Apple QuickFacts as of 2017/02/24 Apple was the first company to introduce a 32-bit PC ... and in 2003 introduced the first 64-bit PC. In 2010, Apple introduced the iPad, the first tablet computer done right, the first tablet to find popular acceptance. In 2013 Apple was the first to produce a 64-bit smartphone (iPhone 5S). ._ files (dot underscore files) These are files that end up on systems like Unix servers as a result of a Mac copying files to such foreign systems in a manner which attempts to preserve the full fidelity of the Mac files. Such files are almost always 4096 bytes in size. The dot-underscore files are a way to keep Mac-specific extra data, extra attributes around even on non-HFS file systems, a somewhat crude way to store them in some way when it couldn't be done in a cleaner fashion. 09:41 The time on the iPad in commercials is always set for 9:41 a.m. because it represents the exact moment the iPad was originally introduced. 09:42 The time on the iPhone in commercials is always set for 9:42 a.m. because it represents the exact moment the iPhone was originally introduced. Scott Forstall explained in an interview: "We design the (product launch) keynotes so that the big reveal of the product happens around 40 minutes into the presentation. When the big image of the product appears on screen, we want the time shown to be close to the actual time on the audience's watches. But we know we won't hit 40 minutes exactly." "So you add a couple of minutes?" "Yeah! And for the iPhone, we made it 42 minutes. It turned out we were pretty accurate with that estimate, so for the iPad, we made it 41 minutes. And there you are - the secret of the magic time." "1,000 songs in your pocket" 2001 tagline used to promote the first generation iPod's large storage capacity and compact design. (Ironically, the (disastrous) Motorola Razr V3i iTunes cellphone of 2005 could hold only 100 songs.) 1904 The first year in the Macintosh epoch (midnight, January 1, 1904), so chosen by the Mac development team because it was the first leap year of the century in which the Mac was created, where it's mathematically convenient to have a calendar system start on a leap year. If a Mac system spontaneously exhibits this date after reboot, it can indicate a dead internal battery. 1984 commercial The name of the famed January 22, 1984 SuperBowl TV commercial spot for the new Macintosh, produced by film director Ridley Scott per ad agency Chiat/Day. Performer who throws hammer: Anya Major, a model whose experience as a discus thrower won her the part. (Only a real, heavy hammer would have been convincing, and no other candidate could handle it.) (Anya later starred in Elton John's "Nikita" music video.) The acclaimed commercial almost didn't survive corporate minds. Super Bowl time had been acquired, and Chiat/Day commissioned to produce a great commercial for the new Mac. When first shown to Apple's board of directors, there was only stunned silence at the end of the ad's screening. According to then CEO John Sculley, "Two members put their heads in their hands and said, 'You're not really doing to run that thing, are you?'". The commercial had cost $700k to make, and $1.5m worth of Super Bowl commercial time had been purchased. The board was very disturbed that the product did not even appear in the commercial. Chiat/Day's thinking was that they wanted something dramatic to grab people's attention, well beyond the airing itself. Sculley liked the ad; but the board didn't and wanted to sell back the Super Bowl ad time. But only some of the time could be sold back, and the ad did get shown. The rest is memorable history. Was the Big Brother figure depicting any given individual? No; it was a generic stab at uniformity and compliance, exemplified by IBM, played by actor David Graham. IBM was Apple's competitor back then. The Super Bowl was not the first public showing of the commercial: it was previewed in front of a large audience at the Apple Sales Event, Fall 1983, following a lead-up by Steve Jobs on how IBM then sought to dominate the personal computer marketplace. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_commercial 32-bit mode See: "Open in 32-bit mode" 64-bit Accommodated in Panther, more complete in Tiger. The evolution from 32-bit to 64-bit was smooth because, in large part, because the PowerPC architecture was defined as a 64-bit architecture with a 32-bit subset from day one. This means that a 64-bit migration strategy has been part of the platform since the PowerPC was first introduced. www.apple.com/macosx/features/64bit/ developer.apple.com/macosx/64bit.html See also: Boot; Boot in 64-bit mode; Chameleon Code 64-bit applications Launch System Profiler and click on Applications to get a list of applications and their bitmodes. This can also be done via command: /usr/sbin/system_profiler SPApplicationsDataType 64-bit mode? You can tell if your OS X is running in 32-bit or 64-bit mode via one of the following means: - Launch the System Profiler and click on Software, where the label "64-bit Kernel and Extension" will have a "Yes" after it if so. - Launch the Terminal app, and in the window type the command 'uname -m': it will report "i386" for 32-bit, x86_64 for 64-bit. See also: Boot in 64-bit mode; 68030 systems Cannot normally run a Mac OS > 7.6. But by using Born Again, 32-bit-clean system can run OS 8.1 (for $25). Born Again works in conjunction with Apple's Mac OS 8.1 installer to provide a simple way to install the code that provides 68030 compatibility to Mac OS 8.1. See: http://home.earthlink.net/~brochner/ bornagain/ http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/4842 There is another program, Pseud040, which allows *some* older machines to run Mac OSes which demand 040 hardware, but in a clunky manner (boot first into a lesser Mac OS). 802.1X Wireless network security authentication method, eliminating the need for a VPN client to use wireless. OS X support at 10.4.6. iPhone/iPod touch support at OS 2.0. Apple Article ID: 303471 With AirPort turned on, when OS X boots, it will present a dialog box, titled: "802.1X Authentication" picturing a wall jack with a purple, circular form, with text boxes: User Name Password It is best to pre-configure 802.1X, which you can do in the Internet Access application. If that doesn't show an "802.1X" padlock icon, go into the File menu and select "New 802.1X Connection". 802.11n Higher speed wireless networking, formally announced at the 2007/01/09 Macworld. At that time, 802.11n was a draft specification rather than a formalized standard. As of October 2009, Apple products featuring 802.11n conform to the final standard, rather than the draft. Compatible with 802.11a/b/g. Up to five times the performance and up to twice the range compared to the earlier 802.11g standard, when 'n' only devices connect. Speed and range will be less if an 802.11a/b/g product joins the network. As of 2007/01, the following Macs suport 802.11n (with enablement): - iMac with Intel Core 2 Duo (except 17-inch, 1.83GHz iMac) - MacBook with Intel Core 2 Duo - MacBook Pro with Intel Core 2 Duo - Mac Pro with AirPort Extreme card option. 802.11n upgrade Earlier Macs with only 802.11g AirPort capabilty can be upgraded via a $199 solution from QuickerTek.com. http://www.quickertek.com/products/ 80211N_upgrade_imac.php 5900 Standard port number for VNC, as used by Screen Sharing. A/ROSE Apple Real-Time Operating System Environment: an extension allowing communication between your computer's main logic board and certain NuBus cards: the Apple Token Ring 4.16 NB card, the Apple Serial NB card, and the Apple Remote Access 2.0 MultiPort Server card. Probably unneeded by your system. A/UX Apple's first Unix product, presaging OS X. A/UX was based on UNIX System V Release 2.2, rather than BSD, as OS X would be. A/UX was first released in 1988, with the final version (3.1.1) released in 1995. A/UX required a 68k-based Macintosh with an FPU and a paged memory management unit (PMMU). X11R4 was provided, and made for an excellent experience. It was said that Apple's underlying motivation for A/UX was to sell computers to government agencies, which required that the computers have Unix capability. With A/UX gone, some turned to MachTen, a Mach-based Unix for the Mac, from Tenon Intersystems (California), which included full X11 client & server. A4 The 2010 Apple processor introduced in the original iPad. It is an ARM processor, designed by Apple and produced by Samsung and Intrinsity (with most of the work done by Samsung). It is a single Cortex-A8 CPU and a PowerVR SGX GPU. (Intrinsity was acquired by Apple during the development period). The A4 was designed by Apple's silicon design team in Israel, headed by Johny Srouji. After the experience of compromised design of the original iPhone with commercially available parts, Steve Jobs was convinced that Apple needed to do its own silicon design in order to produce products with capabilities which out-stripped its competitors. A5 Next generation processor, dual-core. A6 Dual-core ARM processor, first used in the iPhone 5. Is reportedly Apple's first attempt at designing an ARM core in-house. A6X Dual-core ARM processor, first used in the iPad, 4th generation. A7 Appeared in iPhone 5S, announced 2013/09/10. Is the first 64-bit processor in cell phones. Over a billion transistors. Modern instruction set, says Apple: is this different from what came before? Supports OpenGL ES 3.0, which further indicates a much more advanced processor. Accompanied by new M7 chip for motion tracking. Details about the chip design were not disclosed. As Apple emphasized, they are going from 32-bit to 64-bit literally overnight (September 28, 2013). There has never been such a transition. Examination showed that the A7 was manufactured by Samsung. They must have a strict internal firewall between their groups, as Samsung seemed surprised and shocked in reacting to the A7 announcement, where they subsequently made a rushed statement that We intend to make a 64-bit device, too. Whereas the A7 is so much more advanced than Samsung has in any of its devices, there was speculation that TSMC may have been making the A7. It may be that the A7's design is the result of Apple's own, recently assembled semiconductor design team, intended to create proprietary processors without competitors having access to design info. This would really rattle Samsung, giving them no advance information for copying. A8 Apple-designed microprocessor, as found in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus A8X Apple-designed microprocessor, M8 motion coprocessor separate. introduced in the iPad Air 2. Second generation 64-bit architecture. 3 billion transistors 40% faster CPU 2.5x faster GPU A9 Apple-designed microprocessor, used in the iPhone 6S, 6S Plus, SE. M9 motion coprocessor embedded, for the first time. Made by both Samsung and TSMC. A9X Apple-designed microprocessor, introduced in the iPad Pro 9.7". A10 Fusion Apple-designed microprocessor, as in the 2016 iPhone 7. Two sets of dual processors, one for high performance, the other for low power. 6-core GPU. Made exclusively by TSMC. AAC Advanced Audio Coding format. AAC is the powerful audio codec, the technology at the core of the MPEG-4 specification, that compresses much more efficiently than older formats like MP3 (the old MPEG-1 audio layer 3 - still supported by iTunes), while delivering CD-quality sound. In fact, some expert listeners have judged AAC audio files compressed at 128 kilobits per second (kbps) stereo to be virtually indistinguishable from the original uncompressed audio source. Developed by the MPEG group that was instrumental in the development of audio codecs like MP3 and AC3 (also known as Dolby Digital), the AAC codec builds upon state-of-the art signal processing technology from Dolby Laboratories and brings true variable bit rate (VBR) audio encoding to QuickTime. Apple's awareness of the litigation threat extends to the humorous naming of one of their alert sounds "Sosumi". Added to iTunes version 4. Note that AAC tunes drag-copied from iTunes for storage or transport on portable media do not bring with them the album artwork. See also: iTunes Filename suffix: .m4a AAC file, create The QuickTime Player Pro application has an Export capability where, if you choose Save Exported File As, and then Movie To MPEG-4, you can save the result as an audo AAC file, at the bitrate of your choosing (where 128 Kbps is a good choice). Such a file can then be readily dropped into iTunes for a high quality tune, as in transferring a track from one of your CDs. AASP Apple Authorized Service Provider: a facility authorized by Apple to service their products, staffed by trained professionals. An Apple Store is the most common AASP. About This Computer Shows a list of running programs. You can Ctrl+Click on any to go directly to it. Accent marks and other symbols See: Keyboard Viewer Account, remove See: User, remove. Accounts in OS X Via command line: ls /Users | grep -v Shared ACD Apple Cinema Display (q.v.) ACL Access Control List. Introduced in Tiger. The basic Unix-based file access control is by file owner, group membership, or anyone. An ACL allows specific users to be given access, and an associated password to be defined for that access. Action icon On iOS devices, it is a rectangle with a curved arrow coming out of it, up to the right. Activation Lock iOS 7 feature to combat iPhone theft, free to all users. Embeds the user's iCloud account into the device's low level firmware, so that even if thieves attempt to wipe the device, it will refuse to subsequently "activate" until the account and password are entered. iOS "activation" involves the device contacting Apple's servers, an additional step that the company can tie to a specific iCloud account and device's UUID. Apple can therefore refuse to activate a device that has been reported as stolen until both authentication factors (the device and the account) are supplied. (Without anything similar provided by Google for Android, Samsung partnered with third party developer Absolute Software to deliver a "LoJack" branded solution, at least for one model of its smartphone lineup: the Galaxy S4. But it entails a $29.99 annual fee! Tied into the phone's firmware by Samsung, the LoJack app says it can allow users to remotely lock, wipe and locate a missing device similar to iCloud's Find My Phone, but also says it will "work with law enforcement globally to get the device back." Samsung's approach is referred to as a "kill switch". Carriers rejected Samsung's add-on solution because it would compete with their own lucrative insurance offerings.) Active devices count In Apple financial reports, an active device is one which has shown activity with Apple services in the last 90 days. Active Directory access OSX: Via the Directory Access app, in the Utilities subdirectory. See: Directory Access Active Directory printing A Mac can print through a Windows Active Directory server... To set up such a printer under 10.5: Go into System Preferences; Choose Print & Fax; One the left side, click '+' to add a printer; In the presented GUI, you will be tempted to click on the Windows choice, but don't - AD will not present a list of printers thereby and you will get nowhere with that. Instead, click on Advanced; For "Type:", choose Windows; In "URL:", enter "smb:///"; In "Name:", enter the name that you will live with as the printer name when you choose among printers; For "Location:", enter indicative info about the printer; For "Print Using:", choose a printer driver, perhaps "Generic PostScript Printer", or one of the large number of manufacturer/model-specific drivers that Apple provides. To print: In an application, initiate printing as usual, and select the AD printer. Click Print. OS X will pop up an authentication dialog box. In it, choose "Registered User"; in the "Name:" field enter a backslash and your username (e.g., "\joesmith"); in the "Password:" field enter your password. The job will then flow to AD. If you fumble the dialog, the job will remain in the OS X print queue, with a status of "On Hold (Authentication Required)": you can correct its condition by going into System Preferences > Print & Fax and there Open Print Queue on the printer instance, click on the job to select it, then Resume it, which will cause the authentication dialog box to pop up afresh. Activity Monitor tips To look further into what a process is doing, double-click it: that will open a window on just that process, with sections Memory, Statistics, Open Files and Ports. The open files report can help you determine what a process may be hung on (e.g., mdworker getting stuck trying to index a certain area). Columns: Click on a column header to sort on that: click on it again to sort in the opposite direction. For a more expansive system report, right-click in the column headers to be able to add more columns (or remove some). AD See: Active Directory ADB Apple Desktop Bus, as employed in Mac from the Mac II series to the G3 233. Thereafter discontinued in favor of USB. ADB provided the convenience of allowing the computer to be started by simply pressing a special key on the keyboard, rather than reaching down to press the button on the front of the computer: USB could provide no comparable method, since its capablities, as a generalized computer interface, were not in play until after the computer started. It was not until ADC came along that starting of the computer could return to the desk top. Note that the ADB cable is the same as S-Video. ADC Apple Developer Connection, which publishes interfaces and techniques, and makes software available. A registered customer can subscribe to it, and get early versions of new operating systems, etc. ADC Apple Display Connector carries digital video, USB, and power to flat panel LCDs. As such, it is a superset of DVI. Allows the computer to be started from the desk top - something we had been missing since ADB days. The Cube was the first Mac with ADC. Later G4 towers also had. Add Call iPhone function to add someone to a current phone call: to engage in a conference call. To use: 1. Make your first call. 2. Tap Add Call and call another line. The first call is put on hold while you are doing this. If you want, you can talk on the second line privately before merging the calls. 3. Tap Merge Calls to bring the current line into the conference with the other caller(s). Perform steps 2 and 3 to add more calls to the conference. If you have an incoming call that you would like to merge into the conference, tap Hold Call + Answer, then tap Merge Calls. Add Printer Panel that appears when '+' is clicked in System Preferences choice... Print & Fax (Mac OS 10.6) Print & Scan (Mac OS 10.7) Elements: Default Via Bonjour, discovers devices on the same subnet. Fax Whatever fax devices that are on the same subnet. IP Here you can define an Internet Protocol devices to access, being one of: LPD IPP Socket Windows Shows Domains, when the Mac is on a subnet which the Windows server accepts. Advanced For specialized printer definitions, including: Epson FireWire Fax HP Fax Internet Printing Protocol Internet Printing Protocol (http) Jetdirect LPD/LPR Host or Printer Windows Address Book As of iTunes 4.8, use an iPod for synchronizing the Address Book across Macintoshes. Administrator (OS X) Mac OS X provides the Administrator user in place of the root user: it is the default username when OS X is installed. The administrator can perform almost all functions the root user can, and can do them using the Finder (that is, without resorting to the command line). The only thing the administrator is prevented from doing is directly adding, modifying, or deleting files in the system domain; however, an administrator can use special applications such as Installer or Software Update for this purpose. The administrator is not a real user (in the sense of a user with an account of "admin"); an administrator is any user who belongs to the admin group. The user who installs Mac OS X on a system and who provides information to the Setup Assistant application automatically becomes the first administrator for the system. Thereafter, this user (or any other administrator) can use the Users pane of Accounts System Preferences to create accounts on the local system for new users. Administrative users belong to the "admin" group. Non-administrative users belong to the "staff" group. You might choose to rename Administrator to your own username, in System Preferences, Accounts. After doing so, you will still see Administrator as the name atop iChat et al. To fix that, go into Address Book and rename Administrator. Adobe Acrobat Reader tips - Move up, down: Page Up, Down keys, or up-arrow, down-arrow. - Jump to page: Apple-5 keys, type in page number, press Enter. - Scroll vertically within page: Hold down the Shift key while using the up-arrow and down-arrow keys. - Scroll horizontally within page: Hold down the Shift key and press the left-arrow and right-arrow keys. - Hide tool bar: Apple+Shift+B Repeating brings it back. - Hide menu bar: Apple+Shift+M Repeating brings it back. - Select all text in a document: Apple+A keys. - Select every word in a document: Apple+C keys. - Convert document into an image: Apple+Option+5 to seitch to the Select Graphics tool; Apple+A to select the entirety as one graphic, Apple+C to copy it, for later pasting. - Presentations: Capability provided by Acrobat Reader starting in v5, in Full Screen mode; provides slide show capabilities, including transition effects. Choose the effects you want in the Preferences->Full Screen area. To go full screen: In the Window menu, select Full Screen View, which takes over the whole screen. (Escape key to revert.) Adobe Type Manager Light Smoothes on-screen fonts when you have PostScript versions of the fonts. www.adobe.com/products/atmlight/ main.html (The Appearance manager's smoothing of screen fonts applies only to TrueType fonts.) Advanced Technology Group A think tank within Apple, formed in 1986 by Larry Tesler "to allow Apple to study questions, technologies, and user issues that were beyond the time frame or organizational scope of any individual product group," as described by James R. Miller. ATG was given free reign and liberal funding to work on futuristic ideas that didn't necessarily have obvious immediate product potential. However, as Apple's financial situation worsened in the 1990s, company elements not directly contributing to revenue had to be shut down, which Steve Jobs did in 1997. While ATG seems a noble pursuit, the other side of such efforts is the inclination to invent everything yourself, rather than acquiring or licensing even better ideas that others have come up with. AEBS Abbreviation for AirPort Extreme base station. AFP Apple Filing Protocol, responsible for AppleShare-compatible file sharing in Macs. This is the basis for File Sharing in Mac OS X, as when in the Go menu you select Connect to Server and pick another Mac system. You will see the server address like "afp://...". AFP Version 1.0 was jointly developed by Apple and Centram Systems West. AFS AppleFileServer (*not* Andrew File System). See: AppleFileServer AFS See: OpenAFS Ahrendts, Angela Head of Apple retail, to start in the spring of 2014, after leaving her U.K. position of CEO of Burberry. Announced October 14, 2013 in Apple.com/pr, she will be joining Apple in a newly created position, as a senior vice president and member of our executive team, reporting to CEO Tim Cook. She's not a technology person, per se, but is very attuned to retail and the customer experience. In late 2016 she changed her title from Sr. VP of Apple Retail and Online to Sr. VP of Apple Retail, reflecting how she incited Tim Cook to unify Apple online as just Apple, not separate exposition and sales. She also changed the orientation of the retail "stores" to instead be destinations where more than sales occurred, as in forums, education, product training, and general get-together. AIM* AOL Instant Message files, as found in the Extensions folder (icon has a little yellow man slanted to the right). AirBuds? You mean: AirPods AirDrop OS 10.7+ feature for easy file sharing between nearby systems. Requires a Mac incorporating hardware support for the new feature, which involves Mac models built no earlier than late 2008. (See Apple Article HT4783) WiFi must be turned on. AirDrop is a simpler mechanism that the prevailing File Sharing or Drop Box. It makes basic file exchange between nearby users as simple as Bluetooth, as fast as WiFi, and as easy as drag and drop, with layers of security and personalization that combine with Apple's easily understandable user interface to make a conceptually complex task easy to initiate even for non technical users. USAGE: Turn on wireless. Click on AirDrop in the Sidebar. This will show nearby Macs which are likewise capable. To transfer a file, drag it to that other Mac's icon in the AirDrop window. The intended recipient will be prompted for acceptance of the transfer. Note that AirDrop is active only when you are in it by virtue of having clicked on it in the Sidebar. There is no System Preferences entry for it. AirDrop appeared in iOS 7, for sharing with those in your vicinity (without having to bump phones together). OS X and iOS use different AirDrop protocols and were not interoperable - until OS X 10.10 (Yosemite). AirDrop in OS X operates over Wi-Fi, whereas the iOS implementation utilizes both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. See also: Drop Box Airplane mode An iPhone setting to comply with airline regulations. When active, no phone, radio, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth signals are emitted from iPhone and Global Positioning System (GPS) reception is turned off. AirPlay 2010/09/01 successor to AirTunes (which was music streaming only)...to also stream video and photos. It's an Apple-developed protocol, but not limited to Apple devices: media device companies make products incorporating AirPlay - but only for the audio portion of AirPlay, which as of late 2011 was all that Apple was licensing. Apple initially reserved video streaming for itself. The streamed data is encrypted, which thwarts 3rd parties who might seek to exploit it. In a rare move, Apple has made company BridgeCo a "trusted partner" for AirPlay: BridgeCo makes embedded chips for streaming media, to be used by major manufacturers of audio equipment. BridgeCo has been given access to the source code of Apple software, so that they may best implement products. How AirPlay works: The sender and receiver must be on the same local network, be it wired ethernet, 802.11 wireless, or Bluetooth. The sending device can be an iOS device (iPad, iPhone, iPod touch) or recent Mac. The receiving device can be an Apple TV or audio receiver or equipped speaker. When an eligible receiver is available, an identifying icon (a triangle in front of an HDTV-like rectangle) will appear on the sending device. Touching the icon will present the choice of Apple TV or other device. You can only stream from a hand-held device to one AirPlay receiving device at a time. But with your computer, you can stream to multiple AirPlay receivers. AirPlay is designed for personal/home networking: it does not work on institutional/enterprise networking due to authentication and encryption used on enterprise wifi networking. Further, enterprise wireless networks typically suppress multicast traffic in order to maintain the perfromance of the wireless network in the presense of a multitude of wireless devices. And until Apple TV software level 5.1, that device did not support enterprise security protocols. What AirPlay can do: - Stream audio, photos and video to: A second-generation Apple TV (must use software version 4.1 or later) - Stream audio only to: Routers, such as the AirPort Express; Audio/video components, such as receivers, powered speaker systems, such as the Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin Air and the Klipsch Gallery G-17 Air. Protocols: There are two protocols, reflecting the evolution from AirTunes to AirPlay. The first is RAOP (Remote Audio Output Protocol), used for audio streaming. The second is AirPlay service, for photo and video content. RAOP uses UDP for streaming audio and is based on the RTSP network control protocol. The streams are transcoded using the Apple Lossless codec with 44100 Hz and 2 channels encrypted with AES, requiring the receiver to have access to the appropriate private key to decrypt the streams. The stream is buffered for approximately 2 seconds before playback begins, resulting in a small delay before audio is output after starting an AirPlay stream. The protocols are not formally published. http://www.apple.com/itunes/airplay See also: Bonjour AirPlay Direct As of 2012/08, reportedly planned technology where Apple wants to stream directly from an iDevice to AirPlay speakers, for example, eliminating the prevailing need for a local wireless network. This is very much needed in institutional and corporate settings where the wireless networking cannot accommodate AirPlay needs. Not yet released, as of 2013/02. AirPlay Mirroring A variation of AirPlay whereby everything on the sending device's screen is mirrored on the receiving device screen (Apple TV). This can be used to get content onto the big screen where the content provider does not allow AirPlay-ing. AirPlay Mirroring on Macintosh To stream content from your Macintosh to an AirPlay receiver (Apple TV). Available in OS X Mountain Lion, on basically mid-2011 Macs and later. The simple test: If your Mac supports AirPlay Mirroring, an AirPlay Mirroring menu extra appears in the menu bar when an Apple TV is on the same network. Apple Article: HT5404 AirPlay to Macintosh Commercial software called AirServer ($15, at http://www.airserver.com/Mac) and Reflector ($15, at http://www.airsquirrels.com/reflector/) allow you to stream content from your iOS device to your Macintosh. AirPods Apple's bluetooth earbuds, announced in their September 2016 products announcement. These are similar to Apple's traditional white earbuds, but wireless. They are very sophisticated, with Siri functionality. Apple invented the W1 chip to incorporate into them. You can use just one pod, as for iPhone conversations. No-challenge pairing. Up to 5 hours of battery power on a single charge. Availability slipped: Were supposed to be available in late October 2016 but Apple ran into issues and just barely made the 2016 holiday season. The problem was reportedly in both earpieces getting the sound at the same time, to not be out of phase or sound weird. http://www.apple.com/airpods/ AirPort The stem name of Apple's wireless site networking, based upon 802.11b,g,n. Administration is via AirPort Utility (there is no Web-based administration.) DISCONTINUED: In November 2016, Apple decided that they would no longer develop routers, as too small a segment of their company worth continuing. AirPort - original version Apple's choice of wireless ethernet: 11 Mb/sec, based on the IEEE 802.11 Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) worldwide industry standard. Range: about 150 feet, maximum The original Airport base station (Graphite) only supports 64-bit encryption as-is: its wireless transmission is handled by a Lucent Orinoco (formerly Wavelan) Silver card - there's a bone-stock Lucent card right inside the unit. The Silver card handles at most 64-bit encryption; Lucent also sells the Orinoco Gold card (for about $20 more than the Silver), which can do 128-bit encryption. So if you want 128-bit encryption, you need to crack open the base station and replace the Silver card with a Gold card. Interference Robustness can be turned on if really needed, but it cuts speed to about 1/3 what it is without Robustness. An oddity: In Japan, AirPort's name is instead AirMac. http://www.apple.com/airport/ http://www.apple.com/airportextreme/ http://www.apple.com/support/airport/ See also: Graphite; Snow AirPort access points Go into System Profiler > Networks > AirPort. Examine: Other Local Wireless Networks AirPort Base Station Original model M8209LL/A (Graphite), for 802.11b transmission. 40-bit encryption: cannot be flash-upgraded for 128-bit encryption. 2001 enhanced model (Snow) accommodates 40-bit and 128-bit encryption, and sports an Ethernet LAN (as well as the original Ethernet WAN) connection, for both allowing a 10base-T wired Mac to share the WAN connection which the Base Station occupies, and to allow the Base Station to serve as a firewall. A 128-bit Base Station supports both 40-bit and 128-bit encryption. The original AirPort base station used a version of the 486 processor and could be convinced to speak Linux. AirPort Base Station command line util? Apple does not supply a command line utility for interacting with your Apple AirPort Base Station: there is only the GUI. AirPort bridging The term for extending an AirPort network by relaying across base stations. AirPort card Original, 40-bit encryption model M7600LL/B. 2001/08 128-bit encryption model M7600LL/C. Quietly came out, for use with non-Apple base stations, as well as the then-current Graphite base station with its 40-bit encryption. 2002 model number: M7600LL/D. AirPort 2.0 (2001/11) software allows your original in-Mac card to be upgraded to 128-bit encryption capability, for use with non-Apple networks (e.g., Cisco LEAP), but it cannot upgrade your Base Station. For installation in G3 iMacs, a sleeve, called the AirPort Card Adapter, is required. AirPort card command line utility /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/ Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/ Resources/airport Deals with technical data which would be of little use to civilians. Invoke with no parameters to see usage. AirPort Extreme base station The 802.11n version of the AirPort base station. Abbrev: AEBS Ethernet ports are all 10/100/1000. (The original version of the Extreme limited ports to 10/100.) Missing from the Extreme relative to its predecessor is an antenna connector: this was apparently deemed unnecessary given the inherently greater range of this new version. Be sure of having recent base station firmware applied in order to make the fullest use of this product. For example, firmware 5.5 allows the use of four USB printers, rather than 1. USB port: Its type is not explicitly specified by Apple, but seems to be USB 1. A USB hub may be utilized in order to have multiple USB devices attach to the port. USB disk usage: Supports USB storage devices that have a block size of 512 bytes, and are formatted as Mac OS Extended (HFS-plus), FAT16, or FAT32. (Not all USB storage devices use a block size of 512 bytes.) Storage devices are shared based on the format used to initialize the storage device. For example, if HFS-plus formatting was used, AFP and SMB/CIFS protocols are used to share the device on the network. If FAT16 or FAT32 was used, SMB/CIFS protocols are used. Works with disks that have a single partition and are not software RAID volumes (no more than one volume per physical disk). If the disk is a self-contained RAID that presents itself to a computer as a single volume requiring no software support, then it is supported. Note: Use AirPort Disk Utility to discover and mount AirPort Extreme-based volumes over the network. It is not possible to turn off the transmitter/receiver on the AirPort Extreme base station (AEBS). Allied products: AirPort Extreme Card AirPort Express 2004/06 AirPort base station that looks much like a PowerBook power adapater, which can simply hang out of an electrical outlet. 802.11g. Sports an ethernet jack for LAN/WAN network connection, a USB1 jack for attaching a printer, and a mini stereo jack for connecting your stereo music system, so that iTunes may stream music from your computer to your living room stereo, via a transport known as AirTunes (q.v.). Note that this music transmission facility was a precursor to Apple TV. It is not possible to turn off the transmitter/receiver on the AirPort Express (AX). AirPort network, extend The term for doing this is to create a Wireless Distribution System (WDS). In the WDS, there is: - Master base station, being the access to the WAN. - Remote base station, being a final end point. - Relay base station, an optional station between the Master and Remote where a longer distance is involved. AirPort security Regardless of the number of bits, wireless transmission based upon solely WEP protocol is insecure, because of seriously faulty design. Apple addressed this industry failing in early 2004 with the WPA protocol, introduced in the OS 10.3 AirPort 3.2 update. With WEP, Apple has the user employ a passphrase, where that is transformed into a long encryption key via mathematical operations. (Other computer companies had customers employ a short hex character string, making for weak security.) Current AirPort security choices: WEP 40-bit WEP 128-bit WPA Personal (uses a passkey) WPA Enterprise (radius server authentication) AirPort serving to nearby laptops On the serving system (e.g., tower): First activate the network method by which other systems will share your network connection. (In most cases, that means turning on AirPort.) Open System Preferences, go to Sharing. Click on Internet. In "Share your connection from:", choose the network connection you want to serve/share, typically "Built-in Ethernet". In "To computers using:" choose AirPort. Click Start. The usual signal strength "fan" in the Apple menu bar turns into an antenna. On the served system (e.g., laptop): In the AirPort menu bar entry, the new server system should be obvious now. Simply choose it, and give OS X on your served system a moment to settle into it. AirPort signal strength Can be seen in the menu bar, if in Network preferencences for AirPort you click in the checkbox "Show AirPort status in menu bar" whereupon you will see a "radiate" icon in the menu bar, where arcs are blackened according to signal strength. AirPort Utility The Mac OS X software through which you administer your AirPort base station or Time Capsule. The utility archives firmware updates in ~/Library/Application Support/Apple/ AirPort/Firmware/ As of iOS 5 Beta, you can actually use an Airport Utility (lite) built into the WiFi settings page to configure a new Airport Extreme or Time Capsule. You have to be in the initial setup state (reset completely to defaults) to see it, but when in range, a "setup an airport base station" window appears, allowing this lite level of configuration. AirPrint iOS 4.2+ feature of iPads, iPhones, and iPod touches to be able to perform wireless printing directly from the devices, to a printer on the local WiFi network, from apps programmed to use AirPrint. AirPrint automatically finds printers on local networks and can print text, photos and graphics to them wirelessly over Wi-Fi without the need to install drivers or download software, and no user configuration. Being Bonjour-based, AirPrint requires WiFi networking: you cannot initiate printing from 3G cellular access (no roaming printing). Supported on: iPad iPhone 4 iPhone 3GS iPod touch (3rd generation and later) Once a job is printing, an app called Print Center is active in your multitask apps list, to show progress. Apple originally intended (and announced) that AirPrint would be able to print to any shared printer, but reduced that just before releasing Mac OS 10.6.5, possibly because they deemed it more elegant to print directly to new technology ePrinters, rather than use the Mac as a print server. HP's existing and upcoming ePrint enabled printers were the first to support printing direct from iOS devices. Next came Canon. Epson is likely to follow. Control is limited: The number of copies can be specified, but there is no choosing page layout, font size, paper size, print quality, pages range, etc. Can print to a Mac-attached printer via the very similar 3rd party Mac software products: Collobos Software's FingerPrint Ecamm Network's Printopia These OS X applications effectively turn the Mac (AirPort turned on) into a print server which looks to the (unchanged) iOS device like a group of printers, being all the printers selected in the application's preferences pane. (The OS X Printer Sharing function does not work with AirPrint...at least not yet. Things are likely to change with OS 10.7 as Mac OS and iOS further converge.) http://www.apple.com/pr/library/ 2010/09/15airprint.html (AirPrint is in no way related to the pre-existing company AirPrint Networks.) Apple Article: HT4356 ("AirPrint 101") lists supported printers See also: File Sharing AirPrint in OS X As of Lion (10.7), AirPrint is in OS X. It is driverless printing, in contrast with conventional OS X printing. In Mountain Lion (10.8), AirPrint is the preferred method. AirServer See: AirPlay to Macintosh AirTunes 2004/06 adjunct to AirPort Express, adding a destination choice to the lower right area of the iTunes window, for sending your music to your connected stereo system from your AirPort networked computer: the AirPort Express unit is placed at your stereo system site, and receives the wireless signal from your computer location. (The advantage of this is limited, given that the arrangement is rather backwards, in that you would be local to your stereo system rather than remote if you wanted to listen to music. More usually, you would have an iMac or similar in the room with the stereo system, and would connect the stereo to the computer - which avoids consuming your network in listening to music. AirTunes was succeeded by AirPlay, as announced 2010/09/01. See also: iTunes AIX IBM's version of Unix, which ran on a "Macintosh" family called the Network Server series, sold from February 1996 to April 1997. Designed for high-demand tasks, these PowerPC 604 servers coupled extremely easy-to-upgrade hardware with the power of AIX. However, the series was not well received, and was discontinued due to slow sales. You can still find manuals on the Apple web site, under "AIX Manuals". ALAC Apple Lossless Audio Codec, being what is used to create "Apple Lossless audio file" entries in the Music section of your iTunes. The format is supported on iPhone, iPad, Mac, iTunes and most iPods. Unlike MPEG and AAC, there is no content reduction involved. ALAC files are stored within an MP4 container with the file extension ".m4a" - the same extension used by the AAC, with distinction obviously made in file header information. ALAC was made open source in 2011/10, under the free Apache license: those adopting it are free to use the software for any purpose, including modification and distribution. The license requires that any original copyright, patent, trademark and attribution notices in redistributed code be preserved, and notifications be provided for every licensed file that may have been changed. AlBook Shorthand for Aluminum PowerBook, which is the 2004,5 generation following the Titanium series. Album art Is stored in each song file, allowing the art to stay with the song as it is moved across computers. iTunes will usually be able to find album art for CDs that you import into it; but sometimes it can't find an album cover, or what it finds does not actually match the album. In this case, you are on your own to find art to accompany your tunes. A good source of cover art is Amazon.com, particularly customer contributions, which yield larger images. Another good online source is http://www.discogs.com/, which has large, quality images. And there is tralfaz-archives.com/coverart/coverart.html The JPEG image can be added to the tune by going into the File menu, choose Get Info, choose the Artwork tab, then drag the image into the empty box. Alias, create OS X: When in an application, like Preview, where the Alias, create and place in one step Hold down the Option+Command keys as you click on and drag the icon which is to be given an alias. AltiVec Circa 1998 PowerPC extender performance technology jointly developed by Motorola, IBM, and Apple. Simply stated, it is a math accelerator which greatly speeds up specialized operations such as MPEG-2 decoding, Adobe Photoshop filters, color-space transformations, digital-audio and video-signal processing, 3D rendering. Reportedly requires hand-coding to exploit, and "nothing can touch it for performance". Utilized first in the (Motorola, Freescale) G4 32-bit PowerPC microprocessors used in Apple products. In more detail, AltiVec is the single-instruction, multipledata (SIMD) unit which accelerates data-intensive processing tasks. It has 170 million transistors and a 415mm die,and it comes packaged in an 85 x 85mm MCM with 5,184 pins. AltiVec adds a 128-bit vector-execution unit, capable of both integer and floating point operations, that can process up to 16 data elements at a time (think SIMD). The 128 bit width is twice that of Intel's MMX, and has 32 data registers vs. MMX's 8, giving AltiVec about 8X the throughput. Moreover, AltiVec's resources are dedicated, whereas MMX shares registers. See also: PowerPC Aluminum keyboard (2007) New with "eye shadow" aluminum iMacs. Includes additional media keys and newly-labeled keys for Expose and Dashboard. Key functions: F7 Previous track F8 Play/Pause F9 Next track F10 Mute F11 Volume down F12 Volume up When introduced, Keyboard Software Update 1.1 was necessary. Brightness controls have moved from F14 and F15 to F1 and F2 respectively. Dashboard is now accessible via F4. Additionally, the Expose key is now F3 and has expanded functions: Press Expose key - all windows Press Ctrl+Expose - appl. windows Press Cmd+Expose - expose desktop The Command key is now labeled "command." To access the F keys as function keys (F1-F12), the keyboard now includes the Function modifier key (Fn). Press and hold this key while pressing a function key, F1 through F12, to use it as function key. F5 and F6 are exceptions; they are not dual-purpose keys and do not require the function key. The Eject key is now directly over the delete key. Hold down the Option key when pressing an iconic key for the System Preferences of that category. Oddity: Apple engineered the Caps Lock key on this keyboard so that it has to be held down momentarily to activate, apparently to deal with the age-old problem of inadvertently hitting this key and getting unwanted upper case in your typing. Some users have named this behavior "anti-jab protection". Amazon MP3 Downloads vs. iTunes Store Having accumulated some points from Pepsi bottle caps, I "bought" a few MP3s from the Amazon.com store. The sound was not satisfying, being "tinny" or "hollow". Comparing the same artist releases on the iTunes Store (AAC form), there was a considerable quality difference for the same recording, where the iTunes version sounded "real". Acquiring music via Amazon MP3 Downloads is not worth it. Amber alert, disable Open Settings on the iPhone and go to Notification Center. At the bottom you will find section GOVERNMENT ALERTS, where you can disable this. Amelio, Gilbert Apple's hapless CEO after Jobs and Sculley, notorious for a multi-hour, rambling address at the January 2007 Macworld. Ousted July 9, 1997 as the board of directors had enough of the continuing downhill slide of the company, having given him a year and a half to turn the company around. Executive VP and CFO Fred Anderson stood in as Apple chief until a new CEO could be picked. Ellen Hancock, former IBMer who became executive VP of technology, resigned with Amelio. Steve Jobs, having been brought back into Apple with the purchase of NeXT, had a role of "advisor", and that role was expanded, to advise the board on product strategy, marketing, sales, and business partnerships. Jobs was made interim chief executive, and then CEO. (Macworld Magazine published their September 1997 issue with an "Amelio Ousted, Page 25" sticker.) A American flag in menu bar See: Keyboard Viewer "And, boy, have we patented it!" The now-legendary Steve Jobs exclamation during the original iPhone announcement (33:52 into the MacWorld 2007, January 9, keynote address) - made with emphatic body language. This was to protect its newly engineered Multi-Touch interface - which Apple was well aware would be broadly copied as many companies would imitate what Apple had created. But it can take a long time for patents to get established. Apple's key U.S. patent number in this area was 7,966,578 for "[a] computer-implemented method, for use in conjunction with a portable multifunction device with a touch screen display, [that] comprises displaying a portion of page content, including a frame displaying a portion of frame content and also including other content of the page, on the touch screen display." A broad patent, it was finally awarded 2011/06/21. Apple can now undertake full enforement of that patent. Announcements See: Product announcements Antares Code name for the PowerPC 970MP dual-core G5 processor, circa 2Q 2005. Apache web server /etc/httpd/users is the directory which the Apache built-in Web server uses to manage user sites. Apache web server, control in OS X See: Personal Web Sharing Aperture Apple's high end photographer software. Aperture takes advantage of Core Image to achieve their fast-launching, fast-rendering results - achieving virtually real-time effects even on RAW and HDR source files. Supported cameras list: www.apple.com/aperture/specs/raw.html BEING DISCONTINUED: In the WWDC 2014 presentation, Apple gave a brief look at a new Photos app for Mac, to arrive in early 2015. On 2014/06/29 we learned that this will replace iPhoto - and Aperture. Aperture will be removed from the Mac App Store when the Photos for OS X app launches. See also: Image Capture APFS Short for Apple File System (q.v.). APNS Apple push notifications: a proprietary, binary protocol that is the basis for Apple's iMessage technology. Apollo Motorola G4 processors. Labeled MPC 7455 and MPC 7445, the Apollo G4s achieve all of the goals that Motorola outlined at the 2000 Microprocessor Forum -- namely GHz+ performance, fabrication using SOI (Silicon On Insulator) technology, the ability to have a 2MB DDR (Double Data Rate) L3 cache, and a superior power consumption/performance ratio. App Short for Application, it is the name given to applications on iOS devices. Some competitors - particularly Google - have criticized Apple's approach: after all, they say, you can implement applications via websites rather than have apps on everyone's mobile device. What that suggestion masks, however, is the "tax" to be paid in a Web approach, including depending upon network service which may be spotty or non-existent, having your time and data plan consumed by webpage ad downloads, and being monitored by any number of embedded information probes you can't see. It is also notable that apps deprive Google of the opportunity to derive advertising income from your use of your mobile device. App, launch from command line You can use the 'open' command, like: open /Applications/Safari.app/ Alternately: Within each *.app/ folder, there is a *app/Contents/MacOS/ subfolder where you can find the actual executable for the application in question. Thus, you could launch Safari via: /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/Safari App Analytics Apple service, new in 2015, for developers to gauge their apps. The service will let developers track how people "discover and engage" with their App Store titles. analytics.itunes.apple.com App Store The handheld device applications subsection of the iTunes Store, for obtaining Apps for the iPhone and iPod touch. Download wirelessly. Developers set prices; get 70%. Announced 2008/03. A wildly popular concept introduced by Apple, the store reached one billion downloads within nine months, on April 24th, 2009. Enterprises with their own phones complement can develop and distribute their own custom apps on their intranet. There is also an "ad hoc" app distrib model: Developer certification program allows registering up to 100 iPhones for parocial apps, such as written by a faculty member. App Store Volume Purchase Program Apple program whereby an educational institution can buy iOS apps in volume using a Volume Voucher, credit card, or PCard, then distribute the apps to multiple devices. If the institution is tax exempt, no sales tax charge will be involved in purchasing apps. The program also allows app developers to offer special pricing for purchases of 20 apps or more. Circa 2011 App switcher (OS X) Hold down the Command key, then momentarily press Tab to bring up an applications selector in the middle of the screen. In it you can tab on to the app you want; or press 'q' to cause that app to quit; or 'h' to hide that app. Apple Apple Computer, Inc. Founded April 1, 1976 by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Incorporated January 3, 1977. Steve Jobs chose the name of the company as a tribute to Apple Corps, the Beatles record company, which the Beatles formed in 1968. Steve's conflicting choice of name and comparable logo has resulted in several legal run-ins with Apple Corps, even after they signed an agreement in 1991. The gist of the settlement was that Apple Computer was to stay away from music. However, the inevitable convergence of all media in digital form made that infeasible. Apple, online shopping Apple provides online shopping, where you may have items delivered. Be aware, however, that the deliveries are via Federal Express, and require a person to be there to accept and sign for the package. (It is possible to go online to FedEx and authorize delivery without someone having to be there, but that is unobvious. Apple I The first Apple computer, which was hand-built by Steve Wozniak. The selling price was $666.66. The "factory" and shipping origin was Steve Jobs' parents' house. Apple Broadband Tuner Circa 2005 Apple network parameters tweak, principally for Verizon FiOS customers. It is a "package" which contains no delivered software, but merely updates /etc/sysctl if that file is present, to set: net.inet.tcp.sendspace: 131072 net.inet.tcp.recvspace: 358400 kern.ipc.maxsockbuf: 512000 (Values are in bytes.) The settings can be dynamically instated, via (sudo) commands: sysctl -w kern.ipc.maxsockbuf=512000 sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.sendspace=131072 sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.recvspace=358400 Beforehand, do 'sysctl -a' and note the original values. Normal for 10.10: net.inet.tcp.sendspace: 131072 net.inet.tcp.recvspace: 131072 kern.ipc.maxsockbuf: 8388608 Not recommended for AirPort. Do 'netstat -s' to check for packet transmission issues which might be resolved by settings adjustments. Another site recommends values: sysctl -w kern.ipc.maxsockbuf=8000000 sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.sendspace=4000000 sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.recvspace=4000000 Apple Campus 2 This is Apple's next major campus, developed on the former HP campus in Cupertino, CA. In February, 2017 it was given its own name: Apple Park (q.v.). Apple CD Audio Player Comes from the Mac OS Installler item "CD-ROM" (under the Multimedia heading). Apple Cinema Display, 20" Model A1081 1680 x 1050 pixels, 100 dpi Power is through a 65 Watt power adapter white "brick", Model no. A1096. output 24.5 VDC, 2.65 A max. Pixel response time: 16 milliseconds Hub: Two USB 2.0; two FireWire 400 (which eliminates the ghosting and smearing appearance that can show up in video playback and on-screen motion). Connector: The pre-2004 "plastic" version utilized a DVI connector, carrying digital video, USB, and power; the 2004 "aluminum" version utilizes a combo cable which carries DVI, USB 2.0, and Firewire 400 to separate computer-side connectors. Apple Cinema Display, 22" 1600 x 1024 pixels Pixel response time: 16 milliseconds (which eliminates the ghosting and smearing appearance that can show up in video playback and on-screen motion). Contrast ratio (typical): 300:1 Apple Display Connector (ADC) carries digital video, USB, and power. Apple Cinema Display, 23" Model A1082 1920 x 1200 pixels Power is through a 90 Watt power adapter white "brick", Model no. A1097, output 24.5 VDC, 3.70 A max. Pixel response time: 16 milliseconds Hub: Two USB 2.0; two FireWire 400 (which eliminates the ghosting and smearing appearance that can show up in video playback and on-screen motion). Connector: The pre-2004 "plastic" version utilized a DVI connector, carrying digital video, USB, and power; the 2004 "aluminum" version utilizes a combo cable which carries DVI, USB 2.0, and Firewire 400 to separate computer-side connectors. For fully adjustable use, consider the CinemaLift LCD Arm ($469) from lcdarms.com. Apple Cinema Display, 27" See: Apple LED Cinema Display Apple Cinema Display, 30" Model A1083 2560 x 1600 pixels. Power is through a 150 Watt power adapter white "brick", Model no. A1098, output 24.5 VDC, 6.10 A max. Hub: Two USB 2.0; two FireWire 400 Connecting in general: The thick cable from the display contains: - Special DC power connector for the "brick", which can be plugged in either side up. - DVI video connector - USB connector - Firewire connector All of those connectors plug into the Macintosh's respective ports. Connects to a PowerMac G5 system using a DVI connector, with NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL graphics card; or to a PowerBook G4 with ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 graphics card and dual-link DVI functionality. The display turns on automatically when the computer is turned on. Pixel response time: 16 milliseconds (which eliminates the ghosting and smearing appearance that can show up in video playback and on-screen motion). Requires special 256MB video card: Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL ($599) or scaled-down version of the card, the Nvidia GeForce 6800 GT DDL ($499). There is now also the ATI X800 XT card, at about $499. Usage notes: The display and its power brick run hot when the display is "lit", and cool when not lit. Aging: There is an array of CCFL backlighting, some of which may eventually fail. Replacement parts are about $11 each from LCDParts.Net. Review: Computerworld QuickLink# 51827 Light (LED) means: Is normally off, even when the display is active. Is on when the computer is in sleep mode or turned off. If the monitor's Off pad is touched, the light will flash once and then be dark. Flashing... Short, short, short: thee display is detecting wrong video format or an unsupported resolution. Short, long, short: Make sure you are using the correct power adapter with the display. This alert will only appear on displays built in 2004 or later which require an external power adapter. The display can be made to function by taping over the middle connector on both sides of the connector. Short, short, long: The display is detecting a backlight error. Check your display's power connections and restart the computer. If the problem continues, contact Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider. this of course could be caused by failed components on the LCD circuit board. You will have to open it up and take a look at the board, check for burned/broken components. Apple Cinema HD Display Circa 2007, 2008, G5 era displays. Featured a thick aluminum frame mounted on an L-shape stand, with a matte (non-glossy) display surface. Was the successor to the previous generation transparent plastic Cinema Display units, with their tripod standing. Came in three sizes: 17" 1280 x 1024 20" 1680 x 1050 23" 1920 x 1200 Apple Cinema HD Display, 30" This is the aluminum display. 2560 x 1600 pixels. Controls: Touchpad buttons on the side for power on/off and brightness. Hubs: Two USB 2.0 ports and two FireWire 400 ports. (Connection of the FireWire to early 2009 Macs, having only FireWire 800 ports, requires an adapter.) Power: There is a white power brick, taking 120VAC and delivering DC power to the display. Cannot be driven by a pre-2009 iMac, in that the best those came with was a mini DVI connector, which does not present all the signal pins required to drive this display, which requires dual DVI. The early 2009 iMac can drive the display, having a Mini DisplayPort output port with support for DVI, VGA, and dual-link DVI via adapter. Apple Computer, Inc. The corporate name, as founded 1976/04/01 as Apple Computer Company, until it was announced at the 2007/01/09 Macworld that, with the company's foray into so many consumer electronics goods, that it was changing to simply Apple, Inc. Apple Configurator Mac app for configuring and deploying iOS devices in a large environment. Available free in the Mac App store. Apple content delivery network (CDN) Went live 2014/08/01 in U.S. and Europe. Previously, Apple contracted with Akamai and other CDNs for regional fan-out distribution of high volume data transmissions, such as OS updates. Apple has been building data centers and high performance networking around the U.S. to facilitate this and other. Apple's network for this is Class A subnet 17.x.x.x/8. Apple Corps The registered name of the commercial organization founded by the Beatles in 1968 as the group's main commercial vehicle, although only its record label arm, Apple Records, ever did much business. Apple Computer was set up by 1975 by two college drop-outs, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who chose a similar name and logo for their personal computers company. This unfortunate choice has dogged Apple Computer ever since, as Apple Corps has engaged in multiple lawsuits over the years to keep Apple Computer from infringing on its identity, by engaging in the production of music. The result of one lawsuit was the 1991 agreement that Apple Computer would not infringe upon Apple Corps' trademark. This came to a head once again in 2006 as Apple Corps sued Apple Computer in British High Court over the use of the Apple logo on the iTunes Music Store. The High Court judge ruled that Apple Computer used the apple logo in association with the online store and not the music it sold, and therefore did not breach the agreement. Apple Computer has been somewhat contemptuous of the bickering, perhaps most conspicuously by their addition of a Macintosh sound alert called "Sosumi". This endless squabble demonstrates how animosity can dominate over reason, given how powerful the two companies could be if they instead collaborated. The 2007/01/09 Macworld was notable in demonstrating the iPhone's music capability with a Beatles tune - probably the first Apple Computer, Inc. formal utilization of their music. This presaged the 2007/02/05 announcement that the historic dispute had finally been resolved, with Apple owning all trademarks related to "Apple", and will license certain of those trademarks back to Apple Corps for their continued use. Apple Disc Burner Circa 2002 CD burner software. Produces discs formatted in the hybrid HFS+/ISO 9660 format that both Macs and PCs can reas, and in the ISO 9660 format (as used for MP3 files), and in the Red Book audio-CD format. Can't create multi-session discs. Apple Education Store Used to be available from the general online Apple Store; but now if you click there on Education Store, you get error: Sorry... Unable to enter the requested store. Apple has apparently changed things such that you need to gain access through the portal which your educational institution has set up. Apple Energy LLC As a seeming extension of Apple's solar energy adoption, Apple created this subsidiary in May, 2016 to sell power into wholesale markets. This represents Apple selling the surplus of what its solar panels produce, helping to offset the cost of their deployment of such technology. Apple File System Announced at WWDC 2016, to replace the aging HFS+. To arrive in 2017. Abbreviation: APFS APFS supports nearly all of the features of the existing HFS+ file system, but it is optimized for Flash/SSD storage and features strong encryption, copy-on-write metadata, space sharing, cloning for files and directories, snapshots, fast directory sizing, atomic safe-save primitives, and improved file system fundamentals. Was designed with all of Apple's operating systems and devices in mind, to scale from watchOS up to macOS, specifically accommodating flash storage and encryption. Employs a 64-bit inode number, contrasted with HFS+ and its 32-bit catalog record. Number of files on a volume: more than 9 quintillion Timestamps are now in nanosecond resolution, rather than 1 second. Appeared in iOS 10.3. Apple ID, change email address Yes, you can change the email address that is associated with your Apple ID. With only one device active, use it to go to appleid.apple.com, then sign in using your existing Apple ID. Once logged in, press the small Edit button located in the upper-right corner of the Account section, followed by Change Email Address. Apple ID on iPad, manage As of iOS 5: Going into Settings > Store will reveal an Apple ID box. Touch it, and it presents the choices: View Apple ID Sign Out iForgot [password reset capability] Cancel Select Sign Out to remove the current value. Thereafter that page will present: Sign In Use Existing Apple ID Create New Apple ID iForgot [password reset capability] Cancel Apple IIe Pre-Macintosh personal computer from Apple. Featured ProDos instead of AppleDos (developed from the remains of the Apple III OS). Apple III Apple's last 8-bit computer, leading up to the Macintosh, sold from May 1980 until April 24, 1984. It was physically distinguished by a keyboard which looked like it was detached from the body of the computer, but was not. This was supposed to be a business computer, as contrasted with the Apple II, with an advanced OS (SOS - Sophisticated Operating System) and a new BASIC interpreter, "Apple /// Business BASIC". Standard memory: 128 KB (twice that common on other PCs). Max: 256 KB. Disk technology: Floppies, about 185 KB per diskette; "ProFile" 5 MB hard drive. A green phosphor monitor was standard, but the computer could to 16-color graphics. Costing a whopping $3500, this computer was a lemon, suffering a raft of hardware problems. Apple Inc. Apple's official corporate identification. (Not Apple, Inc.) Apple Internet Connection Kit Circa 1995 add-on to Mac OS 7.5 to provide Internet functionality. It is an integrated collection of Apple and third-party software that allows customers to easily connect their Macintosh directly to the Internet. The Apple Internet Connection Kit is a one-stop shop for key Internet tools that let the user get started using the Internet. It works on LAN and dial-up access, and simplifies dial-up to an Internet Service Provider (ISP). Bundled software: Internet Dialer Software; Apple Guide for the Internet; Netscape Navigator; Claris Emailer; Fetch FTP client; Stuffit Expander decompression software from Aladdin; NewsWatcher browser software; NCSA Telnet terminal emulation software; QuickTime VR Player; Adobe Acrobat Reader; Real Audio software; Point-to-Point (PPP) software. Apple keynote presentations Macworld and other Apple presentations can be found in iTunes, in high quality, a day or so after the event, in: Podcasts > Video Podcasts > Tech News > Apple Keynotes Apple LED Cinema Display 27" LED-backlight display, to attach to Apple MacBook Pro laptops or iMacs or Mac mini. 2560x1440 resolution. Mini DisplayPort cable for easy connectivity, and three USB 2.0 ports. There$(B,$(Bs also a built-in iSight camera, microphone, and 49-watt speaker system that provide a true desktop experience. Made of aluminum and glass. Integrated MagSafe charger to keep Mac notebooks charged. Glossy screen (be aware). Released: 2010/09 Replaced in 2011 by the Apple Thunderbolt Display. store.apple.com/us/product/FC007LL/A Apple logo Was originally designed in April, 1977 by Rob Janov, an art director at Regis, McKenna, Apple's public relations agency. The image was a two-dimensional apple with a bite taken out of its right side, with six color stripes (green, yellow, orange, red, purple, blue, from top to bottom). In February, 1981, Regis McKenna was acquired by Chiat/Day, remaining Apple's leading advertising firm. Apple Mail See: Mail 'Apple Mail To Do' folder Seen in an IMAP account. Seems to be new with Leopard. Involves the syncing of To Do's to your IMAP server, much like Notes. The To Do's are reminders, set from the File menu in iCal. As of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, this was changed to be Reminders, with data storage in iCloud rather than your IMAP server. Apple Maps In 2014, rented vans with odd sensing equipment on top were seen to be driving around various cities. Research found that the vans had been rented to Apple, and analysis of the topside equipment reveals that it was for street-view recording, obviously to improve Apple Maps. In 2015, the vans are not anonymous any more, being sighted with an "Apple Maps" identifier on their sides. Apple acknowledge this project on website http://maps.apple.com/vehicles/ Apple menu bar OS X: The screen-top menu bar which has a blue apple in the left corner. The icons on the right side, in the order in which they appear, left to right: "Cartoon speech balloon": iChat. "Padlock" or "PC card": Looks kind of like a black padlock on its side, with the hasp on the left. This is the VPN (L2TP) in the Internet Connect area. "Barbed B": The Bluetooth control. "Cinema Display": Displays control. "Fan": This is the Airport control. "Speaker": Sound volume control. Does not include muting. Apple Mobile Device Support Software introduced into iTunes in 2007/09 to support direct Store access by the iPod touch (initially) and the iPhone. Apple MPEG-2 Playback Component See: MPEG-2 Playback Component Apple Music Announced at WWDC 2015, the result of the purchase of Beats Music. Intended to be a fusion product/service for purchasing and streaming music. Includes Beats 1, a global radio broadcast service from Los Angeles, NY and London. All this is being run by music people. The Connect function is reminiscent of the old Ping function of iTunes. Launching 2015/06/30. $9.99 per month, first 3 months free. $14.99 for a family, up to 6 members. Apple online services icloud.com Apple Park This is Apple's next major campus, developed on the former HP campus in Cupertino, CA. Originally named Apple Campus 2. In February, 2017 it was given its own name: Apple Park. Apple moving in, June 2017. Apple Pay Apple's innovative secure payments system, based upon its devices. Introduced at presentation 2014/09/09; launched in October, 2014. At launch, requires an iPhone 6 or Apple Watch, and iOS 8, for on-the-go payments. Utilizes restricted NFC, Touch ID, and the Secure Element chip in the Apple device. Usage: Hold your finger on the Touch ID button as you hold your device up to the merchant's point-of-sale customer interface device and in about a second the transaction is complete, with the merchant's device typically showing a light pulse and your Apple device giving you subtle vibration feedback plus a "Done" on its display. Apple is not involved in the payment process: the transaction is between your device, the retailer, and the bank. Apple Pay does not record what users bought or how much they paid. Cashiers also do not see a name, credit card number, or security code. Fees: Neither the customer nor the merchant incurs any additional charge for the service. Apple has contractual arrangements with banks for them to pay a small fee. Whenever a bank card transaction takes place, the card-issuing bank deducts what's known as an interchange fee from the amount it pays the acquiring bank that handles the card transaction for the merchant. What the bank pays is actually a savings over the monumental credit card fraud that goes on with traditional card-based transactions. In the Q4-2014 earnings call, Tim Cook said that "Apple Pay is classic Apple - taking something that is old, outdated, kludgey, focused on everything except the customer, and putting the customer at the center of the experience, and making something very elegant." Various merchants, such as Kohl's, are tied to other systems and do not participate in Apple Pay. However, that does not mean you cannot take advantage of your phone for payment when shopping in their stores: for such merchants, you can add their card to Wallet, and use that at payment time. Announced at WWDC 2015, with iOS 9, Apple Pay will support rewards and store-issued credit and debit cards, as the Passbook app becomes Wallet. At WWDC 2016, Apple announced that Apple Pay would be coming to Safari: that will dramatically boost its usage. Apple Pay on the Web Went into effect in September 2016. When you go to pay for a purchase from a participating online retailer and click on Apple Pay on their website checkout page when in the Safari browser, a pop-up window will appear to have you touch the Touch ID button on your iPhone — a functionality based upon Continuity. Works also with Apple Watch. This supplementary-device method sill likely be supplanted by Touch ID on upcoming Macintosh computers. Apple Pay via Macintosh Possible starting with the 2016 MacBook Pro, which has a TouchID sensor at the right end of its Touch Bar. Apple Quick Tips Available in iTunes, in moderate quality, at: Podcasts > Video Podcasts > Software How-To > Apple Quick Tips Apple Remote The small, white, plastic remote control for the Front Row interface, introduced in October 2005. That was replaced with a thinner and longer aluminum version in October 2009. Its signal transmission is via infrared light, with an operating distance of up to about 30 feet. The technology is infrared (IR). The LED emits at 980nm, or about 306THz, in the near-IR spectrum. This is not far outside of the visible range, but cannot be seen by the human eye. (It would be blindingly, painfully bright if visible.) Multiple remotes and computers can be in a room, dedicated to one another via what is called Pairing, which allows you to set the receiving computer so that it can only be controlled by one remote: 1. Get within inches of your Mac. 2. Point the remote at the Apple logo on the front of your iMac. 3. Press and hold the Menu and Next/Fast-forward buttons simultaneously on the remote for 5 seconds. A chain-link style lock reflects the pairing. This can be un-done via System Preferences > Security, Unpair. You can use the built-in iSight camera to see if your Apple Remote is emitting a signal. A digital camera or DV camera with an LCD display will work too. Infrared beams are invisible to the human eye, but most digital camera and video cameras use Charged-Coupled Device (CCD) chips or image sensors that are sensitive to infrared light. To use the built-in iSight to test your Apple Remote, follow these steps: 1. Turn on the iSight by opening the video preview window of iChat. 