Datasets:

qbwmwsap

/

unprocessed_stackexchange_data

like 1

Q: What is the difference between Intel and PPC? What is the hardware and software differences between Intel and PPC Macs? A: When it comes to Apple hardware, the differences between the last generation of PowerPC and the first generation of Intel were fairly minor, as far as the end user experience goes. They used the same form factors, and the all-new internals were quite effectively hidden by the unchanged exterior and the accommodations the operating system made for compatibility. The last PowerPC Macs were sold in 2006, so any new machine since then is Intel. In general, Intel Macs can run the vast majority of software created for PowerPC Macs. There is a performance hit for the emulation required, but it runs at acceptable speeds even for complex software like Photoshop. PowerPC Macs cannot run Intel software. The latest version of OS X, Snow Leopard, is available only for Intel-based Macs. Intel Macs have access to a feature called Boot Camp, which allows them to boot into Windows at full speed. Intel Macs can also run Windows inside virtual machines with the help of third-party software (VMWare Fusion, VirtualBox or Parallels); there is a minor performance penalty for this, but it's much faster than the emulation required for a PowerPC Mac to run Windows software. A: The Intel chips at the time of the transition were sourced to be far more thermal and power efficient than the PPC chips of the time. Intel had much more room to grow within the same thermal and physical envelopes in terms of clock rate and the amount of hardware needed to support a given processor choice. The PPC roadmap was shooting for massive clock rates in the 4 to 5 GHz range which amplified these disadvantages for future PPC chips when compared to future Intel chips. Moving to Intel processors did away with the need for exotic liquid cooling systems, massive heat sink design and complexity due to space constriants that went into the G5 PowerMac. Power supplies were also downsized. PPC design was heading directly into mainframe territory with chipkill memory, CPU virtualization, First Failure Data Capture and other high end / high cost features. Just check out this P5 heat sink and 4 processor MPM with associated L3 cache chips to get a feeling for how massive these processors would grow before Power7 manufacturing finally packed more power in a lower clock rate / smaller package. (and this is finally shipping in 2010). Now the Power5 and Power6 are still shipping and awesome at what they do in server land, just not so appropriate for the current Mac market space. Furthermore, there was nothing coming in the pipeline for a portable processor from PPC so even though the power was there for future desktop machines if one accepts the many tradeoffs already listed. Quite simply, portable macs were starving for horsepower on the PPC architecture and likely drove the urgency of a transition to anything but PPC. A: Hardware-wise: PowerPC is a microprocessor developed mainly by the three developing companies Apple, IBM, and Motorola. It is built with reduced instruction-set computer (RISC) which speeds-up the operation of MIPS (million instructions per second). PowerPC is mainly based on IBM’s earlier Power architecture because it has a similar RISC instruction set for microprocessors. Intel and AMD CPU's are based on CISC architectures. Typically CISC chips have a large amount of different and complex instructions. The philosophy behind it is that hardware is always faster than software, therefore one should make a powerful instructionset, which provides programmers with assembly instructions to do a lot with short programs. In common CISC chips are relatively slow (compared to RISC chips) per instruction, but use little (less than RISC) instruction A: PPC Macs refers to the generation of Macintosh computers created in the mid to late 1990s through to 2006 that used PowerPC RISC based chips made by IBM or Motorola. That last PowerPC based Macintosh, the PowerMac G5 stopped being sold in August 2006. The latest version of Mac OS X a PowerPC chip enabled computer was able to run was Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) (so long as the computer supported it). Intel Macs refers to the newer Macintosh computers (since January 2006) that use Intel's CISC processors. Intel Macs uses EFI instead of BIOS and can run the latest versions of Mac OS X. Intel Macs are also able to run PowerPC compiled applications through a translation layer called Rosetta which is optionally installed in 10.6. If a program is made available as a Universal binary it is able to run on both PPC and Intel Macs however many new applications released today are Intel only (eg. Google Chrome, Final Cut Studio, Mac OS X Snow Leopard). A: From the end user point of view, you don't need to worry about it much. Many applications were produced as "universal", meaning they run on both PPC and Intel-based Macs, and an emulator (called Rosetta) would let PPC-only apps run on the new Intel machines. However, as time passed, newer features were only available to Intel Macs, so some applications state outright that they require Intel chips. Also, the latest version of Mac OS X only runs on Intel CPUs. Apple did a reasonably good job of hiding the entire transition from users, so that everything just kept working as people expected, offloading any heavy lifting to software developers. A: Architecture: PowerPC: (short for Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) and Intel processor. more information can be found at wikipedia: PowerPC A: I also wanted to know more on the Power architecture, I did find some good info on it. I'm glad to share the following information, specially for POWER8 (the latest from IBM): * *SMT8: 8 threads per core * *can also switch mode e.g. SMT1, SMT2, SMT4, SMT8 *CAPI: Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface * *first of its kind in industry *hardware attachment *eliminates the Device driver overhead when accessing the FPGA. *Increased coherency *NUCA - Non Uniform Cache Access * *though each processor is associated with a L3 cache, NUCA let's the L3 Cache be shared by the cores. *Benefits data-intensive workloads *NVIDIA partnership: * *through NVIDIA CUDA parallel computing we can obtain an 8x performance increase for Java programs, on Power8. More references: * *https://community.runabove.com/kb/en/instances/power8-features.html *https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273393397_The_cache_and_memory_subsystems_of_the_IBM_POWER8_processor A: One thing I know is that PPCs are big endian by default, but can switch modes if necessary. Intel are little endian. A: Power PC has its unique set of instruction in which overall is labeled RISC architecture and the way it performs its program goes way faster than that used on PC. About software there isn't difference except the way it was coded or compiled. For example Windows NT 3.51 was developed for PowerPC. PC most used processor are labeled CISC architecture which change the way you code and the advantage is operates more than a single task at same time. The term RISC and CISC doesn't make difference since some times RISC 32bits has more complex instructions than CISC 8bits.

Q: Turn on Back To My Mac via a Script or Command Line The VPN software I use for work (IPSecuritas) requires me to turn off Back To My Mac to start it's connection, so I frequently turn off Back To My Mac in order to use my VPN connection (the program does this for me). I forget to turn it back on however and I'd love to know if there was something I could run (script, command) to turn it back on. A: There is no supported way to do this. Having said that, you can do it using scutil: louis@Arios:~$ sudo scutil > set Setup:/Network/BackToMyMac > d.add <YYY> <XXX>.members.btmm.icloud.com > set Setup:/Network/BackToMyMac > quit louis@Arios:~$ Replacing <YYY> with the UID of the user account on the system (for most people with single account that is 501), and <XXX> with your iCloud account number. If you don't know that you can check your dns-sd registrations: louis@Arios:~$ dns-sd -E Looking for recommended registration domains: DATE: ---Wed 22 Aug 2012--- 9:11:04.789 ...STARTING... Timestamp Recommended Registration domain 9:11:04.789 Added (More) local 9:11:04.789 Added icloud.com - > btmm - - > members - - - > <XXX> The last line will list your iCloud user number. I think they are all 8 digit numbers, at least mine is.

Q: Why doesn't Microsoft Office/2008(& later) support RTL languages? I have Microsoft Office/2008 on my MacBook Pro. Office doesn't support RTL languages like Farsi and Arabic, and I know that Office/2010 (for Windows) also has the same problem. Do you think the lack of support is because of business competition, or some other reason? A: “Why” is a question for Microsoft, but I'm guessing it boils down to a simple lack of resources on the part of the Mac Business Unit. They have to prioritize certain features, and RTL support is not a priority for them. To address the underlying need, you have several options: OpenOffice and NeoOffice support RTL text in Microsoft Office documents. Mellel has a reputation as the best RTL/multilingual word processor (it certainly has a nice feature set for it, like a direction breaking space so you can mix RTL/LTR in a paragraph), but I don’t know how good its Microsoft Office document interoperability is. This would also be a use case where it might make sense to run Office 2010 inside a Windows virtual machine. A: Microsoft has dragged their heels on support for RTL languages such as Hebrew and Arabic for years. It's always been 'coming in the next version' for as long as I've been using a Mac. Until it shows up, if it ever does, the premiere word processor for RTL languages on OS X is Mellel. It's actually quite great. A: Microsoft probably doesn't have the manpower and it uses custom code for layout, plus the market is relatively small as well. What's strange is that Apple's iWork doesn't work with RTL, although the OS (Cocoa framework) does support it. Indeed, OpenOffice (or NeoOffice) are the best alternatives for RTL languages. Mellel should also work, but it's quite different in its approach to text editing.

Q: Repair Disk - Start up disk options I had a power failure and upon rebooting noticed that the OS drive needed to be repaired (Disk Utilities). I am running Snow Leopard and don't have the CD to start up from in order to perform the fix. Are there any other options for running the repair utils on the startup disk? A: One option would be to clone your startup drive to an external disk using something like SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner. Then you can use System Preferences->Startup Disk to select that external drive as the boot drive. Once you've rebooted and are running the system off the external drive you can use Disk Utility to run the repair. After you're done, re-select the internal drive as the Startup Disk and reboot. A: One option that doesn't require any external drives or disks: Disk Utility's repair disk is largely* a thin wrapper over the unix fsck (stands for "File System Check") utility. You can run it by: * *Booting into "Single User Mode" by rebooting and holding command-S during startup. *A command-line input will appear; enter /sbin/fsck -fy *Wait for it to complete. If you see **** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED ***** then run it again, since sometimes fixing the first errors will uncover more. *Repeat until it says that the disk appears to be ok. *Enter Reboot to boot normally. *I can't find any indication that Disk Utility's "Repair Disk" function does anything that fsck doesn't. Nonetheless, Apple recommends that you use Disk Utility instead when that is an option.

Q: How can I make focus follow the mouse cursor? I will often click on a button expecting it to be clicked but instead all that happens is the application it is in becomes active, and I have to click again to actually click the button. It would be nice if this second click wasn't needed, which leads me to my question: How can I make it so that when I move the mouse cursor over an inactive window, it becomes active? A: This is freely possible for the Terminal and X11 : defaults write com.apple.Terminal FocusFollowsMouse -string YES defaults write com.apple.x11 wm_ffm true Or, OS-wise, with a utility that seems to fit your needs, called MondoMouse. A: I originally wanted to do this with my first Mac a couple years ago as well, since that's how my Linux and Windows environments behave. But I think the driving force preventing this from becoming a reality is in how OS X handles application menus. What if you want to go to the menu at the top of the screen for an application you're using, but in the process briefly hover over another application? That would become infuriating quickly. In short, I don't think its doable for that and potentially other reasons. A: Best little utility I stumbled upon is Zooom/2. Strange name, hence hard to find. You can choose delay (Rather cumbersome, OS X and global menu is not designed to allow that). I set it to focus window under cursor instantly when Option key is pressed. Great value, no dock or tray icons, it just works. A: Amethyst (https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst) is excellent. Follow the README.md instructions to download, and then enable "Focus Follows Mouse" in the Misc. section of the Settings view.

Q: With multiple monitors, can I pick which one an application will load on? In Spaces it's possible to specify which space a given application will open on -- for example, my web browser always opens on Space 1 and iTunes on Space 3. Is something similar possible with multiple monitors, so that whichever space I'm on a certain application will always open on the second monitor? For even more control, can I specify that it will always open on Monitor 2 of Space 4? A: Not with the default Apple Spaces. There is an alternative, though. CocoaBots makes a small app called Hyperspaces which builds upon the default Spaces and adds a bunch of cool features. Multi-monitor support is coming to their next release. http://thecocoabots.com/blog/post/148/hyperspaces-104-and-the-road-to-11/ A: Stay App sounds like it might do what you want. If you’re fastidious about keeping your windows tidy, Stay is for you. Stay ensures that your windows are always where you want them to be, even as you connect and disconnect displays.

Q: How do I disable or get rid of the startup sound my Mac makes? Everytime I turn on my Macbook Pro it makes a start up noise. This is annoying since there is no volume or ability to turn it off. I just don't want the sound to play at all. How do I disable this startup sound? A: Open Terminal.app and type: sudo -s Give the password when asked for then: cat >/private/etc/rc.shutdown.local #! /bin/sh /usr/bin/osascript -e 'set volume with output muted' then press Ctrl-D and type "exit". Next time you'll reboot in silence BUT you'll have to manually reset the sound volume (F10, slider ...) if you want to hear some music again. Theoretically it should be possible to run under /private/etc/rc.local a script to do it ('set volume without output muted') but that seems to behave erratically. A: I haven't noticed that sound on my MacBook Pro for ages, and today I figured out why. The MBP seems to remember 2 sets of volume settings; both for having-no-headphones-plugged-in, and for having-headphones-plugged-in. I usually have my external speakers plugged in-when I'm at home, and when I'm travelling/way from home obviously I don't. At some point in the past I have turned the volume down to zero when headphones weren't connected, and now when I start the MBP up there's no sound. You could try this (though it's not particularly practical) - turn the volume on your Mac right down to zero, then restart the computer. I suspect you won't hear the startup-sound. Like I say, not really practical but if the start-up noise annoys you enough, you might just get into the habit of turning the volume down before switching off. :-) EDIT: Just realised this this point about turning the volume down has already been made in other answers here, so feel free to ignore this! A: For Snow Leopard and earlier machines download and install "StartupSound.prefPane" which will install a preference pane in system settings to allow you to adjust the startup volume and disable the startup sound: http://www5e.biglobe.ne.jp/~arcana/StartupSound/BETA/index.en.html Note that the above has mixed results in Lion. For Lion users the following is recommended: * *Login as administrator and open a terminal window *Create scriptfile for muting sudo nano /path/to/mute-on.sh *Enter this as content, when done press control+O to save and control+X to exit: #!/bin/bash osascript -e 'set volume with output muted' *Create scriptfile for unmuting sudo nano /path/to/mute-off.sh *Enter this as content, when done press control+O to save and control+X to exit: #!/bin/bash osascript -e 'set volume without output muted' *Make both files executable: sudo chmod u+x /path/to/mute-on.sh sudo chmod u+x /path/to/mute-off.sh *Check if any hooks already exist (these will be overwritten, so make sure it is OK for you) sudo defaults read com.apple.loginwindow LoginHook sudo defaults read com.apple.loginwindow LogoutHook *Add hooks for muting sudo defaults write com.apple.loginwindow LogoutHook /path/to/mute-on.sh sudo defaults write com.apple.loginwindow LoginHook /path/to/mute-off.sh Notes: * */path/to/ is the location of the scripts, I used /Library/Scripts/ *you can skip the unmuting loginhook (i.e. each logout will silence your machine), but I like it this way because I always have sound available exactly at the volume level I set last time *root has to be the owner of the script files - running an editor from command line with sudo is the easiest way to achieve that (otherwise you need to chown) *to delete the hooks, use the following: sudo defaults delete com.apple.loginwindow LoginHook sudo defaults delete com.apple.loginwindow LogoutHook (source) A: You can use StartSound.PrefPane which basically just sets the volume to 0 when you shutdown and then turns it back up after login. A: Hold down the mute button on your keyboard whenever you boot it A: If you keep your volume off when you shut down your mac/laptop it wont make the sound when you start it up again! I don't know if this is true but its what my laptop does :)! Hope this helps!

Q: Multitasking on iPhone Does the iPhone close the background programs if it runs out of memory or battery? A: There are two ways to approach this question. From the end user's perspective, the answer is no. No matter what you do, the app will come back to the same state it was in previously, unless you close it from the switching interface. Technically: yes. When the device runs short on RAM, it will freeze the application's state from RAM to the main storage (flash). When you resume, it loads the state from flash back into RAM, and then resumes. This is intended to happen quickly enough and transparently enough to be indistinguishable, but you may sometimes notice that resuming takes a bit longer if you have loaded several other apps in the meantime (and therefore pushed the app out of RAM). A: They aren't really "in memory," more like cached to disk if and when necessary. Many apps don't even use the multitasking or aren't setup for it. When you switch it does actually close the app. Being in the task bar doesn't guarantee that it's actually in memory, actively running, or both. The OS manages that. A: No. Even restarting, complete power down and power up, will not remove the background applications from memory. According to the Apple Geniuses you must manually remove the applications from the task bar.

Q: Is there a configurable "word-of-the-day"-screensaver/ -widget I am looking for a "word-of-the-day" screensaver or dashboard widget where I can configure (e.g. in a text file) that "words" to be displayed? A: AFAIK - there's word-of-the-day screensaver that comes packed with every Mac OS X (since Tiger). You can configure it on a "per dictionary" basis. So if you need a limited list of some words, just create your own dictionary, install it on the system and I believe you'll be able to use it in a screensaver yourself.

Q: Strange loading screen when MBP battery dies and reboots I have a 2007 Macbook Pro and for nearly two years, the battery has been toast. In April, Apple replaced the logic board. Since the repair, whenever the power cable comes loose, the MBP shuts off as expected. Before the repair, when the power cable was unplugged, the MBP simply shut off. Now, when I plug it back in and turn it on, it boots back up in the previous state, but has a white screen with loading bars at the bottom. I haven't found anything related to this on the web. Is this related to the new logic board, or is there something else I should be concerned about? The MBP is running Leopard and is up to date. A: This feature is called Safe Sleep. Apple notebooks will keep the RAM contents alive (sleep in PC jargon), but write a copy to the disk (hibernate, in PC jargon) at the same time. If the battery runs out while the computer is sleeping, when it wakes up, it needs to read the RAM contents from disk, and thus you get the progress bar you are seeing. Apple doc about it is here A: This is so called "Hibernation" (my first met in windows). When battery dies, the OS dumps whole RAM into HDD (sort of swapping) so that no information is lost. When it's being booted back up, it loads the information back from HDD to RAM (hence you see the progress with those white bars).

Q: Faster alternative to ShakesPeer? I've used ShakesPeer for it's clean and Mac-like interface. But the downloads are really slow. Is there a faster alternative to ShakesPeer? Preferably having at least the same features as ShakesPeer itself if not more. Also preferable if the software follows the Apple Human Interface Guidelines. A: I haven't tried these but Jucy and EiskaltDC++ are two DirectConnect clients that work on mac. However, neither appears to use a mac interface. source: http://alternativeto.net/desktop/shakespeer/?sort=likes&platform=mac A: Whatever calavera pointed you at — also, try MLDonkey, NeoModus Direct Connect (DC original client!) and Valknut, they all have Mac versions. Since I'm not a DC user, can't comment on speed =(

Q: How do hide iPod icon with SBSettings? On my Jailbroken iPad, I have SBSettings installed. I chose to hide all my application icons, but iPod will not go away, no matter what the switch setting is. I was thinking about just going into the file system and manually deleting the icon, but I don't know where it's stored. Any suggestions? A: Are you running OS 3.1.x or 4.0.x? I've had some inconsistencies with hiding certain icons on my jailbroken 4.0.1 phone. It may be that SBSettings isn't fully compatible with OS 4.x yet. edit: Fail on my behalf. Somehow I missed "iPad" in both your question AND tag. /facepalm A: I just used Saurik's guide on theming and made my own iPod icon, a transparent 57 x 57 PNG. Kinda rudimentary, but it works for now. I then used iBlank to hide the shadow. Works for now lol....even though, the iPod is still selectable, kinda gotta be lucky to spot it.

Q: Is Apple's warranty international? I'm about to travel to the US, where iPods / AirPods / iPhone are much cheaper than in my country. I wonder if Apple's warranty is international, and/or what warranty coverage exists when I return to my country. Where can I understand what Apple Warranty covers in the US when products leave the US? A: I bought an ipad in January 2013 (10 mths ago) in the USA. It started giving problems a few weeks ago by restarting for itself every 2 mins. I took it at the apple dealer and repair center in South Africa where I currently stay, they tried fixing it but said that it needs to be replaced but they can't replace it since its under international warranty and they only deal with South African bought products. So I guess the warranty is not international A: Apples warranties are international except for the iPhone where the warranty is only valid in the country the phones was bought in. A: Apple Warranty is international and you can use your warranty on every country that apple has branch. but other than warranty you can buy AppleCare Protection. Apple has “global repair coverage” If you carry your Apple computer or iPod when you travel and happen to need repair service, AppleCare Protection Plan offers global repair coverage. but for this you need to purchase AppleCare Protection , and if you want go to other country to buy your product cheaper AppleCare Protection not a good Idea. A: Yes it's international. My friend bought a MacBook in the US and had a warranty case in Switzerland. The warranty case got solved without any problems. A: AppleCare warranty is international, sort of no questions asked (unless you take in a soaking iPod). Apple's limited 1 year warranty is sort of international. As in, your local Apple Service Provider may provide you with warranty or may choose to be very strict on the wording and not cover anything they don’t have to cover to the letter of the law and agreement. A: Yes, Apple's computer warranties are international. Worst case, you have to ship your product back to the purchasing country if Apple asks for that, but the wording and common practice is U.S. purchases generally get covered everywhere Apple has service globally. See Apple's Warranty Page for more details. The warranty is established in the country of purchase and if warranty service is not available in the country where the device is when service is requested, you may be on the hook for import/export duties as well as paying for the shipping. No, iPhone and some parts of AppleCare plus are not necessarily international. * *https://www.apple.com/legal/warranty/ Pay attention to parts like: IMPORTANT RESTRICTION FOR iPHONE, iPAD AND APPLE TV SERVICE. Apple may restrict warranty service for iPhone, iPad and Apple TV to the country where Apple or its Authorized Distributors originally sold the device. That doesn’t mean you won’t get service, but you could be denied or could have to get the device back to the country of purchase on your dime to get service. Also, no in terms of consumer law varying widely between Europe, Asia, US and other countries: * *How does Apple's two year warranty in Europe work? To recap: * *Warranty is what Apple offers and you may have responsibilities or costs to get service *Consumer law covers things outside the warranty, so you need to balance both when choosing where to buy *Look for words like shall and may and must - these contracts are legal and /or prescriptive so details and words matter. Read all the document, several times before spending money if you don’t know the return policy or have limited time to return goods after purchasing them. A: Read my answer here: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/13285/34885 in the comments (look for my name: madivad). I can vouch that: iPhones warranties are NOT international. IMPORTANT RESTRICTION FOR iPHONE AND iPAD SERVICE. Apple may restrict warranty service for iPhone and iPad to the country where Apple or its Authorized Distributors originally sold the device. from https://www.apple.com/legal/warranty/products/ipad-english-a.html UPDATE: I made this post in 2013, I have again checked the link above in 2017, and the situation is still the same.

Q: Can an iPhone be restored from an iPod Touch backup? If I have an iPod Touch backup on my computer, can an iPhone restore from it? How about vice versa? A: According to this forums post, somebody did it with success. Worked flawlessly for me I just activated my new iPhone 3GS and then iTunes offered to either set it up as a new iPhone or to restore it from my iPod Touch backup which I did. No problems so far... A: Yes, i can confirm this Works based on my experience. All my music and contacts from my iPod touch was magically restored to the iPhone 4S. A: It will depends only of the iOS version, because the Apple's script is not accepting iOS minor than 8 right now (That's called downgrade). But if want to make an "Upgrade" (or restore from a version to the same version) so you have no problem with that, even with different devices.

Q: How do I recover the administrator or root password on OS X? I received a hand me down white MacBook with 10.4 on it and it automatically logs into a user account that isn't able to change much in the preference pane. How do I recover or change the administrator password? The original owner told me to try a few passwords, none of which work to get logged in as admin. A: You can reboot into single user mode and change the password of a user with: passwd [user] Enter the new password twice and reboot. A: Boot to OS recovery, internet recovery or on older systems, with a Mac OS X DVD, then there's an option to change passwords. You can follow an how-to here. A: Getting admin access without the Setup Utility: another option, for the sake of completeness. * *Boot into single user mode by holding command-S on boot up. *Enter /sbin/mount -wu / when the prompt appears to mount the filesystem *Enter rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone *Enter reboot At this point, it should run the colorful little setup utility that ran when the machine was new. This'll create a brand new admin account. This method can be useful if you don't want to mess up any existing accounts on the machine. Before step 4 you can use the passwd command to overwrite the current password for any accounts on the mac. The command ls /Users will show all the user names.

Q: iPhone Taskbar close all applications Is there a way to close all application in the taskbar at once? A: No. You have to manually remove each one. A: One nifty trick I learned from a friend: Enter "wiggle" mode for the taskbar, then tap the icons from right to left. This way you can close at least four apps in a steady motion without having to wait for the icons move one column to the right. Sounds obvious, but try it out and you’ll see what I mean.

Q: "Erase and Install" function missing in Snow Leopard When installing Tiger or Leopard, there was an option called "Erase and Install" that would delete the disk before installing the new OS. In Snow Leopard, this option seems to be missing. Is there any way I can add "Erase and Install" back to Snow Leopard? A: With Snow Leopard Erase and Install is now a two step process: * *When you start up off the Mac OS X Install DVD from the Tools menu choose "Disk Utility". You will then want to erase the hard drive you want to install on. *Install Mac OS X as you would normally. A: Use the tools menu --> disk utility to erase the partition you want to install Snow Leopard on. Then proceed with the installation. A: Because Snow Leopard is an technically a Leopard upgrade it might not be readily accessible. You can boot up and under the "Tools" menu open up Disk Utility to erase before you install.

Q: How do I turn off multitouch zoom in Safari? I'm using my wife's Macbook with the bigger multitouch track pad. Many times while in Safari, it thinks I want to zoom in and the page will zoom in. I want to just get rid of multitouch in Safari, or just disable the zoom feature in Safari. It's nice to have multitouch in other applications like iPhoto, but it just causes problems in Safari. A: In the trackpad preference pane (System Preferences) there is an option to disable Screen Zoom. There is an alternative. A small plugin, of sorts, that allows you to disable pinch zooming in Safari and Firefox. http://cubeyellow.blogspot.com/2009/01/mac-book-pro-trackpad-zooming-and.html

Q: Keyboard needs to be setup on every boot up I am being asked to setup my keyboard every time I reboot my computer. Is there anyway I can get this to keep the setup? I am on Snow Leopard and have a Logitech Wave wireless keyboard and mouse combo. This started happening when I switched to 64-bit mode. Booting into 32-bit mode doesn't fix it. A: Repair permissions: Run Disk Utility; select your (main) disk; click Repair Disk Permissions Viewing logs: Run Console A: Um, standard "stock" fixes: * *Repair permissions *Check logs *Erase (Logitech) software and reinstall You could also see if it is actually saving the connection details (by finding the pref file) or it is unable to.

Q: How can I move an iTunes library from one computer to another? I'm getting a new laptop and I want to move my iTunes library from the old to the new computer. How can I do this? Of course I want to preserve as much information as possible: metadata such as ratings and play counts, cover art, my purchased content from Apple. I also own an iPhone which I used to sync with the old computer and now I want to sync with the new one, preserving my apps, contacts, purchased content, etc. What would be the best way to do this? Is just moving the whole “iTunes” folder from one computer to the other an option? A: If they both have Firewire you can simply use the Migration Utility. A: Yes, moving the whole iTunes folder will work fine, as long as the music is in the same location or a subfolder (that's the default). You can even move from Mac to PC and vice versa. However, I would suggest copying first; just in case anything goes wrong. :-) If the iTunes Media folder and the Library files are in different locations, it can get more complicated. It's still possible, but if this is the case and you have the disk space, it's easiest to “Consolidate” the library into the folder that contains the iTunes Library file before you make the move. A: Yes, simply coping your entirely iTunes folder to an other computer will do the trick. This assumes all of your media is consolidated within the iTunes Media and iTunes Music folders. iTunes will assist in copying music to the folder and organizing a library if you would like to ensure all the media is portable when it comes time to transfer. Do not forget to reauthorize the old computer if you are not going to use it regularly in case it crashes and one of your 5 slots is taken up. You can reset things after a lost computer, but it is somewhat time restricted to prevent abuse of that feature. A: * *If you are a Windows user and don't want to go through all of this hacking, you can buy iTunes Transfer software at my partner site. It will help you back up your library – with playlists – and transfer it to your other computer. *If you're trying to transfer music from your iPod to your computer, unfortunately, Apple won't let you do this freely, but you can buy iPod to Computer software for PC (free trial download), or iPod to Computer software for Mac at my partner site that will allow you to do this. *If you just have the hard drive of your old PC, Ben has shared with us how to make the transfer *If you aren't keen on messing with XML files – and play count isn’t important to you - Oden has a simple process, involving smart playlists, for retaining song ratings when you transfer your iTunes library. *Collin has a simple way to find out those duplicate songs that you may end up with when transferring your catalog. *Aaron devised a clever way to transfer while retaining playlists in your collection. *If you are transferring between Macs, pbaron has a method involving FireWire mode. Source for above.

Q: Why does my MacBook Pro take so long to go to sleep? My MacBook Pro takes an awful long time to go to sleep when I close the lid. Considering that I generally want to close the lid and then carry it somewhere, I want it to be fully asleep so I don't have any hard drive issues. Is there anything I can do to speed up the process? A: I recommend a nifty little utility called SmartSleep that allows you to control when the saving of your RAM contents to disk for the Safe Sleep / Hibernate feature Mac OS X has. Alternatively you can disable Safe Sleep altogether by running: sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0. To change it back to the defaults, change the value to 3. 0 - Old style - just goes to sleep. 1 - Only Hibernate 3 - Default - goes to sleep but writes RAM contents to disk just in case. 5 - Only Hibernate mode but if you use secure virtual memory. 7 - The Default but if you use secure virtual memory. A: Use the command pmset -g log to find out what is delaying the sleep command. Look for "applicationresponse.slowresponse" and "applicationresponse.timedout" entries. A: Depending on what applications you are running it could take a significant amount of time (20-30 sec) to actually "sleep." OS X will "dock" the hard drive head if it detects sudden movement, so I wouldn't expect any issues there. A: Another use for the pmset utility (which, like most Apple utilities, is documented: do "man pmset" in Terminal) is to tell the system to sleep when you hit the power button. In Terminal, do sudo pmset powerbutton 1 and thereafter when you hit the power button a menu comes up with choices Restart, Sleep, Cancel, and Shut Down. I always sleep my MacBook Pro this way in order to be sure it has really gone dormant. On the other end of the sleep cycle, I don't want the machine waking up while traveling if it gets jostled enough to shake the lid open (even briefly). The Terminal command to estabish this is sudo pmset -a lidwake 0 For both commands, you will have to authenticate as an administrator.

