it was more of just my lack of knowing that Macs did Taxes too. That changed for my 2007 taxes.

WORKS WITH OS X 10.5 LEOPARD

We recently received the last of our tax related documents, so I set out with my wife to the store to pick up our tax software. With out much thought I picked up Taxcut for this year and assumed I would just take the software home and use Bootcamp to launch Windows Vista on my iMac. While standing in line I glanced across the system requirements for this years Taxcut and noticed that it included Mac OS X (10.3.9 or newer) under the Operating System section. I quickly decided that I would try the software out on my Mac when I got home.

I was a bit worried that the system wouldn’t work correctly in OS X 10.5 Leopard but also understood that I could always boot into Windows via Bootcamp or parallels if I needed to do so. But worry not, because Taxcut software runs quick and easy with Leopard.

INSTALLING TAXCUT

Much like all other applications, installing Taxcut was as simple as dragging the icon from the CD to the Application folder. I launched up the system and was honestly surprised at how quickly the application pulled up. Taxcut always seemed a bit slow to me in Windows and wasn’t as clean and easy looking as what I was experiencing in OS X 10.5 Leopard. This difference between Taxcut in Windows and Taxcut in OS X may be the simple enhancements in software from last years Taxcut release but the process was almost effortless.

FILING AND CONCLUSION

In total it took me 20 minutes to complete my Federal and State Tax return. I easily transmitted the filing electronically and received acknowledgment shortly afterwards that the return was accepted by the Federal Government.

Overall the process was painless and worked flawlessly. While I’ve had fine experiences with running the software on a Windows machine, I’ll be using the Mac version in the future.

Also, TurboTax has a Mac version of its yearly tax software.