2. Point your Apple Remote toward the built-in iSight. 3. Press and hold the Menu button on the remote while looking at the video preview window. - If you see a faint blinking light coming from the Apple Remote in the video preview window, then the remote is working properly. - If you don't see any blinking light in the video preview window, replace the battery in your Apple Remote and then test it again with your computer. Battery: CR2032 Apple Articles: HT1522 See also: Front Row Apple Remote Access Client Circa 1997 client for dialing into AppleTalk networks. Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) Separately purchased product for environments (education, business) where remote screen views and remote software installation facilitates productivity. Available for Mac OS 8, 9, 10. The client is free to download from the Apple site; the server (admin) costs. www.apple.com/remotedesktop/ Downloads: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/ apple/ Microsoft also has a Remote Access to access a Windows system from a Mac: see "Remote Desktop Connection Client" See also: Back To My Mac Apple Remote Desktop 2 (ARD) OSX-only follow-on version. A powerful suite of desktop management tools, enabling administrators to manage networks of Mac OS X systems from a central location. Distribute software, create detailed reports, configure systems, and offer online help to users without leaving your desk. - Install multiple software packages simultaneously. - Gather info on more than 200 software and hardware system attributes - Store profiles of mobile systems, even if the systems are not connected to the network. - Execute remote UNIX shell scripts. - Set the startup disk of remote systems - Deploy command-line tools for setting Network, Energy Saver, and Date & Time preferences - Observe and control any VNC-enabled computer, including Windows and Linux systems. - Discover Mac OS X systems on the network using Bonjour and one of four network scanners. - View lists of running, queued, and completed tasks. - Delegate a subset of Apple Remote Desktop tasks to non-administrator users Stores the system information it collects in an PostgreSQL database (included with Apple Remote Desktop 2). Requires OS 10.2.8 or later. Apple Retail See: Retail stores Apple Secure Compression A 56-bit technology used in OS 9, generated by Apple, based upon RSA Security's PKCS7, which is an MD5 encryption algorithm. (The length was limited to 56 bits to make Mac OS exportable, under US laws.) Apple Shop A "store within a store" section of Best Buy, specializing in the sale of Apple hardware. Is obviously financed by Apple, to better represent and sell their goods. Includes a periodic Apple Answers Day: an open house event at the Apple Shop in select Best Buy stores. Every month, Apple Solutions Consultants (ASCs) will cover a new topic related to Apple products, Mac-based solutions, tips and tricks. Apple Store Seeking to increase their retail sales - and dissatisfied with the way many retailers were handling Apple products - on May 19, 2001 Apple opened its first retail stores: • Tysons Corner (McLean), Virginia • Glendale, CA. Heading the retail team were former Target vice president of merchandising Ron Johnson and Gap CEO Millard Drexler. Towards the end of 2016/08, Apple dropped "Store" from the name of their retail locations, indicating that they are a place to go, not just for buying things. This is reinforced by some of their newer locations including a small park, of hosting movie director and actor talks at the locations, etc. Apple Studio Display, 17" LCD flat panel, in clear plastic frame. Native resolution: 1280 x 1024 pixels See also: Apple Cinema Display Apple Teacher As of October, 2016, a new program for educators that offers self-paced learning materials, tips, news, and inspiration to help unlock the magic of iPad, Mac, and built-in apps in the classroom. Apple Thunderbolt Display Replaces Apple LED Cinema Display, adding Thunderbolt desktop bus technology. 2560-pixel-by-1440-pixel WQHD IPS screen . 16:9 edge-to-edge glass design, the Thunderbolt Display uses IPS technology to provide a brilliant image across an ultra wide 178 degree viewing angle. Integrated MagSafe charger to keep Mac notebooks charged. Designed to complement the 27" iMac, but really expands a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air, or gives Mac mini a display. Introduced 2011/07/20. Released September 2011. Built-in FaceTime HD camera & microphone. Ports: 1 Thunderbolt; 3 USB; 1 FireWire 800; 1 Gb ethernet. Note that with just 1 Thunderbold port, this device is obviously for end of chain, not midst of chain. Built-in 2.1 speaker system (49 watts). DISCONTINUED: Apple announced 2016/06/23 that the display would be discontinued, with no replacement in the offing. But: thereafter came rumors that there would be a next generation display offering having an integrated GPU. Apple TV (AppleTV) The real product name of the codenamed "iTV", introduced 2007/01/09 at Macworld. Internal identifier: AppleTV1,1 Think of it as a means of giving your HD TV wireless capability, to obtain content from your Macintosh computer, which is storing media content (movies, TV shows, your home videos, music, photos). The 40 MB hard drive in the box can cache a reasonable amount of that material, or you can stream it from your computer, presuming unfettered wireless networking. Apple TV syncs with one computer, but can play content streamed from up to five other computers. It seems surprising, but there has not hitherto been a simple way to interconnect your computer and television. (Interviewed in January, 2004, Steve Jobs said: "Someday that [DVD burning] could happen over AirPort, so you don't have to burn a DVD - you can just watch it right off your computer on your television set. But most of the products that have said, 'Let's combine the television and the computer!' have failed." Available 2006/03/21 (delayed from February), at $299. (There is no educational discount on this product.) Video connections: HDMI (digital video + audio); component video (analog). There is no S-Video: an HDTV is thus mandatory. Video capabilities: It supports up to 720p high-definition TV (1280x720), rather than the 1080p standard used by many HDTVs now. In detail: H.264 and protected H.264 (from iTunes Store): 640 by 480, 30 fps, LC version of Baseline Profile; 320 by 240, 30 fps, Baseline profile up to Level 1.3; 1280 by 720, 24 fps, Progressive Main Profile. MPEG-4: 640 by 480, 30 fps, Simple Profile. Audio capabilities: AAC (16 to 320 Kbps); protected AAC (from iTunes Store); MP3 (16 to 320 Kbps); MP3 VBR; Apple Lossless; AIFF; WAV. Very notable is the absence of mention of Dolby Digital sound. The reality is that this is a two-channel (stereo) device - as is apparent from its Left+Right audio connectors. Movies from the iTunes Store are encoded in Dolby ProLogic matrixed sound, which feeds left and right front speakers directly from the two channels, and derives monophonic center and mono surround speaker sound from the sum and difference of those two signals. This means it's a 20 year old audio technology, and a GREATLY diminished sound experience relative to today's discrete 7.1 sound. The living room illustration on the Website for Apple TV shows a flat panel TV with two frontal speakers - no more. The limit of 2 channels is common on consumer recording devices (VCRs, DVRs), but is still retro. There is no volume control on the Apple Remote, so use the volume controls on your TV or receiver. Note that you can directly connect the box to your TV, or through an A/V receiver for better control and sound fidelity. Connecting to a receiver makes the most sense where you will be largely listening to music and podcasts and audiobooks, where it would be wasteful to have the TV on. The box has a micro USB 2.0 port, formally defined as "for service and diagnostics". It can be used with the Apple Configurator software as in specially configuring Apple TV to participate in an enterprise network. Networking: Wireless 802.11n, intended to be its principal communication method. (Can work reasonably well with a computer having only 802.11g.) There is also a 10/100BASE-T Ethernet port which could be used instead. If the networking is slow, Syncing compensates by allowing the box to transfer content from your computer to the hard drive in the box, for later viewing. In all cases, iTunes is the software in the computer which feeds media to ATV. Sources: The box is driven by one, designated Syncing computer. Media can come from that computer and up to five other computers. Other: AppleTV runs a tailored version of Mac OS X. Download the AppleTV User's Guide for details. Apple TV is actually an extrapolation of the AirPort Express product, which streamed music to your home stereo via "AirTunes". No education purchaser discount on this product. An operational fact to be aware of: Apple TV is always on, to always be ready to sync programming. The most "off" it becomes is standby mode. Is Apple TV really necessary? Realize that the product amounts to a costly, complex "cable" connecting your Mac to your television. You can achieve that connection with a simple S-video cable to an older NTSC TV or a DVI cable to a newer TV, and an optical audio cable. (See the DVD Player entry for how to turn on Dolby Digital in that app.) All this is to say that you can get at least as good movie presentation experience via direct cabling from your iMac or other Macintosh to your receiver or HDTV. Is Apple TV worth it? With 720p video material, definitely. Watching hi def content hunched over your computer is a poor substitute for sitting on your couch and watching it on a big screen. Historical: Loosely speaking, there was an earlier "Apple TV" product: the circa 1997 Apple TV/FM Radio System, being a card and remote control for early PowerPC Macintoshes. Consider the name of the product: It effectively supplants any actual television display offering from Apple. January 2008 update: A *software* update allows Apple TV to operate in HD mode, providing 1280x720 resolution and Dolby Digital 5.1 sound, as part of supporting movie rentals. Support: http://www.apple.com/support/appletv/ On February 9, 2009, Apple sent a survey to registered owners of Apple TV soliciting info on how they use the product, and what they'd like to see - which one would expect to represent Apple's continuing interest in advancing the product, and intention to create a next version. Apple sold more than five million of these in 2012, despite no advertising. As of 2014/04, some 20 million Apple TV units have been sole since ATV launched in 2007. Until about May, 2014, Apple TV had always been in the online Apple Store as a product in the iPod category. It then moved out of there, to be its own entry on the store page, signifying greater importance to Apple. Apple TV, convert your movies for it With your movie in the iTunes window, select it, then choose Advanced > Convert Selection for Apple TV to create a converted version. The original movie file remains in your iTunes library. Apple TV, file management So, you have a bunch of movies on your Apple TV unit: how do you manage them? Content management is performed from iTunes. On occasion, you will want to remove a movie from Apple TV - but there is no such action choice there. And if you go into the Apple TV area of iTunes you will see that all the content is listed, but in gray, where you can't take any action on the items - it's just a listing. The way to do it is to go into your Movies section of iTunes, from which the movie on your Apple TV came, and there uncheck the box next to the movie; then click on Apple TV and perform Sync. Apple TV, networking Apple TV can be connected wirelessly to an 802.11__ network, or to a wired ethernet network. Apple TV 2nd/3rd generation is not multi-homed: it connects to one or the other, but not both at the same time: if both forms of networking are available, it will choose wired ethernet, and will switch to that automatically when the cable is plugged into the back. As of iOS 8, an iOS device can directly connect to an Apple TV via peer-to-peer networking: no need for connecting to an organization network. Apple TV, 2nd generation 2010/09. Much smaller, all black, component video capability now absent. Same 720p limit. Internal identifier: AppleTV1,1 Ethernet speeds: 10/100BASE-T Apple TV, 3rd generation Announced in 2012/03/07 presentation. 1080p, new menu system, iCloud. Same physical size, black color. Processor: A5, single core. Ethernet speeds: 10/100BASE-T Apple TV, 4th generation Announced in 2015/09/09 presentation. Dramatically different remote control, with gyroscope and accelerometer, to allow games use. Voice control using Siri. To call up a show, you don't have to do so in the context of a "channel": you simply say what show you want to watch and that will offer what's available. Finally, apps and app store and SDK for 3rd party developers. Runs new TVos version of iOS. HDMI 1.4 (meaning no 4K, which needs 2.0) The absence of 4K HDMI output capability is not much of an issue because there has been little meaningful 4K content (even well into 2016), 4K TVs beautifully upscale HD content without onerous 4K file downloads, and HEVC (H.265) is not yet fully baked. Apple TV, stream content to Apple TV must get its streaming content from iTunes, and thus your personal computer must be running. You cannot simply attach an external hard drive to an Apple TV as a content source, in that content must come from iTunes. Apple TV software updates http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4448 Apple TV Take 2 Announced at Macworld 2008 (January 15). Is the same hardware, but more aggressive pricing, plus enhanced software allowing direct iTunes store access from your TV, movie rentals support, HD plus Dolby Digital 5.1, and Flickr access. Previously sold Apple TV units can upgrade their capabilities via a free download (available 2008/02). This enhancement finally puts Apple TV into a good position, where the user can interact solely with that box to enjoy any content. As Steve Jobs said during the presentation, many services tried to bring movies to the TV over the Internet, but failed. Paramount and Sony launced Movielink to offer movies over the Internet, but that fizzled and was sold to Blockbuster. Movielink and many other services deliver movies to your (Windows) PC, where you are left to watch the movie on your computer (a dubious experience) or, you are left to your own devices to somehow get the PC to send a video signal to your TV. The Vudu box is much like Apple TV, in design and movie usage terms; but like Tivo it is an isolated, proprietary unit, with no way to transfer content to any portable or other device. Apple's approach, with full transfer capability across ATV, iPods and computers, is far more appealing. Pricing? Under $5 to rent a movie. Is that competitive? Yes, judging by services such as RC video on demand, where a movie is $4.99 and must be viewed within 24 hours of commitment. Nuances: HD movies can be rented *only* from Apple TV. If you go to the iTunes Store movie rentals area via your Mac and look at the Ratatouille offering, it will say "This movie is available in HD on Apple TV". Apple TV 3.0 The third version of the software, in conjunction with iTunes 9.0.2 (25). Made available 2009/10/29, but not splashed on the Apple main Web page: the change was announced via Hot News Headlines, so if you didn't notice that, you would not be aware of the update. A wholly new function to Apple TV is Internet radio, with HE-AAC support. Apple TV "channels" additions Apple periodically adds "channels" to Apple TV, in the form of specialized apps which Apple helps the content providers create. Apple refers to these in their Apple TV updates as "Third-party content". As of 2013/08 such channels can be added without any updates to the Apple TV software. Here is when some U.S. channel updates occurred... (The top row of icons is: Movies, TV Shows, Music, Computers, and Settings. Those are Apple constants.) 2008/01: Flickr 2010/09: Netflix 2011/03/09: MLB.TV, NBA 2011/08/01: Vimeo 2011/10/12: NHL, WSJ Live 2012/07/31: Hulu Plus 2013/06/19: HBO GO, WatchESPN, Sky News, Crunchyroll, Qello 2013/08/27: Vevo, The Weather Channel, Disney Channel, Disney XD, Smithsonian Channel. 2013/09/26: Major League Soccer (MLS), Disney Junior channel. 2013/11/29: Yahoo Screen, PBS 2013/12/11: Watch ABC; Bloomberg; Crackle; KORTV. 2014/01/28: Red Bull TV 2014/02/24: World Wrestling Entertainment 2014/03/17: ACC Sports 2014/04/21: A&E, History, Lifetime 2014/06/24 ABC News, PBS Kids, AOL On, Willow 2014/07/29 CNBC, FOX NOW 2014/08/20 NFL Now 2014/08/26 Showtime Anytime 2014/09/17 Beats Music 2014/09/23 FX NOW 2014/10/28 Feeln, FYI 2014/11/06 CBS News 2014/12/09 UFC.TV, The Scene, Fusion, Dailymotion. 2015/01/16 Tennis Channel Everywhere 2015/01/27 120 Sports 2015/03/24 TED, Young Hollywood, Tastemade. 2015/03/25 CNNgo 2015/04/27 NBC Sports 2015/05/05 CBS Sports, USA Now 2015/06/02 NatGeo TV 2015/07/07 Showtime 2015/10/20 Made2Measure (M2M), CBS, NBC - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Seasonal: iTunes Festival appears in late August, before the September fest. http://www.apple.com/appletv/whats-on/ Apple TV "channels" management Rearrange channel icons: - Press and hold the Select key on your Apple Remote until the icon jiggles. - Use the directional buttons on your remote to move it to a new location; as you do so, the existing apps will shift out of the way. - With the icon where you want it, press the Select button again to set it. Channels you don't want to see in the list? Hide unwanted channels from view as follows: - Highlight the channel you want to hide - Press and hold the select button on your Apple Remote until all the icons start to jiggle. - Press the Play/Pause button and choose Hide This Item. Apple TV updates http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4448 Apple TV update 5.1 2012/09/24 Shared Photo Streams Accept invitations for Shared Photo Streams, browse photos and comments, and receive notifications of new content. AirPlay Send audio content from Apple TV to AirPlay-enabled speakers and devices (including AirPort Express and other Apple TVs). Also includes the ability to require an onscreen code to use AirPlay with your Apple TV. iTunes account switching Save multiple iTunes accounts and switch quickly between them. Trailers Search movie trailers. In the United States, see show times for local theaters. Screen savers New Cascade, Shrinking Tiles, and Sliding Panels screen savers. Main menu Reorder icons on the second page by holding down the select button on the remote. Subtitles SDH support for the deaf and hard-of-hearing as well as improvements to viewing and selecting subtitles. Network configuration Support for setting up advanced network options using configuration profiles. Gives Apple TV the ability to connect to a network that uses 802.1X authentication. Apple Article: HT5438 Apple TV update 5.2 2013/01/28 Adds the ability to play your iTunes purchased music directly from iCloud; Up Next tune feature; Bluetooth keyboard support; AirPlay stereo audio sending, from movies, TV shows, and other content being playe on Apple TV to AirPlay-enabled speakers and devices including the AirPort Express and other Apple TVs. Apple TV usage tidbits QuickTime Player Pro has an Export choice of Movie to Apple TV, which creates a .m4v file. If you are in the midst of watching a program and abruptly exit that, upon returning to it later you will be given the option of resuming where you last left off, or starting from the beginning. Apple TV video feeding iTunes is your storehouse and feed source for providing video to your Apple TV. Videos can be acquired in iTunes from the iTunes store, or be copied into iTunes from an external source, as for example downloading a movie trailer from a studio Web site (if necessary, through QuickTime Pro's ability to save such transmitted videos). Videos can then be copied to Apple TV via syncing, where items to be transferred are those with a checkmark in the box next to their names. Alternately, videos may be directly acquired on Apple TV, as for example via podcast downloading. Those are later automatically synced to your computer's iTunes for storage (in light of the limited disk capacity of Apple TV, where its disk is intended for short-term storage). In approaching downloads, keep in mind that Apple TV is basically an HP 720p device (720 pixels vertically x 1280 pixels vertically). As such, But, you may encounter videos which are incompatible with Apple TV. An example is a Hubble Full HD podcast: You can get it directly onto Apple TV, but when you go to play it, you get error message: "This video cannot be played because it is not compatible with Apple TV." Or, you may have gotten that same podcast within iTunes on your computer, but syncing will fail, where to the right of your Apple TV in the iTunes Devices list you find a triangle with an exclamation mark in it. It's not intuitively obvious, but you can click on that triangle to find out what the problems are. This will lead to the explanation: " was not copied to the Apple TV <ATVname> because it cannot be played on this Apple TV". Why the problem? Most commonly, because the video's resolution (screen size) exceeds the capability of Apple TV, as you can see in the ATV specs. For example, the Hubblecast Full HD podcasts are MPEG4, H.264, 1920x1080 format (HD1080p_screen). This is too much for Apple TV. The provider may have compatible versions available, as in this case, a Hubble HD series of the same podcasts, which are MPEG4, H.264, 1280x720 format (HD720P_screen) - still very much HD, and gorgeous. Or, where alternate forms are not available from the provider, iTunes nicely provides a Create Apple TV Version capability, which generates a copy of the same title in iTunes, in the compatible format - which will then happily sync to your Apple TV. Apple Type Services (ATS) OS X font rendering engine, a key element of the Quartz graphics and imaging system in Mac OS X. Provides: - Resolution-independent font handling. - Anti-aliasing (no jaggies). - Optimization for LCD screens. Apple Watch Introduced at presentation 2014/09/09. Durable sapphire display. Multi-touch screen supplemented by a "digital crown" knob on the right side for twirling and pressing. The display also differentiates between tap and press, for different functions. The display is flexible OLED, paired with electrode sensors to support the Force Touch feature, to discern forceful taps. (OLED helps conserve battery power.) Screen resolutions: 272 x 340 for 38mm version 312 x 390 for 42mm version (Apple refers to the Apple Watch display as "Retina".) Contains microphone and speaker. Memory: 512 MB Storage: 8 GB flash Works in conjunction with your nearby iPhone (5 or later), where you can make phone calls from the watch. Haptic feedback (Taptic Engine), to feel notifications and other things. Pulse sensor on the backside. Does Apple Pay. Available in two sizes, for different people size wrists: 38mm and 42mm. Comes in three versions: "Watch" - stainless steel "Watch Sport" - aluminum case "Watch Edition" - gold case Easily interchangeable watch bands, in a variety of choices, many with magnetic closures. Apps can be selected from a "spherical" collection of small icons, where the middle is magnified (akin to like dock magnification in OS X). No camera (at least not in the announcement version of the watch). Charging: Inductive, via a magnetic disk which grabs the back of the watch. Biometric accuracy: In October, 2016, Cleveland Clinic researchers found Apple Watch to be the most accurate wrist-worn fitness tracker on the market, with 90% heart rate accuracy. Apple Watch: Edition (gold) model Introduced what is now termed the Series 1 first incarnation. Discontinued in Series 2, replaced by ceramic design. The costs of physical security for a gold metal product - from manufacture to store display - was likely a factor. Apple/IBM alliance Goes back to 1993/1994. Steve Jobs had been vociferously antagonistic of IBM, which around 1983 he saw as Apple's greatest competitor, with their then IBM PC. But Steve Jobs was removed from Apple, and attitudes were different under John Sculley, who in 1993 had been discussing RISC opportunities with the major RISC vendors of the time: Sun (SPARC), DEC (Alpha), IBM (POWER). IBM agreed, and the PowerPC Alliance came to be, with Apple's Bill Brown being the negotiator. Apple also pursued an object-oriented operating system/environment (Taligent) with IBM, as Apple was looking to replace its aging OS. In 2014, under Tim Cook, Apple formed a new alliance with IBM for mobile business computing, where IBM would promote Apple products for the business environment and Apple would assist IBM in producing a suite of industry mobile apps. Applebot Apple's Web crawler, used by products including the voice-activated assistant Siri and Spotlight Suggestions. Circa 2015. Respects customary robots.txt rules and robots meta tags, according to Apple. If robot instructions do not mention Applebot but instead refer to Googlebot -- Google's well-known web crawler -- the Apple robot will follow Googlebot instructions instead. Originates from the 17.0.0.0 net block. User-agent strings will contain "Applebot" together with additional agent information. For example: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_10_1) AppleWebKit/600.2.5 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/8.0.2 Safari/600.2.5 (Applebot/0.1) Apple Article: HT204683 Implications: Apple maybe further getting away from Google Search. AppleCare Staffed 06:00-18:00, Pacific Time. AppleCare Protection Plan A valuable benefit of purchasing AppleCare Protection Plan is that it comes with a CD-ROM containing TechTool Deluxe, a powerful diagnostic utility that tests critical system components such as the processor, RAM, VRAM, the hard disk, and more. Where it finds problems, it can be allowed to correct them. Once you have registered your AppleCare instance, you are eligible to download the latest vertion of TechTool Deluxe from the Apple website page www.apple.com/support/techtooldeluxe where the page will ask for your registered device serial number. AppleDOS The original Apple (Disk) Operating System, for Apple II computers. Interestingly, Apple had to compete with CP/M, which was a popular alternate OS for the Apple II. AppleFileServer Is the Apple File Protocol server...the AppleShare Server. Do 'man' on it to see some info. AppleShare IP 6 Lets Mac clients access files over AppleTalk or TCP/IP. Includes SMB file sharing, FTP file access, mail server (SMTP, POP, IMAP). AppleTalk AppleTalk is the language Macs use to talk or communicate with each other, whereas LocalTalk and Ethernet are different physical wiring options. It was first released in 1987. Is on, by default. Turn it off if not needed, as being on saps performance. Discontinued: In OS 10.6, 2009/09. AppleWorks Inexpensive, multi-function Apple application, introduced in November, 1983. Provides sub-applications: - Word processing - Spreadsheet - Database (Import want Tab-separated field data. Will not inherently report .csv, comma separated variables data. Deal with this by editing the source file to change all commas to Tabs, all double quotes to nulls, then paste into the spreadsheet.) - Drawing - Painting - Presentation AppleWorks is a great "Swiss Army knife" package, capable of opening and processing many Microsoft data formats (but not PowerPoint (.ppt): Apple's Keynote application does that). The app preceded OS X, so got dated. AppleWorks was augmented - but not replaced - iWork in 2005. There are Enhancement Packs for AppleWorks, as from www.tandb.com.au/appleworks/enhance/ There is an AppleWorks User Group. History: Introduced in 1984 for the eight-bit Apple II computer line, it was one of the first integrated suites, combining word processing, spreadsheet and database in a unified program. By 1991, it had mutated into ClarisWorks, a Macintosh collection that combined the original trio with graphics and communications tools, albeit sharing only half of the name and most of the application mix, but no code. A Windows version appeared in 1993. AppleWorks was the successor to MacWrite. After an amazing 23 years, AppleWorks/ClarisWorks was officially retired August 15th, 2007, replaced by the iWork package (though that lacks draw, paint, and database capabilities). The apps in iWork can import AppleWorks files. Problem handling: Can't do Save or Save As... Quit AW. Go to Users / <YourName> / Documents / AppleWorks User Data. - Delete the AutoSave folder. - Delete the Recent Items folder -- it is In Starting Points. (Both folders will be recreated when you launch and use AW again.) "Application" Mac OS file format identifying an application program, of the type used in the PowerPC era. Replaced in OS X by "Application bundle". Application, assign to a Desktop In OS 10.6 Desktops, an application can be assigned to a Desktop by first having the application in the Dock, then select the Desktop you want the application to be in, then right click on that Dock icon, to therein choose Options > Assign To. Note also that in System Preferences you can choose some organizing options under Mission Control. Application, assign to a Space In Spaces (OS 10.5,6), assign an application to a Space via System Preferences > Expose & Spaces > Spaces and operate in Application Assignments. Application, force quit OS X: Apple menu -> Force Quit Alternately, press the Option key and the application's icon in the Dock, then choose Force Quit. Application, launch from command line See: Application, run from command line Application, run from command line Do '/usr/bin/open /Applications/<AppName>' Do 'man open' for more info. Note: If you got into sudo mode beforehand, and then opened an application, such as Emacs, it will be running as your own userid rather than superuser. See also: open "Application bundle" Mac OS file format identifying an application program, of the type used in the OS X era, replacing the PowerPC era "Application" file format. Application defaults To see from the command line, do like: defaults read -app TextEdit Application Loader OS X software for developers: helps you to prepare and submit your apps to the App Store. You can also use this tool to create In-App Purchases for your apps. Application Loader is part of Xcode and is also available for download separately from the Manage Your Applications module on iTunes Connect. Guide: itunesconnect.apple.com Application Switcher The name of the facility whereby you quickly move from one running application to another, via Cmd+Tab. application/x-mplayer2 plug-in Download and install the Windows Media Player. Applications OS X: Name of folder containing the Mac OS X applications available to all users of the computer. Updated by the administrator. See also: Library; Shared; System Applications (Mac OS 9) Name of folder containing Mac OS 9 applications, when OS 9 is co-resident on the same disk as OS X. Applications, open, switch between Holding down the Command key and pressing the Tab key will allow you to return to a next open application. Apps compatibility, Macintosh OS X http://roaringapps.com/ Apps of note A few apps for the iPhone and iPod touch that are particularly worth a look. Music recognition: Midomi; Shazam Internet radio: AOL Radio; Pandora Radio Aqua Mac OS X user interface, first demonstrated in January, 2000. Started as the system GUI at boot time via 'SystemStarter -g ...'. Steve Jobs said of it: "We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them," See: OS X Archive OS X has the ability to create Zip files, which OS X refers to as Archive. If you archive a single item, the archived file has the name of the original item with a ".zip" extension. If you archive multiple items at once, the archived file is called Archive.zip. In the Finder, there is a Create Archive function under the File menu. If you drag a directory into a mail message you are composing, it will be attached as a zip file. See also: __MACOSX Arial font A font much like Helvetica. May not be installed by Mac OS X, but may be installed by a web browser like Internet Explorer (/Library/Fonts/Arial) ASIP AppleShare IP, as in speaking AppleTalk over ethernet (TCP/IP). See also: PAP AssistiveTouch iOS 5 accessibility feature for those with hearing, sight, or motor skills problems. Activate via Settings->General->Accessibility. ATI Radeon HD 5770 graphics card A double-high card for Mac Pro, needing a power connection to the motherboard. Built-in fan. Requires OS X 10.6.4 minimum. (Trying to boot with OS 10.5 yields no video.) Was the standard video card with the Mac Pro 2010, which was engineered for the card. You can use the card in a 2009 Mac Pro for ordinary booting, but if you hold down the Option key while powering on, to get the firmware boot volumes list, no video will appear, because that Mac Pro's firmware is insufficient to drive the 5770. ATV Apple TV (q.v.). AU Lab (Audio Unit Lab) AU Lab is a digital mixing application that provides facilities for blending audio from the input of an audio device as well as audio generated by an Audio Unit Instrument or Generator. In addition, AU Lab can host Audio Unit effects and route audio through these effects. The interface is in the form of a sophisticated mixing panel, making for an impressive application. It is installed with Xcode, into /Developer/Applications/Audio/. Usage can be had from its Help. Audio choices Audio choices as seen in System Preferences will change according to whether you have an audio cable plugged into a sound port... Line Out: Will appear as an output choice if a cable is plugged into the audio output mini speaker jack. Internal Speakers: Will appear as an output choice when no cable is pluged into the audio output mini speaker jack. Audio formats suppored by OS X AAC (.aac, .adts) AC3 (.ac3) AIFC (.aif, .aiff,.aifc) AIFF (.aiff) Apple Core Audio Format (.caf) MPEG Layer 3 (.mp3) MPEG 4 Audio (.mp4) MPEG 4 Audio (.m4a) NeXT/Sun Audio (.snd, .au) Sound Designer II (.sd2) WAVE (.wav) The list is documented in the Apple developer document section "Supported Audio File and Data Formats in OS X". Audio MIDI Setup A utility that comes with OS X (10.2 and later), for adjusting the computer's audio input and output configuration settings and managing MIDI devices. It was first introduced in OS X as a simpler way to configure MIDI Devices. Previous to its inception, Open Music System (OMS) was commonly used for these tasks; a much more complicated and tedious system than AMS. One use of AMS is to check whether your Mac supports multi-channel sound, or just stereo. Audio recording Can be accomplished via iMovie; or QuickTime Pro (File > New Audio Recording), which can record from the microphone or Line In. Other packages: Audacity: A free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ Auto Save OS 10.7 feature employed in some Mac apps to automatically save your work. Saves during pauses in your work and, if you work continuously, it will save after 5 minutes. It saves in the background, so you can work without the distraction of having to remember to save, or being interrupted by progress bars. You can click on the document's name at the top of its window to see prior versions. Applications which do Auto Save: Preview, iWork, and TextEdit. You can turn Auto Save off: Go into System Preferences > General, the there check the box next to "Ask to keep changes when closing documents". http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4753 See also: Modern Document Model; Versions Automatic Login (OS X) OS X is a multi-user system, but the computer is often used by only a single person. To eliminate the nuisance of being asked to log into a dedicated computer, you can set Automatic Login. System Preferences -> Login -> Login Window See also: Username Automator OS 10.4+ visual builder of "workflows", to encapsulate routine tasks. www.macosxautomation.com/automator/ AVCVideoCap Sample app provided in the FireWire SDK, supporting stream capture from AV/C tape devices (both DV and MPEG), and MPEG AV/C tuner devices (such as cable set-top-boxes). For capture from a cable set-top-box, the user can specify a start-time, a duration, and a channel-change (if the STB supports Panel-subunit based channel-change commands). For capture from a DV camcorder, AVCVideoCap will rewind the tape, start playback, and capture from the device until 10 seconds elapse with no new frame-data (end of recorded portion of the tape). Info about the SDK apps is available in the AVCVideoServices_ReadMe.rtfd found under the Examples directory. See also: VirtualDV AVI movie playback on Mac QuickTime does not natively do this. In particular, AVI employs data compression techniques which estrange it from mainstream movie playback applications such as QuickTime. The MPlayer application that you can get off the Web does this reasonably well. AWS Amazon Web Services: cloud computing services which Apple had been using through 2015, but which they are moving away from as they build more and more high-capacity (and green) data centers. Apple has reportedly been paying Amazon about $1B per year for AWS. AX Abbreviation for AirPort Express. Back to My Mac Leopard+ feature to gain access to your Mac from anywhere, for file sharing and screen sharing. The facility refers to gaining access over long distances, where network addresses may be changing, such that a tracking and lookup capability is then required: that is now provided by iCloud (formerly, MobileMe, .mac) to track what IP address each of your Macs is using at the moment. All your devices are known to one another by virtue of using the same Apple ID. What this facility does is cause your Mac to periodically contact Apple's servers to inform them of your Mac's location on the Internet. Back to My Mac creates an encrypted tunnel between two computers, even over the Internet, allowing you to reach machines behind routers that otherwise block access. As of 2013/08, BtMM is only a Mac facility - iOS does not yet have it. To use: Go into System Preferences > iCloud, and click the checkbox for Back to My Mac. What this does is cause your Mac's network address to be tracked in iCloud, while your Mac is turned on. Also activate Screen Sharing if you want to use that, for remote access to your desktop. Within the Screen Sharing preference, you would want to click on Computer Settings and choose "VNC viewers may control screen with password" to there set a password. If you have to open a port in your firewall, it is port number 5190. You may have your target Mac's Energy Saver settings configured to cause your Mac to go to sleep after a time. You should click in the checkbox for "Wake for network access". For the shareable Mac to appear in the sidebar, go into Finder's Preferences and into its Sidebar tab, to there click in the checkbox for Back to My Mac. You don't need to use such special settings to cross-access your Macs within your home networking: you can do that simply by double-clicking on the desired computer under SHARED within the left pane of a Finder window. See also: Screen Sharing; VNC Back to School deal See: Summer deals Back To The Mac The invitation title for Apple's 2010/10/20 presentation, referring to adapting iPad methodologies to the Macintosh OS, for improved interactivity. Presented: iLife '11; OS 10.7 "Lion" selected features; Mac App Store; MacBook Air. Backup/restore solutions NetRestore (q.v.) is a free solution BackUp ToolKit, by FWB Hammer http://www.digitalriver.com/fwb "Badge" The name of the little circle which partially covers an app icon on the iPhone or iPod touch, commonly used to Bash See: Login shell Battery Mac desktops have used the same battery since the Mac SE, introduced in March, 1987: 3.6V lithium. (Before that there was the 4.5v alkaline battery in the Mac Plus. Battery Health Mac App store app, free, which reveals the health of your MacBook's battery, including capacity. Tip: Once every six months or so, ply a vacuum cleaner's nozzle over the air vents of your turned-off laptop, to remove dust which can be impeding air flow and aggravating battery use. Battery icon in OS X menu bar A choice made in the Energy Saver in System Preferences. By clicking on it you can have it also show either (approximate) time remaining or percent charge. When plugged into the charger, the time value will disappear: since you are on external power, the life is "infinite" and so there is no time limit; but percent is still a viable choice. Beachball The small, multi-colored circular object which looks like a beachball, which appears and spins when the invoked software is too busy to complete the request. Also called the spinning beach ball, or spinning pizza. Its official name is the spinning wait cursor. It indicates that the selected application is not responding to system events. In Mac OS 9 and earlier, the icon was a black and white wristwatch whose hands moved. See also: Safari performance Beats Music A subscription music service founded by music producer Dr. Dre (Andre Romelle Young) and and co-founder Jimmy Iovine. Additionally, Beats has a hardware division, known for their headphones. In May 2014 Apple made a $3 billion offer for Beats (both music and hardware), which the company accepted. The deal is expected to be completed in Sepember, 2014. Beats is expected to retain its identity, as both Dre and Jimmy become Apple employees. The deal was more about acquiring popular culture rather than just Beats products, to reinvigorate Apple's presence in the music field. Bento Personal organization software from FileMaker, Inc. Named after the traditional Japanese dish, which serves up different foods in a single compartmentalised tray. (Bento was also the former name of an OpenDoc compound document file format.) Works largely by drag-and-drop, whereby the user can integrate or link existing info without having to know how to work with databases. Bento can delve into your iPhoto library for pictures to include in its database system. Price: A modest $49 (far less than the full-blown FileMaker Pro). Rating: Version 3 was highly rated by Macworld. There is an iPhone/iPod touch counterpart (just $5) which interacts with the desktop version to sync changes. An iPad version (also just $5) was created from the iPhone version. So why should you go with Bento rather than FileMaker Pro? Cost! Bento will do all that ordinary people need a database package to do, at a small fraction of the price of FileMaker. Bento costs just $49, and its upgrade price $29. A FileMaker upgrade costs a whopping $179. Bento is also much more intuitive and easy to use. Versions history: Bento 1 Jan 8, 2008 Bento 2 Oct 14, 2008 Bento 3 Sep 29, 2009 Bento 3 Project Manager Sep 2, 2010 Bento database location Its default location is: ~/Library/Application Support/Bento/ as file bento.bentodb . To change the default location, hold down the option key as you launch Bento until a "Choose Database" dialog box appears. Then, release the option key, click "Choose", and set the new default location. By this procedure you could have the bento.bentodb file in your Dropbox folder, for sharing with other Macs, doing likewise on them (but don't run Bento simultaneously on the multiple Macs sharing this arrangement, as this is loose, and could scramble that db file). Bento database moving If you get a new Mac or a new disk drive for a rectangular Mac Pro, you likely want to move your Bento database(s). You could try the approach of using its Export to text (tab/comma separated values) and import that into a new instance of Bento, but even the vendor defines simply moving it physically. --------------------------------------- If moving across Macs: With a USB stick drive or the like available as your transfer medium, go into ~/Library/Application Support/Bento/ and there drag bento.bentodb to your transfer medium to copy that "package file" (a special type of directory). Take that medium to your new Mac and copy its bento.bentodb to the same location, renaming any existing one out of the way. (You obviously would have installed Bento on the new Mac, so the Bento directory would be there.) --------------------------------------- If moving to a new disk in a rectangular Mac Pro: You would typically want to do this where your Mac Pro is a multi-boot system, having a different OS X level on each disk/partition. You would thus be transferring the db across OS instances, which is awkward. This is perhaps best accomplished via the command line: Open the Terminal utility in the From OS and then do: cd ~/Library/Application\ Support/Bento tar -cvf ~/db.tar bento.bentodb cd /Volumes/<NewOS>/Users/<You>/Library/ Application\ Support/Bento mv bento.bentodb bento.bentodb.old tar -xvf /Volumes/<OldOS>/Users/<You>/ db.tar Bento details Database files are located in ~/Library/Application Support/Bento/ as file bento.bentodb . Sync to iPhone/iPod touch: With the Bento app installed on your handheld device, you can sync selected database project to it. The method is local wireless, rather than iTunes. Bento 3 supports syncing to one mobile device: if you attempt to sync a second handheld device, that will result in Bento dropping the previous device from its Devices list. This does not harm: certainly, the database you synced remains fully intact on the original handheld, but to revert to the original device you have to re-pair. Bento iCloud support? As of mid 2012, there is still no iCloud support in Bento: you can only sync between Mac and iOS Bento. BeOS An oddball operating system which Apple considered as a successor to MacOS, in early 1997, after the failure of the Copland project, as Apple was in the hands of incapable "leadership" under CEO Gilbert Amelio. Be Inc. was founded by Apple alumnus Jean-Louis Gassee, in 1991. Late December 1996, Apple offered him $120M for the company and its OS, but Gassee held out for $400M - though the company was worth only about $80M. Apple abandoned that initiative, to instead pursue acquisition of Steve Jobs' NeXT, Inc. BIOS No such antiquated nonsense in Mac hardware. See: Booting method Birthdays of famous people /usr/share/calendar/calendar.birthday Blankenship, George Apple's former Vice President of Real Estate. He created one of the most successful retail growth strategies in history in Apple's retail stores deployment, in conjunction with Ron Johnson. He later joined Tesla Motorcars as VP of Design and Store Development and a mandate to "build Tesla's retail strategy and network." Blu-ray support Absent from Apple products, through 2007. Apple has been a member of the Blu-ray Disc Association since the early days, but has sat on the sidelines as the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD war waged on. The absence of an HD optical drive in Apple products has remained something of a contradiction to its high-end video production software (Final Cut Pro). On the other hand, it is the case that Blu-ray and HD-DVD are media-based video conveyance products, and as such, explicit competitors to Apple's iTunes video sales, where it is understandable for Apple not to evidence enthusiasm for either format. Will Apple add Blu-ray to its products? It seems almost certain, probably in very early 2008, beginning with the high-end Mac Pro computer. Recall the 2005 Macworld, where Kunitake Ando, president of Sony, affirmed his company's affiliation with Apple, where Sony is the effective parent of Blu-ray. Blue Box Circa 1997 architectural intention for Rhapsody (q.v.) to run then Mac OS applications. See also: Yellow Box Bluetooth, reset See: Bluetooth Explorer Bluetooth diagnostics Hold down the Option key and then click on the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar to have access to diagnostic stuff. When you move the pointer down to a connected device, it will expose an "RSSI" value (received signal strength indicator), such as "-48 dBm". The nearer the number is to 0, the better the connection (-51 is better than -55); but the number will never be near 0. Numerical guidance: -110 and lower = Very poor connection and likely to be unusable -100 to -109 = Poor connection -70 to -99 = Good connection -40 to -55 = Very strong connection Signal strength will weaken as your batteries run down. Also watch out for interfering other devices. Bluetooth Quick Assist: Apple doc HT1153 Bluetooth Explorer A utility installed as part of XCode. In /Developer/Applications/Utilities/Bluetooth/ To perform a "factory reset" of your bluetooth environment, run the Bluetooth Explorer and: - Select the "Modify Software & Device Configuration" from the Utilities menu. - Keep the first 4 checkboxes checked (one will say "Full factory reset"). - Click "Perform actions" button (lower right of window). - Reboot (possibly the Reboot NOW button will work, if not just do a normal reboot). Bluetooth file transfer Is very convenient for transferring files between nearby computers, albeit rather slow (35 KB/s). A "cannot validate" message may be due to the other Mac being in Sleep mode. Bluetooth support 1.5 (2004/02/05): Provides support for Bluetooth enabled headsets and printers: "Headsets must support the Bluetooth headset profile and printers must support the Bluetooth HCRP profile. In order to configure and use a Bluetooth headset, the Bluetooth module must have the latest Bluetooth firmware from the Bluetooth Firmware Updater application version 1.0.2 or later." It is available via the Mac OS X Software Update Control Panel. (You know you need the firmware update if "Headset" does not appear in your Bluetooth "Set Up New Device".) At the same time, AOL announced AIM 5.5 with iChat AV compatibility. Apple Speech recognition is not supported using a Bluetooth headset. docs.info.apple.com/article.html? artnum=120276 www.info.apple.com/usen/bluetooth/ www.apple.com/bluetooth/ Bluetooth 4.0 Introduces Low Energy (LE). Was was first introduced in the MacBook Air and Mac mini in Mid 2011. Thereafter was added to later Macintoshes, concluding with the 2013 Mac Pro. .bom Filename extension for a Bill of Materials binary file, as used through OS 10.5 (but not 10.6 and up). File signature: 0000-0007: BOMstore Each time something is installed from a package file, a "Bill of Materials" file (whose filename extension is ".bom") is stored in the package's receipt file, which is kept in /Library/Receipts/. Each .bom file contains a list of the files 1installed by that package, and the proper permissions for each file. See also: Permissions database; Receipts Bonjour Apple's network device discovery technology, created in 2002 in OS 10.2 (then named Rendezvous). The technology is Apple's trade name for its implementation of the IETF Zeroconf (no configuration) protocol. It uses standard DNS packets in a new way. Thus it is a new service, but it is using a technology that is relatively old, DNS over IP. Bonjour works within a subnet - only. There are three parts: Addressing: Where a static IP address nor a DHCP address is used by the device, an approach called "self-assigned link-local addressing" is used, where an unassigned address in the subnet is appropriated for use, where other Bonjour devices can discover and communicate with it. Naming: Temporary networking such as this obviates DNS, so something else has to do much the same. A technique called Multicast DNS is used to run through the subnet retrieving the IP addresses and host names of computers and devices participating in Bonjour. On the Mac, in System Preferences -> Sharing is a field called Computer Name, which holds the arbitrary name of your computer. For Bonjour use, that name gets ".local" appended to it, to yield addressing constructs like the following Web browser URL: http: TheSimsOutpost.local Service discovery: Beyond being able to contact a Bonjour participant device, one also needs to interact with a particular service within it, as for example printer sharing. A Bonjour- enabled application uses service discovery to query the subnet for services that it understands, so as to be able to participate. Example: Printer sharing... On Mac1, go into System Preferences -> Sharing, activate Printer Sharing, and then choose printers to be shared. Now, Mac2 on the same subnet goes to print something: in the Printer list there is a sub-selection called Shared Printers, and therein the printers "hosted" by Mac1 magically appear. Bonjour uses MDNS, which transports DNS queries in a zero configuration way but only across local networks, not campus or enterprise networks. Attempting to use it on large networks, as in wired and wireless networks on college campuses, Bonjour creates a flood of MDNS traffic and attendant network service issues. Apple is pursuing a better implementation, as evidenced in articles such as http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/ 110812-apple-university-264091.html . The Bonjour name first appeared in Tiger. www.apple.com/support/bonjour/ www.apple.com/macosx/features/bonjour/ See also: Rendezvous Boot See: Mac OS X boot See also: Safe Boot Boot Camp Novelty name for OS X software which allows Windows XP and later Windows versions to be installed and then booted on an Intel Mac. Announced 2006/04/05 as a beta. Introduced as a feature in "Leopard". The mechanics are fairly simple: The Boot Camp Assistant utility is run to carve a Windows partition out of the standard Mac partition (on the boot disk or any other disk inside your Mac), then Windows is installed in the new partition (whose name is "BOOTCAMP", format usually NTFS, but maybe FAT32). Once Windows is installed and running, insert your OS X install disc to then install Apple-specific drivers within Windows, for trackpad and other utilizations. After the Apple drivers are installed, you can effect a right-click under Windows on a MacBook Pro by pressing the trackpad with two fingers, and window resizing is readily possible. When booting your Mac, hold down the Option key to select Windows as the boot choice. The Windows partition can be readily adopted by Parallels. (However, my experience is that it's better to install Windows in Parallels space.) Boot Camp is not for running an alternate version of OS X on the same computer. Can run Linux, but is not officially supported. http://www.apple.com/support/bootcamp/ As of new Mac models in March 2015, Windows 7 will no longer be supported. Boot Camp Update To update the Boot Camp software which resides in the Windows environment. Install by invoking Apple Software Update within Windows. Boot disk OS X: /dev/disk0 Boot from a certain disk Macintoshes beginning with the G4/500 tower system have had hardware which support holding down the Option key while booting to cause discovery and presentation of a set of boot choices, consisting of icons representing disks and network boot sources. Note that if a given disk contains multiple Mac OSes, as for example OS X and OS 9, the hardware is incapable of determining the choice at that level: it can only resolve down to the disk level. Selecting a disk with multi-boot capability like that causes booting from the OS most recently set as the boot choice in the Finder. Boot from hard drive This is the Mac's normal mode, but if it tries to, say, boot from a CD which is trapped in the optical drive, boot by holding down the D key. Boot from optical drive (CD, DVD) With the computer powered off, hold down the C key while powering on the computer, and continue holding down the key until you perceive booting happening from that drive. Boot in 32-bit mode As of OS 10.6, OS X still boots into 32-bit mode by default. If for any reason you need to force 32-bit, hold down the 3 and 2 keys while booting. Boot in 64-bit mode Yes, Snow Leopard is a 64-bit OS; but it defaults to booting in 32-bit mode, for compatibility with drivers and 3rd party software which is not 64-bit, as Apple's way of preventing complaints. (The Kensington MouseWorks systems preference software is a good example, which does not function after booting into 64-bit mode.) It is also the case that 64-bit software can demand more memory space. Is 64-bit mode worth it? It can result in a performance boost, where there is sufficient memory. Note that 64-bit applications can run as 64-bit even if the OS is booted in 32-bit mode. Does your Mac support 64-bit? To check, enter the following command in a Terminal window: ioreg -l -p IODeviceTree | grep firmware-abi where the result will be "firmware-abi" = <"EFI64"> if so. Additionally, the memory must be 64-bit type. In the Snow Leopard era: When booting, hold down the 6 and 4 keys. Expect booting in 64-bit mode to take longer. To verify: Launch the System Profiler and click on Software, where the label "64-bit Kernel and Extension" will have a "Yes" after it if so. There isn't a simple way to make 64-bit the boot default. Boot key shortcuts When booting, some key sequences can be useful: - Eject CD: Hold down mouse button - Boot from CD: Hold down C key - Boot to single user mode: Cmd + s - Boot to Safe Mode: Hold down Shift key during startup. See: Safe Mode - Boot to Open Firmware Mode: Command + Option + O + F (At the prompt, you can enter commands like reset-nvram or reset-all, then mac-boot or shut-down.) - Boot in verbose mode: Cmd + v - Boot disk chooser (Startup Manager): Hold down Option key until it appears. - Boot OS X rather than any other version of the Mac OS: Hold down the X key during boot. Apple Article: HT2574 - Boot so that the Mac operates as a FireWire drive to another Mac: Hold down the T key. (See Target Disk Mode) - Start up in Apple Hardware Test (AHT): Have Install DVD 1 in the computer; hold down the D key during boot. See: Diagnostics folder Boot problems See: Safe Boot Boot progress, display Hold down Apple+V (Command+V) keys during the boot. This will show kernel and daemon start messages, then go into the usual Finder GUI if everything is okay. And you may also see some later shutdown messages. Boot without Extensions With the computer powered off, hold down the left Shift key while powering on the computer, and continue holding down the key until a message appears saying that extensions are off. Booting method for an Intel mac In the intro info for Boot Camp, Apple remarks: "Macs use an ultra-modern industry standard technology called EFI to handle booting. Sadly, Windows XP, and even the upcoming Vista, are stuck in the 1980s with old-fashioned BIOS." EFI is Extensible Firmware Interface, an Intel technology defining the interface between the OS and the computer firmware. http://www.intel.com/technology/efi/ Boston Accords In 1997, Steve Jobs had been returned to the helm of Apple, after a succession of inept, vision-less managers failed to get the company out of its downward spiral. On August 7th of that year, Apple and Microsoft representatives met at the Four Seasons hotel in Boston and, after what has been called a spectacular lunch, agreed to finally end the mutually counterproductive lawsuits against one another, to have Internet Explorer become the Mac's default browser, and that Microsoft would more seriously develop good software for the Mac. (MS products had been driven away from the Mac by interim Apple management, and Jobs realized that it was in the best interest of all concerned that this nonsense stop, to have good software in general on the Mac.) These accords were one of the Jobs measures which saved Apple. Brightness At least on a G4 Mac with driving an ADC flat panel, the F14 key will dim and F15 will brighten. Browett, John Former head of retail sales (Senior Vice President of Retail Operations). Joined Apple in April, 2012, chosen by Tim Cook. Departed October 2012, fired by Tim Cook, after conflicts resulting from poor decisions by Browett. Cook has run retail operations pending finding a new retail chief. During his tenure, he exhibited a "bean counter" mentality, reducing store staff and degrading the retail experience which Apple had worked to hard to perfect. He failed to understand what Apple was all about and was a liability to the company's future. The Browett experience emphasises how much talent is involved in the success of a retail operation, and how a successful operation can be quickly degraded by the untalented. This was also a major learning experience for Tim Cook, as well as a demonstration of his leadership in dismissing both Browett and Scott Forstall. Before joining Apple, he was a chief executive of UK electronics retail group Dixons from December 2007. (Dixons had a reputation for poor retailing.) He previously had been the chief executive of Tesco.com. Brunner, Robert Apple's original design department founder, left the company in the 90's. BTO Build To Order: When you order a computer via Apple's online store, you can specify special options beyond the default configuration. Build Numbers Refers to Mac OS generations. Example: Build 13A451: "13" refers to OS X 10.9 "A" refers to the 10.9.0 version "451" is part of a sequential numbering of compiled builds. Bullet character, generate On the keyboard, hold down the Option key and press the 8 key. Button, default Per Apple's Human Interface Guidelines, a button which serves as the default (will effectively be "clicked" if the user presses Return) shall be the default colof (blue) and will be "pulsing". Buttons are otherwise clear of color, and not pulsing. If that button is clicked, it acquires color and the default button loses its color. BYODKM Bring your own display, keyboard, and mouse. As emblematic of the Mac mini. C compiler Part of Xcode Tools. /Developer/Documentation/ Developer-Tools/Compiler/ /usr/bin/ commands: cc, c89, c99, gcc c89 is ANSI C. See: Xcode CAD software Very inexpensive: CADintosh shareware, from Lemke Software ($33). Very flexible: Sketchup ($495) Calendar iCal was renamed to Calendar in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. Calendar info As of iTunes 4.8, use an iPod for synchronizing Calender info across Macintoshes. Calendar: Add U.S. holidays For an iOS device: ` - Tap the Settings icon - Tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars - Scroll down and tap Add Account... - Tap Other - Tap Add Subscribed Calendar - In the Server field, input: ical.mac.com/ical/US32Holidays.ics - Tap Next - Tap Save Camera, accessing over Internet Via OS 10.3 - 10.5 you can access a camera which is attached to a