Q: Is there a way to start a specific application with a keyboard short cut? Sort of like the Windows+R command in the windows world? That actually just lets you run a command but you get the idea. A: As of Snow Leopard, this actually is built into the OS. Launch Automator and create a service that receives no input from any application. From the Actions Library, add the 'Launch Application' action to the workflow. Select the 'Terminal' application in the drop-down list of Applications. Save your new service and then assign a keyboard shortcut to it in: System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts -> Services A: Solution suggested by @NReilingh is fine but it fails if Terminal.app is running and it has no opened window (I've tested it in OSX 10.7). Replacing Launch Application action with Run AppleScript action and setting the following code to be run does the trick: on run {input, parameters} tell application "Terminal" activate reopen end tell return input end run Here's the full post: Mac OS X: Launch Terminal from keyboard shortcut A: I wanted a shortcut to always open a new Terminal window regardless of anything else. Here is the code to do that: tell application "Terminal" do script "" activate end tell A: Assuming your running Snow Leopard ⌘+space will open Spotlight which can be used to run terminal. Spotlight can be bound to another key combination but the default is similar to Windows+R. A: In Mavericks there is an option to open a new terminal window at the folder you have highlighted in Finder. To enable this option go to Finder -> Services -> Service Preferences and check New Terminal at Folder. Then use it from the Finder menu: A: This solution works for MacOS Sierra. * *Launch Automator *Click 'New Document' and select 'Service' *Change "Service receives selected" to "no input" *Select "Launch Application" from the Action pane *Select the application that you need to launch from the pull down menu. For Terminal you will have to go to the bottom and select "Other" and find it in the Utilities folder. *Save the Service using some name. *Open System Preferences. Go to Keyboard option. Click on Shortcut tab. *Select Services from the left pane and scroll down to General in the right pane. You should see your Service. *Click the service. You should see a button on the selected service itself which says "Add Shortcut". Click on that. *Enter a key combination and close System Preferences. A: If you have the Alfred Powerpack, you can add a hotkey in Alfred 1: Or create a workflow in Alfred 2: Hotkeys have a short delay by default in Alfred 2, but changing the trigger behavior reduces it: A: I would recommend installing QuickSilver. It's an application launcher that will remember the applications you launch most frequent and recommend them first. It's easy to launch any application with a few keystrokes. QuickSilver is the first Application I install on every new Mac. A: Not built-in to the OS, but I've been using a free utility called Visor. What you do with it is leave your Terminal running in the background, but Visor hides it and invokes it in a Quake-style console when you hit a (user-configurable) key combo. It's pretty customizable as to how your Terminal shows/hides. Super awesome. A: DTerm is accessed via a user-configurable hotkey, and pops up a window in which you can execute a terminal command in the current directory. For example, if you're in Finder and want to tar some files, you just hit the hotkey and run tar, without the need to change directories. Pressing Shift+Enter instead of just Enter after typing your command will execute it in a new Terminal window, from which you can keep working. A: I use Spark and have ⌘+⌥+§ (I have a UK keyboard layout; § is just below esc) to launch the terminal. I prefer it to using Services/AppleScripts because it's faster. Also it doesn't add any visible UI elements like other solutions (I'm very anal about keeping my workspace as streamlined as possible). I think development for Spark has stopped but it works perfectly on Snow Leopard. A: I love Apptivate, it is like Spark. Apptivate lets you "assign system wide shortcuts to any application, document, or script file." It just does this one thing, and does it pretty well. It's very small, so doesn't use much system resource. One great feature of Apptivate is that if it detects the application, say Terminal.app, that has already been running, Apptivate will hide it, instead of launching a new instance of the application. A: Although I think the Automator / Keyboard binding to Services is better, I think I should mention Quicksilver, which gives you excellent keyboard services for the mac. You should read this article about Quicksilver. A: This is a bit opinionated and not a direct answer: you can use iTerm and set a global hotkey for it through Preferences (⌘+,) > Keys > Hotkey. A: I'm using FastScripts to do this. It's free for up to 10 keyboard shortcuts, $14.95 to enable unlimited keyboard shortcuts (I'm not affiliated with Red Sweater Software, just a happy customer). A: This is pretty close: CDTo. "Fast mini application that opens a Terminal.app window cd'd to the front most finder window. This app is designed (including it's icon) to placed in the finder window's toolbar." Ideally, you want a tool that mimics the built-in feature of MacOS 9: A: I use Open Terminal. Check it out here. A: Thanks for the recommendation for Spark. I have just now tried version 3.0b9 and it worked perfectly in OS X 10.10.3 for creating a shortcut to launch the terminal. I use Ctrl+Opt+T, which is the same shortcut to open the terminal in my linux distro. A: You can use the Automator.app to make new shortcuts Automator app> and then service(gear icon)[no input]> followed by launch application.app service,> chose terminal.app > [SAVE] > system pref. >keyboard shorcuts >services > setup shortcut ctr+opt+cmd+T Its Explained in this link

Q: How do I turn off the Front Row keyboard shortcut? I keep accidentally hitting Command+Esc and bringing up Front Row. How can I disable this shortcut? A: Under Keyboard & Mouse on System Preferences there is a Keyboard Shortcuts tab.

Q: Why does my MacBook Pro reach high temperatures when running? I have my MacBook Pro sitting on my desk and it's consistently over 160 degrees. It is almost too hot to touch in some places on the casing. A: 160 degrees Fahrenheit, if it is CPU temperature, is normal for MBP. MBPs are designed to run pretty hot, with the aluminum case as the main heatsink the casing gets uncomfortably hot sometimes. If you want to remedy the problem: * *use a laptop stand (I use Belkin Cushtops, they are really comfortable), *put your laptop on steady, heat-transducing surface (human skin, blankets or soft chairs are bad — wooden/plastic/metallic tables are good), *open up the casing and clean the dust (can make it ~10 degrees Celcius cooler) *or, use less video- or CPU-intensive application =) A: If you're interested, I've had a lot of luck manually regulating my MBP's temperature a little better with smcfancontrol. I find that keeping the fans running at 3,000 RPM by default (instead of the normal 1,000) adds no ambient noise over what's already in my office and keeps the temperature a bit lower. I also use it to pre-emptively turn the fans up to 6,000 RPM when I know I'm about to do something that will make it run hot. A: That is within range. The chips can run up to 205*F according to the people at my local Apple store (I had the same question). There is a thermal trigger if it gets too hot that will yank power to the computer. Real pain when you're working on something and don't notice the heat output. A: Short answer: because of the crappy nVidia chip in it. See here for more details and don't forget to use some sort of app to see your actual temperature details. You'll see it's the GPU diode that's burning up. The rest should be hunky dory, at least 12 degrees centigrade below that piece of... extraordinary nVidia technology which I will forever remember for this snafu. Long answer: I currently have one of those pre-Unibody 17" MBPs, with the faulty nVidias. Oh yeah, I'm so happy, I can hardly hold it in. It initially ran at about 75 degrees Centigrade when I used it. After putting it on a smcfancontrol diet and keeping the fans revved up to 4500 as a default, everything was hunky dory except it still ran at about 69 degrees and was burning my forearms (though I love it in the winter). Long story short: bought a wireless keyboard, turned the fans down to their standard 2000, 4 weeks later I'm the proud owner of an MBP with a dead nVidia chip on it. Luckily, I had Apple Care so everything was fixed literally without any questions. The new logic board had the gpu diode running at 63 degrees for the first two weeks (with fans turned down). Now their default has become 72 degrees with the fans at 4000. I think I'm going to turn smcfancontrol off, make the default 2000 again and let it burn. I wonder how many dead nVidias I have to get in so that Apple replaces my notebook with a version that doesn't have a crappy nVidia card in it.

Q: Is there a quick way to lock my Mac? On Windows you can hit the keys Windows+L to lock your computer if you step away. I don't want to have to remember if sleep currently asks for a password, if there is a time out where my screen isn't locked during a short period. Even with Lion supporting resume of many apps, I don't want to log out. I do want to be sure data is secure when stepping out for lunch or a smoke break. A: Your Mac can ask your password after it wakes up if you set it to do so in the Preferences panel (Security). From there on, you can use ⌥+⌘+⏏ to put your Mac to sleep. So all you have to do is hit that and walk away. A: If you enable screen locking within the screen saver pref pane you can put the computer to sleep and lock at the same time by pressing ⌘+⌥+F12 A: ⇧+⌘+⌥+Q will perform a "quick logout." Another option is to enable a password when waking from sleep or screen saver and adding a hot corner for one or the other. Then locking is as simple as tossing a mouse in a corner. A: To lock your screen using a apple keyboard try this Or do this by going to "System Preferences" then "Security" under "General" A: If you want to be able to remote control your Mac (with Synergy or something similar) even when it's locked, I'd recommend you to show the Keychain Status in the Menu Bar. You do that as follows: * *Launch the application Keychain Access *Press ⌘, to open up the Preferences window *Tick the Show Status in Menu Bar check box *Click the newly appeared lock icon in the menu bar *Click Lock Screen to lock the screen This will lock the screen with a login window, but still make the Mac possible to remote control. If you don't need to remote control the Mac, MacLoc is a simple and effective solution. A: On macOS High Sierra, there is a standard key sequence and Apple menu item to lock your screen. * *control-command-q or ^+⌘+Q The Lock Screen 2 app is a great little tool to make locking and unlocking much more adaptable. It is for sale on the app store priced below $5 lately. The promo video is quite entertaining even though it doesn't promote the ease of assigning a custom key command to engage a screen lock. A: Here is a good tutorial which will help you to create a short cut keys to lock your mac machine http://www.macyourself.com/2013/01/27/how-to-lock-your-mac-screen-with-a-keyboard-shortcut/ Lock Screen Service 1. Launch Automator from your Applications folder. 2. Select Service as the document type. 3. Select Utilities from the list on the left, then double-click Run Shell Script in the next column. 4. On the top-right side of the screen, adjust the drop-down menus so the statement reads: Service receives [no input] in [any application] 5. Copy the following command into the large text box that appears: /System/Library/CoreServices/"Menu Extras"/User.menu/Contents/Resources/CGSession -suspend 6. Go to File > Save and name your service Lock Screen. Once saved, you can now quit Automator. Lock Screen Keyboard Shortcut 1. Launch System Preferences and go to the Keyboard pane. 2. Next, select the Keyboard Shortcuts tab. From the list on the left, select Application Shortcuts. Click on the plus (+) button below to add your new shortcut. 3. In the dialog box we’ll want to leave All Applications selected in the first menu. Enter Lock Screen as the Menu Title. Please note this has to be exactly the same name you entered when saving the service in Automator. Finally, enter your keyboard shortcut. Let’s go with Command+Option+Shift+L. 4. Click Add and you’re all done! Now when you press your keyboard shortcut (Command+Option+Shift+L), the Mac login screen will immediately be displayed. You’re still technically logged in and processes such as large downloads will continue in the background. But you can leave your Mac unattended without worry – no one will be able to access your account until you enter your password. When you do, everything on your desktop will be there just as you left it! A: Go to settings -> Mission control and then over to HotCorners on the bottom left corner. There are 4 corner setting appearing there. Choose anyone of them according to your feasibility as put to sleep. Just by dragging the mouse to that corner will put it to sleep and lock your system. I guess thats the best easy shortcut i have discovered. A: If you're using Alfred, just invoke Alfred and start typing "lock". I don't remember if it's activated by default, but if not, you can activate and change the keywords in the Alfred preferences. A: Via the Expose system preferences panel you can set a "hot corner" of your monitor that activates your screen saver. Say you set the Bottom Left corner, as soon as you move your mouse there the screen saver will invoke. If you've set a password on it, bingo, done. Yet another option is to enable Fast User Switching in the Login Options pane of the Accounts preferences panel. This puts a Users menu in the top right hand corner, from which you can quickly choose "Login Window...". This kicks you to the login screen, requiring a password to move away from, and also does not end your session/quit any running apps. A: Deskshade does exactly what you are asking. It locks the screen displaying only a huge padlock sign so intruders know the screen is locked which prevents unnecessary attempts to use the machine whiles you are away. http://macrabbit.com/ A: SizzlingKeys is a little Preference Pane that mostly lets you configure iTunes keyboard shortcuts, but one of the "Extras" included lets you specify a shortcut to actually lock the computer and take you to the Fast User Switching screen, not just start the screensaver. I keep Lock configured as ⌃+⌘+L but you can specify whatever you want. SizzlingKeys has a paid upgrade, but the Lock shortcut is configurable using the free version. A: Another program that can allow you to quickly lock your screen is Padlock. Note that the aforelinked Macworld review of Padlock also gives a comprehensive review of other solutions (many of which were discussed above) for locking your Mac. A: FTW! A keyboard short cut to launch screen saver which you can configure with a password lock. All free. Follow the link for better explanation and screens. I have been using quicksilver to launch the screensaver which works nicely as well. http://leafraker.com/2007/09/14/start-the-screen-saver-with-quicksilver/ The only thing left to do is to define a keyboard trigger. I’m using “Shift/Control/Command-L” as my trigger. This key combination may sound a bit awkward at first, but I’m using “Shift/Control/Command” for all my Quicksilver trigger. The nice thing about this combination is that it rarely cause conflicts with other keyboard shortcuts, and once you are used to this combination it’s really not this bad. So in this case I combined it with the letter “L”, for “Lock”. A: There is finally a native way to lock your screen, starting with macOS High Sierra (10.13). This can be done by clicking the Apple menu at the top left of the screen, and then pressing "Lock Screen." The shortcut associated with this action is ^⌘Q. Arguably, this is not as convenient as the ❖L (Windows + L) shortcut that exists on Windows. However, one can achieve a similar behavior on the Mac natively. Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts, click on All Applications, press the + (plus) button at the bottom, type in "Lock Screen" (without quotes) for the menu title, and for the shortcut assign your own shortcut (such as ⌘L). Now you can use ⌘L à la Windows (or your own shortcut) to lock the screen. Note that using ⌘L as your lock screen shortcut will render it ineffective for other tasks such as focusing on the URL bar in Safari. A: Logging out to the fast user switching screen * *Run /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu\ Extras/User.menu/Contents/Resources/CGSession -suspend. *Enable the fast user switching menu from the Users & Groups preference pane and then select Login Window… from the menu. *Use the lock action in Alfred. Locking the screen * *Check "Require password immediately after sleep or screen saver begins" in the Security & Privacy preference pane. You can then lock the computer manually by pressing control-shift-eject to turn off displays or option-command-eject to go to sleep. A power key can be substituted for eject in 10.8 and later. In 10.9 and later, you can also put displays to sleep by running pmset displaysleepnow. *Enable the Keychain menu extra from the preferences of Keychain Access and then select Lock Screen... from the menu. A: You guys should check out QuickLock to lock your Mac with. It locks with any desired keyboard shortcut, it's beautiful, and it's completely and totally customizable. Best of all it's free. Check it out here: http://www.quicklockapp.com A: On macOS High Sierra, there is a standard key sequence and Apple menu item to lock your screen. * *Control-Command-Q or ^+⌘+Q For older OS, ⇧+⌃+⏏ puts the display (only the display, not the whole computer) to sleep and will then prompt you for a password if you have enabled Require password [amount of time] after sleep or screen saver begins under System Preferences > Security. If your Mac does not have an ⏏ (eject) key, you can use ⇧+⌃+⌽ (power). A: Lock Me Now - a Free app. Found it great for myself after searching and trying various options. Nothing redundant, just all-you-need-out-of-the-box: * *Lock your screen *Set a global shortcut *Unlock with just a password P.S: I'm not affiliated with this product. A: With the track pad, you can configure gestures for locking your mac. I do it with a four finger swipe left. To confiugre this, you need a (free) tool like the BetterTouchTool. A: Use a keyboard shortcut and use Automator to make a screen lock service. This will allow you to set any keyboard command you would like to lock or start a screen saver on your mac. As referenced below is a nice article on how to do the process. Handy screen locking tips for Mac If mousing to part of the screen isn’t your thing, you can use the keyboard to lock the screen, but it takes Automator (or a third-party application, but Automator is the better bet if you’re using OS X 10.6). Launch Automator and create a new service. Tell the new service that it receives “no input” (rather than the default of “text”). The default is also for “any application”, make sure to keep this set. Next, drag the Start Screen Saver action from the Utilities action group to the workflow. Finally, save the service and give it a name, such as Start Screensaver. Go back to Keyboard Shortcuts in the Keyboard section of System Preferences and look in the Services group. Scroll down to the General section and you will see the newly created Start Screensaver service is enabled. Click in the whitespace to the far right of this entry and a new entry box will appear. Type the keyboard shortcut, such as CTRL-OPT-L. Exit System Preferences. You will now be able to hit CTRL-OPT-L and activate the screen saver in order to lock the screen. If you wish to return to the login window instead (you are still logged in, but the computer is locked) rather than activate the screensaver, change the Automator service to Run Shell Script instead of Start Screen Saver and have it run the following command: /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu\ Extras/user.menu/Contents/Resources/CGSession -suspend A: From my answer in Super User. Using Keychain Access's Lock Screen menubar. Activate it here, in Keychain Access.app's Preferences: Then lock. A: I've used Salute for years - works beautifully. A nod to Windows' three finger salute - ⌘+⌃+⌫ gives you quick access to screensaver (set a password on the and your done) - terminal or activity monitor. It's no longer actively developed but doesn't need to be - worked great on Leopard through Mavericks. A: You have some app on the App Store who provide you a lot of way to lock your Mac. Like this one : https://itunes.apple.com/fr/app/lock-me-now/id464265594?l=en&mt=12 Or this : http://www.knocktounlock.com [Lock and unlock your Mac with your iPhone bluetooth] A: Just hit these 3 buttons at the same time and hold shortly until you're locked: Control-Shift-Power (⏏ or ⌽) Works in the latest macOS Sierra. A: Beginning with OS X Mavericks, all you need to do is press the power button of your MacBook to put it to sleep. This has the advantage of preventing you from having to close the lid to get the same effect. This will put your MacBook to sleep, however.

Q: When using Spaces, is there a way to set each "desktop" background independently? For instance, say I had a few sweet background images I wanted to use to identify each one. A: There's no built-in feature in OS X for that but there are two applications that can do that for you, Hyperspaces and SpaceSuit. A: You have to use a third-party tools, like SpaceSuit. A: Mac OS X Lion supports this out of the box now. Simply switch to the Space you want to apply a certain background to, then change it as usual (with System Preferences or the desktop's context menu). Repeat for your other Spaces and background images. For older versions, you will still need to use a third-party tool as recommended by the other answers.

