Documentation

PSA: Your own personal Apple support profile.

Apple_logo_largeIn case you weren’t aware of it, Apple maintains a dashboard for you, tracking all of the devices you have associated with your Apple ID, and providing you with information about them.

For instance, for ともだち (tomodachi), my trusty 13″ MacBook Pro, I can see my model number (13-inch Late 2011) and serial number right from the front page. By clicking through, I can also my built-in warranty and Apple Care coverage details, with links to contact Apple support. This is also true of repair coverage, and the ability to set up a repair online. There are even tabs to show me any service or repair cases the product has had. And finally, there’s a tab with a list of FAQs that pertain to the machine in question.

I was kind of surprised to find my very first (5G!) iPod on there. Since I no longer have this device, I took the opportunity to disassociate it from my account. (Oh yeah, the site lets you associate and disassociate items from your Apple ID.)

It’s not a ground-breaking site, but I know a bunch of you have Apple devices (ranging from those of you with an iPhone, to those have consumed the entire flavor spectrum of Cupertino Kool-Aid), so I thought you might find it useful.

 

Mac OS X Special Character Quick Reference

I was chatting with someone today, and mentioned that the heat index was 106°. My correspondent immediately asked me how I managed to make the degree symbol. As I’m on a Mac, it’s dead simple: option-shift-8. This was something of a revelation to my friend (also a Mac user), and the next question was, “What other cool symbols can I type!?”

Instead of doing the right thing (telling my friend to open a TextEdit document and try the damned keyboard combinations), I made a cheat sheet. (Only about halfway through making it did it occur to me to Google for one. And by then, I was already invested in the damned thing.)

So, if any of you might find it handy, here it is: OS X Special Character Quick Reference

Enjoy. Or don’t. 🙂