Mac, over the Web, if its owner allows. At the Mac with the camera, open the Image Capture application, go into Devices > Browse Devices, and click Sharing. This allows you to share the camera, including over the Web, where it provides a URL and port number to use (like 10.0.1.4:5100). The camera may not support advanced functions, and may connect only as a mass storage device. If the camera supports it, you can even remotely control the camera to take pictures, manually via the Take Picture button, or at intervals via the Remote Monitor tab. OS 10.6 limits Web access to the local network; and the interface is different. Always consult the Help for current capabilities. Camera app alternatives Camera+ offers lots of control, plus slow shutter). Manual is like having a DSLR. ProCamera (4.99) features noise reduction and super low-light performance. Camera images Use iPhoto to import and manage. www.apple.com/iphoto Camera recommendations If thinking of buying a DSLR camera, the best supported are Canon and Nikon brands, as in www.ononesoftware.com/ detail.php?prodLine_id=38 Canon seems to be more progressive than Nikon, where Canon cameras seem to offer more computer interfacing functions. Camera roll The set of photos and movies originated on your Apple hand-held device. You'll find it within your Camera app. Cancel button shortcut Simultaneously press Command + . to effect a Cancel. Canon imageRUNNER printer drivers While Apple provides printer drivers for many printers, it does not do so for the imageRUNNER series: you have to go to the Canon website and search. Capture screen See: Screen capture Carbon The OS X version of the old Mac Toolbox, allowing old OS 9 and earlier applications to run in the new world of OS X with only minor changes. (Carbon is named after the element which is the basis for all life.) Carbon apps are built with Xcode. See also: Yellow Box Carbon Dater Tool which traditional Mac OS developers can use to see what needs tweaking to run under Mac OS X. "Carbonized" To be OS X native. Cards Handy Apple iOS iPhone app for sending personalized, letterpress greeting cards, stamped and sent for you. $2.99 per card for U.S. delivery; $4.99 elsewhere. As of 2011, all cards are landscape oriented, as is the convention for letterpress printing. Announced during the iOS 5 rollout presentation. www.apple.com/iphone/from-the-app-store/ apps-by-apple/cards.html DISCONTINUED: 2013/09/10 Apple suggests instead using iPhoto for ordering letterpress cards with your photo and text. Note that Cards is a convenience: You can more flexibly create and *order* cards within iPhoto, with a choice of letterpress (landscape), "folded" (the common portrait greeting card form), and "flat" as a simple 2-sided piece of card stock. Note the iPhoto cards method of producing cards for batch shipping to an address, not directly sending an individual card. CarPlay Voice control system for the iPhone which allows drivers to use a number of iOS features hands-free. Introduced at the Geneva Motor Show, 2014/03/03. CarPlay can also predict a driver's journey "based on recent trips via contacts, emails or texts, and provides routing instructions, traffic conditions and ETA" on Apple Maps. There's also the option to get the maps sent to the vehicle's onboard display. New in 2015: Wireless connection, to use CarPlay in your vehicle without connecting via a cable. Apple has developed a Car app, allowing you to control vehicle functions without leaving CarPlay. (This is a clever inversion of the initial scheme, where CarPlay was a subset of the vehicle's interface system.) https://www.apple.com/ios/carplay/ Casper Code name for the speech recognition software which would become known as PlainTalk, in the John Sculley era. cat command usage on system files The Mac convention for a "newline" character is Carriage Return, as opposed to Unix's Line Feed. Thus, if you 'cat' a system file, you may "see nothing" - because every line gets output to you current window line, and the final CR in the file puts the cursor back where it started before you invoked the command. Do 'cat -v' or use the 'less' command to see what's actually in the files. CD, insertion actions When you insert a new audio CD into your Mac, iTunes automatically connects to the Internet, accesses Gracenote's Compact Disc Database (CDDB), and retrieves information about that CD - its name, song titles, artist(s) names, and more. Even if you don't import music, iTunes will remember its name the next time you insert the CD, quickly displaying all of the pertinent information about it - whether you're connected to the Internet or not. In fact, if you burn a copy of your CD to play in the car, iTunes recognizes that copy as if it were the original. Ref: http://docs.info.apple.com /article.html?artnum=93952 CD, write OS X: File menu -> Burn CD CD burning, advanced 'man drutil', 'man hdiutil' CD-RW, copy files to disc Drag the files of interest to the CD-RW disc: this does not actually write them, but just establishes them as files to be burned. (If you "open" a name you dragged to the disc, you open the original you dragged.) When you have all the files you want, go to the File menu and select Burn Disc. (Ejecting such a prepared disc will also give the opportunity to burn.) CD-RW, copy more files to disc You can't, with this technology: you have to first erase the disk, then re-write it. Use Disk Utility: go to its Erase tab, select the disc drive, then erase. CD-RW, erase Use Disk Utility: go to its Erase tab, select the disc drive, then erase. Note that erasing is purely that: it does not format the disc. Formatting occurs in Finder mode. Certificates and security Certificates work with SSL for best security with Safari and other browser sessions. A Certificate Authority issues "certificates" to vouch for the authenticity of the site you are accessing, which has bought into the certificate. Certificates can be managed via the Keychain Access utility. Therein, you can set Preferences to further protect yourself, such as activating OCSP and CRL (set both to Best Attempt). Certificates, create & manage Via Keychain Access utility: under the Keychain Access menu, choose an entry in Certificate Assistant. Certificates, display Via command line: certtool y or, for lots more: certtool y \ k=/System/Library/Keychains/X509Anchors | less (Pipe the output to 'less' because certificates can contain binary.) CG Short for Core Graphics. cgpdftops CUPS filter: Core Graphics PDF to PostScript. Shows up in PostScript job headers like: %%Creator: (Microsoft Word: cgpdftops CUPS filter) and /Creator(Microsoft Word: cgpdftops CUPS filter)def Chameleon Code "Fat binaries": applications that contain both 32-bit and 64-bit binaries within a single file. Using fat binaries, network administrators distribute a single version of an application to all users regardless of their system capabilities. Once installed on a user's system, the fat binary automatically selects the appropriate code for the system without user intervention. This greatly simplifies administration, installation and distribution of applications. Tiger supports the industry standard LP64 programming model supported by other 64-bit Unix systems, including AIX. LP64 defines an int as 32 bits, longs and pointers as 64 bits. Character Pallette OS 10.2 applet for displaying a character set. Replaced in 10.3 by Font Book. Cheetah Product code name for Mac OS 10.0 Next: Puma Chicago Proportional-width, sans-serif font created by Susan Kare, who was invited to join Apple by then programmer Andy Hertzfeld (high school friend), in 1983. The font became synonymous with the Macintosh, and later became the font on the iPod. Chime See: Startup sound/chime Chinese competition tactics China continues to be a hotbed of intellectual property theft, where a standard practice is to file for patents based upon leaked images of Apple's new devices, to beat Western companies to the IP office in order to extort money from legitimate companies via patent trolling. A case in point is the 2016 suit by Shenzhen Baili Marketing Services Company, which registered a patent for a "rounded-edge smartphone design" — despite having no viable product of their own, and going bankrupt (not even a website remains). Despite the obviousness of their tactics, they filed suit against Apple in Beijing, claiming, in reverse thinking, that the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus looked too much like their phone. As testament to the ethical standards in China, they won a regulator’s patent ruling in Beijing in June 2016. China, in its economic struggles in pretending to have an open market, has become increasingly hostile toward foreign companies, as witness forcing Apple to discontinue iTunes and iBooks services in China. CHRP Common Hardware Reference Platform. Apple's mid 1990s move away from proprietary motherboards and circuitry, toward PowerPC designs, essential for licensed clone makers. Early microcomputers embedded numerous control functions in ROM, a technique which Apple embraced and continued into the 1990s as a way of locking their essence into The Mac ROM. Transferring such software out into the operating system became a prolonged effort which impeded the migration toward CHRP. Cinema Display Apple's hi-res, larger LCDs. Driven by standard video cards in modern G4s and G5s. The video connection is ADC, which provides both DVI and power in one connector (nice, but incompatible with Wintel computers). Steve Jobs says that Apple has the best displays in the industry: in fact, competitors buy Apple's rejects. In 2004/06 Apple went from wide plastic bezel construction to aluminum for its 20" and 23" Cinema Displays - and added a whopping 30". The new displays depart from the strictly ADC connection of the prior displays, using just DVI (allowing the display to work on Mac or Wintel), with a separate power connection. On the back, bottom edge are two USB 2.0 and two Firewire 800 ports. Nvidia Gforce 6800 dual DVI connections to drive the huge 30" display with 8 million pixels; but the card also has dual-dual connectors, which can drive TWO 30" displays! See also: LED Cinema Display City Tour Feature of Apple Maps, facilitated by its Flyover capability... When you search on a city, you will be initially offered a City Tour, which flies over the city and briefly circles around landmarks, which it names in the tour field. See also: Flyover Clamshell mode Refers to using a lid-down MacBook to function like a deskcop computer, to operate with an attached keyboard, mouse, and display. In this mode, think of the MacBook at being a Mac mini. The MacBook can be an a sleeping mode, but cannot be shut down: there is no way to power up a shut down MacBook without opening its lid. Claris Separate company which Apple created to develop its own applications: FilemakerPro, Claris Organizer, and ClarisWorks (the former AppleWorks). Claris as a company name was discontinued in early 1998, with ClarisWorks returning to its AppleWorks identity, and the company renaming itself to FileMaker Inc., to focus on that product. Claris Organizer was bought by 3Com, and became Palm Organizer on the Palm Pilot hand-held computer. ClarisWorks Claris's all-in-one application suite, providing: - Word processing - Spreadsheet - Database (Import want Tab-separated field data. Will not inherently report .csv, comma separated variables data. Deal with this by editing the source file to change all commas to Tabs, all double quotes to nulls, then paste into the spreadsheet.) - Drawing - Painting - Presentation Formerly: AppleWorks, before Claris was spun off. As a refreshed product, it became the most popular integrated office suite on the Mac, outselling Microsoft's Works in its first year. By the time Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, Claris had deteriorated to irrelevance, and was disbanded. But the productivity suite was eventually reborn as iWork, with Keynote, Pages and Numbers. ClarisWorks and iWork continue Apple's hedge against Microsoft Office possibly departing the Macintosh platform. Classic environment OS X: You can run pre-OS X PowerPC applications in a "classic" environment that is implicitly launched when you start an old application. Requirements: - A PowerPC Macintosh (no Intel), up through the G5 series. - OS X 10.1 through 10.4 (not 10.5). - Mac OS 9.1 or later 9.x installed. The Classic Environment is something that comes to life from within your existing OS X environment. Classic applications live in the folder named: Applications (Mac OS 9) Control: Preferences -> Classic Note that there is no need to to format the disk for "OS 9 Compatibility": that checkbox is presented in Disk Utility only for systems which can directly boot OS 9. Classic doesn't need that. Clean Install Creates a new System Folder containing only Apple software: the old System Folder remains in place, from which you may transfer stuff you need in the clean System Folder. Available in the install process where you select an installation disk. Is recommended, to avoid having obsolete adjuncts foul operation. Readily selectable in OS8. Clipboard, manage from command line There are two commands for interacting with the Clipboard (old name: pasteboard). They are: pbcopy Takes Stdin and to place in the Clipboard. Example: ls -l | pbcopy pbpaste Its Stdout is the contents of the Clipboard, which you can use like: pbpaste > cb.contents CLIX Command line interface for OS X, having an Aqua look-and-feel. It offers hundreds of commands and security features, including the ability to disable systemwide 'sudo' authorization upon entering sleep mode. http://rixstep.com/4/0/clix/ Cmd + Ctrl Keyboard shortcut for zooming in and out of a document or spreadsheet. Works in conjunction with the Trackpad gesture "Use two fingers to scroll" in System Preferences, under Keyboard & Mouse. Cmd + Option + c Keyboard shortcut to copy the style of selected text. Cmd + Option + v Keyboard shortcut to paste the style of a previously selected+copied text style. Cmd + w Keyboard shortcut to "close a window". It has evolved to more generally close a view: for example, when you are employing Tabbed Viewing in Safari and are looking at a web page under a tab, Cmd + w will not close the Safari window, but rather will close that tabbed view. Cocoa OS X's user interface application framework, for writing OS X GUI applications (using Xcode). Their native object-oriented application program environment. It started with the Mac's standard interface, the mouse and keyboard. As of the iPhone era, Touch API was added. Cocoa is an updated version of the NeXT Frameworks. Cocoa applications can be written in Objective C or Java. See also: Carbon Cocoa Touch The original Cocoa (keyboard and mouse interface), adding touch interfacing. Colons and slashes (: and /) The Mac OS historically used the colon character (:) to denote directory in a file path specification. If you tried to enter a colon as you created a new file name, with an application context it would substitute a hyphen, and in a files listing context would reject the punctuation. Mac OS X is Unix, where the directory designation character is a slash (/). In OS/X, you should not have a slash in a file name: if you type a slash, the OS will accept it, but will invisibly map it to a colon (:). To avoid confusion, it is best to avoid trying to use a colon or slash in a file name. ColorSync Apple's color management technology, for matching colors across different devices: scanners, monitors, printers, etc. ColorSync accommodates the color variations introduced in varying technolgies by changing the RGB and CMYK values sent to the devices: ColorSync changes the numbers in a file as it goes from one device to another. This is facilitated by telling it the From and To device in a ColorSync "profile". colorsync.apple.com Version 1.0 uses the RGB model in the Apple 13" Trinitron display to describe all the RGB colores (a color profile). An application which uses ColorSync can call up the profiles of whatever devices are in use, match colors between monitor and printer, then hand off the resulting file to the PostScript driver, which sends the file to the printer. Combo Drive Optical drive that combines CD-R/CD-RW recording capability with the ability to read (but not write) DVD media. Is found in lower-end Macintosh computers. Contrast with: SuperDrive Command line aids See: CLIX See also: Xupport Command+K Keyboard shortcut, when in the Finder, to access the Go menu Network selection. This provides support for the following protocols: afp:// cifs:// ftp:// ftps:// http:// https:// nfs:// smb:// vnc:// Notes: - The FTPs cause the remote file system to be mounted read-only, where you can download but not upload. - In my packet tracing, I don't see FTPS using SSL: the password et all are transferred in plain text. - The VNC cannot be used to access Windows servers: instead, go to Microsoft.com and download the free Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac 2.1.1 software. Complete My Album iTunes Store function where, if you buy one tune of an album, you have get the rest of the album at a reduced cost. To use that function, go into the iTunes Store home page, where on the right, under QUICK LINKS, you should find Complete My Album. Historical: Since the beginning, there had been a six month time limit to take advantage of this, starting at tune purchase time. In 2011/12/20 that restriction was eliminated.) Complications A wristwath term which became notable with the advnt of the Apple Watch. A complication is an added functional element on the watch face. On a traditional watch, this might be the day of the month, or a stopwatch dial. On Apple Watch, this would be an alarm or an indication of the current weather or sunrise. Compressor Video encoding utility from Apple, for use with Final Cut Pro X export. Available in the Mac App store for $50. CompUSA Major computer retailer in the late 1990s and early 2000s. They bought out the failing Computer City stores in 1998, ending up with some 200 stores nation-wide. CompUSA was notable for being Apple's first foray into "store within a store" selling of Macs, where there would be a separate section devoted to those Apple products, staffed by knowledgeable people. CompUSA president Jim Halpin in 1997 promised to make his stores "the Apple headquarters for America", as he entered into that partnership with Apple. However, the promised commitment was half-hearted: the Apple section was often stuck in the back corner of the store; shelves were poorly stocked with Apple equipment or allied accessories; if any sales staff was in the area, they usually knew little or nothing about Macs. This sour experience certainly encouraged Apple's initiative to open their own stores. Apple later tried the same "store within a store" concept with Best Buy, with much better results due to better placement and more interest on the part of that retailer. Computer name Set in Sharing preference. Shown at top of System Profiler report (or via command /usr/sbin/system_profiler SPSoftwareDataType). This is the "Macintosh" name by which those sharing your system may identify it. This is different from your computer network identity/address. In particular, if your network access is via DHCP, you will vary. You can verify your current network identity by lauching the Terminal utility or a local X11 window and entering the command 'hostname'. Note that a varying hostname may interfere with applications which use the computer's address for authentication purposes, as in saving a password constructed from the network identity. Conference call on iPhone See: Add Call Conference Room Display New feature in Apple TV update 6.0, intended for institutional and business environments, where there can be multiple Apple TVs and wireless networks. Turned on in Settings > AirPlay. What it does: Allows you to establish instructions that show up in the ATV screensaver along with standard information that includes the Apple TV's name and the wireless network it is on, to allow your device to connect to it for AirPlay-ing content. configd Mac OS X daemon. Maintains dynamic configuration information about the computer and its environment (e.g. network), which is provides to applications and other daemons. Essentially it is a local server that exports information stored using the SystemConfiguration framework. Brief list of exported data: - Location (reflected in the system-wide Location menu) - IP address - Computer Name There are several ways to access this information: - The SystemConfiguration.framework itself, which is part of CoreFoundation. This allows an application to interact directly with configd, but requires code modifications. This is a good choice if you've got time on your hands and want to make your application very robust. However, it is Darwin-specific, and thus not readily available on other systems like Linux, or other BSD distributions. - scutil: a command line interface to configd. It seems mostly for debugging purposes, but it can be used to extract basic information from configd in a rudimentary fashion. - /var/db/SystemConfiguration/ preferences.xml (actually, /Library/ Preferences/SystemConfiguration/ preferences.plist) is the persistant store for SystemConfiguration data. I wouldn't interact directly with (as in, make changes to) this file, but it can be handy to peruse if you are looking for a specific piece of data. configd has a farily simple plugin architecture which uses bundles to provide additional functionality. There are a number of bundles installed with Mac OS X - the most useful, for my purposes, is the Kicker.bundle. Usage: /usr/sbin/configd [-d] [-v] [-V bundleid] [-b] [-B bundleid] [-t plugin-path] Files: /var/db/SystemConfiguration/ Configuration files OS X uses XML to store configuration data, rather than assorted parochial file formats. Connect to Server Item under OS X Finder Go menu, for specifying a URL for connecting to a service such as SMB on a named computer. Prior to 10.2, this was the only way to reach such services. 10.2 introduced network browing for services. Console log See: System Logs console.log /library/Logs/Console/502/console.log (the "502" may vary). Each start of OS X rotates the console.log files, such that console.log becomes console.log.0, and the other older copies (through console.log.9) move down and shift out of existence after generation 9. See also: System Logs Contacts (iOS) Also known as Address Book, this is your directory of people you need to contact from time to time, via phone, email, message, or FaceTime. Groups concept: By default, your iOS contacts consists only of iCloud information, where all you see in Contacts is "All Contacts", meaning that you have that single list. Now let's say you join an Exchange server and go into Settings and turn on Contacts. Then, in the upper left of your view will be a Groups button. "All Contacts" is now a merged view of your iCloud contacts and your Exchange-based contacts. By touching the Groups button, you can then get into a selection list to choose to see All Contacts or just those provided by either Exchange or iCloud. The Global Address List: In having an Exchange account configures in your iOS device, you have access to this list, which constitutes LDAP search access into the domain directory. (It is not a list stored in your device.) As of iOS 5, there is no way to manage Groups within an iOS device. Contextual menu (OS 8) New in Mac OS 8. Menus whose content vary according to the context in which they appear, unlike those in the menu bar, which tend to be global. In Finder, move cursor to desktop background; hold down the Control key and press the (left) mouse button to produce the contextual menu, showing the options available in that context. Use of contextual menus requires the presence of the Contextual Menu extension. Contextual menu (OS X) As in the past, get it by holding down the Control key and press the (left) mouse button to produce the contextual menu; or, on a multi-button mouse, press the right button (right-click). You can also effect this by using only the keyboard: Go into System Preferences and select Universal Access, and therein go to the Mouse section. There, turn Mouse Keys "On". Your numeric keypad now does all that a mouse can. (For details, go into Help and see the "Shortcuts for Mouse Keys" topic.) Now, when you are in an area and want its contextual menu, hold down a Ctrl key and press 5 on the numeric keypad to effect a Ctrl+Click: up pops your contextual menu. The foolish, space-wasting numeric keypad is now finally doing something useful. See also: Universal Access Continuity OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) facility for continuing your work across Macintosh and iOS devices. Via proximity awareness, the aspect of Continuity called Handoff allows you to start a task on one device and continue it on another: an icon shows up on the bottom left of the device screen inviting you to continue your work there. A Mac is aware of a nearby iPhone, through which it can receive and initiate telephone calls. Control Panels (Disabled) Name of folder into which the Extensions Manager moves files from the Control Panels folder. Control Strip Quickie control facility that appeared in OS 8, which could be pulled out to access various controls, as for sound. Move it by by holding down the Option key. Conversions (currency, unit) Can be done directly in the Spotlight search field (OS X and iOS) by entering like: 100 usd to gbp or: 27 gallons to quarts You can also ask Siri. Convert currency and units The OSX Calculator application has all that built in. Cookies, where stored ~/Library/Cookies/ where the major file is Cookies.binarycookies. Copland In the early 1990s Apple was looking for some path to modernize its Mac OS. It initiated the Copland program as kind of an exploratory effort, intending that it would evolve into an OS called Gershwin. But it suffered too many delays and compatibility problems. 1994/03: Apple announces Copland, due in 1995, to feature active assistance, multitasking, and memory protection. And a more advanced OS, Gershwin, is to follow in 1996. 1994/08: CEO Michael Spindler says that Copland will arrive in 1996. 1995/11: The Copland beta goes out to 50 key developers. 1996/05: New CEO Gil Amelio says Apple will ship Copland piecemeal. 1996/08: CTO Ellen Hancock kills Copland and Gershwin. Rhapsody is the new initative. See: Rhapsody Copy file A file is readily copied by dragging it to another device (disk, network unit, etc.). Alternately, you may right-click (Ctrl+Click) to make a copy of that object (Copy "...Its_name..."), then position into another folder and do a "Paste item". Yet another approach, particularly useful in making a copy within a folder, is to use Duplicate, and then adjust the name of the copy to what you want. See also: Move file Copy/paste from command line To copy: ls -l | pbcopy pbcopy < myfile.txt To paste: pbpaste > mytext.txt Core Animation Previewed at WWDC 2006, as new in Leopard. Using Core Animation, Mac developers can create snazzy animations in their programs using different media types, such as text, 2D graphics, OpenGL renderings, and video, simultaneously. Core Animation dynamically renders these media layers together, complete with transparency effects and Core Image filter and effects. When content changes, Core Animation updates it, automatically. Core Data Mac and iOS facility which enables developers to work with a user's data as objects, handing much of the complexity of data storage and retrieval for them. The Core Data framework provides options of how to store that data suited for different tasks: either as a simple XML text file or in binary data (both examples of a standard file), or within a SQLite database (a specialized file that contains organized data that is accessed and modified via specialized transactions). Introduced in 2005's Mac OS X Tiger, and made available to App Store developers in iOS 3.0. Core Duo temperature http://macbricol.free.fr/coreduotemp/ Cores: more = better? Choosing faster processors with more on-board cache yields better performance than more but slower cores. More cores are of value only where application software can parallelize things. Cover Flow iTunes enhancement which makes fuller use of stored album covers, to flip through them to select a tune. Was incorporated into the initial iPhone. Cover Flow in Leopard Introduced into the Finder as another way to flip through folder files, where the contents of many files can be seen through embedded use of Quick Look. Note that seeing inside a file in this way means that the file is open, and as such cannot be moved: revert to more ordinary file list views to allow the folder files to be closed and moveable. Crashes (OS X) ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/ or /Library/Logs/CrashReporter/ for dumps, if enabled. Cube graphics card The nVidia GeForce3 is the fastest video card you can install in the Cube without modifications. Outputs VGA and ADC. This faster-running card has a fan rather than a heat sink. Cue, Eddy Apple-F¢s senior vice president of-A Internet Software and Services. Cupertino, California The birthplace and home of Apple. It all began in the Jobs family garage, at 2066 Crist Drive. Becoming a real company, in 1978 Apple moved into commercial office space, claimed to be on Stevens Creek Boulevard. But the first, true Apple headquarters were in a modest building at 10260 Bandley Drive. Today they occupy a campus at 1 Infinite Loop, off South Deanza. .cups OS X home directory subdirectory containing CUPS printing file lpoptions, which contains the name of the default printer, like: Default hp_4100_in_my_office The directory and file should be writable by the user. CUPS Common UNIX Printing System, the standard printing facility for Unix systems in general, and the one which Apple adopted for OS X. (Apple started developing a printing facility from scratch in 2001, but dropped that to adopt CUPS, which has been in OS X since 10.2.) Indeed, in 2007 Apple acquired the source code *and* its originator, Michael Sweet. If you point your Mac-local (Safari) browser at http://127.0.0.1:631 you will (be surprised to) find yourself in a web interface to the CUPS system on your Mac, being a front end to the Mac's "Printer Setup Utility", where you may inspect a list of your past print jobs, any current print jobs, and printers. (Port 631 is service name "ipp", as hosted by the cupsd daemon process.) If you perform Print Test Page from that web page, the job will be submitted under username "anonymous", rather than your username, which may be problematic. Performing a Cancel will work only if the job is in the CUPS local queue: if the job has already gone to the print server, and is in its queue, the cancel will have no effect. Doc: http://127.0.0.1:631/documentation.html Ref: http://www.macosxhints.com/ article.php?story=20040101194202284 See also: IPP CUPS, reset daemon From command line: sudo killall -HUP cupsd This can take a bit of time. When the service is back, 'lpstat -r' should show: "scheduler is running" CUPS default printer, set lpoptions -d PrintQueuename or lpadmin -d PrintQueuename CUPS log files In /var/log/cups/, where: accss_log Contains all HTTP requests processed by the CUPS server. error_log Messages from the schedule (errors, warnings) page_log A summary of each page sent to the printer. CUPS model directory /usr/share/cups/model/ Contains: deskjet.ppd, generic.ppd, etc. CUPS printer attributes In /etc/cups/ppd/, as ______.ppd files, being standard PPD files plus modifications particular to the printer definition (such as duplexing). The source of theses PPDs is /usr/share/cups/model/ and its subfolders, and also /Library/Printers/ PPDs/Contents/Resources and /System/ Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/. The lpadmin command can only use PPD files in /usr/share/cups/model/ and its subfolders. CUPS printers To quickly see all defined printers, issue the following from command line: lpc status However, printer definition details are not revealed. Add a printer via command via 'lpadmin' (q.v.). See also: Printers CUPS server running? 'lpstat -r' Reports scheduler is running if so. CUPS spool Conventionally, /var/spool/cups/. You will see "c_____" (binary) files in there, with job numbers after the first character, being held-behind job control files, per PreserveJobHistory in cupsd.conf. The control files consist of attributes, including "job-name", being IPP messages based on the original IPP Print-Job or Create-Job messages. There might be "d_____" files in there as well, being the data portion of print jobs (the PostScript, etc.). Data files are normally removed after a job has successfully printed, however this behavior can be configured. CUPS version determination Simple method: http://localhost:631/ A more physical method: Look at the top of the file /etc/cups/printers.conf after a recent printer definition. It will contain like: # Printer configuration file for CUPS v1.3.6 # Written by cupsd on 2008-05-06 11:33 cupsctl Command to change CUPS directives which live in /etc/cups/cupsd.conf. cupsd.conf File containing CUPS directives. /etc/cups/cupsd.conf Changes are conventionally made using the 'cupsctl' command. This file tends to be rarely changed. (It is more common to change /etc/cups/printers.conf, as new printers are defined.) After making a change to the file, cause the cupsd daemon to see that by doing: sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ org.cups.cupsd.plist sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ org.cups.cupsd.plist Currency conversion In OS X Calculator. .cwk Filename suffix (default) for AppleWorks files, where the identity originated with the ClarisWorks package, which became AppleWorks. Cyberdog Mid 1990s OpenDoc-based Internet access software. Went as far as release 2.0 but then was discontinued with Apple reorganization of 1997. Daemons manager Via launchd, new in OS 10.4. Info: 'man launchd', 'man launchctl' OS X is Unix, but not Linuxy: there is no /etc/init.d/ or /etc/rc?.d/ setups. Instead, the info needed to control daemons can be found from /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/, which is in the form of .plist files, which are binary files that contain data in XML-format. If necessary, these files can be opened with Property List Editor, which is supplied with Xcode. Starting a daemon is performed like: sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ org.cups.cupsd.plist Stopping a daemon is like: sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ org.cups.cupsd.plist To list all daemons: launchctl list Dark Mode Interface choice in OS X Yosemite to remove the bright colors of the menu bar, sub-menus and the application dock, replacing them with black, making use a bit easier in dimm light. Control: System Preferences > General, "Use dark menu bar and Dock" checkbox. As of Yosemite, there is no keyboard shortcut for Dark Mode. Darwin The circa 1999 project name for Mac OS X, which includes Apple's version of the Mac 2.5 microkernel, BSD 4.4 Unix, the Apache Web server, and various Mac-specific technologies such as AppleTalk and HFS+. Darwin was open-source through the PPC days, but was closed as of Intel days, to prevent hacking. There is no longer access to source code to build a customized OS X kernel for Intel hardware. See also: OS X Server "Darwin" The operating system name string returned from command 'uname -s' invoked in OS X. Dash, generate from keyboard To create an en-dash (en dash): Hold down the Option key and tap the hyphen key. To create an em-dash (em dash): Hold down the Option and Shift keys and tap the hyphen key. See also: Keyboard Viewer Dashcode Developer tool for creating Dashboard Widgets and some Web applications. Is also used with HTML preparation within iBooks Author. Is installed with Xcode, into directory /Developer/Applications/. Dashboard New in Tiger, Apple calls this facility "Expose for widgets". It provides a set of "desk accessories" (as in the old Mac OS) in a layer above the OS X window, where the mini apps are called widgets. On an ordinary keyboard, F12 presents the Dashboard (newer keyboards have a dedicated Dashboard key). You can copy and paste between Mac apps and widgets, as in capturing monetary numbers to plop into the calculator widget. Dashboard integrates with Safari, where the widgets are little, floating Safari windows, engineered with HTML, CSS, and Web graphics (GIF, JPEG, PNG, etc.), programmable with JavaScript. Top: To be able to quickly get into Dashboard, go into System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Saver, click on Hot Corners, and assign like the top left corner for Dashboard access. (Press the Esc key to leave Dashboard.) Data centers Apple has been building a series of data centers around the United States to service iCloud and other functions. Locations: Maiden, North Carolina Prineville, Oregon Newark, California Reno, Nevada (They have been listed on page www.apple.com/environment/renewable-resources/) There are also AppleCare repair warehouses in Carlisle, Pennsylvania (182,000 square feet), the second in the United States, joining Apple's existing warehouse in Elk Grove, California. Data Detectors Aka Apple Data Detectors. In text, this algorithm detects special data types, such as URLs, phone numbers, addresses, etc. ATG originated within Apple's Advanced Technology Group as a result of research into collaborative, intelligent agents aimed at using smart data analytics to make static information within a document readily actionable by users. DD is particularly valuable on a small device such as the iPhone, where it is more difficult to copy and paste text. defaults Command to query and set defaults into system configuration files (plists). Writes plist files in binary form (not XML). If the command writes a new key-value pair to an existing XML format plist file, the operation will convert the file to binary. Query example: defaults read com.apple.appstore goes after the contents of file Library/Preferences/ com.apple.appstore.plist Update example: defaults write com.apple.x11 enable_stereo -bool true Get a list of all plist domains: defaults domains Show defaults for a given application: defaults read -app TextEdit Show command usage: defaults help man defaults The command *can* operate on specific files, outside the system defaults area, as in defaults read ~/.MacOSX/environment (omit the .plist appendage); but, as the man page advises, this capability will disappear in the future, and the 'defaults' command will operate only upon system defaults. See also: plutil; Property List Delete file OS8: Select, then Cmd+DeleteKey Deleted Users OSX folder housing users who have been deleted from the system. Desktop DB An invisible database file found at the root level of every volume. The database contains info about the applications and documents within that volume, and acts as the repositiry for the comments in the Finder's Get Info windows. Privacy: The database can contain more than you want, such as the names of apps you use and any URLs stored in the Finder's comments field. If you copy a volume, you can end up with this database info copied along with it. Desktop Manager One programmer's goal to create a virtual desktop manager for OS X. A nice effort, but utilizes unsupported techniqes, and thus prone to break as Apple changes things. http://wsmanager.sourceforge.net/ Desktop picture from within image file Open image file in a drag-and-drop pgm like SimpleText; select portion of pic; drag marqueed selection directly into the Desktop Pictures control panel and it become a new desktop picture. Desktop Pictures Through OS9: Open its control panel, or more simply just double-click on the desktop itself. Desktop printer icon (OSX) With a printer icon on the desktop, you can print by simply dragging and dropping a document onto the icon. Create the icon through the Printer Setup Utility's Printers menu, Create Desktop Printer choice. See also: Sidebar printer icon Desktop Printer Utility A means of setting up printer icons on the desktop, to which you can drag files to be printed, or double-click the icon to manage the print queue. In: Apple Extras/Apple LaserWriter Software /dev/disk0 OS X: The boot disk device entry. Type name: GUID_partition_scheme Name: (none) /dev/disk0s1 OS X: Disk 0, partition 1. Type: EFI Name: (none) /dev/disk0s2 OS X: Disk 0, partition 2. This is usually the main partition for a Mac. Type: Apple_HFS Name: Macintosh HD (The default name for a Mac's disk.) /dev/disk0s5 OS X: Disk 0, partition 5. Develop Special menu in Safari (q.v.). Developer details You can enroll as a developer for free. This gives you access to Xcode and guidance information. Full membership requires enrolling in the iOS or Mac Program ($99). You do not need to enroll in the program to write apps and test them in iOS Simulator. You do need to enroll, however, to test apps on devices and to distribute apps. Enrollment gives you full access to the iOS Dev Center and the iOS Provisioning Portal. Developers, books for Stephen G. Kochan: "Programming in Objective C". Aaron Hillegass: Cocoa Programming for OS X. dfont The font format used by OS X system fonts. They are TrueType fonts, but contain all their font info in a single file, which works with all operating systems. (OS 9 fonts contained a resource fork which other operating systems could not read.) DHCP support Available as far back as Mac OS 7.5. Diagnostics folder While booting, holding down the D key may boot into Diagnostics mode. This causes the system to first looks for an EFI boot-loader that calls itself a diagnostic disc, where it checks the optical drive first: not finding it there, it will look for it on the hard drive(s), as follows. Directory /System/Library/CoreServices/.diagnostics will exist and contain the entire Apple Hardware Test suite IF your Mac has its original OS intact. (An an Erase & Install had been performed in an OS upgrade, then there will not be such a folder. More recent Macs may have an EFI partition to make it possible to boot into Diagnostics: run the 'diskutil list' command to see if there is such a partition. In most cases, expect to need to have Recovery Disk 1 in the drive for a diagnostic boot to operate. Dictation Microphone-based dictation function added to iPad and Mac OS 10.8 before they got Siri. It can be used where a microphone key appears in the virtual keyboard on the iPad, to the left of the Space bar. On the Mac, activate it in System Preferences, specifying what keyboard key to use to turn it on for each dictation segment. Requires an Internet connection in OS 10.8, but in 10.9 Enhanced Dictation allows offline, continuous dictation. There are special words you can use to format your text. Say: Period To have a period (.) there. Comma For a comma. New Line Start following text on a new line. New Paragraph To cause following text to start after an empty line, constituting a new paragraph. Cap To have the next word capitalized. Caps On ... Caps Off Sequence to use for text to be all upper case. Open Quote ... Close Quote Sequnce to use around text to end up in double quotes. Special characters in general: Just say their name to have them appear, such as Degree, Caret, Registered, Copyright, etc. Historical: Dictation has its roots in Mac System 7's PlainTalk Speakable Items (circa 1993). That technology was never perfect for dictating text, but did lead to the VoiceOver and Voice Commands in OS X. See also: Enhanced Dictation Dictionary There is a Dictionary application. OS10.4: More integrated, in Tiger. There is a widget dictionary. Cooler still: in text applications like TextEdit and Safari, select a word and do Command+Control+D to have its definition pop up; or with nothing selected, hold down those keys and simply move the cursor around words and the definition of each appears. Another approach is to select a word, then right-click (Control+Click), which yields a choice of Search in Spotlight, Search in Google, or Look Up in Dictionary. Didi Chuxing China's ride-hailing company (think Uber), in which Apple made a $1 billion investment in May 2016. This got Apple a seat on Didi's board. Differential Privacy Announced at WWDC 2016. Helps Apple gather data and usage patterns for a large number of users without compromising individual security. To be used in iOS 10 to collect data to improve QuickType and emoji suggestions, Spotlight deep link suggestions, and Lookup Hints in Notes; and in macOS Sierra to improve autocorrect suggestions and Lookup Hints. Uses hashing, subsampling, and noise injection to enable crowd-sourced learning without simultaneously gathering data on individual people. It is to be opt-in participation. This is a form of anonymized data. The way Apple will proceed is to create subject-limited databases, for example interest in pop tunes. Apple will use the data for a period, then wipe the database and start with either a fresh data set or a different subject. Digital camera RAW support RAW image format contains all the pixels as the camera imaged them - in contrast with a JPEG version of the image, which employs lossy compression. The rub is that JPEG is a standard, but there are as many raw image formats as there are camera manufacturers. OS X, iPhoto, and Aperature equally support a list of cameras contained in support Articles: HT3825 "Mac OS X v10.6: Digital camera RAW formats supported" You can also search support Articles for "Digital Camera Raw Compatibility Update ..." Digital Copy In an arrangement between Apple and 20th Century Fox, some Fox DVDs will contain what is called a Digital Copy, being a parallel copy of the DVD content, which can be transferred to an iTunes device (computer, iPhone, iPod, Apple TV). This was announced by the head of Fox at the Macworld 2008 keynote presentation, the first title being Family Guy: Blue Harvest. Digital Hub Apple term for making the Macintosh a central resource in customer's lives by providing lifestyle resources in digital form, such as music (iTunes), movies (iMovie), photographs (iPhoto). Directory Access OS10.3: App in the Utilities folder, for participating in MS Active Directory. Do Command+K to connect. A 'dsconfigad' command is available. For connecting graphically to Windows servers, MS has released a Mac Remote Desktop Connection client. Directory Services In OS 10.5, the former NetInfo was replaced by Directory Services. Both can be considered a way of managing data that used to be in flat files housed in the /etc directory, being Unix's way of keeping track of users, groups, hosts, and similar information. Such information is now physically stored within /var/db/dslocal/, in plist XML files, using a logical pathing structure which looks like Unix directory pathing, but is unrelated to the Unix file systems, instead being a logical arrangement within that physical area. Information is stored under "nodes", where the Default nodes are: aliases computers config groups hosts networks users By command: dscl Directory Utility An OS X utility. Determines which directory services (e.g., LDAP) a Mac OS X computer uses and how it connects to specific directory domains. Directory Utility also defines search policies for finding authentication and contacts information in specific directory domains. Disk and file system fixing Norton Utilities For The Mac used to be an excellent tool, but has been discontinued. This leaves TechTool, by www.micromat.com. Disk Cache A portion of memory set aside to hold onto the most recet data read from or written to disk, thus allowing re-reference without having to go to the disk again. Disk First Aid Apple utility for repairing disks that have been built by Apple utilities. Full repair may require multiple passes. In OS X, this utility has been supplanted by Disk Utility. Disk health Modern disks come with a facility named S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) to assess the health of the disk. You can check your disk's status by launching Disk Utility: therein, select the disk (not the major partition on it). Near the bottom of the window you will see "S.M.A.R.T Status", where you want to find the status being "Verified". If it instead says "About to fail", you want to immediately back up your data and start pursuing a replacement disk. Once the status gets to "Failing", things are fatal. Disk image (dmg) A virtual disk, stored as a .dmg file, which can be created at a given size, and desired folders and files dragged into it to populate it. Creating: Launch Disk Utility, click on New Image, and enter a filename for the image, plus size and type info. Volume name: The disk image volume name is internal to the image - it is not the name portion of the .dmg file identity. By default, the volume name is simply "Disk Image". To change the volume name, first mount the disk image, then perform Get Info on the mount point (not the .dmg file) and therein adjust the contents of the Name field. Usage: Double-clicking on a .dmg file will cause the disk image to be mounted and its contents to be made available, by virtue of the OS knowing that .img filename extensions should be processed by the DiskImageMounter. (You could alternately open Disk Utility and perform an explicit mount therein; or just drag the dmg over the Disk Utility icon.) When done using a disk image, dismount it, which closes the .dmg file. Note that the size of the .dmg file is only as large as the data contained in it, while the size of the virtual volume expanded from the .dmg file when it is opened reflects the capacity specified when it was created. A read-only or compressed disk image will open automatically to show contents when double-clicked. This is optimal for software distributions. (A read-write disk image will not open automatically.) Disk image, background image See: Finder window, background image Disk image, internet type Intended for the transient downloading of files from a Web or FTP site. Introduced in OS 10.2.3, an Internet disk image is like a regular disk image, except that it deletes itself ater mounting and copying contents to your Mac disk. To create one, first make a standard disk image file via Disk Copy and then open the Terminal utility to enter the following command: hdiutil internet-enable -yes <PathToTheDiskImage>.dmg which will convert the standard disk image to Internet type. Disk image, skip checksum verification During the mounting of a disk image, its embedded checksum is verified against the reality of the file: you will see a progress bar and "Verifying...". This can be time-consuming. If you are confident in the disk images you will be using, you can defeat the verification by using the Terminal utility to enter the following one-line command: defaults write com.apple.com.frameworks.diskimages skip-verify true You can, of cours, repeat the command with "false" to undo that. Of course, checksums exist to protect against corruption in transmission and media storage, so best left on. Disk info, partitioning OSX: Utilities/Disk Utility Disk partition, copy Launch Utilities/Disk Utility. Click "Restore". Select Source and Destination partitions, and allow erasure of the destination. Disk replacement When you replace a disk in a "sealed" Macintosh such as an iMac or Mac mini (but not a Mac Pro), you should be careful to replace it with a disk supplied by Apple. Disks supplied by others may be cheaper and seem equivalent, but: disks supplied by Apple contain special firmware for the disk to tell the system what its temperature is, and thus allow the system to speed up the fan if needed to keep things cool. If a mongrel disk is installed, there will be no such firmware, with the common result that the fan will run at a high speed (lots of noise) - because the system has no idea what's going on and is operating for the worst condition. (There are software programs available to attempt to compensate for having installed a mongrel drive, such as SMCfanControl, but they are kludges which can't recognize actual overheating conditions when they occur. Disk space and fragmentation OS X handles "file" fragmentation (a file being broken up into chunks and strewn across your hard disk) automatically, and fairly well, every time that you launch a fragmented file under 20MB. But there is also "drive fragmentation" which is space between files, constituting discontinuous freespace. Drive fragmentation isn't an issue until the disk gets nearly full, resulting in lack of contiguous space, which OS X needs for working space, for virtual memory, temp files, databases, etc. When this happens, OS X can start acting flaky, and eventually, in extreme cases, it will suffer from data loss. For best results, keep your disk under 80% used. While you may think of that 20% as unused space that you as the user should be able to fully employ as you want to, you should instead think of that space as just "not permanently committed", meaning that it should remain available for dynamic utilizations as needed for your system to perform all needed functions. What Apple says on all this: http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT1375 SSD advisory: Avoid running defrag on solid state hard drive (SSD) or a hybrid drive. SSD's themselves need no periodic maintenance. There is built-in software in recent versions of OS X called TRIM that keeps them running at peak performance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM). Since an SSD has a limited number of read/write cycles, theoretically you are limiting it's life span by defragmenting the data on it. In practice, though, modern SSD's offer so many read/write cycles, that this isn't really a concern. Disk space and performance MacWorld tests demonstrate the the more free space on a disk, the better the performance. (With SSD, however, performance did not degrade with fullness, until about the 97% full point. With SSD, the higher the density, the higher the performance, due to fewer chips to manage.) Disk congestion results in fragmentation, where catalog fragmentation is the much worse aspect (than file fragmentation). Disk space consumption See: Macintosh disk space consumption disk0s1 BSD name for the first partition on the first hard drive. Usually contains EFI boot data. disk0s2 BSD name for the second partition on the first hard drive. Usually contains the working file system, labeled "Macintosh HD". disk0s3 BSD name for the third partition on the first hard drive. Usually contains the labeled "Recovery HD" area. diskutil Command line command for setting up, modifying, verifying, and repairing local disks. /usr/sbin/diskutil Inspection may be done without privs, but to take action, sudo is needed. Doc: There may be no man page; do 'diskutil --help'. A PDF is available at http://www.apple.com/education/ technicalresources/howto.html Subcommnds: eraseDisk [format] newName <OS9Drivers> [Mount Point|Disk Identifier|Device Node]; Completely erase an existing disk. All volumes on this disk will be destroyed. Ownership of the affected disk is required. Format is the specific filesystem name you want to erase it as. (HFS+, etc.) You cannot erase the boot disk. Example: diskutil eraseDisk UFS UntitledUFS disk3 Valid filesystems: "Journaled HFS+" "HFS+" "HFS" "MS-DOS" "UFS" list Show all disks. Disks, list Command line: diskutil list Displays from Apple 17": Apple Studio Display (q.v.) 20": Apple Cinema Display (q.v.) 22": Apple Cinema Display (q.v.) 23": Apple Cinema Display (q.v.) 30": Apple Cinema Display (q.v.) Display resolution "The ideal resolution for text, video and graphics is about 100 pixels per inch." - Scott Brodrick, product line manager for displays at Apple Distinguished folders These are folders found in Mac Mail, whose origin is mysterious. Attempting to delete them results in error: Error: Distinguished folders cannot be deleted, The folders ("Yammer Roor", "Files", "Clutter", etc.) are created by Office 365. Ignor or hide them. .dmg Filename suffix for a Disk Image file, as used by OS X. You can use the Disk Copy utility to mount the image manually, if necessary. See: Disk image DNS cache, flush So one of: dscacheutil -flushcache or sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder See also: /etc/hosts DNS search order in OS X In Mac OS X v10.6 and later, the search order of DNS servers specified in Network preferences is dynamic, so that servers that don't respond are moved to the end of the search order. This provides performance and reliability improvements over previous Mac OS X versions, but in some configurations it can lead to unexpected results in Mac OS X v10.6 through 10.6.2. If there is more than one server for the query and all of them have returned SERV_FAIL, the servers will be queried in the order that they were disabled (that is, the server that has been disabled the longest will be used first). The plist file involved: /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist Apple Article: HT4030 Related: http://reviews.cnet.com/ 8301-13727_7-10471471-263.html Do Not Disturb iOS 6 Phone app feature to keep your phone from buzzing, beeping, or otherwise annoying you when it shouldn$(B,$(Bt. Set specific hours in which you won't get notifications or calls; that can be modified to let you receive calls from those in your Favorites or from those who call you multiple times in a preset time period, so that you don$(B,$(Bt miss anything important. Dock (OS X) An area, typically located at the bottom of the screen, where frequently used objects may be represented. The left side is for application icons, specifically, aliases to applications; the remainder of Dock space to the right is for everything else. Dragging an application icon to the left side of the Dock causes OS X to automatically create an alias of it for you. Remove an application from the Dock by either dragging it out (for a cute "poof" animation) or right-click on it then choose Remove from Dock. A folder may be dragged into the Dock, to create an enduring reference to it: pressing on it will cause its contents to be listed and selected. Items can be dragged into or out of the Dock, to change the Dock's content. Files can be dragged onto application icons in the Dock, for the appl to open that file (drag & drop). The Dock is controlled by process: /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/ Contents/MacOS/Dock An overlooked feature of the Dock: click and hold down on the icon of an open application and it will provide you with a list of its current windows, allowing you to select one. Dock, restart Launch the Activity Monitor utility, select the Dock entry, then choose Process: Quit. Or, from command line: killall -HUP Dock Dock options Keep in Dock When selected, the icon will remain in the Dock when the application has quit. Click it to cycle this on/off. Open at Login When selected, the application is added to your Login Items list. When you log in to your account (or when Mac OS X automatically logs in), the application will automatically open. Click it to cycle this on/off. (You can also adjust Login Items in Users preferences, in System Preferences.) Show in Finder This will open the folder where the application resides on your Mac and select the application. There are also Dock Preferences, which you can quickly get to by right-clicking in an empty area of the Dock (as toward the right side). The magification preference is of particular value when there are many icons in your Dock. Dock usage tips Dock Expose (10.6): If you click on a docked application and keep the mouse button pressed, you will be shown an Expose display of all the open windows for that application, where you can select one to directly go to that window. Spring-loaded Dock Expos$(B"k(B: If you drag a file from the Finder into the Dock and hover it over an open application, the open windows of that application will be exposed, and you can continue dragging into that window to have the file taken into that application. This is a handy way to attach a file to mail. Dockling OS X: The name of those cute little functionality icons that are used to control volume, monitor settings, AirPort configurations, and the like. Document Library OS X concept introduced in Mountain Lion to, like iOS, tie your documents to the application which created them. Each application comes with its own little file browser, the Document Library, being a separate window. Initial apps using DL are: TextEdit, Preview, Pages, Numbers, Keynote. In its advent, DL allows document sharing across Macs, but will likely be in iOS 6. DL is oriented toward iCloud usage, but can plow into your Mac file system. Documents in the Cloud Refers to being able to store certain documents in iCloud, where the Mac or iOS app is programmed to support that, such that the documents may subsequently used by that owner on another Mac or iOS device, or on the same device, later. Note that the capabilities of a given app my differ, in its incarnation on iOS versus Mac. Copies of all documents stored in iCloud are automatically locally stored on your Mac, in the Mobile Documents folder, located inside the ~/Library folder. .DOCX files These are XML format files created by Microsoft Word. Such files can be opened by TextExit and the iWork Pages application. Dolby Digital 5.1 sound Available in DVD Player when the Mac is capable of digital stream audio port output, as in the case of an iMac. See also: DVD Player; Multi-channel sound Double click minimize window When you double-click the title bar of a window, it can be either minimized (moved to the Dock) or alternate it size. The choice is controlled in System Preferences > Dock. .download Temporary filename suffix for when a file is being downloaded, as through a web page. Upon completion of the download the temporary suffix will be removed. Download Linked File Menu choice when you right-click (Control+Cllick) on a Web item (movie, image, etc.). Doing this gets the file with its original creation timestamp, as opposed to doing a Save As when watching such a movie, which instead gets the current timestamp. Download origin To see where a download came from, do a Get Info on the file, then expand the More Info triangle. Driver controlling disk Get Info: "Where:" Drivers in OS X Are comprised of a group of files called a Bundle. Such drivers are a special bundle referred to as a Kernel Extension. Drop Box Historic OS X feature for giving a copy of a file to another user on your Mac or another Mac on your local network. Is accomplished by going into the network instance of that Mac as a guest, opening the Public folder, and then dragging files into the Drop Box folder there. Requires that the receiving Mac have File Sharing turned on, in order to be choosable on the network. See also: AirDrop drutil Command line utility which uses the DiscRecording framework to interact with attached burning devices. See also: hdiutil .DS_Store files Desktop Services Store files. The Finder will automatically put a .DS_Store file into every folder you have opened. These files are used to store information which controls the way a folder will be opened; i.e., the shape and size of the window, its background, the position of the window on the desktop, and whether file, folder or icon view has been selected. .DS_Store also stores supplementary info, and is created when you add Spotlight Comments to a file: the .DS_Store file contains the comments on all the folder's files. If you were to delete the .DS_Store the folder would revert to the system default next time it is opened and a new blank .DS_Store would appear (invisibly). While some consider the .DS_Store files to be a design shortcoming of the Mac OS X Finder, a mechanism like this is necessary when opening Finder windows for exchangeable disk media to give former users of the classic Mac OS the same user experience they had in previous operating system versions. These are normally hidden "dot" files, but you can alter secluded preferences with TinkerTool or the like to expose them. Using SMB from the Mac to access a Unix system running a Samba server will result in .DS_Store files being planted in visited Unix directories - which will add clutter and confuse the Unix system administrators. We see the same file planting when using SFTP to store files on a file server. Creation of the .DS_Store files on networked drives can be done by entering the following 1-line command in Terminal: defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true dscl Directory Services command line utility. To create, read, and manage Directory Service data. See: Directory Services DuckDuckGo In iOS 8, an alternative Web search tool, one that's focused on protecting your privacy. Choose that instead of Google or Yahoo or Bing - searchers which may collect information on you as you search for things. Dumps See: Crashes Duplex printing It is customary in Macintosh printing to define a single instance of a printer, and then, at print time, check the Two-Sided box on the Print dialog box if you want duplex printing (else leave unchecked for simplex printing). If you want to define separate printer instances for simplex and duplex, you may do so; but the duplex instance will still default to simplex, where you have to check the box each time you print. You can cause this box to be permanently checked by going into CUPS and change the configuration: Browse to http://localhost:631/printers Click on your duplex printer; Administration > Set Default Options 2-sided printing: Long Edge (Portrait) Click: Set Default Options See: Two-Sided DV DV stands for Digital Video, meaning the video which comes out of modern camcorders. The USB connection on DV cameras is usually designed for downloading still images and not video. For transferring video, a FireWire connection is usually necessary - and this is essential to transfer such video into iMovie. Within the early CRT-based iMac series, circa 1999, the G3/400 offered a "DV" model, distinguished by having a DVD-ROM drive instead of CD-ROM, and adds dual Firewire "400" ports and a VGA video out port. DV video capture See: VirtualDV DVD, extract audio to .aiff file You may own a DVD and want to extract some of the sound from it, as for example an interesting sample of music from a movie trailer. To do so, employ an application such as HandBrake to extract an MP4 of the selection. Then, use QuickTime Pro's Export to create a .aiff file of the sound. DVD, extract programming from You can extract portions of a DVD that you own via the use of the HandBrake application, available on the Web. A less well known choice is MakeMKV. VLC can reportedly perform this task unto itself. Another app choice is DVDRemaster ($). Videos about the use of these applications can be found on YouTube. DVD Player OS X application to play DVDs on your Mac, in various sizes. Includes an on-screen "remote control". Remembers where you stopped watching a DVD so that you can resume from that point when reinserting the DVD at a later date. Dolby Digital 5.1 output is available when the Mac (e.g., iMac) supports digital stream output... With no disc loaded, go into Preferences, then click Disc Setup. In the Audio Output area, you have the choice of: System Sound Output: The default format, plays analog audio on your computer's built-in speakers, stereo headphones, or other audio device. Digital Out: Plays digital audio, allowing you to use a home theater system to play back 5.1 audio. To use Digital Out, your audio equipment must support the S/PDIF format. You might need to install drivers required by your audio device. Contact the manufacturer of your audio device to determine whether you need to install drivers. With Digital Out, DVD Player uses the digital output device you choose regardless of the setting in the Sound pane of System Preferences. If you choose System Sound Output, DVD Player uses the audio output device selected in the Sound preferences pane. Note: If you use built-in digital audio output on your computer when you play a DVD, you can only hear audio for the movie. Computer alerts or other sounds from the computer are not emitted. DVD Studio Pro A separate DVD production package from Apple, providing far more sophisticated facilities than the basic iDVD. With DVD Studio, you can subdivide your content into chapters, apply alternate language tracks, creat complex scripts to control the DVD's actions, and embed security features such as region encoding and CSS. DVD-RAM support First appeared in Mac OS 8.6 & G3 systems. Early G4 systems had "push-in" loading, where the drive stuck out a slotted "hand" into which one would push a naked, single-sided DVD-RAM disc or a cartridge. That was too odd, and later G4 systems reverted to a more familiar tray, which would accept either cartridges or discs. Don't expect a SuperDrive to cope with a DVD-RAM disc. Mac OS X: Reading & writing data to DVD-RAM discs is fully supported. DVD-RAM discs can be repaired, partitioned, and formatted using the "Disk Utility" app that is included with Mac OS X. The formatting choices are: - Mac OS Extended (Journaled) - Mac OS Extended - Unix File System (not recognized by OS 8, 9) OS X will read UDF discs, but not write them: the 'mount' command will show such a disc mounted read-only. You can reformat a UDF DVD-RAM to a usable Mac format with Disk Utility, or from the command line by doing: /usr/sbin/diskutil list; (to find out what /dev disc is on) sudo /usr/sbin/diskutil eraseDisk "HFS+" UntitledHFSplus /dev/disk3; The diskutil method may fail on a disc formatted by a consumer DVD recorder (e.g., Panasonic), where diskutil list shows "DVD_VIDEO_RECORDER". This may be a case of the drive not accommodating a 4.7 GB disc, such that a more modern DVD-RAM drive may be in order. A product called Dragon Burn nicely handles CD and DVD formats. See also: diskutil; UDF DVD-VR support DVD - Video Recording discs are typically those DVD-RAM discs produced by a DVR, such as those in the Panasonic line. Mounted in a DVD-RAM drive, OS X does not recognize such discs. You can, however, employ a specialized software product to read the discs on a Mac, such as Pixe VRF Browser (www.pixela-1.com). Also: Ulead DVD MovieFactory 4. CyberLink Corp. - PowerDVD 5 HEURIS' DVD ConnexIT: a plug-in that allows you to instantly read video files from a DVD-VR disc in QuickTime MoviePlayer, Final Cut Pro, and other QuickTime applications. ($149) http://www.heuris.com/MPEGProducts/ dvdconnexit/ConnexIT_QT.htm HEURIS Xtractor: Get video and audio off DVDs. ($149) http://www.heuris.com/MPEGProducts/ Xtractor/Xtract.htm Software Architects ReadDVD! UDF Reader Driver mounts and reads all types of discs formatted in the UDF format, including the special Video Recording (VR) format discs created on DVD Camcorders and DVD Video Recorders. http://www.softarch.com/ Software Architects WriteDVD! Pro and GreatVideo! ($69) http://www.softarch.com/ (The GreatVideo download file will be named like: GV-OSX-E-120.dmg .) DVDxDV Commercial product to extricate video from a DVD that you made, when you no longer have the original source material which went into making the DVD. Allows you to then work with the movie segment in iMovie, a Final Cut app, or similar. www.dvdxdv.com Limitations: Cannot decrypt commercial DVDs; loss in quality when transcoding video. DVR Digital Video Recorder. Employs removeable media such as DVD-RAM (the most flexible) or DVD-R/DVD-RW or DVD+R/DVD+RW, and may also include a hard drive to facilitate time-based capture. The removeable media is formatted with the UDF file system, and the video files recorded within that file system is DVD VR, at least in the case of DVD-RAM discs. A DVD-RAM disc formatted and recorded with a Panasonic DVR will mount on OS 10.4 as /volumes/DVD_VIDEO_RECORDER, but as read-only rather its true read-write; and there will be no access to subdirectories or files because of permissions like: ls -alR /volumes/DVD_VIDEO_RECORDER total 8 drwxrwxrwx 88 Dec 7 2003 . drwxrwxrwt 136 May 6 08:40 .. d--x--x--x 196 Dec 7 2003 DVD_RTAV /volumes/DVD_VIDEO_RECORDER/DVD_RTAV: total 8292552 d--x--x--x 196 Dec 7 2003 . drwxrwxrwx 88 Dec 7 2003 .. ---------- 82601 Jan 20 2004 VR_MANGR.BUP ---------- 82601 Jan 20 2004 VR_MANGR.IFO prwxrwxrwx 4245569536 Jan 20 2004 VR_MOVIE.VRO See also: UDF .dylib Dynamic Library, the type of file which contains compiled object code which can be linked against at runtime. /usr/lib/ contains dylib libraries. e-book reader for Macintosh As of 2013/01 there is no e-book reader app supplied with OS X. Some reasonable, free ones (available in the Mac App Store): BookReaderLite Bookle Kitabu Caveats on any such readers: - Being a separate app means that your e-books in iTunes are not visible to the app, and have to be brought to it. - DRM-protected e-books inherently cannot be read by such apps. eapolclient The eapolclient is used by Mac OS X to connect to 802.1x secured wireless networks. Easy Access OS 9 control panel facility for impaired people, to facilitate keystrokes and mouse movement. Was incorporated into OS 10.1 with new name Universal Access (q.v.). EFI Extensible Firmware Interface: the Open Firmware hardware facilitator which Apple has, in place of the ancient BIOS stuff that PCs continue to use. EFI makes it possible to perform nice things at boot time, like bring up a graphical disk chooser (Startup Manager) and have a Target Disk Mode. An EFI firmware install involves downloading the package via Software Update, then follow the on-screen instructions to shut down the computer, then press and hold the power button until its associated light flashes, at which point there will be "chimes" from the internal speaker, and a progress bar will appear in the bottom center of the display. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Extensible_Firmware_Interface Eject icon In OS 10.3, at least, an Eject icon (pyramid atop horizontal bar) appears in the Apple menu bar, allowing you to choose to open any of your removable media drives. Clicking on the icon will also reveal keyboard shortcuts (typically, F12 and Shift+F12). Eject icon in Menu Bar See: Menu Bar Eject at start-up time Hold down the (left) mouse button when starting your Mac, to eject a disc which happens to be in an optical media drive. Eject key delay Introduced in OS 10.4.9 to prevent unintended presses of the Eject key from opening the optical bay (when the OS isn't using it). Eject removable media (diskette, CD) During operation: Cmd+E At boot time: Hold down mouse button or laptop trackpad button. Before OS8, would leave ghost image on screen, for diskette copying: one had to do Cmd+Y (Put Away) to perform a full eject. With OS8, is a full eject; no ghost. Eject removable media tray In OSX, when the CD door is closed and there is no (mounted) disk in it, you can do one of the following to get the door to open and the tray to slide out: 1. Press the Media Eject key (a pyramid over a flat, on newer keyboards). Repeat to close. 2. Hold down F12 on older keyboards. Repeating the operation will cause the tray to slide in. El Capitan OS X 10.11, follow-on to Yosemite, introduced at WWDC 2015. Is enhancements to Yosemite, rather than dramatically new, to refine the experience and improve performance. Search is kind of textual Siri now, allowing natural language interaction. Metal graphics brought to Mac, to greatly accelerate screen performance. Split View conveniently provides a full screen view of two apps, side by side. Easily find the cursor/pointer on screen by shaking your fingers on Trackpad. The Notes app is greatly enhanced. The performance emphasis reflects Apple creating a solid foundation for OS 10.12 to have impressive new features. Next: Sierra eMac The commodity Mac designed for educational sales (K-12), with an affordable price point. It looked like the first iMac, being wedge-shaped with a flat CRT face, but was rather bulky. Emacs The powerful Unix text editor. It is most commonly run under X Windows. The default emacs on OS X is not the X-Windows version - it is the text based one (sometimes called Console Emacs). Probably the best X-Windows version of Emacs for the Mac is the Carbon Emacs package, available free on the Web. Emoji, in OS X All those little faces you can insert into your text. Show them via the keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + Command + Space Empty Trash The longstanding Mac way of finally disposing of file system items (files, directories, etc.) which have been the subject of recent Move To Trash operations. The Empty removes the directory (folder) pointers to the objects, and relinquishes the occupied space so that it may later be reused; but the space occupied by the objects remains intact, such that the "undelete" operations available in supplementary utilities could recover whatever portions of the data which had not yet been overlaid. In OSX there is also a Secure Empty Trash, which goes further, to obliterate the data space by overwriting it with random bits, making old data fully unrecoverable. Encrypting files OS X does not provide the feature of encrypting individual files. But, what you can do is employ a disk image to house some files, and encrypt that image. Run Disk Utility, select New Image, then choose AES-128 from the Encryption pull-down menu. Make the format read/write. Choose a reasonable size for the image. You then click Create, whereupon you will be asked for a password for the image. A .dmg file will be created. It is best not to click the checkbox "Remember password in my keychain": this forces all users of that disk image to enter a password when mounting it, adding security. To populate the disk image, mount it, then drag files into it: they are encrypted as they enter the image. To use files in the disk image, open them within the image, or drag them to a folder. Unmount the disk image when done, as an open image allows anyone sharing your Mac to access the contents. See also: FileVault. Encrypting information Small amounts of information (credit card numbers, etc.) may be encrypted by using helpful functionality in the Keychain. Launch the Keychain Access utility. Therein you will see the category Secure Notes. Choose File > New Secure Note Item, or with Secure Notes selected, click the plus sign. Type a name for the note that will help you remember what it is. Type or paste the information you want to preserve in the Note field: the info can be brief, or even a few megabytes. It may be best to create a separate keychain for storing your personal information, so that it can use a password which is separate from your Mac account login password, for that separate protection. A separate keychain will also make finding things easier, away from the clutter of web access certificates and the like. It is best to click the padlock icon to lock the keychain. Encryption See: FileVault. End-of-line character The Mac has traditionally used a Carriage Return (CR; ^M) to mark the end of each line of text. In contrast, Unix uses a Line Feed (LF; ^J) and Windows uses the two characters CR LF. Enhanced Dictation New with Mavericks, is a choice in System Preferences > Dictation & Speech, to be activated while you are connected to the Internet. Allows dictation without an active Internet connection. The first time you turn on Enhanced Dictation, OS X downloads additional content that allows Dictation to work offline. The amount of free disk space required to download this additional content varies depending on the language you are using. After the additional software downloads, you can use Dictation even when an Internet connection is not available. With Enhanced Dictation, text appears as you speak. This allows you to dictate continuously. Enhanced Dictation automatically stops listening when you switch to another window, or if you press the Fn key again, or when you click Done. Apple Article: ht5449 See also: Dictation Entourage Microsoft product: a personal information manager (PIM) that helps you handle e-mail messages, contacts, schedules, notes, documents and more from one central location. Its email supports POP, IMAP, and MSN Hotmail. Environment variables, per user Mac OS X supports the definition of environment variables in the scope of the current user session, to be observed by OS X applications. On login, the loginwindow application looks for a special property list file with the name environment.plist. This file must be located in a directory called .MacOSX at the root of the user$(B,$(B's home directory. The path to this file (which you must create) is as follows: ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist That file will contain like: ...preliminary stuff... <plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>YOUR_ENV_VAR_NAME</key> <string>Your_Env_Var_Value</string> </dict> </plist> This file may be edited via the Property List Editor developer tool GUI. (There is no command line tool for editing.) Changes are in effect the next time the user logs in. Note: This file is for the OS X environment, and not to be confused with the .tcshrc or like shell environment files in which such variables can be defined and be in effect. Note: There is no /etc/environment on OS X, as there is, for example in AIX. See also: 'defaults', 'plutil' commands Environment variables, per application There is an LSEnvironment spec in the application's Info.plist, Epoch The Macintosh epoch begins with year 1904. See also: 1904 /etc/hosts Standard Unix DNS lookup file, with IP addresses in the first column, hostnames in the second column. Is actually: /private/etc/hosts (/etc is a symlink to /private/etc) After adding an entry to this file, you may be frustrated to find that the command you use to then access that host by name do not see the change. This is due to the way that some commands operate: they disregard /etc/host.conf and /etc/nsswitch.conf rules and go directly at a network name server. Such commands are 'host', 'dig', 'nslookup'. Instead, use 'ping', which is known to follow the rules. In OS 10.5+, I found that the action of updating this file, by itself has no effect upon lookups: you may need to additionally do: dscacheutil -flushcache or sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder to flush your Mac's DNS cache. Notes: There is also a dscl Directory Services command line command for updating the Hosts plist XML file; but that is extraneous in this, as is the related 'dscacheutil -flushcache. There is also a HostsWidget - which I found neither updates /etc/hosts nor the Directory Services area: useless. /etc/sysctl.conf Boot-time file to supply various system control settings. Refer to /usr/include/sys/sysctl.h for descriptions. The format of this file is much like shell, with # for comments. Do 'sysctl -a' to see prevailing settings. Events Some of Apple's events: 2013/10/22 iPad, etc. Yuerba Buena Center for the Arts Exchange support See: iOS Exchange support ExFAT Windows-compatible file system format in Disk Utility. Is an extension of FAT, optimized for flash drives, allowing much larger file sizes than FAT32. See also: MS-DOS (FAT) eXodus Xwindows software for the MacOS, originally from White Pine Software, which then competed with MacX. Later became a product of PowerLan USA. Utilizes their TunnelMate SSH adjunct product. (TunnelMate must be in the eXodus folder, with exactly that name.) Much superior to the freebee XonX and OroborosX combination. Installer trial download: ftp://ftp.powerlan-usa.com/pub/ downloads/eXodus/eXodus_Installer.hqx http://www.powerlan-usa.com/exodus/ eXodus_Installer.hqx Cursor movement speed is controlled via the Mac System Preferences, Keyboard, Key Repeat Rate. Recommended XDMCP settings: Host: (a good XDM host) Mode: Query End-of-Session Mode: Start a New Sess Enable Keep Alive Support (Don't expect XDM to work off-campus.) Expose (French word) OS 10.3+ feature to make it easy to find a desired window among many that are open in an application, or among applications. Pressing F9 shrinks all application windows enough to make it possible to identify each window. Pressing F10 shrinks all windows within the current application enough to make it possible to identify each of that application's windows. (If the appl has only one window open, pressing F10 will leave that window as-is, and will darken all appls behind it, so that the single window stands out.) Pressing F11 causes the underlying desktop to be exposed, by pushing all other windows to the edges of the screen. Holding down the Shift key while performing any of the above actions causes them to be in slow motion. The power of Aqua... The expose function is quite sophisticated, as evidenced when multiple monitors are in use, where the operation will operate on the windows which are specific to each monitor. Extensions (Disabled) Name of folder into which the Extensions Manager moves files from the Extensions folder. Extensions Manager OS 8 means for managing Extensions. To have it appear at boot time. hold down the shift key at that time, whereupon the EM will interrupt the boot: close it to resume; or, to restart the computer, command-option-click the EM close square. Eyes Free Announced in summer 2012: A program that more tightly integrates iOS devices into cars, allowing users to issue voice commands that are answered audibly without even lighting up the device's screen. At the 2013 WWDC (June 10), in Eddy Cue's presentation, Apple announced that 12 automakers that will launch the Eyes Free system in the next 12 months. They are, in the left-to-right, top-to-bottom order shown in the keynote display: Honda, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Ferrari, Chevrolet, Infiniti, Kia, Hyundi, Volvo, Acura, Opel, Jaguar. (And there may be others.) The system will integrate Siri from the iPhone and iPad with Bluetooth voice command systems with the hands-free button on the steering wheel. (Note: Eddy Cue joined Ferrari's board of directors in November, 2012.) Was released 2014/03 as CarPlay (q.v.). EyeTV HD Circa 20010 Elgato product: a small box to which a component video plus stereo audio connection could be made (as from your cable provider's HD box), with an output USB connection to your Mac. There is no HDMI capability (ostensibly to avoid licensing costs). Although input is analog, the quality is very good, and more than acceptable for DVR type usage. (For exceptional programming, most of us later purchase the provider's Blu-ray release.) The box is not directly operated: you use the EyeTV 3 software to control it. (The software, which comes with the box and can always be downloaded from the vendor site, requires an activation key.) Recording format: EyeTV HD only captures in the H.264 format. The audio is stereo AAC. Resolutions match the original video source, up to 1080i. Input: 480i, 480p, 576i, 576p, 720p, and 1080i video signals (SD sources via Component, Composite/RCA or S-Video inputs, HD sources via Component) Output: H.264 Main Profile, VBR 15 Mbps max., 1920)I×1080 pixels at 30 fps max., Audio:-A AAC-LC, stereo, 160 Kbps, 48 kHz QuickTime export formats: DV DV 16:9 HDV 720p HDV 1080i QuickTime Movie MPEG-4 H.264 Divx AVI Elgato was bought out by Geniatech. EyeTV hybrid Circa 2009 Elgato product which was essentially a small USB stick with a coaxial connection to your cable provider's standard definition box to your Mac. F8 Function key to invoke OS 10.5 Spaces. F9 Function key to invoke OS 10.4+ Expose to show thumbnails of all windows. F10 Function key to invoke OS 10.4+ Expose to show thumbnails of the windows of the current application. F11 Function key to invoke OS 10.4+ Expose to move all windows out of the way to fully expose the desktop. F12 Function key to invoke OS 10.4+ display of Widgets. FaceTime In iOS4, first on the iPhone 4, a new means for video chatting, via WiFi, initially only between iPhone 4 users. FaceTime uses the small-hole microphone located at the top of the unit, rather than the main microphone at the bottom, which is for cellular calls. In its initial incarnation, invocation is awkward: You have to activate it via Settings > Phone, then drill into the Contacts app, where there then is a FaceTime button in each person's entry. One would expect this to have been implemented by way of adding iChat to the iPhone, but not at this time. In his June 8, 2010 keynote at WWDC, Steve Jobs said that, the next day, Apple would be taking FaceTime to standards organizations such that it can be universally adopted. FaceTime camera As of 2010/10/20, with the introduction of FaceTime software to the Mac, the camera built into the upper frame of MacBook and iMac computers is now being called the FaceTime camera, rather than the iSight camera. FaceTime for Mac Introduced in the 2010/10/20 Back to the Mac presentation. Available for download in beta form. FaceTime HD Evolutionary improvement on the original VGA (640x480) FaceTime video camera, found only on higher end Macintoshes as of May 2012. 720p video. FaceTime over 3G Announced at WWDC 2012, in iOS 6. Req: iPhone 4S; iPad 2 or 3 with 3G FairPlay See: iTunes digital rights mechanism Fat binary The name for the application composite which carried both a Motorola 68K binary and PowerPC binary in the 1980s period when there was that Macintosh transition. Apple introduced the dual binary concept during this period, and carried it forward into the transition to Intel processors and 32-bit vs 64-bit systems. This is in stark contrast with Windows, which had no such approach, making for an onerous process for both developers and customers. See also: Universal Binary (q.v.). FAT file system OS X can format a partition in Microsoft FAT format, and can read and write files in it. See also: NTFS Faxing (OS X) In Printer Setup Utility, Preferences, Faxing .fdd Filename extension for a Parallels floppy disk drive file image. Virtual machines treat FDD images as real diskettes. It is actually a .dmg disk image file created by Disk Utility, thereafter having its extension portion renamed. Federighi, Craig 2013 - Craig Federighi is the senior vice president of Software Engineering at Apple Inc. Fetch (FTP client software) FTP client for personal computers. Close the connection by closing the transfer window, or quit Fetch by choosing the File > Quit command. The Mac version stores the server host's ID key in .ssh/known_hosts. Connections can be established without creating a Shortcut. Deleting a Shortcut does not remove the host ID key from .ssh/known_hosts. Fetch is supposed to handle a host key change - but does not: you get error "SFTP connection to ______ could not be opened because the SFTP server rejected your authentication information." You have to physically remove the known_hosts file. Fetch vs. Push for iOS email You can set up "fetch" on your iOS device to check for mail... Every 15 Minutes Every 30 Minutes Hourly Manually. Fetch involves periodic polling, entering into sporadic sessions with the server, thus being easy on the battery. Note that there is no option for tailoring the fetch to a certain number of minutes. There is also a Push choice. It is easily confusing if you don't understand the technologies (particularly as the iOS configuration choice says "New data will be pushed to your iPhone from the server"). First, by itself it does *not* cause mail to be pushed from the server to your device. Its purpose is to render your device in tune with the push email service provided by *some* mail servers (Exchange ActivSync, Google Sync, MobileMe, iCloud). In that regard, your device knows which server types do Push and which don't, such that turning on Push is effective only for servers which do Push, as you can verify by going into the Advanced section of that configuration area. The Push choice on your device causes the device to maintain a constant session with the mail server, so that when the server receives a new mail message for you, its architectural Push functionality will be able to immediately convey the message to you. Obviously, maintaining constant communication sessions is hard on the battery, particularly with cellular. Further, with Push, the device has to ping the server periodically to assure that the connection is still viable: connections can become unviable because of server firewall timeouts and IP address changes in cellular roaming. Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data. File, password protect As of Tiger, you can allow access to files by user (achieve via ACL). This can be set up via Get Info, under Sharing & Permissions, where in adding a user (New Person), you can define a password for accessing the file. File and folder tips The Mac OS has a lot of little productivity aids which make it so easy to use... - By quickly double-clicking a file, you cause its associated application to open, to operate on the file. - You can rename a file or folder or disk by selecting its icon, then press Return, then edit the name as desired. Or, you can single-click the name, wait a second, then click it again. - The folder view can be sorted by Name, Date Modified, etc. by clicking the column header: click it again to sort in the opposite order. - To make frequently used files stand out, do Control + Click (right-click) on a name, and choose a color label. - When looking at a folder, select multiple contiguous entries by dragging the pointer across them; or, click the first one then do Shift + Click on the last one. To select discontiguous entries, use Command + Click. If you selected one you really didn't want, another Command + Click on it will remove it. - Within the same disk, dragging a file moves it across folders: across disks, dragging copies the file. Within the same disk, hold down the Option key before clicking and dragging to copy the file. To make a copy of a file in place, do Command + D. To copy a file in a disjointed way, select the file, do Command + C to cause the OS to remember it, then navigate to a folder somewhere else in the file system and do Command + V to paste the copy there. - You can drag a file down into the depths of a folder hierarchy with minimal effort, via the implicit feature called spring-loaded folders. Simply drag the file over the high level folder, hold it hovering there for a moment, and the folder will automatically open, whereupon you can place the file there, or go deeper. - When in a filename or similar box, you can press the Up Arrow key to shoot to the beginning of the text in the box, and Down Arrow to shoot to the end. - When entering a folder for a given file or area of files, type the first few characters of the name, and you will be immediately positioned to that alphabetical position. - To quickly review a bunch of GIF, JPEG, or similar images in a folder, simply select those multiple files and then do Command + O to open them all at once, in the Preview app, where you can then scroll through them. And, while staying in Preview, you can drag some more image files into the "drawer" portion of Preview to additionally see those. - You can drag a file over to and onto the top of an application icon to cause the app to open and make use of the file. With Mail, the file will become an attachment. - When doing a Save As, to create a variation of a given file name, first click on the down-pointing triangle which is to the right of the Save As filename field, to expose a folder view. If your new name is similar to an existing file in that folder, you can save typing by clicking on the gray, similar name, which causes that name to be copied to the filename box, where you can change the couple of characters to render the new, unique name. - When you're in a folder and want to know where you are in the folders hierarchy, you can hold down the Command key and then click on the little folder icon at the top center of the window - and you can step up in the hierarchy by moving the pointer to the level you want to go to, then let go. - You can move, round-robin, around the folder windows by holding down the Command key and then press the ` (back tick) key at the upper left of the keyboard. (This also works in the multiple windows that an application may have open.) To move among the Finder and applications, hold down the Command key and press the Tab key. - By quickly double-clicking the top of a window frame, you cause that window to be sent to the Dock, where it is out of the way and will not participate in round-robin window traversals. Single-click the window image in the Dock to bring that window back into action. - To the left side of a folder window is the Sidebar, used to contain frequently accessed folder names. You can add a folder to the sidebar by simply dragging it in. Drag it out to remove it. A frequently used printer could also be added to the sidebar, by first creating a Desktop Printer icon, then dragging that to the Sidebar. - To search for a file by name, do Command + F, then go into the first oval and select Name. To search for a file by contained text, use the Spotlight oval which appears with a magnifying glass at the top right of a window. - In Unix, remove a file from a directory by doing like 'rm myfile'. The file's data will remain in disk blocks, however, until overwritten some time in the future. To instead securely remove a file, use the 'srm' command, which clears the disk blocks. File(name) extensions As in the .rtf at the end of file name MyTextEditDocument.rtf. OS X uses the extension to identify the file type, as an accommodation to PC conventions. Mac OS 9 was able to associate files and their applications via four-character Type and Creator codes, embedded in the file. In fact, Type and Creator still exist in many OS X files, and will be used in place of the extension, if found. Apple formalized handling of file types through special data identifiers called Uniform Type Identifiers (UTIs). Each UTI provides a unique identifier for a particular file type, data type, directory or bundle type, and so on. File handling can thus be determined according to filename extension or MIME type. File formats See Apple site article 24464 "Common Internet file formats". File Sharing In Mac OS X, the means of performing bulk data transfer across computers. Operates by making your Mac a file server, at least for the duration of the transfer. Activate in your system by going into System Preferences, select Sharing, then turn File Sharing On. Other Macs on the same local network should automatically see your system, in the left pane of Finder windows, under SHARED; or, they can go into their Go menu, select Connect to Server and pick your system. Then they can open your Public folder and drag files into the Drop Box folder therein. By default, File Sharing employs Apple Filing Protocol (AFP). You can go into the Advanced options and instead use FTP (passwords not encrypted) or SMB. You cannot rename shared disks when File Sharing is active. File Sharing, in iTunes In iTunes 9.1 you can copy app files from and to your iOS device. Attach the device to your Mac with its USB cable, select the device in the left pane of iTunes, then click on the Apps tab and scroll down to the File Sharing area of that screen. There you will see a list of the apps which support file sharing, and can thereby copy files in either direction. Apple article HT4094 describes File Sharing. Related: HT4088 File Sharing speed-up Create a RAM disk and locate the shared files in it. File transfer Transferring files between a Mac and another Mac or PC can be accomplished in quite a number of ways... - Media: Create a CD-R or DVD-RAM disc, or use a USB flash drive. - Bluetooth: Where the two computers are in the same room. (This is slow.) - iChat: Employ a Bonjour connection for fast, local networking in the same vicinity; or go over the Internet via AIM. Simplest usage is to drag the file onto the buddy you want to send to. Or, in iChat, go into the Buddies menu and Send File. - File Sharing: The Mac-to-Mac cross-mounting of volumes, at any distance. - FTP or scp: To send the file over the Internet via common protocols, where you are allowed access to the receiving system. - PowerBook: You can connect a PowerBook to another Mac and have the PowerBook operate as a hard drive to that Mac. FileMaker The historic Macintosh database program from Apple. The current originator company name is FileMaker, Inc., which is a subsidiary of Apple. In 1995, FileMaker Pro 3 transformed FileMaker Pro into a relational database program, with the ability to link and display data across different database files. As of FileMaker Pro 7, multiple database tables can be in one file. FileMaker, Inc. Software subsidiary of Apple, specializing in database applications. Obviously, their principal, signature product is FileMaker. As of 2007/11 they are also producing Bento, a personal database. WWW.FILEMAKER.COM FileVault Mac OS X feature for encrypting your account's home folder. Activate via the Security pane of System Preferences. FileVault creates a separate volume for your home folder and encrypts the contents of it. The data in your home folder is encoded and your information is secure if your computer is lost or stolen. FileVault uses the latest government-approved encryption standard, the Advanced Encryption Standard with 128-bit keys (AES-128). Thereafter, you'll need either your FileVault password or your master password (which you can set in the same place) to access that data. The feature was added by Apple for US military use. This feature is perhaps best used on a laptop, in case stolen. Fully consider the ramifications of using it: if you lose your password or something goes wrong with the software, no further access to the data is possible. Another approach, to protect a collection of files, is to store them in an encrypted disk image. Run Disk Utility, select New Image, then choose AES-128 from the Encryption pull-down menu. Final Cut Express Video production tool, situated below the high-end Final Cut Pro, and well above iLife's iMovie, in terms of cost and features. Final Cut Express 4 was released 2007/11/15. $199. Final Cut Express HD The next level above iMovie. Final Cut Pro Apple's premiere movie editing application. It originated as an application called KeyGrip, developed by Randy Ubillos, which was sold to Apple and became the basis for FCP. Version 10 (Final Cut Pro X) was a total rethink of the application, perhaps signifying Apple fully making the application their own. Find command, optimizing OS X: When you use its built-in Find function, Mac OS X v10.2 searches by default in over a dozen languages besides English. To speed up your search, choose Preferences in the Finder menu and click the Select button at the very bottom of the dialog. In the ensuing dialog, turn off the languages that you don't need searched, and it will speed up the indexing of your content, helping you Find even faster. See also: mdfind Find My Friends iOS 5 added feature, for friends or family to be able to locate each other. One can opt in or out, and specify a time limit on findability. However, only one device per Apple ID can use Find My Friends at a time - so this would not work for families having one account and multiple devices. Find Out How New subdivision of the Apple website, as of 2008/01, providing tutorials on getting into and best using Apple products. Finder Early versions identified the authors on a splash screen: Bruce Horn, and Steve Capps. Finder window, background image You can set a chosen image as the background of a Finder window... Open the folder in icon view. Right-click in the window and select Show View Options. Click on Background: Picture. Drag a jpeg or similar into the picture frame. (This is a bit tricky: if you click into a different folder to get at the image, that changes the focus to that window instead. Better to locate the image you want, ahead of time, to be able to select and drag it without causing that other window to be activated.) Alternately: Double-click in the frame, which causes a file selection window to open. To later remove the image: Show the picture frame, per above, select the frame, then press Delete. Consider clicking "Always open in icon view" to always have your image seen when the folder is opened. Special considerations: The above technique alone is fine if the window remains on your Mac. If the window is to go to another Mac, as for example being in a .dmg as part of a software distribution, then you need to realize that the picture specification is a *reference* to an image file in your local file system. If you simply took that prepared .dmg to another Mac, the background image would be absent. For the background image to always appear in a .dmg, it has to reside in the .dmg; but you don't want the file to intrusively show up as an icon or filename in the window. One way to deal with this is via the Berkeley Unix "hidden file" convention, where a file system object with a period in front of it is not to be ordinarily revealed. To set this up: Have your window in icons mode. Drag the image to the dmg as any .jpg or .tiff file name. In the Finder's View menu, choose Show View Options. Under Background, choose Picture. Double-click in the picture box, navigate to your image file, and choose it. Now we want to make the image file's icon invisible... Go into Terminal to get a command line and do cd /Volumes/<YourDMGname> to situate to where the image file is. Now put a dot in front of its name, like: mv background.tiff .background.tiff As soon as you do that, the background image file disappears from the window. Quit Terminal. You now have a neat, embedded backgroud image in your dmg. (There is another, more complex way to render the image icon invisible, via the developer tool command: /Developer/usr/bin/SetFile -a V <File_path> but the dot method is simpler, and does not require having Developer Tools installed.) HOWEVER: In Snow Leopard (OS 10.6), Apple changed the Finder to save view options in a new format - which older OS X releases don't understand. Thus, the background image you create on a modern Mac will not be visible when the dmg is mounted on a 10.5 Macintosh. Finder window, new OS X: File menu -> New Finder Window Firewall Controlled in the Security portion of System Preferences. Governs incoming connections. Its orientation is to deny access to all services by default, thereafter allowing you to allow access to selected services, such as Web sharing, file sharing, remote access, and FTP. Open ports by clicking on the New button in the Firewall window. Firewall, by command The /sbin/ipfw command is available. Do 'man ipfw'. 'sudo ipfw list' will show you the actual settings that Sharing choices have implemented. Logging: /var/log/system.log "Firewall unavailable" Message seen when going into the Sharing panel, Firewall tab, to adjust the Mac OS X firewall. Also see intercept message "Other firewall software is running on your computer. To change the Apple firewall settings, turn off the other firewall software." Seen to occur when Virtual PC is also running, which seems to be causing this: go into VPC's Get Info and observe the IP ADDRESS value, which may be 192.168.131.65, which is a private subnet addr. FireWire Apple-invented peer-to-peer serial communications networking technology, formalized as standard IEEE-1394. Advice: Having multiple devices active (alive) on the same FireWire network can result in aberrant behavior. For example, an iSight camera is attached to a G5's frontal FireWire port, and not in use, and then a DVD-RAM drive is attached to the FireWire port on the back of the G5: copying files to or from the DVD-RAM then results in odd errors; or complete file transfers, but the files are corrupt when later use of them is attempted on another system. Firmware, Macintosh All Macintoshes have firmware, resident in a small amount of flash storage, which governs system operation at boot time. It is sometimes referred to as Boot ROM. The firmware which ships on a given Mac is highly tailored to that specific model, and configuration. For example, if a given Mac tower computer is released at one time with a uniprocessor version and a dual processor version, each will have firmware tailored to that version. The firmware in the Mac may be fine for the life of the product such that Apple may not have to issue updates for it. But sometimes there may be compelling issues (e.g., fans speeding up needlessly) which calls for a firmware update, which Apple may develop and issue. The firmware *might* be released via Software Update; but sometimes it is left to the customer to go to the Apple Support pages to see if there is a firmware update for their Mac model. Firmware level, Macintosh Go into System Profiler and click on Hardware. There, the Boot ROM Version is that of the firmware, the numbering being like 5.1.4f0 . Note that firmware will not necessarily come via Software Update: you may have to go into Apple's Support pages and look around. Firmware update (G4 tower) From time to time, Apple will make new system firmware available for your type of computer, which you can download and then install as follows: With the machine shut down, hold in the Mac's Programmer's Button and press the Power button to start the system. Continue holding the Programmer's Button until you hear a long tone from the speaker, at which point you can release the button. The computer will display a progress bar at the bottom of an otherwise empty screen, then reboot, whereupon you will hopefully get a boxed message like: "Your Power Mac G4's firmware has been successfully updated to version 4.2.8f1!". Firmware update (PowerBook) From time to time, Apple will make new system firmware available for your type of computer, which you can download and then install as follows: With the machine shut down, hold down the Command (Apple) key and then press and hold down the Power button to start the computer. Continue holding both keys until you hear a long tone from the speaker, at which point you can release them. The computer will display a progress bar at the bottom of an otherwise empty screen, then reboot, whereupon you will hopefully get a boxed message like: "Your PowerBook's firmware has been successfully updated to version 4.1.8f5!". Firmware updates Can be found in the Support area, like http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1031 The Software Update process should itself find them for you. You can search for firmware updates by seeking "FW" in support.apple.com, as in "27-inch iMac EFI FW Update 1.0". Ref: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4125 "About EFI firmware updates". That articles notes: "The hard disk in an Intel-based Mac must be formatted with the GUID partition scheme to apply a firmware update. Intel-based iMac computers are shipped this way from the factory. If you have reformatted your hard disk, you should check which scheme your hard disk is currently using before applying a firmware update. See Article HT2434, 'Firmware updates for Intel-based Macs require a GUID partition scheme' for more information. If you try to apply the update to a hard disk that utilizes any formatting scheme other than the GUID partition, the update will be unsuccessful." Firmware updating: CAUTION! Updating firmware elevates your computer hardware to a new level. This may render your computer unbootable from your original install CDs, which could result in your computer becoming unusable if the system software update that typically accompanies such a firmware update fails, leaving you with a corrupted version of the OS. In consideration, you should not proceed with an network-installed Apple Software Update that involves firmware changes unless you have current-level install software available for potential recovery needs. Fiscal quarters Apple's first fiscal quarter is the fourth calendar quarter. First Aid OS X: A tab in the Disk Utility First Cut Movie editing application for the Mac, by Apple's Chief Architect of Video Applications Randy Ubillos, which evolved into iMovie '08 - which was controversial in being so different from preceding iMovie versions. Fiscal year Apple's fiscal year begins in October of each year. Fix permissions Was a capability in Disk Utility through OS X 10.10. No longer present in El Capitan (10.11): Apple says that permissions are automatically fixed overnight or when new software is installed. fix_prebinding A Mac OS X daemon that is launched whenever a binary is executed that has out-of-date dynamic linking prebinding hints. It is supposed to scan the binary and dependent libraries, and update the hints in the binary. The benefit is faster launch times the next time it is run. If the environment variable DYLD_NO_FIX_PREBINDING is exported in the environment, the prebinding update won't be attempted. BTW, If you leave it exported all the time, you may find Mac OS X starts to slow down noticeably. Flash Adobe's proprietary Web animation package. Early on, when Flash was owned by Macromedia, Apple adopted it. But, over the intervening years, Apple and its customers suffered from erratic release and support of Flash on the Mac platform from its provider. This left a very bad taste, and Apple got disgusted with Flash, instead recommending that developers use Java and other open software instead. This is the most compelling reason why Flash is not on the iPhone. On Thursday, April 29, 2010, Steve Jobs published his landmark "Thoughts on Flash" open letter on the Apple site, proclaiming it an obsolete tool, and infeasible on mobile devices. At the time, Adobe vehemently disagreed. But they never could produce a viable Flash for mobile devices. On Wednesday, November 9, 2011, Adobe issued a statement saying that they would stop trying to develop Flash for mobile browsers, instead focusing on HTML 5 - exactly what Steve Jobs had been saying should be done. Flash, stop using for YouTube on Mac See: YouTube HTML5 Video Player Flashback Malware which exploits a security flaw in Java in order to install itself on Macs, to grab passwords and other information from users through their Web browser and other applications such as Skype. The user has to proactively install it, as enticed by a malicious website which may claim it to be a Flash update. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5244 Flashing question mark Means that your Mac can't start because it doesn't recognize the start-up disk. Has in the past been caused by a defect in Apple's Drive Setup, their utility to format hard drives or update the driver on the disk. Common cures for the flashing question mark: 1. Re-bless the system folder: Start the Mac with an alternate disk. If the icon for the problem disk appears on the desktop, back up your critical files on that disk and then open the start-up disk's System folder and remove the System file. Close the System folder. Put the System file back into the System folder. 2. Zap the PRAM: Hold down Cmd-Option-P-R at start-up until the Mac restarts twice. Then release the keys and let start-up proceed. 3. Run Disk First Aid. 4. Use Norton Utilities or MacTools pro to check the disk. 5. Reinstall the system software. "Flat" movies Macintosh files consist of two parts: a Resource fork and a Data fork. File systems on other platforms do not have Resource components. Thus, to migrate Mac files to those platforms, files must have their resource and data components combined, or "flattened". MoviePlayer provides a Save As facility to achieve this. Flat Package Format Refers to the creation of installer packages via PackageMaker, where the minimum target system is OS 10.5. In this format, installation elements are bundled into a single file, rather than a directory as in the past. This file is actually a xar archive. (You can no longer view the package's contents from the Finder using the Show Package Contents menu. The Flat Package Editor, lets you view the package's contents now.) Packaging as a file makes distribution much easier, because it is a single file. Before, distributing a bundle directory was awkward, as you would have to either create a zip file from the assemblage or put the bundle into a disk image file. Software made available in the Mac App Store is in Flat Package Format. Though the flat package may be able to stand alone, it may be housed in a disk image file so as to be able to add other elements such as graphics around it. See also: mpkg; .pkg file Floppy diskette image, create You may occasionally need a floppy disk image file, as for Parallels VM work. Create such via the following steps: In Terminal, issue the command: dd if=/dev/zero bs=1024 count=1440 > floppy.img Launch Disk Utility and open that img file from the File menu. Select Erase. For Format, choose "MS-DOS (FAT)". The resulting img file will have a kind of NDIF Disk Image as seen in the Finder; when mounted. A Get Info on the mounted floppy volume will show a format of MS-DOS (FAT12). Floppy diskettes and OS X OS X has gone beyond old floppy diskette technology: If you happen to have OS X installed on an older Mac having a floppy drive, upon inserting a floppy nothing will happen. Reboot in OS 9 to have inserted floppies mounted and usable. FLV Flash Video file. See: QuickTime extensions Flyover iOS 6 Maps app feature for viewing cities in realistic 3-D, where you can move around each city. Requires at least an A5 chip, so works in iPhone 4S+, iPad 2+. Flyover locations: http://www.apple.com/ios/feature-availability/ See also: City Tour Folder, open in Finder, from Terminal If you're in the Terminal utility and would like to cause a certain folder to be displayed in the Finder, just do open <FolderName> A simple example is: open . to open the current directory in the Finder. Folder background color OS X: View menu -> Show View Options. Folder icon You will have noticed that some folder icons are "plain" while others have special symbols, particularly those from software vendors. A folder's image can be changed... Do Get Info on the folder. At the upper left you will see a small image of the folder. Click on the icon: this will cause a blue outline to appear around the icon. To change the icon, first copy a desired image to the clipboard, then click on the Get Info folder image and perform paste. (Note that dragging an image file into that Get Info area does not work.) Note that there is an img2icns app on the web to convert images to .icns files, for icons usage. The Apple site has icons: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/ icons_screensavers/ Folder sizes As you've no doubt seen, in the Finder, a folder is listed with its Size being "--", which means "not reported". Why? Because doing so would necessitate delving into the folder contents, which could take considerable time, and slow down your system. But if you really want to see folder sizes, as when doing some looksee at what's consuming your disk space, you can do so by going into the View menu to choose Show View Options and therein check the box titled "Calculate all sizes". Font, identify Sometimes you are browsing a web page or PDF and would like to know what a given display font is - but the application provides no way of identifying it. A convenient way to identify a font is to open TextEdit and bring up the Font Panel (Format->Font->Show Fonts); then Select a sampling of the text from the original application and Paste it into TextEdit. Select that text in TextEdit and the fonts window instantly displays its characteristics. (You can verify that this is working by selecting text which is obviously Courier, as seen in computer text output examples.) The font choices you see listed in TextEdit reflect the fonts installed on your system, being equal to the fonts displayed by the Font Book application. The source font you are trying to identify may not be in your font collection: TextEdit will generally reflect the font family, then, but not necessarily the style. For example, a source font is Helvetica Condensed, but the best you have is Helvetica. Font, system Apple used Lucida Grande as the standard system font from 10.0 to 10.9. The system font was changed to Helvetica Neue in 10.10 Yosemite. Size 12 is common. Helvetiva has been criticized because its minimalist style leaves characters such as i, l, and 1 difficult to distinguish, particularly at small sizes. Apple has reportedly been working on a new system font called Apple Sans, which may in fact be the San Francisco fornt that Apple designed for use on the Apple Watch, where letters are particularly small. That has two flavors: San Francisco Text font for text that is 19 points or smaller; San Francisco Display font for text that is 20 points or larger. The font's major feature is more space between letters, which aids legibility. (This San Francisco is not to be confused with the whimsical "ransom note" San Francisco font that came with the original Macintosh.) Font Book OS X 10.3+ application for readily previewing, installing, organizing, and managing your fonts as well as create and edit font collections. As soon as you launch Font Book, you will see the available fonts in your system. From this window, you can turn the font family on (enable) and off (disable) as well as preview it - and remove it. Installing fonts: Can be done from Font Book itself, via its File menu item "Add Fonts", or by opening the font file itself, where OS X will display a sample of the font and provide an Install button. Note that, by default, the install will remove the original file, having moved it to the desired Library/Fonts folder in the fonts hierarchy. This is good in that it helps reduce pointless clutter. Preferences allows the operation to be a copy rather than a move. (You can always go into the folder and make a copy.) A dot (bullet) at the right side of a listed font indicates that duplicate copies of the font are installed, where the Edit menu item "Resolve Fonts" can fix this. Replaces 10.2's Character Pallette applet. See also: Fonts (OS X) Font Collections Mac OS X comes with fonts in the following collections: Classic, Fixed Width, Fun, Modern, PDF, Web Font management See the interactive tutorial: "Font Management In Mac OS X" http://www.apple.com/pro/training/fonts/ Font Panel A font selection control panel which developers may include in their Mac applications. Can be seen in TextEdit. Best described in Apple's "Fonts in Mac OS X" Font scaling, relative Let's say you're in TextEdit, viewing a document with a variety of type sizes, and you want to make them all proportionally smaller. In using the Font panel (Cmd+T), this could be tedious, in selecting each font individually, and then applying a new absolute size, hoping to get all the fonts to some proportionally smaller size. A far easier method is to select all the text you want to change, and in the Font panel's Size box, enter "/2" to cut in half, or "0.75" to make 3/4 the size. Fonts (OS X) The system searches for fonts in the following order, top down: Type of Use Located Here ----------- ------------------------ Application In the appl's own folder /Library/ Application Support/ <AppName>/Fonts User ~/Library/Fonts Computer /Library/Fonts/ Network /Network/Library/Fonts/ System /System/Library/Fonts/ Classic /System Folder/Fonts/ Manage fonts with Font Book app. www.extensis.com/products/2d.html www.uwec.edu/help/MacOSX/fonts.htm Note that the fonts provided with OS X are TrueType. Never install fonts into /System/Library/Fonts/ yourself: that area is reserved for the system. Ref: Apple's "Fonts in Mac OS X" See also: Apple Type Services (ATS) Fonts, fixed-width Andale Mono, Courier, Monaco, VT100 Force Quit The means for forcing an application to quit, as when it's hopelessly looping. It can be invoked from the Apple menu, or hold down the Option and Command keys and press Esc. By default, the current application is selected in the list. The selection list can be bypassed by instead using the key sequence of Option + Command + Shift + Esc, to immediately act on the current application. Force Touch New touch interface technology introduced on the 2015 MacBook's trackpad. It adds dimensionality to the interface, where you can touch for traditional actions, but press (harder touch) for "deeper" functions. An example is where you are in a text document (e.g., web page) and want to see the definition of a word, by performing a force touch on it. Forked file structure In Mac OS 9 and earlier (but not OS X): a way of storing information unique to Mac OS computers. Every Mac OS file would consist of at least one of two separate pieces of information, or forks: a data fork and often a resource fork. A file's data fork holds raw data in an organized but relatively unintelligible format. The resource fork consists of all the interfaces, dialog boxes, warning boxes, and graphical user interface (GUI) information necessary to format and present the data in a familiar and Mac OS-like way. OS X dispensed with that, to instead go with industry standards, which identify file type, and imply handling, by means of filename extension (e.g., .txt) and MIME types (as in mail attachments), for developers to work with. Format disk (OS X) Use the Disk Utility utility. See also: diskutil Formula creation When authoring a mathematical document you may need to create a math formula for the content. That's awkward to do in a text editor; but is readily accomplished by using the Grapher app in the Mac OS Utilities folder. Thereby you create an image which can be readily pasted into the document, and nicely scaled. Forstall, Scott Apple's Senior Vice President of iOS Software. Forstall had originally joined NeXT, Inc. after college and came to Apple with Steve Jobs after Apple's acquisition of NeXT in 1996. Viewed from outside the company, Scott's dynamism made him seemed to be in line to be the next CEO. On October 29, 2012 Forstall was forced out of Apple on the basis of cumulative dissatisfaction with him. His management style was abrasive and assumptive, resulting in a lot of political disruption within the company. He was responsible for portraying Siri and Apple's Maps as fully ready, when they weren't, resulting in considerable embarrassment for the company. Scott's insistence upon skeuomorphic design in iOS apps rankled Apple designers as being so non-Apple in style. CEO Tim Cook had to write a public apology for the Maps debacle when Scott refused to do so, which was the final straw. FrameMaker drops Mac On April 21, 2004, Adobe discontinued FrameMaker for the Macintosh operating system. Freehand Macromedia drawing package. Saves files in proprietary format. Competitor: Illustrator Front Row The combination of the small remote control (called Apple Remote) and the OS X software which presents your Music, Photos, Videos, and DVD playback. Underneath, the following applications are run, respectively: iTunes, iPhoto, QuickTime Player, DVD Player. Coupled with Bonjour local networking, FR can sniff out music and photos on any nearby Mac or Windows computer set up for sharing. Front Row provided a media interface to your Mac which looked like the early Apple TV interface. In that few people watch programs on their Mac, FR waned in popularity, with Apple discontinuing supplying a remote control with iMacs after the white plastic generation. FR was supplied through Mac OS 10.6: as of Lion it is no longer supplied. FTP, Passive mode control In System Preferences, under Network Proxies; checkbox "Use Passive FTP Mode (PASV)". OS X uses Passive mode by default. You will notice that the web browsers that run in OS X have no FTP controls... because they use the OS X setting. FTP client OS X has two... Its 'ftp' command line client is usable, but primitive and insecure. It does support bi-directional transfer, however. Note that you can use FTP in the Finder: under the Go menu, choose "Connect to Server" and then enter the URL of the FTP server (ftp://<ServerNetName>). You can then gain read access to that remote data (but not upload files). You can likewise enter an ftp:// URL in Safari. This is suitable for use with "public" FTP sites, for downloads, but should not be used for sites requiring authenticated access or uploads. NCFTP is a satisfying command line FTP client, which you can download off the Web. It provides command line completion and other aids. Again, this is plain FTP, and thus insecure. OS X provides an 'sftp' command, which is based upon SSH and thus secure. It is best for authenticated access. FTP client software available free FileZilla: Generally excellent. GUI-based FTP and FTPS client. To initiate a secure session, enter "ftps://" as the preface in the Host field, which will cause FileZilla to contact port 990 on the server. Knows how to handle symbolic links. Host keys are in ~/.putty/sshhostkeys. CyberDuck: Available free on the Web, and for $23.99 in the Mac App Store. It supports FTP and SFTP. Presents the FTP server's file list in a window into which you can drag files from the Finder. Deficiencies: - No FTPS. - If the file server entry is a symbolic link to a directory, Cyberduck doesn't know what to do with it: you can't drag any files into it. FTP client software to purchase Fetch: About $30 via the App Store. but is available free to education. FTP Bot: Nice from-to dual view interface. Supports FTP and SFTP. Deficiencies: - No FTPS support. - If the file server entry is a symbolic link to a directory, the app doesn't even show it. FTP server capability (FTPD) Is built into OS X. Is activated by doing the following: - In System Preferences, click Sharing. - Click Services and select the FTP Access checkbox. FTPS To use FTPS (FTP with SSL) in OS X: from the Finder Go menu, select Network and specify the URL with "ftps://". This provides a Finder window showing the files and folders in the FTP server directory, where you may drag things from or to that window. See also: FTP; SFTP Function key codes F1: 122 F2: 120 F3: 99 F4: 118 F5: 96 F6: 97 F7: 98 F8: 100 F9: 101 F10: 109 F11: 103 F12: 111 F13: 105 F14: 107 F15: 113 F16: 106 F17: 64 F18: 79 F19: 80 Fusion Drive Combination SDD+HDD storage, announced 2012/10/23. 128 GB SDD and either 1 TB or 3 TB hard drive. Frequently used content automatically goes to SDD. It amount to automatic hierarchical storage, where most frequently accessed data is migrated to SSD. The OS is always on SSD. Do not confuse this with hybrid storage, which lacks the hierarchical handling of data. The technology is proprietary to Apple, and not documented for the public. One partition can be added to the hard disk on Fusion Drive: that added partition will not participate in the SSD storage tiering, however. Data residency in SSD is by block, not by file. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5446 Fusion Drive partitioning A Fusion Drive is best not partitioned. It allows creating only one additional OS X partition, and that will be purely in HDD space, not handled by Fusion. G3 32-bit PowerPC microprocessor. Manufactured by IBM. G4 32-bit PowerPC microprocessor. The name stands for the 4th generation of Motorola's PowerPC family. Initially manufactured by Motorola. But Motorola failed to provide G4 chips in the quantity needed by Apple, and IBM came on board to supplement the G4 supply. (The bad experience, and Motorola's initial disavowal of any problem on their supply side, put Motorola out of favor with Apple, and helped usher in the later G5 as an IBM-only venture.) Incorporates the Velocity Engine. (The G4 is casually said to be a G3 with the Velocity Engine added.) The motherboard of the early G4s were built on the same motherboard as the G3s, called the "Yikes motherboard". It used a PCI slot video card. Later G4's used what is known as the AGP motherboard, wherein PCI video cards were phased out in favor of a dedicated video slot called the AGP (advanced graphic processor) slot. How to tell the difference from outside the cabinet: On the back of the G4 are two audio inputs: the microphone input and the speaker (headphone) output. If they are horizontal to each other (side by side), you have a Yikes motherboard; if they are vertically arranged, then you have a AGP board. G5 2003/09 next generation 64-bit processor in Macs. Manufactured by IBM, based upon their 2001 Power4 processor design, the G5 is a PowerPC 970. Jointly announced June 23, 2003 by Apple and IBM. Physical memory addressibility: 42 bits, 4 terabytes. Virtual memory addressibility: 64 bits, 18 exabytes (18 billion billion bytes). Shipped with blank discs: DVD-R 4x 4.7 GB, CD-R 1x-48x 8 min 700 MB. It was expected that the G5 would be at 3 GHz by 2004/06; but the industry "hit the wall" at 90 nm semiconductor miniaturization, leading Apple to migrate to Intel processors instead (the irony being that Intel was struggling with the same 3 GHz barrier, but at least was more progressive with other approaches to more throughput). The G5 can run OS 9 and its applications in the OS X Classic Environment, but cannot boot OS 9. (See also: Classic) www.ibm.com/PowerPC http://developer.apple.com/performance/ g5optimization.html See also: Macintosh G5 G5 memory specs 1.8, 2.0 GHz models: PC3200 DDR SDRAM, no parity, 184-pin DIMM, installed in pairs in 8 slots, 128 MB, 256 MB, 512 MB, or 1 GB DIMMs. docs.info.apple.com/article.html? artnum=86414 Games, classic console type The best package to run them is OpenEmu (openemu.org). It provides a structure for adding engine cores, where you somehow find and install the commercial ROMs for the games. GameSprockets 1996 software technology to make it easier for programmers to develop games for the Macintosh. Abandones in 1997. GarageBand Audio production software created by Apple in early 2004, and available in the iLife package. Allows amateurs to create compositions by combining tracks and keying effects. By default, GB creates files with a time signature of 4/4, which means that each measure of music contains four beats, with 120 beats per minute (BPM). The number of measures per minute is 120 divided by 4 = 30, with 2 beats per second. GarageBand 3 New, 2006/01. - A complete studio for producing podcasts, including support for chapters and artwork, the expertise of a built-in radio engineer, and integration with iChat for interviews. - Hundreds of professional-recorded sound effects and music beds for use in podcasts. - Integrated scoring for iMovie projects. Gatekeeper Mountain Lion feature that builds on OS X's existing malware checks to help protect your Mac from malware and misbehaving apps downloaded from the Internet. Gatekeeper wants to limit apps to those downloaded from the Mac App Store or applications that have been signed with an official Apple Developer ID. Its control point is in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General : "Allow applications downloaded from:". This defines what happens when a downloaded file is first launched, as a "gating" function for your system. Apple Article: HT5290 Generic PostScript Printer Lives in /System/Library/Frameworks/ ApplicationServices.framework/ Frameworks/PrintCore.framework/ Resources/Generic.ppd When selected in defining a new printer, that ppd gets copied into /etc/cups/ppd/<Printer_Name>.ppd with modifications specified in the config choices, such as checking the "Duplex Printing Unix" checkbox, resulting in the standard PPD line *DefaultAPOptionalDuplexer: False being changed in the copying to *DefaultAPOptionalDuplexer: True Or on the lpadmin command line, have: -m drv:///sample.drv/generic.ppd (that, revealed by lpinfo -m | grep -i generic) generic.ppd The generic PostScript PPD provided by CUPS, in /usr/share/cups/model/. In its headers, says *FileVersion: "1.3" Shows up in Print & Fax as Kind: Generic PostScript Printer, 1.3 As used with -m option of 'lpadmin' command to define a printer. Geneva The default Macintosh font on U.S. systems, when it cannot find any member of the requested family. For example, you select some text from a PDF and paste it into TextEdit - and it doesn't look the same as in the PDF. (Acrobat Reader's Help says: "If a font copied from a PDF document is not available on the system displaying the copied text, the font cannot be preserved. A default font is substituted.") Gershwin See: Copland Gesture: drag Use one finger swiping. In Safari, this causes the whole page to move up or down. Gesture: scroll Use two finger swiping. In Safari, this causes just the pane that your two fingers are in to scroll up or down, independent of other panes on the web page. The page itself does not move, as it does with one-finger dragging. Gesture: zoom in, out In iOS maps, you tap with a finger to zoom in. To zoom out, tap with two fingers. (An alternative to pinch.) Gestures Late 2007, early 2008 name for finger operations on touch control surfaces (trackpad, iPhone face, iPod touch face) for performing certain operations. For example: A two-finger "pinch" will expand or shrink an image. A three-finger horizontal swipe on the new MacBook Air will page left and right in Safari. Get A Mac commercials Ran for four years, starring Justin Long and John Hodgman. Justin said in a Huffpost interview that Steve Jobs chose Long for the commercials because Justin reminded Steve of an earlier version of himself. Get Info Mac Finder function to get info on a selected file. Shortcut: Command + I Get Info Inspector Panel Mac Finder function to get info on any file you advance to in a files listing. This is a more dynamic version of Get Info. Shortcut: Command + Option + I Alternately, you can right-click a file, then press the Option key, which changes the Get Info choice to Show Inspector. Get Info summary info This allows you to get composite info on multiple files: their combined size, etc. To use, hold down the Shift key as you select multiple files, then do Command + Control + I. Global Address List (GAL) Seen in Contacts. Also known as Microsoft Exchange Global Address Book, it is a directory service within the Microsoft Exchange email system. Your Contacts app accesses this server directory via networking (there is not a copy on your device). The amount of information it presents is typically minimal (name, phone, email address) such that you may want to have fuller entries for your contacts entered into iCloud. The GAL contains information for all email users, distribution groups, and Exchange resources. Digital IDs certificates generated by Microsoft Exchange Server Advanced Security IIS or by Microsoft Exchange Key Management Server (KMS) are automatically published in the Global Address Book. Users of Microsoft Outlook can publish to GAL their externally generated PKI certificates that are used for secure e-mail. "Golden grid" When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1996, he found a confusing array of products and computer models. He elegantly reduced that to a 2x2 grid: all computer users would be divided into two segments: professionals and consumers. For each segment, the company would offer products in two categories: desktop and mobile, which at the time meant portables (laptops). Grab service Similar but distinct from the Grab utility is the service called Grab, which is found under each application's native menu, in the Services sub-section. However, in that Services cannot create documents, this version of Grab can only capture imagery for use in the open application. See also: Services Grab utility OS X utility to capture window or screen images, for saving or printing. Grab saves screen shots as files in TIFF format. If you want to use your screen shots on the web, in email, or in a word processor, you can use the Preview application to convert the TIFF files to other formats, such as JPEG or PICT. To grab a ... Window: Shift + Cmd + W Issues: Doesn't want to operate when the DVD player is active. See also: Screen capture (screen shots) Grafio Outstanding diagraming tool for the iPad. Export formats: PDF, JPG, PNG and IDDZ (Grafio document format). There is a Lite version, which is mostly a demo, supporting 4 creations and exporting with a The one, conspicuous problem is that your creations are locked into the IDDZ format as the only revisable format produced by the app. Keynote can also be used to create diagrams, but not as readily. Grand Central Dispatch Snow Leopard facility for assigning threads to processor cores. It is an implementation of task parallelism based on the thread pool pattern. It was first released with Mac OS X 10.6, and is also available with iOS 4 and above. GCD works by allowing specific tasks in a program that can be run in parallel to be queued up for execution and, depending on availability of processing resources, scheduling them to execute on any of the available processor cores. GCD uses threads, but abstracts them so that the programmer need not be concerned with that. Graphite Code name for the original Airport base station which has one Ethernet connection. See also: Snow Creater China A market which Apple regards as consisting of China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Group Directive specifying the system group identity under which the httpd is to run. Example: Group nobody See also: User GT Advanced Technologies Arizona company contracted by Apple in 2013 to supply sapphire for Apple device components. GTAT has 700 employees. Before being contracted by Apple, GTAT only generated 11 percent of its revenue from its sapphire business. Guided Access IOS 6 feature for rendering certain controls on the iPad inoperative, as where you want to restrict what a child may do when using the device. This is usually used in conjunction with Single App Mode, to confine use to one app. H.264 FAQ http://www.apple.com/mpeg4/h264faq.html See also: Pixlet Hair Force One Comical nickname for Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering, a name which appeared as he was demonstrating Game Center, with that being his screen name. In the October 2013 keynote, his wife was revealed as Hair Force Two. Handheld apps SSH: TouchTerm or iSSH http://jbrink.net/touchterm/index.html Handoff Apple OS software architecture ingredient announced at WWDC 2014, part of the Continuity facility. Allows OS X and iOS device users to seamlessly transition between the two operating systems. Is limited to Macs that support the Bluetooth 4.0/LE specification. Bluetooth 4.0 was was first introduced in the MacBook Air and Mac mini in Mid 2011. The feature has since made its way into later Mac releases, finally coming to every Mac as of the 2013 Mac Pro. Hardware info, via command line 'sysctl hw' See also: System Profiler Harmony Code name for System 7.6. HD SC Setup This Apple utility is used to initialize hard drives. It supports a fixed repertoire, but you can make it handle other drives by modifying a copy of the program (as with ResEdit): seek the string SEAGATE and update the table found there to your manufacturers name (up to 7 chars) and the drive type. hdiutil Command line utility to manipulate disk images. Can create an ISO from a CDR. For info: man hdiutil To get info on an image: hdiutil imageinfo <Filepath> See also: drutil; .iso HDMI Apple TV was the first Apple product to sport an HDMI port. The Mac mini, released 2010/06/14, was the first Macintosh with an HDMI port. HDR photography High Dynamic Range - a feature of the iPhone 4. With HDR turned on, three photos are taken of the scene, each with different exposure levels. Then iPhone 4 layers the shots together to create a single photo that combines the best elements of each shot and more accurately represents the wide range of light in the scene. Per default settings, both the regular shot and the HDR photo appear in the Camera Roll, and both would be transfered to your computer in a sync operation. You can choose to have only the HDR version saved. "hello again" The text in Apple's invitation to the October 27, 2016 Macintosh announcement event. The words hark back to Steve Jobs' presentation of the first Macintosh, where its first spoken words were: "Hello, I'm Macintosh". Further, the 1998 iMac intro used the screen words "hello (again)". Help facility, backward & forward To move to the previous page, use the keys Apple + [. To return to that next page, use Apple + ]. Hex calculator The OS X Calculator application has an excellent Programmer view. Hey Siri The iOS 8 spoken phrase for invoking Siri, hands-free, when your Apple device is attached to power. Thus, when your device is in a dock or the like, you don't have to go over to it, reach down, and operate the Home button to invoke Siri. Hey Siri doesn't work when your phone is operating on its internal battery, where you would have it in your hand anyway, where you can readily press the Home button. HFP Hands-Free Profile, in the Maps app, for HFP Prompts (driving directions) given by your iPhone, its voice played through the car's speakers. When in your car and the iPhone is paired and operating, the Maps app should show an audio indicator in the lower right. There, you can get into the Navigation Voice panel and turn on HFP Prompts. New in iOS 7.1. HFS Hierarchical File System. Replaced the original Macintosh File System (MFS). HFS file system, fix You may have trouble booting into OS X, which might be due to file system problems. You could then boot into single-user mode (hold down Apple+S) then run like: fsck_hfs -d -r -y -f /dev/rdisk0s2 This command is for HFS and HFS+. HFS+ (aka Mac OS Extended Format) New in Mac OS 8.1, 1999. Provides for disk blocks of various sizes instead of the old technique of the disk being divided into a maximum of 64K blocks, which could make for space-wasting large block sizes. HFS+ supports more than 5.25 billion allocation blocks. HFS+ is a journaled file system. Going to HFS+ conventionally requires reformatting your disk; but the Alsoft package called PlusMaker can avoid that. Attempting to read an HFS+ disk on an older Mac system will result in only a Read Me file being available, which explains the situation. Notes: Filenames in HFS+ are case-insensitive: "FileX" and "filex" are equivalent. File timestamp resolution is 1 second. Journaling can be turned off through the Disk Utility, File menu. Being replaced by Apple File System in 2017. HFSX Is a version of HFS+ that is case-sensitive (like most Unix systems) for use with server software. Hide all application other than current Cmd + Option + H will hide all applications other than the app which is currently in the foreground. Hide current application Cmd + H will hide the application which is currently in the foreground. Hidden files OS X observes the Unix convention that a file or folder name whose first character is a period ("dot") is to be deemed a "hidden" file and should not be revealed in a standard files listing. The control is in the preference list, com.apple.Finder.plist, which you can alter as follows: - Open a Terminal window. - Type: 'defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE' or 'defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool YES' - Restart the Finder. (Easiest way is key sequence Option+Cmd+Esc and then relaunch Finder; or you can log out, log in; or do 'killall Finder'. The files should now be visible in the Finder. To undo this, repeat the steps above again, but change TRUE/YES to FALSE/NO. For GUI style control of this and some other options, adopt the freeware TinkerTool (q.v.). maczealots.com/articles/hiddenfiles/ Home button on iOS devices This is the conspicuous, round button on the front of the device, which one presses to return to the home screen. There is also a "virtual home button", which becomes active on the iPhone 7 if the hardware detects if the physical home button has gone defective. This virtual home button has actually been available through Apple’s Accessibility functions for several years. The virtual button, called Assistive Touch, is designed to help those who might have trouble pressing the Home Button to more easily access its functions with a virtual alternative. "Home on iPod" A feature which would have been in OS X 10.3 Panther, but was dropped before Panther was released. It would have allowed taking a copy of your Mac home directory with you, on your iPod, to allow having the same home directory data on a foreign Mac: "When you find yourself near a Panther-equipped Mac, just plug in the iPod, log in, and you're "home," no matter where you happen to be." Home Sharing iTunes feature on Macs or PCs which allows up to five computers on the same local network running iTunes to stream or transfer music, videos and other content between their iTunes libraries. Each computer activates Home Sharing in iTunes, their owner entering their Apple ID and password. They can then stream content from the other computers' iTunes libraries, as well as manually transfer (import) iTunes content from other Home Sharing libraries, or configure them to automatically transfer new purchases from another library on the network. As of iOS 4.3 (2011/03/11), Apple's mobile devices can participate in Home Sharing, to stream data from a computer to the iOS device. As with iPod music sharing conventions, there is no limit on the number of iOS devices which may participate in this sharing. Home Videos New category in iTunes 11.0 and Apple TV update 6.0, for keeping your videos separate from commercial movies that are in the Movies category. HomeKit Was quietly introduced in the 2014/09/18 Apple TV update 7.0. host DNS lookup utility command. Undocumented is the way in which this utility goes about performing its lookup: it goes directly after DNS servers on the network, as specified in /etc/resolv.conf, which ignores precedence rules defined in /etc/host.conf and /etc/nsswitch.conf. So, if you add an entry to /etc/hosts which is new or an override for an existing DNS entry, 'host' will not see the /etc/hosts entry. As such, it is like the 'dig' and 'nslookup' commands. You can use the 'ping' command instead, which follows the rules. Hot Corners OS X convenience feature wherein moving the pointer into an extreme corner of the display may activate the screen saver, per config choices. hPod Informal name for the HP-branded version of the iPod, introduced at the 2004 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The HP iPod was identical to the Apple iPod except for the HP logo (located below the Apple logo, on the back). (Note that the contractual arrangement was that HP would market the standard iPod: not the iPod Mini or others in the line. The arrangement might have evolved, but was inherently limited.) Differences surface in support and service. Why do this? Being a Windows company, HP helps iPod and Apple penetration in that market segment as HP helps Windows users get into iPod and iTunes. It is also the case that HP marketing will get this Apple product into stores and outlets where Apple does not ordinarily have a presence. Steve Jobs might also have done this in homage to the company he had worked at before starting Apple. See also: iPod HyperCard Before there was the World Wide Web, with its hypertext, there was Apple's HyperCard, using the same philosophy to link information in a "card" model. It was devised by Bill Atkinson in 1987, for the then 9" black & white Macintosh. Buttons would allow clicking through information contained in a "stack of cards", with various widgets and fields on the cards. It lasted more than 11 years, but didn't evolve much, and indeed was a viable concept for only a fraction of that time. Originally, HyperCard was bundeled with the Macintosh, but later became a Claris product - which helped kill it off. There were two versions of HyperCard, with version 2 coming three years after version 1. Confusingly, version 2 was turned into three products. HyperTalk Invented by Dan Winkler. i As the first letter of various Apple products, reflects the Internet age. The formal use of the 'i' began with the Steve Jobs introduction of the iMac in 1998, where 'i' was explained as representing "the excitement of the Internet", where the iMac made it simple to get onto the Internet. Job continued: "'i' also means some other things to us"... internet individual - A beautiful stand-alone product. instruct - Use it in education. inform inspire iAd Introduced by Steve Jobs at WWDC 2010. Is Apple's in-context facility for incorporating advertising into apps such that clicking on a banner will result in an interactive experience, which upon closure will return the user where they started - not left in some web page, outside the app they were using. The intention is to create ads with compelling, rather than irritating, content. An iAd is identified in the lower right corner of the banner. Is part of iOS 4. The underlying facility is called iAd JS, part of a JavaScript library in iOS 4, to provide functionality in an HTML 5 environment. As such, this is another, major demonstration that Flash is extraneous, furthering the cause of HTML 5. (Web ads are largely created using Adobe Flash Professional.) iAd also constitutes an Apple-served facility. Though developers are free to work with advertisers and incorporate the ad content into their apps, that would render the content fixed in time. It is preferable for advertisers to use Apple's servers to provide current feed, to showcase the latest products or make revisions according to prevailing conditions. For such serving, Apple takes a 40% cut of income, while an industry-standard 60% goes to the advertisers. A further implication of being an Apple service is that iAds allow Apple to offer advertisers targeted access to population segments having specific interests, per information which Apple has via iTunes and product registrations, without making that info available to outside agencies. This allows customer privacy to be preserved while at the same time providing unusually good added value to advertisers. All very neat. Something to note: Apple's promotion of iAds says is conveys "The emotion of TV". There's a hint there as to Apple's plans for television, where they could offer a form of Internet-based television with commercial sponsorship via iAds. http://advertising.apple.com/ "I'm a Mac" guy The actor in the 2006- Apple Macintosh commercials who plays a Mac is Justin Long. You've seen him in movies such as Galaxy Quest and Die Hard 4. (The "PC" guy is John Hodgman.) iBeacons Apple's micro-location technology, introduced 2013/08 in iOS 7. An iBeacon device is any Bluetooth low energy (BLE) device that transmits a specific data payload: even a recent Mac or another iOS device can be turned into a beacon. Uses the power-sipping Bluetooth low energy standard to help iOS devices determine their location with a high degree of accuracy without GPS or cell tower triangulation. It operates by the property owner deploying very low power "beacon" devices (which might run for a year on a battery) within the property. Constitutes a precise locator (think very local GPS) to be able to pinpoint something in a store or your seat in a stadium. A retailer app which is programmed for iBeacons can respond to that precise position so as to tell you something about what is in that position in the store, such as the shoes there being 15% off today. Or, in a museum, the museum's app could tell you about a painting as you got near it. Further, the message provided to you could be personalized, addressing you by name as it told of the nearby item. IBM collaboration Originally occurred around 1997, with the Taligent effort. As of late 2007 and early 2008, collaboration with IBM is in full swing, as IBM says that their search for Microsoft alternatives has brought the two companies together (again). In terms of products, IBM is accommodating the iPhone and iPod touch in its Lotus Notes, and providing a version of its free Lotus Symphony office suite for Macs. "We have a lot in common," IBM spokesman Mike Azzi said. "We're going to cross-pollinate." iBook The lower-end, "consumer" Mac laptop (where PowerBook is the high end, "professional" laptop). Introduced at at Macworld 1999 with a clam-shell style model, in iMac-like colors. Has traditionally had a 1024x768 limited screen size. iBooks Apple's iOS app for books. Supports books and PDFs. iBooks uses the popular ePub file format (which, ironically, is not supported on Kindle). iBooks 3.0 supports the .ibooks format of iBooks Author 2.0. If iBooks is not already present on your iOS device, go to the App Store and download. As of iOS 4.1: In books, you can bookmark pages, highlight sections, and copy text from the books. In PDFs, you can bookmark pages. There is no ability to copy text from a PDF or annotate the PDF. (The GoodReader app provides such capabilities.) A PDF can be renamed by touching Edit when viewing the list of PDFs, then touch in the name to alter it. Note that many free ebooks are also available for download, free, from ManyBooks.net (but, the iBooks versions tend to be better, as in having interspersed illustrations that ManyBooks does not). You can create ePub format books using open software such as Sigil. FAQ: Apple Article HT4059 iBooks, PDF title fixing Amateur PDF creators are infamous for failing to give their PDFs meaningful names, such that they will show up in iBooks as "ECCW" and like meaningless titles. Unfortunately, iBooks 1.0 for the Mac provides no means for changing titles. You can fix titles via a physical approach: Go into your Library folder, and then into Containers > com.apple.BKAgentService > Data > Documents > iBooks. There you will find .pdf files with the meaningless names you saw in iBooks. Simply rename the PDF files via ordinary means. In iBooks the PDFs will still have the old names, until you double-click to open one - which causes iBooks to look afresh at the contents of that directory and then show all the new names. iBooks, publish yourself Authors can self-publish their own books. Their books would have to adhere to these criteria: each one would need to have a 13-digit ISBN, be in ePub format, validate against epubcheck 1.0.5, and contain no unmanifested files." Authors also need ot have a Tax ID number, a credit card on file with Apple, and a Mac running OS X 10.5 or later. Note that Pages '09 lets you export your documents in ePub format for reading with iBooks on iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. (Apple Article: HT4168) iBooks 2 iOS app. Released 2012/01/19. Supports multi-touch textbooks. iBooks 3 Released 2012/10/23. Continuous scrolling, multi languages. iBooks and public library ebooks ebooks obtained from a public library likely employ the Adobe Digital Editions DRM (Digital Rights Management) protection on the files. iBooks does not support Adobe Digital Editions Protected books, so you can't use the ebooks that way. iBooks Author Mac OSX app. Released 2012/01/19. For creating multi-touch books for reading on iPad, as featured for textbooks. (As of Mac OS 10.9, such books can also be read on a Mac.) Apple$(B,$(Bs widget creation tool, Dashcode, is built in, making it easy to create HTML widgets that appear as objects alongside the text. Keynote app presentations can be dropped in. iBA's tool set is much like as in Pages, but its Widgets selections let you have things you cannot have in Pages, such as a click-through gallery of images. You can think of iBA as a next generation Pages. Previously authored text can be dropped into the left frame from MS Word or Pages: the text will automatically adapt to your book's template. Inserted videos must be .m4v type. The HTML function allows your book to reference Web content, allowing those portions of your book to always be current, without re-publishing. Books are usually produced for landscape viewing, which affords the greatest content flexibility. Landscape-oriented books, when turned to portrait orientation, concentrate on the text, which is reflowed, where your widgets (if Inline Objects) are now thumbnailed in the left margin. Portrait-only templates are fixed-format and thus have a fixed font size. Attach your iPad to your Mac to preview how the book actually looks and acts. Output generation choices: - iBooks format (new with iBA 2.0), for interactive use on iPad. The output is a proprietary Apple file format similar to the EPUB standard, but with extensions that prevent it from being universally readable or editable as an EPUB document. The format uses undocumented, proprietary XML namespaces and undocumented extensions to CSS. - PDF, being a passive but formatted presentation of the material. - Plain text, stripped of formatting, suitable for simple text editing. Output can be contributed to iTunes U. iBA is not intended to create general ePub books. http://www.apple.com/ibooks-author/ Apple Articles: HT5071 HT5478 What's new in v.2 iBooks Categories iBooks allows you to display books by Category. This is set up in iTunes, by entering appropriate text into the Category column of the display (equal to the Genre element in the Info display tab for an item). Unfortunately, categories assigned to PDFs do not show up in iBooks. iBooks list view of books or PDFs When you are looking at your bookshelf of books or PDFs, you can instead list by name by flicking the bookshelf downward, which exposes a search box and view choice icons that were hidden under the very top. Touch the lines icon to show your items in list format. This then allows you to sort on Bookshelf, Titles, Authors, or Categories order. iBooks PDFs They can be gotten into your iBooks storage in one of following ways when using an Apple mobile device: • When browsing a web site and you open a PDF, you will be presented with the option "Open in iBooks". • When in Mail and you open an email attachment, you will be presented with the option "Open in iBooks". • Using AirDrop among Apple devices, you can rapidly send a PDF from one device to another. • When syncing to iTunes, you can have the PDFs in iTunes synced to your device. Note that the PDF may have a strange name: that is the fault of its author, who set the Title of the PDF to that odd value, or let the PDF generation utility create its own name. To rename such a PD, touch Edit when viewing the list of PDFs, then touch in the name to alter it. You could alternately change the name as the PDF sits in iTunes. iBooks textbooks Announced in an Apple Education Event in NYC at the Guggenheim Museum 2012/01/19. Is multi-touch textbooks on the iPad (only), requiring iBooks 2 level. Creation via iBooks Author or similar facility. Note how similar this is to the mid 1990s OpenDoc concept, with a compound document containing text, images, audio, and movies. iBookstore Think iTunes Store for books. iCal Calendaring application with OS X. Handles iCalendar standard files (e.g., "meeting.ics"), as well as the older vCalendar standard (.vcs files), plus calendars created in Entourage. As of iOS 5, syncs with iCloud. Mail preferences include "Add invitations to iCal" for processing incoming .ics files into the calendar. For the mail feed to work, your Address Book entry must reflect your email address. Via Export you can generate a .ics file on your desktop machine which you can then transfer to your laptop and import to refresh its schedules list. Vis Subscribe, you can bring in an external calendar, by URL. Apple provides a variety of calendars which you can import this way, found at www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/calendars For example, you can grab the US holidays calender via URL webcal://ical.mac.com/ical/ US32Holidays.ics Subscribed calendars show up individually in the left pane of the iCal window. Issues: If someone forwards you an email with a .ics in it, for the original designated recipients, iCal will want to process it; but you are not in the original .ics list of users, so will not be able to. By default, each Mac account starts the iCalAlarmScheduler, which serves to notify the individual of an upcoming event. That is, you don't have to run iCal per se to get notifications. http://www.icalshare.com/ allows you to share calendars around the Internet. Daylight Savings Time smarts: iCal knows when DST starts, and won't accept 02:00 as a valid event time that day - given that there really isn't a 02:00 that day: it insists upon 03:00. RENAMED: to Calendar in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. iCal invitation, forward Go into iCal, right-click on the event and click "Mail Event." iCal syncing Apple proscribes that you can use their $$ .Mac Web service to synchronize your calenders. There are various alternatives out there, such as iSynCal or WebDAV set-ups. iCal tips When establishing a new event, if you include the time in its title, that will be used as the "from" time of the entry. IceKey Flat keyboard from Macally, having "scissor" type keys, as on a PowerBook (but a stiffer touch). Requires driver software for the Volume and Eject keys above the numeric keypad to work (the install requires a reboot). iCEO Did all these 'i'-prefixed products come about as a result of Steve Jobs being designated interim CEO of Apple not long after his return to Apple in 1997? One has to wonder. iChat AV Allows AOLIM and Bonjour instant messaging, voice chat, and video chat. For video, requires at least G3 600 MHz. Video resolution: max 640 x 480 No support for USB cameras (yeesh). To see who you are: Click on your personal name at the top of the Buddy List (maybe hold down Option key). Microphone control: Is in Preferences, under Video(!). If only one of the two parties has a microphone, he can initiate a One-Way Audio Chat: the other party can hear; to respond, that other party can invoke Send Instant Message to send typed responses to the audio initiator. (The participant without a microphone needs to "lie" and use the Audio menu to have Microphone Enabled, which causes a green telephone handset to show up in Buddy List window entry for that user; else the Invite To One-Way Audio Chat selection will be grayed out.) Response time and echo cancellation: iChatAV also uses the same digital audio technology in CDMA cell phones to provide users with clear two-way audio. It has echo cancellation features, and allows users to speak and receive audio simultaneously. There's a delay between you talking and your buddy hearing you, but you won't hear yourself talk while you're chatting. (Avoid putting microphones near speakers.) Group chat (more than two participants): Choose File > New Chat, then Across firewalls: docs.info.apple.com/ article.html?artnum=93208 Send file via iChat: While in an iChat session, simply drag the file into the text or video window. - but some (apps) have been seen to fail, though Personal File Sharing can transfer them. Saving chat contents: You may be tempted to copy the contents of a chat and paste it into a textedit window; but instead, do a Print and Save As PDF: you will get a much nicer, annotated session log. As of 10.4.9, supports USB webcams of the UVC type (only). Apple Articles: HT2020 iChat, archive your chats Go into Preferences -> Messages, and check the box "Automatically save chat transcripts". They are then saved in folder ~/Documents/iChats/. Alternately, you could simply choose Print and generate a PDF, which works out nicely. iChat, group chat Choose File > New Chat. Click "+" to add participants. iChat agent Associated with iChat, but running in the background, is this process, which keeps track of status and other details. If you are having trouble with pasting into iChat, or a similar problem, exit iChat and also kill off this background process, then restart iChat. iChat alternative Adium. http://adiumx.com/ iChat AV and Bonjour Via Bonjour you can communicate with others on your local subnet without any middling service (AOLIM) or registration. Turn on Bonjour via the Preferences, Accounts specs. Then you can open a separate Bonjour contact window. The window will, of course, have no capability for adding buddies as the method is free for all. An interesting difference when using Bonjour is that your recipient can see the text as you type it, given the opportunity of immediacy with local network interaction, as opposed to AIM's approach of processing whole-messages to minimize Internet traffic. (This is configurable in Preferences > Messages.) iChat picture Your iChat picture is saved in your home directory Library:Images:iChat Recent Pictures folder as like Recent 1.tiff More generally, iChat icons are in: Library:Application Support:Apple :iChat Icons iChat port numbers (ports) 16384 to 16403 are used to send, receive, and optimize AV streams. For a single conference, 4 ports from that range of 20 are utilized to send and receive audio and video. Additionally, port 5060 is used for signaling and initiation of AV chat invitations, and 5678 is used for SNATMAP, for a total of 22 ports open. All iChat traffic is UDP except for ports 5190 and 5298, which need to be open for both TCP and UDP; and 5220 and 5222 and 5223, which need to be open for TCP only. 5190 is reportedly used for file transfer. Ports 5297, 5298, and 5353 are used only for local traffic. Opening these ports may be necessary for firewall software that runs on a computer, rather than on a router. These ports do not need to be open at your uplink to the Internet. The SNATMAP service on port 5678 is used to determine the external Internet address of hosts so that connections between iChat users can properly function behind network address translation (NAT). The SNATMAP service simply communicates to clients the Internet address that connected to it. This service runs on an Apple server, but does not send personal information to Apple. When certain iChat features are used, this service will be contacted. Blocking this service may cause issues with iChat connections with hosts on networks that use NAT. iChat tips Multi-line: You will have noticed that when you press Return/Enter, your chat message is sent, rather than that key resulting in a next line to type on. To create a multi-line message, hold down the Option key, then press Return. iCloud The next stage in Apple's evolution, introduced by Steve Jobs at the WWDC 2011/06/06. Available 2011/10/12. Steve Jobs negotiated the purchase of the iCloud brand name from Sweden's Xcerion in 2011, just months before he debuted new iCloud features alongside iOS 5 and OS X Lion. Xcerion subsequently rebranded itself as CloudMe. iCloud is your "digital hub": it copies your content into Apple servers, thereby making it wirelessly downloadable to all your devices. Is integrated with apps, to make things work seamlessly. iCloud is a means for sharing your content among your devices; it is *not* for sharing data with others, except by explicit messaging (iMessage service). iCloud is free, up to 5 GB of storage: buy more if you need it. (Purchased music, TV shows, apps, and books, as well as photos in your Photo Stream don't count against your 5GB of free storage.) With iCloud, MobileMe ceases to exist, per se. Web access: www.icloud.com Mail, Contacts, Calendar service is now free. (Mail is actually a mail account on me.com.) Pages, Numbers, and Keynote documents automatically pushed to the cloud. Automatic daily backups to cloud (over WiFi). Wholly new is iTunes Match, a $24.95 per year service to match tunes (e.g., MP3) that you've independently added to your iTunes library, which Apple's servers will find in their millions of tunes, to provide you with a high quality copy of the tunes. The Mac was originally positioned to be the hub of your digital life. That has now changed: your Mac becomes just another peer device to which content is pushed, with iCloud becoming the hub. iCloud may not look like much at its introduction, but is likely to evolve into as major strategic part of Apple's future. Apple Article: PH2608 See also: Mobile Documents iCloud, restore files In https://www.icloud.com/#settings go into the Advanced section to see all the restore choices. iCloud app for iOS See: iCloud Drive iCloud Backup This iCloud service backs up your important iOS device information daily over Wi-Fi. If you lose your device or buy a new one, it$(B,$(Bs easy to restore the same information you had on your previous device. If you turn on iCloud Backup on all your iOS devices (Settings > iCloud > Storage & Backup), the following information is backed up when the device is turned on, screen-locked, and connected to a power source and Wi-Fi: Purchased music and TV shows (U.S. only) Purchased apps and books Photos and videos in your Camera Roll Device settings App data Home screen and app organization iMessage, text (SMS), and MMS messages Ringtones It will run on a daily basis as long as your device: is connected to Internet over Wi-Fi is connected to a power source is screen locked You can also back up manually whenever your device is connected to Internet over Wi-Fi by choosing Back Up Now from Settings > iCloud > Storage & Backup. iCloud Contacts (address book) Is based upon CardDAV. iCloud Drive Generalized file storage in iCloud, announced at the 2014 WWDC. Is embedded in Mac OS X Yosemite and iOS 8. 5 GB is free. Effectively replaces the old iDisk service. Available for Windows as iCloud For Windows. Documents are available as follows: Mac: iCloud Drive is in the Sidebar iOS: iCloud Drive app iCloud.com: iCloud Drive page Windows: iCloud Drive in File Explorer On the Mac: Dragging a file to iCloud Drive will move it to iCloud: to copy it instead, hold down the Option key while dragging. Note that documents stored in iCloud (as from TextEdit, Pages, et al) prior to Yosemite and iOS 8 are in a different area, and will be copied to iCloud Drive when you activate iCloud Drive in your eligible devices. Conversely, Yosemite and iOS 8 cannot access your previously stored iCloud documents because those OSes want only to use the new iCloud Drive. Activating iCloud Drive on your Mac causes folder iCloud Drive to be created in your Mac's sidebar, reflecting what is stored in the cloud. The activation takes a few minutes. Before doing so, you would be wise to make a backup of your important documents as reside in ~/Library/Mobile Documents, just to be safe. Dropbox had been the 3rd party general storage service, but iCloud Drive will give Dropbox stiff competition. iCloud file sharing All the documents that you save in iCloud are available to all your Macs (running Mountain Lion+) or iOS - presuming compatible applications being present on your devices. Copies of all documents stored in iCloud are automatically locally stored on your Mac, in the Mobile Documents folder, located inside the ~/Library folder. Every Mac app that supports iCloud document storage has its own folder here. As of OS 10.8.2 that list is: Keynote Mail Notes Numbers Pages Preview shoebox system-spotlight TextEdit Textinput Be aware that the iOS versions of Mac apps tend to be "lite", where opening a Mac-created, iCloud-resident document can result in the loss of some attributes: the iOS app should present you with the choice of opening a copy of said document. The process of opening such a document in iOS actually converts the document to iOS app format, which is different from the Mac format. iCloud for Windows Yes, there is an iCloud implementation on Windows, so that you can equivalently make use of iCloud services and documents from a Windows PC. iCloud iCal Is based upon CalDAV. iCloud Keychain Apple's cloud-based storage locker and password management tool. Announced at WWDC 2013. Works by safekeeping passwords, website logins, credit card numbers, and Wi-Fi networks across devices. When users go to type in a password for an online account, for instance, Safari will suggest one to use. Credit card information will also be stored, though you'll have to input your own security code each time. All of that sensitive information is encrypted by 256-bit AES and it's assumed it will work a lot like other password safekeeping suites like 1Password. iCloud limits See Apple Article HT202158. iCloud mail service Mail headers reveal that Apple is running the MTA mail package Oracle Communications Messaging Server ostensibly on Solaris servers. According to job postings, Apple's data center environment consists of Mac OS X, IBM/AIX and Sun/Solaris systems. iCloud Photo Library New with the Photos app on OS X and iOS, this supplants the old My Photo Stream. The data is stored in your iCloud space allotment, where the first 5 GB is free. (This differs from Photo Stream storing, where Apple provided that latest-photos space free, as a kind of cache, outside your iCloud area.) When you launch Photos for the first time, it will determine how much space is required and, if that exceeds the amount of free space in your iCloud allotment, a higher tier plan will be offered. Given that iPhoto has been around a long time and people have a substantial collection of photos by now, the amount of space required will commonly be more than 5 GB. Initially, many will be taken aback by this, in having few photos in Photo Sharing, where that was their cloud usage, so why is cloud usage going to be so much more now? It is the case that iCloud Photo Library makes *all* your photos (and videos!) available in the cloud, meaning all that you have on your Mac in iPhoto. This is somewhat insidious in that iPhoto is being discontinued and your dependence upon the Apple photos collection application is now forcing you to pay for your whole collection being in the cloud. iCloud Photo Sharing See: Photo Sharing iCloud status icons Apple Article: TS4124 iCloud storage usage https://www.icloud.com/#settings iCloud vs. iCloud Drive Upgrading to iOS 8 on your iPad results in a choice of whether to turn on iCloud Drive, with the advisory that once you do so, documents stored there will require that you boost your Macs to Yosemite in order to be able to continue accessing documents that you previously stored in iCloud (Documents in the Cloud). Apple doc HT201104 explains that committing to the use of iCloud Drive by your account results in documents already stored in iCloud being automatically moved to iCloud Drive. iCloud.com Apple's iCloud website, making various elements of iCloud available to content owners via web browser. Apple bought the icloud.com domain for $4.5 million. As of 2012/09/13, Notes and Reminders are on iCloud.com. New technology for the website is usually tested on beta.icloud.com first. icon As appears as a little picture in a file, in the Finder. An icon image is a specialized graphic: you can generate such a graphic from a TIFF file via the tiff2icns command. iCreate Excellent UK magazine published by Image Publishing, Ltd. Contains guidance and tips on using Mac applications and tools to make the most of them. The price is about $14 per issue for U.S. residents. As of mid 2008, it was a print mag only: no digital edition. http://www.icreatemagazine.com/ iDevice Informal name for an iOS (mobile) Apple device, such as iPhone, iPad, iPod touch. IDFA ID for Advertisers. Apple's prescribed method for advertisers to identify clients, rather than SIM card number or other. Sometimes called IFA. iDisk General Apple-served storage space that had been made available to .Mac and then MobileMe users. Discontinued. The space was heavily used for website serving, as .Mac HomePage and the later MobileMe Sites folder. iDisk was sometimes inappropriately called iWeb, because it was so closely associated with that Mac iLife application. Maximum allowed file size was 1 GB. With the demise of MobileMe, being replaced by iCloud, iDisk ceases to exist. Apple apparently does not see any point in being a web hosting service facility: there's plenty of that elsewhere, such as Dropbox and Amazon's free space. Apple Article: HT2049; HT4686 See: iCloud Drive iDVD DVD authoring application, part of the iLife suite, for casual users. With it you can Create DVD-R discs, typically from a movie which you've edited with iMovie. It provides the means for producing a basic DVD. It lacks advanced features which a home user typically would not need, such as multiple language tracks, subtitles, Dolby audio encoding, and complex navigation menus. For advanced features, there is DVD Studio Pro. FORMATS: iDVD supports all of the video formats that iMovie HD supports, including HDV, 16:9 widescreen, MPEG-4 and iSight. INPUT: iMovie work-ups and QuickTime movies. Most movies in QuickTime format can be added to an iDVD project. For best results, export your movies as QuickTime files that are in DV (digital video) format. OUTPUT: iDVD 5: With a supporting SuperDrive, you can now burn DVDs in the following formats: DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW and DVD+RW. Or save your project as a fully-encoded Disk Image. Disk Images are an excellent master copy of the iDVD project. Reportedly doesn't work with FireWire drives because of licensing issues. iDVD 4 is intended to accept only DVD-R, not DVD+R, while iDVD 5 will work with '+' media as well. www.apple.com/idvd Feed back to Apple: www.apple.com/feedback/idvd.html See also: iMovie iDVD 6 New 2006/01. - Magic iDVD to create a complete DVD project from your movies and photos automatically. - Support for Widescreen DVDs with menus, video, and slideshows. - Next Generation iDVD themes with Autofill Drop Zones. - Works with Apple SuperDrives and compatible third-party DVD burners. iFund The last speaker in the 2008/03/06 iPhone SDK presentation was John Doerr, of venture capital firm KPCB, who announced the establishment of a $100M fund for iPhone entrepreneurs, to further this computer-in-your-pocket. iLife A separately priced suite of applications available for the Mac and shipped on new Macs. Constituent apps: iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand, and the more recent iWeb. Introduced at Macworld 2003. The set of apps is not as uniform as you might expect: when installing iLife '08 on a G4, the iMovie app will be excluded because it requires a G5 or better. iLife 09: January 2009 As of 2010/09, no refresh yet. iLife '11 Announced 2010/10/20. Apps: iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, iWeb, iDVD. Life Support Provides system software resources that are shared by iLife and other applications. Illustrator Adobe drawing package. Saves files in PostScript format. Competitor: FreeHand iMac A circa 1998 all-in-one Mac which harks back to the SE. Announced April, 1988; overviewed at the July, 1988 MacWorld in New York City; on the market August 15, 1988. Originally a CRT-based machine, it featured a 1024x768 display on a 15" screen, a G3 running at 233 MHz, 32 MB SDRAM, with hard drive, CD-ROM, USB, 10/100BaseT ethernet, 56 Kb modem. It became Apple's first computer using USB for the external data bus, displacing the overly complex SCSI bus that Macs had been using. This plastic iMac kicked off a societal craze with its translucent plastic in trendy colors, starting with the original Bondi Blue (extended in 1999 to add strawberry, blueberry, grape, tangering, and lime "flavors" (colors). Limited to 128 MB of memory. No SCSI, no floppy, no FireWire. It broke the floppy habit by incorporating a CD-ROM drive (but, no writability). The iMac is inherently limited to a single hard drive; so you can't migrate to a new OS X by alternating drives. Particularly notable about the first iMac was its chosen $1299 price point, which Apple has stuck with for its consumer desktop machines. The accompanying USB keyboard employed the same translucent plastic; but its design was compact, and make for too-small arrow keys. A complete failure was the "hockey puck" mouse, whose round shape made it impossible to tell by feel if you were holding it correctly, resulting in a lot of mis-guided screen pointer movement. Name origin: The iMac name did not come from Apple, per se: it came from their advertising agency, TBWA/Chiat/Day, where Ken Segall was the executive working with that product. The story is that Steve Jobs presented the pre-production Bondi Blue model to the agency, asking them to quickly come up with a name, as printing of the shipping boxes and documentation had to occur within a week. (Jobs himself reportedly had a prospective name - which the agency thought ill of.) Segall's team came up with five names, four of which were reportedly just filler around the favored name, iMac. Jobs reportedly did not think much of that name, until he pictured its conciseness on the side of the computer. iMac, differentiating models See Apple Support Article HT1463 "How to identify your iMac". iMac (2002; "desk lamp" design) In the 2002/01 Macworld Expo the new iMac was introduced, with a radical "lamp" type design, with a flat panel display mounted on a half dome CPU enclosure. Designer: Jonathan Ive iMac (2004; "slab") The third generation iMac design was unveiled at the August 31, 2004 Apple Expo in Paris, being a slab design, with the (G5) computer built into the roughly 1.5" thick polycarbonate plastic case, which housed the 17"/20" display. It was billed as "the most compact desktop computer ever made" (far eclipsing IBM's recent "compact" computer, which doesn't even come close). The ground-breaking design made everyone wonder, "Where's the computer?" The design is meant to evoke the iPod, and potentially draw the iPod buying public toward the Apple computer line. Intro of this next generation iMac was delayed by a shortage of the IBM G5 microprocessors. Designer: Jonathan Ive, now Apple VP of Industrial Design. SuperDrive and magnetic holder for the Apple Remote on the right side. When sleeping, a pulsing white light could be seen through the front of the case. Came in 17", 20", and (later) 24" display sizes. iMac (Early 2006 - white plastic) Official, keyworded name of the dual core Intel iMac announced at the January, 2006 MacWorld conference in San Francisco. Is all but identical to the iMac G5 from last fall, except that its G5 processor module has been replaced with an Intel Core Duo module. Is overall much faster than the G5 version. Be aware that the Intel chipset limits FireWire speed to the original 400 Mbps, so no FireWire 800 speed on board. Keyboard: A1048 These Intel iMacs employ a "mobile" version of the processor family, to limit heat issues in what is tantamount to a laptop computer design. iMac aluminum (2007/08) The fourth generation iMac, announced in a Steve Jobs presentation on the Apple Campus, Tuesday, 2007/08/07. All aluminum case. (The previous generation had an aluminum support, and this one carries that to its logical conclusion.) The former all-white screen surround is replaced with a black border - which seems jarringly distracting compared to the previous all-white design, but is common in television displays to help the viewer's eye to perceive contrast better. The matte plastic screen is replaced by glossy glass. Gone is the 17" iMac. The old high-profile plastic keyboard is replaced by one with a thin slab having a matching aluminum casing. The optical drive is the now-old SuperDrive - no Blu-ray yet. Missing on the new iMac relative to the prev-gen: the magnetic Apple Remote holder on the right edge of the case, and the "sleeping" LED on the front, both gone due to replacement of plastic by metal. Problems: These iMacs have turned out to be "lemony", first plagued with video driver problems which caused freezes, and then by color banding problems. iMac 2012 Announced at the special event, 2012/10/23, this is the new "thin edge" iMac. What's no longer included: - Optical disc drive (Seldom used any more) - Audio in jack (USB audio input is better) - FireWire ports (There is a Apple Thunderbolt to FireWire Adapter) iMac G5 New in 2005, where the computer is built into the 17"/20" slab display. Audio out: Via 3-conductor mini headphone jack; can be analog or digital (but beware that volume control does not work when the output is digital). Note that there is no Toslink output on this iMac: to use such a cable, it needs a headphone jack adapter. iMac glare The reflective screen on the iMac may induce eye strain, as your eyes try to focus on the imagery and ignore room reflections. Vendors with solutions: http://www.photodon.com iMac memory changes If replaced memory modules are not recognized, the iMac will sound three tones every five seconds. iMac model, identify See Apple Article HT1758 "How to identify iMac models" iMac too bright The 24" iMac tends to be way too bright even at the lowest Brightness setting in the Displays system preference. This seems to be partly a consequence of panels getting capable of higher brightnesses as manufacturers improve them, in conjunction with Apple possibly not having adapted to this reality in the programming of their Brightness control. (But, Apple could certainly have achieved this - and perhaps chose not to, because (as I realized) a brigher image results in less visible reflection from the glossy surface of the display, and thus less distraction.) One treatment for this would be to go into the Displays system preference and, under Color, do Calibrate (where Expert mode affords more control). This can tone down the display. A remedy is to download the freeware application called Shades, from http://www.charcoaldesign.co.uk/shades which plants itself as a system preference, providing excellent control of brightness. (And the app is sophisticated, recognizing and handling two displays separately, so that you can balance brightness across them. Its on-screen slider can be turned off via its System Preference.) Image, save When viewing a web page and there is an image you'd like to keep, right-click on it (or Ctrl+Click), which will present a pop-up menu including an entry like: Save Image to "Downloads" You can simply click on that selection to save the image with the name it was given for the Website. However, such a name is usually trivial or meaningless, so you'd like to give it a name of your fabrication. You can achieve that by holding down the Option key, which changes the entry to: Save Image As... which you can select to then bring up a save dialog. Image Capture OS X application to transfer images from your digital camera or scanner to your computer. It is used, transparently, by iPhoto for transferring images from a camera into the photo library. With mainstream cameras, you can instead have iPhoto launch automatically when the camera is connected to the computer, as via USB. Using Image Capture directly may be preferable where you want to preview pictures before importing them, or import only some that are in the imaging device. A further alternative is to remove the memory card from the camera, insert it into a USB or FireWire card reader, and access the card from your computer as a storage volume. Image Capture is not intended for importing videos - use iMovie. Image files, view OS X: Preview appl Image viewing, convenient OS X has a very convenient image viewing capability that is somewhat hidden... When you are in a directory containing a bunch of image files that you want to browse, and don't want to have to click to open every one, simply drag to select as many as you want, then do Cmd+O to open them in Preview. There, you can quickly move through them with the Up and Down arrow keys. ImageWriter Apple's first printer, introduced in December, 1983. Dot matrix. See also: LaserWriter ImageWriter II Apple's second printer, introduced in April, 1985. Dot matrix. iMail A dashboard widget: a counter for unread mail messages, in concert with Apple Mail. Not to be confused with the IMAIL mail client from MIT. iMate Griffin Technology adapter to allow old ADB keyboard and mice units to be used on USB computers. Draws power from the cable - no external power supply. Works very well. iMessage Apple's next generation messaging technology in iOS 5, built into the Messages app. Text messages are encrypted. (The connection is encrypted with TLS using a client side certificate, that is requested by the device on the activation of iMessage. The encryption is so good that governments can't decrypt it for investigations.) iMessage technology is proprietary to Apple devices, thus a selling point for them. It detects if your correspondent is iMessage capable, and will use that for communication, instead of SMS. iMessage works by automatically checking to see if the contact you're sending messages to has an Apple ID associated with the device: if so, the message will be sent as a (no-cost) iMessage rather than using SMS ($$). Protocol: Is based on Apple push notifications (APNS) - a proprietary, binary protocol. As the person you are communicating with starts typing, you see a balloon with "..." in it. Read receipts are also possible, where the sender can receive acknowledgement when the sent message has been read. iMessage allows you to send unlimited text, photos, videos, locations, and contacts using Wi-Fi or 3G from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to other iOS 5 users. (Does not work with Macintosh users.) A valid Apple ID is required to use iMessage on iPad and iPod touch. Messages sent using iMessage will appear in a light blue bubble, while messages sent using SMS or MMS will appear in a green bubble. (It is also the case that if the message you are about to type will be sent via iMessage, "iMessage" will appear in light gray lettering in the text entry field before you start typing in it. If SMS will be used, the gray lettering is "Text Message".) Incoming messages are in gray bubbles - because how they were sent is not relevant to you. You can prevent the use of SMS by going into Settings > Messages and turn off "Send As SMS". A valid phone number or Apple ID is required to use iMessage on iPhone. Considering that there are some 200 million iOS devices out there, as of June 2011, there is critical mass for iMessage. Works with iCloud, for continuity of communications across devices. OS X Lion may get iMessage capability in its iChat. Is Apple's answer to BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), and thus one less reason to go with a BlackBerry. (BBM has some 40 million users, globally: far less than the number of iOS devices out there now.) Also note that BBM requires RiM servers and fees; not iMessage. iMessage also eliminates the need for the antiquated SMS which carriers have used to milk consumers. Some info: www.imore.com/tipb-answers-imessage-works iMessage data handling There is no Apple-published specification for iMessage that I have found, so this info is empirical... Photos and videos included in messages are "optimized" in sending, with their data reduced in proportion to the capabilities of the transport. With a wifi connection, reduction is moderate; With a cellular connection, reduction is more extreme. This is an MMS convention which iMessage adheres to. MMS does not define limits to message size, but conventionally, video is limited to about 1 MB (1.2 MB sometimes seen). Some carriers limit MMS to 300 KB. These are "constraints" rather than architectural limits. iMessage not receiving on iPhone Your iPhone may not be receiving iMessage messages as you would expect, particularly where you have multiple devices sharing one Apple ID. This may happen on the phone because it operates with a telephone number identity as well as an Apple ID. To rectify: Settings > Messages > Receive At > Caller ID and there click on the email address, making sure there$(B,$(Bs a checkmark next to it. iMessage notifications control Go into Settings > Notifications > Messages Adjust Repeat Alert for one of Never Once Twice 3 Times 5 Times 10 Times with about 2 minutes between each alert. .img Perhaps you mean .dmg (q.v.)? iMic USB microphone-level or line-level input (switch-selectable), headphone line-level output. From GriffinTechnology.com. Contains a built-in microphone amplifier, powered by USB. Immediately recognized by Mac OS X - no device driver to install. Input supports better than CD quality at up to 48 Khz sampling. Traditional Mac audio only supported a maximum of 16bit sampling, while the iMic hardware samples internally at 24bit. This means that the iMic has a much larger potential signal to noise (S/N) ratio, a wider dynamic range and superior high-end frequency response. Problem handling: - If you get no sound but iMic does show up as the input/output device, try toggling Mute off and on. See also: iChat; USB audio iMix Another name for a playlist in iTunes. iMovie Digital video movie editing application, part of the iLife suite. First appeared as provided software on the iMac DV, 1999. On April 28, 2000 Apple announced that iMovie could be freely downloaded from www.apple.com/imovie . Create edited movies from digital imagery (DV, digital still camera). The output is typically to iDVD. Your Movies folder is the workplace. SUPPORTED FORMATS: iMovie supported video formats are limited to DV, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264, and AIC. If your MPEG files are muxed (multiplexed) MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 videos, iMovie won't accept them because of codec incompatibility. To get odd formats into iMovie, use a separate video conversion app first. INPUT: Typically via FireWire from a camcorder. Or, real-time from an iSight camera/mic. iMovie only imports DV stream movies...streaming digital video captured directly from a video camera or other video source. QuickTime movies exported from Flash or like sources aren't in DV stream format, so the iMovie importer can't 'see' them in the import dialog. To deal with this, convert the QuickTime movie exported from Flash into a DV stream. This can be done using QuickTime Pro. You can explicitly import any QuickTime-compatible file < 2 GB, as in simply dragging a .mpg file to a box on the right side of the iMovie interface. Imported videos become Clips. SOUND INPUT: Can come from microphone, CD, iTunes library, or sound effects. Use 16-bit audio for best results (per Apple Article 61636). But, sound will not participate in an Import from a movie in MPEG-1 Muxed format or MPEG-2 Muxed format. OUTPUT: In NTSC or PAL video formats. An import example: http://www.education.uiowa.edu/ resources/how2/iMovie/ TIPS: Avoid having FileVault active, which can result in jumpiness. Feed back to Apple: www.apple.com/feedback/imovie.html The next higher level above iMovie is Final Cut Express HD. There are various expositions on the effective use of iMovie and iDVD in the Pro area of the Apple website, as in www.apple.com/pro/techniques/3d_demo/. iMovie made a fresh appearance 2010/06/07 as an iPhone 4 app. See also: iDVD; Magic iMovie iMovie 3.x That level introduced the ability to convert a QuickTime movie into a DV stream during import. iMovie HD 6 New, 2006/01. - Apple-designed iMovie themes that combine your video and photos with professionally produced scenes. - Real time Core Video effects so you can experiment with special effects and see the results instantly. - Audio enhancement tools and sound effects to make your movie sound as good as it looks. - Support for multiple projects open simultaneously. iMovie tips Clips: iMovie likes to separate an input file into separate clips, where it detects a scene change. You can defeat this in its Preferences, by de-selecting Automatically Start New Clip At Scene Break. However, clips may be limited to 2 GB in size (9 minutes, 28 seconds, and 2 frames of DV video), whereupon iMovie will emphatically create a new clip of the incoming data after the 2 GB point. Automatic DVD production: In the project selection window, choose "Make a Magic iMovie" and it will do everything, from importing your camera video, to assembling it, to buring it to a DVD via iDVD. Speed adjustment: Cmd+I for Inspector, Convert Clip, adjust speed. "Includes 720p and 1080p" In iTunes, is an Information item when you are looking at a movie offering. This means that the movie can be downloaded in either form. Right after that, you will see either: Downloading 720p Downloading 1080p depending upon your Preferences setting under the Store tab, choice "When downloading High Definition videos, prefer:". You have this choice to best suit the realities of your Internet connection and storage space. /Incompatible Software Folder containing software which a recent Mac OS X install found to be incompatible with that level of the operating system. A message during the install will have so noted this. You should review what's in there and update such software as appropriate. Infrared imaging attachment for iPhone www.flir.com Initialize a disk An operation which deletes the directory structure on a disk. It does not traverse the disk erasing all of it - which is why the operation take litle time. Naturally, this leaves previously written data intact on the disk, retrievable by enterprising software. Formatting a disk actually obliterates old data - and takes a lot longer. Ink The name of the OS 10.2+ tablet handwriting recognition software. When you connect a graphics tablet to your Mac, OS X 10.2 activates its Ink handwriting-recognition technology and places an Ink item in your System Preferences. Ink lets you handwrite text directly into any application with an active insertion point. As you write, a sheet of virtual paper displays your handwritten characters, and when you pause, Ink automatically converts your letters to text and inserts them in your document as if you had typed them. Insert key? Mac desktop keyboards have a Help key where the Insert key is on ordinary keyboards, and pressing the Help key brings up the Help facility. So how to effect Insert on a Mac keyboard? In most cases, terminal access to systems where you need an Insert key is accomplished via X11, and in X11 one can reassign keys by name, as via xmodmap. Perform the following from your Mac xterm window to map the Mac keyboard Help key to Insert (those being in the same keyboard position): xmodmap -e "keycode 122 = Insert" Unfortunately, PowerBook laptops don't even have a Help key. There, you can use the 'xev' command from the Mac xterm window to identify the keycode for any pressed key and reassign that one. Inspector Mac term for an information panel whose contents change with each object you choose in another window. A familiar example is the Fonts inspector (Format > Font > Show Fonts) which shows all the attributes of the fonts on a page as you move the pointer around the page. The inspector technique is much, much better than the MS Word approach where you have to tediously go back to the menu system or tool bar for every selected font you want to see on the page. Another example is the Get Info Inspector Panel (Command + Option + I), where you can see info on any file you choose in a Finder window, without having to do an individual Get Info on each item. Install update manually See: Standalone installer Installer An OS X application which extracts and installs files out of .pkg packages. Originated in NeXT. For info: 'man installer' See also: Package Installer disk, convert media type The installer disc you have may be a DVD, but your laptop only takes CDs. What to do? Take the media to a Mac which can read it. There, launch Disk Utility, select the disc from the left pane, then click New Image, wherein you will choose DVD/CD Master, to create a bit-for-bit copy of the source disc, including empty sectors. Installer files Click on "i" (info) button next to that item's name in the installer, to get a list of the files in it. Installer tricks An install older than your current OS may balk. Hold down the Option key when launching the installer to get to the Custom Install. See also: Tomes Instant alpha Capability in modern OS X Kenote and Preview apps to render the background of an image transparent, to make it more usable in image compositing. Here's how it works in Preview: In the window with the image, click on its Edit icon (a marker, diagonally down to the left, over a rectange) to expose the image editing menu. There, click on Instant Alpha (looks a bit like a magic wand) and, using that tool, select a bit of the background: this will cause a salmon colored overlay to appear. Drag around until it the background is separated from the foreground image. Now press Delete to make the background transparent. You can repeat this pruning until all extraneous background elements are gone. If part of the image inadvertently goes away, hold down the Option key and drag in that removed region to bring back the wanted image portion. Using Extract Shape first may make the work easier, particularly where the background is "noisy". In Keynote and Pages, there is an Instant Alpha item in the Format menu. Note that the JPEG format lacks transparent background capability, so you will be prompted to change your image to PNG format, which can do that. Intel Core Duo Low-power-consumption, dual-core microprocessor for laptops and small boxes where heat and fan noise would otherwise be an issue. Incorporated into the iMac, MacBook, and MacMini product lines beginning 2006/01, with maximum speed of about 2 GHz. Intel's flagship Core microarchitecture is a dual core, 64 bit, 4 issue superscalar, moderately pipelined, out-of-order MPU, implemented in a 65nm high performance bulk process. The processor can address 36 bits of physical memory and 48 bits of virtual memory. Some sources list this as a 32-bit processor, others as 64-bit.? The first processors that will use this architecture are code-named: Merom For mobile computing. Conroe For desktop systems. Woodcrest For servers (more cores). Intel processors, Apple switch to Announced 2005/06/06 at the WWDC. Apple had given IBM plenty of time to advance PowerPC processor technology so that Apple could continue its innovative computer line - but IBM failed Apple. As Steve Jobs said: "I stood up here two years ago in front of you and I promised you this ["3.0 GHz?" G5 PowerPC computer pictured] - and we haven't been able to deliver that to you yet. I think a lot of you would like a G5 in your PowerBook and we haven't been able to deliver that to you yet". IBM failed to deliver the speed; but just as important, the power per watt for laptops. Transition period: 2006-2007 Note that this was the last major John Sculley initiative that Steve Jobs had to fix. A conspicuous irony is that Intel itself has failed to deliver new (Broadwell) processors in a timely manner in 2014, causing Apple to have to delay product upgrades. This has fostered January 2015 rumors that Apple would transition its laptops to ARM type processors, which Apple would design and thus be in control of their own upgrade cycles. Intel's former chief executive Paul Otellini revealed in 2014 that he didn't believe his company would able to earn enough money building mobile chips for Apple's new iPhone to cover its development costs, largely because he couldn't imagine Apple selling iPhones in large quantities. See also: Marklar Interface building See: Cocoa Internal Speakers See: Audio choices Internet Connect Configuration panel for setting up Internet connection methods, such as Airport, Bluetooth, Modem, VPN. Internet Explorer (IE) Web browser from Microsoft. They discontinued development of IE for the Mac in early 2000, as Apple produced the Safari browser (for OS X). Latest versions produced: For Mac OS 8.1 to 9.x: 5.1.7 (1997) For Mac OS X: 5.2.3 (2001) "Internet Printing Protocol" Type choice when defining a printer in OS X, under Advanced. Denotes printing utilizing URI prefix "ipp://", conventionally connecting to port 631 on the IPP server. See also: IPP printing, set up, advanced "Internet Printing Protocol (http)" Type choice when defining a printer in OS X, under Advanced. Denotes printing utilizing URI prefix "http://", conventionally connecting to port 80 on the IPP server. Mac command line command 'lpinfo -v' should verify http submission capability by reporting "network http" in the list. To print to the standard IPP server port, configure the printer via URL form "http://host.place.edu:631/Printername". See also: IPP printing, set up, advanced "Internet Printing Protocol (ipp)" Same as "Internet Printing Protocol" Internet radio Has been available on the Mac, within iTunes: go into Library, click on Radio in the top bar. Has been available on Apple TV. Is not available in Apple apps on iPhone: you need to install one of the 3rd party apps which does that. Internet Recovery OS 10.7 Lion recovery feature, as for when your new Mac (starting with the Mac minis and MacBook Airs introduced 2011/07/20) have a newly replace hard drive. This deals with the reality that Lion is sold on the Mac Apps store, rather than on optical media. (But it will be possible to purchase Lion on an Apple-sold USB "thumb drive".) This recovery works by powering up the Mac such that it goes out to Apple's servers for its boot: the process first runs a quick test of your memory and hard drive to ensure there are no hardware issues, then presents a limited interface at first, with only the ability to select your preferred Wi-Fi network and, if needed, enter the WPA passphrase. Next a recovery HD image will download and start-up will begin from that, whereafter full install utilities and functions are presented. Older Macs will have to start from their original Snow Leopard DVD-ROM, apply software updates, then install Lion as usual. iOS New name for the iPhone OS, as of 2010/06/07 (at WWDC), where the first one with this name is iOS 4. (iPhone OS 4 was previewed in April under that original name.) This naming was overdue, given that the OS is for all Apple mobile devices: iPhone, iPod touch, iPad. Apple licensed the iOS name from Cisco, which had its IOS operating system name for some years. iOS, save battery life Closing backgrounded apps does not do anything to save battery life: backgrounded apps are suspended. Closing them only saves memory. iOS 4.1 Announced in 2010/04/08 presentation. Became available 2010/09/08. iOS 4.1 has reincluded the Field Test mode to iOS. This allows iPhone users to get a numerical figure for antenna strength rather than the traditional bar measure. To enter the mode: Dial *3001#12345#* into your phone [and press Call]. Pressing Home will exit you from the Field Test mode. iOS 4.2 Available Monday November 22, 2010 for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. It was mostly driven by the iPad, which was still at a 3.1 level then, way behind the iPhone 4, conspicuously lacking multitasking. Viewable document types: .jpg, .tiff, .gif (images); .doc and .docx (Microsoft Word); .htm and .html (web pages); .key (Keynote); .numbers (Numbers); .pages (Pages); .pdf (Preview and Adobe Acrobat); .ppt and .pptx (Microsoft PowerPoint); .txt (text); .rtf (rich text format); .vcf (contact information); .xls and .xlsx (Microsoft Excel) iOS 4.3 Announced 2011/03/02. Avail March 11. iTunes home sharing. Hotspot ability on iPhone 4. AirPlay enhancements. Safari much faster. FaceTime for iPad. Supports all iPads, iPhone (GSM), and third- and fourth-generation iPod touch. iOS 5 Announced 2011/06/06 at the WWDC. Available 2011/10/12. Camera: Faster usage via a camera button on the lock screen, and using the volume-up button as a shutter release. Autofocus and autoexposure. Photos: At last, the ability to crop, rotate, enhance, and remove red-eye. Compatible with: iPhone 4S iPhone 4 iPhone 3GS iPad 2 iPad iPod touch (4th generation) iPod touch (3rd generation) http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1456 Android 4.0 and iOS 5 were released at about the same time. By June of 2012 (Apple Developers Conference), more than 80% of iOS users were on the new release: only 7% of Android users were on their new release. iOS 6 Unprecedented adoption rate: 200 million as of 2012/10/23. iOS 7 Announced at WWDC 2013. Employs "flat" icon graphics, which facilitates parallax layering. A dramatic change is borderless buttons. For a clean look, at introduction time it utilizes font Helvetica Neue Ultra Thin (Ultra Light) - changed in beta 3 to be the somewhat thicker Helvetica Neue Regular. (Many adjustments can be expected as input arrives from developers experiencing the betas. Always keep in mind that what is introduced at WWDC is for developers, not the general public.) The most dramatic change is that this version is 64-bit! As needed to support the new 64-bit iPhone 5S. Meanwhile, Android remains 32-bit. iOS 7 also includes Multipath TCP, allowing devices like the iPhone to simultaneously use multiple interfaces such as cellular and Wi-Fi to transfer data. iOS 8 Made available 2014/09/17. Full storage encryption is on by default now. iOS 9 Announced at WWDC 2015. Improved Siri. SlideOver. Multitasking. Picture-in-Picture watching of videos while you use apps. When in keyboard mode, you can use the keyboard area as a trackpad. Proactive assistant. iOS device: how to hover over a link When using Safari on a Mac, you can just move the pointer over a link to have its actual URL exposed (in the bottom edge of the window). Obviously, you can't "hover" on a touch device, so how do you see its URL without going to it? Simply touch and hold on the link: the URL will be reported in the pop-up box, and you can slide your finger off the link to keep from actually going to it. iOS device: how to record screen Ever wanted to create a movie of actions happening on your iPhone or iPad screen? To do so: • Connect your iOS device to your Mac via a Lightning cable. • On your Mac, open QuickTime Player. • In player: File >New Movie Recording • Just to the right of the Record button in Player is a downward arrow: click on that to drop a menu, where will choose your iOS device within the Camera section. • Now, when you press the Record button, you are making a movie of what's happening on your iOS screen. iOS Exchange support Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync is a proprietary protocol which provides push synchronization of contacts, calendars, tasks, and email between ActiveSync-enabled servers and devices. Apple licenses it for iOS, where it has been in iOS since 3.0. Apple also licenses it for Mac OS X. In providing Exchange integration, Apple does not charge its customers any additional fee - unlike RiM, where they charge Blackberry customers a fee for Exchange server access. iOS file system When Apple introduced iOS, it created a specialized file system based on the Mac's HFSX with support for individual file encryption used for data protection on mobile devices. iOS government certification iOS is certified for U.S. government use It's FIPS 140-2 compliant, allowing it to be used for low-level security classifications. It has also received STIG certification for Dept. of Defense use. iOS mail filtering The Mail app on iOS devices has no mail filtering capability, as of iOS 6. Mail filtering needs to be done at the server. iOS video player The video player software which Apple provides for developers in iOS. Apps which use it (YouTube, iPod, BBC News, MLB) can send video out to external devices, via the 30-pin connector and, in late 2010 in iOS 4.2, via AirPlay. IP address Readily seen in Sharing control. iPad As of 2012/10/09, 100 million sold. iPad (1st generation) Apple's tablet, announced at the 2010/01/27 special event. (The project code identifier was "K48"; model identifier: iPad1,1.) WiFi model released 2010/04/03. WiFi+3G model released 2010/04/30. Display: 9.7" LCD (5.75 x 7.75". 