Q: Which OS X Applications do you find indispensable? Please Search Prior To Posting! There are many applications already listed. In all likelihood, this includes the one you are thinking of. Please check the existing answers to avoid duplicates, and the resulting cleanup it necessitates. To search, use the search box in the upper-right corner. To search the answers of the current question, use inquestion:this. For example: inquestion:this Evernote If it hasn't already been posted, please follow a few simple rules when adding it as an answer. Rules * *Limit to one application per answer. *Add a short description of the application. *Add a link to the website in the name of the application if possible (no direct downloads). *Use ## [appName](link) for citing the application name. *Only Mac OS X (not iOS, OS 9, compatible, etc) applications. All versions of OS X are accepted, but if the application requires a specific version please note. A: Perian Perian is a free, open source QuickTime component that adds native support for many popular video formats. A: Transmission Transmission is a cross-platform BitTorrent client that is: Free and Community-Driven. Easy. Lean. Native. Powerful. A: The Unarchiver The Unarchiver is a much more capable replacement for "BOMArchiveHelper.app", the built-in archive unpacker program in Mac OS X. The Unarchiver is designed to handle many more formats than BOMArchiveHelper, and to better fit in with the design of the Finder. It can also handle filenames in foreign character sets, created with non-English versions of other operating systems. Supported file formats include Zip, Tar-GZip, Tar-BZip2, RAR, 7-zip, LhA, StuffIt and many other more and less obscure formats. A: Notify Notify is an awesome email notifier for Mac OS X. It fits seamlessly into your menubar, only vying for your attention when you have new mail. Notify supports mutliple accounts, including Gmail, MobileMe, and Rackspace Email. A: Echofon A really simple, intuitive twitter client. This is the one that got me to switch from Tweetie. A: X Lossless Decoder X Lossless Decoder(XLD) is a tool for Mac OS X that is able to decode/convert/play various 'lossless' audio files. Supported audio files can be split into tracks with a cue sheet when decoding. It works on Mac OS X 10.3 and later. XLD is Universal Binary, so it runs natively on both Intel Macs and PPC Macs. A: Unrar This is a command line utility to unpack the .rar files on Mac OSX. You can't unpack the .rar files natively on OSX, where this small util is useful. A: Aperture Aperture is a fine app for photo management and editing for professionals and advanced amateur photographers alike. It supports many file-formats and raw image file formats. For a complete feature list see the link above. One of my favorite features is having a full screen view while still having image control for editing via a HUD. A: Caffeine Caffeine is a tiny program that puts an icon in the right side of your menu bar. Click it to prevent your Mac from automatically going to sleep, dimming the screen or starting screen savers. Click it again to go back. Right-click (or ^-click) the icon to show the menu. A: Transmit FTP, SFTP, Amazon S3 and WebDav client. A: Cyberduck for Upload, Download and Sync of FTP, SFTP, WebDav, iCloud, S3, ... A: Skype With skype, you can make * *Voice and video calls to anyone else on Skype *Conference calls with three or more people *Instant messaging, file transfer and screen sharing A: MacPorts The MacPorts Project is an open-source community initiative to design an easy-to-use system for compiling, installing, and upgrading either command-line, X11 or Aqua based open-source software on the Mac OS X operating system. To that end we provide the command-line driven MacPorts software package under a BSD License, and through it easy access to thousands of ports that greatly simplify the task of compiling and installing open-source software on your Mac. A: MacVim A very good port of Vim. I used both Emacs and TextMate for quite some time, but finally became a Vim user. I think I'll have a look at TextMate 2, if it will actually be released some time… A: Isolator Isolator is a small menu bar application that helps you concentrate. When you're working on a document, and don't want to be distracted, turn on Isolator. It will cover up your desktop and all the icons on it, as well as the windows of all your other applications, so you can concentrate on the task in hand. It's a small utility, but one that I find pretty indispensable. One of the first apps I install on new Mac. A: A Better Finder Rename A Better Finder Rename has long been the file renamer of choice for tens of thousands of professionals, businesses and hobbyists across the world. A: Mathematica If I need to choose only one software to install on my Mac, I would install Mathematica by Wolfram. A: XBMC XBMC is an award-winning free and open source (GPL) software media player and entertainment hub for digital media. XBMC is available for Linux, OSX, Windows, and the original Xbox. A: iMovie iMovie is the best amateur video editing software out there. It has a very small learning curve, which makes it great for doing quick projects. I used iMovie for the longest time, then switched to FCE. I still use it for minor projects. A: Quicksilver More then just an application launcher, Quicksilver is an intuitive, self learning, application launcher and system manipulator. It can also assign global hotkeys to actions, store clipboard history, show the current iTunes song and much more. A: iWork Pages is both a streamlined word processor and an easy-to-use page layout tool. It allows you to be a writer one minute and a designer the next, always with a perfect document in the works.   With great-looking templates, easy-to-create formulas, and dynamic tables and charts, spreadsheets suddenly make perfect sense.   Create your presentation in Keynote, and you’ll be a hard act to follow. Powerful yet easy-to-use tools and dazzling effects put the show in slideshow. I use iWork constantly. Both on my Mac and iPad. It's just great :D A: VirtualBox VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). A: MusicBrainz Picard MusicBrainz is an audio file metadata (or "tag") editor. It has options for both automatic and manual modification of audio metadata. It's cross-platform (Linux/Mac OS X/Windows) and written in Python and is the official MusicBrainz tagger. Picard supports the majority of audio file formats, is capable of using audio fingerprints (PUIDs, similar to other fingerprinting apps like Shazam and SoundHound), performing CD lookups and disc ID submissions, and it has excellent Unicode support. Additionally, there are several plugins available that extend Picard's features. A: Clean My Mac The world's easiest-to-use maintenance solution. This all-in-one tool includes everything you need to keep your Mac clean and healthy. A: Opera Because it's still my favourite browser. After having used it on Windows for eight years, I took it with me when I "switched" four years ago. Browsers are always subjective, but I like Opera because I rely on its single-key shortcuts, used its mouse gestures a lot before I moved over to a glass trackpad, I have dozens of tabs open at any time, it has session handling, bookmark syncing, and dozens of other neat, small things. And everything is built in and just works. I could probably get Firefox to do everything Opera does for me, but it would be a hassle, and it would be even slower than it already is without any extensions. I could never get Safari to do everything I need. A: NTFS-3G (Tuxera) We still need to learn how to play nice with windows systems (and filesystems). I use this to access my NTFS drives. NTFS-3G is a stable, read/write NTFS driver for Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenSolaris, QNX, Haiku, and other operating systems. It provides safe handling of the Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 NTFS file systems. A high-performance driver is available commercially for embedded devices. A: CrashPlan A very powerful backup application that allows you to backup to external drives, other computers, and/or their own cloud at a very reasonable price. It has an impressive compression rate and allows you to create multiple backup sets to backup different data to different locations. It has a well-designed interface and allows you to specify scheduled or continuous backups. It offers versioning and 448-bit encryption. For a home user the software is free to use if you choose not to backup to their cloud. A: I Love Stars Displays iTunes’ current song’s rating in your menu bar. Click to change rating. Supports keyboard shortcuts. Has a configurable sound to remind you to rate an unrated song. Disappears when nothing’s playing. A: Evernote Evernote is an app for note taking that features online syncing, much like Dropbox. Install Evernote on your desktop, laptop, iPhone and iPad and have access to all your notes, and if you've left all them all at home, access them on the web. A: Safari While I adore Chrome, but Chrome on Mac is not on the same level as Chrome on Windows yet. A: Firefox Firefox is an open-source web browser from Mozilla, based off Netscape. With a few OS X specific tweaks it can be made to behave like a OS X browser should, including font rendering, Keychain Access and Retina display support. A: OmniGraffle The only diagramming application worth using. A: Pomodoro Pomodoro Desktop is a desktop application for Time Management on your Mac OSX. It is a simple but effective way to manage your (coding) time, and it's based on the Pomodoro technique you can find here. A: Air Display Technically this is both an iOS and Mac OS X application. What it does is let you use your iPad as a second monitor with your Mac. When I am using my Mac my iPad isn't usually in use (unless a family member stole it) so I use Air Display to make it useful while I am using my Mac. You get a 1024x768 or 768x1024 display that rotates and flips automatically - like you would expect. The Mac portion is free, but you buy the iPad App. Runs with Windows too. Operates over WiFi, but you can always create a private network if one does not exist or it is too slow! A: OmniDiskSweeper OmniDiskSweeper scans your hard drive telling you where your largest files are, making it easy to delete cruft. It's intelligent in how it presents this information hierarchically. A: VMware Fusion Yet another virtual machine product. I have tried Parallels and am using VirtualBox on and off, but VMware's Fusion is what I find to be most efficient and feature-full. Unity view is quite efficient when you want to run something side-by-side, while full screen or windowed modes are good for when you need a focus or are just testing out something. A: iTerm2 iTerm2 is a full featured terminal emulation program written for OS X using Cocoa. We are aiming at providing users with best command line experience under OS X. The letter i represents a native apple look and feel of the program interface, and an emphasis on complete international support. Note: iTerm2 is based on the old iTerm and is supported by the original author. A: Reeder for Mac A gorgeous RSS reader based on the iOS app. * *Syncs with Google Reader *Can manage Google Reader subscriptions *Has full Readability integration *Supports multi-touch gestures *Switches between reader and webpage view in a swipe *Has customizable interface and shortcuts *Supports Lion fullscreen mode *Offers quick access to services (including Twitter, Readability, Instapaper, ReadItLater and Evernote) A: VirtualHostX For web developers who develop websites locally on their Mac. VirtualHostX manages your Apache Virtual Hosts and enable the use of domain names that point to your local machine (even non-routable domain names.) VirtualHostX does this by managing your Mac's hosts file and your Apache httpd.conf and httpd-vhosts.conf config files. It even supports MAMP (although I don't use MAMP.) It's one of my top 5 favorite apps and one I'd hate to do without. I use it every time I start a new project! A: iChm iChm is an ebook reader for CHM (Microsoft Compiled HTML Help) files. A: SABnzbd SABnzbd is an Open Source Binary Newsreader written in Python. It's totally free, incredibly easy to use, and works practically everywhere. SABnzbd makes Usenet as simple and streamlined as possible by automating everything we can. All you have to do is add an .nzb. SABnzbd takes over from there, where it will be automatically downloaded, verified, repaired, extracted and filed away with zero human interaction. A: KeePassX password vault KeePassX is a cross platform secure password saver. Like Keychain, but you can use it on your mobile phone and windows computers. A: Postbox Postbox 2 is first class email software that puts you in the driver’s seat. Stay on task, find information quickly and act, not react. Unified Account Groups Focus Pane Quick Reply Exist both free and paid versions A: Kod a programmers' editor for OS X An open source project that is slowly replacing TextMate for me. A: Papers Designed for scientists, Papers manages PDFs of journal articles. Articles imported to Papers can easily have their metadata applied from journal databases. Articles can then easily be sorted by author or journal, and labeled with different categories. Papers has an associated iOS app that it syncs with. A: SizeUp SizeUp allows you to quickly position a window to fill exactly half the screen (splitscreen), a quarter of the screen (quadrant), full screen, or centered via the menu bar or configurable system-wide shortcuts (hotkeys). Similar to "tiled windows" functionality available on other operating systems. A: Plex Media Center for OS X Plex bridges the gap between your Mac and your home theater, doing so with a visually appealing user interface that provides instant access to your media. Plex can play a wide range of video, audio and photo formats as well as online streaming audio and video. The real power of Plex is found in its library features: Organize your media into versatile libraries, automatically retrieve metadata from the Internet, and display your libraries using one of the visually stunning skins. Plex has all but replaced VLC as my primary media application. A: Forklift A Finder replacement. Two panes file management program. Not as cutomizable as Total Commander but has a lot of features builtin. A: Shady If you're finding your laptop screen too bright at night even on the minimum brightness, Shady's the right guy for you. Basically, it puts a transparent overlay over your entire screen, dimming it anywhere between 0% and 90% of normal. A: muCommander muCommander is a lightweight, cross-platform file manager with a dual-pane interface. It runs on any operating system with Java support (Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, *BSD, Solaris...). Here's a non-exhaustive list of what you'll find: * *Virtual filesystem with support for local volumes, FTP, SFTP, SMB, NFS, HTTP, Amazon S3, Hadoop HDFS and Bonjour *Quickly copy, move, rename files, create directories, email files... *Browse, create and uncompress ZIP, RAR, 7z, TAR, GZip, BZip2, ISO/NRG, AR/Deb and LST archives *ZIP files can be modified on-the-fly, without having to recompress the whole archive *Universal bookmarks and credentials manager *Multiple windows support *Full keyboard access *Highly configurable *Available in 23 languages : American & British English, French, German, Spanish, Czech, Simplified & Traditional Chinese, Polish, Hungarian, Russian, Slovenian, Romanian, Italian, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, Slovak, Japanese, Swedish, Danish, Ukrainian and Arabic. *Free Software (GPL) A: Voodoopad VoodooPad is a place to write down your notes and thoughts. Ideas, images, lists, passwords, your mom's apple pie recipe. Anything you need to keep track of and organize. VoodooPad will grow with you without getting in the way. Drag and drop folders, PDFs, applications, or URLs into VoodooPad, and they will link up just like on the web. And with powerful search, nothing will be lost or out of reach. A: Adobe Creative Suite / Master Collection The absolute KING of creative tools. Sure, the price is a bit up there, although there really isn't anything that can touch the versatility of having seventeen applications at your disposal. I've used some of these tools since their very existence (Illustrator, Photoshop) and I honestly can't imagine working without them. It would be difficult to describe what they all do; infinite possibilities. Photoshop Extended, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat X Pro, Flash Professional, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Contribute, Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition, OnLocation, Encore, Bridge, Device Central, Media Encoder, Media Encoder ◆ I'm a bit shocked this is just now making it's debut here. A: Audio Hijack Pro Audio Hijack allows you to record any sound from your Mac or input device. You can also mute certain applications. This is my go-to-application for any audio recording. A: Stickies It's Apple's program for taking notes. Very minimalistic and fast. Your notes can be: * *formatted how you like *edited with hyperlinks *drag and drop pictures *export as *.txt *custom color of note A: Soulver An amazing calculator that does it all with a nice text-based interface. Just type your problem as you'd write it on paper. You see your answer instantly. No setting up formulas, no equals button. If you make a mistake, you don't have to start all over again, you just hit delete. A: Hiss Hiss is an OSX app that forwards notifications from Growl enabled apps to Notification Center in Mountain Lion. Currently in beta, but it does an awesome job of piping all your Growl notifications into the Notification Center of OS X Mountain Lion. The only real downside to it is that it flags all notifications with the Growl icon. A: Sequel Pro Sequel Pro is a fast, easy-to-use Mac database management application for working with MySQL databases. Sequel Pro gives you direct access to your MySQL databases on local and remote servers. Whether you are a Mac Web Developer, Programmer or Software Developer your workflow will be streamlined with a native Mac OS X application! A: Things Task management tool with an that UI strikes a nice balance between simplicity and functionality. Can be synced with iPhone and iPad versions. It's a commercial app, and not even very cheap (40€ / $53 currently), but I've come to rely on it a lot. A: BetterTouchTool Take your Magic Mouse and add some more magic to it. Lets you do tons more gestures than OS X alone. Works for the new trackpad and the multitouch trackpads in laptops too. It's still a bit buggy, but really, really cool. A: MacTeX -- TeXLive distribution and assorted goodies for the Mac. A: Sublime Text 2 Sublime Text has grown to become my favorite GUI code editor. It feels like a spiritual successor to TextMate (even allowing support for some TextMate bundles like snippets and themes), and has many original+natural features like fully independent text cursors, a very nice search feature, and a rapidly-growing plugin API and surrounding community. I liked it so much I wrote an inline lint plugin. A: Skitch Skitch allows you to take screenshots on your Mac, edit them and share them with others. It makes the sharing process seamless by making it a natural workflow to send the image (with edited arrows and other highlights helpful to your client) to them via email or automatic website uploads. It is especially popular with the designer community, as they show their clients rough drafts of their work in a nearly automated process. It makes it simple to work remotely with someone and pass on work revisions and get feedback quickly. Other uses include: * *Snap a website *Capture a chat moment *Screenshot an application *iSight snap your bad hair day *Quickly sketch an idea *Tap into your iPhoto Library *Re-open images from your Skitch History A: Coda Coda is the only web-language-text-editor I like. It does everything you really need for web applications. It remember some common part of code in clips that you can load just by typing their tag name, it completes your html tags, it shows you the list of functions with related variables and autocomplete, it has the powerful Transmit ftp engine built in, it has a great visual CSS editor, it allows you to personalize the text colors and it has HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP doumentation maulaus available from within the application. Never seen all these features in just one application! From the developer's website: So, we code web sites by hand. And one day, it hit us: our web workflow was wonky. We’d have our text editor open, with Transmit open to save files to the server. We’d be previewing in Safari, adjusting SQL in a Terminal, using a CSS editor and reading references on the web. “This could be easier,” we declared. “And much cooler.” A: InsomniaX Disables sleep mode, so you can shut your lid without the system hibernating. A: Google's Quick Search Box An application launcher, like Quicksilver. Having tried both, I found Quick Search Box's UI to be cleaner and the overall application to be faster. A: TinkerTool This handy tool allows you to customize OSX in various ways so that it is more efficient for you uses and allows you to access settings that you normally couldn't A: PCalc This is an awesome calculator that I have been using for at least 10 years. For basic arithmetic and quick calculations this app can't be beat. It is also available from the Mac App store. A: Fraise Fraise is a free text editor for Mac OS X Leopard 10.6 which is both easy to use and powerful. It is designed to neither confuse newcomers nor disappoint advanced users. General-purpose text editor with extensive syntax highlighting support. Can be downloaded via MacUpdate. A: 0xED a free, native OS X hex editor based on the Cocoa framework. * *Fast editing of large files. *Unlimited file size (limited by what the actual file system supports). *Small memory footprint. *Instant opening of files of any size. *Resource fork editing. *Full hex/text search/replace. *Binary/text Cut/copy/paste support. *Plug-in system to display your custom data types. A: Nocturne For all those low-light situations, Nocturne is a tool for inverting colors, changing screen tint etc. So I can make the screen dimmer while keeping it readable, when the dimmest backlight setting is too bright. I especially like the Invert hue option, which can be used to keep colors the same while inverting black/white. A: LaunchBar LaunchBar is a smart and powerful, keyboard driven productivity utility that lets you access and control every aspect of your digital life. Whatever you want to get done on your Mac – with LaunchBar it’s only a few keystrokes away. Indespensible as a keyboard utility to launch applications, open websites, search the web and a million other things. A: F.lux f.lux makes your computer screen look like the room you're in, all the time. When the sun sets, it makes your computer look like your indoor lights. In the morning, it makes things look like sunlight again. Tell f.lux what kind of lighting you have, and where you live. Then forget about it. F.lux will do the rest, automatically. A: TotalFinder Improves the finder by adding a tabbed view, as well as other less interesting features. I didn't realize how addicted to this I was until I got a new Mac and couldn't figure out why I couldn't open another finder tab. :-) A: CloudApp What a fantastic little App... it makes easy to share allmost any file instantly and when you create a screenshot it automatically uploads it to the web and you have the short URL ready to be pasted anywhere. a simple Cmd + SHIFT + 4 and ... Paste the url :) ...and you have RainDrops to share other content as photos from iPhoto directly and more A: TextWrangler TextWrangler is the (free) powerful general purpose text editor, and Unix and server administrator’s tool. It is a powerful and richly featured tool for composing, modifying, and transforming text stored in plain-text files. Among other things, it can open files from (and save them) to remote FTP and SFTP servers, offers a powerful grep engine, supports multi-byte and non-Roman text files, can perform Find Differences on pairs of files or folders, and can be invoked from the Unix command line. A: iTunes quote from Thilo: I absolutely hate this app, but at the same time I (or rather my iPods) cannot live without it. Please, Steve, make iTunes optional for iPods and iPads. A: iStat Menus Displays customizable system monitoring information like CPU, memory and network usage and hardware temperatures in the menu bar. So like MenuMeters but a bit nicer in my opinion. A: Notational Velocity is an application that stores and retrieves notes. It is an attempt to loosen the mental blockages to recording information and to scrape away the tartar of convention that handicaps its retrieval. The solution is by nature nonconformist. A: BBEdit Hands down the best plain-text editor I've ever used. A: Sparrow Sparrow's hallmark is a simplified user interface reminiscent of Twitter clients such as Tweetie or iOS apps, as opposed to a more traditional e-mail style such as Apple's Mail or Mozilla Thunderbird. Sparrow currently supports all IMAP email accounts. It also includes features such as drag-and-drop attachments, Growl support, and keyboard shortcuts, as well as threaded replies and easy switching between Gmail accounts. A: Microsoft Office Office for Mac 2011 is the best option for Mac users who share documents at home, work, or at school. It comes packed with powerful features for creating artful documents, dynamic spreadsheets, and effective presentations. Plus it’s compatible. You can be confident that your documents will open correctly on Mac or PC. A: Parallels Desktop Gives almost(!) seamless Windows OS and apps integration. A: Skim * *PDF reader and note-taker. A: Overflow Overflow is an application designed to quickly launch applications, open documents, or access folders while reducing the number of items needed in your Dock. A: Base Base is an awesome tool for managing SQLite databases. It has an intuitive interface and allows you to easily create or alter tables. I especially like that the transcript shows you exactly what queries Base is executing against your database. A: Clipmenu A simple yet powerful clipboard management tool. A: JustNotes A simple notes app that syncs with Simplenote--my favorite notes app for iOS. A: AppFresh AppFresh helps you to keep all applications, widgets, preference panes and application plugins installed on your Mac up to date. All from one place, easy to use and fully integrated into Mac OS X. AppFresh works by checking the excellent osx.iusethis.com for new versions and lets you download and install available updates easily. A: QuickCursor QuickCursor lets you use your favorite editor to edit text in any Mac app that has a text input field. It's particularly useful for editing textboxes on web pages. A: AppTrap When you move a .app to the Trash, AppTrap notices this and offers to remove all associated library and preference files. A: AntiRSI A timer that detects when you're using the computer and tells you to take breaks if you've been at it too long. I like it because it has two timers running concurrently, one for small, frequent breaks, the other for long, rarer breaks. It's intelligent, configurable, and can show the timers on the dock icon. A: TinyUmbrella TinyUmbrella is a great app for anyone who has an iOS device they want to downgrade to a previous firmware for one reason or other. It backs up and saves the SHSH blobs or "Keys" required to complete the restore. A: Bowtie Bowtie (free) is a little app for controlling iTunes and Last FM. It comes with several features, and it's really well done. Here's a brief description from its webpage. Bowtie is a free application that allows you to control iTunes and your iPhone (requires 99¢ companion app) with customizable shortcuts, submits your songs to Last.fm with support for Loving and Banning, and sports a very simple, yet very powerful, HTML5 + CSS + JavaScript theming system. It's got some pretty cool "Bowlets", or little controllers/information displayers that can sit on the screen. There are plenty to choose from (these are just a few I have downloaded from the theme browser): This is one of my favourite (PaperRift by creeze): Download on App Store. A: Port Map Easily configure ports, assuming you have a UPnP router. A: Hex Editor Practically every editor, including text editors, lie about the contents of files. Even programming languages change or omit certain characters. In general this is intended to help you see what they think you are looking for, but sometimes you just want to see things how they really are Note: The original hexeditor I linked to is no longer on offer, so I have updated the link with the suggestion from neoneye A: NetBeans IDE A free, open-source Integrated Development Environment for software developers. All the tools needed to create professional desktop, enterprise, web, and mobile applications with the Java platform, as well as with C/C++, PHP, JavaScript and Groovy. A: LibreOffice LibreOffice is the FLOSS office suite. It's comparable to Microsoft Office while available for free. A: Boom * *provides a system-wide equalizer *boost the overall volume of your computer *boost volume of specific audio files *fast access via menu icon A: Hands Off! Firewall * *Prevents applications from phoning home *Block outgoing/incoming network connections *Block subdomains *Supports IPv4, IPv6 and local networks *Block read/write file operations *Monitoring network connections and disk access *export/import rules *default rules for certain applications (Mail, Safari,...) *access via menubar A: Moom Moom is a very configurable window management tool. Some useful features include convenient and fast window placement and resizing using grids, saving window layout profiles, configurable hot keys, and much more. A: Little Ipsum It’s my favorite dummy text / lorem ipsum generator for OS X (free). What it makes so special is the selection mechanism from the menu bar (words… sentences… paragraphs): A: Bark From their site: Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks? Bark intelligently brings notifications from Growl into Notification Center under OS X Mountain Lion. Much like Hiss, Bark forwards your Growl notifications to Notification Center in Mountain Lion. The catch though is it forwards them not as "Growl Notifications", but as notifications from the actual app that sent them, making the experience totally seamless. Screenshots might make it more clear. I reckon Bowtie and Coda 2 don't support Notification Center natively, but with Bark this is what you get: And on notification center they look like this: Correct icons, correct grouping, the plugin is completely free and works with the newer versions of Growl (App Store versions)... definitely worth checking out! PS: Coda 2.0.3 I think now supports Notification Center natively, but you get the idea... A: Secrets Secrets is a PrefPane that lets users access hidden settings in many Mac OS X applications. It is also open source and user driven, any user can submit a secret and have it immediately available in the Secrets for anyone to use. A: Spotify For listening to music off the internet. This definitely has become one of the pieces of software I would first install (on a Mac or any other computer). Note: Spotify is available only in some countries; currently: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The Wikipedia article has details. A: Carbon Copy Cloner Clone, synchronize, backup. CCC 3 features an interface designed to make the cloning and backup procedure very intuitive. In addition to general backup, CCC can also clone one hard drive to another, copying every single block or file to create an exact replica of your source hard drive. CCC's block-level copy offers the absolute fastest performance and highest fidelity in the industry! A: Acorn I have Photoshop, but Acorn is an amazing, lightweight and cheap alternative I go to way, way more often. A: TotalTerminal (formerly Visor) * *"A system-wide terminal on a hot-key." I press ctrl-T (the hot key I chose), and a tab-able terminal window slides down from the top of my screen. This invaluable for anyone who, like me, is constantly between the terminal and other apps. This great little tool was originally by Blacktree, who made Quicksilver. A: OmniFocus OmniFocus is designed to quickly capture your thoughts and allow you to store, manage, and process them into actionable to-do items. Perfect for the Getting Things Done® system, but flexible enough for any task management style, OmniFocus helps you work smarter by giving you powerful tools for staying on top of all the things you need to do. A: µTorrent One of the best light weight BitTorrent clients. A: Hyperdock Brilliant. HyperDock adds long awaited features to your Dock: Select single application windows just by moving the mouse on a dock item, use mouse clicks to quickly open new windows and many more. Control iTunes. Hover the mouse over the iTunes dock item to view information about the current song, You can pause or skip songs and even adjust volume just by scrolling on the itunes icon. And many more... A: Cinch I literally couldn't stand to use the Mac without this software. When I want to full screen an app I just drag the app's title bar to the menu bar and it "cinches" itself to full screen. A must have for Mac. Edit: Cinch also allows making a window fill the left/right/upper/lower half of your screen (similar to Windows Snap). Very useful for copy-pasting and comparing. A: Daisy Disk DaisyDisk scans your disks and presents their content as interactive maps where you can easily spot unusually large files and remove them to get more free space. The map gives you an overview of your data, so you always know what your hard disks are filled with. A: Dropbox Put your files into your Dropbox on one computer, and they'll be instantly available on any of your other computers that you've installed Dropbox on. A: Eclipse IDE (free) Awesome, open source, well-featured IDE primarily for Java, but also supports C++, PHP, and Python, among others. Also has a wealth of third-party plugins. A: Versions GUI Subversion client. From their website: Versions provides a pleasant way to work with Subversion on your Mac. Whether you're a hardcore Subversion user or new to version control systems, Versions will help streamline your workflow. I will say up front that it doesn't inherently support all of Subversion's features, but it does make managing source code and important document for solo developers and small groups much, much easier than dealing with the command line. It's one of the three apps that gets opened with my "AM" script. A: Calibre calibre is a free and open source e-book library management application developed by users of e-books for users of e-books. It has a cornucopia of features divided into the following main categories: * *Library Management *E-book conversion *Syncing to e-book reader devices *Downloading news from the web and converting it into e-book form *Comprehensive e-book viewer *Content server for online access to your book collection A: Lastpass Yet another password manager (actually, probably the first one online, I believe prior to 1pass) that integrates well with every browser (well, at least Safari, Chrome and Firefox). You have even an option to use yubikeys with it. I use it for long time and it's just amazing. It does everything I would expect and little more. It monitors when you change password, have a KB of websites and really gets almost all of them, while allow you to configure whenever field with login and password you want. And it's multiplatform. Back in 2010 it bought Xmarks and must integrate with that as well. It's completely free to use but it does offer a premium subscription for extra (and unnecessary) features. I personally paid for it as a donation, since I really never use the features. A: Terminal Terminal.app opens a UNIX terminal and allows you to access many power-user tools and features, just as you would on a machine running Linux or BSD. A: iChat I know a lot of people use Adium, and I did too for a long time. But iChat just does what I want and does it slightly more elegantly, so I switched. I personally can't live without: * *audio and Video calls; *it can stay in the menu bar without launching the application, and log in at startup (if you are familiar with UNIX, it's like a daemon mode); *support for Jabber. I also use it for MSN via a Jabber transport, which basically lets me connect to MSN through a jabber server, integrating the two seamlessly. Since there are a lot of transport-enabled servers – for ICQ and AIM (which, by the way, are also supported natively in iChat), IRC, Gadu-Gadu, QQ and of course MSN – you can benefit from iChat's simple interface with whatever IM service you use. A: Divvy Application for moving and resizing windows using a "grid" approach. A: AppCleaner It's small and powerful tool for remove/ uninstalling your applications on OS X. I use it frequently, it even helps you to remove Cache created the the application from your Mac. A: Colloquy Excellent IRC client that is open source. A: Activity Monitor A task manager, a utility for performing different tasks to a computer processes, in the Mac OS X operating system. Some of its functions include: * *Quitting or "killing" a computer process *Viewing the computer's CPU load *Checking the amount of random access memory in use or swapped out *Checking the amount of hard disk read-ins and write-outs *Checking the capacity of storage devices *Monitoring the computer's network usage *Inspecting running computer processes *Viewing a process identifier number *Viewing information about a particular process A: xGestures * *adds mouse gestures to every program. A: Rulers from the webpage: "Rulers" allows you to create rulers on the entire screen area like most common graphic editors allow on their working areas only. The guide lines enable you to measure and position objects with precision. Rulers is incredibly useful in many fields, such as computer graphics, desktop publishing and web design. Rulers can also be used to select a screen area and take a screenshot that is automatically saved to your desktop or copied to system clipboard. A: Rip Rip is an application for accurate CD audio extraction. It uses a smart combination of the AccurateRip database and CD Paranoia to ensure that the CD will be ripped accurately through the fastest means available. A: Spirited Away Spirited Away checks each running application's activity, and if an application isn't active for a certain fixed time, Spirited Away hides the application automatically. It is, in effect, Spirited Away :-) This is a great productivity app, keep your workspace clean and focussed, by hiding all the apps you are not using. No more distractions in the background! A: Breakaway Pull out your headphones, and iTunes pauses. Plug it back in, and it starts again. A simple application that makes your life that much easier. A: FinderPop This tool provides a ton of enhancements to the contextual menu. It allows you to select move,copy,alias a selected item (icon) to pretty much any folder via pop-up hierarchical folder lists. Built-in preview stuff, and more. A: Textual: IRC for Mac OS X Textual is a lightweight IRC client created specifically for Mac OS X. It was designed with simplicity in mind. Textual has taken the best of IRC and built it into a single client. Its easy-to-use functionality combined with scripting support makes it an ideal IRC client for novice to advanced users. I tried Colloquy; I tried MacIrssi; I tried X-Chat Aqua; but for a GUI client, I have happily stuck to using Textual. A: Vox Vox is a little and simple music player for Mac OS X with support for many file types, including FLAC, MP3, AAC, Musepack, Monkey's Audio, OGG Vorbis, Apple Lossless, AIFF, WAV, IT, MOD, XM, Games Music and many others. Includes numerous effects like Equalizer, Reverb, Time Stretch, Pitch Shift, Echo. Moreover, all supported files can be exported to AAC+, Apple Lossless, WAV and other formats with enabled effects. This is one truly awesome little app which is sadly not well-known. I'd even say Vox was one of the reasons I switched to Mac. Nothing but the essentials for a music player. Besides, it offers some nice audio features (e. g. resampling with antialiasing) as well as built-in Last.fm integration and nifty controls in menubar. I prefer to organize my music in folders by artists and albums and not bother with music libraries used in most modern audio players, so Vox's ability to play all files in a folder is the single most important feature to me. If you feel that iTunes has grown far too big for a music player or just don't like messing with audio libraries you should really give Vox a try. A: Pianopub Pianopub is a free Pandora internet radio player for OS X. It is a port of Pianobar, so please support the original developers. It is for use with your account from the Pandora.com internet radio service. By far the best Pandora client ever — in form of a native Mac OS X app. A: The Hit List THL is a to-do list/GTD organizer that supports tagging, contexts, tabs, unlimited nesting, alarms, cloud syncing, keyboard shortcuts, and a ton of other features. It's a great piece of software, and comes from a developer with impeccable attention to detail. There's a companion iPhone app as well. A: Prism by Mozilla Labs Prism allows you to turn any webpage into an application. I've used this numerous times. A: Readiris OCR software for OS X. Readiris 12 family quickly converts your paper documents into editable text or PDF files you can edit, share and store! A: Grooveshark I know what you are thinking: "This isn't an application!", but wait a second, it actually is! I made Grooveshark into a standalone application with hotkeys. I love it and use it all the time! Information about turning Grooveshark into a standalone application here. A: Sloth Sloth is a graphical frontend for the console tool lsof. If don't know what that is, it doesn't matter! Sloth makes it easy to find out which applications are using which files. Sloth displays a list of all open files and sockets in use by all the applications your user account is running on the system. This list is presented along with the names of applications using the file and their process IDs. Includes support for regex list filtering, process killing, sorting and more. A: ControlPlane ControlPlane supports multiple contexts where a context is defined as a location or activity you are performing. Using evidence sources you can create a set of rules that tell ControlPlane what context to apply to your environment. When ControlPlane enters or leaves a context a set of Actions are performed. In other words: it will turn off screen saver protection when You arrive home and turn it back when You leave. And so much more. A: CheatSheet Just hold the ⌘ a bit longer to get a list of all active short cuts of the current application. It's as simple as that. A: ScreenFlow With ScreenFlow you can record the contents of your entire monitor while also capturing your video camera, microphone and your computer audio. The easy-to-use editing interface lets you creatively edit your video, and add additional images, text, music and transitions for a truly professional-looking video. The finished result is a QuickTime or Windows Media movie, ready for publishing to your Web site or blog or directly to YouTube or Vimeo. A: WebStorm & Co. These are the best IDEs for Web development I found so far. The features go way beyond what simple editors offer. Intellisense, refactorings, debugging, source control integration are my favorite. A: XtraFinder XtraFinder add Tabs and features to Mac Finder. • Tabs. • Dual Panel & Dual Window. • Cut & Paste. • Colorful icons in Sidebar. A: TextExpander Simply the best. Save keystroke even if you just use it to write your email address. A: SizeUp Allows you to set keyboard shortcuts for moving windows to certain halves and quarters of the desktop, as well as between desktops when using multiple monitors. A: Preview A lot of people (especially newcomers) completely overlook what the humble built-in Preview app can do. Apart from handling PDFs (including printing them in various layouts etc), you can join PDF files together with it (open the sidebar and start dragging pdf files into it, rearrange pages etc). You can crop & resize images, adjust colour & saturation (etc), save as different image format and even add text & simple diagrammatical annotations to pictures. Like a lot of the built-in software, there's an awful lot of flexibility that you simply don't appreciate at first because it's hidden in the GUI - as opposed to huge nested menus of functions, you have to try things with the mouse - often things just work! A: Jumpcut Minimalist Clipboard Buffering for OS X Jumpcut is an application that provides "clipboard buffering" — that is, access to text that you've cut or copied, even if you've subsequently cut or copied something else. The goal of Jumpcut's interface is to provide quick, natural, intuitive access to your clipboard's history. A: NetNewsWire Easy-to-use RSS reader that syncs with Google Reader (but it doesn't have to). I think my favorite part is that the UI can be completely and logically navigated with the arrow keys even the action of opening a feed entry in your default browser. A: Path Finder Path Finder = Finder + Automatic viewer + Shell + Screen Capture + Almost everything you need A: Twitter The best Twitter client there is. In perfect sync with the web app itself. A: Air Video Server (Free) Associate to an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, through their 2.99 App this is the best solution to see all your downloaded movies in your devices. There is a Windows version as well. Added Since iOS 4.3, iTunes Home Sharing is now available for all iDevices, and there is no need of having Air Video, though, you wil need to import all your movies into iTunes in order to be accessible cross network. For me, I will still stick with Air Video for a long time :o) A: Thunderbird On the whole, still the best email app I know for any platform. A: gfxCardStatus gfxCardStatus is an open-source menu bar application that keeps track of which graphics card your dual-GPU MacBook Pro is using at any given time, and allows you to switch between them on demand. (free, donationware) If you have a dual-GPU MBP, you absolutely NEED this program! Did you know that some common applications such as Skype enable your high-powered Nvidia graphics card the entire time they're running? I use it to force my MBP to switch to the power-saving Intel graphics chip when I'm on battery. It adds an extra hour or so of battery life which would otherwise be wasted just because I keep Skype online for chatting. A: Little Snitch - Firewall * *rule based traffic filtering *connection alert for undefined rules *network monitor also see: Hands Off! A: Aquamacs * *emacs on the Mac. A: Filezilla No matter what OS, Filezilla had been everywhere I go, and when you start to use it, you can never really get rid off it. The interface is simple and intuitive, with bookmarks, tree sync, multiple connections on tabs, etc. A: MacFuse MacFUSE allows you to extend Mac OS X's native file handling capabilities via 3rd-party file systems. It is used as a software building block by dozens of products. A: DTerm A terminal window for every application. Press a hotkey (I have mine set to Cmd-Opt-Space), and a floating command line pops up over your current window, initialized to the current directory of that window. Another hotkey allows you to easily paste the name of your current document or Finder selection. A: MenuMeters I have a hard time using a Mac without it these days. How does anyone -- especially a programmer -- work without having the pulse of their Mac at their fingertips? How else do you tell when your browser is stuck or is really downloading something, if you can't see the network traffic? When the computer pauses, and you want to know if it's working, just look at the menu to see that the CPU gauges are pegged at 100% -- and much of that is in the kernel. At a glance, I can instantly see that memory consumption has rocketed up, and with a click I can see that I'm heavily into swap space. It's just so useful. A: Growl Growl is a well-known 'notification' system for the Mac; many different programs support Growl and will pass notifications to it. You have a surprising degree of control over how the notifications appear, how they group themselves together, how they are dismissed from the screen etc. This can be configured universally or on an app-by-app basis, so it's very flexible. One of the most useful features for me has been the way you can configure it to send notifications to selected other Macs on the network - I can leave one of my Macs doing something (such as downloading a large file) while I'm using my other Mac, and when the first Mac has finished doing its stuff the notification will pop-up on the Mac I'm in front of. Growl is free, though you can donate to the cause! Programs that can use Growl include Coda, Dropbox, Firefox, Handbrake, NetNewsWire, SuperDuper!, Transmit, and also Mail & Safari (via helper plugins). A: MAMP (MAMP = Mac Apache MySQL PHP) Apache Webserver, MySQL Database and PHP in one Package. Easy installation and easy to use for local development of Websites/Webapps. A: Movist The best movie player for Mac OS X based on QuickTime & FFmpeg. Opens all types of video files and loads quicker than any other app for movies I've ever used. Features I like: * *file support - plays amazingly well .mkv not to mention all the rest *simple and minimal UI *excellent keyboard shortcuts support *switch from FFmpeg to Quicktime playback with a single click A: Garageband This program is, in some ways, the embarrassing bastard child of the audio world. It's an underpowered, feature-crippled version of Logic, one of the best-regarded multitracking applications in the recording world. Nonetheless, Gagareband is very powerful, and does what I need it to do. While I'd appreciate more flexibility (tempo matching would be nice, and the ability to change time signatures within a project), and the program doesn't handle multiple layers of effects as well as I'd like, it performs brilliantly at what it does do, and it's insanely easy to learn. Garageband is one of the main reasons I haven't ditched my G5 Mac for a Windows or Linux machine I took so long to replace my G5 mac. (Now I use GB and Logic on a Macbook Pro.) A: SuperDuper! I'm amazed it hasn't been mentioned as an answer already. It's saved my data on more than one occasion from catastrophic hard drive failure. From its website: SuperDuper is the wildly acclaimed program that makes recovery painless, because it makes creating a fully bootable backup painless. Its incredibly clear, friendly interface is understandable, easy to use, and SuperDuper's built-in scheduler makes it trivial to back up automatically. It's the perfect complement to Time Machine under Leopard and Snow Leopard, allowing you to store a bootable backup alongside your Time Machine volume—and it runs beautifully on both Intel and Power PC Macs! A: Google Chrome Google Chrome is a lightweight, minimalistic web browser based off the open source project, Chromium. A: Homebrew "The missing package manager for OS X". Like MacPorts and Fink, but simpler to use and easy to contribute to. A: Xcode A good IDE for cocoa developers. Xcode 5 is now available on the Mac App Store. A: VLC media player At its simplest, it's a video player that'll play nearly anything. File extensions supported include: mov, mkv, flv, wmv. It's actually considerably more powerful than that in terms of streaming and converting, but even as a straight up video player, it's impressive. A: Picasa Picasa is free photo editing software from Google that makes your pictures look great. A: MPlayer OSX Extended It is a media player. I like it more than VLC player. A: Audacity A free software, cross-platform digital audio editor and recording application (from Wikipedia). If you want to record plain old audio onto your computer, Audacity is a pretty easy way to do it. (Apple's optical drives from the past several years have implemented region lockout DRM in firmware, rather than simply software, so I can't play back DVDs from multiple regions on my Mac. It's a laptop, so "just buy a second DVD drive" isn't really feasible, and I'm not brave enough to try flashing it with a third-party firmware. Plugging in my DVD player to my Mac is quick and easy, though!) A: 1Password 1Password can create strong, unique passwords for you, remember them, and restore them, all directly in your web browser. A: Xee Xee is a lightweight, fast and convenient image viewer and browser. It is designed to be a serious tool for image viewing and management, with a sleek and powerful interface. Xee is useful as a more powerful replacement for Preview, or most any other image viewer available on Mac OS X. A: Onyx OnyX is a (free) multifunction utility for Mac OS X which allows you to verify the Startup Disk and the structure of its System files, to run misc tasks of system maintenance, to configure some hidden parameters of the Finder, Dock, QuickTime, Safari, Mail, iTunes, Login window, Spotlight and many Apple’s applications, to delete caches, to remove a certain number of files and folders that may become cumbersome and more. I've seen this utility majorly improve the performance of Mac OS X. I run it about once a month to automate maintenance scripts and it's helped identify problems like the need to repair a disk several times. A very useful and effective tool. A: nvALT Unbeatable note-taking app, featuring online syncing with the plain text notes web service, Simplenote, and the simplenote apps for iPhone and iPad. nvAlt is a fork of the existing application, Notational Velocity. A: Fantastical Amazing background app for quickly accessing and adding events to your mac's calendar. Supports Caldev Sync to keep your mac's calendar always up to date, as well as natural writing event creation. Bring up fantastical with a keyboard shortcut, and then type out your new event. Hit return and it's in. Quickly view all the upcoming events for the next month and beyond. Next time you open iCal, all of your data will remain intact as Fantastical works with your software in the background. A: TextMate TextMate brings Apple's approach to operating systems into the world of text editors. By bridging UNIX underpinnings and GUI, TextMate cherry-picks the best of both worlds to the benefit of expert scripters and novice users alike. If you’re looking for a good editor, Sublime Text 2 is quite good too by now! A: Shift It (Uses the same principles as SizeUp, but free) This application will let you resize and move your windows without having to using a mouse. Here are some of things you can do with Shift It: * *Shift the focused window to left/right/top/bottom half of the screen. *Resize the focused window to fill the whole screen. *Move the focused window to the center of the screen. Shift It is a great tool that lets you organize your windows. Now you can read documents side-by-side without having the pain of manually resizing the windows. A: cdto Fast mini application that opens a Terminal.app window cd'd to the front most finder window. This app is designed (including it's icon) to placed in the finder window's toolbar. A: Default Folder X Augments the Open Folder and Save Folder dialogs from any application to allow you to immediately jump to any folder currently open by Finder. (Also works for folders open with Path Finder). Once you start using this app, it's really hard to live without it. A: Gitbox Gitbox is a Git repository manager. A: Airfoil Play any audio across your network to a whole host of devices, all in sync! Airfoil sends audio to remote speakers including iOS devices, other computers, and hardware devices like the Apple TV and AirPort Express. Airfoil for Mac gives you any audio, everywhere. Basically, what previously only iTunes could do (send audio to an AirPort Express) you can now do with all applications. A: Geektool Geektool allows you to put a tail of your syslog on the desktop, or the output of some command, or some graphic/chart/picture. It's a bit like a more single-minded Dashboard for your desktop. You can make awesome clocks, or beautiful server monitoring, or just a fortune cookie (if you install fortune with HomeBrew). It's not perfect (it would need sticky borders, continuous command output and sane multi-monitor behavior for that) but it's a lot of fun, using little resources. A: Alfred Alfred is a productivity application for Mac OS X, which aims to save you time in searching your local computer and the web. Whether it's maps, Amazon, eBay, Wikipedia, you can feed your web addiction quicker than ever before. It's a wonderful piece because it enables you to: * *Increase your productivity by launching apps with shortcuts *Instant access to web searches, bookmarks & more *Browse and play music from your iTunes library quickly *Perform actions – copy, move & email files & folders *Ward off RSI – skip using the mouse with easy shortcuts A: Handbrake HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder. A: Adium Adium is a free instant messaging application for Mac OS X that can connect to AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, and more. It provides enhanced security by supporting the OTR messaging protocol out of the box. A: Tunnelblick Tunnelblick is a free, open source Graphic User Interface (GUI) for OpenVPN on Mac OS X. It provides easy control of OpenVPN client and/or server connections. A: VideoMonkey This is an open source replacement for VisualHub. It's free and lets you do all kinds of mass video conversions as well as auto-tagging your video with tv show / movie metadata. A: Hyperspaces Set names and separate background pictures for different spaces. Really helps me focus on one specific project at a time and helps me avoid tangents. A: Clyppan This is a really good clipboard manager. A: Zooom/2 Zooom/2 is a Mac desktop utility that redefines how you can resize, move and align your application windows - making you faster and more productive. On many X-based desktops (such as KDE and Gnome) you can resize windows from any side, move windows by clicking anywhere on the window, and switch windows simply by pointing your mouse. Zooom/2 brings the same functionality to Mac, and I can no longer live without it. For example, in my configuration I hold Shift-⌘ and click anywhere in a window to move it. No more hunting for the menu bar or the resize corner! A: Minuteur Quick and easy to use timer. It's programmable, so you can do (10+2)*5 or the Pomodoro technique on repeating intervals. The App is localized into English, but the linked webpage is French. The MacUpdate page is in English. A: Warp From the website: Warp is a preference pane that allows you to use the mouse to switch between Spaces rather than using the keyboard. Warp offers the ability to display a live preview of a space when you move the mouse to the edge of the screen, allowing you to see what you have on another space before actually switching to it. Clicking the preview will then warp you to that space. A: Alarms Alarms app is the reminder system you never knew your Mac was missing. Just drag the items you want to be reminded of to the Alarms menu and place them on the time line. A: Pow Pow is a zero-config Rack server for Mac OS X. Have it serving your apps locally in under a minute. Simple to use and indispensable if you are doing any kind of Rails/Sinatra/Rack development A: Final Cut Express, a discontinued video-editing software made by Apple. Final Cut Express is one step above iMovie, with up to 99 video tracks, 99 audio tracks, and 12 compositing modes. My favorite features of FCE are Chroma Key, Color Correction, and Livetype, which comes with Final Cut Express. A: DragThing is a utility that provides an alternative to the Dock. It is tremendously flexible and customizable in letting you design your own way to organize application launchers. Let me be frank; I've been using a Mac every day since 1987. I cannot live without DragThing because I could never get used to using the Dock, which appeared with the first Mac OS X circa 2000 (and I was using developer builds of Mac OS X before the first version went public). While you can configure DragThing to perform many functions, what I use it for is to provide an application menu and an application launcher that behave the same way they did in Apple Macintosh System 7 through Mac OS 9. That's the way I want it. A: Final Cut Express I am so amazed no one has mentioned this! The best video editor for the price. Unfortunately Apple has abandoned FCE to go on to FCPX. I couldn't live without FCE! A: SecondBar SecondBar adds a second menu bar to your secondary monitor. Although there are a few bugs, it's a great little application. A: Keyboard Maestro An indispensable macro tool. Trigger a macro based on a hotkey (overriding the frontmost app if appropriate), typed strings (a la TextExpander, the status of an app, the system waking or your logging in, at certain times or dates, etc. A macro can do pretty much anything you can do manually -- manage apps, choose menu items, click on windows or dialog boxes or whatever, display text or Growl or other notifications, etc. -- including running scripts. Macros can also include flow control (if, while, etc.) for less straightforward tasks (e.g. in Photoshop CmdDelete deletes the current layer if a layer is selected or the current group of layers if a group is selected). One great use is unifying commands across apps, e.g. have Cmd- zoom out and Cmd= zoom in for every app that supports the concept rather than having to remember how, say, OmniGraffle does it vs Photoshop vs Numbers. Keyboard Maestro enables you to create or record custom macro shortcuts that you can activate at any time. For example, your macros could help you navigate runnings applications or work with an unlimited number of clipboards. Best of all, every macro you create is available using simple keystrokes you choose. A: Growl Extras - Hardware Growler, Growl Mail,... HardwareGrowler Find out when a hardware status changes on the Mac. Growl Mail Notifications for incoming mail. A:  MarcoPolo MarcoPolo brings context-aware computing to your Mac! It allows your computer to determine its context through gathering evidence from your environment (evidence sources), using flexible rule-based fuzzy matching to make an educated guess (rules), and then performing arbitrary actions upon changing context (actions). I use MarcoPolo to run scripts (actions) when I arrive at work, as determined by WiFi hotspots detected or IP addresses assigned (context). A: teleport Okay, did a search of all eight pages posted to date, and didn't see "teleport" listed. This little free System Preference gets installed on two computers, and then you can move your cursor off the screen of one, onto the screen of the other. I run a dedicated Mac Mini server, but my main computer is a Mac Pro. I have the server screen above the pro screen, and I can simply move my cursor up to the server, like you'd do with multiple monitors on the same computer. BRILLIANT! This is so much simpler and easier than using Screen Sharing or other such tools. It also copies the clipboard of one computer to the other. This can cause a significant delay if you have something huge on the clipboard. A: Simple Comic Simple Comic is the most intuitive comic reader on the Mac. Its clean interface gives you full control of your viewing experience without getting in the way. Reading comics on a computer has never been easier. A great program for looking any any set of archived images. Simple Comic viewer window http://dancingtortoise.com/simplecomic/images/screens/two_page.png A: Yep * *I scan all my documents to PDF and use Yep to track & find them. *No filing! Everything goes to a single target folder, Yep takes care of it. *Tag documents *Automatically finds all PDF, iWorks, Office, et.al. documents anywhere on your hard drive. *Does not use a database like some similar apps. So I can access documents via finder; move, copy, delete, etc. easily. *In conjunction with a Fujitsu Scan Snap scanner Yep is a dream to use. A: Tweetbot for Mac Though relatively new. Tweetbot for Mac is bringing the same innovation to the Mac platform that it's had established on iOS for a while now. A: EVE From website: EVE helps you to learn shortcuts, in order to increase your productivity with MAC OS X. Every time you execute an action using the mouse, EVE will show you the matching shortcut. Great application! I use it with Cheatsheet. A: SparkleShare SparkleShare allows you to create your own DropBox. In this way you don't have to pay for more space, if you have your own server, and you don't have to share data with no one else (service provided) except the people you decide. How does it work? SparkleShare creates a special folder on your computer in which projects are kept. All projects are automatically synced to their respective hosts (you can have multiple projects connected to different hosts) and to your team's SparkleShare folders when someone adds, removes or edits a file. Why SparkleShare? The idea of SparkleShare sprouted at the GNOME Usability Hackfest in London, where a couple of designers came to the conclusion that they didn't have a good (Open Source) collaboration tool to share their work (for more background, read “The one where the designers ask for a pony”). They didn't like how the good collaboration tools were proprietary, and that using them meant having to give up privacy, control and other rights. What they needed was something that they could run and control themselves, without having to depend on other companies. A: Vienna Viennna is a free open source RSS/Atom reader. Very flexible and version 3 will have Google Reader support. A: Glui I never really enjoyed using Skitch, even before Evernote bought them. Not too long ago I heard about Glui and have fallen in love ever since. It's quick, provides some useful annotating tools, uploads to Dropbox and the automatically copies the share url to your clipboard. Really has improved my workflow as a programmer. Makes it super easy to share screens when working with others. A: Monosnap Monosnap is a free screenshot program for Mac OS X and Windows. The program allows users to create screenshots, annotate them and upload them to the cloud. A: Hub List Very promising successor of The Hit List. Description: A HTML5 compliant productivity application From the author: Hub List tries to strike a balance between simplicity and customization. If you’ve every managed a software project then you’ve probably spent more time then you care to admit inside an ugly bug tracking application that a bunch of developers convinced you would make them more productive. You probably use another app to manage your business projects and then something else to help you remember all those pesky personal todos like getting your mom a card for mother’s day. Rather than try to replace all those tools Hub List strives to provide real-time two-way integration with all of them so you can be more productive using the tools you already have. Website: hublistapp.com A: switchDiskSizeBase In Mac OS 10.6 disk and file sizes are measured in base 10 (one kilobyte is defined as 1000 bytes, one megabyte is defined as 1000 kilobytes, etc.) in Finder and Disk Utility. Unfortunately this has created a lot of inconsistency even when working with Apple’s own programs since most of them still define file sizes in binary units (one kilobyte is defined as 1024 bytes, one megabyte is defined as 1024 kilobytes, etc.). This utility will switch the measurement of disk and file sizes in both Finder and Disk Utility back to binary units (or if the measurement has already been switched to binary units it will restore the system back to using base 10 units). After the switch in Snow Leopard I never could get used to read file sizes in Finder with base-10. This application patches the Foundation framework in order to get back base-2 units. I can now again compare disk space and file sizes with other operating systems or output from shell tools. A: Podworks I recently referred to the app in this thread. If you own both a Mac and an iPhone or iPod, this application is a must-have. Podworks works around iTunes to allow transfer of media to/from Mac and iOS devices. A: iMote I use it mostly to rate songs and get Growl to display the currently playing song. From the website: iMote is a simple, elegant, and lightweight program for controlling iTunes from just about any application. Play/pause, change tracks, select playlists, adjust volume, rate tracks, and more using fully customizable hot-keys or a universal menu bar item. iMote includes a beautiful iPod-esque floating window, indicating current track information, and Growl support if you want an even more streamlined experience with your other Growl-enabled applications. Written using Cocoa, iMote is lean and mean, consuming minimal system memory and CPU time. iMote is the original iTunes controller. A: News Anchor One of the few RSS readers that doesn't try to imitate an e-mail application, News Anchor converts inanimate text in news feeds into lively television-like news broadcasts. With News Anchor you can now "read" news feeds while eating or doing other things. A: Vuze Vuze, the most powerful bittorrent app on earth A: Monocle A great utility to make a web search (Google, Wikipedia, any other search engine) just a keystroke away regardless of what application I'm in. A: Livetype Livetype is an awesome title generator that came with FCE. It does have a rather steep learning curve if you aren't used to keyframing, but it generates professional-looking titles at a great price. A: Spark Spark is a powerful, and easy Shortcuts manager. With Spark you can create Hot Keys to launch applications and documents, execute AppleScript, control iTunes, and more... You can also export and import your Hot Keys library, or save it in HTML format to print it. Spark is free, so use it without moderation! I use this all the time and love it! A: App bar App Bar displays a quick list of all your applications. This is the quickest way possible to find and open any application launched from your Status Bar or Dock. All apps are listed alphabetical and the scroll list is well laid out and always just a click away. A: JiTouch JiTouch is similar to BetterTouchTool, but with many, many more options. The one thing it doesn't have is Windows 7 snapping, so keep BetterTouchTool around for that. I would highly recommend this application, though it's a paid application. A: Shimo - VPN management for the Mac Receive notifications via Growl. Assign network locations and wireless networks to profiles. * *CiscoVPN Support *OpenVPN Support *IPSec Support *PPTP/L2TP Support *Hamachi Support *SSH Support *Use Keychain for Passwords *Certificate Management *Advanced Notifications *Automatic (Re-)Connection *Syncing Profiles with MobileMe *Scriptable with AppleScript *Global Keyboard Shortcuts A: Sophos Anti-Virus Mac Home Edition Free commercial AV software. * *Fast signature updates *Low cpu usage *Live scan *Define custom scan scopes *Define action upon treat alert (log only, cleanup, move threat, delete threat) A: Scrawl Scrawl is nifty little note taking app for the Mac that I made with iCloud support. A: iProcrastinate iProcrastinate is the ideal task manager for anyone who doesn't want their todo list to get in the way of actually getting things done! Great for anyone who is looking for a mobile, easy-to-use task manager. (Not just for students!) Add birthdays, soccer practice and conference calls, all without missing a beat. Uses iCloud to sync between Mac and iOS. Couldn't do my homework without it. A: AppCode From JetBrains, the makers of IntelliJ. Has a lot more refactoring support than XCode and a more powerful editor. Especially useful to anyone coming to iOS development from the Java world. A: Emacs 24 Best text editor ever...Supports VIM bindings plus has org-mode and can run a shell, edit directories, view images, etc. Make sure to use the built-in package manager to load add-ons. Solarized-dark is an excellent color scheme. A: Herald Allow notification plugin for Mail.app. In ML you have notification center, but with Herald you also get the full message body which I really like. A: CCleaner One of best cleaning utility. CCleaner is the no. 1 cleaning utility for Windows PC. In Mac it does the same function, cleaning temp files, cookies, cache etc. for making more space available. The tools section provides utilities to uninstall an application, change startup option, erase free space and manage permissions. A: SafeWallet SafeWallet is a very useful and complete password manager, which allows you to safely keep you passwords, credit card pins, notes, and many more stored on your Mac. It also provides functionality for sharing your wallet with the iOS App (SafeWallet for iPhone). In this way your wallet is always with you and always synced. A: ControlPlane (free/open-source) This application can trigger a wide range on actions based on different events, its mainly use being to start/stop application based on your context. For example when you bring your laptop to work it can start Outlook. You can detect that you are at work based on the network IP, presence of a wireless network, or many other options. A: Debookee Debookee is a network traffic analyzer that allows you to see your traffic by protocols: HTTP, HTTPS, TCP, DHCP, DNS, SIP etc ... It can also scan all the devices present on your network, and intercept the traffic of any of them, perfect to see what your iPhone or tablet is sending over the network. A: PogoPlug There's a software version as well as the hardware box that creates a cloud server. The software version allows me to set a folder or drive on my Mac and link to it so I can let others access. I know there are other ways to do this, but for me the $20 ($30 now, I think) was well spent as the software is simple and no glitches. If you have a good friend and you both agree to leave your computers running, you can use the other's extra drive to store your backup with no monthly fee, just install a decent size drive at the friend's house. A: Airmail After last year Sparrow acquisition from Google and development freeze, Airmail is new, actively developed mail client. It does not hide it's Sparrow roots, but exceeds it and new features are constantly added. A: Entropy dEntropy Logo http://bit.ly/16BItjE I use it as my daily productivity booster since it moves all files I haven't touched within the last week from my Desktop into my archive. It has many more features you may find interesting. Here is a trailer. Disclaimer: I'm the creator. Ask me anything. ;) A: Unclutter Main features: * *Instant, configurable access even in full screen mode *File Storage, to keep your Desktop clean from temporary files *Notes, your digital notepad *Clipboard preview, so you always know what you're about to share *Draggable cards that can stick on top of other windows *Retina display support A: Gimp Very powerful and free and open source image editor, inspired by PhotoShop. Has layers, RGB and indexed modes, and more tools and filters than you can shake a stick at. Since version 2.8 Gimp is OS X native. Screenshots - Features A: Fuzzyclock "Often you don't need the exact time in hours, minutes and seconds. A more human readable style like "five past ten" makes more sense. For that, you can now use FuzzyClock. FuzzyClock is a menubar clock which displays the current time in a "fuzzy" style." I use the handwriting font. (Alfred, Cloudapp and Growl have been said). A: StockMeter