45.6 square inches), IPS type, 1024x768. Multi-touch. 802.11n wireless standard; ATT cellular optional. (IPS is In-Plane Switching, an LCD technology first introduced in 1996 by Hitachi to correct the poor viewing angles and color problems that LCDs had at the time.) Processor: Apple A4. Memory: 256 MB Storage: 16/32/64 GB flash memory. Battery life: 10 hours run; 1 month standby. History: A multi-touch tablet was a goal of Apple's since the early 2000s, which they pursued through touch development and inertial scrolling. Perhaps around 2005, Steve Jobs realized that this technology would be perfect for a phone. The tablet project was put aside, to instead work on what became the iPhone. Once the iPhone thing settled down, the project team returned to the tablet, and finished it, to become the iPad. The iPad name was acquired from Fujitsu, which gave the name iPAD to an early wireless device to aid retail store management, in 2002, which looked like an elongated smartphone. What's the origin of the name choice? That is not known. It may be that the name was chosen as a short cousin of the iPod. Note also that in the TV series Star Trek Voyager they had a hand-held information device called PAD - Personal Access Display. iPad (2nd generation) Announced 2011/03/02. Available 3/11, 5 pm (but immediately sold out, and barely available thereafter). A5 dual-core processor: twice as fast (1 GHz), but about same power consumption as A4. Same 10 hours of active battery life, and a month of standby. 25 Watt-hour battery. RAM: 512 MB. 9x faster graphics. Thinner. Gyroscope. Front and back cameras (apparently, the same specs as those in iPod touch 4th generation, rather than higher resolution as in iPhone 4). Lighter: 1.3 pounds. 2 colors: black and white. On both ATT & Verizon networks. Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR. Display: 9.7" LCD (5.75 x 7.75". 45.6 square inches), IPS type, 1024x768. Dock connector HDMI mirrored video output via dock-connector cable, even 1080p. (The adapter plugs into 30-pin connector in the iPad 2 and outputs to HDMI plus 30-pin.) GPU: Imagination Technologies PowerVR SGX543MP2. Standard background image is carbonated bubbles. No Siri, despite having an A5 processor as in the iPhone 4S, which does Siri. Innovative iPad cover (Smartcover). Same pricing as iPad 1. New apps for iPad: iMovie ($5); Garage Band ($5). Model identifiers: iPad2,1 iPad2,2 iPad2,3 iPad (3rd generation) Announced in 2012/03/07 presentation. Called "the new iPad" during the presentation (not iPad HD). Described in advertising as "resolutionary". Retina display (2048x1536; 3.1 million pixels, beyond 1920x1080 HD); Super High Aperture (SHA) pixel technology. 40% better color saturation. A5X processor, dual core; quad core graphics. Bluetooth 4.0. Cameras: The front camera is now called the FaceTime camera, and remains VGA quality. The back camera is now called the iSight camera, improved to 5 megapixel, backside illuminated, 5 element lens, IR filter, ISP built into the A5X. Auto exposure, auto focus. Face detection. 1080p video recording, with image stabilization. Voice dictation, via microphone button on the virtual keyboard. Cellular: 4G LTE (first time on any Apple product). 3.1 Mbps EV-DO, 7.2 on HSDPA. Has the most radio bands ever shipped in a consumer device. Battery endurance: Despite all the added demands, same 10 hours general, 9 hours 4G. 42.5 Watt-hour battery (about 70% higher capacity than in iPad 2) - harder to charge via USB connection. Usual 30 pin dock connector. 9.44 mm thick (vs. 8.8 iPad 2). 1.4 pounds (vs. 1.33 iPad 2). Standard background image is gradient blue. Processor: ARMv7 1.00 GHz (same as A5) Memory: 1 GB Internal model number: iPad3,3 Models: 16 GB $499. 32 GB $599 64 GB $699 4G: 16 GB $629 32 GB $729 64 GB $829 Available March 16. iPad 2 will continue to be sold, as only a 16 GB mode, $100 less, as a more affordable model (to make Apple more competitive). No Siri, despite having an A5 generation processor as in the iPhone 4S, which does Siri; but dictation is provided, which is an aspect of Siri. What's not there: Siri. 802.11ac. iLife software suite not included (buy from App Store). FaceTime not allowed via cellular, despite 4G speed boost. Why not called iPad 3? Perhaps because Apple wants to treat the iPad like its other main stream products, where you don't say "iMac 7", for example. iPad (4th generation) Announced in 2012/10/23 presentation (just 1/2 year later!!). Why so soon? To have all Apple hand-held products now using the same Lightning connector. Processor: A6X iPad (4th generation plus) Announced in 2013/01/29 as a PR announcement, this is a capacity boost version of the iPad 4, with 128 GB of storage. Available starting Tuesday, February 5, in black or white, for a suggested retail price of $799 (US) for the iPad with Wi-Fi model and $929 (US) for the iPad with Wi-Fi + Cellular model. iPad Air The next generation full-size iPad, debuted at the Apple media event of 2013/10/22, at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco. Thinnest yet; narrow side bezels. A7 processor and advanced graphics. Mimo 802.11n wifi (no 802.11ac). iPad Air 2 The next generation full-size iPad, debuted at the Apple media event of 2014/10/16, on the Apple campus. Even thinner. Processor now A8X (the A8 processor of iPhone 6, with added performance for iPad. Memory: 2 GB. M8 motion processor. Touch ID. 8 MP camera with panorama, slow motion, time lapse. Laminated and anti-reflective display. 802.11ac. iPad mini Debuted at the Apple media event of 2012/10/23, at the California Theatre in San Jose. Employs engineering touches of the iPhone 5. Fits in one hand. 7.2 mm thin. 0.68 pounds (about the same as a pad of paper). Processor: A5 Screen: 7.9" diagonal; 1024x768 (same as iPad 1,2). Facetime HD. 5 MP iSight camera. Cellular: LTE Lightning connector. Stereo speakers (first Apple tablet to have them). Side borders are thinner to allow screen touching via one hand. Starting price: $329, 16 GB. iPad mini 3 Debuted at the Apple media event of 2014/10/16. A minor refresh, basically adding a Touch ID button, but leaving its wireless networking at 802.11n, same A7 processor, same dimensions, same screen technology. iPad mini 4 Offhandedly announced 2015/09/09. A8 processor. 2 GB memory iPad movie rentals Per Apple Article HT4095: SD movie rentals are in a widescreen format and have a resolution of up to 480p. HD movie rentals have a resolution of up to 720p on iPad. Movies rented on iPad cannot be transferred to other devices and can only be viewed on iPad. Note: HD movie rentals do not come with an iPhone and iPod-compatible SD version. iPad Pro Announced 2015/09/09. Intended for institutional use. Four speakers! One at each corner. 6.9mm thick 1/58 [pounds RAM: 4 GB Display: 12.9" diagonal, oxide TFT Resolution: 2732x2048 Variable refresh rate (first on an Apple product) to save battery life. Accompanying products: Apple Pencil (stylus) Smart Keyboard cover iPad Pro 9.7" Introduced 2016/03/21. Same screen technology as iPad Pro. Brightest tablet on the market, with lowest reflectance. 25% greater color saturation. True Tone display: measures the color temperature of ambient light and alters the color temperature to match. Four sensors can look at ambient light temperature so stuff on your tablet looks more like real paper. Pro audio, with four speakers, twice the volume. A9X processor. M9 motion coprocessor. Smart Connector; Smart Keyboard for this size iPad Pro. Supports Apple Pencil. Advanced camera. Shoots 4K video. 5 MP FaceTime camera. 12 MP iSight camera; True Tone flash. 32 GB: $599. 128 GB: $749. But: No LTE version announced. USB 2 transfer speed (25$(G!9(B35 MB/s), not USB 3 (625 MB/s) of its larger version. iPad VGA connector usage Mirroring is the common mode of operation. Some applications (e.g., Keynote) have been written to use the APIs to drive external video; others cannot, for lack of programming. VGA is video only, of course: if you wanted sound sent to the display, you'd have to connect an audio cable. There is also the HDMI adapter, which passes both video and sound to HDTVs and similar advanced display technologies. The VGA adapter does not support HDCP and thus is restricted from playing "protected" (copyrighted) content, such as purchased movies. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4108. iPhone Apple's cell phone, formally announced at the 2007/01/09 Macworld, to be purchasable in June. It was announced as: $(O#@(B A widescreen iPod with touch controls $(O#@(B A revolutionary mobile phone $(O#@(B A breakthrough Internet communicator Processor: ARM type, 400 MHz Bus speed: 100 MHz Identification string: "iPhone1,1" Also functions as a wide-screen video iPod, with advanced Internet applications. The iPhone seems to be Apple's effort to get an iTunes capable phone done right, after Motorola bungled the iTunes RAZR V3i phone (2005/11), which reflected negatively on Apple; and the iPhone addresses the chronic problem of your cell phone not being able to communicate with your Mac. On the front is a single physical button: the round Home button, about the size of your fingertip. (This was anticipatory engineering, which allowed the iPhone 5S to use that button for its fingerprint sensor.) Virtual buttons on a MultiTouch display, with a virtual keyboard with smarts. Runs OS X Leopard, to allow full-scale apps, rather than "baby software". Initial applications: Mail, Safari Browser, Widgets (not the same as OS X Dashboard Widgets). Includes a 2 MP camera. Specs: 3.5" diagonal screen, 160 ppi. SIM slot. Sensors: proximity, ambient light, accelerometer. Networking: GSM, EDGE, SMS messaging, WiFi, Bluetooth. Automatically detects and switches to WiFi. However, it lacks 802.1x support out of the box, supporting only PSK security mechanisms. Google Maps. Free Yahoo "push" IMAP email. During the presentation, Steve said that a 3G iPhone was in the future. You probably also noticed that the 2 MP camera is on the back of the phone: the future will probably bring an iSight camera on the front, for video iChat. The service provider is the "new at&t", [formerly, Cingular] as say the 2007/06/04 commercials, and: "Use requires minimum new 2 year activation plan." Oddly, this commercial-end notice was excised about a day later. Phone activation is done at home, via iTunes 7.3+. The non-phone features of the device (iPod, etc.) cannot be used until activation is performed. The iPhone may be thought of as "the smallest Macintosh, ever". With all the emphasis on "phone", what was initially not fully appreciated is that the iPhone is actually a revolutionary device, constituting a computer in your pocket. It's not just an advanced phone, but rather a whole new computing platform which incorporates cellular communication. What's missing? Flash plug-in is the most conspicuous omission. It can be perceived that the Leopard product delay was caused by developers having been put onto the task of making iPhone accomodations. Thoughts: Apple's approach to a cell phone dramatically points out how badly industry design concepts can go in the wrong direction. All the other so-called smart phones had gone down the path of cluttering the surface of the phone with a bewildering array of hard-cast buttons, both confusing the user and reducing the size of the display, and diminished display size make for diminished applications functionality. This stupid design concept went on for years, and it took Apple to step in and show the cell industry how to properly do things. Once Apple's design was seen, it was obvious what a good design was - with inevitable imitations to follow. Is imagination that lacking in the vast majority of the design world? iPhone VP: Scott Forstall History: Apple did not originally intend to develop a phone. A multi-touch tablet was a goal of Apple's since the early 2000s, which they pursued through touch development and inertial scrolling. Perhaps around 2005, Steve Jobs realized that this technology would be perfect for a phone. The tablet project was put aside, to instead work on what became the iPhone. Once the iPhone thing settled down, the project team returned to the tablet, and finished it, to become the iPad. The first iPhone suffered from limitations because it was basically cobbled together from available electronic components. This situation convinced Steve Jobs to set up Apple's own silicon design team. Next generation: 3G iPhone, Airplane Mode A settings choice for use on commercial airliners, where the wireless features of iPhone are disabled, and if allowed by the aircraft operator and applicable laws and regulations, you can continue to use the non-wireless features after takeoff. When airplane mode is on, an airplane symbol appears in the status bar, and you cannot make calls, send text messages, surf the web, or check for new email. But: Do not assume that any given airline will allow you to use such an electronic device, regardless of employing this setting. Airlines may rightly distrust passengers to do the right thing, and insist that devices not be used at all. As a fixit: If you turn on Airplane Mode, wait 15 seconds, then turn it off, this serves to reset the iPhone's radio transmission facilities. iPhone, 1 billion sold On July 27, 2016 Apple announced having sold 1 billion iPhones. iPhone, block certain callers Blocking certain callers is not an inherent capability in any phone, but there are several approaches to doing it... AT&T Smart Limits for Wireless is an online service that enables you to provide your children with the freedom and security of a cell phone while setting sensible boundaries for its use. One feature is the ability to block incoming and outgoing calls and text messages by specifying blocked numbers. Costs $5 per month. Another approach is to download a silent ringtonw (e.g., Silence.mp3) from the web and assign that to the nuisance caller number in your Contacts list. iPhone, call hands-free on speaker Initiate the call via Siri, like: "Call Jackie using speakerphone" or "Call Jackie using speaker" iPhone, capture screen An image of the current screen can be captured if the iPhone's software is at least level 2.0: Press the home key and the sleep/wake button at the top at the same time. The screen will flash white, signifying that a photo of the current screen has been saved. You can then view and work with the image by going into Photos, and then the photo album called Saved Photos. Transfer the photo to a computer by emailing it. The image will be a 320x480 JPEG. iPhone, conference calling Initiate the first phone call. Tap Add Call to call another person. The first call is put on hold. If you want, you can talk on the second connection privately before merging the calls. Tap Merge Calls. The calls are merged onto one line and all three parties can hear one other. Repeat Add Call and Merge Calls to add more calls to the conference. If you're unable to get this to work, the problem may be ATT having failed to activate conference calling feature for your account. Conference calling hints: $(O#@(B The iPhone is actually a two-line phone, where one of the two lines can be involved in a conference call. $(O#@(B To drop a conference call participant, tap Conference and then tap the red circle with the phone icon which appears next to the call. Tap End Call to terminate that caller. $(O#@(B To speak privately with one of the conference call participants: Tap Conference, and then tap Private next to the caller you want to converse with. To reinstate that person in the conference call, tap Merge Calls. $(O#@(B A new, incoming caller can be added to a prevailing conference call by tapping Hold Call, then Answer, then Merge Calls. iPhone, DFU mode DFU mode is a state that you can put your iPhone into where it can interface with iTunes but does not load the iPhone operating system or boot loader (this is what really differs DFU mode from recovery mode). DFU stands for Device Firmware Update. iPhone, Google initial reaction In January, 2007, when Steve Jobs was about to introduce the iPhone, Google was about to introduce a keypad-based phone of their own. Then they saw Steve Jobs present the iPhone... Chris DeSalvo-F¢s reaction to the iPhone-A was immediate and visceral. "As a consumer I was blown away. I wanted one immediately. But as a Google engineer, I thought 'We-F¢re going to have to start-A over.' What we had suddenly looked just so . . . nineties," DeSalvo said. "It's just one of those things that are obvious when you see it." Also interesting was how immediately Google-F¢s Android chief at the time, Andy-A Rubin, reacted to the iPhone unveiling. On the day Jobs announced the iPhone, the director of the Android team, Andy Rubin, was six hundred miles away in Las Vegas [at CES]. Rubin was so astonished by what Jobs was unveiling that, on his way to a meeting, he had his driver pull over so that he could finish watching the webcast. "Holy crap," he said to one of his colleagues in the car. "I guess we-F¢re not going to ship that-A phone." iPhone, serial number Unlike iPods, the serial number is not impressed into the back. Can be seen in the Settings > General > About screen. When connected to your computer and the iTunes application is run, the serial number is shown under the Summary tab (along with the phone's IMEI number). And, when connected, the serial number is revealed in System Profiler. The serial number is also on a label affixed to the box in which the iPhone came. iPhone, SMS alerting The iPhone can alert when an SMS message is received. In silent (vibrate) mode, the vibe lasts about 0.4 seconds, which may be too short to discern, probably too brief for pager type alerting. iPhone, SMS details SMS is purely a cellular messaging system, where one or both ends of the session must be on a cellular phone. Message length: SMS is technologically limited to 160 chars per message. If you compose a message which ends up being 161 chars, it is sent in two segment transmissions, the second being 1 char. The iPhone will know to combine them into the single, desired message. There is no indication of message length when composing an SMS message. iPhone, SMS messages plans The following rates apply, as of early 2009: None - Pay 20 cents for each message sent or received. iPhone Text Messaging 200 $5.00/month iPhone Text Messaging 1500 $15.00/month iPhone Text Messaging Unlimited $20.00/month In subscribing to limited messaging, avoid getting involved in any online service which automatically sends you SMS messages frequently. iPhone, SMS messages via email SMS messages can be sent to an iPhone via email, by composing a text message of up to 160 characters, emailed to: <iPhone_number>@txt.att.net where the host portion is the SMS gateway at ATT. (Each carrier provides such a gateway for their customers.) Such messaging is obviously unidirectional, with no conversation possible. Note that such message sending is free for the sender - an anomaly in SMS, where carriers like to charge for sending and receiving. Note that SMS messages can be sent from the iPhone "AIM" app. iPhone, SMS messages via iChat Yes, iChat can be used to send an SMS message to an iPhone (or any phone) from your Macintosh. Go into the iChat File menu and choose Send SMS... Phone addressing is the usual, by 1-digit phone number (so include full phone numbers in your Address Book). You can thereafter interact with the iPhone owner via SMS messages. iPhone, SMS messages, block Spammers target cell phones, too. To avoid the nuisance and expense of such crud, block them. You can do this via the online area: http://mymessages.wireless.att.com which is allied with, but separate from, your main ATT Wireless account area. iPhone, test There are sites out there whereby you can test the performance of your iPhone. Some of them: Testmyiphone.com (speed test) iPhone, vibration duration Silent mode (vibrate) notifications on the iPhone are short, both the minimize annoyance and to preserve battery power. In some cases, you may want to lengthen the vibration duration. There is no setting or app to do this: you have to ssh into your iPhone and modify the contents of file: /System/Library/Frameworks/ Celestial.framework/ SystemSoundVibrationPatterns.plist iPhone 2.0 See: iPhone OS 2.0 iPhone 3G The version of the iPhone which utilizes third generation cellular transmission technology. Added feature is GPS. Model identifier: iPhone1,2 Display: LED, 3.5" diagonal; same 320 x 480; 163 dpi. Processor: ARM type, 412 MHz (slower than co-marketed iPod touch, second generation) Memory: 128 MB (Insufficient for iOS4 multitasking.) Bus speed: 100 MHz Identification string: "iPhone1,2" Battery life improved over 2007 iPhone - but it had to be improved, as 3G is very consumptive of battery power, and will nevertheless result in less daily battery life than the original iPhone on EDGE cellular. A big advantage of 3G over EDGE is that while taking a call you can go look at Web pages, as when you need to look up directions for a caller. Announced 2008/06/09 at WWDC - on the first anniversary of the first version of the iPhone. "Twice as fast. Half the price." Available 2008/07/11. The music used in the commercials is "You, Me, and the Bourgeoisie", by The Submarines. Next generation model: 3G S iPhone 3G, test There are sites out there whereby you can test the performance of your iPhone. Some of them: Testmyiphone.com (speed test) http://www.iphonespeedtest.com/ http://www.dslreports.com/mspeed iPhone 3G and signal strength Forums were abuzz with complaints about 3G reception problems on the new phone starting when it was introduced. Only lab testing would be able to discern if the problem is the phone or the network, so customers were left to speculate what the problem was, based upon observations. It was often observed that the iPhone 3G evidenced fewer "bars" than other 3G phones in the same location. The problem was seen in other countries as well, leading to a conclusion that it was a phone problem. But, it could also be a network issue in all locations due to the sudden surge in 3G use due to the number of iPhones hitting the street. To measure signal strength, the iPhone 3G can be put into Field Test mode, with accompanying menu: dial *3001#12345#* then tap Call. The bars will be replaced by a signal strength number, which is decibels per milliwatt, usually ending up being a negative number, such as -85. The less negative the number, the stronger the signal. iPhone 3G Field Test mode The iPhone 3G can be put into Field Test mode, with accompanying menu: dial *#3001#12345#* then tap Call. The bars will be replaced by a signal strength number, which is decibels per milliwatt, usually ending up being a negative number, such as -85. The less negative the number, the stronger the signal. Main menu items and sub-details are: Network Information AR FCN RF Channels AR FCN DED RX LevFull RX LevSub RX QualFull RX QualSub Ciphering MX TXPwr Cell Information Reports details of the cellular towers that are within range: RX (the received signal stength), FQ (frequency band ST (station ID) CI (the cell tower ID) N (network ID) # (status code) where there is also more info on each: # Network (carrier ID number: 410 = AT&T) Location Cell id Station Freq Rx Level C1 C2 GPRS Information Attached Attach Status Idle Mode nom cipher Freq Hopping pbcch nco Si13Loc PDP Information [Packet Data Protocol] Call Information RX QualFull RX QualSub CH Mode uplink CH Mode downlink Amr Acs Dtx Uplink Dtx Down Amr Ci Versions Firmware Version LCD Panel ID Under "Cell Information" is a list of towers that are within range. These towers or "sites" are ordered by signal strength, where the RX:-xx is the signal strength measured in decibels (dB) per milliwatt. The tower at the top of the list will generally be the one you're actually using. As you move/drive around your signal will transfer from tower to tower. iPhone 3G firmware levels Not authoritative... 03.12.06_G The 1.0.0 firmware 03.14.08_G The 1.0.1 and 1.02 firmware 04.01.13_G The 1.1.1 firmware 04.02.04_G 1.1.1 Apple Store's original firmware; differs from an 1.1.1 upgrade. iPhone 3G S (3GS) Speedier version of the 3G, announced 2009/06/08 at the Apple Developer's Conference. Went on sale 06/19. Same case, size as the 3G. Model identifier: iPhone2,1 Display: LED, 3.5" diagonal; same 320 x 480; 163 dpi. Oleophobic coating. Contrast ratio: approx 138:1 Memory: 256 MB With longer battery life, 3 mp autofocus camera, video recording capability, voice control, and the ability to participate in higher 3G data rates. The screen surface is also new, being an oil-based, "fingerprint-resistant" oleophobic coating on the handset. Identification string: "iPhone2,1" Opinion: This generation represented lost time for Apple, being just a tweak of the 3G - at the same time that the competition was making gains. I wonder if Apple was instead concentrating on the 4th iPhone, treating the 3GS as a filler generation. Previous generation model: 3G iPhone 3rd party applications Initially, can be created as Web apps, with Web 2.0 and AJAX, based upon Safari. No SDK needed. Development can occur on your desktop Mac, as the Safari is the same. Full integration with iPhone services. A "real applications" SDK would become available in 2008/03. iPhone 4S See: iPhone 5th generation (4S) iPhone 4th generation Official name: iPhone 4 Announced 2010/06/07 at the 2010 WWDC. A "slab" design, rather than the sculpted design of the first three generations, in order to make this generation thinner, with a solid glass front and back to make that possible. The desired design was codenamed N90, in a project begun at the end of 2008. In addition, there was a less ambitious N90 design as a fall-back, in case production of the N90 design was found to be infeasible. Model identifier: iPhone3,1 (ATT GSM) Display: 3.5" diagonal, IPS type LED, 960 x 480, 326 pixels per inch (Retina Display, so named because its pixel density exceeds the ability of the average human eye to resolve further.) Contrast ratio: 800:1 (also unheard of in mobile phones), cited by Apple as being 4x that in the 3G S. (Apple certainly looked into OLED (AMOLED) technology, but it had multiple issues: insufficient production yield; color fidelity; cost - about double that of LED; performance - inadequate for text.) WiFi: 802.11n Still camera: 5 Mp; LED flash; 4 mm focal length; f/2.8; HDR image capture technology. Movie camera: up to 720p HD (1280x720), 30 fps, with LED illumination. Video is captured in MOV H.264 format. Front-face camera: VGA quality (640x480), for FaceTime video chatting. Memory: 512 MB Storage capability: 16 GB; 32 GB The interior is dominated by an enlarged battery, as needed for enhancements (e.g., camera subject illumination). The 8 GB iPhone 3G S becomes the new entry level iPhone. See also: HDR photography iPhone 4th generation, on Verizon Announced at 11:00 EST, 2011/01/11 at a Verizon presentation attended by Apple COO Tim Cook. It is a CDMA phone - which required some redesign of the external antenna. As a CDMA phone, data and voice cannot be simultaneous. Available 2011/02/10. $199.99 for the 16 GB model, subsidized under a 2-year contract. Upgrade possible after 20 months. Model identifier: iPhone3,3 (?) Verizon's arrangement with Apple is non-exclusive. The agreement with Apple is such that there will be no Verizon logo on the phone, as Verizon does with other phones it purveys; and the phone will not be pre-loaded with "crapware" which notoriously plagues the buyers of other Verizon phones. Particularly notable is the Verizon FAQ on its iPhone titled "Can I exchange a device that I recently purchased for iPhone?" where Verizon will indeed do that. iPhone 5th generation (4S) Announced 2011/10/04 in the Cupertino campus presentation hall (rather than the summer debut of earlier iPhones). Available Friday, October 14, 2011. Sold 4 million over first 3-day weekend. Name: iPhone 4S (Why not iPhone 5? A given case design may be so good for current components that it will be used for two generations of the product. As such, the new generation looks like the prior one, rather than a new incarnation, and so the variation name is used, to denote that the internals have changed while retaining the former appearance.) Why the delay in introduction? Because of all the development to add voice control. In April of 2010, Apple purchased Siri voice assistant technology, which they've been busily adopting. The invitation to the 2011/10/04 announcement was coyly titled "Let's talk iPhone". If you slightly tweak that, it's "Let's talk, iPhone", which sums up the magnitude of the new phone, which even if it still looks like the 4th generation, will be groundbreaking. Such advanced technology requires more memory and processing power. Siri replaces the comparatively primitive Voice Control that debuted with the iPhone 3GS in 2009. Siri is way beyond voice recognition: it is artificial intelligence, where you can converse with the phone. Internal identifier: iPhone4,1 Processor: Dual, ARMv7 A5 ~800 MHz x 2 Memory: 512 MB (same as iPhone 4) Graphics processing up to 7x that of iPhone 4. Unique, dual antenna design: No other company can transmit and receive on dual GSM and CDMA antennas. This is the first smartphone with Bluetooth 4.0. Larger f/2.4 aperture that catches 73 percent more light than the one found in the iPhone 4. Includes a high-end infrared filter to provide better color accuracy and uniformity in photos. With iOS 5, the volume-up button can be used as the shutter release. Face detection can recognize people's faces, for automatic focusing. Movie (video) camera: HD 1080p (1920 x 1080) with real-time image stabilization. Still camera: 8 MP, f2.4 aperture (same as iPhone 4S); sapphire crystal for improved clarity; autofocus; tap to focus; face detection; LED flash; geotagging. It's a "world phone", meaning that it does both GSM and CDMA; and with HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access, aka 3.5G) it can do so at essentially 4G speeds (up to 14.4 Mbps, where that HSPDA speed level is available). Why not 4G/LTE? Because the chip set is not yet fully evolved, and the high power consumption. What's the 'S' in the name? One answer is Speed and another is Siri. Why the same 512 MB of RAM as the iPhone 4? A compelling reason that memory technology is dynamic type, requiring constant refreshing, which is a battery drain in mobile devices. Better is to minimize memory usage. For ATT upgrade eligibility, go into the Phone portion of your iPhone and, via Keypad, enter: *639#. An eligibility text message should appear shortly thereafter. Another method is to go through the Apple iPhone page and click on How To Buy, then click through the ordering until "Check eligibility" appears. iPhone 5th generation (4S) tips To reduce battery consumption, turn off "find my friends/family". iPhone 6th generation (iPhone 5) Announced 2012/09/12 at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco. Processor: A6 dual-Core 1.02GHz ARMv7 twice as fast as the A5 and any previous iOS device. Memory: 1 GB 20 percent lighter and 18 percent thinner than iPhone 4S. Pre-orders of its iPhone 5 topped two million in just 24 hours, more than double the previous record of one million held by iPhone 4S. Sales on the first weekend of availability exceeded five million units. No simultaneous voice and data (SVDO) for Verizon: Apple says: "iPhone 5 supports simultaneous voice and data on GSM-based 3G and LTE networks. It is not yet possible to do simultaneous voice and data on networks that use CDMA for voice and LTE for data in a single radio design." At the time, LTE was for data, not voice calls. iPhone 5C The "plastic" iPhone announced alongside the iPhone 5S on September 10th, 2013. The 5C is more of a mid-tier device than a budget phone: as Tim Cook explained in the October 28, 2013 earnings call, the iPhone 4s has become the entry level phone, with "the iPhone 5c as the mid-tier ". The novelty colors of the 5c will appeal to the youth market and the Asian market. Being mid-tier, it avoids the minimal margins associated with cheap phones as being made by Chinese companies for the low end of that market. iPhone 5S The 7th generation. Processor: the new, faster 64-bit A7 chip with one billion transistors Speed: up to twice as fast (the A7 runs at 1.4 GHz) Graphics processor: twice the graphics performance Colors: silver, gold, and "space gray" (no more black). Battery life: 10 hours LTE browsing, 250 hours standby, 40 hours of music Camera: new 5-element Apple-designed lens with a 15 percent larger light sensor, auto-image stabilization, burst mode, and 120 frames-per-second slow-motion options Fingerprint sensor: a feature Apple calls Touch ID, so you never have to use a passcode again to access your mobile phone )I­ and yes, you can buy stuff with-A it. Being 64-bit is huge: this is way ahead of Samsung; and note well that Android is still 32-bit while iOS is now 64-bit. Sales: Over the 3-day initial sales weekend (9/20,21,22) a record-breaking nine million iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c models were sold. This is way over their previous 1st weekend sales of about 5 million. Like the iPhone 5, still no simultaneous voice and data on Verizon. To make it possible, Apple would have to add another radio, and thus experience extra battery drain. iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus Introduced at presentation 2014/09/09. Back camera slightly protrudes from the body (likely because of the limits on shrinking optical lenses). iPhone 6: 4.7" diagonal screen, 1440x750, 326 dpi. 6.9mm thick. iPhone 6 Plus: 5.5" diagonal screen, 1920x1080, 401 dpi. 7.1mm thick. Longer battery endurance. The A8 processor is capable of playing a 4K video to the iPhone screen. Apple didn't make this a standad feature, likely because of potential overheating. (This hints that the 4th generation Apple TV box will support 4K.) iPhone 6S, iPhone 6S Plus Announced 2015/09/09. Case is thicker 7000 series aluminum (as used in the aerospace industry). The glass is made with a dual ion exchange process. Features 3D Touch (new name for Force Touch). iPhone 6s Plus battery rated 2750 mAH, (5% less than iPhone 6 Plus). 4K video capability, with optical image stabilization for video as well as photos. RAM: 2 GB iPhone 6s was the world's top-selling smartphone in the second quarter of 2016, based on an estimated 14.2 million shipments, while the two-year-old iPhone 6 trailed in second with an estimated 8.5 million shipments. Only the Plus has optical image stabilization in its camera. iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus 2016, fall. It seems that this incarnation will be an incremental improvement over the iPhone 6S, rather than being a whole new phone as usual. This may be due to Apple shifting development emphasis to the 10th anniversary (2017) iPhone. Flush home button. A10 Fusion processor chip, with four cores: 2 for high performance processing, 2 for low power needs, with assignment by a traffic-regulating chip. six-core GPU. RAM: 3 GB Display resolution: iPhone 7: 1134x750 (326 ppi) 750p Plus: 1920x1080 (401 ppi) 1080p Record high contrast ratio and record low reflectance. DisplayMate calls the iPhone 7 screen overall the "most color accurate display that we have ever measured." Camera: Single lens on the 7, dual on the 7 Plus (normal, 2x telephoto). The lens window is sapphire. Eliminates the 3.5mm headphone jack - which is an old analog clunk which just took up valuable internal space. 9,1, 9,2 and 9,3 are the three storage tiers of the iPhone 7. 9,4 designates an iPhone 7 Plus. As of its advent, the iPhone 7 Plus is the fastest iOS device Apple has ever made – even beating the iPad Pro 12.9-inch which has 4GB RAM. IP67 water resistance (that's fresh water: salt water will corrode seals). The water rating means the iPhone 7 will withstand submersion in water up to 1 meter for 30 minutes. Inside the iPhone 7 is a field-programmable gate array, or FPGA, made by Lattice Semiconductor, purpose and usage unknown. Model numbers vary by radio capabilities: iPhone 7: A1660 Global phone (CSM + CDMA). GSM/CDMA-compatible Qualcomm MDM9645M modem. (Sprint/Verizon) A1778 Like A1660, but no support for TD-SCDMA and CDMA EV-DO Rev. A bands. GSM-only Intel XMM7360 modem. (ATT/T-Mobile) A1779 Japanese market; FeliCa Type-F NFC contactless technology iPhone 7 Plus: A1661 Global phone (CSM + CDMA) GSM/CDMA-compatible Qualcomm MDM9645M modem. (Sprint/Verizon) A1784 GSM-only Intel XMM7360 modem. (ATT/T-Mobile) A1785 Japanese market; FeliCa Type-F NFC contactless technology It was notoriously discovered and revealed to the public that the Qualcomm modems in the iPhone 7 have speeds up to 600 megabits per second, while the (GSM-only) Intel modems max out at 450 megabits per second. Making things worse, Apple decided to throttle the Qualcomm phone models to have them match the inferior speed of the Intel chip, for a "uniform customer experience" across all versions of the iPhone 7. The iPhone is supposed to be the best of the smartphones. Apple is failing its customers in intentionally diminishing performance. Customers aware of this are skipping the iPhone 7. (Apple may be trying to get away from Qualcomm due to their high royalty rate demands - which has resulted in fines in South Korea and anti-trust actions in the U.S. Indeed, Apple brought suit against Qualcomm in late January 2017 for greedy royalty demands.) See also: Wide Color iPhone Apps Store Pre-announced in the iPhone SDK presentation, 2008/03/06, to be available in June, 2008. Based in iTunes, this will be the single source for all iPhone applications. iPhone competitors Naturally, iPhone competitors have appeared as of late 2007, most notably Verizon's LG-made Voyager phone, where Verizon prominently talks about "touch" in their ads. The Voyager is a good example of imitation that doesn't come close to "the real thing"...like Russian imitations of U.S. inventions. Lacking sophisticated touch technology and underlying operating system, the Voyager is a clumsy device offering an unsatisfying experience - further evidence of cell phone makers who still "don't get it", and who will continue to lag behind in technology and market share. A sad example of this is Motorola, which was a premier telecommunications company in a prime position to dominate the market. As of early 2008, they are losing ever more market share and losing money with every phone they sell. iPhone in business Why should companies adopt Apple's phone as a standard rather than Android? Because of stability in evolution: you know what you are getting, that it will endure, and grow. With Android phones, what you get on them is willy-nilly, as manufacturers add whatever they feel will help the phone shine brighter than the next guy's phone, and features can be dropped or mutated without warning. Further, the level of Android and the interface you get vary according to the whims of carriers. iPhone models, identifying Apple Article HT3939 iPhone multitasking Apple has intentionally restricted multitasking on the iPhone (and iPod touch), in that multitasking rapidly consumes battery power (a sore point for users, who would lambast Apple if the battery did not last). Further, there has to be a good interface approach to dealing with both foreground and background processes. Through at least 2010/03, the system's phone, SMS, email, iPod, voice recorder, Nike+, and certain other bundled apps can continue in the background while the user launches another app. However, third party titles obtained from the App Store (including apps from Apple, such as Remote or iDisk) can not be launched at the same time. A good approach to multitasking is rumored for iPhone OS 4.0, expected by mid 2010, probably operating like Expose in Mac OS X. In the mean time, there is Push Notifications which Apple introduced in mid 2009, by which the device holder receives a message related to an installed app. iPhone OS The conventional name for Apple's mobile operating system, as first appeared in the iPhone, and then the iPod touch, and then the iPad. As of 2010/06/07, known as iOS. iPhone OS 1.0 Released implicitly with the incarnation of the fires iPhone, in 2007/06. No SDK: instead, Web apps. iPhone OS 2.0 Announced 2008/03/06. Release date: 2008/07/11. Elements: $(O#@(B Enterprise support MS Exchange email: Push email, contacts, calendar; auto-discovery of server; global address lookup; remote wipe. Cisco VPN. WPA/WPA2 Enterprise. 802.1x authentication EAP (TLS, TTLS, FAST) LEAP; PEAPv0, PEAPv1 $(O#@(B SDK Core OS: OS X kernel; BSD TCP/IP; Sockets; Security; Power Mgmt; Certificates; File System; Bonjour. Core Services: Collections; Address Book; Networking; File access; SQLite; Core Location; Net Services; Threading; Preferences; URL utilities. Media: Core Audio; OpenAL; Audio Mixing; Audio Recording; Video Playback; JPG, PNG, TIFF; PDF; Quartz (2D); Core Animation; OpenGL ES (real-time 3D graphics, hardware assisted). Cocoa Touch: Multi-Touch Events; Multi-Touch Controls; Accelerometer; View Hierarchy; Localization; Alerts; Web View; People Picker; Image Picker; Camera. (Kernel is the same as forms the basis for Mac OS 10.) $(O#@(B End-user features Contacts search; iWork documents support, MS Office documents support (for viewing); Bulk delete & move; Save images (to photo library); add Scientific mode to Calculator; Parental controls; further languages support. Introduced native apps development with the SDK. Developer program introduced at announcement date, 2008/03/06. The development was a lead-up to the advent and opening of the App Store. Reviewed at WWDC 2008. iPhone OS 3.0 Release date: 2009/06/17. iPhone OS 4.0 New name: iOS 5 (q.v.) iPhone OS, common attributes Mail attachments are limited to 15 MB, which is mostly an issue for video shot on the iPhone. iPhone protective sleeves The Incipio Orion offers good protection. It features sturdy leather which protects well, plus a pull tab to make it easier to start getting the phoneout of the sleeve. The downside is that the tab adds bulk, so this sleeve is best suited to carrying your phone in a carry case rather than a pocket. An excellent, minimalist sleeve for carrying the phone in your pocket is the Sena 152201 UltraSlim Pouch. iPhone satisfaction ratings As of March, 2012, J.D. Powers rates the iPhone highest in customer satisfaction for the 7th straight time, with with 839 out of 1,000 possible points. (The industry average is 774.) iPhone search There is a search screen for searching your entire iPhone. It is the leftmost window (#0) amongst all your icon windows. You can get to it by swiping through your windows until you get to it, or more simply in iOS7, just swipe down within the icons area of any window (not from the top of the screen, but from within the midst of it). iPhone SE Because many people want a compact iPhone. Aluminium case. Basically an extrapolation of the 5S. 4" display iPhone, introduced 2015/03/21. 64-bit A9 processor; M9 motion coprocessor. 12 MP iSight camera. True Tone flash. Panorama up to 63 MP. 4K video. LTE up to 150 Mbps; more LTE bands; voice over LTE. 802.11ac WiFi. Touch ID (previous generation), Apple Pay. $399 for 16 GB, $499 for 64 GB. This supplants the iPhone 5s in the U.S. But: No 3D Touch iPhone security By default, the iPhone is simply usable. You can prevent someone getting into it by going into Settings and turning on Passcode Lock: this establishes a 4-digit passcode which must be entered before access to the phone is possible. For further security, within Passcode Lock, turn off Simple Passcode, which allows you to have passcodes of arbitrary length and content, requiring virtual keyboard typing to gain access. iPhone shutdown iPhone is actually designed to shut down automatically under certain conditions, such as extremely cold temperature. This protect the device’s electronics from low voltage conditions. iPhone tips Charging: To charge faster, put your iPhone into Airplane Mode: that will turn off the radios, which drain power as you try to charge. Undo typing: When typing text into apps like Notes, you can shake your iPhone to undo the typing. Email read aloud: Just say, "Read my email" to Siri, and Siri will read all your messages aloud to you; or to read only your most recent email, say "Read my latest email"; or for just those from a specific contact, say like "Do I have email from Mark?" iPhoto Mac OS X image library and manipulation application. Photos commonly enter iPhoto from a camera attached to the Mac via USB (an operation accomplished by iPhoto's transparent interaction with the Image Capture application). Shares on IP port number 8770. By default iPhoto's library folder is located under: Home -> Pictures -> "iPhoto Library" The folder is created when you first launch iPhoto, and will be initialied with an Albums subdirectory. Tools: Enhance Is for treating overall contrast and color problems. Retouch Spot correction of problem areas, by blending from adjoining areas. Tips and tricks: Rotate works counterclockwise by default. Hold down the Option key to make the Rotate tool work clockwise. Pressing the Control key while editing a photo will show what it looked like before. Holding down the Alt+Cmd keys when launching iPhoto causes the following remedial choices to be presented: Repair Permissions Rebuild Thumbnails Repair Database Rebulld Database Excessive library size slows performance. Note that iPhoto has its own Trash area: after deleting a bunch of photos, go into the iPhoto menu and there select Empty Trash. Supported cameras list is generally the same as that for Aperture: www.apple.com/aperture/specs/raw.html Feed back to Apple: http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphoto.html iPhoto sharing through a firewall: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html ?artnum=93747 BEING DISCONTINUED: In the WWDC 2014 presentation, Apple gave a brief look at a new Photos app for Mac, to arrive in early 2015. On 2014/06/29 we learned that this will replace iPhoto - and Aperture. See also: Image Capture iPhoto, stop launching when camera Your iPhone can function as a camera. connected When you connect it to your Mac for USB charging, you don't want iPhoto to launch. So how do you prevent that? There are two places: In iPhoto: Open its preferences. On the General pane, there is the item "Connecting camera opens:", which you can set to "No application". That may already be chosen, and yet iPhoto keeps opening. So on to... Open the Image Capture app while your camera is attached. Note that IC has no Preferences. Click on the little diamond in a rectangle at the bottom left of the window, which will expose the connected device. There, you will likely see Connecting this iPhone opens: iPhoto Change that to "No application". Not that when a "camera" is attached to your Mac and you launch an untailored iPhoto, it is prone to put up a dialog asking if you want it to launch when a camera is attached. iPhoto 6 - Support for up to 250,000 photos. - Photocasting so family and friends can subscribe to your albums and automatically receive your full-resolution photos directly in iPhoto. - Full-screen editing and comparing. - Professional-quality greeting cards and wall calendars with your photos delivered right to your door. iPhoto '11 In OS X Lion. You can create and order greeting cards, photo books, or calendars, by clicking Create on the task bar at the bottom of the window. See also: Cards iPhoto Libraries You can compartmentalize your photo libraries into removable media volumes, by transferring the contents of the current library to CD or DVD, via iPhoto functions, then physically remove the Photo Library from your Pictures folder. At the next launch of iPhoto, it will reconstruct an empty Photo Library. When you mount the library volume, iPhoto will automatically launch and present it to you. iPod Apple's portable music recorder/player, storing encoded music upon a small hard drive. Shirt-pocket-sized, listen via (white) earbuds. Rechargeable, non-removable battery: recharges via power adapter or power lead on line interface. Expect perhaps 6 hours of play time, and 4 hours to recharge fully. Introduced October 23, 2001 at a press conference, by Steve Jobs. The name was conceived by Vinnie Chieco, then a freelance copywriter whom Apple contracted in determining how best to introduce the player. When Chieco saw the white, futuristic device, his thoughts wandered to the pure white EVA pods of the Discovery One spacecraft in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. There had been some MP3 players on the market then, but they were designed without genius, and were so difficult to use and so ugly that they had little appeal. It took the imagineers at Apple to do it right, and create an extremely appealing device. As of 2011/10, over 300 million iPods have been sold. It took Sony 30 years to sell 220,000 Walkman casette players. The original iPod employed a 1.8" diameter hard drive from Toshiba. See: iPod audio formats for that info. Line interface (as of 2004/06): FireWire 400 and USB 2.0(3) through dock connector Designer: Jonathan Ive The iPod started as an idea for a digital music player, being worked on by Tony Faddell in early 2001, at that time not part of Apple. Steve Jobs took note of that effort, and took it in-house, demanding that it become a product before the holiday season - making for a grueling nine-month development effort (with a nail-biting battery life problem encountered near the end of the development period). Ultimately developed into a phenomenon, becoming the standard digital audio player, and almost a form of currency, given how frequently it is offered as a premium or prize by business promotions. A very happenstance aspect of the design led to its widespread appeal: the white earbuds. The unusual color (white, to match the color of the iPod) was highly visible, and as the public caught sight of trend-setting cool people with white earbuds, they were intrigued as to what was going on, and a purchasing wave started. Voice recording technology was added to the iPod 2003/10; but an external mic is needed to use it. There is some PDA capability built in: contact info, calendar, notes, alarm clock, and some game playing capability. There is controversy suggesting that Apple cripples the recording sample rate on iPods to about 8 KHz, speculation being that this is to be a disincentive to digitally record live concerts on the sneak. One published way around this: 1. Install Podzilla on your iPod (not all models are supported). 2. Boot in to Linux on your iPod. 3. Go to Extras > Recordings, choose 8,32,44.1,88.2 or 96kHz the higher, the better quality. 4. Record via Line In a microphone or even use your headphones. 5. Boot back in to the normal iPod OS plug in to the doc, grab your files from the iPod in the Recordings folder. See also: hPod iPod, boot from Was a capability with the early iPods, whose connection mode was FireWire. You could enable FireWire disk use (via iTunes), mount the iPod as a disk, install the OS on it, and select that as a Startup Disk. With the newer, USB-based iPods, such booting is no longer an option. iPod, get tunes back out of Prior to iTunes 7, syncing was unidirectional: from your computer to your iPod. To transfer tunes back from the iPod to the computer required third party methods, such as the software called Senuti. As of iTunes 7, you can sync everything you buy on the iTunes Store back to any authorized computer. And lots of other things come along for the sync, too: song ratings, on-the-go playlists, voice notes, even audiobook bookmarks. It all syncs back to iTunes so what you see on your iPod matches what you see on your Mac or PC. A hardware product called Rapid Transit can be used to transfer audio, video, and photo files between any two USB devices, including iPod. http://www.apple.com/itunes/sync/ iPod, learn to use Apple Article ID: 304706 ("iPod 101"). iPod, serial number Is stamped on the back of every iPod. Can also be seen in the Settings -> About screen. The serial number is also on a label affixed to the box in which the iPod came. iPod alarm clock? Small iPods don't have an alarm clock function: there is only a count-down timer with an alarm at the end. The iPod touch is a full-feature device which does have an alarm clock. iPod and vehicles The iPod (and its connector) has become the standard as an automotive music source, with almost all automobile manufacturers now providing an interface in terms of both cabling, connector, and user controls. A flash memory iPod (the nano) makes the most sense in vehicles, where there is no hard drive vs. potholes issue. www.apple.com/ipodnano/ipodyourcar/ Note that iPod in cars makes satellite radio (and its fees) dubious, particularly as you can enjoy many, high-quality podcasts free. iPod audio formats and quality AAC: Advanced Audio Coding. Apple's proprietary file format for audio, developed as part of the MPEG4 standard. Metadata accommodated. Data rates: 16 to 320 Kbps. Filename extension: m4a. For a given file size, sound quality is better than MP3. This is the standard format in the iTunes Store. The store bitrates were originally 128 kbps, with FairPlay Digital Rights Management controls, but then 256 kbps was offered, without DRM, with the name iTunes Plus. AIFF: Audio Interchange File Format. Apple's audio format for uncompressed, CD-quality sound, with accommodation for metadata such that album art can be attached. Apple Lossless: Compressed, but with no discarding of music information. Files are compressed to about half their original size. Metadata accommodated. MP3: MPEG-1, Audio Layer 3. An old, lossy compression format; the original format used for portable music players. Convenient, but sound quality is much compromised. Data rates: 32 to 320 Kbps Quality settings: Apply to AAC and MP3, controlling the compression rate, labeled "Good Quality," "High Quality", and "Higher Quality". Alternately, you can employ custom settings to choose your own sampling rate. iPod Camera Connector WAV: Windows Waveform. Uncompressed; can contain CD-quality (44.1 KHz/16-bit) audio signals, but obviously require a lot of storage and memory space. A disadvantage is that album art cannot be attached to WAV files. A small adapter with an iPod connector on one side and USB connector on the other. Allows you to import photos directly from a compatible USB digital camera or media reader1 to your iPod photo, iPod with color display, or Fifth Generation iPod (it won't work with other iPod models including iPod nano). After you've imported your pictures, you can view them on iPod or transfer them to your computer later for editing, printing, sharing, or storing. If you want to display the photos on a TV, then you'll have to transfer them to your computer, and then back to your iPod. Alternately, there is the Belkin Digital Camera Connector iPod iPod Classic The original iPod, with a clickwheel and 4x3 display and a tiny hard drive inside (160 GB, latest). Sales continued until 2014/09, when it was discontinued, at 12 years old. It remained the highest capacity iPod. (The iPod touch never got above 64 GB.) Tim Cook said that it was discontinued because it was no longer possible to get the components to make it. iPod Hi-Fi Odd Apple product that was a portable speaker with a white body and black grill and an iPod doc on the top. Had a limited function remote control. Could run on six D cell batteries. Integrated handles. Seaked resin enclosure. Introduced by Steve Jobs at 2006 Apple Special Event. The goal was to make a portable speaker whose sound experience was like home audio - stereo separation, frequency range, no distortion at high volume. Was released on February 28, 2006. Discontinued September 5, 2007. Was expensive; and other music product companies made better such units. iPod Mini Smaller version of the iPod. Utilizes Hitachi's Microdrive. iPod models See Apple Support Article ID 61688, "Identifying iPod models". iPod nano Successor to the Mini. Employs flash memory rather than a hard drive, allowing it to be far smaller, and better suited to use in a moving, jarring vehicle. Comes in 1 GB, 2 GB, and 4 GB capacities. Its screen is small but displays photoes with outstanding fidelity. iPod Out 2010 feature of iOS 4, enabling second generation or later iOS devices to present Apple's classic iPod interface on a vehicle's display (as opposed to leaving the playback controls up to car manufacturers). iPod Photo Pricey color-display version of the iPod, optimized for storing and displaying photographs, on its little display or on an attached television. This specialized iPod was merged into the general iPod line 2005/06/30 as a color display iPod was introduced. iPod Shuffle The USB2 flash version of the iPod, 512 MB or 1 GB. Introduced at Macworld 2005(01/11), available same day. The 2nd and 3rd generation models are so small that standard USB connection is not possible: the headphone jack is dual purpose, hosting USB as well. A special cable is used, having a standard USB connector on one end (to plug into your computer) and an elongated, 4-connector plug on the other end (three rings on the shaft, plus tip). iPod touch, 1st generation 2007/09 iPod based upon the iPhone. (Its last name is officially lower case.) Processor: ARM11 620 MHz (underclocked to 400 MHz, then 412 MHz) Memory: 128 MB DRAM Bus speed: 100 MHz Wireless: 802.11b/g; No bluetooth Unlike the iPhone, the 'touch has a "Dock" with a "reflective floor", which harkens to the new Dock in Mac OS 10.5. The following audio file formats are supported by iPod touch. These include formats for audiobooks and podcasting: AAC (M4A, M4B, M4P, up to 320 Kbps) Apple Lossless MP3 (up to 320 Kbps) MP3 Variable Bit Rate (VBR) WAV AA (audible.com spoken word, formats 2, 3, and 4) AIFF The following video file formats are supported: H.264 (Baseline Profile Level 3.0) MPEG-4 (Simple Profile) iPod touch does not support WMA, MPEG Layer 1, MPEG Layer 2 audio files, or audible.com format 1. Networking: 802.11 only. Security: WEP; WPA; WPA2. No 802.1x. You can join a secured network only by password - no username capability. Absent all the phone elements, the 'touch contains a much larger battery than the iPhone, allowing much longer usage between chargings. Compared to iPhone, the initial release of touch's software was without Notes, Mail, Weather, Stocks and Maps: those were added with a low-cost ($20) version 1.1.3 iPod touch software+firmware update (165.5 MB), announced 2008/01/15. Ebooks: Specialized electronic book readers have repeatedly failed in the marketplace. But you can readily use the 'touch for ebooks, via Google's Book Search project, or the targeted service http://www.textonphone.com . Syncing: Is performed over the conventional USB iPod cable. Media purchased from iTunes can be transferred from the 'touch to another computer which is authorized to use such material, by performing Sync from the iPod screen in iTunes, that operation is called "Transfer Purchases" and during which iTunes will show progress message "Transferring Purchases from _________" and the 'touch will display message "Sync in Progress". For applications: Lead-in at: http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/webapps/ or browse/download on iPod at: www.apple.com/webapps As Walt Mossberg says: "The iPod touch is a testament to what can be done on a mobile device without a cellphone carrier's help." As of mid 2008/01, Apple's view of the 'touch has changed from it being a video iPod with WiFi added to facilitate iTunes Store sales, to it being "the first mainstream WiFi platform for mobile applications". The flattening of iPod sales certainly encourages this marketing extension. Carrying cases: There are lots of clunky holders being offered for the 'touch. A nice sleeve type case, which allows the 'touch to be safely be carried in a pocket or bag is the Incipio Orion sleeve, available on Amazon.com etc. (www.myincipio.com) iPod touch, 2nd generation More rounded than its predecessor, with modest speaker capability added (emits through headphone jack), plus volume control. Supports microphone input, via new Apple headphones. Product number: MB528LL/A (A1288) Processor: ARM11 620 MHz (underclocked to 533 MHz), with internal ARM7 core for Jazelle acceleration (faster than co-marketed iPhone 3G) Bus speed: 133 MHz Memory: 128 MB DRAM Wireless: 802.11b/g; Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR iPod touch, 3rd generation Announced at the "It's only rock-and-roll" special event, 2009/09/09. No difference in features from 2nd generation - just a speed boost (up to 50% faster). Still no built-in microphone (need to use mic on provided headset). The word is that this unit was supposed to have a built-in camera, to have such a boost just as the iPod Nano did in this event and for the device to parallel the iPhone; but there were major problems with the camera component as this 'touch approached production, and the design had to be quickly changed to eliminate it. This would explain why the announcement event seemed to be padded with "filler", bringing game developers up to demonstrate new games - redundant to prior events. Versions: 8 GB (lesser version) @$199. 