Q: Windows print screen when using Boot Camp I have bootcamp installed on my Mac, and when on Windows, I need to frequently capture screens using windows shortcuts such as Print Screen. Using virtualization is not an option, since I need to run a virtualized environment within Windows already. On the Mac keyboard (I have a MacBook Pro, and an external think aluminum keyboard), there isn't a print screen key. Is there any equivalent when using a mac keyboard? A: Follow these instructions in order to map the F13-F15 keys on an Apple keyboard to the functions, Print Screen, Scroll Lock, and Break commonly found on PC keyboards: * *On your PC, copy the following lines into a text file. REGEDIT4 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout] "Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,04,00,00,00,46,E0,5F,00,46,00,5E,00,37,E0,5D,00,00,00,00,00 * *Rename the text file remap.reg *Double click on the file remap.reg and answer yes to the question about adding the information to the registry *Reboot Function keys are now remapped to their PC equivalents Source: MacWindows.com A: This article at Apple's KB includes the mapping of Windows keys to each of their keyboards. A: Under Windows (with Boot Camp software installed) you can press F13 or Fn+F11 to take a screenshot.

Q: How can I get DoubleTwist to differentiate between music and podcasts? Since iTunes has no way to sync with my Motorola Droid, and all of my music is on my Macbook Pro, I recently tried out DoubleTwist. It detected my Droid right away. The problem is that when I chose to sync all of my music, DoubleTwist also synced all of my podcasts, which quickly filled up my sd card with stuff I don't want on there. Is there a way to have it only sync my iTunes music library and ignore podcasts? A: Judging by the screenshots, doubleTwist allows syncing specific playlists and has smart playlists. Create a smart playlist that would contain all your library but not podcasts (excluding genre Podcast), and sync it.

Q: Sync iPhone with multiple Macs Is it possible to sync an iPhone with multiple computers? I know the music will be restricted, and I don't mind. I want the contacts, bookmarks, etc. to be in sync across my home iMac and my MacBook. A: The best way to synchronize contacts and bookmarks between several Mac and/or iPhone is to use MobileMe (now iCloud). It will sync all as you need where you want. A: You actually don't have to buy MobileMe to sync contacts and calendar to multiple Macs and multiple iOS devices. This can be accomplished with only a free Google account. If you want more details on how to set it up, please ask. As far as I know, there is no way to sync bookmarks without MobileMe. A: Actually, I just answered the question to how to keep your device's music library synchronized with 2 machines as well: Sync iTunes U between 2 Macs via an iPod A: One way to partly solve this (without paying for MobileMe) is by syncing certain data between different computers using Dropbox. (This approach was suggested in a Super User question about syncing home folders that I asked a year ago.) To sync contacts, for example, share AddressBook's application data between your Macs like this: * *Move the folder ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook (on the computer where you have the data) to your Dropbox. *On each computer you wish to sync, create a symlink from ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook to that folder in your Dropbox. These screenshots show what the setup looks like on one of my computers: (If you need more detailed instructions, please let me know!) For bookmarks, you'd need to share some Safari application data (I don't know which files/folders exactly as I haven't done that myself). Obviously this isn't optimal, but once you set it up, it works pretty well. I think Apple is sooner or later going to provide better (cloud-based, even wireless) sync across multiple devices (also to those who're not paying extra for the service). Well, at any rate they should, as they are lagging behind Google quite badly in this respect. A: You can have your music synced to one computer and contacts synced to another - no problem.

Q: Creating a new file blocks Textmate When I want to create a new file through the button (left-bottom one) in the project drawer or in the file menu it takes a long time and blocks TextMate and even blocks TextMate totally in some cases. I've installed the latest version of TextMate and installed all updates available for Mac OS X. Anyone any idea what the problem is? A: I just tested it with a couple of different massive projects on my MBP and it created a new file right away. First guess would be perhaps a bundle or other plugin you've added is interfering with the program operation somehow. You could also try trashing your Textmate preferences file and restart the program to see if that helps (~/Library/Preferences/com.macromates.textmate.plist). A: Do you have any external drives connected? Certain external hard drives will go into some sort of dormant mode when they haven't been used in a while, and will block things until they spin back up. This is triggered by anything requiring filesystem access, whether you're trying to access those drives or not. If this is your issue, it'll be very intermittent, and caused by other attempts to access the file system (Open File and Save File dialogs being common). Furthermore, it won't be limited to just Textmate, but your usage patterns may mean it mostly shows up there. The solution, in this case, would be to unplug the external drives when not in use. Of course, this isn't to say this /is/ your issue, but it would more or less fix your symptoms.

Q: Dot-files and other meta data on non-Mac network shares Is there a way to tell Finder to not use (or worry about) the ._* files and other meta-data files it normally tries to use when it's on a network share? Currently when I'm in Finder and I try to copy a file to a network share it results in an error: The Finder can’t complete the operation because some data in “file_name” can’t be read or written. (Error code -36) But I can copy the file from the terminal command line to the network share and use it from Finder afterward just fine. It seems that the meta-data isn't really needed on the network share. Is there a way to tell Finder this? For reference, I'm using Snow Leopard and the share is a Samba share on a Linux server. A: defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true Will get rid of the DS files. Anything else you might have to do by hand. A: Adapted from https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/57832/8546 Finder Finder does much to ensure integrity of data, and to make its results compatible with a broad range of Apple operating systems. For some types of copy/move routines, ._ (dot underscore) files are required. File system If creation of ._ files is prevented at the file system level, then that file system is partially incompatible with at least: * *Apple Finder *Microsoft Office Excel, PowerPoint and Word 2011. (For any use case that involves Office 2011 saving to a file system, you must allow ._ on that file system … and so on.) Error code -36 -36 (ioErr) (I/O error) is a file system error, it indicates that data cannot be sent or received by the operating system. Historically, errors of this type were bummers. Without knowing the detail of your Samba configuration: * *I guess that in your case, error -36 is the result of a file system restriction. For more detail please see my answer to an older question, Why are dot underscore ._ files created, and how can I avoid them?: * *Purposes of .DS_Store and ._ files A: Is the file you're trying to copy using a resource fork? If you're dealing with .DS_Store file issues run the following command in Terminal: defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true If you're having issues with resource forks on Snow Leopard you may need to change your settings for the streams setting in smb.conf on the Linux machine or nsmb.conf on your local Mac. (._FILENAME files are the resource forks of the file). Check out Super User for more details on this. A: This is not working for me anymore. So i have added ._* to the veto files I think it's works but i don't know if it has other complications? vi /etc/samba/smb.conf [global] veto files = /._*/.AppleDB/.AppleDouble/.AppleDesktop/:2eDS_Store/Network Trash Folder/Temporary Items/TheVolumeSettingsFolder/.@_thumb/.@_desc/:2e*/ (esc-shift-ZZ) service smb restart service nmb restart

Q: What's the difference between Real, Virtual, Shared, and Private Memory? The different columns in Activity Monitor are a little confusing A: Real mem relates to physical memory (actual RAM modules in your computer). Virtual Mem is how much "fake" memory is allocated to the process, meaning memory that is allocated on the permanent storage medium (hard drive, solid state drive, etc) for that process. Shared memory is physical (Real) memory that can be shared with other processes. Private memory is "real" memory that can only be used by the process it is allocated to. These explanations may help as well... directly from activity monitor --> help --> viewing system memory usage: Here is an explanation of some of the information displayed at the bottom of the memory pane: * *Wired: Wired memory contains information that must always stay in RAM *Active: Active memory that contains information that is actively being used. *Inactive: Inactive memory contains information that is not actively being used. Leaving this information in RAM is to your advantage if you (or a client of your computer) come back to it later. *Used: Used memory is being used by a process or by the system. Used memory is the sum of wired, active, and inactive memory. If the system requires memory it takes free memory before used memory. *Free: Free memory is not being used and is immediately available. *VM size: Virtual memory, or VM, is hard disk space that can be used as memory. VM size is the amount of disk space being used as memory. Mac OS X can use more memory than the amount of physical RAM you have. A hard disk is much slower than RAM, so the virtual memory system automatically distributes information between disk space and RAM for efficient performance. Page ins/outs: The number of gigabytes of information Mac OS X has moved between RAM and disk space A: Apple updated the Activity Monitor in OSX 10.9 (Mavericks). They have a good article about what everything means here http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5890. In summary... * *Physical Memory: The amount of RAM installed. *Memory Used: The amount of RAM being used and not immediately available for other apps. *Virtual Memory: The amount of memory mapping that apps have asked for. This is not an actual consumption of RAM resources and it size is determined by the author of the app. *Swap Used: The space on your drive being used to swap unused files to and from RAM. It is normal to see some activity and it is not a indication that you have depleted RAM resources. Seeing memory pressure in the Red state will indicate that RAM resources are depleted. *App Memory: The amount of space being used by apps. *Wired Memory: Memory that can’t be cached to disk, so it must stay in RAM. This memory can’t be borrowed by other apps. *Compressed: The amount of memory in RAM that is compressed, making more RAM resources available for other apps. *File Cache: The space in RAM marked as available for apps to use that contains recently used files. Memory Pressure graph The combination of Free, Wired, Active, Inactive & Used memory statistics in previous versions of Activity Monitor have been replaced in Mavericks with an easy to read "Memory Pressure" graph. Memory pressure is indicated by color: * *Green – RAM memory resources are available. *Amber – RAM memory resources are being tasked. *Red – RAM memory resources are depleted and OS X is using the drive for memory. A: Taken from my answer at Server Fault: Mac OS X Memory Jargon: Wired : This refers to kernel code and such. Memory that should not ever be moved out of the RAM. Also know as resident memory. Shared : Memory that is shared between two or more processes. Both processes would show this amount of memory so it can be a bit misleading as to how much memory is actually in use. Real : This is the "real" memory usage for an application as reported by task_info() - a rough count of the number of physical pages that the current process has. (RSIZE) Private : This is memory that a process is using solely on its own that is used in Resident memory. (RPRVT) Virtual : The total amount of address space in the process that's mapped to anything - whether that's an arbitrarily large space for variables or anything - it does not equate to actual VM use. (VSIZE) Active : Memory currently labelled as active and is used RAM. Inactive : "Inactive memory is no longer being used and has been cached to disk. It will remain in RAM until another application needs the space. Leaving this information in RAM is to your advantage if you (or a client of your computer) come back to it later." - Mac OS X Help Free : The amount of RAM actually available without any data. The best documentation I know of (and have been able to find in followup research) is Apple's own Managing Memory article on their developer website. Other worthwhile sources: Darwin-dev mailing list: [1], [2] and an old article on MacOSXHints. Additionally Mike Ash has posted a good layman's introduction on his blog

Q: How can I get Snow Leopard to properly reconnect to my Windows network drives after it goes to sleep? My mac goes to sleep. It wakes up. The volumes mounted to a Windows server in my house all work. I can see pictures and listen to music. Until I can't. After two or three sleep/wake cycles, I can't connect to the Windows server at all, with Finder hanging infinitely on trying to connect. I have to reboot the entire machine to reconnect properly. With OS X 10.5, I never could get the volumes to reconnect after sleep, but at least they didn't sabotage Finder. Anyone have any ideas? I hate leaving the mac running all the time. (27" 2010 iMac, OS X 10.6.4) A: This is a known issue, and has no current hotfix or resolution. The problem is in the samba implementation. The only thing I can think of doing is writing a script to umount your samba just before sleep, and mounting right after sleep. (Nobody has done this yet) Most educated source on the problem I could find: https://superuser.com/questions/144327/mac-os-cant-connect-to-smb-shares-after-sleep A: I had this issue as well and found sleepwatcher to do what I need. I found this article http://imclumzy.wordpress.com/2009/12/28/mac-osx-automatic-smb-mount-script-using-sleepwatcher/ I used created the main script as he has it and then another to calls this one with one line for each volume I need to mount, for example: sh ~/Scripts/mountShare.sh /Volumes/Music bundywhs/Music. I don't have the username and password in it since i store it in my keychain. One other note, his article has the sleep time set to 10 seconds in his wakeup script. That seems to work fine when I am on wireless but for me my wired network takes longer to come back so I changed it to 30 seconds.

Q: Can the keys on the MacBook Pro be removed for cleaning? The MacBook Pro does a really good job keeping dirt and stuff from getting under the keys, but none-the-less there is some dirt under a few keys. Can I pop these keys off and then easily replace them? In the past when I've done this, the key never really went back on correctly. This is the newer Unibody MBP with the black backlite chiclet keys. A: If they keys are square without beveled edges then no. Removing it would require major surgery to remove. I recommend a can of air duster, some q-tips, and alcohol to clean the keyboard. A: Without knowing which specific model you are referring to it would be hard to tell. The keyboards on the newer unibody macbook pros are one assembly and it would not be advised to try to take off the keys. A: Yes - all keys on all mac portables in the past 10 years or so are individually removable. There are very delicate plastic scissors hidden under the key caps. Also - the scissors are not necessarily all oriented the same way. The return key may have two vertical scissors where an H key may have one horizontal scissors mechanism underneath. Also - the size of say a small arrow key may not be the same size as a function key at the top. Large keys such as the space bar and the option keys have added metal supports and you may need a large amount of patience to get them back. If you damage the very small delicate nubs - you will have broken that key and have to press the little rubber nubbin by hand until you can get a replacement. If you bend the metal rings that hold the scissors (or the actual switch) - the repair cost is much higher. Most lighted whole keyboards go for $65 to $300 plus labor. Do your research before starting so you won't be that person with a plastic baggie of parts that are close but not identical waiting in line at the genius bar for help with a tedious repair. :-) If you know the cost to replace and have a steady hand - dive in and go get those crumbs :-) A: A bit offtopic answer, but sometimes get handy: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/23536/keyboard-cleaner :)

Q: Is there any way to print directly from my iPad to my wifi-connected printer? I am happy to purchase an app, but the only printing app I'm aware of seems to just let your ipad connect to a computer that is connected to the printer and effectively print through it. I'm looking to print from my ipad without the use of another computer. Both the ipad and the printer are on the same wifi network (which is how I print from our laptops). EDIT: In my specific case, the printer is a Canon MP990. A: iOS 4.3 now offer AirPrint. A: If you want to print pictures and photos, you can use Epson iPrint (there are similar apps from other printer manufacturers, e.g. Canon iEPP, HP iPrint Photo 2.0, Kodak Pic Flick or Lexmark LexPrint). For printing PDFs or other documents, the already mentioned "print n share", "Print Bureau" (both from eurosmartz) or Air Sharing Pro from Avatron could be useful. Via piquadrat answering my similar question on gadgets.stackexchange.com. A: Canon made a utility for their printers called Easy-PhotoPrint. Otherwise, they are more generic utility like ePrint (but it's far more perfect or convenient). A: I have used the iPad part of PrintCentral with mixed results - I have a HP Color LaserJet 2605dn connected to an Apple Airport router. The printer is configured as 'A4' (I'm in the UK) and while some things print just fine from the iPad, other things seem to have pagination issues. Printing from emails and Safari generally seems okay. To be fair I think that the only way you're going to get this to work seamlessly is if you can find a wifi printer with drivers for the iPad (do they even exist) - everything else is likely to be some kind of compromise. EDIT: Just to be clear, PrintCentral can either print directly to the 'network' printer, or can send data to an app on your Mac/PC. I haven't tried the latter approach (and your question says you don't want to do it that way anyway) - but I have used it to connect and directly print to my HP from the iPad. A: Have you tried Google Cloud Print? https://www.google.com/cloudprint/learn/apps.html A: The answer depends on what kind of printer you have. The fundamental problem is printer drivers. That is why all of the apps use a server/proxy on a desktop computer, that way the can piggyback the desktops existing printer drivers. Otherwise they would need to include drivers for all supported printers. A few of the printer vendors have iPhone/iPad apps that can take to their network printers, but obviously those only support their printers (an usually only recent ones). I expect this to change at some point in the future (when Apple builds printing support into iOS), but this how things stand with iOS 3.2/4.0.

Q: Is there any way to get a pop-up notification on my iPhone or iPad when mail arrives? I have gmail set up to send me "true" push notifications (using the exchange server setup). So my mail arrives in realtime, and I instantly get badges on my springboard screen to indicate new messages. But I want to be able to get a pop-up with the sender and subject, like I would with an SMS, or an IM using Beejive. Is there really no way to do this? It would be especially helpful when I'm in another app, and don't mind the pop-up's interruption, but would like to know who the message is from before deciding to leave the app to check mail. A: With the release of iOS 5 mail can now appera as a pop up box style notifacation. Goto Settings>Notifications>Mail> the choose "Alerts" in the alert style menu. you will then have something that looks like a message notification when an email arrives A: Give BoxCar a go. I use it in a similar way for Twitter Direct Message notifications. A: I use a combination of Notify and Prowl, running on a spare Mac. I found so many other uses for Prowl, such as sending push notifications from a script. A: Don't use the standard Gmail configuration from iPhone, use Google Sync. Here: Google Sync: Set Up Your Apple Device for Google SyncShare Comment A: This isn't a way to fix your issue now, but I believe iOS 5 will be able to do what you want when it's released this fall according to: http://www.apple.com/ios/ios5/features.html#notification I see screenshots with mail notifications on the top of the screen and I believe these can be configured to be current-style pop-ups per app. A: I use a combo of Apple Mail rules, an AppleScript, and Howl (another growl app similar to Prowl mentioned above). Name the Mail rule like so: "growl-TestPost" as indicated in the AppleScript, then set up the considitons and trigger this AppleScript to run. Then set up your Growl display style to use that of Howl (or Prowl). Here is the AppleScript, unfortunately I do not have info on the original author's script which I modified: on run -- at current, the registration is done whenever you launch the script, -- and also below whenever the the script itself is run by Mail -- (that let's users make new notification on the fly, sort of...) -- could probably find a more graceful semaphor, but... register() end run using terms from application "Mail" on perform mail action with messages messageList for rule theRule set theRuleName to name of theRule if theRuleName does not start with "growl-" then return register() -- extract notification type from rule name set noteType to characters 7 thru (length of theRuleName) of theRuleName as text repeat with thisMessage in messageList -- basic information for notification set theSender to sender of thisMessage set theSubject to subject of thisMessage set theText to (content of thisMessage) set tid to AppleScript's text item delimiters set AppleScript's text item delimiters to " " try set theSummary to (text items 1 through 20 of theText) as text on error set theSummary to theText end try set AppleScript's text item delimiters to tid -- notify tell application "GrowlHelperApp" to notify with name noteType ¬ title noteType description ¬ "From: " & theSender & return & "Subject: " & theSubject ¬ application name "MailGrowl" end repeat -- if we want to coalesce or order the notifications, then we'd put the -- notifications into an array above and notify GHA here. I'm not completely -- on the structures that are required for grouped messages, though.. end perform mail action with messages end using terms from to register() tell application "Mail" set ruleList to name of every rule whose name begins with "growl" end tell set noteTypes to {} repeat with theRuleName in ruleList set end of noteTypes to (characters 7 thru (length of theRuleName) of theRuleName as text) end repeat tell application "GrowlHelperApp" register as application "MailGrowl" all notifications noteTypes ¬ default notifications noteTypes ¬ icon of application "Mail" end tell end register

Q: Why didn't my Windows partition show up in the Startup Disk preference pane? I install Windows(XP after that 7) on my MBP with Boot Camp and every thing was fine but after a while in System Prefences -> Startup Disk my windows partition was lost and when I want to switch to my windows must restart my Laptop and Press Down option during startup. I can't switch directly from my OS X. anyone know how can I solve this. or why this is happened? A: Did you by any chance install the NTFS-3G driver? It's a known bug (for quite some time, now). When installed, you can no longer have the Windows partition in the Startup Disk prefpane. A: You shouldn't have to eject your Bootcamp disk from your Desktop. As soon as you do that, it's unavailable to the system until you reboot. A quick tip: if you don't want your Bootcamp drive to display on your OS X Desktop, boot into windows and then rename your C: drive to a name that starts with a period. OS X will treat it as a "hidden" file and not display the icon. Been using that trick since Bootcamp was in beta and have never had a problem with it. A: I found a solution, if you haven't already. I'm assuming here that you have already uninstalled the NTFS-3G Driver Browse to /yourhdd/Library/ and search that folder for a file called com.tuxera.NTFS.plist - I found mine in .../Library/Filesystems/NetFSPlugins Open that file with a property list editor. I used Open with Property List Editor 2.1 Look for a Property, Disable Driver, change it's value to 1, and restart, should be fixed. A: I had this issue with the latest version of Tuxera NTFS and El Capitan. I reinstalled Tuxera, restarted and all game good again. My bootcamp drive was accessible again via the desktop. A: In the NTFS control panel, there is an option to uninstall. I did that, and, without restarting, I have the option again!

Q: Are there sites that support editing and ordering photo prints, cards, and books on an iPad? I'm reposting this question (unchanged) from webapps.stackexchange.com, because I've received no answers there and this seems like an appropriate question for the Apple Stack Exchange site. I've tried the Shutterfly iPad app, which allows uploading photos, but doesn't support any other functionality available on the website. And I can't edit photos or design cards and books from the Mobile Safari browswer on the iPad, presumably because those features use Flash. Are there any other photo websites that provide either a full-featured iPad app (that includes creating cards and books and ordering prints) or an iPad or iPhone app that allows uploading photos and a website that allows one to create cards and books and order prints in Mobile Safari? Note, I download photos directly from my camera to the iPad, so I'm trying to figure out how to avoid any need for a PC. Someone (on vark.com) recommended Apple's MobileMe (http://me.com). But http://www.apple.com/mobileme/features/gallery.html doesn't show that it supports editing photos and ordering prints, cards, and books. Does anyone have experience with MobileMe? A: I don't really have a direct answer for you, but I would like to help by sharing what I know. I have a Mobile Me account, and there are no tools for editing your photos online. It's an image gallery. A gallery is meant just for viewing and not for editing. Mobile Me was designed to work in conjunction with the iLife software on a desktop mac. You edit the photos, order the prints, make the cards, and the books in the iPhoto app on the Mac. Photo editing on the iPad is the easy part, but I think you are approaching it from the wrong angle. There are tons of free (and cheap) apps that allow you to edit photos. (Photoshop Mobile for instance. Just check the Photography category in the App Store). Once you edit them in an app, then I would upload them to a service that supports printing services. The hard part is going to be the ordering of prints, cards and books from the iPad. We can only hope that sometime in the near future, Apple creates a mobile version of iPhoto just as they did with iMovie. That would be ideal. EDIT * *You can order prints from this app as well: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=323705153&mt=8%3FpartnerId%3D30&siteID=KEmRFwU0WKY-yY5rDqaKJMaSUWCfbLPC3w *You can also order prints from the Walgreens app: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/walgreens/id335364882?mt=8 *This might solve your issue as well! http://www.ritzpix.com/net/OrderPrints/ *You might want to check out this app and service: http://www.ecce-terram.com/order-solutions/mobile-client.html ECCE TERRAM announced a new service this week that will allow people to order prints of photos stored on their iPhones from the phones themselves. With their Photo2lab Client, users may select a photo (both those taken with the iPhone and those transfered from iPhoto), add text and create prints, post cards and even mini photo books. You'll even be able to add an address to a post card from the iPhone's built-in contacts list. A: I downloaded the Walgreens app and emailed pics to my local store. The only problem is if you edit your photos on the iPad, it doesn't transfer to the store. So just use their browse and edit button, fix the pics there and create an album, send and pick up in hours. So far this has worked. A: Only answer I can think of would be something like Phanfare loading up to flikr/Phanfare or via SmugMug and the smugshot app combined with the smugmug webpage (which is not mobile friendly, but isn't flash infested either). A: Just released. I hope this helps: http://itunes.apple.com/app/roes/id533327862?mt=8

Q: What is the best media player for the mac (besides .mov - e.g., .mp3, .wmv, .avi, .mpg, etc) I've recently switched from PC to Mac, so I'm slowly building a library of useful utilities. So, any recommendations for the best generic media player? On the PC - I've found the VLC player to be pretty useful - there's a Mac version, but I don't know how it compares to other alternatives. Many of the alternatives on the PC are full of crap - e.g., constantly pushing toolbars, add-ins, anti-virus junk, etc. So, I'd like something lightweight and crapware free. I'd be happy to pay $20-$30 for something that was worth it. A: I like Movist. It has the format flexibility of VLC, but with a nicer Mac-like interface. A: I vastly prefer the experience of using Quicktime with a little help from Perian and Flip4Mac to give it compatability with 90% of the video I need to play. For the rare stubborn video that does not want to cooperate with that setup, I break out VLC, because of VLC can't play it, it's just not going to play. A: VLC is a nice player, but if you want something more Mac OS-like, try Lunettes (download link beta 8 is the last one at the time of writing). Basically, it's VLC rewritten fully in 64 bits and Obj-C. You do not have to build it yourself ! Just extract the .app from the zip file, that's all. A: VLC is by far the best. Fast, extensible, and versatile. You can play just about any format video, Video_TS file, remote disks, remote streams, even pipe the output of a command into it to play. Can you say on the fly video manipulation? That's VLC. Not to mention the main selling point, it's free. Quicktime? Slow. Plugins? Hokey. Alternatives? Either not very "native" or buggy, slow, and prone to crashing. There is not one thing I have been unable to play with VLC that I had to use something else. Okay, one thing. The MKV support on it is a bit of a pain. Try seeking with a 4GB MKV file. A: VLC is best media player in OS X too. and it's free also. but if you install perian in your mac (it's free too) I suggest use QuickTime. peran it's component for Quicktime to support many extension for media on mac. A: I can only agree regarding VLC. It's best. I've tried quite a few (MplayerX, MplayerOSX, QuickTime and some others), since the UI is, just like on Windows, ugly and non-slick, but it still win by far. What I like the most are all the keyboard shortcuts for everything. Currently my standard setup is to use VLC together with AirFoil. The problem then is of course the 2 second delay for sound to the AirPort Express, this is however easy to solve with the f key, delay sound 2000 ms (g reduces the delay). Or if you get hold of some subtitle that totally out of sync, use h and j to delay the text. I use this all the time. None of the others I tried have easy (if any) access to these features, and thus make the unusable for me and my lovely AirPort Express setup at home. A: I like VLC, but I end up using Mplayer OSX Extended more often. I find the default shortcut key mappings to be more intuitive. And it's as versatile as VLC in terms of file format compatibility. A: VLC really do a good job, but sometimes it fails me when dealing with some Blu-ray issue. I do a lot of homework on this, finally I got Macgo Blu-ray player. I won't say it's the best or perfect, while it meets my needs currently. There is a little friction in the playing of one disc but no big deal.

Q: Adding a new processor I've got a Mac Pro (Jan-2008) 2.8GHz Quad-core Xeon with one processor. Do all the Mac Pro's have the two sockets motherboards even if it's purchased with one processor? If so can I purchase an equivalent Intel Xeon proc and install it to have the 8-core? A: No, single processor Mac Pros ship with a single socket motherboard, and use Xeon 3000 series processors, not the more expensive Xeon 5000 series needed for dual socket support.

Q: What are some good sources for Pages and Keynote templates? It doesn't matter whether they are for free or for purchase as long as they are compatible. A: The best commercial packages of themes for the iWork apps, in my experience, are those from Jumsoft.(under Design) They produce themes for both Pages and Keynote, as well as animation and art packs. For free templates, iWorkCommunity has a ton of Pages templates, and some decent Numbers templates as well for basic use. KeynoteUser also produces commercial themes, in addition to having some freebies, and an excellent blog and collection of links for other sources of high quality stuff. A: Interesting. You can find some nice examples on Themeforest, they should have a big list of such items. http://wisset.com/premium-keynote-templates/ A: Klariti has SDLC and business templates over but these are for professionals. http://klariti.com/apple-iwork-templates/

Q: Is it generally advisable to get anti-virus software for Mac OS X? Is it worth to buy an anti-virus software for Mac OS X? I heard both opinions like "it's not possible to get a virus on Mac OS X" and "Mac OS X is also vulnerable against virus... " Which is true? What is the accepted practice, if any? Under what circumstances would anti-virus be advisable? A: The simple fact is that malware has always existed for Mac OS (OS X and macOS), so the statement that a Mac can't get malware is patently, demonstrably and dangerously false. A second fact is that Apple has done a good job with technology to make the macOS ecosystem largely immune to most threats. This "immune system" consists of sandboxed application design, entitlements to let developers express intent when they need out of the sandbox, signed code to prevent modifications that turn a known app malicious, App Store distribution, system integrity protection, XProtect file quarantine mechanism with a free online update service. Historically and for many years; the scarcity of viruses, trojans and other malware that spread widely or affect a broad cross-section of Mac users has contributed to a perceived complacency about good security hygiene. The good news, is macs have a built in multi-layered defense system against virus and trojan/malevolent software. This means that most of the recent exploits rely on people unintentionally sabotaging themselves by self-defeating built in defenses. With a small investment of time, you can significantly decrease the need for additional anti-virus protection on OS X. The calculus of whether running a specific antivirus package is a moving target (vendors typically react to bugs and threats - so what was true yesterday may not be true tomorrow). This makes general answers about the merits of software easily out-dated in a month's time (let alone the two and a half years that have passed since this question was first asked). What hasn't changed for decades, is that each user should at least spend some time thinking about what is on their device and how painful total compromise might be to them. Based on how valuable your time is to you, it would be silly for someone that has paid IT staff to advise them to not spend $1,000 extra dollars on evaluating security to include potentially installing anti-virus software. It would also be silly for a casual home user to pay for software rather than invest some time to mitigate known risks in their behavior in response to a healthy fear of the unknown. There are many cases where additional anti-virus protection is critically important. There are also many cases where it is totally un-needed. I would recommend anyone browse these few Apple knowledge base articles to gauge their "baseline security aptitude" and then reach out and learn more before spending any money on anti-virus software1. * *Use gatekeeper, automatic updates to apps and system files and malicious lists for quarantine. *Protect your computer from harmful applications - the very basics *Safety tips for handling email attachments and content downloaded from the Internet - a good primer on attachments and executable code *Apple ID: Tips for protecting the security of your account - great tips on account hygiene, applicable for all online accounts *Safari: Using encryption and secure connections - starts with the basics, but gets technical quickly. Perhaps better is about certificates to get started. My only critique of the above articles would be the admonishment to frequently change passwords. This is of limited value when you start making unique passwords and don't as a matter of course enter those passwords on other computers. Changing passwords is of little use when your using them on compromised computers, since the new password is stolen as easily as the old one was. Once you've mastered the basics, you should have absorbed the following ideas: * *how to use the OS X keychain for storing passwords *considered or implemented having a few distinct passwords *and have started securing your account passwords as well as your computer (by applying the tips on Securing Apple ID to other accounts) After the basics, now it's time to think about increasing your overall security by spending money on anti-virus or a good unique password generation toolset2 to automate secure storage of stronger, unique passwords. Without being proficient at the level of involvement in the linked articles above, spending money and potentially adding instability or slowness from anti-virus software might not make sense for many users. Furthermore, Apple is clearly intent on getting ahead of this problem with the one-two punch of the App Store model where spreading unsafe software installation practices is clearly working with GateKeeper to allow most people to have automated warnings when code is not signed to prevent tampering and assist in tracing the source of malware. For most Mac users on Lion, the correct answer is to keep running anti-virus if you have it but not to run out and get it unless you have a good reason to spend time and money after getting up to speed on the basics of security. Since Lion, Apple has hardened the OS faster than bad actors have been able to exploit the OS so for most people and most businesses, not needing additional software as your default option is a sane and probably correct choice. 1 especially with the likes of Mac Defender preying on people looking for legitimate anti-virus software 2 like 1Password A: There is anti-virus software available for Mac OS X: * *Intego VirusBarrier *ClamXAV (Free) *Norton AnitVirus Mac Edition *McAfee VirusScan for Mac *Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac (Consumer Version is free) Is it worth it? That's largely up to you. Personally I'd say unless required there's no reason to so long as you practice "safe computing" (eg. not opening files from just anywhere, being aware of what is installed on your computer, etc.). However there are some companies that require any computer (regardless of OS) to have up to date anti-virus software installed and operational. There are no viruses available for Mac OS X but there are several pieces of malware and trojan horses that a user must manually download and install. The anti-virus products (and actually a feature in Mac OS X Snow Leopard) will help fight against these threats but the primary defence is actually user education as the attack vector is primarily social engineering and not using any security hole. A: There is a nice article on Mac.Appstrom from yesterday about antivirus on Mac OS X (which ones and do we need them). A: Another possible reason install an antivirus software on a mac could be the protection of systems running other operation systems in a heterogenous network. A virus or malware could reside on a mac drive for several time, until it is activated by an other system, on which it can run. Therefore it may make sense to install anti-virus software on all computers in a network, to keep the whole network clean. A: Arriving lately after the legitimate rising of this question I'd like to add here a return on many years and many OSes regular attacks. * *There is no Tchernobyl frontier (in 1986, French government announced publicly that the Tchernobyl radioactiv cloud wouldn't cross the country frontiers. Since this official public lie, I name with this metaphor any form of false official security barrier) to protect MacOS X: we live under the same probability (all operating systems are born equal with approximately the same coding errors ratio: they are written by us humans who are error prone). *There are many attacks targeting specifically Symantec AntiVirus for 2 reasons (I'm refering here to the huge number of external attacks I see on our external firewall targeting 2967/tcp and 38293/udp = ports used by Symantec anti-virus.): * *(too many security defaults) × (too many people using it) = good target for cybercriminals *many versions of Symantec AntiVirus failed to install or run on a case sensitive filesystem which is the sign of a weak quality control. To say it bluntly, a vulnerable anti-virus (Symantec) installed on a robust operating system (MacOS X), may render this last one vulnerable. *Many attacks are targeting directly us (the human seated behind the keyboard), either through booby trapped web servers or HTML formatted E-mail hidding URL toward these booby trapped web servers The 2 best anti-viruses I'm using on many versions of MacOS X are: * *clamav *ClamXav As their name lets guess it, they are based on the same engine. It is pretty good quality software, updated very quickly, and running also on many other Unixes. On some new crapware detected clamav included them within less than 72 h where commercial products took a quiet week (just enough time stop to get many thousand computers infested). I also appreciate Sophos, because it is running on different OSes, does install and run on a case sensitive filesystem (which is the sign of a serious quality control). A: Probably goes without saying, but if you run any version of Windows in a VM within OS X, those installs of Windows will need antivirus software on them. A surprising number of people I've worked with (including, on one occasion, a head of IT) haven't thought of that. A: No, it's not worth it to buy any antivirus software for your Mac. This is for two reasons. Firstly, the number of viruses in the wold for OS X is infinitesimal. Your risk is extremely low, and what viruses do exist, are mostly proofs of concept or MS Office Macro Viruses targeting old versions of Office. The second reason is because for what antivirus needs you do have, ClamXAV is lightweight, effective, and free. So no, it's not worth purchasing. But it is absolutely worth using, and if you can spare a few bucks for the tip jar, I'd encourage you to do that as well. A: Apple is excellent and keeping up with patching the few Mac vulnerabilities that do arise, so anti-virus isn't necessary as long as your not foolish enough to fall for blatant trojans. HOWEVER if you have a Windows PC with which you share files, it may be worth running anti-virus on your mac to prevent yourself from unintentionally spreading Windows viruses (which are otherwise harmless to Macs). Note that all anti virus programs for mac are either a hoax or simply check for Windows viruses to prevent unintentional spreading of viruses while file sharing. A: I personally use Sophos. The company I work for uses Sophos with 20,000+ computers, and the Mac version is free for consumer use. I have not had any problems with it running on my machines. It scans relatively quickly, and runs faster & better than any Norton product I've ever used. A: Viruses are so 80's. The big money is user information, this is where big companies make a lot of money, like Google Ads. Also Known As Spyware. Viruses started as a joke, a prank, a way for coders to have fun. Viruses flourished on Microsoft platforms like DOS and Windows because Microsoft never really cared about its customers other than how to sell more and make more money. MacOS X is a Unix based OS. Unlike Windows, a file cannot do whatever it wants. If it tries to modify your hard disk in any way, outside the home folder, it needs permissions. Permission you give. That makes life, for a virus, seriously hard. Because the goal of a virus is not just to infect your files, that means nothing, it's there to infect your system to infect your OS. To take control of your OS. That's the end goal. It's not impossible to hack an OS like MacOS X, but Apple is not stupid and, unlike Microsoft, it cares - because safety and reliability is what it sells. I have owned an iMac for 7 years and I've never had the problems I had with Windows. I see little reason to install a piece of software that will slow down my CPU and offer me zero benefits. There is no such thing as safety, safety is an illusion. As a matter of fact I have caught viruses on Windows several times using an anti-viruses that was full updated. If you want real safety, disconnect from the internet and install nothing. This is the only way to be sure. What seriously annoys me, and one of the big reasons I left Windows for good, was that Microsoft created this culture of "getting a virus is what happens for an OS" like its something normal. It's not normal, it's a serious flaw in the design of the OS, a flaw that survives because customers tolerate it as "normal". Do not install anti-viruses, you paid for your OS, demand from its publisher to deliver an OS that does what is reasonable to expect to keep you and your files safe. Viruses and malware are unacceptable. A: Do you need an Antivirus Software on OS X? Yes, yes you do need some sort of antivirus app for your Mac OS X and my reason for saying that is simple. Viruses exist for every known Operating System. It is true that Apple’s Operating system for Macs is safer and more naturally protected against Viruses but the REAL truth is that Mac systems are not as popular as the Windows OS so those that make viruses don’t see a need to program viruses for Macs when most desktop users in the world still operate on a Windows OS. So my point is, it is better to get a good Antivirus for your Mac computer now because sooner or later, as OS X becomes more user friendly, more and more viruses will appear... That's how I look at it too, you can never be too safe.

Q: StartupSound.prefPane on new iMacs? Inspired by this question to which I thought I knew the answer, does anybody know how to make StartupSound.prefPane work on a new iMac? I just got the computer last week, and installed SS.pP (v1.1b3) right away, but noticed the next day that it didn't actually function. However, it appears to work, in that it installed fine in System Preferences, I can access it, check and uncheck its options, and move its slider, all without receiving warnings or errors of any kind. Whatever configuration I set is remembered the next time I go into the app, even after a reboot. Nevertheless, the startup sound is still played when I boot up. Edit: Are others having the same issue? I'd be interested to know if this is a consistent problem with new iMacs or some quirk in how I've set mine up... A: Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure you're out of luck. A year or two ago Apple decided that the startup sound is enough of a diagnostic (which it is, in fact: it lets you know the logic board is functioning properly enough) that it needs to sound on every boot, from the internal audio device, regardless of what your sound settings and interfaces are. A: I use the Startup Sound prefpane on a 2010 iMac with 10.6.5 and it does its job beautifully. Try reinstalling the prefpane. Link here.

Q: Opening a new Terminal window when it's running on another desktop I open a lot of terminal windows. I also make use good use of tabs & multiple desktops. Normally I launch Terminal.app with Spotlight. But if Terminal is already running on another desktop, it changes to that desktop and opens it there. I hate that. I want it to open on the current desktop. So for now, I've been doing this: Is there a better way? A: By Golly, I think I've found it this time. Fire up Utilities/AppleScript Editor. Copy/paste the lines below. Save it and add it to your Dock. Whenever you click it you'll get a new window on your current desktop. You need to have "Enable support for assistive devices" activated in System Preferences - Universal Access. tell application "Terminal" to activate tell application "System Events" tell process "Terminal" click menu item "New Window" of menu "Shell" of menu bar 1 end tell end tell Source: adapted from this hint regarding Safari. A: I looked far and wide and found no better way myself. I usually have less than 5 Terminal windows open, and I usually don't want to switch desktops for Terminal, so in System Preferences - Expose - Spaces I assigned Terminal to be in Every Space so as to follow me around. You might hate that though. A: You can create a new service using automator (from the applications folder). At the top of the automator window, enter: Service receives 'no input' in 'any application'. Then, in the workflow, add 'Run applescript'. Make the applescript contain the following: on run {input, parameters} tell application "Terminal" do script " " activate end tell return input end run (You can add any command you like into the do script line between the " " (e.g. something useful to run when terminal first opens like "uptime" if you like, or just leave it blank). Save the service as 'Open Terminal' or whatever name you like. It should now appear in your services menu. Then if you want to add a keyboard shortcut, you just need to go to System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts tab, select services in the left hand menu, and find your new service (its probably near the bottom). Just click in the space to the right of your service name, and assign it whatever keyboard shortcut you like, and hey presto! it should all work A: You can tell the system to stop switching spaces "automagically" based on what App comes to the foreground: # don't switch spaces defaults write com.apple.Dock workspaces-auto-swoosh -bool NO killall Dock This is an important setting if you view each Space as its own workspace, and might have a Terminal window and a web browser window open in each space. If you want to switch spaces, you need to do so consciously and manually. This is equivalent to System Prefs > Spaces, and then unchecking the "switch space when switching app" checkbox at the bottom.

Q: What are the benefits of iPhone jailbreak? Some days ago I read a news that said iPhone Jailbreak is legal. So I get 2 question in my mine. * *before this news jailbreaking was illegal?(if yes why? "because when we buy something we can do anything we want with that product )(and if no then what was this news for?) *what is the benefits of jailbreaking? (are all iPhone applications was reachable through iTunes app store?) A: I Jailbroke my iPhone 4 as soon as the jalibreak was released and had my iPhone 2G Jailbroken before that. For me it's not about illegally installing applications, it's about intsall tweaks and applications which Apple can't or won't allow into their App Store, for example: * *Winterboard: Complete themeing system. *SBSettings: Easily enable/disable settings from within any application. *Infinifolder: Remove the 12 Application limit from iOS4 Folders. *QuickReply SMS: Reply to SMS messages directly from the message alert with a popup keyboard and then instantly return back to what you were doing. *Cyntact: Show contact pictures in Contacts. *BossPaper: Rotating wallpapers (Was available before iOS 4 allowed them) *Categories: Allowed Apps in folders years before iOS4 did! The few short weeks I had my iPhone 4 without it being Jailbroken I found it hard to use as I'd got so used to the small tweaks I'd installed my Cydia, most of them I had purchased.- A: I jailbroke my iPhone 4 few weeks ago, specifically for the MyFi, which allows you to tether your 3G connection to your other WiFi-enabled devices (iPad, laptop, etc), without paying $20 to AT&T every month and being limited by 2Gb of data. MyFi is $19.99, but you pay it once and enjoy free tethering after that, especially if you kept your $30 unlimited data plan (I did). Initially beyond that I saw very little reason to use other apps from Cydia store, but now I slowly changing my mind, since I found few real gems. * *SBSettings - gives you quick panel to toggle WiFi, Bluetooth, 3G and few other functions. This is extremely handy, especially when you're trying to preserve your battery (long day on the conference or something) and you don't want to dive into Settings each time you want to turn WiFi on or off. SBSettings is free *Notified Pro - this is notification management done right. Notifications have horrible usability in iOS and this app ($4.00 for Pro version, but I think they have the light one for free as well) fixes it by introducing notifications list similar to one Android has, which you can activate from status bar or via other customized shortcuts *Frash - which is Flash for iPhone, right in your mobile Safari. Frankly I haven't use it for anything serious yet (and it doesn't support my favorite Flash game Quadradius), but it's a good app to wow your friends, since everyone knows that there's no Flash on the iPhone and you can always prove people wrong. *My favorite app IntelliScreen - it's a paid app as well, but it's extremely handy. It gives you a highly customizable lock screen very similar to Windows Mobile's Today screen, so you can look at your calendar, emails, SMS and other info without even unlocking your phone. Really, really handy. One other thing that I didn't try personally yet, but going to soon is sync with your PC or Mac over WiFi. I hate to do it over a cable. Now, on the bad side: * *You have to be more careful and knowledgeable about stuff you're installing. That includes both apps (which are, in general, more buggy and may conflict with each other or with iOS) and stuff like official Apple iOS updates that you can't install unless you know that there's a jailbreak for them. *Cydia store (and others like RockYou app store) are less informative than AppStore and quite often it's hard to figure out what certain app does *Payment (while they allow multiple ways including AMazon payments and PayPal) is usually much more painful *Apps quite often are more expensive (think $4.99-$9.99 range), but on the bright side they worth it A: As to your first inquiry, Jailbreaking was illegal because of the way the Digital Millenium Copyright Act restricts the circumvention of encryption, copy protection, and other digital security mechanisms. In short, it is not so much the possession of a jailbroken phone which was illegal, but rather the process by which the phone was jailbroken. A common analogy is to liken the DMCA's restriction to a law preventing the crossing of red lines in the road. If there is a public park on the other side of the red line, it is legal for you to be there, but illegal to walk across the line to get there. The recent LoC ruling essentially created an exception to the DMCA's restriction for the specific purpose of jailbreaking a phone for the purpose of installing additional software and expanding it's functionality. Now, as to Why Jailbreak? In short, Jailbreak if there is an application you want to run which requires you to jailbreak. Apps available through Cydia and other repositories available to Jailbroken iPhone owners run the gamut from those rejected by Apple because they violate the App Stores Terms of Service in some way (Explicit content, use of hidden or illegal API's), apps from authors who disagree with Apples policies in administering the App Store, and apps which rely on functionality only available from other jailbreak apps. A: Here's the same question from gadgets.stackexchange.com. Lotsa good info in that post as well. iOS4 really has circumvented the "need" to jailbreak. The reasons are actually dwindling now. Here are my advantages. * *Backgrounder allows a (now outdated) type of multitasking. It was ok on iPhone 3G, but with the iPad's more powerful processor, it may be more stable. Once 4.0 is released for the iPad, this won't be necessary any more. *MyWi allows you to tether for free if you've got the 3G iPad ($9.99 for the app...$19.99 for 4.0, but well-worth it IMO) *For me, it's cool to have access to the filesystem. Utilities like Mobile Terminal, OpenSSH, and iFile are of specific interest to me just for my own nerdish pleasures lol. Hope this helps! A: The Benefits of Jailbreaking are that you can run any software that was created for it, regardless if it was rejected from the Apple’s App Store. Some good applications were rejected for different reasons (using Private APIs, Confilcts with existing Apple apps, etc). If you Jailbreak your iPhone/iPodTouch you can install any of these, bypassing the iTS. EDIT: The legal part has been nicely explained by LessPop_MoreFizz. A: Jailbreaking your phone lets you use non AT&T sim cards in it. If you go overseas to the Czech Republic or to Germany, for example, you can buy pre-paid sim cards in those countries and continue using your iphone if it is jailbroken. A: For me jailbreaking allowed me to install an app not allowed on the App Store - AutoSilent. I needed this as a drop of my iPhone (1G) left the silent switch permanently set to silent. AutoSilent allowed me to bypass this. A: I jailbreak because of Wifi Tethering and WinterBoard. A: Facetime over 3G and tethering are the only reasons to jailbreak an iPhone 4. Multitasking is the only reason to jailbreak an iPad. Its legal, but make sure you restore the device before you bring it to a genius bar. Apple employees don't have to honor the warranty or applecare if they see that the device is jailbroken.