32 GB, 64 GB @$399 versions, with faster processor and OpenGL ES 2.0 support. Product number: 32 GB: (A1318) Processor: ARM Cortex-A8 833 MHz (underclocked to 600 MHz) Bus speed: 133 MHz Memory: 256 MB DRAM Wireless: 802.11b/g; Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR iPod touch, 4th generation Announced 2010/09/01 at Apple music event; available a week later. New features: - Still camera. (720x960 - not as good as that in iPhone 4, due to thinner dimension of the 'touch.) No auto-focus. - Movie camera (HD capability). - Front-facing camera (VGA quality) & FaceTime. - Microphone (on back). - Speaker (on bottom). - A4 processor. - Retina Display (but not IPS LED). - Bluetooth - Three-axis gyroscope Comes with iOS 4.1. Memory: 256 MB There is no vibration motor in the 'touch. No GPS. No FM radio. No compass. iPod touch, 5th generation Refreshed in July, 2015 A8 chip, 8MP iSight camera, 5 colors. No Touch ID (so no Apple Pay). iPod touch, capture screen An image of the current screen can be captured if the iPod's software is at least level 2.0: Press the home key and the sleep/wake button at the top at the same time. The screen will flash white, signifying that a photo of the current screen has been saved. You can then view and work with the image by going into Photos, and then the photo album called Saved Photos. Transfer the photo to a computer by emailing it. The image will be a 320x480 JPEG. iPod touch, screen goes black After a minute of leaving the device with a static screen, you find that it dims and then goes black, whereafter you need to press the Wake button to get it back. This is a function called Auto-Lock, intended to save your battery and screen. You can change the time period by going into Settings -> General and then choosing Auto-Lock. iPod touch mail app Results in the following email header in sent mail: X-Mailer: iPod Mail (4A102) iPod video The now-old video iPod supports the following video formats: - H.264 video: up to 768 Kbps, 320x240, 30 frames per sec., Baseline Profile up to Level 1.3 with AAC-LC up to 160 Kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4 and .mov file formats. - MPEG-4 video: up to 2.5 mbps, 480x480, 30 frames per sec., Simple Profile with AAC-LC up to 160 Kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4 and .mov file formats. Probably the best video format to use when creating videos to your iPod is .m4v rather .mp4, as iTunes recognizes .m4v as the video format for iPods. Note that although a file may be MP4 or M4V, iTunes may balk at syncing it to the iPod due to restrictions on video dimensions, encoding techniques and data-rates. Ref: http://plasticbugs.com/?p=305 iPod video output iPods can output video, through their 30-pin Dock Connector, pins 8, 9, and 10. As of 2008, the video remains analog. On traditional iPods, the video type is S-Video. On the iPod Touch and iPhone, the video type is component (YUV), 480i scan resolution. IPP Internet Printing Protocol, for printing via Web job submission. OS X Server provides IPP serving via CUPs. Individual OS X would have to add it. As of OS 10.2, Print Center browses for IPP printers. (A properly configured IPP server will allow OS X to readily find and display its list of printers.) See also: CUPS; Internet Printing Protocol IPP printing, set up, advanced This method goes beyond the basic set-up method to provide more control opportunities, by specifying a URI, with parameters. Go into System Preferences; Choose "Print & Fax"; Click the plus-sign (+) to add a new printer; Click Advanced; (If Advanced does not appear in the menu bar, right-click on the menu bar to add it.) For "Type:", choose "Internet Printing Protocol"; For "URL:", enter it in the form ipp://<PrintServer>:631/printers /<LogicalDestination> ?waitjob=false In the Name field, enter a name by which you will recognize the print choice in a printing dialog; The Location field can be filled in with text as to the nature or location of the printer; In the Print Using field you may choose one of the numerous printer drivers which Apple supplies; Finally, click Add to create the printer definition. The "waitjob=false" will nicely prevent the currently submitted job(s) to stay in the local print queue until all predecessors get processed by the print server, as the Print Queue display status "Waiting for job to complete..." indicates. (This behavior is apparently programmed in the expectation that the customary printer will be a USB-attached device, where it would be inappropriate to send another job until the just-sent one finishes printing.) When in an application and you print, what is generated is a PDF: the printing suite performs a PDFtoPS conversion to then send the file as PostScript. The username under which the printing occurs is the Mac login session name. IPP printing, set up, basic This method will basically set up an IPP printer instance, without any controls. Go into System Preferences; Choose "Print & Fax"; Click the plus-sign (+) to add a new printer; Under "IP", choose the Protocol "Internet Printing Protocol - IPP"; In the Address field enter the network address of the server, as either a network name (e.g., xxx.us.edu) or an IP address, with ":631" at the end; (If you omit that appendage, I've found that the printing will attempt to contact the server address in general, and will result in an unexpected prompt for a username and password, which makes no sense.) (The Mac will probe that location with UDP SNMP packets.) In the Queue field, enter the name of a logical destination or queue within that server, or leave empty to get the default queue; (The Mac will probe that location with UDP SNMP packets.) In the Name field, enter a name by which you will recognize the print choice in a printing dialog; The Location field can be filled in with text as to the nature or location of the printer; In the Print Using field you may choose one of the numerous printer drivers which Apple supplies; Finally, click Add to create the printer definition. When in an application and you print, what is generated is a PDF: the printing suite performs a PDFtoPS conversion to then send the file as PostScript. The username under which the printing occurs is the Mac login session name. If you open the Print Queue display and see that the submitted job is stuck on state "Waiting for job to complete...", it indicates that the IPP interaction is a one-whole-job-at-a-time: synchronous, which is no good for shared, network printing, where jobs enter a queue along with many jobs from other users and await their turn to print. To get around that, perform an advanced IPP printing set-up. IPP printing: server requires print pw In some environments, access to the printer requires a password. You could define the printer like: ipp://account:password@server/printer This has limited applicability, though: First, defined printers can be used by every user on the machine, so adding printers like this only makes sense on single-user machines. Second, the sensitive account data is written to /etc/cups/printers.conf in clear text (though this file is only readable by administrators). Alternately, you could update file /etc/cups/printers.conf for that printer to have the line: AuthTypeRequired username,password which supposedly causes an identification dialog to pop up. IPv6 on Mac, turn off using command You can use these commands from the Terminal window to turn off IPv6 on the Mac: networksetup -setv6off ethernet networksetup -setv6off wi-fi Then close Terminal, and restart your Mac. There should now be an option for "off" for IPv6. You can check this by going into System Preferences, click Network, select Wi-Fi, then choose Advanced and select tab "TCP/IP" tab. There, Configure IPv6 should be set to Off. This operation might be used where AirPlay is not working where your Apple TV box is connected via ethernet cable. iSight The name of Apple's compact, add-on video+audio camera for videoconferencing (a webcam). Cylindrical in shape, about 1.2" in diameter, silver in color, perforated for cooling. 1/4 inch color CCD sensor with 640x480 pixel resolution. Lens: f2.8 Weight: 2.3 ounces Interface: FireWire Onboard processor optimizes the color saturation, contrast, and white balance. Built-in microphone - dual element, enabling noise suppression by comparing the sources of incoming sound. Rotating the frontal ring closes the iris to absolutely prevent inadvertent snooping. Tiny green light at top front indicates when in use. Drawbacks: Always hot temperature when connected to FireWire port, even if not in use. Later, MacBooks and iMacs would come with a small camera built into the top of their frame, referred to as their iSight camera (starting with white iMac upgrade announced at the Apple Special Event, 2005/10). Discontinued in February, 2007 (as most new Macs have built-in iSight cameras). As of 2010/10/20, with the introduction of FaceTime for the Mac, the cameras built into the frames of Macintosh displays are now being called FaceTime cameras. www.apple.com/isight www.apple.com/support/isight .iso file, access contents Simply double-click, which will cause it to be mounted. You can also mount from command line: hdiutil mount <FilePath> .iso file, create Because ISO images are inherently read-only, you need to prepare a directory of contents in OS X, first, populating it with what you want to be in the ISO. Adhere to ISO standards, where names can be long, but keeping them to 8.3 naming format is best. Create the ISO via Disk Utility... Click on New Image in its toolbar. Choose settings: Encryption: none Image Format: DVD/CD Master Note that size can be specified large, like 600 MB: later processing will minimize to contents size. Save as <Somename>.cdr Mount the .cdr and populate it with the files you want; then unmount. Go to the command line and enter like: hdiutil makehybrid -iso -joliet -o My.iso My.cdr where the output ISO file will be read-only, and have your contents. You may want to keep the .cdr file around as an ongoing source for preparing ISO files in the future, where you can repopulate it as then needed; and do Get Info on the .cdr and enter the conversion command into the Spotlight Comments box, to conveniently have the command form at hand. Note that the ISO name can be changed in via Get Info's Name & Extension box. Note that some info on the Web suggests simply changing the .cdr extension to .iso to yield the ISO; but that is superficial, and inadequate. .iso file, info about Via the command line: 'hdiutil imageinfo <Filepath>' .iso (ISO 9660) file, burn to CD Open Disk Utility. Drag the .iso file into the left side devices box. Select the disk image and click Burn. Insert a recordable CD or DVD disc into the optical drive of your Mac and follow the onscreen instructions. This will result in a writing phase, then a commit phase, then a long Verifying phase. If successful, the disc will eject. This results in a disc image copy of the .iso. To gauge the viability of the produced disc, exit Disk Utility and insert the disc and see if it mounts and that it looks as it should. iSSH SSH/VNC/X11 app for iPad and iPhone (and iPod touch). Usage documentation is virtually non-existent, so can be hard to learn and exploit. Its X11 runs the DWM window manager (turn on/off in its config page). Discontinued: Withdrawn from the App Store in 2015, as the developer went on to other things. iSSH X11 usage It can be completely unobvious how to use X11 in iSSH. Here's the scoop... When you log on to a host in iSSH, you will be in text/console mode. You would commonly then just use that as a springboard to another host, to access it in X11 mode. That would be best done via an 'ssh -X <OtherSys> xterm' to tunnel to an xterm initiated on that other system. That X11 session is available in a different iSSH area: touch on the 'x' in the upper right, which returns you to the original host session control. There, touch on the X11 icon in the upper right, which takes you to the X window. By default, "dwm" X window manager is active. With it active, invoking a second X11 application (such as xclock) results in the screen splitting vertically, with the new window filling that subdivision of the screen - rather than sharing the current window. This is the way DWM "tiled" mode works. (This mode is represented in the DWM control bar via "[]=".) You can switch to "floating" mode, for individual windows, by doing Alt+f. (This mode is represented in the DWM control bar by "><>" - which looks like a fish.) And there is "monacle" mode, to have a single app window visible, via Alt+m (represented by "[M]".) In floating mode, a window can be repositioned by touching Alt, then press the left "mouse button" and move the window with your finger. To fully expose a partially exposed window, touch the Alt key then double-tap on the partially exposed window that is to be raised. holding down on the virtual mouse button while tapping where you want the window to go.) Disabling DWM in Settings allows the xclock to appear in its own, small window, as you would want in X. iSSH X11 usage, fonts Fonts are a perpetual bugaboo with X11 usage, where the "server" (which is in your device) needs to have whatever fonts are needed. When they are missing, you will see rows of empty rectangles where strings of characters should be. iSSH's fonts sets is basic, missing things like Courier and Helvetica. EMACS: In using emacs, you may be best off by invoking it with "-font fixed"; but using emacs is awkward in iSSH due to the disjointed Ctrl key icon, where you should consider using gedit rather than emacs. iSync Mac OS 10.3 application for synchronizing contact and calendar information not just between two (or more) Macintosh computers but also among your Mac, iPod, Palm OS devices, and even Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones. Compatible devices list: www.apple.com/isync/devices.html To interact with a device, go into the Bluetooth menu and select Set up Bluetooth Device... This will provide a PIN for your cell phone to store in order to interact securely with your computer. With cell phone synchronization, is is conventional to synchronize only contacts whose Address Book info includes phone numbers (selectable under More Options after you click on the phone's icon). .ite A file which comes along with standard purchased album tracks or the movie file. The iTunes Extra file is actually a bundle, which is directory of files masquerading as a single file. Inside the bundle are navigation pages built using web-standards including HTML pages, Javascript code and CSS presentation, along with content folders containing regular PNG graphics, AAC audio and H.264 video files. The package is essentially a self-contained website, although its FairPlay content requires iTunes 9 to view. You can extract content from the bundle by copying it and making its filename extension .zip, where you can then go in and pull out the movies, for example. iTMS iTunes Music Store .itmsp iTunes Music Store package file name extension. iBooks Author creates package files of this type, used for further editing in that app. When the package is ready, you can "publish" it into iBooks form, either into the iBookstore (for sale there), or as just a .ibooks file which you can put into iTunes U or make available on a download site (such as Google Drive) when the book is provided for free. iTools Apple's late 1990s thru summer 2002 network services website where you could have an account to gain access to the following services: HomePage Web service for you to have a home page, for publishing photos, movies, and other data. iDisk Allows you to share files with others, through the Public folder contained in your iDisk. Mac.com Email services. In the summer of 2002, iTools was reformulated as .Mac, Apple's new web services point. KidSave Intended to protect kids from harmful stuff on the Internet, allowing them access to more than 55,000 educator-approved websites, blocking all the rest. See: .Mac; MobileMe; iCloud iTouch Abbreviated name for the iPod touch, as encountered in terse magazine and Web articles. iTunes The Apple audio player on your (Mac) computer, introduced April 28, 2003 for OS X, whereby you could listen to CDs, "rip" them for digital storage on your computer, and listen to Web "radio" stations. The Apple mantra for that incarnation of the software was, "Rip, mix, burn." Derived from the SoundJams application, which Apple licensed and thereafter evolved into iTunes. The store started then with 200,000 individually purchasable tunes. (Steve Jobs had to work hard to convince the record industry and key artists that purchasable singles were the way to go, as the industry wanted to see only the sale of full albums - their historical marketing model. The convinced band U2 became an important hinge-pin in turning the industry around on this.) One-click download and charging (with royalties to Amazon.com). The lucky timing of the introduction of iTunes contributed greatly to its success: As Apple was developing iTunes, the music industry was busy suing Napster out of existence. The public was then attuned to and greatly wanted digitally downloadable music, but the backward music industry still clung to CDs. iTunes happened to walk into an unsatisfied marketplace, and could not help but be a success at that point. Windows version added October 16, 2003 - whereupon iTunes sales just exploded. Native encoding format is AAC, at 128 Kbps (as used by the iTunes Music Store) Can encode via: AAC, AIF (AIFF), MP3, WAV, Apple Lossless Encoder (new with iTunes 4.5, 2:1 compression). On Quality: Use AIFF or Apple Lossless if you intend to burn custom audio CDs from your music. Avoid copying music across compression type formats (e.g., MP3 and AAC), as that can result in artifacts and (further) degradation of sound quality. Personal use rights: You own the music - no subscription fees. Unlimited CD burning; burn unchanged playlists up to 10 times; unlimited burns per track. Put music onto 5 Macs (Digital Rights Management limit was 3 before iTunes 4.5); authorize/deauthorize computers; unlimited number of iPods. (If you physically copy the AAC files from one Mac to another, when you first open one of the files on the other Mac, an iTunes pop-up will appear saying that you must register that computer with your Apple ID to allow it to be one of 3 computers to have the tunes. Thereafter the tune will be copied into your library. There is no menu item for authorization - it is implicit. Deauthorization must be performed from the computer to be deauthorized.) Purchased songs are encoded using a protected AAC format that prevents them from being converted. (Nor can they be shared over networking.) CD burning. Bonjour music sharing among your computers (meaning, within a subnet). Tip: You can go to Radio and then open the Public directory and click on KCRW Simulcast and get CNN, NPR, PRI, and the BBC. As of 2007/03, it is estimated by industry researchers at Piper Jaffray & Co. that there are at least 110 million users of the iTunes music & video software, as compared with an estimated 23 million Windows Media Center-enabled PCs in the market - but with an estimated minority of 12 million actual Media Center users, which makes for about 10:1 iTunes over Windows Media. See also: AAC; AirTunes; iTunes Music Store; Mastered for iTunes iTunes 4.6 Added support for Airport Express. iTunes 9 Reorganized interface, improved syncing (including organizing apps), and Home Sharing, within 5 computers on the same subnet (which for the first time allows dragging selections from one computer's iTunes library into another). There is an automatic transfer feature - which works only with content downloaded from the iTunes Store. Tracks copied via Home Sharing don't maintain metadata such as ratings or playcounts, nor can you transfer or sync playlists. There is finally a dedicated Wish List. Supports HE-AAC encoding and playback. If upgrading to iTunes 9, consider having it rearrange your content to its new, default organization: Choose File -> Library -> Organize Library, and then check the Upgrade To iTunes Media Organization option, and iTunes will rearrange your iTunes Music folder into a new iTunes folder with subfolders for Movies, Music, Podcasts, and so on. iTunes, add album artwork AIFF and WAV file formats both predate the notion of embedding artwork by many many years. The WAV file format doesn't have the embedded tag which MP3 and some other audio file formats do, into which you can add data and a picture, so you can't add album artwork to WAV tunes. Generally speaking, this is also true of AIFF files: if you try to add album artwork, it doesn't "stick". This is because, in AIFF, there is no standard data 'chunk' for artwork. (An image can be added to an AIFF, as in the Application Specific chunk, but it would be in a non-standard way.) If you really want to attach artwork to tunes which are AIFF, a strategy is to convert them to Apple Lossless, which readily accepts album artwork. iTunes, burning CDs A general burning tutorial is at: http://www.apple.com/ilife/tutorials/ itunes/it4-2.html The Help section of iTunes has a topic "Creating your own audio CDs". The process is to create a playlist, which then controls burning. The Help info advises: "If the playlist contains any songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store, you can only burn the playlist seven times." iTunes, copying across computers To copy tunes from one computer to another, open iTunes to your Library area, then select tunes and drag to the removeable media drive (e.g., DVD-RAM). At the receiving computer, insert that media, select the tunes, and drag to your Library area there. The oval window at the top of iTunes will display copy progress. Note that such wholesale copying will usually cause purchased music to end up in your Library area rather than in Purchased Music. iTunes, drag files into (import) You can get content (movies, music) into iTunes, from a general hard drive location, simply by dragging it. If you just drag it in, the file will be copied into the iTunes library. If you hold down the Option key while dragging it in, the file will not be copied: instead, an alias link to that file will be established in the iTunes library. iTunes, hide some purchases Your iTunes view may be cluttered with TV show or like purchases that are not of current interest to you. They can be hidden, to To unhide them: You cannot do this from the iTunes view...you have to go into your online account and there, under iTunes in the Cloud, click Manage to the right of Hidden Purchases. For better or worse, purchases cannot be deleted. We all learn this lesson after having downloaded some free tune or TV show to see what it's like, not want to keep it, and then realize there's no way to get rid of it. iTunes, how many tunes? To always show how many items you have in Music or other category, go into the View menu and Show Status Bar. That status will then show at the bottom of the window. This is particularly useful where you have Home Sharing active and you want to quickly see if contents numerically match across your computers. iTunes, learn to use The iTunes Help is your best, basic reference. Apple Article ID 304706 is helpful. iTunes, segment tune for burning Sometimes, an audio recording (such as an audio book) is too long for the intended purpose, such as burning to a CD-R. You can readily deal with this in iTunes. Create a new, temporary playlist. Drag your recording to this playlist. In the playlist, do Get Info on the tune, then click the Options tab. There, enter "1:14:00" in the Stop Time field, specifying that only the first 74 minutes of the recording is to be output (the limit of a CD). Click OK, then click on the Burn CD icon, insert a blank CD-R when told, then commit to burning the CD. The next 74 minutes of the recording are handled much the same way, entering "1:14:00" into the Start Time field this time. You can use the procedure above to make a segment of a tune to be kept on the computer: after setting the Start and Stop times, select Convert Selection to AAC from the Advanced menu to create the extract. Obviously, where a tune had been an MP-3 or similarly compressed file, re-processing it in the AAC compression scheme can further impair the sound; so this technique will work best with Apple Lossless tunes. iTunes, special actions If you hold down the Option key when you launch iTunes, a dialog will appear where you may perform either Create Library or Choose Library: this allows you to use a different location for your iTunes library, as for example an external drive where you earlier dragged the Music/iTunes folder to copy your library content there. iTunes album information iTunes gets its album information from the Gracenote.com database. People around the world are continually sending track information to Gracenote. This can result in existing information changing, which can affect whether iTunes recognizes that a track you are importing is one you already have in iTunes. iTunes and CDs iTunes can burn to either standard Audio CDs or Data CDs. Both are "digital"; the difference is that an Audio CD is recorded using 16-bit linear Pulse Code Modulation and no compression whereas a Data CD holds MP3, AAC, and similar audio files in their native form, with inherent compression. CD players manufactured after 2003 can often handle Data CDs. iTunes authorized computers, list There is no direct way to list the computers which have been Authorized to play DRM-protected content (since 2009, that means movies and TV shows). You would expect such a function to be provided in iTunes, but not. With the advent of iCloud, there is an indicative way to determine which of your computers are authorized, by virtue of doing content downloads... In iTunes, go into the Store section, click Account, click View Account and log in. This will put you onto the Account Information page. In the Apple ID Summary section, the Computer Authorizations line will show you how many computers are authorized - but not which ones. Go into the iTunes in the Cloud section. On the Manage Devices line you will see a count of all your devices which participate: Macs, iPods, iPads, iPhones. Click on Manage Devices. This, finally, reveals all your devices, identified by type, where you are interested in type Mac. The name you gave your computer (in System Preferences, Sharing) will show up in parentheses - but may simply be "Mac". The simple way to determine if your currently available computer is Authorized is to go into iTunes and try to play a "Protected AAC audio file" tune. A trial-and-error method of identifying which of your currently available computers is Authorized is to go into iTunes and perform Deauthorize This Computer (in the Store menu), and then review the Computer Authorizations line again. If you're seeking this info because you are at the limit of 5 and don't know all the computers in play, you can go into your account from iTunes and perform a Deauthorize All, then authorize viable computers, afresh. (Note that this is allowed just once a year.) iTunes CD database lookup When iTunes needs to get information about an inserted CD, it goes to Gracenote CDDB. iTunes Connect The portal for developers to submit app updates and changes. iTunes digital rights mechanism Apple's FairPlay Digital Rights Management (DRM) format is called FairPlay. Apple does not license FairPlay, effectively blocking most companies from selling DRM protected songs that can play on the iPod. iTunes download limits When you buy a song, video, iPod Game, or album from the iTunes Store, you are entitled to download it only once. (Best "backup" method is replication to other Macs you own.) Applications purchased from the App Store can be redownloaded free of charge. Ref: Apple Article HT1469 iTunes DRM Was generally in effect for music (except for EMI titles as of 2007/04/01) until 2009/01/06, when it was announced at MacWorld that per concluded negotiations between Apple and the music companies that DRM was finally discontinued. Note that Steve Jobs had called for the elimination of DRM in an open letter, 2007/02/06, which can be seen at www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/ It can be argued that the lock-in nature of DRM contributed greatly to the establishment and growth of the iTunes Music Store, and thus Apple's dominance of the music distribution market. The change is a blow to Amazon.com - which they probably expected would ultimately occur - where Amazon for a while had the advantage of contracts which allowed them to sell online music without DRM. (Also, what Amazon was selling was lesser-quality MP3 music, rather than the better AAC.) Not to be overlooked is that the demise of DRM is a body-blow to Microsoft's gleeful basing of its media playing on DRM. iTunes drop folder Added in iTunes 9, this is a "live folder" which is watched for new content, which is than automatically added to iTunes. It is: ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/ Automatically Add to iTunes/ Dragging this to the sidebar of your Finder will allow easy addition of material to your iTunes library. For this to work, the iTunes preference (under the Advanced tab) "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library" must be checked. iTunes export The export function does *not* result in the exportation of tunes: it exports the textual database entries. To export the tunes, you can drag-copy them out of the iTunes window to a folder or removable disc in the Finder. iTunes Extras New in iTunes 9, this provides extra ("bonus") material when purchasing movies, finally addressing the absence of such material that is common when purchasing the same video on disc. Arrives as a .ite bundle alongside your movie file in the iTunes directory. The Extras can only be viewed from your computer - they cannot be directly viewed from Apple TV or hand-held devices like iPad or iPhone. The Extras are thus disjointed from the movie. Extras are not provided with rented movies. (But, some extras are viewable on their page in iTunes, where Apple makes some extra material available. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3823 See also: .ite; iTunes LP iTunes FAQ http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/store/ iTunes Info elements Grouping: The grouping (piece) of the track, as where a piece of classical music constitutes has multiple movements but is a unit. "Part of a compilation" checkbox: Used to keep tracks together where they have different artists, which would cause iTunes to separate them. iTunes Library File in Music/iiTunes, being the database of the songs in your library and the playlists you've created. Some song-specific data is saved in this file. If you delete the file, iTunes creates a new, empty copy when you open the application, but any playlists, song ratings, comments, or other information you created is lost. The iTunes Library file is only used by iTunes. iTunes library, move to external drive First connect the new drive to your computer (USB, Firewire). Go into iTunes Preferences and select the Advanced Settings. Under the Advanced tab you will find a choice for the the iTunes Music folder location, which you can change (but assure that "Keep iTunes Music folder organized" and "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" are both checked). Using the "Browse" function, select the new drive and perform "OK." This will changes the default location of your iTunes music library, and thus where all new additions go. Lastly, in the iTunes "Edit" menu select "Library." From that drop-down menu, choose "Consolidate Library", which will cause iTunes to begin copying the library to the external drive, preserving all metadata, including play count, album art, year of release, etc. In that the output is a copy of your library, you have the opportunity to verify that the copy is satisfactory before obliterating the original library. When ready to delete the old, go into Music/iTunes folder to find the folder named "iTunes music". iTunes LP New in iTunes 9. Evolution from LP records to CDs and then digital music resulted in the dimunition of album art and supplementary material - which is particulary dumb in the digital era, when rich content is possible. iTunes finally addresses that, bringing back all the artwork and liner notes, adding video interviews and lots more capabilities. Note that this works only in iTunes itself: iTunes LP is not available on Apple hand-held devices. See also: iTunes Extras iTunes Match Store all your music in iCloud - no matter its manner of purchase, and enjoy iCloud features. In addition, if any tunes match those offered in the iTunes Store, the high-quality store copy will replace the likely lesser copy of yours. Apple charges $24.99 per year for this value-added service. Went live 2011/11/14 via iTunes 10.5.1. Notes: If your music was encoded below a bitrate of 96 kbps, iTunes Match will simply skip over it. You can convert those within iTunes so that Match will accept that new version. iTunes Movie Rentals Introduced by Steve Jobs at the January 16, 2008 special event. Prior to that, the model had been movie sales; but the sales were lackluster, only 7 million. The apparent reason is that while people like to own their music, to play their favorites again and again, they watch movies only once or twice, and so are disinclined to purchase movies. iTunes movies Unfortunately, details about what you're getting with any movie in the iTunes store are largely missing. Some will simply say "Format: Widescreen" with no details. This means only that the aspect ratio of the movie is as was shown in a theater (close to 16:9 aspect ratio), rather than "pan and scan" to 4:3 aspect ratio, in classic ol' television style. It does *not* mean that the movie is high def: such movies will probably look rather fuzzy on an HDTV. The availability of movies in HD is irregular: some will be directly available in iTunes on your computer, clearly identified as such; some will be designated in iTunes as being available on iPad or Apple TV. Details about the movie format are not provided in iTunes... You won't be told if the movie is 480i, 720p, or 1080p for example. Your only clue may be the size of the movie, where a size like 1.8 GB would be standard definition and a size around 4 GB would be 720p HD. iTunes Music Library.xml File in your Music/iTunes folder, containing some (but not all) of the same information stored in the iTunes Library file. The purpose of the iTunes Music Library.xml file is to make your music and playlists available to other applications on your computer. In Mac OS X other iLife applications (like iPhoto, iDVD, and iMovie) use this file to make it easier for you to add music from your iTunes library to your projects. iTunes Music Store Launched April 28, 2003 with 200,000 tunes, AAC-encoded 128-kbps, 99 cents each. Within 5 days of iTunes Store launch, 1 million songs had been sold, via 1-click purchasing. The iTunes store is not intended to be a profit center, but rather a facilitator for iPod sales and furthering of the Apple name, to help sell other Apple products. As Apple says, it is a "just over break-even" operation, with revenues being plowed back in to expand its data center capacity, etc. See also: iTunes iTunes Music Store and TV shows Apple has found the major TV networks to be capricious. NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker was initially all gratitude for iTunes having delivered a surge of viewers to The Office and greatly helping the network in 2005; but in 2007 Zucker abandoned iTunes in attempting to grab more profits through ad-based digital provider hulu.com - despite that provider's lack of portability. The former giant networks are desperately casting about, trying to preserve their mass and profits in the new digital realm and, like newspapers, having no firm idea how to survive. Thus, they are prone to flit from place to place. iTunes on Windows Apple's clever infiltration into Windows PCs, constituting a "mini platform" within the PC, using Apple technology and thereby displacing Microsoft's media playing software. Ironically, iTunes makes Apple one of the biggest software developers for Windows. Many people don't realize that every time they install iTunes on a Windows PC, they also are installing Apple networking software called Bonjour, which operates independently from the Microsoft built-in network software controlled from the Windows Control Panel. This Apple network layer isn't harmful and doesn't interfere with the Microsoft networking functions. It's designed to allow iTunes users to share their music. iTunes periodic housekeeping Every once in a while you may want to get back a bit of disk space that iTunes is holding. As you likely know, Apple releases new levels of iTunes periodically. When you apply a major update, the database is updated. In doing so, the previous image of the database is moved to folder Music/iTunes/Previous iTunes Libraries for possible backout. These files are roughly a megabyte in size, and accumulate over time. iTunes playlist, delete without warn Normally, deleting a playlist results in a confirmation dialog. You could defeat this by next time checking the box "Do Not Ask Me Again", but later undoing that is an issue. The dynamic method is to click on the playlist, and then do Command+Delete, to cause iTunes to delete the playlist without the warning. iTunes Plus 2007/05/30 new variation on tunes, being DRM-free music. Format: AAC, at 256 Kbits/second (an upgrade from the original 128 kbps iTunes format) As of 2009/01/06, announced at MacWorld, iTunes Plus is now the standard for store music downloads, DRM-free, per concluded negotiations between Apple and the music companies. Tunes are now be available for 69 cents (older music), 99 cents (current, non-hit titles), or $1.29 (current, popular hits), with most albums still priced at $9.99. (Apple had staunchly pressed for single unit pricing, as per its original 99-cent tune price, both for accounting simplicity and to counter the inclination of music companies to charge ridiculous prices for music - as witness their longstanding, outrageous $18 pricing for CDs. Both sides compromised, to good results.) Apple also provides you the opportunity to upgrade some lower bitrate tunes that you own. To use that function, go into the iTunes Store home page, where on the right, under QUICK LINKS, you should find iTunes Plus. The upgrade price is $.30 per song, 30% of current album price, and $.60 for a music video. HISTORIC: 2007 pricing: music tracks: $1.29; videos: $1.99 Upgrade existing EMI songs in your iTunes collection for $0.30 per song. (An Upgrade My Library function detects DRM versions of Plus offerings.) An album may contains 18 tunes, and yet cost only $9.99. A new iTunes 7.2 preference is to see the Plus version of offerings instead of the DRM version. DRM was first discontinued for EMI offerings, April 01, 2007. Supported by iTunes 7.2 software, made available 2007/05/30. See also: Mastered for iTunes iTunes Preview itunes.apple.com Web pages to describe a movie, TV show, or music selection, without launching the iTunes application: from there, the person can click to see and purshase it in iTunes proper (where account charging software is in place). Such pages are linked from other Web pages, such as /www.apple.com/startpage/. iTunes Producer Free software application allows you to prepare your music for direct delivery to iTunes. Use it to encode your music in AAC format; enter album, song, and cover art information; and send your prepared files directly to Apple for consideration. iTunes Producer is also the publishing software for iBooks Author books. iTunes Purchased Music This is a playlist which contains all of your iTunes store purchases. As such, it can be deleted - but once gone, you can't get all of it back: your next purchase will recreate the Purchased playlist, but not repopulate it with former purchases. If it was accidentally deleted, you can create a substitute with the Smart Playlist feature. Select File: New Smart Playlist with rule: Kind is Protected AAC audio file with "Live updating". Click OK, and name the playlist to be memorable, like My Music Purchases. That playlist will then contain all past and future music purchases. iTunes Radio Apple's subscription music service, to be available in fall, 2013. Announced at WWDC 2013, on June 10. Apple will stream tunes to your device according to categories of interest, which can be types of music or music by chosen artists. You can purchase tunes you really like. Thereby, you create your own, tailored "stations" of music you want to be streamed. By default, this is ad-sponsored; but ads can be eliminated if you subscribe to iTunes Match. This is somewhat analogous to Internet radio, but is streamed from Apple's servers, fully identifies tunes, and offers purchase. And Apple is likely to have tunes before radio stations will. Various reports have suggested that the reason it took so long for Apple to launch iTunes Radio was so that it could cut a sufficient number of deals directly with the record labels, avoiding the costly royalty fees otherwise imposed by the CRB. iTunes Replay Expected in early 2009: An on-demand streaming video service for iTunes movies and videos. iTunes sharing, with whom? Thus far, iTunes does not provide a display of who's sharing whatever you set up in its Preferences. Via the Terminal utility, you can enter the following "list open files" command to reveal those sharing over the network: lsof +D /Users/user name/Music/iTunes/ iTunes\ Music -i where the +D option limits lsof to files inside the specified directory, including all of its subdirectories, while -i limits the search to files opened over your network. A variant: lsof -r 2 -n -P -F n -c iTunes -a -i TCP@`hostname`:3689 If you're not opposed to installing foreign software on your Mac, you could plant the iTunes Monitor application and use that. iTunes terms of service www.apple.com/legal/itunes/us/service.html iTunes tips Cmd+R reveals the physical tune file in the Finder. To rewind the current tune, hold down Command and Open, and press the left-arrow key. To fast-forward in the current tune, hold down Command and Open, and press the right-arrow key. Multiple genres for tunes: In the Get Info on a tune, you can select a single genre from the pull-down list. But, you can also type multiple genres into that field, separated by commas. iTunes tutorials http://www.apple.com/itunes/tutorials/ iTunes U New iTunes store area, 2007/06, offering educational tracks: lectures, audiobooks, speeches, sports video clips, and campus tours, among others. Absolutely free, the content comes from some of the most prestigious universities in North America: Penn State, UC Berkeley, Duke University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and many others. Press release "Apple Announces iTunes U on the iTunes Store", May 30, 2007. General info: http://www.apple.com/education/itunesu/ Support info: http://www.apple.com/support/itunes_u/ iTunes U app iOS app for iPhone, iPad, released 2012/01/19. Basically equates to the iTunes U portion of the iTunes store, but is mostly intended for putting a course together, with pointers to course material in iTunes, assignments, quizzes and the like. iTunes update frequency The frequency of iTunes updates is usually to usher in new functionality in the software. A quieter purpose is to enhance FairPlay DRM to deal with the latest hacker incursions against it, so as to keep content providers happy to sell through the iTunes Store. iTunes video store (movie store) Inception, Tuesday 2006/09/12. The effort to add movies to the iTunes store resulted in the unprecedented action of the store being shut down that morning, replaced by a black screen with the white lettering: It's Showtime The iTunes Store is being updated. A downtime of hours, during prime time, for a major site such as this strongly suggests major architectural changes required to fulfill the adjusted mission. The initial movie offerings are only from the Disney company (Disney, Miramax, Touchstone, and of course Pixar) - the movie store starts modestly, just as its music store did. Pricing: Major new titles: $12.99 pre-order and first week, then $14.99. Older titles, $9.99. Movies are released on the store at the same time as DVD release. The video resolution is 640x480 (actually, up to 480, depending upon the movie's aspect ratio, where the 640x480 was chosen to match the video resolution of the fifth generation iPods) - not quite up to DVD's 720x480. Apple describes it as "near DVD-quality". That's great for TV shows, but not where it should be for movies, where they can be had on DVD, "Enhanced for 16x9". No promise of HD offerings. And these videos are likely interlaced, making them much less quality than 720p. Apple article ID 304277 cites the typical movie size as 1.5 GB - suggestive of quality loss versus a DVD, which is up to 4.7 GB single layer, or up to 9 GB dual layer, already MPEG2 compressed. Sound quality is another loss: It's Dolby Surround Sound, which is 2 channels (front left, front right) with derived front center and rear surround sound. That's decent, but old technology - nowhere near the Dolby Digital 6.1 experience. (The file size would be considerably larger if Dolby Digital were in play.) Movies are presented in their original aspect ratio, with "letterbox" presentation on the screen. Videos purchased from the iTunes Store have FairPlay digital rights management embedded in the files and are in a format that can be readily synced to a Fifth Generation iPod. Movies must be watched from a Mac or PC generating the video, to the computer screen or a televison. There is no capability to create a DVD from the downloaded material. (It may be surmised that Apple executives are not using iTunes movies as the content source for their home theaters.) Titles availability may vary by country. There seem to be no extras with the movie download, so you don't get everything which is on a DVD. Note that used DVDs are widely available for less than $10. And there's Netflix. iTunes video store vs. Amazon Unbox Amazon beat Apple to introduction with the launch of the Amazon Unbox download service 2006/09/08. But: Unbox's pricing - about the same as a purchased DVD - and the absence of supplementary material which you get on a purchased DVD, and the extreme restrictions (must be viewed with the Unbox Video Player, rentals must be watched from the device originally stored on, and the most onerous being the inability to realistically watch your purchased videos on a television), make Unbox "no bargain". Worse, Amazon reserves the right to delete files on your PC, and spam you with unwanted "promotional video content". Add to that the highly dubious Microsoft PlaysForSure DRM, and you conclude that Amazon has prostituted itself to Microsoft. And Unbox will install and update software on your Windows PC at will (as for example a surprise upgrade of .NET, without it even asking.) You're much better off buying a used DVD from eBay or your local store: no restrictions, full features, lower price. iTunesHelper iTunes Helper is Apple software which runs in the background, monitoring for the connection of any iPod or iPhone to the computer, if an iPod or iPhone is detected it will automatically launch the iTunes application. The functionality is the same on both Mac OS X and Windows PCs. There is no serious ramification to disabling it: if absend, iTunes will no longer auto-launch upon connecting your iPhone or iPod. iTV Code name for a product previewed at the "It's showtime" special presentation 2006/09/12. A compact, flat box to take video wirelessly from your Mac or PC, to drive your TV with videos from iTunes/FrontRow. The same video file (or audio or photos) plays on PC, iPod, and TV. Interfaces: 802.11, USB2, ethernet, HDMI, component video, optical audio. The 802.11 mention was unspecific, and given the video needs, may be 802.11n rather than g. Pricing: $299 Coming 2007 Q1 Was introduced 2007/01/09 at Macworld as "Apple TV" (q.v.). Ive, Johathan Apple's head design engineer. 2015/05/25 Give up day-to-day managerial duties in what the company said is a promotion to the newly created position of chief design officer. iWeb New iLife app, 2006/01: - Easy and fast website creation, including webpages, blogs, and podcasts. - Stunning Apple-designed templates that include photo albums with slideshows, "about me" pages, blogs, podcasts, and more. - Integration with iPhoto, iMovie HD, and GarageBand to incorporate your photos, movies, and music. - One-click publishing to .Mac. Apple expected customers to use this in conjunction with .Mac and then MobileMe, which provided web pages space with iDisk. However, the advent of iCloud spelled the demise of iWeb and iDisk: iWeb went away as of mid 2012. iWeb stores the server host's ID key in .ssh/known_hosts. If the server host ID changes, iWeb can't handle that, and gives a misleading message. iWork Successor application to both AppleWorks (plus its ClarisWorks lineage) and Keynote (provides Keynote2), to take advantage of OS X and integrate with iLife. Announced at Macworld 2005(01/11), $79, available 01/22. Was developed by the Keynote people. Pages: "Word processing with an incredible sense of style". However, initially absent from this AppleWorks/ClarisWorks successor were spreadsheet, database, draw, and paint. (A spreadsheet would eventually appear, in iWork '08, as Numbers.) Note that the continued availability of a productivity suite from Apple has helped draw down the price of Microsoft's Office for Mac suite product, from its original $500 to 2011's $90 (Amazon price). At the 2013/09/10 new iPhones presentation, it was announced that iWork would come free on all newly purchased Apple devices. This compensates for Microsoft failing to make its Office products available on the iPod and iPhone, and will detract from MS software sales. And, iWork is now available in iCloud. Whereas it was free to use in iCloud, it would not make much sense to keep charging for it on iDevices. Contrast this to MS charging $140 for Office on a computer, and $100 per year for Office 365 cloud access. See also: Keynote; Pages iWork '06 New, 2006/01. Includes applications Pages 2 and Keynote 3. New features common to both apps: $(O#@(B Tables with calculations, enabling you to perform spreadsheet operations right in your presentation or document. $(O#@(B Three-dimensional charts with realistic textures for displaying your data. $(O#@(B Advanced image editing for perfecting your photos. $(O#@(B Freeform Bezier curves and curved shapes that greatly expand drawing capabilities. $(O#@(B New shapes, including customizable stars and polygons. $(O#@(B Image masking using a standard or custom shape to create unique photo cutouts. $(O#@(B Comments to use as notes or reminders when creating documents or presentations. iWork '07 No such thing. Apple skipped production of a new version this year. iWork '08 New, 2007/08/07. Includes applications Pages 3, Keynote 4, and (new) Numbers 1 spreadsheet. iWork '09 New, 2009/01/06. The three applications have been further improved. iWork.com introduced to allow document sharing (but not true collaboration). iWork '10 No such thing. Apple skipped this year. iWork '11 No such thing as of 2011/09/20. iWork in the cloud Announced at WWDC 2013, iWork will be available in iCloud, free to all registered Apple customers, with remarkable capabilities for a Web-based application suite. Contrast this to MS charging $140 for Office on a computer, and $100 per year for Office 365 cloud access. iWork.com Apple website service, released as a public beta on January 6, 2009 at the Macworld Conference & Expo, iWork.com provides a web interface for viewing, downloading, and commenting on uploaded documents from Apple's Mac-based iWork productivity suite. The service supports uploading of Pages '09 documents, Keynote '09 presentations, and Numbers '09 spreadsheets. Users can download documents in both Microsoft Office and PDF formats, in addition to their native iWork formats. The user who uploads the document determines which of the aforementioned formats are available as download options. However, in contrast to cloud-based office applications such as Google Docs, iWork.com does not offer editing. The service is currently free as a beta but will morph into a subscription-based offering once it's finalized. iWork.com never advanced beyond "beta". With the advent of iCloud in the fall of 2011, I speculated that iWork.com may fold into that. Indeed, on March 9, 2012 Apple announced that the iWork.com public beta will end on July 31st, and that the service will then end, where users are encouraged to use iCloud - which, of course, offers none of the collaboration that iWork.com did. J2SE Java 2 Standard Edition. Version 5.0 Release 4. delivers numerous enhancements for the Apple implementation of J2SE 5.0 on Mac OS X v10.4. J2SE 5.0 Release 4 improves reliability and addresses issues found in earlier releases of J2SE 5.0 for Mac OS X. After installing J2SE 5.0 Release 4, J2SE 5.0 becomes preferred over Java 1.4.2, which will still be installed on your Mac. Applications run with J2SE 5.0 unless they specifically request Java 1.4.2. J2SE provides compatibility with Sun's Java 2 Platform Standard Edition, version 5.0 (1.5.0_06). Jaguar Product code name for Mac OS 10.2, based upon FreeBSD 4.4 Previous: Puma Next: Panther Java for OS X Apple had shipped a Java SE runtime with every copy of Mac OS X, beginning with version 10.0; but Apple discontinued the practice of shipping Java with OS X as of OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), because Java changes so frequently. You can download Java as needed, from Oracle (http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1572 and http://www.java.com). CAUTION: As of 2014/03 it appears that Oracle has started adding adware to the Java, as they had been doing for years with Windows users. The Java level can be seen by launching the Java Preferences utility and going to the General tab. The Java Plugin Settings applications are located in the folder /Applications/Utilities/Java on a Mac OS X system. (Why is it tucked away? The Help facility says, "Mac OS X is set up to work correctly with Java applets for most users, so you do not need to change these settings.") There, you can change various settings: Under the Cache tab, there is an Enable Caching checkbox, and a Clear button to clear the cache. Java SE 7 and future versions of Java for Mac OS X will be available from Oracle (who absorbed Sun Microsystems, the originators of Java). Ref: Technical Note TN2110 "Identifying Java on Mac OS X" http://developer.apple.com/java/faq/ www.java.com/en/download/faq/java_mac.xml Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 4 Can download from http://support.apple.com/kb/DL848 Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 5 Can download from http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1360 Java for Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) Is not included with the OS install. If you try to run a Java app on Lion, OS X will look for the latest version of the runtime and download it - with your approval. However, this approach can disrupt the process which is requiring Java. Instead, it is best to separately download Java, which you can do from: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1421 Java installed? If you do not see a Java icon under System Preferences, Java 7 and above is not installed. If you do see an icon, click on it to determine your version. --------- Doing 'java -help' when Java is not installed will cause a pop-up message saying: To use the "java" command-line tool you need to install a JDK. Click "More info" to visit the Java Developer Kit download website. (Goes to the Oracle website for the latest version - which may not be appropriate.) Status code: 0 if installed; 1 if not installed. --------- Doing 'java -help > /dev/null' when Java is not installed will cause a pop-up message saying: To open "java" you need a Java SE 6 runtime. Would you like to install one now? [Not Now] [Install] (Note the different behavior when redirection is employed, where this gets you to a proper-version install.) Status code: 0 if installed; 1 if not installed. --------- Doing '/usr/libexec/java_home' when Java is not install yields Stdout messages: Unable to find any JVMs matching version "(null)". No Java runtime present, try --request to install. (There is no pop-up.) Status code: 0 if installed; 1 if not installed. --------- Doing '/usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.6' when Java is not install yields Stdout messages: Unable to find any JVMs matching version "1.6". No Java runtime present, try --request to install. (There is no pop-up.) Status code: 0 if installed; 2 if not installed. Java version that's in effect Go into Utilities > Java Preferences and see on the General tab. From the command line, as admin, run: /usr/libexec/java_home which will report the JAVA_HOME like: /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/ 1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home (It is a command which follows the Java version choosen in Java Preferences.) For Mac shell programming, this might be used to set environment variable: export JAVA_HOME=`/usr/libexec/java_home` See also: /usr/libexec/java_home JavaScript testing If you go to www.apple.com/startpage/ without JavaScript enabled, the multiple image blocks on that page will report "Please enable JavaScript to view this page properly." JFS (Journaling File System) Added with OS 10.2.2 (Merlot). Journaling for the Mac OS Extended (HFS Plus) file system enhances computer availability and fault resilience, which is especially noteworthy for servers. Journaling protects the integrity of the file system on Xserve and other computers using Mac OS X Server in the event of an unplanned shutdown or power failure. It also helps to maximize the uptime of servers and connected storage devices by expediting repairs to the affected volumes when the system restarts. Journaling is a technique that helps protect the integrity of the Mac OS Extended file systems on Mac OS X volumes. It both prevents a disk from getting into an inconsistent state and expedites disk repair if the server fails. When you enable journaling on a disk, a continuous record of changes to files on the disk is maintained in the journal. If your computer stops because of a power failure or some other issue, the journal is used to restore the disk to a known-good state when the server restarts. With journaling turned on, the file system logs transactions as they occur. If the server fails in the middle of an operation, the file system can "replay" the information in its log and complete the operation when the server restarts. This can be turned on in Disk Utility by selecting the disk and clicking on the Enable Journaling icon. It can also be enabled from the command line, by doing like: sudo /usr/sbin/diskutil enableJournal / Turn it off in Disk Utility under the File menu: Disable Journaling. It can also be disabled from the command line, by doing like sudo /usr/sbin/diskutil disableJournal / Ref: article 107249 Jobs, Steve Apple co-founder, the entrepreneur guy. 1955/02/24 - 2011/10/05 (~3 pm). Was working at Atari in 1976 (he was employee No. 40, at 19 years old), and later at HP ("What I learned there was the blueprint we used for Apple," he told a journalist in 2003). Jobs returned to Apple with Apple's acquisition of his NeXT computer company in February of 1997 ($429M), with Apple then under CEO Gilbert Amelio. Apple continued to slide. On the 4 July 1997 weekend Jobs convinced the directors to oust Amelio in a boardroom coup; Amelio submitted his resignation less than a week later; and Jobs then became interim CEO on September 16, 1997. On January 14, 2009 Jobs announced that due to health problems, he would be taking a leave of absence from Apple, until the end of June. Jobs return to Apple in 1997 By September 1997, Jobs had cut 70% of Apple's product line and got Apple out of side businesses like printers and servers. "You are bright people," Jobs told one product group. "You shouldn't be wasting your time on such crappy products." Focus pays off. Johnson, Ron Former head of retail sales (Senior Vice President of Retail Operations). Working with Steve Jobs, he introduced the Apple Store and made it a success. (The board of directors opposed opening stores, given the prominent failure of Gateway computer stores at the time.) Note that at the time of the opening of the first store in May, 2001, Apple was struggling to recover from an all time company low. The ability to make Apple Retail a success is all the more impressive when it's appreciated that Apple had very few products in 2001. Joined Apple in January 2000. Departed November 2011 - with no successor lined up - to become CEO of J. C. Penney, lured there by Penney board member Bill Ackman. (When Apple first scouted locations for its stores, Johnson would park near JC Penney's mall stores because they always had plenty of unused parking spaces.) John Browett was later chosen as Apple's next retail chief. (Before Apple, Ron was vice president of merchandising for Target and worked at Mervyns.) See also: Blankenship Joint Venture The name for an extension of Apple's current Genius Bar services that is aimed at small businesses and prosumers. New as of 2011/02. Subscribers of the new service will be able to speak with a store-based Apple technician ("Genius") over the phone for one-on-one consultation and troubleshooting, or they can request an on-site visit. Hitherto, Apple's Geniuses are not allowed to provide support remotely via the phone or in-person outside of Apple's retail locations. Joliet Volume Access System Extension enhances the way your Mac can read CD-ROMs from other platforms, mainly Windows. Shareware. Supports ISO 9660 Level 1 to 3 and Joliet (Microsoft's extension of 9660 to handle long filenames in Win95). It is functionally a replacement for Apple's ISO 9660 File Access extension, in that Apple did not extend their CD support to encompass Joliet. http://www.tempel.org/joliet/ Journaling An industry standard disk file system feature introduced in Panther whereby changes in file system meta data is recorded in a small disk area known as a Journal, prior to syncing file system changes from OS memory to disk. Should a crash occur, this info will allow much faster and more preserving restoration of file system content in the next OS restart. Journaling is the standard for OS X disk file systems, seen as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" when a drive is formatted. You can enable journaling in drives via Disk Utility. "Just For You" New addition to the Apple Music Store, 2005/10: a predictive software program that makes recommendations based on past purchases. Ken Burns Effect In iPhoto slide show, the technique of slowly panning and zooming on a photo to give it more "life" than simply showing it statically. So named because documentary producer Ken Burns heavily used that in his films. Though associated with Burns, the effect originated with Donald B. Hyatt, who, beginning in the 1950s produced dozens of NBC television documentaries on historical figures and themes. It was termed "stills in motion" then. Kensington Expert Mouse Pro A lousy name for what is actually an excellent USB trackball, evolved from a lineage of such trackballs. This model, #64213, is the silver plastic one with four, large buttons at the corners, a scroll wheel/button, and six buttons at the top. The ball is of essentially ideal size and mass, riding on stainless steel wheels in the base. All of the actuators are programmable via their MouseWorks software, downloadable from their website (us.kensington.com) Support area. Comments: The trackball generally works very nicely with the Mac. The shortcoming is the scroll wheel, which is difficult to work, and particularly to spin without depressing far enough to actuate its button function. And, later generations of the MouseWorks software fail to provide the ability to program the button function. The row of selector buttons across the top can be programmed for any series of keystrokes, thus being handy for "macro" functions. I like to assign the four corner buttons as follows: lower left = single click; upper left = double click; upper right = middle click; lower right = right click. The double-click button is great in allowing you to now single click on that button to effect double-clicking, saving you effort. Maintenance: The stainless steel ball bearing wheels in this trackball unit are rugged. Wipe them and the ball with a damp cloth or paper towel every once in a while, to keep clean, and maintain smooth action. After a long period of use, you may find that the screen pointer will no longer respond in one direction, as for example being unable to move up or down. This is due to lint build-up in the optical sensor area of the wheels. The way to deal with this is to unplug the unit, remove the ball, invert it, and remove the four screws with a #0 phillips screwdriver. Then carefully separate the two halves and open them up with a sandwich. Now remove the four same-size screws holding the main circuit board to the underside of the face. This will expose the wheels, where you will undoubtedly find a small mass of lint around the shaft area, keeping light from getting to the photosensor. Clean this out with a kid's craft paintbrush or the like. Do the same for the smaller support wheel you'll find in there. Re-seat that third wheel. Put the circuit board back into place and secure with its four screws. Carefully close the case, assuring that that third support wheel hasn't unseated (it enjoys playing hide-and-seek), and that no cables are being pinched now. Before trying to screw it back together, inspect the four screw holes to assure that no ribbon cable has shifted so as to block the screw holes (or be in a position to be damaged). Now secure the four screws to complete reassembly. You're good for another five years or so. A particularly annoying shortcoming with this unit is its tiny rubber feet, which shift and fall off, after causing the unit to rock annoyingly during use. You can re-glue the feet back on, but the better approach is probably to buy some stick-on felt and apply good-sized pieces to the four base corners. Kensington trackball software New as of 2011/06 is TrackballWorks, new software for customizing the behavior of the company's trackballs. The free software, which officially supports Kensington's Expert Mouse, SlimBlade Trackball, Orbit Optical Trackball, and Orbit Trackball with Scroll Ring. Does not support the Expert Mouse Pro trackball (grey plastic with stainless steel rollers). Lets you adjust cursor speed and acceleration, adjust scrolling