Q: Is there an image editor like Windows' Paint for OS X? I tried out several image editors mentioned on this site but some of them (like Pixen and Seashore) were very disappointing. These apps were too simple and low level. What do you suggest for a (preferably free) image editor on OS X? P.S: I was using GIMP on Linux and also know that it was released for OS X too, but I want to find new good applications. A: I think it’s too subjective. Anyway, probably the two candidates are: 1) You don’t have Photoshop experience (or want to get far from it): Acorn is for you. 2) You know Photoshop and have some experience with it: Pixelmator will make you feel more at home. A: You said that you already know Gimp. I use that at times on my Ubuntu box and my Macbook. Also, Seashore on the Mac for really simple stuff. Here are a couple of links to open source options. * *http://www.osalt.com/graphic-applications *http://www.opensourcemac.org/ A: I use Pixen for the lightweight jobs. Update 2018: Since I recommended it 8 years ago, Pixen is now a paid app. Apparently I'm not the only one who thought they were doing something right. I wish them well with it. In the intervening time, I've gravitated to using Preview for basic photo editing and markup. A: I don't know why nobody talks about Krita. It is free and powerful with a lot of options. I was a real user of Paint.NET and I got sad when I migrated to Mac and didn't get my Paint.NET. Now I am using Krita and this is perfect. A: You could try Paintbrush (free). As quoted from its website : Paintbrush is a simple paint program for Mac OS X, reminiscent of Microsoft Paint and Apple’s own now-defunct MacPaint. It provides users with a means to make simple images quickly, something which has been noticeably absent from the Mac for years. A: Acorn ($49 or free with reduced features) Acorn is what you want. A: Pixelmator is a great alternative to Photoshop and similar to paint.net on windows A: What about the PowerPoint? You can edit images and then take a screenshot.

Q: iPad virtual keyboard text entry: Way to type multiple capital letters without having to press SHIFT before each letter? Let's say I'm typing a word in ALL-CAPS on the iPad. Currently, the only way I know of how to do this is to press SHIFT before each of the letters. Is there an alternative, like a sticky shift or Caps Lock function, where I can just go into a caps mode, type the letters I want as all caps, and then go back to normal text entry? I've tried keeping my finger on the shift key as well while I type, but that doesn't work as expected. A: Tap the Settings app. and click on the General *menu* > the Keyboard. Then turn "Enable Caps Lock" on. Now just double-tap the shift key to enable caps lock once using the keyboard. you can see with image tutorial here. A: Holding shift ought to work, also. Perhaps that relies on the caps lock option, but it works for me.

Q: iPad virtual keyboard text entry: Can I disable the automatic upper-casing that takes place after I end a sentence? When using the iPad to type a note, for instance, every time I type a period, the iPad assumes I want to start the next word with a capital letter. It also assumes I want to start typing with a capital letter in some text fields on web forms. Is there any way to turn off the automatic SHIFT that is taking place, so there are only capital letters where I explicitly want them to be? A: * *Go to settings *Go to general *Go to keyboard *Toggle and disable auto-capitalization

Q: How to minimize all windows/applications to the dock? ⌥+⌘+M as mentioned in multiple docs only appears to minimize the current (focused) window. I am looking for the "Show Desktop" equivalent. If it matters I'm using 10.6.4. A: I just use Hot Corners to do it. System Preferences >> Desktop & Screen Saver >> Hot Corners >> Select "Desktop" from one of the dropdowns. I use the bottom left, since that's where I was used to the Desktop button in XP lol. A: ⌥+⌘+M actually minimizes all windows of a current application, not just the current focused window (unless of course, the application you have running only has one non-minimized window.) The easiest way to hide all active applications is to select the Finder/Desktop, and then "Hide Others." The keyboard shortcut is ⌥+⌘+H. You can also simply hold ⌥ and ⌘ and click on the Desktop, or Finder on the Dock, or of course, simply use Expose and hit F11 (Or whatever you've rebound Hide-all to.) A: I finally found how to do it with Command+Option+H+M. This works for me on Mac OS X Lion.

Q: How do I sync up my iPhone with my Google Calendar? Possible Duplicate: How do I sync my Google calendar with my iPhone? So I want to be able to add appointments/events/tasks on either and have those changes reflected on both. A: You should really use Google Sync for iPhone to have all the benefits of Calendars (and even Mail if you need it). A: In iCal, add a new CalDAV account. Description: Google:you@gmail.com Username: you@gmail.com Password: yourpass SERVER SETTINGS Server Address: www.google.com Server Path: /calendar/dav/you@gmail.com/user/ Port: Auto Use SSL: CHecked Make sure you have sync enabled in iTunes.

Q: Is it possible to add alternate SCM options in Xcode 3? Is it possible to add additional SCM options in Xcode, specifically Mercurial? I know it is possible outside with Murky and others but I was hoping for a "inside Xcode" integration. If this is too SOish say so. A: In the latest beta of XCode 4, there's a built-in support for Git, so it's possible to add other SCM. Maybe Apple will also incorporate Mercurial support as well. They are several requests - XCode should support Mercurial as well as Git., Xcode 4 should support Mercurial - to put Mercurial support into XCode. So if you can't find a solution now, I'd suggest you to wait until XCode 4 goes out officially. By the way, if you need or want a nice Mac OS X client for Mercurial, you should try MacHg. A: The lack of XCode plugins is due to the fact that apple doesn't document XCode's plugin interface in public. That makes writing XCode plugins very hard. To increase the chance for a future Mercurial plugin you could file a dupe of Documentation and opening of the Xcode plug-in API (.xcplugin and family) which is dupe of rdar://3037631. A: As far as I know, it’s not possible to add support for mercurial using Xcode alone. You have to use an external tool (Like Murky). Xcode’s SVN support is primitive to say something nice about it. It works, but it’s far from being like “Versions”. ;) A: One may want to evaluate github for mac as an alternative. A: You're not going to find an built in extension for adding other SCM's. Best bet is to either use another tool (Murky mentioned) or the CLI. The third option would be to build a set of Xcode macros that performed common SCM tasks, such as commit and pull.

Q: Free screen capture tool that has decent annotation I'm looking for a free screen capture tool that has decent annotation. I want to be able to do the following: * *Highlight an area *Dim everything but the selected area *Draw arrows *Blur selected areas A: I just downloaded the Snagit Beta for Mac, free for now, I'm sure it will cost when it comes out of beta. So far it has everything I was asking for except the dimming feature. It has a few other nice features as well. A: LittleSnapper (not free) from Realmac Software does these things plus it has organizing features and web capture features, with source code. It's more suitable for web or other type of designers, perhaps, but it has these annotation features. A free tool for fast annotation (although I don't think it has darkening or blurring) is Skitch (mentioned by others here as well) which is otherwise very convenient for fast operation. A: Voila can apparently do all that but it’s not free. Skitch i use most of the time to add arrows and such. Very good. A: I second Skitch. I use it every day. It's free, for now. A: Jing also does much of what you're looking for.

Q: How can I use an ADB Apple Keyboard with a modern Mac? I recently found an old Apple Extended Keyboard that uses the ADB interface. I would like to use it, but I don't have an ADB-to-USB converter. I know of only one which is the Griffin iMate. Unfortunately, it's out of production and the ones going on ebay are expensive. Anyone know of another company that made the ADB-to-USB converters? Even better if they still do! A: The iMate was the only converter available on the market. If you do get an iMate, the only thing it will work with these days are keyboards and mice. It internally converts ADB keyboard and mice commands to USB keyboard and mice commands, so it will just make your ADB mouse and keyboard look like a USB mouse and keyboard to the computer, no drivers required. In ~2001 there was a driver for the iMate that would actually configure it as an ADB bus the computer could see, that way anything with real ADB drivers could use it just like a builtin port. That driver has not been updated in years, and Apple dropped all ADB support from OS X, so at this point USB emulation is the only thing it does. Not that there were many (any?) interesting ADB devices that were supported under Mac OS X anyway. A: Find a matching vintage CPU, install an old linux on it with ADB drivers, and then send the resulting keystrokes over IP. Or you could buy a nice new low-profile aluminum Apple keyboard. It'll be cleaner, more comfortable, and cheaper. A: FYI there appears to be another USB to ADB adapter out there as well Micro Connectors USB ADB Adapter. Good luck with your search. A: ADB is over ten years old. I would highly doubt anyone is still making a converter for it.

Q: Stop Safari from loading webpages as Preview images Everyday, the first time I start Safari, if I go to the history or bookmarks tab, I get the following message: How can I stop Safari from prompting this message and completely disable the webpages Preview? I already set the update policy to 2 with this: defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSnapshotsUpdatePolicy -int 2 A: Try running this command in the terminal: defaults write com.apple.Safari DidPromptToFetchRecentHistoryPreviews -bool YES

Q: How can I skip the Welcome screen after installing OS X? How can I skip the Welcome Video/Music that comes up after a fresh install of OS X? I believe you could skip this in Windows by hitting ESC, but I cannot find a key that has that same effect in OS X. A: Unfortunately you can not skip the opening movie - but you can skip the registration process which shows up later by pressing Command-Q. When the Setup process is complete the file .AppleSetupDone shows up in /var/db. (If this file exists it will skip the Setup process altogether) A: Try pressing cmd+q. It’s a Quicktime movie after all.

Q: What are your favorite Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts? What are your favorite keyboard shortcuts on Mac OS X? A: For me the life saving shortcut is the quarter increment/decrement of light/sound: ⇧+⌥ and the increment/decrement light or sound button. It is extremely useful with LED Cinema Display monitors. A: ⌘+E: Put selected text into search clipboard. Then ⌘ + G to find next. In combination with regular copy-paste you can do selective search and replace very quickly and conveniently. A: Here's a great one (for switchers) I got from the TextMate blog; Create the folder ~/Library/KeyBindings (if it doesn't already exist) In there, create a key-binding file DefaultKeyBinding.dict In that file, put this text (including all braces & punctuation); { /* home */ "\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLine:"; "$\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLineAndModifySelection:"; /* end */ "\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLine:"; "$\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLineAndModifySelection:"; /* page up/down */ "\UF72C" = "pageUp:"; "\UF72D" = "pageDown:"; } Save the file, and when you next start a Cocoa app (eg Mail, TextEdit etc) you will find that Home, End, Pg Up and Pg Down now work as they do on Windows. It's well worth having a look at the whole of that article - he explains exactly how to make this file and how the bindings work, with information about the other keycodes etc. A: ⇧+⌘+?: Help->Search, then type any menu item text, can be just a prefix ⌘+E: put selected text in search dialog ⌘+G and ⇧+⌘+G: find next/previous ⇧+⌃+⌘+4: Take a screenshot, press space for whole window screenshot ctrl + mouse scroller: zoom screen ⌥+⌘+⏏: sleep A: * *ctrl+A: Go to the beginning of the line (works in every Cocoa textfield) *ctrl+E: Go to the end of the line (works in every Cocoa textfield) *⌘+⇧+H : Pop up the Home folder *⌘+⇧+D : Pop up the Desktop folder A: ctrl+F2: Access the menu via the keyboard (Windows alt+space equivalent). A: Typing / on any file dialog will give you a "go to folder" dialog, which autocompletes with tab (you have to wait a second for it to work). This lets you type in the full path, from the root / folder. Extra handy if you want to open from / save to hidden locations or already have the command line path you want to save something in. This can be also accessed via ~ (i.e. the tilde key, to start from your home directory, e.g. ~/Documents) or using cmd+shift+G (which starts with the most recently entered directory). A: While being in the application switcher (using ⌘+⇥) cycle to an application by pressing ⇥ or ⇧+⇥; then - while still holding down ⌘ - press the down arrow to see an expose view of the selected app´s windows, including minimized windows. Using the arrow keys navigate to a window you want to bring to the foreground and hit ← to select it. A: Holding down the ⌥ while booting to select the startup volume. Holding down C while booting to boot from a CD/DVD in the drive. A: In a text area: Command ⌘ + → the end of the line (like End) Command ⌘ + ← the beginning of the line (like Home) Option ⌥ + → jump forward one word Option ⌥ + ← jump back one word A: ⌘+space: activate spotlight. Then you can launch any application, open most files, do quick calculations, etc. A: ⌘+W: Close window (or tab). ⌘+⌥+W: Close all windows. A: ⌘+⇧+4: selective screenshot saved on desktop ⌘+⇧+ctrl+4: selective screenshot saved in clipboard A: ⌘+⇧+.: show/hide hidden files on any file dialog A: ⌘+⇧+4+space+click on a window copies the current window to the desktop. This is very useful while taking screenshots without the need to crop. The rounded edges stay rounded. Use this with ctrl to copy the image to the clipboard. A: ⌘+⇥: Cycle through running apps ⌘+`: Cycle through windows for current app ⌘+W: Close current window ⌘+Q: Quit current app ⌘+,: Preferences dialog for current app ⌘+H: Hide current app (as long as it's not Photoshop) ctrl+⇧+⏏: Sleep all displays A: Power keys: Ctrl+⏏: "Are you sure you want to shut down your computer" dialog message appears: Ctrl+⌘+⏏: restart the computer Ctrl+⌥+⌘-⏏: shut down the computer ⌘+⌥+⏏: puts the computer in sleep mode ⇧+Ctrl+⏏: puts the monitor in sleep mode A: Command ⌘ + Option ⌥ + Esc ⎋ brings up the force quit dialog, which is handy for killing unresponsive applications. Command ⌘ + Option ⌥ + Shift ⇧ + Esc ⎋ held down for 5 seconds kills the foremost application. A: ctrl+⌥+⌘+8: High contrast theme. ⌘+` (backtick): Cycle through app's windows. A: ⌘+⇧+N: Create a new folder in Finder A: ⌘+⌥+H: hide all inactive application windows This is great for focusing on a single task or works well as a kind of show desktop if you switch to Finder first (providing you have few or no windows open) A: All of the shortcuts are my favorite! Specifically (based on frequency of use) ⌘+H: Hide application A: ⌘+⇥: Cycle through applications. ⌘+`: Cycle through the current application's windows. ⇥: Auto fill commands and file/directory names in Terminal. ⌘+⇧+4: Take a screenshot of a selected area. ⌘+⇧+3: Take a screenshot of the whole screen. A: ⌘+C: Copy selection ⌘+V: Paste selection ⌘+X: Cut selection A: shift+F12 or F11 - change sound volume without 'bip' sound A: fn+F3: show all windows (in the current Space) fn+⌘+F3: show the desktop fn+ctrl+F3: show the "current application" windows fn+⌥+F3: show the Exposé preference pane A: ⌘+alt+shift+V pastes plain text, SUPER useful for copying from web pages or MS Word into email, and leaving the weird formatting behind. A: Not wholly keyboard shortcut, but holding down the Option key (⌥) and bringing up a system menu often provides extensive information. For instance if you are connected to wifi, hold down ⌥ and clicking on the network menu will bring up a lot of information (MAC address, IP address, signal strength, et c.) about the current network connection. Holding ⌥ and clicking on the notification icon also sets your notification status to "Do not disturb"---rather useful when discussing something on your screen with colleagues and you don't want to see Messages popping up. A: ctrl+⌘+1 to order files by name (icon view) A: Zoom shortcuts, very good for presentations: fn+⌥+⌘+8: turn on/off zoom fn+⌥+⌘+=: zoom in fn+⌥+⌘+-: zoom out A: On newer keyboards, invoke Exposé to * *fn+F3: show all windows (in the current Space) *fn+⌘+F3: show the desktop *fn+ctrl+F3: show the "current application" windows *fn+⌥+F3: show the Exposé preference pane While being in Exposé, * *cycle through windows with the arrow keys, using return to bring them into focus. *use ⇥ and ⇧+ ⇥ to cycle through windows by applications (as highlighted in the Dock) A: ctrl+← or ctrl+→ to move between Mission Control spaces (in Lion). A: ctrl+⇥ Cycles through tabs in a web browser going to the right. ctrl+⇧+⇥ Cycles through tabs in a web browser going to the left. ⌘+↓ Goes to the very bottom of a web page or textarea. ⌘+↑ Goes to the very top of a web page or textarea. A: In Finder, ⌥+⌘+P brings up the full path. If you then hit ⌘+C in Finder, you can paste the full path of a file or folder into your Terminal or elsewhere by ⌘+V. A: ⌘+z [undo] is my favorite & the one I tell the people I support to remember if they only learn one shortcut. In Finder it undoes the last operation you just performed from inadvertently beginning to rename a file or folder; or undoing an unintentional drag and drop of a file or folder into the wrong folder or undoing a move to trash operation. In applications many have multiple levels of undo which lets you step backward undoing previous edits or draws. Extremely useful in extricating yourself from sticky situations or just after having made a simple mistake. A: control+shift+L turn the lights off

Q: Is there a free, lightweight text editor that isn't text-only but also isn't a heavyweight IDE? I'm not really satisfied with the text-editors available for Mac OS X. I tried TextWrangler, Smultron, Coda, SubEthaEdit, TextMate and others I do not remember. But none of the above satisfied my needs. I want a (free) text editor * *which is fast, *which does syntax highlighting *were I can define own syntaxes (or there are many plugins e.g. for YAML), *where the developers are active, *which does not have the look & feeling of TextWrangler (I hate the sliding sidebar) but or a real Mac-application *which can define projects (like Coda can) *which includes a basic support for Git and/or SVN *which supports a fast autocompletion *Mac OS X 10.6 compatible In plain English: the perfect lightweight text editor which is not yet a heavyweight IDE. A: Try Editra It's do lots of you want but not all of them, it's similar to notepad++ in windows. A: I can't vouch for it personally, but RedCar looks pretty promising. It supports TextMate bundles and runs on Mac, Linux & Windows. It doesn't support your entire feature list, I don't believe it has integrated source-control or project support (other than folders). A: You need Notepad++ running under wine! or winebottler! A: One trend I noticed this year is Mac programmers and web developers moving away from Textmate and the like to MacVim, including Ryan Singer of 37signals, who rocked MacVim during his Future of Web Applications talk recently. Lots of people have written about why they switched; "Coming Home to Vim" is my favorite. A: What's wrong with BBEdit, other than you might have to pay for it? A: You might try KomodoEdit. I want a (free) text editor Free and free (under the Mozilla Public License). * *which is fast, Reasonably fast * *which does syntax highlighting Check * *were I can define own syntaxes (or there are many plugins e.g. for YAML), There are lots of plugins; I'm sure it is possible to create your own syntax highlighter * *where the developers are active, I believe so. * *which does not have the look & feeling of TextWrangler (I hate the sliding sidebar) but or a real Mac-application I'm afraid it is not a Cocoa application; it is built off of Firefox's UI system. * *which can define projects (like Coda can) Yep. * *which includes a basic support for Git and/or SVN It looks like there may be some built-in Git support. Here's a git plugin. It looks like support for SVN is built-in. Edit: Those features appear to require Komodo IDE, instead of Komodo Edit. Komodo IDE is a for-pay upgrade. You might find "Home-baked SVN support for Komodo Edit" to be interesting. * *which supports a fast autocompletion It has autocompletion; you'll have to try it to see if it is fast enough for you. * *Mac OS X 10.6 compatible Yes. A: There is a new editor on the block called Chocolat. I've been using it for a week now and really like it. It has a lot of the features of TextMate (as well as supporting TextMate bundles) but I've found it to work a lot better with large sets of files especially over the network. A: I'm partial to Coda these days, but came across this the other day when I was looking for something else. I haven't tried it, so not sure if it meets all your needs. It's free, but only because it's not being developed anymore. http://www.web-scripter.com/ A: There's a new text editor called Kod that is modern, fast, and support projects. A warning -- development on Kod is just starting, so things are a bit unstable. It's alpha-level software at version 0.0.3, although I think it will eventually turn into just the application you're looking for. Features: * *Written from the ground up for 10.6 using Grand Central Dispatch and other new things *Uses GNU Syntax Highlighting format so there's highlighting support for every language *Modern UI with Chromium tabs *Scriptable using node.js A: Atom by GitHub is a free and powerful text editor and IDE build with programmers in mind. At the same time, it also doesn't give the impression of being a heavy-weight IDE. Visual Studio Code is another similar offering from Microsoft. A: Have you considered Xcode? I know you said you don't like TextMate, but it's one that meet pretty much all your needs. which is fast TextMate Really fast Xcode Not that fast but not Eclipse/Netbeans-slow which does syntax highlighting TextMate Very complete and extensible Xcode Does syntax highlighting, it depends on your needs were I can define own syntaxes (or there are many plugins e.g. for YAML), TextMate Very, very extensible Xcode Syntax extensions are possible where the developers are active, TextMate Some say it's vaporware, yet very few other text editor can compete with its current features Xcode Apple development of this program is very active which does not have the look & feeling of TextWrangler TextMate If you don't like the sliding bar, there's a plugin to replace it by a drawer Xcode Doesn't have a sliding bar which can define projects (like Coda can) TextMate / Xcode Do projects which includes a basic support for Git and/or SVN TextMate Support for Git/SVN/Mercurial (and probaby more) via built-in and added plugins Xcode SVN support for 3.x, added Git in Xcode 4 which supports a fast autocompletion TextMate Basic variable/function completion very complete code completion via bundles Xcode Basic variable/function completion MacOS X 10.6 compatible TextMate Some compatibility issue Xcode Fully compatible A: Have you tried any of the Eclipse variants? I'm not a huge Eclipse fan, but the Aptana version of Eclipse (which is geared primarily towards front-end web developers) seems to satisfy all of your requirements above and may be worth a peek. http://aptana.com A: Your best bet in 2018 for free and active and extensible editors that are not heavy IDE are: * *https://code.visualstudio.com/ *http://barebones.com/products/bbedit/ *https://developer.apple.com/xcode/ All are very fast on SSD modern Mac, even the MacBook (One) with a mobile CPU with minimum cores and clock rate. All are free, actively developed, extensible, support code control and completion and are extensible, scriptable and can be added to for many languages and syntax. A: There is also Brackets, to consider. Written in Javascript, currently developed by Adobe as a "community guided, open source project", focuses on web development but can also be used as a generic text editor, has a solid API to extend it and a growing number of extension already available. A: I would say that MacVim but it's of course a more complicated tool based on the traditional unix vim text-editor with a steep learning curve. By the way, which aspect of TextMate didn't appeal you? A: Sublime Text 2 Support for TextMate snippets, languages and color schemes. Split view, tabbing, projects, commands. Full-screen on Lion and a "focused" mode. Extensible, too. Very fast, great multiple selection mode and cross-platform. Currently priced at $59, but a free version is available with occasional alerts. It also has a rapidly-growing plugin API and surrounding community. Check it out, it's freaking awesome. Update: Sublime Text 2 is now superseded by Sublime Text 3 which features various enhancement and performance improvements. A: I think that Aquamacs might do the trick! A: You're not going to find it. * *which is fast, TexMate is pretty fast. TextWrangler is faster for large files though. * *which does syntax highlighting Most (if not all) have syntax highlighting. * *were I can define own syntaxes (or there are many plugins e.g. for YAML), You might or might not get this. * *where the developers are active, Best of luck with that. * *which does not have the look & feeling of TextWrangler (I hate the sliding sidebar) but or a real Mac-application What's wrong with the sidebar? * *which can define projects (like Coda can) Define projects as folders and you're all set. * *which includes a basic support for Git and/or SVN UNIX philosophy is to do one thing and do it well. Integrated support for an SCM is not something easily found. Perhaps you should use an external tool? * *which supports a fast autocompletion As far as I know, only a few major IDE's support this. You're not going to find what you're looking for free. Any IDE will feel slow as mud compared to a text editor like TM or TW. If you want my honest opinion, try TextMate. Bundles will allow you to replicate some of the behavior you're looking for, the rest you can hope is in 2.0. A: Check out Fraise, the successor to Smultron. It meets many of your requirements. Here are the ones that are not met: * *where the developers are active: Fraise looks like it's now dying like its predecessor *which includes a basic support for Git and/or SVN: not sure what you mean by this, but Fraise has command line integration *which supports a fast autocompletion: not positive but I don't think it has autocompletion... but it has commands and text snippets Everything else you mention is in there. on edit: I was a notepad++ guy for years doing windows dev work and over the last couple months I've slowly transitioned over to vim. It does every single thing you're asking for and more.

Q: iTunes on Windows Refuses to Upgrade I've been having a problem when trying to upgrade iTunes on Windows (7 x64). Every time I try to upgrade it, I get the error message: QuickTime was not found. QuickTime is required to run iTunes. Please uninstall iTunes, then install iTunes again. Wanting to upgrade to 9.2 to get iOS4, I obliterated anything to do with Apple from my machine and reinstalled successfully, but this error comes back time and time again. I recently found that I am not the only one suffering from this. Is there a way to solve this issue or am I doomed to stay like this forever? A: It seems like the installer expects Quicktime to be there but when it looks it can't find it. Have you tried removing any registry entries to do with Quicktime and retrying the install? A: I have the same issue. iTunes on Windows 7, installed with default configuration months ago. After that I have upgraded it several times successfully, again with default settings. Now the latest iTunes upgrade offered by Apple Software Updater suddenly fails with "QuickTime required" error. iTunes and QuickTime Player fully working, only upgrading to latest version fails.

Q: What hardware upgrade would be most beneficial for a Mac? Would it make more sense to buy a Mac with a better processor, or with a better graphics card, or a SSD? For general computer use, mainly word processing and Chrome/Safari. A: Do you plan to buy an iMac or a MacBook ? If you buy a MacBook, you should take a SSD because it's better for a portable device (more resistant). If you buy an iMac, SSD is not really necessary because you don't move your computer every day, so you can take a better processor and/or RAM. If you don't manage to choose, juste take a better processor and a SSD :) Hope this helps ! A: The speed gains from an SSD drive are awesome, but they're still much more expensive. Also, OS X always sees significant boosts from adding RAM, so get as much as you can afford (but not from Apple!). A: Given those three I say processor. Given an alternate option I say processor then RAM. Always buy the most "powerful" processor you can at the time. You're probably going to keep the computer for a few years. With upgrades and new versions coming out it is hard to stay on top. Might as well be as close to the top as possible to start with. OS X and some programs (cough Firefox) love RAM. Get the stock amount and upgrade later. A: For general computing the most "bang for your buck" would come from RAM as tonklon states. Get as much as you can given your budget and specs on the computer. The next item would be up the hard drive to SSD. This can get quite expensive but I've heard nothing but good things about certain SSD drives. If cost not an issue then do both. If it is then upgrading RAM is your best bet. Keep in mind that Safari is a memory HOG. I've seen it take over 1G of RAM with just a few browser tabs open. Default graphics card should be more than adequate for your stated needs. A: My suggestion is to always take the second fast processor available and invest the rest of your budget in RAM. The fastest processor is usually too expensive. You don't get much more speed for the price difference between the fastest and second fast. And don't upgrade the RAM in the Apple Store. Find a local reseller, who delivers your System readily build with non-apple brand RAM with warranty. You could get twice the RAM for the same price. But never ever use discount RAM. It's not worth the hassle. EDIT Oct 12: bmike's comment is right. The SSD is right now the single most important component for your Mac's speed. So take the SSD. Even if you can then only afford the slowest processor. BTW. Are there still Mac models w/o SSD? A: I've found RAM and SSD are usually the ways to go. However, it depends upon your current configuration. If you currently only have 1gb or less of RAM, then you should definitely load up on RAM at the expense of other things (if there need be a tradeoff). But if you've got 2gb already, then SSD will likely do much more for you (given your stated needs). A: As Jeff Atwood says in his post, "no CPU or memory upgrade can come close to touching that kind of real world performance increase" as an SSD. A: SSD and RAM for me. But buy them from OWC or Crucial. Don't use the Apple one! And second display is always a nice upgrade, even a small 7 inch USB display. A: Consider that Hard drive is a bottleneck (physical speed) and limited ram enforces the usage of the Hard Drive (swap!). With those two parameters, you need to find a balance between the two. If you get 32GB of RAM, yes, you will be using a “slow” hard drive, but the swap to drive will be close to zero. If you go with less ram but an SSD, those swapping times will be way way faster. I’d chose memory over anything else, because swap is not a substitute for RAM, and no free RAM = bad things occur.

Q: Why iTunes updates get released so fast and why everytime the entire iTunes has to be updated instead of patched? I use iTunes on my Mac (OS X 10.6) but I wonder what's up with it's update. I really want know Why iTunes updates get released so fast and why everytime the entire iTunes has to be updated instead of patched. P.S: I have limited bandwidth with my internet then the size of update was important for me. A: The reason why they release patches so often, iTunes is the app where all their management of iPhone and iPad occurs, which means they often need to update it to add support for new iPhone/iPad/iPod touch models, and to support new features in those products. The fact that it is also where they handle a lot of their DRM (which they may have contractual obligations to update in some instances) probably is part of the reason as well. The fundamental issue with delta patches is that they are more complex, and have higher support costs for the vendor. A full updater can run against any version of the app that is installed, a delta patcher most be made against specific version. A full updater will work regardless of whether the app has been modified (user hacking the binary to do something, tweaking the artwork, etc), a delta updater will fail against a modified app. Given the extra work involved in preparing a delta patch, and the increased chance that it won't work, they tend to only be used in very specific cases. Apple tends to create delta updates for software updates, but they only create a delta against the most recent released version of the OS, rather than making dozens of versions that work with every release they make the one that will get most people, and then for everyone else they do a combo update that is a full updater that also incorporates every previous software update as well. For smaller things like iTunes, they don't tend to bother with delta updates at all due to the increased workload, support, the increased number of versions that exist, and the fact that iTunes is fairly small in the scheme of things (it is smaller than an OS update, or an iPhone/iPad firmware). A: I use iTunes on my mac (OS X 10.6) but I wonder what's up with it's update. I realy want know Why Itunes updates get released so fast and why everytime the entire Itunes has to be updated instead of patched. It probably is patched. There are more then a few files that go along with iTunes, there are other applications and shared processes that must be updated as well. Applications are updated on an as-needed basis. You probably don't have to update right this minute, it's simply saying an update is available, and you would be better off if you updated. This could fix any number of issues, from performance, stability, or misc "bugs" that were found. You can see the (abbreviated) changelog if you want to know exactly what this update is supposed to do. Contrary to the other answer, it is not how Apple "bundles" applications. The "bundle" is simply a folder that finder interprets as an application. Applications can (and are often) "patched" by modifying files withing these .app folders. The entire application does not need to be replaced every time. Otherwise every Adobe update would take days do download. A: Please note that the following answer is valid for any application (Apple-specific or 3rd party). It's the way Apple bundles all applications. In fact every *.app is a bundle (think - folder). You can open it in finder (right click -> Show Package Contents) or cd to it in terminal. That's why any app is not patched like on windows systems where files of one program is scattered all over the file system, but sort of "replaced" as a whole.

Q: Quicksilver addons and plugins Quicksilver is no doubt THE App that's must have for any keyboard ninja using Mac. Please share your [power] tips on new addons, triggers and plugins that you use. A: If you're using Quicksilver just as a launcher I recommend checking out "Google Quick Search Box" (http://www.google.com/quicksearchbox/). A: [Holywar mode on] Quick silver is NOT the app that's must have for any keyboard ninja using Mac since Spotlight works like a charm. Quicksilver was good on 10.3 as there were no Spotlight :). [Holywar mode off]

Q: Cycle through windows with keyboard in Adobe Acrobat I use Adobe Acrobat Pro a lot, and often keep multiple documents open. Does anyone know of a way of cycling through the open windows of this application without resorting to the mouse? (Cmd+` (backtick) does not work.) I use OS X 10.6.4 on a 13" MacBook Pro. A: You can try Cmd + F6. It's working on both Mac OS & PC. A: Are you referring to cycling through all open windows in all apps, or all open windows within Adobe Acrobat? If the former, use ⌘tab to switch between apps, and then ⌘` to swap between windows in that app. If the latter, ⌘` works just fine for me (Adobe Acrobat Pro 9.3.4; 15" MacBook Pro running OS X 10.6.4; no particular third-party addons that might change this behavior). A: I had given up on this for a long time, but trying it once more I noticed that the "`" requires to be pressed for longer for the switch to happen. Once it switches you have to let go quickly or it will switch back to the 1st document. Hope this helps. A: You might want to take a look at Witch (http://manytricks.com/witch/). It'll give you many more options for how you can cycle through windows and open apps. It's not free ($19), but there is a free trial. A: option+command+backslash (on french keyboard) (`, on english probably) A: On Mac OS X 10.11.1 with Acrobat Pro DC installed try controltab.

Q: Mail: Smart Mailbox Filters How can I get the smart mailbox to filter email correctly? I have the following set: Contains messages that match ANY: Subject Contains criteria one Entire Message Contains criteria two Entire Message Contains criteria three The result is no messages found. If I remove the third criteria I get messages. What I thought the ANY would take each criteria and OR them. Instead it appears to be AND ing them. Any thoughts on how to implement criteria in an OR? A: You've got your rule set up correctly - if it's an ANY set of predicates it's as if there is an OR between them. It may be slow (and why nothing is showing up) because an Entire Message Contains has to search every email you have. What happens if you have only criteria three and not criteria two - there may be an issue with criteria three that is causing the search to fail. (Check Console) You can kludge a smart mailbox with AND and OR rules by using other Smart Mailboxes and the "Message Is In Mailbx" or "Message Is Not In Mailbox" predicate. A: For the "Entire Message" and "Contains" combination, you can use AND and OR to add multiple keywords. For example, Contains messages that match ALL of the following conditions: Data Received is in the date range "01/01/2011" to "31/12/2011" Entire Message Contains "invoice OR receipt" This will give you all messages in 2011 that contain either "invoice" or "receipt"

Q: Quick, automated way to verify the copy of a folder? I have a lot of files that I've been transferring around my network and to external hard drives. For example, I just copied a folder with files representing an old laptop's disk image (created with clonezilla) from an external hard drive to my macbook pro. Is there an app or script I can use that would allow me to verify that all the files in the folder were copied correctly and without corruption? I want to be able to run something on the source and target folders that will give me confidence that they are identical. Ideally, the tool would be able to verify folders on a network drive as well. A: Two easy ways, one CLI and the other with a GUI : * *With Terminal : * *diff -rq folder1 folder2 *Using FileMerge (which comes with the Developer Tools) : * * A: The easiest way to do that would be to run a md5 sum on all the files and match it with the local set. I can't script off the top of my head at the moment, but that's how you would do it. For future reference, don't copy folders. Tar / bzip them up and then move them. Your copy time will be significantly decreased and then it's easier to verify a successful copy.

Q: Is it possible to launch a program in a specific language? I'm a developer, and my primary language is French, so I use Mac OS X in French. However, I need on a regular basis to open an application in English to do support. Right now I'm going to the International System Preferences and I put English above in the languages list, then I open the app I need to run in English. When I'm done, I switch it back to French. This is an annoying process. Is there something else I can use, like a command-line program, to launch an application in a specific language? A: You can change the language inside the preferences file of the application : defaults write com.apple.TextEdit AppleLanguages '("en-US")' Or just run once one application with another language : /Applications/iCal.app/Contents/MacOS/iCal -AppleLanguages '(de)' To determine the bundle identifier, run mdls -name kMDItemCFBundleIdentifier /Applications/Mail.app or directly in one command: defaults write $(mdls -name kMDItemCFBundleIdentifier -raw /Applications/Mail.app) AppleLanguages '("en-UK")' (via SuperUser) A: There is a freeware, Language Switcher, to launch a single application with a different languages. it's really simple and work amazingly. A: Go to the app, Press Command + I and if there are other languages they will show up in the info page. Just untick all except the language you want A: For Google Chrome do this: defaults write com.google.Chrome AppleLanguages '("en-US")' A: I also found this to work: bash-3.2$ LANG=de.UTF-8 bash-3.2$ /Applications/MuseScore\ 3.app/Contents/MacOS/mscore A: In the Finder, get info on the application. There are languages here, and you can choose. Alas, this seems to have disappeared in Snow Leopard.

Q: How to perform hard / cold reboot of iPhone or iPad? I understand that when I press and release the power button on the top of my iPhone or iPad, it stays on but turns off the screen. Whereas if I press and hold the power button, a "slide to turn off" control appears on the screen. Sliding this, as I was told, does turn the unit off, but it does so by suspending the RAM to disk (flash memory, actually.) So, when turning on the iPhone or iPad, it isn't so much rebooting the OS as it is resuming it from flash storage. How to force the OS to completely reboot on these devices? A: See Restart your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support: iPhone 8 or earlier Press and hold the Home and Power Button until your iPhone / iPad reboot (ignore the "Slide to turn off"), you can release both buttons when you see Apple logo. iPhone X Press and hold Volume up [or down] and Power Button until your iPhone reboots (ignore the "Slide to turn off"), you can release both buttons when you see Apple logo. See If your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch won‘t turn on or is frozen - Apple Support: If your screen is black or frozen If your screen is black or frozen, you might need to force restart your device. A force restart won't erase the content on your device. You can force restart your device even if the screen is black or the buttons aren't responding. Follow these steps: * *On an iPhone X, iPhone 8, or iPhone 8 Plus: Press and quickly release the Volume Up button. Press and quickly release the Volume Down button. Then, press and hold the Side button until you see the Apple logo. *On an iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus: Press and hold both the Side and Volume Down buttons for at least 10 seconds, until you see the Apple logo. *On an iPhone 6s and earlier, iPad, or iPod touch: Press and hold both the Home and the Top (or Side) buttons for at least 10 seconds, until you see the Apple logo. A: Hard power off, hold power button and home button until it shows the shutdown slider, and then keep holding the buttons. After a while the screen will completely turn black. Now press the power button to boot the machine up.

Q: Can I change my OS X theme? Some of my friends said that OS X sucks because you only have to choose one theme on every device that have OS X. I searched, but I didn't find any feasible solution just one little thing that cost money (and I didn't want to risk it). Is there a easy way to change OS X themes that is free? Please don't tell me that the theme doesn't need to be changed; I really want something like Ubuntu that can change anything, I really love my Ubuntu desktop (KDE and Gnome). If OS X doesn't do this, are there any 3rd-party utilities that can? A: There is now an app called Flavours that allows theming. It has many nice themes, including some Shapeshifter themes, and runs starting on Lion (10.7.x) up to Mavericks (10.9.x). It costs a bit, however. A: These days, there's also PaintCan which is a plugin for MacForge. A: Out of the box there is no themeing capability in Mac OS X, you can however modify some of the colours used by Mac OS X in the Appearance Preference Pane in System Preferences. If you're serious about themeing however there are 3rd party applications you can get to help with this: * *CandyBar - manages and changes icons. *ThemePark - does most everything else. If you're interested in available themes that work with ThemePark check out MacThemes Otherwise a fairly good resource is the forum at MacThemes. A: Back in the 10.4 days there was Shapeshifter from Unsanity. Sadly, it died when Leopard was released.

Q: Mac ports installation of gcc46 failing due to architecture problems When trying to install gcc46 on OS X 10.6.4 using port (MacPorts 1.9.1) i get the following errors: artemis:foo$ sudo port install gcc46 Error: Cannot install gcc46 for the arch(s) 'x86_64' because Error: its dependency gmp is only installed for the arch 'i386' Error: and the configured universal_archs 'ppc i386' are not sufficient. Error: Unable to execute port: architecture mismatch MacPorts was freshly installed on the 10.6 system. Any suggestions on how to resolve this or how to install gcc46 for i386? (Previously asked and as of now unanswered on SuperUser.) A: For some reason the universal_archs configurations was wrong. An answer on SuperUser now worked: * *in /opt/local/etc/macports/ copy macports.conf.default to macports.conf *make sure universal_archs in it is set to x86_64 i386 *now go for clean installs, e.g. by following the migration instructions A: Try installing first gmp only with the universal variant : sudo port install gmp +universal Then reinstall gcc46.

Q: Can I get the Canon EOS Utility to stop bugging me when I plug in my iPhone? I'm not sure if this belongs here or SuperUser, so I'll ask here and if the community decides to close it, I will re-ask there. Every time I plug my iPhone in to my MacBook, the Canon EOS Utility (installed with the software for my DSLR) pops up and decides to inform me that a camera was not connected. I, of course, know this, as I just connected my iPhone. This happened with my last iPhone (3G) and continues to happen with my current iPhone 4. Is there any way to get that software (provided by Canon) to stop bugging me (on my MacBook, OS X 10.6) when I plug in my iPhone? A: After plugging in your iPhone, open "Image Capture.app" in the Applications folder. In the bottom left of the window is an option to choose what to do when this "camera" is plugged in. Change this to Do Nothing or open iPhoto as you would prefer. A: You can also try installing Cameras, which will let you select default actions depending on the camera you plug in. A: Open up the ImageCapture application. There will be an option to change what happens when you plug a camera / device in. A: One option would be to simply disable the Canon EOS Utility, which apparently has a 'helper' app/daemon running all the time, and manually launch it when you need it. There should be a setting in the Canon EOS Utility's preferences, but if there isn't, look in System Preferences » Accounts (I think that's what it is called in Snow Leopard) » Login Items. If there's nothing there, check "~/Library/LaunchAgents" (where ~ is your home directory) for something which (probably) lists Canon in the filename. Remove the file from that directory and restart your Mac. Bonus Tip: Assuming that your camera mounts in /Volumes/ when connected, you could use Hazel to automatically launch the utility when your camera is connected.

Q: iChat periodically disconnects About twice a night, iChat will disconnect (though it'll still show me as connected). After about 10 minutes, it'll realize it's disconnected and bring up a dialog telling me it lost the connection. I can then close the dialog and reconnect with no trouble. My computer's network connection seems to be fine throughout this. Any idea: * *What might might be causing this? *How to fix it? *At least how to make it tell me more immediately when it loses the connection? A: Your problem might be your router loosing connection temporarily to your ISP. I use Chax, an extension to iChat which, among other great things, auto-reconnects when connection is lost. Chax is donationware.

Q: How can I unlock my screen when my input is in a different language? I have 3 languages installed and everytime my MacBook goes to sleep - the screen is being locked. After entering a password, system says that it's incorrect. It appears, that I'm entering password not in English language, but in Lithuanian (mother tongue), where all digits are taken by Lithuanian-specific vowels and consonants (from 1 to 8: ąčęėįšųū). And the problem is that I can't change language back to English so that I'd be able to enter digits for my password. Using backtick for "default language" does not work (I get beeps all the time). Copy pasting does not work too. Any suggestions? As I don't think I need to take care of what language my MacBook locks the screen in. I'm running Mac OS X 10.6. A: Go to System Preferences > Accounts > Login Options and tick "Show input menu in login window" you'll then be able to change it in the screen saver password window as well In OS X 10.7 Lion, "Accounts" is called "Users & Groups". The setting "Show input menu in login window" really ought to be active by default when plural language input sources are enabled, though. A: If you used before lithuania language and with this language locked screen.then you must to press in one time ctrl and alt plius number which for you need. A: Go to System preferences > Language & Text and in the Language tab move your password language (in your case, English) on top of the other languages. A: just turn it on and turn it on again and it will go back to english i just did it

Q: Is there a way to rename a sound card in Mac OS X? I have multiple sound cards connected and would benefit from being able to rename them from their device name to something like "Headphones", "Surround system", etc. Is there a way to do this? A: The Sound Card’s name comes from the Device itself, which “publishes” its name. The operating system reads the name from there. I don’t believe you can rename it, but you can definitely go to /Applications/Utilities/Audio MIDI Setup and create an Aggregate Audio Device (with the names you want) and select the input/outputs of each. For example, you can create your headphones like this:

Q: iPad displays "Not Charging" when plugged into USB ports. What can I do? When I plug my iPad into my computer's USB ports, the iPad battery area displays "Not Charging". I understand the iPad requires more wattage to charge compared to an iPhone or iPod, as evidenced by the iPad's larger power adapter (10W) vs the iPhone's (5W). Is there anything I can do to enable iPad charging from my computer's USB ports? The computer in question is a desktop PC, and it has a 950W power supply. I presume the motherboard's own USB ports are the issue, as opposed to overall power available :-) So I'd like to know: * *Are there external USB hubs that can supply enough power to charge the iPad? *Is there any other solution to enable a computer's USB ports to charge an iPad? e.g. doubling up a USB port, as I've seen done with some external hard drive enclosures? A: From the article, The iPad's USB charging caveat: [Originally posted on Neowin.net by giga on 04 April 2010 12:26] The iPad specifications page clearly state the ability to charge with USB (with no mention of OS requirements) but Apple have additionally provided a support document disclosing that "some USB 2.0 ports and accessories do not provide enough power to charge iPad." Providing some further clarification to Macworld, Apple asserts that USB charging is supported but that it varies according to the state of the iPad and the power output of the USB hub: * *For the fastest charging, use the iPad’s included 10-Watt USB power adapter. This will fully charge the iPad in a few hours, even if you’re using the iPad at the same time. *When connected to a high-power USB port—such as the ones on recent Macs and the iPhone Power Adapter—the iPad will charge, even during use, but more slowly. (We haven’t yet determined how much more slowly.) Some third-party powered USB hubs provide higher-power USB ports, but many don’t; similarly, the USB ports on most Windows PCs don’t provide this additional power. *When connected to lower-power USB ports—those on older Macs, most Windows PCs, and most USB hubs (powered or unpowered)—the iPad’s battery is not charged while the iPad is awake, but is charged (again, slowly) when the iPad is asleep. What’s confusing here is that the message "Not charging" appears in the menu bar when the iPad is awake, which might lead you to assume that the offending USB port can never charge your iPad. But rest assured, Apple says: once you put the iPad to sleep, the battery will indeed charge. (If you could see the screen while the iPad was asleep, it might even display the charging icon. It’s the modern-day “Does the refrigerator light stay on when I close the door?” mystery.) Further analysis from Apple's statements indicate that the iPad can only be charged off of USB connections that provide near 1 amp of current. The majority of USB ports on most older Macs and PCs only provide 500 mA and thus can't be used to charge the device. The USB 2.0 specification provides 500 mA of current to high-powered buses and 100 mA for low-powered buses. But in April 2009, the specification gained a new "Battery Charging Specification" which provided additional current to high power devices and it seems that Apple has started to incorporate it in their newer Macs. A: As Am1rr3zA mentioned above, the specs for USB 2.0 provides for 500 mA of power. Apple is the sole manufacturer that I know of that utilizes higher-than-spec powered USB ports, and I think, even then that's only on their later model (within the last couple years) Macs. "Not charging" is a bit of a misnomer, because in fact, the iPad is charging, but it's also draining power. It says "Not charging" when it's draining power quicker than it's charging, which is the case when plugged into 500 mA USB ports. There's nothing you can really do about this, unfortunately. A: The same thing happened to me "Not Charging" but when I inserted my motherboard support cd i saw a software called "ASUS Ai Charger" then i installed it and restarted. Then when i plugged in my iPad mini it charged A: Check if there is an update for your motherboard, many manufacturer has release update to enable USB port to deliver enough watt to charge an iPad. A: This is one of many cases in which a device that says it's not charging is actually... charging... very... slowly. This is the case with the ipad here, ipods and iphones that are put into older docks, blackberries that are connected to older macbooks, etc. You'll likely be just fine if you charge it overnight, but if you're waiting for it, it's pretty darn slow. A: USB 3.0 is specified for up to 900 mA. Give such a hub a try. A: I installed "ASUS IA Chrager" on my PC and it worked ASUS AI Charger

Q: Books or Info about Mac OS X under the hood Can somebody point me in the direction of books, sites, articles, ... to learn everything about Mac OS X "under the hood"? In other words to learn more about the kernel, the system. ps.: About Snow Leopard of course A: I've read several articles by Amit Singh at http://kernelthread.com, and have always found them very interesting. He's book is Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach A: Don't overlook http://developer.apple.com - there still is a free developer account option to get Xcode 3. You can also buy Xcode 4 from the Mac App store for $5 and no developer account needed - the public documentation available through Xcode is impressive and comes from the web site. The free Ingredients browser also is superb for consuming and searching the Apple Documentation. You only need to pay for a developer account to get pre-release software and documentation so to learn about the current and past OS is free or nearly free.

Q: iVPN Connection Problems I want a way to create a secure connection to the internet (something I can trust) on my iPod Touch and Laptop through a source I can trust. In my research, it was suggested I use iVPN on my iMac at home to set up the connection. So I bought that and tried it out. The VPN client connects, but I cannot navigate to the internet. Any thoughts on how to fix it? A: Doing so would require being able to access your iMac from remote places, thus configuring either a DMZ host, or port forwarding on your router. Either way it will be a headache. Also if you're on a residential connection note that the public IP address can and will change. I recommend a dynamic DNS server for that. Assuming you can get that all setup it's as simple as setting up VPN on your iDevice.

Q: Can I use Time Machine to back up data to a Windows shared drive? How can I do "Time Machine" from my Mac OS X 10.6.4 to my Window share drive? I'd also prefer to encrypt my image, so it's "safe" just in case :-) A: In order to create a Time Machine backup to an unsupported drive (pretty much anything that's not formatted HFS+) you need to run the following Terminal command: defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1 Your share will now show up as a valid Time Machine destination in the Time Machine Preference Pane. Time Machine will then create a disk image on that drive that will act just like a HFS+ drive for Time Machines purposes (hard linking, etc.). One advantage of using a disk image over using the entire drive is that you can limit the size it will grow to of the disk image using Disk Utility. Be sure to check Louis Gerbarg's answer as well for why it's unsupported and you have to jump through a hoop to enable it. A: There are various hacks to setup a diskimage on the share, which I am sure other people will describe in depth. Having said that DO NOT USE SMB TO STORE TIME MACHINE BACKUPS. Guaranteeing writes on a disk image backed over a network store is complicated. Apple had reliability issues with Time Machine over AFP for years, and they controlled the entire stack. In order to guarantee write ordering and write stability (which are necessary in order for Time Machine to work in the presence of intermittent networking, such as walking out or range of the base station or putting the machine to sleep midbackup and waking it up out of range) Time Machine depends on features specific to AFP (For those interested, those are published as part of the Time Machine Network Server Requirements). If you want to backup to a Windows Machine you should probably get a copy of ExtremeZ-IP, if it is a linux box running SAMBA you should install netatalk. A: I did not test this solution, but looks someone did a little write up for this: OSX Timemachine and Samba/Windows share « Hupio’s Weblog A: Yes with caveats * *Create a sparsebundle disk image per these instructions Windows NTFS Linux or other disk for Time Machine Backups and move it to your network file share *Optional: Add the disk image as a login item so that it is mounted when you log-in * * Menu -> System Preferences -> Users and Groups -> Login Items -> '+' button -> Navigate to the network drive and select the sparsebundle *Or, add a cron job for a 2 line script: * *osascript -e 'mount volume "smb://username@servername/sharename"' *hdiutil attach /Volumes/servernameandorsharename (The advantage of osascript over bash is that osascript will remember your password) *If your disk doesn't appear as an option in Time Machine preferences use the line from Chealion's answer: defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1. * *And/Or use the commandline: tmutil setdestination /Volumes/Volumenameonceitsbeenmounted *Buy a copy of Alsoft DiskWarrior. The problem is, as @louis-gerbarg says, backup to a network share is a risk unless your server, router, network and client are all very reliable. The symptom is then that the disk no longer mounts and your backup no longer runs. I have been doing Time Machine backup to network share for 10 years and I reckon on a disk repair every other month. I have sometimes got through a year with Disk Utility or chkdsk alone repairing errors but that left me with a trail of old broken backup images. That said, the better perspective is: * *If you don't have 3 copies, you aren't serious about backup. Therefore: *You should also have everything duplicated to somewhere that's at least fire-and-theft-isolated from your machine. Some combination of iDrive, OneDrive, Github, Syncthing, Cubbit, diy Azure storage, for instance. *That leaves me still using TimeMachine primarily for the convenience of recent versions: 'darn get me the version from yesterday'. It's a great interface. So now I'm less concerned about losing last year's TM backups so long as I can start a new TM backup tonight. A: Unfortunately, I don't believe you can. From the Time Machine help docs: Time Machine can’t back up to an external disk connected to an AirPort Extreme, or to an iPod, iDisk, or disk formatted for Windows. EDIT: Ignore this answer. As mentioned in comments, Apple's own documentation is out of date.

Q: Are there any features like Winamp's auto tag exist for iTunes? It took me 3 months to ID3 Tag all of the MP3s (artist, album, released year, etc) in my iTunes library. It was annoying. I saw that Winamp solves this problem with an "Auto Tag" feature. Is there a plugin for iTunes on OS X to do the same? Or does iTunes itself support this? P.S: I would like the program or plugin or whatever else to be compatible with iTunes. A: MusicBrainz Picard works quite well, it uses the same database as iEatBrainz but is still actively developed. It's free, and I've had great luck with it fixing tags on some 40GB of music I had laying around from my Windows days. The interface is somewhat arcane unfortunately. Check out this link that will give you some other alternative ideas. on edit: I went back to check out the newer version of Picard (0.12 vs 0.11), and the workflow is much improved. A lot of the annoying things from before have been automated. If you take a few minutes to set all the preferences to your tastes using the online help as reference, this really is a great automated tagging app. A: iTunes does have a "Get Track Names" option under the "Advanced" menu. That should be what you're looking for. Granted it might not find everything, but it finds most of them. If you aren't ripping from a CD, then I suggest iEatBrainz, though you will have to scrum up a UB for it. Other software: * *Jaikoz (Java) *MusicBrainz Picard (Python) *iEatBrainZ UB A: There's also an application called SongGenie. It looks very good, too. A: You could try TidySongs. From their website : TidySongs is an easy and powerful program that will fix any missing or misspelled song details, add album artwork, remove duplicate songs and organize your music. A: After many search I find TuneUp it's done what I want. TuneUp is an easy-to-use and powerful plug-in for iTunes & Windows Media Player, and also available for both Mac and windows. A: MetaBliss is good, but costs $20 You are limited to working with batches of 5000 at a time, but the bulk update feature is great

Q: How can you get Finder to sort by name, but also sort folders before files? When I want sort my files and folder in Finder (specially sort by name) they sort all item by name mixing folders and files together. I want a way that sorts (like Windows) first all folders by name then all other items by name. How can I do this? A: There's no built in feature in the Finder to achieve that, but with the "plugin" TotalFinder you can get that. It's located under the "Tweaks" tab in the TotalFinder settings. Edit: There was a screenshot here, but it was out of date. Look at Robsofts answer instead for an up-to-date screenshot! A: XtraFinder is free plugin for Finder that allows you to sort folders before files, by selecting "Arrange folders on top" in the Preferences. After installing and running it, you can tune folder sorting and many other aspects of Finder behavior. A: Here is a method that involves a plist setting, and no plugin, or third party app. To summarize: Show Package Contents of Finder.app (located in System/Library/CoreServices Drill down to Contents > Resources > English.lproj. > InfoPlist.strings Locate the string “Folder” = “Folder”; Add a leading space before the second Folder as follows: “Folder” = “ Folder”; Save InfoPlist.strings to the same location (backup elsewhere if desired) Relaunch Finder (Ctrl+Option+Click) Open new Finder window and sort files by Kind A: Related to the Total Finder answer above (so please don't vote for this answer), here's a picture of the current TF tweaks page (you get to it from the Finder's Preferences screen). With these options I definitely get the folders at the top of the list. You can also control this from the VIEW menu in Finder, once TF is installed. A: There is a Finder replacement called Path Finder that will do what you want. It's a bit more expensive but it does do a lot more than just a regular finder window. A: As of OS X Yosemite (≥ 10.10), you can sort folders above files without any third-party apps. Finder > Preferences -> Advanced tab -> Check "Keep folders on top: in windows when sorting by name" option. A: This is possible by having icons displayed as list (Cmd + 2) in Finder window. First click on the [Name] column header (this will sort all files by name), then click on [Kind] column header (this will sort items by kind, but keep the name sorting in groups). A: Since I have found myself doing the Folder trick over and over again I ended up creating a bash script to automate renaming of the string in /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/InfoPlist.strings. * *Save it as e.g. finder-folders-first.sh *Make it executable: chmod +x finder-folders-first.sh *Run with root permissions: sudo finder-folders-first.sh #!/bin/bash # Make folders sortable first in Finder if [[ $EUID -ne 0 ]]; then echo "Script must be run as root! Aborting." exit 1 fi cd /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/ cp -i InfoPlist.strings InfoPlist_ORIGINAL-`date +%b-%d-%Y_%H_%M_%S`.strings plutil -convert xml1 InfoPlist.strings sed 's|<string>Folder</string>|<string> Folder</string>|' InfoPlist.strings > InfoPlist_PATCHED.strings diff InfoPlist.strings InfoPlist_PATCHED.strings if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then echo File already patched! Exiting. exit -1 else echo Patching original file... plutil -convert binary1 InfoPlist_PATCHED.strings -o InfoPlist.strings fi echo Restarting Finder... killall Finder echo Done! The last line restarts Finder. To do the same thing from the GUI press Alt+rightclick the Finder icon in the Dock and select Relaunch. Now, in Finder click the Kind column once/twice to have the folders listed as first/last. This works in Mavericks and Yosemite, but might not work in later versions.

Q: What are some good resources for learning Dashcode? What are some good resources for learning Dashcode? I've got plenty for XCode, but can neither find a good online Dashcode tutorial nor a book in stores. If anyone can help, please let me know. My apologies if this is better suited for SO. A: There are a bunch of resources available from the Apple Developer Site. Here is a small list of stuff available: Dashboard Widget Tutorial Mobile Safari Web Application Tutorial Starting a Project A: Maybe you've already checked and didn't like it or something, but the included help documentation is actually a pretty good starting point for creating simple widgets in Dashcode. It got me through coding a couple easy ones. Not sure if you're looking for complete beginner tutorials or something more advanced however.

Q: Can I make applications load on the same monitor as the mouse cursor? I have multiple monitors, and with Quicksilver and Magic Mouse gestures I open applications without using the dock more often than with it. Is there a way to have these application windows appear on the monitor that currently has the mouse cursor? An added bonus would be the ability to have Finder open a new window if there isn't one on the current monitor, even if there is one on the other monitor. A: I think Mr. Siracusa has railed against the lack of consistency or flexibility that leads to a situation like this, and I don't have a "you can modify this plist and presto!" answer either, but I saw this and thought of your plight: cordlessdog.com/stay/ It may not be what you need, but it could be a step in the right direction, which I heard of here: http://twitter.com/wilsonminer/status/20750686482 A: I've never come across anything that would tick all those boxes unfortunately. I simply don't think the OS supports that at the moment. Sorry I can't offer more help.

Q: Is there a way to match calendar colors without MobileMe? Possible Duplicate: How can I change the colors of calendars on iOS5 I have an iPhone 4 that syncs with iCal through Google. However, the colors for the calendars are different on the iPhone than on iCal. Is there any way to set the colors for the calendars on the iPhone so that they are the same as the colors I have selected in iCal? A: There's no official way to achieve this, however you can try a trick involving deactivating / reactivating calendars in a certain order until they match the colour you want. A: Assuming you have your preferred colors set in iCal, try this on your next sync: BE SURE YOU SYNC ANY CALENDAR INFO YOU MIGHT HAVE ADDED VIA THE PHONE BEFORE DOING THIS OVERWRITE * *In iTunes, select your iPhone in "Devices" (same as normal sync) *At the top of the sync window, click on "Info" *Scroll down to the Advanced heading *Under "Replace information on this iPhone", check the "Calendars" box *Sync at will This should override all of the calendar settings on your iPhone, and replace them with the settings from iCal.

Q: Is there a quick, free viewer for Word docs? TextEdit will open them, but often doesn't display them correctly. I really like QuickLook, but it won't stay open and doesn't allow for copying text. OpenOffice seems to read the files adequately, but is slow to launch. The ideal would be something like Preview that can open Word docs. A: Try Bean. The last time I tried it, it was pretty quick (quicker than OpenOffice) and according to the website, can open .docx files. A: Here's an interesting solution I've never seen before. Apparently a .docx is just an .xml file (which I've heard, but never actually investigated lol). * *Change the .docx extension to .zip *Unzip the file. You'll get an .xml *Open and read the resulting .xml A: Preview.app and TextEdit.app can both open .doc(x) files. While they may not handle intricate formatting, I have found they will do a decent job with 99% of the Word files that I receive. For more advanced documents, Pages remains the best answer, and it's now free for effectively everyone. A: Pages by Apple can be used to view Word document files. Pages is available as macOS and iOS native app as well as for Web. Pages used to be a paid app, but is now available free of cost. Pages Web app can be used on compatible Web browsers even on a Windows PC. A: You can open them up in chrome with the extension "office editing for docs sheets and slides" by google. Works pretty fast on my computer. And I use chrome anyway so it's nice for me. Downsides are that it doesn't seem to work for double clicking on macOS (you might have to drag the file into chrome or type the path) and the save feature wont save to .doc files. But it will display them quickly just like a preview.

Q: Is there a tool I can use to securely wipe data from iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch? Is there a tool or application that will securely wipe an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad (i.e. any iOS device?) I'm not interested in a complete wipe that would brick the device. Rather, I'd want to wipe all free space after it's been reset to default or had the OS reinstalled. Furthermore: by "securely wipe", I'm referring to multiple successive passes with random data, etc. to thwart any attempt at data recovery. For instance: If somebody wanted to sell their old iPhone on eBay, how can they be sure it's completely wiped, so there's little hope of a malicious buyer being able to recover sensitive data that used to be on it? I think this is especially important when people are using iPhone apps to store passwords, credit card numbers, etc. (even if those apps have a supposedly secure storage mechanism.) A: The built in secure-wipe does a very good job, but you should really create a new user on your Mac and do a Restore from iTunes while logged in as that user, and then do the secure wipe mentioned by Studer. That will keep the iTunes account crap from happening. There's also an iWipe app available in the Cydia store at $2.99 for jailbroken iphones, that wipes free space. A: iOS 4.0 supports a very rapid secure erase called "Data Protection". If you upgrade from 3.0 you need to do a restore to set the stage for hardware encryption of all the data. If your device isn't capable of hardware encryption (often called secure data at rest), then you can use the Erase all content and settings function. This built-in functionality to secure wipe your iDevice has been around since iPhone OS 2.0 As this doesn't work the same way on all iOS devices, do read Understanding 'Erase All Content and Settings' before you depend on this to clear data securely. Once you are through erasing the device, you might want to connect it to a clean iTunes library and restore the device and set it up as new. Making a new account on your Mac or PC is an easy way to have a library with no account, no songs, and no apps just to be sure the device has a clean (and easily verifiable) start to it's new life. A: One option would be to put it into disk mode and then use an external utility to do the wiping. A: You can get ShredIt for iOS, more information can be found here: http://www.burningthumb.com/apps/shredit/

Q: How can I make my Mac a DLNA server and/or client? How can I make my Mac be a DLNA server and/or client? A: Serviio is a free DLNA server, with a Mac version. http://www.serviio.org/ A: There are several choices based on the fact that any UPnP server should also be DLNA compliant : * *Free ones : * *XBMC *MythTV *TvMobili *Kinsky *Plex *uShare (easier to install with MacPorts) *Paid ones : * *EyeConnect *PlayBack *SongBook The bold ones are directly mentioned to be DLNA servers. A: I've been using the PS3 media server. A: I've had this same frustrating hunt for ages, tried and found all of them to have serious issues either with usability or actual functionality. Most sadly arent even worth trying. But then last week I found a poster who recommended Plex media server and its so good I'm trying to find the post and poster to thank him. Plex server is totally free but you can pay for mobile clients. I have an iMac and MacBook Pro both running Mountain Lion, and the iMac now serves my xbox, wdtv live and archos 7 faultlessly. This may sound set up but save yourself the pain and effort and try Plex first. Plex takes a while to run through a big, say 3tb collection but it genuinely has been the most painless and reliable of all I've tried and the searchable options are far more varied and sensible than those for others. Don't want to name names but I've pretty much tried them all. The only thing I can't comment on is transcoding; I assume their clients manage this. From my perspective, I needed something to access my library, rather than rely on hardware specific transcoding. If you need this its a mixed bag regarding codec support, and I found the issues with other servers made the solution less viable. Connect360 was not bad for xbox, they also do a PS version, but for straight media serving, Plex no question. A: There are some free as well as pay for options: http://mediatomb.cc/ (FREE) http://www.wildmediaserver.com/ ($40) A: I've been using Plex for a few months and its awesome - found it far superior to PS3MS. Get SABnzbD and SickBeard running as well. A: Rivet A: Plex has recently added DNLA support, and is an excellent option. A: Specify Machine... eMac PPC 10.5.8 - Serving : TvMobili-Leopard-universal.dmg works as does Twonky 5.1.x for serving. XBMC seems to work but not thoroughly tested Client : Plex-0.9.5.3-PowerPC - This operates but I've not had any luck getting it to see my servers.... Apparently there is a way to get plex to see twonky but I cant figure it Probably the best bet on a PPC is to get a distro of Ubuntu and go from there.... then all we need is a decent client on our $200 Tablet with HDMI to flatscreen. Otherwise you can get DAAP clients for cross platform music streaming from OSX boxes.... Really it depends on what you mean by makeing a "Mac" into a media server/client.... If you have multiple apple machines, then far and away the best thing is iTunes (I stick to version 9), get vine server and chicken of the vnc.... and bVNC for your android... job done, no brainer A: TVMOBiLi (free) works with Macs really well. I have Macbook Pro Retina and I use it every other day mostly with my PS3 and Samsung Smart TV. Due to my Smart TV not having a qwerty keyboard (and really rubbish remote). I tend to stream movies directly to the PS3 (which connects each time I switch it on). I will rarely use it with my iPad but have the PlugPlayer app when I do. A: Vuze is a free torrent client that includes DMS and transcoding. It's okay — to be fair, the DMS is still in beta, but works very well (though I can't pause video with it) A: Playback is my favorite DLNA Server for MAC OS X, but I just found out that they closed business and are no longer supporting any of their software as of March 2014. I'm using Plex right now as the best of the two others that I've tried; Plex and XBMC (KODI). I just have problems with Plex not understanding my naming convention for TV show episodes. They get out of order and the program reads 4,14,114 as the number 4 for episode numbers. I previously spent a lot of time naming them how they make sense to me. I do enjoy the artwork that Plex brings up for certain titles. Playback didn't try to re-order or rename anything. It just reflected exactly what the folder contents were in alphabetical order. It also had it's own security settings such as only allowing certain devices to connect to the server by ip address. When viewed through the PS3 it displayed album art or a snapshot from that episode. A: MediaLink from NullRiver is a relatively inexpensive option ($20). It was extremely easy to setup -- it installs as a preference pane plug-in, there are four things to configure and a 'Start' button. Best of all, you can try it for free for 30 minutes; I purchased it after about 4.5 minutes. There's also an App-store version that is a straight-up application. Caveats: I don't know if the pref-pane option will still work if/when I upgrade to El Capitan with its new security enhancements (no reason to think it won't, but you never know). Also, the last software was two years ago (2013), as of this writing. But it works and was easy to setup. A: Elmedia Player Elmedia Player is a Mac video player that offers advanced streaming options. It can handle any conceivable media format. Files can be streamed to Chromecast, AirPlay, Roku and DLNA devices. No additional codecs are required for it to work. https://www.elmedia-video-player.com

Q: Create bulleted list in iOS Mail Is it possible to create a bulleted or numbered list in Mail on an iDevice? If so, please share how. I know it'll display them. Like if I create it in GMail on my MacBook, save a draft, then open it on the device, I see the bullets as intended, but I would like to actually create this same thing on my iPad/ iPhone. Thanks! Thomas A: Until Apple offers the ability to add some basic controls (eg. bold, etc.) on the iPhone/iPad (without the keyboard) it's not possible without copying and pasting from a previous message. You could create a draft with the different types of list to copy and paste and use that. Of note: some third party apps can help with this: eg. MarkdownMail just released today by Second Gear Software ($1.99) or any other app that will allow you to create HTML. A: It’s a hack, but one thing you can do is compose your message in a note, which does support bulleted lists, then copy the message into the email app. It really surprises me that this feature doesn’t exist.

Q: Is there an easy way to remove a URL from Safari's address bar history? So, I love the new, awesomebar-style address bar in Safari 5 - with it's history search, I've gotten to the point where I no longer use bookmarks for most sites, I just remember the 2-4 letter strings that will bring what I want to the top of the search results. This is great, except for when I screw up and add things to the history that screw with it. For example, one of my most used shortcuts was to get to a site I frequent by typing "bl" and hitting enter. Somehow, at one point, I did this without a search coming up, and now, the "Top Hit" for "bl" is "http://bl/", which is obviously, not an actual site. Is there any way to remove a single entry from the history without clearing the history entirely? Bonus points if it can be done from the address bar without navigating around in prefs or anything. While the answers currently given work, I'd love to find an easier way to do it. A: click on show all bookmark (open book) on top-left of your safari. then search the site you want to remove (e.g: http://bl) after that delete it from history when you delete the singe site you never find http://bl when press bl in address bar. search here: A: Go in bookmarks menu and select show bookmarks, then search the url you want to delete with the search field on the top right (under the search engine bar), select the url to remove in the bottom part on hit delete key A: In Safari 8 the accepted answer no longer seems to work as history isn't within the bookmarks any more. Instead, there are options in the History menu to show and edit history. As pointed out in a comment above by Loïc Wolff you can use the keyboard combination Opt+Cmd+2 to show history and a search field is available at the bottom right.

Q: Real alternative to Tag&Rename I was using Tag&Rename (an MP3 tag editor) on Windows and I'm looking for a real alternative for OS X. A: Jaikoz and Music Man can do it for you. you can also use some free apps too: * *MusicBrainz *ID3 Editor A: The tagger A: To my knowledge there is no tagging software on OS X as polished and features complete as Tag&Rename. Beside the ones aforementioned, I use SimpleTagger which enables you to tag from Amazon (including cover) and rename your files from tags. A: I mostly use mid3v2. Some examples: mid3v2 --artist Artist --title Title --album Album --track 1 file.mp3 for f in *.mp3;do a=${f%% - *};t=${f#* - };t=${t%.mp3};mid3v2 --artist "$a" --title "$t" "$f";done mid3v2 -l file.mp3 # list tags mid3v2 -l file.mp3|sed -n s/^TPE1=//p # artist mid3v2 -D file.mp3 # delete all tags for f in *.mp3;do l=$(mid3v2 -l "$f");mv "$f" "$(printf %02d $(sed -n 's,^TRCK=0*\([^/]*\).*,\1,p'<<<"$l")) $(sed -n 's,^TIT2=,,p'<<<"$l"|tr '/:?<>\\*|"^' _).mp3";done mid3v2 --delete-frames $(mid3v2 -l *|LC_ALL=C sed -n 's,^\([^=]*\)=.*,\1,p'|sort -u|grep -Exv 'TPE1|TIT|TALB|TRCK|TYER|TDRC'|tr \\n ,) * # keep only specified tags You can install mid3v2 by running sudo easy_install pip;sudo pip install mutagen. id3v2 and id3tag don't support Unicode and id3tool doesn't support ID3v2. A: Tag & Rename works on PlayOnMac. PlayOnMac is a Windows compatibility layer (but it's not a virtual machine). It's free and you don't need a Windows license either. First, you need to download and install PlayOnMac, then buy Tag & Rename and install it from within PlayOnMac. After that, it just works like a usual app.

Q: Can I control how frequently Safari refreshes when switching between pages? Frequently when I'm using Safari on the iPad and loading multiple web sites at the same time and switching between them, Safari starts to reload a page when I switch back to it, even if it's been only a few minutes since I last opened the page. This can be quite annoying. Is there any way to control how often Safari on the iPad will perform refresh a page? Ideally, I'd like to tell Safari to not refresh any pages and just refresh manually when I want to. A: Safari (for iPod and iPad) keeps website cache only in RAM, and therefore, once it runs out of RAM, it'll automatically destroy an entire page, forcing the refresh, disguising itself as an auto-refresh feature. You can only keep few pages respective to amount of your device RAM. You can try a third-party browser that has offline caching, and it'll remedy the situation. like: * *Mercury *iCab *Atomic Web Browser or if you Limit the number of tabs open in Safari to 2 or 3. It won't refresh. A: Try and make sure the sites you're visiting are optimized for mobile, open fewer tabs at a time, and other ways of not using Safari as heavily. Not exactly very suitable answers until iOS 4.1 is eventually released for the iPad. Alternative browsers such as iCab have an offline bookmark option that will save the entire page to disk so you can view it without needing to refresh until you want to. Safari on iOS has a very limited size on it's cache and will refresh a page when you come back to it if the cache is full. Part of this is because of the limited RAM available on iOS devices along with the fact that Apple doesn't write any cached items to the flash memory and only keeps it in the memory. (The iPad and iPhone 3G S only have ~256 MB of RAM, earlier devices 128 MB and the iPhone 4 512 MB) Yahoo has run a series of tests to determine just how large the cache is. If the HTML of a page exceeds 25.6KB it will not be cached (and so refreshed every time you visit), external components can be larger (Up to 4MB) but the max size of the HTML page cache is only ~280KB on an iPad (paltry really). iOS 4 is set to increase that page cache size up to as much RAM as is available.

Q: How to automount a network share once OpenVPN has connected? (Using Tunnelblick) Does anyone know how to automatically mount a network share once a VPN connection using Tunnelblick has connected? Right now I have to connect and then do a cmd+K in the finder to connect to the AFP share. It'd be nice if it would connect automatically. The share doesn't have a password (TimeCapsule without any passwords, and no, not using it for backup, we use it for a fileserver). A: 1. Edit the file /Applications/Tunnelblick.app/Contents/Resources/client.up.osx.sh and add these commands at the end of the file, just before exit 0 : su USERNAME -c ' mkdir /Volumes/TimeCapsule mount_afp afp://afp_username@server/volumename /Volumes/TimeCapsule ' open /Volumes/TimeCapsule Replace USERNAME with your username on the system. 2. Then add the following at the end of /Applications/Tunnelblick.app/Contents/Resources/client.down.osx.sh : umount /Volumes/TimeCapsule 3. Do not forget to check the set nameserver option for your configuration : Warning : Configuration files client.(up|down).osx.sh are executed for every connections made using OpenVPN. This could also be made using launchd for watching if the vpn connection is up, but I don't know how to use launchd. A: I have just succeeded to auto-mount NFS after having connected VPN and auto-unmount before discconect with Tunnelblick (3.7.3 on macOS High Sierra). At first, I had the same problem with Cameron Conner. Still, Studer's answer was quite helpful for me. Instead of Studer's client.(up|down).osx.sh, I placed two lines in the .ovpn: up (path to your connected.sh) down (path to your pre-disconnect.sh) Then create and edit these connected.sh and pre-disconnect.sh. connected.sh: #!/bin/sh sudo mkdir /Volumes/NFS sudo mount -P 192.168.0.1:/share /Volumes/NFS pre-disconnect.sh: #!/bin/sh sudo umount /Volumes/NFS I don't know about TimeCapsule manipulation. So above process is about NFS. I think you can arrange it for TimeCapsule. I think the point Cameron and I got stucked was su or sudo. And, to avoid password is another problem. My solution to that was sudoers. Edit /etc/sudores with visudo. Modify the %admin entry from: %admin ALL=(ALL) ALL to: %admin ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL Unless your account is not an admin, it should work.

Q: Why does OS X's Apache server give different results using real and virtual addresses? I'm developing a WordPress site on my Mac, running OS X 10.6.4. I'm using OS X's built-in Apache server to run the site locally during development. I've set up WordPress and connected it to OS X's MySQL with no problems. The site seems to work fine, and I can post, edit, etc. The WordPress installation is in a folder called ~/Sites/mysite.dev. I've also customized my .hosts file and Apache's httpd-vhosts.conf file, to redirect requests for mysite.dev to this folder. So when I enter http://mysite.dev in a browser window, the site loads. No problems here. So I can access the site, in a browser, from two different addresses, http://mysite.dev, and http://localhost/~Gabe/mysite.dev/. Here's what's weird: When I go to http://mysite.dev, the WordPress site loads normally. When I go to http://localhost/~Gabe/mysite.dev/, WordPress can't find any posts from the database: It gives me the "Sorry, no posts met your criteria" message (which is built into the theme for when a search for posts returns nothing). N.B.: Apache processes the PHP code normally in both cases -- but in one case WordPress can get posts from MySQL, and in the other case it can't. My first thought was that this was a problem with WordPress's configuration, so I changed the WordPress URL to http://localhost/~Gabe/mysite.dev/, but this made no difference. I don't understand why using the two addresses produces different results. Any help appreciated. (Here's why I care, in case you're wondering: I want to preview the site in BBEdit's web preview window, and BBEdit will only load the site via the http://localhost/~Gabe/mysite.dev/ address.) A: This is not a problem with OS X or Apache. A redirect doesn't change any PHP code behavior and since you apparently get response from the code, nothing is wrong with the server setup. The problem lies in the way Wordpress reads the domain name from the request (which is the only thing that should differ) and what it does with it. A: I was able to solve this problem—it turns out that WordPress behaves better when I set both the WordPress address and the site address to http://localhost/~Gabe/mysite.dev/.

Q: Multiple tags on music in iTunes? Is there any plugin for iTunes making it possible to tag the music with multiple tags (not ID3-tags or genre)? Just like last.fm does, e.g. "soft electronic african female-vocalist"? Genres are so totally unusable to use as a music categorizer. I use iTunes a lot for syncing various iDevices and streaming music to the Airport Express, so I'm not really interested in an alternative app, even though I might be if it supports more or less everything iTunes does and have some more features, but also being compatible with and updating the iTunes library. A big bonus would be if it's also allowing hierarchical tag structures. A: While it won't satisfy the hierarchical feature you'd like, the Grouping (or even the Comment) field in iTunes could be used to hold tags. Ideally you would want to do something to make the tag always unique by separating by a comma or say <> around the word. You can then use a Smart Playlist to filter for this tag. (Grouping contains). There is an unfinished program called QuickTag that leverages that ability and makes it easier to tag. There is also a hint on MacOSXHints.com that shows how you can grab Last.FM's tags and apply them to the current playing track. You'll need to modify their script slightly - namely to use the grouping or comment field (and match anything special you've done, eg. <>s around the word) instead of the genre. The alternative Perl version worked faster than the original script for me.

Q: Prevent iTunes from resetting my music library location My iTunes library is located on an network drive, or rather, the music is, and my library file is located on my MacBook. * *Library file: /Users/glenn/Music/iTunes/iTunes Library *Music: /Volumes/MyVolume/Music But every now and then when I use the laptop somewhere outside my WiFi network, and then come back, fire up iTunes and play a song I get a library full of those pesky little exclamation point icons next to my songs. This is because iTunes have guessed that "Oh, he's not at home, let's reset the music files location to /Users/glenn/Music/iTunes." And there are no music there. How can I prevent iTunes from doing this "smart" guess, and just leave the setting alone? PS. And MyVolume is auto-mounted on my laptop. But of course, if iTunes is running when opening up the lid of the MacBook, it takes some time for it to mount, and iTunes won't find the path to the music at first. A: You can make "iTunes Music" an alias to your music folder on your network drive. That should keep iTunes' smartness at bay. A: Finally figured out how to get around this myself. My solution is to have two separate libraries, one local and one on my drive. I created a LaunchAgent (see https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPSystemStartup/Chapters/CreatingLaunchdJobs.html) that runs a script when the mount path to the disk changes (via WatchPaths). The script checks whether the directory /Volumes/drivename exists, and if it does it sets runs a command to tell iTunes to change to the Library on the drive. if [ -e "$mountPath" ] then defaults write com.apple.iTunes 'alis:1:iTunes Library Location' -data "drive hex path data" else defaults write com.apple.iTunes 'alis:1:iTunes Library Location' -data "local hex path data" fi Otherwise it runs the same command with the path to the local library. Mac OS does some weird kind of encoding for the hex data path, so I would recommend holding down the option key while starting iTunes, selecting each library, and examine the plist for the path data (note that when you use the defaults command you have to remove the brackets and spaces from the hex data). This way, if your drive isn't mounted, iTunes will load a local library and won't mess up your main one. This can be handy for traveling, etc when you just want to use the local library to play stuff on iCloud. A: Apparently this is a never-ending issue, because by this date I’m running OS 10.13.6 on a 2012 Mac Mini, and I needed Winger’s Answer to figure out a solution for me: not up to coding in the system files. But I DID realize (as he suggested) that if I removed iTunes from the ‘Login Items’ automatic startup list in the Users system Prefs pane, and let the Mac connect to the network drive first (which is an ethernet connected TimeCapsule, which I’m using also for it’s storage volume as extra space, and IS in the Login Items pane), that when iTunes is opened it finds its library right where it left it! Happy iTunes, happy me! A: What works for me is a combination of the above ... add the shared folder location to: system preferences -> users & groups -> login items (in the login name you're using) This establishes the network connection automatically upon restart which appears to be the root cause of this. Then untick the "reopen windows when logging back in" option when restarting. When the mac next restarts and you log in, the shared folder will automatically be opened (it opens in finder, but you can close it). When you open apple music, it remembers what it was set to and you no longer need to reset the location and rescan your files each time. I worked this one out because when apple music is opened before the network drive, the music file location reverts back to the default location. But if you close apple music, open the network drive where your music is stored, then re-open apple music it magically reverts back to what you had it set to. But if you re-enable the "reopen windows when logging back in" option, it seems that apple music gets launched before the shared folder - so you're back where you started. Although if you typically have a lot of windows open, you could just close and re-open apple music after restarting which should work. A: Just a thought for your laptop, why don't you share your iTunes library and stream it to your laptop instead of mounting the network drive? I'm in the process of setting this up now, I just moved my iTunes library and media files to my Network Attached Storage, which can share with all machines on my home network. I was having the same library reset issue as you, so I'll try using an alias in Windows 7 to get around this (thanks @zneak). Nothing scarier than telling iTunes where my 10,000+ song library is and have it show nothing :( A: I would guess that when the iTunes media directory /Volumes/MyVolume/Music is found to not exist, it resets to the default value of /Users/glenn/Music/iTunes. That is to say, I don't think it matters if the files are there or not (so network mounting is not so much the issue), but that the directory is there and can be browsed. So a solution would be to have an empty directory as your iTunes media library directory (which can just be the default), and mount the network share into that directory. This would involve using smbmount rather than the standard Finder-based /Volumes/... mounting. Of course... smbmount doesn't come with OS X, so this solution will require some effort on your part to get smbmount. You might be able to achieve the same with symbolic links, though I'm not sure whether iTunes can handle its media library directory being a broken symlink; it might just delete the symlink by forcibly creating the /Users/glenn/Music/iTunes directory on top of it...? A: The "music location" path only matters if you set itunes to "import media into your local library" and with "automatic library management" activated. With both options disabled, its not of importance. You set the options in the same tab where you set the "music location" path. Remember: If you use links or aliases to non existing places (when youre not at your network) you might get into trouble with itunes trying to write stuff there - it might even reset because of this. If you add files from a network, with local management off, the network path will be stored inside your library file, no matter what is set as music location. If you are not on your network you will always see the exclamation mark as the files aren't accessible, it makes totally sense. Exclamation mark goes away as soon your network is at reach again. I have everything stored on my network, nothing locally and do not have any trouble.

Q: Can I change the application icon of an Automator script? I have created a couple of automator scripts. I was curious if there is a way to change the application icon on those scripts to something other than the robot. A: You can also change the icon just as you would normally for any other folder or file in Mac OS X: * *Copy the image you want to use as your icon. Ideally it should be 512x512 already. *Choose Get Info on the file/folder/app in Finder *Click on the Icon and you'll notice a blue outline on the icon - now press Command-V or choose Paste from the Edit menu. (Screenshot taken from Super User question 37811) A: To complement the existing, helpful answers: * *The accepted answer works in principle, but: * *relies on extended attributes of the HFS+ filesystem, which are lost when copying the bundle to a filesystem that doesn't support them. For instance, you cannot store a custom icon in a Git repository. *the icon displayed by the bundle itself, such as when showing an alert, is still the original icon. *percent 20's answer is more comprehensive and portable in principle, but comes with two caveats: * *Any changes to AutomatorApplet.icns are lost whenever you modify and re-save the bundle in Automator. Thus, for instance, you'd need a script to put the updated icons in place programmatically every time the bundle is saved. *As others have noted, there are icon caching issues, which can be tricky to resolve; as of OSX 10.10.4: * *Even a reboot doesn't make the new icons appear in Finder (though it does appear in other contexts such as in the Dock), but there are two workarounds: either (a) move the bundle to a different folder, or (b) rename the bundle; given that reverting to the original path and name makes the problem reappear, you'd have to plan ahead: create your bundle in a different location or with a different name, then move / rename to the desired location / name. *Alternatively, you can use a tool such as OnyX and check IconServicesunder Cleaning > User to clear the cache. A: I found a hacky way to do it after you have created the applet * *(Create your icns icon file - however you want) *Open Applications Folder *Right-click on automator script *Click on view package contents *Add your icon to resources folder *Rename it to AutomatorApplet.icns I am sure there is a better way, but I figured out how to do it this way. A: After the script has been created do the following : * *Find the source app with the icon you want *Get Info of the source app (cmd-i) *Click on the icon inside the source app's info window (Not the one in the big Preview section at the bottom, if you have one of those; the little one in the top-left corner.) *Copy it (cmd-c) *Get Info of the automator script (i.e., the destination app) (cmd-i) *Click on the icon inside the destination app's info window *Paste the icon from the clipboard (cmd-v) This method works for every files in Mac OS X. A: Apple's official page on customizing files and folders works great for this! For the sake of completeness, for others who view this, I am sharing this. A: This seems a silly answer but it taught me a interest addittional info Restore the original icon for an item * *On your Mac, select the file or folder, then choose File > Get Info. *At the top of the Info window, select the custom icon, then choose Edit > Cut. Only drawback about this simple apple hidden feature: You can't undo the 'Restore original' icon by executting cmd + z from just made from inside Get Info... Or so it seemed. Lucky me, I noticed that my custom icon wasn't completly removed in all the places (still present in the top side of the Get Info and in the Finder window miniature I both left opened). So I found out a simple cmd + z from Finder window reverted my disaster. Maybe it should be safer to store the copy-pasted custom icon in Contents/Resources/description.rtfd inside Package Contents

Q: How can I really disable the Cmd to Win key mapping in Parallels Desktop 5? Removed it from System Preferences > Keyboard. No go. Remapped ⌘ Cmd to be Ctrl. No go. Ripping out the ⌘ Cmd key shouldn't be the solution. Anyone?... A: It works for me, but I have it remapped like this: So cmd is really control for Windows. A: I found that mapping a different key to the Win command did not remove the Cmd key being mapped to Win. What worked for me was to map Cmd to Shift. All the other shortcuts such as Cmd + S (save), Cmd + C (copy), etc still worked but hitting Cmd by itself now just activates the Shift key which really does nothing by itself. A: Go to Parallels Desktop preferences and disable key mapping for key which behaves abnormally ("Cmd > win" in our case) as shown on the screenshot below: A: You can use Krumstick to remap the windows key inside Windows. A: Not sure if this will help you. But the main problem for me was the CMD + arrow keys I use all the time to go to the start or end of a line. This can be remapped without problems, this way you can use all your normal shortcuts from MacOS too. The second I get a Mac keyboard muscle memory kicks in and this is a good compromise :)

Q: Can Macs be put in hibernation voluntarily? I know that when you put your Mac laptop to sleep and the battery dies, next time you plug it in it will wake up from the state it was prior to being put to sleep. There are also hacks to get this behavior with a desktop Mac (except it triggers when you put the Mac to sleep and unplug it). Is there a way to trigger this behavior without cutting power, and that will still let me put my Mac to sleep normally? Like Windows 7's Hibernate option. A: Yes, of course you can. I myself use Deep Sleep widget (second link) to put my Macbook Pro into hibernation. And if you prefer to use the command line, read this article. A: There is a pref pane called smart sleep that is pretty good A: You could use DeepSleep. I know this is a widget, but if you want an application, do the following : * *Download the widget and uncompress the zip file containing it, but do not install it. *Right-click on the widget, the select Show Package Contents. *Copy the DeepSleep Application where you want.

Q: Keyboard shortcuts for "Straighten" in iPhoto? If you've used iPhoto for photo retouching, you probably know the Straighten functionality. My question is, are there any keyboard shortcuts for rotating the photo, or is mouse & the slider the only way? Any other useful tips regarding this are of course also welcome. It can be somewhat slow and awkward to do this with mouse/trackpad for each photo (especially if your mouse is not the most accurate one, like my Logitech bluetooth mouse). In iPhoto '09 they made matters worse by removing the small buttons next to the slider that you could click to rotate by one step (0.1 degrees). A: You can press the S key to activate the straighten tool. And the return key will save any changes. Unfortunately, I am not sure how to control the slider in order to actually make a change using the keyboard. A: If you have a trackpad you can use two-finger-rotation gestures in Straighten mode. See http://www.cnet.com/news/quick-tip-iphoto-11-trackpad-gestures/ A: You can use the Accessibility Inspector to input arbitrary numbers for the amount of rotation. See this post here for usage instructions. Remember to press Set value to change the number and input numbers with decimal point, e.g. 4.0.

Q: Can I transfer backups when replacing a Time Capsule? If I get a new Time Capsule, how can I transfer the backups from the old Time Capsule to the new one. I see an option to Archive the Time Capsule from the Airport Utility, but I don't see any way to restore. Do I have to go through the initial back up process again with all of my Macs? A: From Apple Support Knowledge Base... Time Capsule, Mac OS X v10.6.3 or later: How to transfer your back up from an existing Time Capsule to a new one For this process, you should leave your computer in the same room as the Time Capsules, or use one Ethernet cable to connect your Mac to the Ethernet port on the existing Time Capsule, then use another Ethernet cable to connect from the existing Time Capsule to the new Time Capsule. * *Configure your Time Capsule for your network. See the documentation that came with your Time Capsule for information about setting it up on your network. *Open Time Machine preferences in System Preferences. *Slide the Time Machine switch to Off. *Open a Finder window. *Locate both Time Capsules listed in the SHARED section of the navigation pane on the left of the Finder window. Note: If you do not see your Time Capsules in that section, choose Preferences from the Finder menu and make sure "Connected servers" is checked under SHARED. *Select the name of the new Time Capsule in the navigation pane. The default name is "Time Capsule xxxxxx", with xxxxxx being the last digits of the ID printed on the bottom of the Time Capsule. *Mount the volume by double-clicking the name of the volume in the Finder window's main section. The default drive name is "Data". *Open a new Finder window by pressing Command-N, or by choosing File > New Finder Window. *Repeat the previous 2 steps with the other Time Capsule, to mount it. Drag your backup disk image from the current Time Capsule to the new Time Capsule. This can take some time to complete because your entire backup will be copied. *Open Time Machine preferences in System Preferences. *Click "Select Disk...", then select your new Time Capsule. *Perform a Time Machine back up. *After the back up, you can remove the Ethernet cables if desired and configure your wireless network to your liking. A: This is a slow way but dead simple. After letting the new time capsule absorb the setting from the old one and hooking it up to your network then just reconnect with Airport Utility to the old one. Reconfigure the old one to extend your network instead of making a new one. Now you can mount both drives and copy files between then as you wish. A: Some time ago I read an article about this procedure but it's a bit of a hack. I won't copy it here because it's a 12-point tutorial. Anyway, I was too lazy to test it, so I cannot guaranty it will work. Maybe someone will post a better solution. A: If you can find a way to hook up the TImeCapsule's drive to your mac directly you might get away with this simple Disk Utility trick: http://rolfje.com/2008/09/07/a-bigger-timemachine-without-changing-history/

Q: Can I resize a BootCamp partition without reinstalling Windows? Does any one know how to do this? A: You can use GParted to achieve this, as it supports HFS+, FAT32 & NTFS resizing. A: if you want to reduce the size of bootcamp partition you can use this. and if you want to increase the partition size you can use CampTune. Edited: if you want do it free use this method (Malicious link removed -- see comments) it needs 2 applications (both are free) * *winclone *carbon copy cloner p.s: some software download link in article was corrupt you must download these apps from my links.

Q: External Disk to use with TimeMachine in a AirPort Extreme Any one know any external disk that I can use to do this? A: Again, any usb disk should work, unless there's something I'm missing in the question.