speed and direction (on devices with scroll hardware), and customize the function of each button or combination of buttons. Kernel extensions As the name suggests, these are functional extensions to the Unix kernel that underlies OS X. They can add a lot of value, but if not rigorously programmed, can cause instability. See also: kext* kext Refers to a kernel extension or hardware driver. In Yosemite, Apple introduced a sexurity feature called "kext signing". Kext signing basically works by checking if all the drivers in the system are unaltered by a third party, or approved by Apple. If they have been modified, Yosemite will no longer load the driver. This is a means of enforcing security, but also a way for Apple to control what hardware that third-party developers can release OS X support for. .kext Filename extension for kernel extension files. kextfind Command to find kernel extensions. Example: kextfind -loaded -not -bundle-id -substring com.apple.' finds which of your third-party kernel extensions are active. .key Standard filename extension for Keynote documents. .key-tef Filename extension for a Keynote iCloud Presentation, designating that it can be opened by both the iOS and Mac OS X versions of Keynote. These -tef files are actually folder "packages", not standard files. Keyboard shortcut A shortcut is only a single, combined keyboard action, like Option+M - it is not a sequence of keystrokes. Keyboard shortcut: dialog buttons Various Mac applications are programmed to allow the convenience of using the Apple key plus the first letter of the name of a button on a dialog box to select that button, rather then moving the pointer over to it and clicking. Keyboard shortcuts Tailor in the Mac OSX Keyboard & Mouse area, tab Keyboard Shortcuts. You can create a new keyboard shortcut for existing menu commands, which you tie to a known application, give the shortcut a title, and enter the character key sequence to cause the desired action. For example, in the Mail application you can create a shortcut which utilizes the key sequence Option+A. Note that a given application may have its own shortcuts list; for example, Mail has a set, which you can see by going into the Mail application and, in the Help area, reviewing topic "Mail keyboard shortcuts". Note that you gain fuller keyboard control of actions by turning on Full Keyboard Access in Keyboard & Mouse preferences, Keyboard Shortcuts tab. See also: Help item "Full Keyboard Access shortcuts for selecting an action"; "About alternative ways to control your computer"; "Setting custom global keyboard shortcuts" Apple Article: HT1343 Keyboard suppliers Go to website matias.ca for one source of good keyboards. Kensington offers a seemingly good keyboard. The MacAlly IceKey keyboard is to be avoided: it requires a driver to use upper right control keys, and various keys die after some period of use. Keyboard symbols In the Mac's Help facility, see pages "Symbols for special keys" and "Keyboard Shortcut Symbols". Keyboard trackpad (iOS 9) Built into iOS 9, initially implemented for the iPad, is a trackpad capability for precisely managing text. When operating on text (e.g., in Notes), touch the keyboard area with two fingers: this causes the keyboard to go blank and a cursor to move around in the text. This feature was not available on the iPhone (because of its smaller real estate) but is available through 3D Touch on the 6S phones, by pressing harder in the keyboard. Keyboard Viewer (keymap) OS X applet for presenting a window showing what various key modifiers (Shift, Control, Option) will help generate for symbols, as well as what is currently being types. In OS X, that is replaced by an applet called Keyboard Viewer. To activate it, go into System Preferences, and then: $(O#@(B In OS 10.9+: In System Preferences choose Keyboard preference, then click on the Keyboard tab and then select "Show Keyboard & Character Viewers in menu bar". $(O#@(B In earler OS X, select Language & Text and then Input Sources, to there click the checkbox for Keyboard & Character Viewer. $(O#@(B In older OS X, select International and click on the Input Menu tab, then click in the box for Keyboard Viewer. This plants a flag in the menu bar, from which you can activate the viewer. See also: Dash Keyboards, USB type, multiple If you connect two Apple USB keyboards at the same time only one of them will be able to perform boot-time functions such as holding down the Shift key to disable extensions or C key to boot from a CD. KeyCaps OS 6-9 name of the Desk Accessory for presenting a window showing what various key modifiers (Shift, Control, Option) will help generate for symbols, as well as what is currently being types. In OS X, that is replaced by an applet called Keyboard Viewer (q.v.). Keychain Macintosh central repository of usernames and passwords to sites and resources you regularly access, used by Apple software and some 3rd party software. Supports 255 character user names and passwords. Initially, there is a single keychain known as the default keychain, named Login Keychain: it is automatically unlocked when you log in or unlock the screen. Keychain files are stored in each user's ~/Library/Keychains directory - one .keychain file for each keychain like: ~/Library/Keychains/login.keychain Encrypted: Login credentials are stored in an encrypted form, retrievable via a master keychain password. Employs 128-bit Fast Elliptical Encryption: is better than most third party apps do on their own, so using Apple's Keychain is beneficial to them. Lineage: Had been in System 7 Pro, but was later removed because it didn't catch on. It returned in OS X, as Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997. Recommendations: In Keychain Preferences, check the box for "Show keychain status in menu bar", showing you if any of your keychains is unlocked. Also, activate OCSP and CRL (set both to Best Attempt). Tips: For additional security you can create a keychain on a USB drive, to be available only when you need it. Keychain and printing You may have multiple printers going to a Windows server where authenticated access is required. You may expect there to be one Keychain password entry for each such printer. However, one finds that the first printer set up with that password then satisfies all other such printers: you will not find Keychain entries for those other printers, because they all use the same server, which is the key host identifier in that singular printer keychain entry. Keychain command line tool Is the 'security' command. See its man page. Basic usage commands: Dump contents of a keychain: security dump-keychain login.keychain In the output: class "inet" = Internet Password The 'desc' field defines the Kind as reported by KeyChain Utility. "genp" = Generic Password (Application Password) "ashp" = AppleSharePassword 0x0000000F = Key. 0x80001000 = Certificate. acct Account name. For a networked printer, may be form "ad\Me" for AD. atyp Authentication type. cdat Creation date. Type: timedate crtr Creator item. Typically null. cusi Custom icon. Typically null. desc Description. Is used for Kind in KeyChain Utility report. "Network Password" for printer passwords. "Token" for tokens. "Web form password": web pages. "AirPort Disk password" "AirPort network password" "802.1X Password" icmt Comment item. Typically null. invi Invisible item. Typically null. mdat Modification date. Type: timedate nega Negative item. path Path. port Port number. prot pctl Protocol. scrp Script code sdmn Security domain svce Service name. For printer: printer name. srvr Server (network address) type Type. Typically null. \134 is octal for character '\'. Data types: timedate Like: 0x32303130303930383135303330395A00 "20100908150309Z\000" wheere the first part is the hexadecimal representation for the ASCII timestamp in the second part. Show keychain info: security show-keychain-info login.keychain Generic password: security find-generic-password -a YOU where YOU is your username. Ref: Keychain Services Reference Keychain First Aid Gone in El Capitan, ostensibly because of self-healing being programmed. Keychain password prompting In Mac OS X, you may be repatedly prompted for your Keychain password. This can be due to someone having fiddled with your Mac. Go into the utility Keychain Access. Right-click on your "login" keychain (or any other one which you believe may be involved) and select "Change Settings for Keychain". There, uncheck the boxes. Keychain peculiarities In the Passwords list, you may see the same Name multiple times. This is not a conflict. The Name is just a convenience for your management of the entries. The important elements are: Account The username or other string identity. Where The network identity of the server to connect to. Password The password to be used. Keychain entries with seemingly conflicting names will have differing field elements. Keynote Apple presentation package, introduced at the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco, January 2003. It is like Microsoft's PowerPoint, intended to allow OS X users to produce professional looking presentations (not specifically to compete with Microsoft). But Keynote provided sophisticated capabilities for a $99 package, including smooth compositing and 3-D effects. Keynote can import PowerPoint, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Macromedia Flash 5, and QuickTime. Native format: Keynote (.key, .key-tef) Export formats: PowerPoint, QuickTime, PDF, images (JPEG, PNG, TIFF), HTML, iPod. The underlying document system in Keynote is entirely XML, and so Keynote can take in XML data from other modern applications which employ it. If you don't register upon the first two launches, on the third launch the option Never Register appears. OSX's Software Update function will give you the opportunity to apply upgrades. Succeeded in January, 2005 by Keynote 2, in iWork. So why would Apple create such a product when PowerPoint seemingly fills that niche? Indeed, why not also create a Microsoft Word competitor? Keynote is, obviously, a good way for Apple to get more attention from the enterprise buyer. In an Infoworld interview with Apple's senior VP of software engineering, Avie Tevanian, and senior VP of hardware engineering, Jon Rubinstein, Apple claims that Keynote was not developed to be an enterprise product. Its de facto market is education, where schools do not have the funding to buy expensive, bloated Microsoft packages, but seek software which is easy to use and produces nice results. Keynote was initiated within Apple as a programming project because Steve Jobs wanted a good presentation package which he could use to get the quality ne wanted for the keynote addresses he does: PowerPoint lacked desired features and there was no indication that Microsoft would add them anytime soon. Apple also received a lot of requests from educators. Apple also wanted to exhibit all the graphics and animation capabilities available in OS X - not present in PowerPoint: Apple wanted to deliver a "showcase" product. Keynote 3 New, 2006/01, part of iWork '06. New features: $(O#@(B New HD themes for presentations and portfolios, and themes for kiosks and storyboards. $(O#@(B New cinematic transitions, including blinds, doorway, fall, reflection, revolving door, swoosh, shutter, and fade through color. $(O#@(B Light Table View for displaying all your slides simultaneously so you can easily reorganize them. $(O#@(B Multiple columns in body text. $(O#@(B Export to iPhoto for use in photocasts, webpages, and book printing. $(O#@(B Export to iDVD to burn a DVD of your presentation with chapter breaks between slides and builds. $(O#@(B More animation control, enabling you to set unique timing and sequence of each bullet, table row, or chart series. $(O#@(B Interleaved builds to mix builds of bullets, table rows, or chart series with other object builds. Keynote usage notes Bulleted lists: To create a new line within a bulleted paragraph: On the Mac, hold down the Shift or Control key and press Enter. On an iOS device, position to the end of the current line and tap there to bring up a contextual menu, tap on Insert, then on Line Break. To create a sub-bulleted list: Press Enter to cause a new bullet and then in the menu system: On the Mac, go to Format > Text > Increase Indent Level; or keyboard shortcut Cmd + ]. Simpler: customize the toolbar to add Indent. In iOS, be on the next bulleted line you want to be indented, tap there to bring up a contextual menu, tap on Insert, then on Tab. Keynote picture frames There may be more present than are shown in the app. See: www.keynoteuser.com/news/?p=226 Keynote remote control You can control Keynote by using an Apple Remote controller on any modern Mac which has Front Row capability. The left and right buttons advance the slides; up and down change the slide volume. As of 2009/01 Apple provided the Keynote Remote app for iPhone and iPod touch, iWork '09. That was discontinued: intstead, the Keynote for iOS now has remote control capability built in, where you can control presentations that are running on your Macintosh or Apple TV. Keypad See: Mouse, use keyboard instead Knowledge Navigator Apple's mid 1980s concept for an intelligent assistant who could find any information you were looking for, analyze it, and carry out instructions, all via voice interaction. It would operate on a touch tablet type device. Several concept videos were produced, which can be found on YouTube. The concept became realized, at least partially, in Siri, introduced in 2011. L1 Cache Level 1 memory cache built into the processor chip. L2 Cache Level 2 memory cache nearby the processor, as on the card which carries the processor. Lab deployment Look into: NetRestore; Carbon Copy Cloner LaserWriter Apple's first laser printer, introduced January 23, 1985 at the Apple annual stockholder meeting. Price: $6,995. It was a very important product in that, with the Macintosh and PostScript, it was the advent of desktop publishing - as well as putting Adobe Systems on the corporate map. See also: ImageWriter LaserWriter IIg Supported under OS X, on ethernet. AppleTalk as the protocol. Should be automatically discovered under Printer Browser type AppleTalk, ending up with a Device URI of like: pap://*/LaserWriter%20IIg/LaserWriter To manually set up, in OS 10.4: Hold down the Option key when defining the printer, so as to get Advanced settings, where you will select Printer URL like pap://111.222.333.444 . Enable AppleTalk, either through the Printer Setup Utility or the Network preferences. The AppleTalk zone is "Local zone". To manually set up, in OS 10.5: Turn the printer on, and on network. Go into System Preferences > Print & Fax Click '+' to add a new printer. Select AppleTalk. Local Zone should display, and the printer should be discovered, whereupon you can select it and make any desired settings. LaserWriter test page, suppress As from the factory, when a Laserwriter printer is turned on, it prints a test page (aka, "Startup page", which reports: $(O#@(B The name of the printer. $(O#@(B The mode (PostScript). $(O#@(B Communication method (e.g., AppleTalk) $(O#@(B Number of built-in fonts. $(O#@(B Amount of printer RAM. $(O#@(B Any attached hard drive. and gives you a sense of print quality before you start sending jobs to it. Suppress using the Laserwriter Utility. LaunchCFMApp Refers to any Code Fragment Manager Carbon application that runs natively in OS X and OS 9, as may be seen in ProcessViewer. An example of such an app is AppleWorks. (You can see the actual process using CPU time by launching the Terminal app to run the 'top' command, rather than run ProcessViewer, which will obscure the app involved.) launchctl launchd manager command. Subcommands: list Reports the managed daemons. The first column contains a PID if the process is running, else a hyphen (-) where it's a managed resource but not currently running. launchd Daemons manager, new in OS 10.4. Intended to replace crond, inetd, watchdogd, and other arcane Unix service management functions. It operates using a plist for the service involved, to know how the service is to be managed. launchd manages the daemons at both a system and user level. Its manager is launchctl. See currently managed processes via: 'sudo launchctl list'. Directory: System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ Binary: /sbin/launchd Info: 'man launchd', 'man launchctl' LaunchServices database Keeps track of your Open With preferences. If you happen to reset things on your Mac, you can use Get Info on various application files to reassign what apps they open when double-clicked. Lauren The young woman in the first "You find it - you keep it" PC shopping challenge Microsoft commercials of early 2009, who pretended to enter an Apple store and shop for a laptop there - when in fact she just walked toward the entry and then, in a cut shot, walked back toward the camera. In the end, she found a laptop she was thrilled to have, at much less cost than a Mac - though of less capability and quality; and she was gleeful to be reimbursed for the purchase, by the on-site Microsoft representative, for succeeding in the challenge. Her (fictitious) identity became synonymous with misleading advertising and settling for less. You will thus see blogs referring to "the Laurens of the world". LC III 25 MHz 68030 OS: 7.1 thru 7.6.1 LDAP Lightweight Directory Access Protocol. Is used in OS X by the Mail app, to look up names, configured under its Compose "Addressing:" portion. Commands: ldapsearch LDAP access Via Directory Utility. ldapsearch LDAP lookup command: opens a connection to an LDAP server, binds, and performs a search using specified parameters. Example: ldapsearch -x -H ldaps://ldap.example.com -b "ou=people,dc=examplelabs,dc=com" -s sub "objectclass=inetorgperson" LED Cinema Display The flat-panel display introduced in late 2008, in 24" size, for the then-introduced PowerBooks. Thus, this is not a general-purpose Cinema Display as was the previous generation of the product (which employed DVI connection). Rather, this product is effectively a "dock" unit for the new PowerBooks, where the display provides a Mini DisplayPort, MagSafe power connector, USB 2.0, plus built-in iSight, mic, and speakers - all looking much like an aluminum iMac. See also: Cinema Display Left mouse-click via keyboard See: Mouse, use keyboard instead Leopard The next OS X release after Tiger, being 10.5, due late 2006. Previewed at WWDC 2006 (Aug. 7) - where it was humorously referred to on a banner as "Vista 2.0". Followed by: Snow Leopard See: Mac OS 10.5 Level app To use your iPhone as a level, lauch the Compass app and swipe left to get to its level function. There you can hold the phone edge-up to be a carpenter's level, or flat to be a horizontal plane level. LG optical drives The optical drives from this manufacturer are found to be only partly Mac compatible. For example, a combo DVD-R, CD-RW, DVD-RAM drive won't do CD-RW on the Mac, but will do DVD-RAM. Some sellers specifically advise that LG drive purchasers only expect to use them on Windows machines - and then only with provided drivers. Note that LG optical drives have only the usual disc tray and do not support DVD-RAM cartridges: they support naked DVD-RAM discs. Liam Apple large-scale robot, with 29 freestanding robotic arms at various skill stations, to disassemble iPhones have their parts recycled. Was revealed at Apple's March 21, 2016 product launch event, with a video (available separately, on YouTube as "Liam – An Innovation Story"). Library OS X: Name of folder containing fonts, plug-ins, Internet search sites, and other items available to all users of the computer. Updated by the administrator. There is also a Library folder inside each user home directory, for each user's personal library items, referred to as ~/Library. As of Lion, your personal Library folder is now hidden (to protect against inadvertent actions which could impair system usability). To get into it, use the Finder's Go menu item Go to Folder, where you can simply hold down the Option key while looking at the Go menu, which will add "Library" to the list; else you can select "Go to Folder" and enter ~/Library. You can make it permanently visible by opening your home folder in Finder and from the Finder menu select View > Show View Options, where you can checkmark the box "Show Library Folder"; or make it visible via the command: chflags nohidden ~/Library/ See also: Library; System; Users Library/Mail/V2/EWS-<User>@<Exchange> Name of a folder that exists when you have set up Mac Mail to interact with an Exchange server in its native manner (not IMAP). Light Peak Fiber optic high speed peripherals interconnect technology which Intel had developed through 2010 into early 2011. Expected to be formally announced on Thursday, February 24th 2011. As implemented by Apple, the technology may be named Thunderbolt, its connector being identical to the Mini DisplayPort and indeed supplying data or video as the need warrants. Light Peak is ultimately intended to be fiber optic; but the reality is that small desktop peripherals need to get power from the cable, so the initial incarnation of Light Peak is copper based. See also: Thunderbolt Lightning Name of the new connector for Apple's hand-held devices, as of 2012/09/12 announcements. Introduced on the iPhone 5, iPod touch, iPod nano (but not iPod shuffle). The initial introduction of the Lightning cable was with a Lightning connector on the device end and usual USB connection on the computer end: but this is not to imply that its speed is limited to USB2 speed, or that it will interact only with USB. The Lightning end of the cable has a tiny integrated circuit inside: a controller chip to dynamically assign functionalities to the signal pads, enabling it to adapt to different situations. It's a 9-contact connector, with 8 active pad contacts plus a circumferential ground. The connector is symmetrical, so that it can be plugged in with either flat side up. By design, the Lightning connector is waterproof. The spec for the signals does not include video specifically - but, of course, any digital signal transmission could convey video as it could any other form of data. And there are Lighting-to-HDMI and Lightning-to-VGA adapters. Line-end character Mac OS 1 - 9 employed a carriage return (CR) to mark the end of each text line. Mac OS X, being Unix-based, employs a line feed (LF) to mark the end of each text line. This is specified in developer guide section "File System Guidelines". Line Out See: Audio choices Linux See: MOL Lion Feline name for Mac OS 10.7 (q.v.). Lion, install on a second Mac Lion is the first Mac OS offering which Apple has stated can be purchased once and then installed on multiple of your Macintoshes. You install a second time by going into the Mac App store. You might expect to be able to go directly to the Lion entry and see it say that you can download it again; but, not. Instead, the procedure is to go into the Purchased section (via login), where you will see your passed purchases (including Lion), and the choice to Install them. Lion Recovery Disk Assistant A downloadable utility that lets users create a Lion recovery partition on an external drive or USB key. Lion Recovery lets users "repair disks or reinstall OS X Lion without the need for a physical disc." Released 2011/08/08. To implement, attach an external drive, launch the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant, select the drive where you would like to install, and follow the on screen instructions. When the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant completes, the new partition will not be visible in the Finder or Disk Utility. To access Lion Recovery, reboot the computer while holding the Option key. Select Recovery HD from the Startup Manager. Ref: Apple Article HT4848 Lion recovery tools See: Mac OS X Utilities application; Recovery HD Liquidmetal A company with an innovative metal. Liquidmetal alloys represent the first enabling materials technology since the creation of thermoplastics and possess characteristics that make them superior in many ways to other commercially viable materials. First, they have an "amorphous" atomic structure, which is unprecedented for structural metals. Second, they include a multi-component chemical composition, which can be optimized for various properties and processes. Finally, they lend themselves to process technology similar to that possessed by plastics. In August, 2010 it was announced that Apple had purchased worldwide exclusive rights to use materials developed by LiquidMetal. This would allow Apple to make stronger, thinner cases for devices such as iPods and iPads. www.liquidmetal.com Lisa Apple's first graphical interface computer, being Steve Jobs' project. The project began in 1978, with a conventional textual interface. In December of 1979 Steve visited Xerox PARC as part of a financial relationship with that company, and was shown their Alto computer, running a GUI with a 3-button mouse. He ordered that his engineers create such an interface for the Lisa, with a single-button mouse. He named the computer after his daughter: Lisa Nicole Brennan, the progeny of his multi-year relationship with Chrisann Brennan; but Apple's official statement was that the name was an acronym for Local Integrated Software Architecture (which was Steve's way of deflecting association with paternity denial at the time). The Lisa became the first computer product from a mainstream computer manufacturer having a GUI and mouse. (The Xerox star was the first such computer, in 1981, but at an astronomical $75,000 price.) Release January 19, 1983, the Lisa was ground-breaking, but its $10,000 price was an insurmountable barrier to success. Jef Raskin's Macintosh project became Apple's successful GUI computer, at a more realistic price, with a reduced number of internal features. There was a version of Unix for the Lisa as sold by the UniPress company. .local The domain which OS X conventionally attaches to your Computer Name for use in Bonjour network processing. Logic (Logic Studio) Apple's high-end, professional music production software package for the Macintosh. (Garage Band is the low end - very different from Logic, due to intents and venues.) So, how did it end up with a name sounding more like circuit design than music? Continuity: The package originated with eMagic (Micro Logic, Logic Gold). Apple bought Emagic, a German-based software provider of music production software in July 2002 for an undisclosed sum. The company's Logic music sequencer constitutes the basis for the Logic product. Login shell, change When any form of command line window is opened (Terminal app, X11 app) a Unix shell is in control of the session. By default, it is /bin/bash, as of OS 10.3 (prior to that, it was tcsh). You can change that in 10.5+ by going into System Preferences, Accounts, unlock the padlock, right click on the user entry to choose Advanced Options. Prior to 10.5 you could do like: chsh -s /bin/tcsh or use the NetInfo Manager utility. Loginwindow's preferences file /Library/Preferences/ com.apple.loginwindow.plist. Logitech Mouseware The name of the software for Logitech mice, for all versions of Windows and Mac OS 8,9. As of Mac OS X: "Logitech Control Center (LCC) is a new version of software that was specifically designed for Mac OS X, incorporating the core functionality of MouseWare, and adding support for Logitech's enhanced keyboards. The Logitech Control Center enables you to customize many new functions that can be assigned to buttons, wheels and keys." Logs See: System Logs _lp The Printing Services username under which CUPS services run, being a safe, unprivileged system user, UID 26. Operates in /var/spool/cups/. Note: When printing through Samba, jobs are seen to appear there for user _lp rather than the name of the submitter in Mac OS. lpadmin Command line configuration of printers and class queues, for CUPS. Set default printer: lpadmin [-E] [-U username] [-h server[:port]] -d destination Delete printer: lpadmin [-E] [-U username] [-h server[:port]] -x destination Set printer options: lpadmin [-E] [-U username] [-h server[:port]] -p printer option(s) Do 'man lpadmin' for details, or use http://localhost:631/help Some of its options: -D String To provide a textual description of the printer. -E Enables the printer. If omitted, the new printer will show up as "Paused" in your print dialogs. -m Model Specifies a model PPD, being one present in CUPS directory /usr/share/cups/model/, Using -m when defining a printer causes it to show up in Print & Fax; without -m, the printer does not show up in Print & Fax. Example: -m generic.ppd which causes Print & Fax to show: Kind: Generic PostScript Printer, 1.3 -v DeviceURI Identifies the protocol and service point net address. Example: lpd://1.2.3.4 -P PathToPPD Specifies the file system path to the PPD file that will be the source of the PPD that this command plants in /etc/cups/<PrinterName>.ppd, modified with attributes such as duplex. The source PPDs may be in /Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/ The lpadmin command can only use PPD files in /usr/share/cups/model/ and its subfolders? Note: Using lpadmin to define a printer *does not* result in the printer appearing in the Print & Fax display (or in ~/Library/Printers, which is the source of that display). At this time I don't know what additional task needs to be performed for such a printer to show up in OS X. If you modify interfaces or devices of existing printers with lpadmin, you will have to do "lpshut;/usr/lib/lpsched" to see the effects. See also: Generic PostScript Printer; lpstat LPD printers Are addressed by Device URI form: lpd://<NetworkAddress>/<QueueName> lpinfo CUPS printing command to show the devices or drivers available for use in configuring printers. Syntax: To list drivers: lpinfo [-E] [-U username] [-h server[:port]] [-l] -m To list available devices: lpinfo [-E] [-U username] [-h server[:port]] [-l] -v Options: -h To perform the lookup on another host, and possibly port number. -l For longer listing. For more info: http://localhost:631/help lpoptions Command line command to display and manage the options on one printer. To list PPD options, do lpoptions -p <PrinterName> -l which will report like: PageSize/Media Size PageRegion/Media Size InputSlot/Media Source Duplex/2-Sided Printing Option1/Duplexer To list CUPS printer options, do lpoptions -p <PrinterName> which will report like: copies=1 device-uri=smb://myprint.ad.bu.edu/ath-sass-ds finishings=3 job-hold-until=no-hold job-priority=50 job-sheets=none,none marker-change-time=0 number-up=1 printer-commands=AutoConfigure,Clean,PrintSelfTestPage printer-info=ath-sass-ds printer-is-accepting-jobs=true printer-is-shared=false printer-location=Athletics printer-make-and-model='Generic PostScript Printer' printer-state=3 printer-state-change-time=1378393130 printer-state-reasons=none printer-type=10498140 printer-uri-supported=ipp://localhost:631/printers/ath_sass_ds Note that "options" does not include the various configuration values which govern things at the protocol level, such as device URI, authentication requirements, state, etc. To set an option ----------------------- lpoptions -p <PrinterName> -o option[=value] ... Note that the device-uri option value cannot be changed via this command, apparently because it is intrinsic. To change it, use the command: lpadmin -p <Printer> -v <New_URI> To remove an option -------------------- lpoptions -p <PrinterName> -r option lpq BSD style command to query the status of a printing destination and the jobs destined for it. Note that if you defined the printer with spaces in the name, as for example printer3 at host17 then the queue/destination name to use in the lpq command should have underscore characters in place of the spaces, as for example printer3_at_host17 This is a CUPS environment command, *not* a standard BSD query command. As a CUPS function, it speaks HTTP, sending a POST to the remote server, with Content-type: application/ipp Attempt to use this to communicate with standard LPD port 515 on a Unix server and you get "lpq: Unknown destination" error as a misleading side-effect of attempting to use the HTTP protocol to speak to a facility that doesn't do HTTP. lpr BSD type command to print a job at a given destination. lpr [-E] [-P destination] [-U username] [-# num-copies [-l] [-o option] [-p] [-r] [-C/J/T title] [file(s)] Note that if the print queue name is one which has an internal hyphen, such as "itwestnew-d", OSX likes to instead use an underscore instead of a hyphen in its print identifying scheme, so you would use name "itwestnew_d" in the lpr command. For lpr to work, lpd must be running on the destination system. And, if that system is AIX, /etc/hosts.lpd needs to allow access. See also: Printer* LPR-LPD printing, using alt. username It is possible to print to an LPD server using a username other than the one you are logged into on your Mac. This may be desirable where you have an arbitrary personal account on your Mac but printing has to occur using a login name at your institution. Go into System Preferences; Choose "Print & Fax"; Click the plus-sign (+) to add a new printer; Under the printers list, click the + (plus-sign) symbol to add a printer; Click Advanced; (If Advanced does not appear in the menu bar, right-click on the menu bar to add it.) For "Type:", choose "LPD/LPR Host or Printer" For "URL:", enter it in the form lpd://<Username>@<PrintServer> /<LogicalDestination> An example would be: lpd://testuser@print-srv/publp For "Name:", enter an indicative name for the printer instance that you will later recognize when printing. For "Location:", enter something indicative. For "Print Using:", the Generic PostScript Printer will probably do. Click Add. That's it! The definitions land in your Mac's /etc/cups/printers.conf file. Now you can print from any application, in standard Mac manner. An LPD server which conforms to RFC 1179 will honor the "P<Username>" entry from the Mac and use that for the job username. (AIX conforms.) In line mode, you can do 'lpr -U <Username> ...' to have the job print under the specified username, rather than the login name. Note that if you have the Mac print dialog produce a Cover Page, it will be generated with your Mac account name rather than the alternate username which you established. This is usually not a problem in that, with such printing, it is the print server which generates a cover page, which will have the alternate username. When in an application and you print, what is generated is a PDF: the printing suite performs a PDFtoPS conversion to then send the file as PostScript. lpstat CUPS command to show status info about classes, jobs, and printers. lpstat [-E] [-U username] [-h hostname[:port]] [-l] [-W which-jobs] [-a [destination(s)]] [-c [class(es)]] [-d] [-o [destination(s)]] [-p [printer(s)] ] [-r] [-R] [-s] [-t] [-u [user(s)]] [-v [printer(s)]] where: -E Forces encryption when connecting to the server. -R Shows the ranking of print jobs. -U username Specifies an alternate username. -W which-jobs Specifies which jobs to show, completed or not-completed (the default). This option must appear before the -o option and/or any printer names, otherwise the default (not-completed) value will be used in the request to the scheduler. -a [printer(s)] Shows the accepting state of printer queues. If no printers are specified then all printers are listed. -c [class(es)] Shows the printer classes and the printers that belong to them. If no classes are specified then all classes are listed. -d Shows the current default destination. -h server[:port] Specifies an alternate server in the command construct. -l Shows a long listing of printers, classes, or jobs. -o [destination(s)] Shows the jobs queue on the specified destinations. If no destinations are specified all jobs are shown. -p [printer(s)] Shows the printers and whether or not they are enabled for printing. If no printers are specified then all printers are listed. -r Shows whether the CUPS server is running. -s Shows a status summary, including the default destination, a list of classes and their member printers, and a list of printers and their associated devices. This is equivalent to using the "-d", "-c", and "-v" options. -t Shows all status information. This is equivalent to using the "-r", "-d", "-c", "-v", "-a", "-p", and "-o" options. -u [user(s)] Shows a list of print jobs queued by the specified users. If no users are specified, lists the jobs queued by the current user. -v [printer(s)] Shows the printers and what device they are attached to. If no printers are specified then all printers are listed. LTE Long Term Evolution: name of 4th generation cellular technology. First Apple product to have it: iPad 3; then iPhone 5. lw Abbreviation for LaserWriter, which is the brand name of the Apple printer which started the desktop printing revolution. This may be a queue name on Unix systems, for the conventional submission of print jobs, where that was once a popular and common queue name. M######/# Marketing Part Number (MPN), as found on Apple product boxes. Example: MA166Z/A. .m4a MPEG 4 Audio file, as generated by iTunes when CD music is imported, or when you export Audio Only from QuickTime Player. Name: Apple MPEG-4 audio Also the format for Voice Memos imported to iTunes from an iPod nano, 6th generation. See also: AAC .m4r Apple's "MPEG4 Ringtone" suffix for what is really an MPEG 4 Audio file, intended for iPhone ring tone use. M4V Apple's DRM-protected video content, as used with the 2005/10 iPod video player. More generally, a .m4v filename suffix is used to designate an "MPEG4 Visual" file, which means a video intended for use on an iPod or iPhone (where iTunes balks at syncing a pure .mp4 video to the iPod). M4V files are usually smaller than their MP4 counterparts. If you open a .m4v file from the Finder, it will want to play the video in iTunes; but it will play fine in the QuickTime Player if you make that happen. In QuickTime Pro, producing a .m4v from a .mp4 is done via File->Export and there choosing "Movie to iPhone". M7 Motion co-processor in the iPhone 5S. Takes advantage of all the sensors and continuously measures the data coming from the accelerometer, gyroscope, and compass without having to wake up the A7. Takes data from sensors without waking the A7. New CoreMotion API. First used by new app from Nike called Nike+ Move. The M7 can discern if its person is driving, or walking or running, and that info can be used to tailor Maps behavior, for example. This can be used to implicitly help you locate where you parked your car as it realizes when you stopped sitting and moving to when you started walking away from your car. .Mac Apple's subscription service site for the Macintosh user community. Launched in the summer of 2002, replacing the previously free iTools site. Services: Web Gallery, Website hoting, IMAP mail, Sync, iDisk, Groups, 10 GB of storage space, Back To My Mac service. You can easily add Web pages to it via the iWeb app, photocast with iPhoto, sync data, etc. In the WWDC presentation 2008/06/09 it was announced that .Mac was being reincarnated as MobileMe. http://www.apple.com/dotmac/ Mac App Store Introduced in OS 10.6 and a key part of 10.7. A single purchased license permits downloading of the software to any machines owned or controlled by the person linked to that Apple ID and logged in with the account. This is a major boon to those who buy a new computer with such apps pre-installed, as their older Macs can then download and benefit from the software arrived on the new Mac. Tip: To re-download older software, such as Lion, after Mountain Lion was released, hold down the Option key when clicking Purchases to expose it. Debugging: Make a Debug menu show up in the application by doing the following from the Terminal utility: defaults write com.apple.appstore ShowDebugMenu -boot true .Mac certificate Required by iChat for encrypting text, audio and video conferences. Mac Box Set 2009/01 combined sales box of OS 10.5 (Leopard), iLife '09, and iWork '09. $169. Mac BU The Macintosh software Business Unit at Microsoft, whence comes Microsoft Office for Mac, etc. Mac Help The local Mac information store. Press Command+Shift+? to invoke. Information may be hard to find in Mac Help. Advice: Keep a PDF of your computer manual for looking up hardware facts. For meaty info, go to http://www.apple.com/support/ and search for what you need. Mac mini The Macintosh which addresses the longstanding question as to why there can't be a very affordable Mac. It is a small box which allows you to use your existing display, keyboard, and mouse, or configure as you like. Mac mini hard drives have always been more economical, slower 5400 rpm. (This is not revealed on the product Web pages or the manual or the Apple Support specs page, but is when you select the product in the online store and expand its Hard Drive info "Learn more" clickable. Introduced at Macworld 2005(01/11), available 2005/01/22. Note that the mini had an early precedent in the form of the Mac IIci, a compact, quiet desktop unit with built-in video driving. As of 2010/06/14 the case is now solid aluminum rather than plastic. The latest minis have an HDMI port. Note that HP pretty much copied the Mac mini for its 2014 Chromebox computer. See also: BYODKM Mac mini (mid) 2010 HDMI: works with devices that comply with versions 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.2a, 1.3, 1.3a, and 1.4 of the HDMI specification, up to 1080p. Mac mini 2011 2X faster processor and graphics. No optical drive any more: deemed superfluous, with the advent of the Mac Apps store and network availability of movies and music. Intel Core i5 and i7 processors. AMD Radeon HD graphics with 256MB of GDDR5 memory. Thunderbolt desktop bus: daisy-chain up to six Thunderbolt peripherals, including the new Apple Thunderbolt Display. Ports: Gb ethernet; FireWire 800; HDMI; Thunderbolt; four USB 2.0; SDXC card slot; audio in (analog/digital); audio out (analog/digital). Power supply built in (no more "brick"). Introduced 2011/07/20. $599 start. Notes: This is the only Mac with HDMI. Mac mini Server The server version of the Mac mini, which eliminates the optical drive so it can contain a second hard drive. The hard drives in the server model run at a faster 7200 rpm. Mac OS 0.7 1984 - the first Macintosh. Processor: Motorola 68000. Mac OS 1.0 1985. Can now drag disk to the Trash; Choose Printer DA; New Folder maker; Shut Down. Processor: Motorola 68000. Mac OS 1.1 1986. HFS, RAM cache. Processor: Motorola 68000. Mac OS 2.0.1 1987. HyperCard, AppleShare. Processor: Motorola 68020. Mac OS 3.0 ("System 3") Introduced January, 1986. Mac OS 4.0 ("System 4") Introduced March, 1987. Mac OS 4.2 Introduced October, 1987, along with Finder 6.0. Mac OS 5.0 ("System 5") Finally combined the OS and Finder as a single entity. Mac OS 6.0 ("System 6") Released in June, 1988. Mac OS 6.0.1 1988. MultiFinder. Processor: Motorola 68030. Mac OS 6.0.4 1989. 32-bit QuickDraw. Processor: Motorola 68030. Mac OS 6.0.8 1990. QuickTime. Processor: Motorola 68030. Mac OS 7.0 ("System 7") Shipped May, 1991. TrueType; 32-bit addressing; aliases; fie sharing; QuickTime; virtual memory; INITs become Extensions. Processor: Motorola 68040. Mac OS 7.1 1992. Fonts folder, WorldScript. Processor: Motorola 68040. Mac OS 7.1.1 1993. AppleScript; PowerTalk. Processor: Motorola 68LC040. Mac OS 7.5 1994. Apple Guide; Apple Menu Options; drag and drop; QuickDraw GX; Stickies; ColorSync; SimpleText. Processor: Motorola PowerPC 601 Mac OS 7.5.2 1995. Open Transport; QuickTime VR; first Macintosh clones. Processor: Motorola PowerPC 603, 604 Mac OS 7.5.3 1996. On 16 high density floppy diskettes, plus supplementary diskettes. Mac OS 7.5.5 1996. Control Strip; translucent dragging; OpenDoc; Cyberdog. Processor: Motorola PowerPC 603, 604 Mac OS 7.6 Early 1997, as Apple was thrashing under Gilbert Amelio. Formerly "System 7.6". Code name: Harmony Runs on 68030/68040 Macs, but not Mac IIx, IIcx, or SE/30. TCP/IP networking remains an nailed-on addision to the OS, and real multi-tasking remains absent (there is Cooperative Multitasking, only). Mac OS 7.6.1 A notable update in which application and other failures were reported in a classified way, rather than as general "Type 11" errors. Mac OS 8.0 1997/08. Code named Tempo, it was a reignited effort to bring out a successor to OS 7.x, which was to have been succeeded by the then Copland OS effort, but that having died, an OS 8 had to be produced. For 68040 and PowerPC Macs. Ships with QuickDraw 3D; multithreaded PowerPC-native Finder; contextual menus; Personal Web Sharing. Can read Windows files. But lacks: preemptive multitasking, rewritten microkernel, and the protected memory which had been slated for Copland. It wasn't until OS 8 that TCP/IP (and PPP) networking was built into the OS. Processor: IBM PowerPC 750 (G3) Hardware requirements: 68040 or PowerPC and at least 12 MB of physical memory. File size limit: 2 GB Mac OS 8.1 A free maintenance upgrade to Mac OS 8. The big improvement: HFS+, a new filing system that allowed far more efficient use of hard drive space. Hardware requirements: 68040 or PowerPC and at least 12 MB of physical memory. Includes: HFS+; Microsoft Internet Explorer as default web browser; Mac OS Runtime for Java (MRJ); Open Transport 1.3; more efficient Virtual Memory; new versions of software components (LaserWriter 8.5.1, PC Exchange 2.2). File size limit: 2 GB Mac OS 8.5 1998. HFS+; QuickTime 3 Pro; Network Browser; Sherlock; Favorites; Processor: IBM PowerPC 750 (G3) Hardware requirements: PowerPC only, 32 MB or more. File size limit: 2 GB Mac OS 8.5.1 An 8.5 fix level for a pesky hard drive bug. Mac OS 8.6 Circa 1999/05. Includes a nanokernel, a low-level part of the OS which acts as an intelligent regular, as cycling down on a PowerBook to save power. Supports multiprocessor systems, finally allowing their owners to activate virtual memory. Hardware requirements: PowerPC only, 32 MB or more. Free: download from Apple site. File size limit: 2 GB Mac OS 9 (Sonata) Circa 1999/10. Current support: http://www.apple.com/support/macos9/ Mac OS 10.0 Released in March, 2001. Being the initial release, the emphasis was on functionality more than performance. Big cat name: Cheetah Mac OS 10.1 2001/09. Emphasis on improving performance. Allowed positioning the Dock at the sides as well as bottom. Added native SMB client. Its printing architecture was legacy stuff rather than CUPS. Big cat name: Puma Mac OS 10.2 (Jaguar) 2002/09. Adds iChat, Unicode support. Printing architecture is now CUPS. Mac OS 10.2.2 (Merlot) Adds journaling to HFS+ file system, making it a Journaling File System (JFS). That is most useful in Mac OS X Server; and so, in the ordinary, workstation OS X, 10.2 provided no means for controlling it via a GUI tool: one had to do like: sudo diskutil enableJournal / which enables JFS on the boot drive. Ref: AppleCare Document 107249 Mac OS 10.3 (Panther) Introduced new optional Case Sensitive HFS+ filesystem: it is case sensitive, not case-preserving like previous Mac filesystems. Based upon FreeBSD 5.x. (FreeBSD traces its lineage to BSD 4.4.) System requirements: Power Mac G5--all models except Power Mac G5 (Early 2005), Power Mac G5 (Late 2005) which use Mac OS X 10.4 Power Mac G4 or Macintosh Server G4, all models. Power Macintosh G3 or Macintosh Server G3 that have built-in USB ports. iMac--all models released in 2004 or earlier. iBook--all models except iBook G4 (Mid 2005) which uses Mac OS X 10.4. PowerBook G4--all models except PowerBook G4 (Double-Layer SD) which uses Mac OS X 10.4. PowerBook G3--Bronze Keyboard models only 128 MB RAM (memory) or more for Mac OS X 10.3.9 or earlier. At least 1.5 GB free hard disk space. Note: For Mac OS X 10.2 or later, 3.0 GB is the recommended minimum. The exact amount required depends on your computer and how you install Mac OS X (default versus custom installation, for example). Mac OS 9.1 or later for Classic applications. Feature comparison vs. 10.2 and 9.x: http://www.apple.com/macosx/upgrade/ compare.html Mac OS 10.3.3 2004/03/16 http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n25711 Mac OS 10.3.4 2004/05/26 www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n25764 Mac OS 10.3.5 2004/08/09 http://docs.info.apple.com/ article.html?artnum=25791 Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger) Originally due around 2004/09; arrived 2005/04/28. 10.4.1 update info: Article ID 301517 10.4.2 update info: Article ID 301722 10.4.4 update info: Article ID 302810 System requirements: A PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor Built-in FireWire At least 256 MB of RAM DVD drive (DVD-ROM), Combo (CD-RW/DVD-ROM) or SuperDrive (DVD-R) for installation. At least 3 GB of free disk space; 4 GB if you install the XCode 2 Developer Tools. See: Tiger Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) With Time Machine and 500 other changes. System requirements: A Mac computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5, or Power PC G4 (867 MHz or faster) processor. (The install checks processor speed.) 512 MB memory or more A DVD drive for installation 9 GB of available disk space or more Apple Article: HT3759 Requires either an Intel Mac, or a G4 or G5 PowerPC Mac with an 867 MHz or faster processor. Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Mac_OS_X_v10.5. Tech Specs: Apple Article SP517 Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Previewed at WWDC, 2008/06/09. Comes with two kernel images: 32-bit and 64-bit. On some machines it boots into 32-bit kernel by default - but can be overridden by holding down the 6 and 4 keys; or, an entry can be added to a boot file to cause it to start in 64-bit mode by default. 10.6 provides the Cisco VPN client built in. 10.6 changes the way in which Mac OS measures file sizes: Used to be based upon MB = 1024**2 and GB = 1024 **3; but now is decimal based, so MB = 1000**2 and GB = 1000**3. System requirements: Mac computer with an Intel processor 1GB of memory 5GB of available disk space DVD drive for installation Tech Specs: Apple Article SP575 Mac OS 10.7 (Lion) Previewed at the Back To The Mac special event, 2010/10/20. Available 2011/07/20, only via download from the Mac App Store (3.74 GB). Announced features: Mac App Store; Launchpad; Full-screen apps; Mission Control Desktop allpaper: Andromeda galaxy Requires Mac having Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon processor. Java is not installed: the first time you run an application which needs a Java environment, a dialog box will ask if you want to install Java. As of 2011/07 that installs Java SE 6 (1.6). But you can manually install Java ahead of need, per download page http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1421 Download details: The App Store download is first written to temporary location ~/Library/Application Support/AppStore/ during the download: at the conclusion of the download it moves to /Applications/Install Mac OS X Lion. Once the installation finishes, that Install application is removed. You could capture a copy of it at the advent of the install process. List of apps and utilities in Lion: http://www.apple.com/macosx/apps/all.html Problems: Preview app: When viewing PDFs, bullets would not show up, probably due to a fonts problem in 10.7. Next: OS X Mountain Lion (q.v.) Tech Specs: Apple Article SP654 Mac OS eras The development of the Mac OS may be broken down into discrete eras which represented major architectural changes, within those eras only gradual evolution occurring. To wit: $(O#@(B Pre System 6 $(O#@(B System 6 $(O#@(B System 7 ... thru 9.2.x $(O#@(B OS X Mac OS licensing program Began in 1995 (when Apple was floundering) where Apple decided to try the Microsoft model, where the OS was to be licensed to other computer manufacturers as a means of further popularizing the OS. It was also called the Mac Clone program. This was a disaster; Apple is principally a hardware company, and having other hardware companies then undercut them in price, with Apple's own OS, was untentable. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he quickly terminated this licensing program. From then on, Apple became focused on the experience of its products as hardware-softwre integrated units; and that approach made them successful. Microsoft would later take note of the success of Apple's, and tried the same approach, with the Zune, which failed miserably as too little, too late: you can't surf if you miss waves. Mac OS X Version 10 of the Mac operating system. Basically, an evolutionary Mac interface on top of Unix, the core being Carnegie Mellon University's open source Mach 3.0 kernel (named Darwin in OS X). OS X is a direct descendent of the NeXTSTEP OS created at Steve Jobs's NeXT company. In that NeXTSTEP was engineered to run on a variety of processors (Motorola 68000 family, Intel x86, Sun SPARC, HP PA-RISC), it should not have been a surprise when Steve Jobs announced at the June 2005 WWDC that Macintoshes would move from PowerPC to Intel, and that OS X had always been ready for such a move. The operating system's layers are: Cocoa (user interface framework) Media Core Services Core OS The upper portion of the hierarchy has $(O#@(B Quartz 2-D graphics $(O#@(B OpenGL for 3-D graphics $(O#@(B QuickTime for multimedia. The operating system components complementing the kernel are from the open-source FreeBSD 3.2 operating system. There is a new graphical user interface called Aqua, built on top of the sophisticated graphics capabilities. The programming interface to the new OS X facilities is called Carbon. This new approach derives from Steve Jobs returning to Apple to revitalize the company, and specifying that the OS would be based upon NextStep concepts that were the basis of his NeXT computer sytem. The old, sluggish Mac file system has been replaced by the BSD file system and networking code from FreeBSD. Supports NFS, AppleShare, and CIFS. Mac applications written for the OS up through version 9 have to run in emulation mode in the Classic environment; otherwise applications have to be specifically written for OS X. The server version came out mid-1999. Public beta released 2000/09/13 at the Apple Expo in Paris. The client version, or more general, GUI version, was released 2001/03/24. You will also see the operating system referred to by the simpler name, "OS X". This may be a way of distinguishing the full, computer-borne version of the OS from stripped-down variants as found on the iPhone, where space is at a premium and only needed functionality is carried over. Mac OS X boot nuances Mac OS X reviews fonts in the Mac OS 9 System Folder as it starts up. Mac OS X configuration aid See: Xupport Mac OS X debugging See Apple Technote TN2124, "Mac OS X Debugging Magic". Mac OS X feedback to Apple http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback/ Mac OS X install tips The OS X installer is sensitive to partitioning type (though it may balk with "You cannot install Mac OS X on this volume. Mac OS X cannot start up from this volume.") In detail: $(O#@(B A PowerPC-based Mac can only install Mac OS X on a disk with the "Apple_partition_scheme". $(O#@(B An Intel-based Mac can only install Mac OS X on a disk with the "GUID_partition_scheme". To skip registering OS X: Simply do Cmd+Q. Mac OS X menu bars font Lucida Grande, through 10.9. As of 10.10 (Yosemite) it will be Thin Helvetica Neue . Mac OS X networking OS X includes its own Microsoft Networking client (NetBIOS). Mac OS X Server Circa 1999 first incarnation of OS X, based upon the Mach 2.5 microkernel and BSD 4.4. It is basic OS X with additional administration and service software. Includes Apple file services and WebObjects 4.01 (Apple's high-end Web production software), plus Java application servers JBoss and WebObject. OS X server was a separate version of Mac OS X, through 10.6. As of OS 10.7 Lion, Server is an update on top of OS X, called OS X Server, to add appropriate services: Mail services, file sharing, wiki server, calendar server, contacts server, Xsan, etc. Server is not for people to time-share the server for Mac GUI usage: it is for them to run standard OS X on their Macs to be clients to various services provided by OS X Server. Unlike the standard version, Server is licensed to run as a VM. Download from the App Store, $19.99. How good is OS X Server? The App Store ratings are mixed, with a lot of unhappiness. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_X_Server See also: Darwin Mac OS X upgrades Available via Software Update or from http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/ Mac OS X Utilities application A set of repair and restore utilities in Lion for dealing with Mac problems. It is part of the Recovery HD partition introduced with Lion (due to Apple no longer distributing the OS on optical discs). Uses: $(O#@(B Restore from Time Machine backup $(O#@(B Reinstall Mac OS X and Apple appls. $(O#@(B Restore your computer to its factory settings by erasing its disk and reinstallingMac OS X and your Apple applications $(O#@(B Repair your computer's disk using Disk Utility. How it's invoked: If your computer detects a problem, it opens the Mac OS X Utilities application automatically. To explicitly invoke, restart your computer while holding down the Command and R keys. Or, boot while holding down the Option key and then select the Recovery HD. Notes: $(O#@(B Some of the utilities need Internet access. $(O#@(B No special trackpad features are available: no gestures, no touch to click, etc. Press down on the trackpad to effect a click. Ref: Apple Article HT4718 Mac Pro Series name of the high-end Macintosh tower systems, based upon Intel microprocessors, succeeding the prior PowerMac series. Announced 2006/08/07 at WWDC. The first model features the new 64-bit Dual-Core Intel Xeon "Woodcrest" processor, meaning four procesors, running at 2GHz, 2.66GHz, or 3GHz. Relative performance is up to twice that of the Power Mac G5 Quad. The enclosure is the same perforated "silver" aluminum as the G5, but are internally redesigned: $(O#@(B Four SATA hard drive bays and up to 2TB of internal storage. Each drive is attached to a "carrier" (aka caddy or sled) by 4 screws, and simply pushes into place, very easily. It's SATA II, with 3 Gb/s speed. (No pre-2014 Mac Pro has SATA III.) The original Mac Pro models formally support a total capacity of 2 TB (four 500 MB drives), the "Early 2008" models up to 4 TB (four 1 TB drives), and the "Early 2009," "Mid-2010" and "Mid-2012" models up to 8 TB (four 2 TB drives), although there are reports that larger 3 TB hard drives work without issue in all models. Also be aware that the 2006-2008 Mac Pros employed a shorter disk caddy (P/N 922-7728) than the later models (P/N 922-8899). $(O#@(B Eight DIMM slots on two riser cards with support for up to 16GB $(O#@(B One double-wide 16 PCI Express graphics slot designed to accommodate high-end graphics cards (without blocking the adjacent expansion slot) $(O#@(B Three full-length PCI Express expansion slots $(O#@(B Two optical drive bays, with one SuperDrive provided. (The connector is unusual - not the old 2x20 pin plus power.) $(O#@(B Five USB-2 ports: Three on the back, two on the front. Apple Articles: HT2838 About the PCI Express slots Mac Pro, 8 processors 8-core Xeon workstation, Introduced 2007/04/04. The Intel processors in it are not on that chipmaker's "map", and indeed were specially provided to Apple. The Xeon processors that Intel had been supplying were in its 5355 chip series, which ended at 2.66 GHz speeds. The special 3 GHz processors in this Mac Pro are officially Intel 5365. This announcement was accompanied by price drops in the Cinema Display unit which this computer would use. Mac Pro, 2010 (mid 2010) Minimum OS X is 10.6.4 (so, will not boot from a base 10.6 install DVD-ROM). Mac Pro, 2013 Radical new, compact design, in a black cylindrical design functioning as a heat chimney. Has some on-board SSD for the operating system, but no space for internal storage: it is the type of system which makes use of an external storage array. Can drive multiple 4K displays. Storage: 256GB PCIe-based flash storage Wireless: 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0 Ports: Six Thunderbolt 2 ports, Four USB 3 ports, One HDMI 1.4 port, Two Gigabit Ethernet ports, Combined optical/digital audio output/analog line out minijack, Headphone minijack with headset support. Despite its power, it is designed to be as efficient as possible: in idle state, it takes no more power than a Mac mini. Announced at WWDC 2013; became available 2013/12/19. Made in Austin, Texas. Mac.com Apple's service provider site, providing services such as email, storage, file sharing, etc. In Mac OS X, Mail uses IMAP by default for Mac.com accounts. Their outgoing mail server is smtp.mac.com. MacBook Replacement for the iBook, introduced Tuesday 2006/05/16. White for the slower versions, black for the faster. MacBook, dock mode Dock mode refers to operating the MacBook in a processor-only sense, where you have a monitor and possibly mouse attached to it, rather than using the MacBook's screen and trackpad. To enter into this mode, have the MacBook powered up, connect the externals, then close the laptop's cover: this will cause MacOS to operate with the external devices rather than the laptop's native interfaces. MacBook Air The world's thinnest notebook computer, introduced at Macworld 2008/01/16. It was contrasted with the then Sony thin laptop, the Air's thickest part being thinner than the Sony's thinnest part; and the Air is engineered with a full-sized keyboard and display, in contrast to the mini keyboards and displays found on competing reduced laptops. Specs: 13.3" 1280x800 display with LED backlighting. Full-size, backlit keyboard. 1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor (reduced in size for Apple). USB2. Micro DVI. 80 GB 1.8" hard drive or 64 GB SSD. Large trackpad with enhanced Gestures, deriving from the recently introduced iPhone; separate click strip south of the trackpad. With no adequate real estate along the left and right sides of the frame for speaker, one, mono speaker was located under the keyboard, with sound coming out from between the keys. In the same way that Apple defined industry direction to eliminate floppy drives for optical drives, the Air eliminates the optical disc drive to instead depend upon modern networking. Where a software install must be done from optical media, Apple provides the new Remote Disc capability, where that software on a Mac *or* PC allows the media to be remotely read and used by the Air. (In that there is no need for an Eject keyboard button, the upper right key is now Power.) At the time of its introduction, the Air had limited appeal, as in being a niche product aimed at the corporate executive who wants a conveniently light but capable laptop to carry around (which could be considered a strategic attempt to influence the purchase of Macs for the business environment in general). But the Air was actually the first of a new generation of laptops, as high-speed, pervasive wireless was making media superfluous. MacBook Air, 2009 In mid-2009 the Air was refresh, alongside a refresh of the MacBook Pro family. New: a slightly higher-capacity battery, and a faster Penryn CPU option. MacBook Air, 2010 On October 20, 2010, Apple defined the Air as defining the new direction for its laptops, deriving from the recent techology prowess with the iPad. The prevailing 13.3" size was redesigned, with a new lighter enclosure, higher resolution screen (1440x900), higher capacity battery (up to 7 hours) and an SSD instead of a hard drive (making this Air something of the laptop version of the iPad). The trackpad derived from the MacBook redesigns, being one piece instead of two. Processor: 1.86 or 2.13 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. A new 11.6" model of the Air was introduced, to be even more portable, and affordable (serving as a nice bridge product between the iPad and Apple's laptops), putting another nail into the coffin of netbooks. Its battery is good for about 5 hours. Processor: 1.4 or 1.6 GHz Core 2 Duo. Screen resolution: 1366x768. With this new generation, the webcam at the top of the bezel had its name changed from iSight to FaceTime camera, as a linkage to Apple hand-held products. These Airs have two internal speakers, for stereo, the sound emanating from between the keyboard keys. The micro DVI connection was replaced by Mini DisplayPort. MacBook Air, 2011 Released 2011/07/20. Processors: Intel Core i5 and Core i7 dual-core. (About 2X speed of previous generation.) Full size backlit keyboard and an innovative glass Multi-Touch trackpad. Now has Thunderbolt desktop bus, via what looks like Mini DisplayPort. Storage is SSD only. Bluetooth 4.0. FaceTime (but not FaceTime HD). Two models: 11-inch screen 5 hours of battery life; Weight: 2.38 pounds 13-inch screen 7 hours of battery life; Weight: 2.96 pounds MacBook Air, charging issue If charging doesn't seem to be happening, it can be the temperature - usually seen in the winter. If the power adapter is too cold, it may not be effective. Relocating the charging to a warmer location often does the trick. (There are many postings of people who took their "won't charge" Air and charger to the Apple Store - only to have it charge perfectly...in that warm environment. I encountered this myself: the charger mag plug showed orange, as in charging, but there was little charging after a full day. This, with the charger plugged into a power strip on the floor in a poorly heated winter room. I plugged the charger directly into that wall receptacle - a higher and warmer location - and charging rapidly commenced, the Air in the same place as before.) MacBook Air, test hardware Hold down D key and power on. If the software needed is not local to the machine, the process will attempt to download it from Apple, in which case a wired or wireless connection is needed, where a wireless choice can specify the router name and its password. MacBook Air model, identify See Apple Article HT3255 "How to identify your MacBook Air". MacBook Pro The first Intel-based Apple notebook computer, being the new name for the laptop line, announced at Macworld 2005/01/10. The "PowerBook" name is being eliminated because the PowerPC is being left behind. The "Pro" designator suggests that this is the high end of a family: perhaps the iBook will become, simply, MacBook. This 15" MacBook Pro adds speed, but takes away some advances that were present in its predecessor PowerBook: no S-video port (you can adapt from the digital video port); no FireWire 800 port, for high speed drives; DVD burner is 4X instead of 8X; no dual-layer DVD burning; no built-in modem. These degradations seem to be attributable to stepping into the realm of lesser, Windows standard, per the Intel chipset on the motherboard. And, with Intel chips, there is no Classic mode for running OS 8,9 programs. The power brick with the Pro is also much larger than for its predecessor. 2007/06/05 upgrades: Intel Core 2 Duo processors (running at 2.2GHz or 2.4GHz); up to 4GB of memory; NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics controller. 15-inch model has a mercury-free, power-efficient LED-backlit display; the 17-inch model still fluorescent backlit, with optional 1920-by-1200 pixel display. Networking upgraded to 802.11n. Base price now $1,999, vs $1,799 before. But: same old SuperDrive, still no HD drive. As of 2016/07/15, Apple had not updated its MBP line in over 400 days — which helps account for Apple losing market share in laptops. MacBook Pro 17", early 2009 Unibody construction, built-in battery. LED-backlit display. NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT graphics processor with 512MB GDDR3 memory, *and* NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor. Up to 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. Specific versions ------------------- CPU: 065-8805 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Product number: Z0GW MacBook Pro, 2012, late Ports: USB 3 (2); Thunderbolt (2); HDMI; SDXC card; Headphone; MagSafe. This model is very different in not having an ethernet cable connection: whereas high speed wireless is so ubiquitous, such cabling was eliminated. If you really want to use a cabled connection, there is an adapter: Apple Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter ($29; provides an RJ-45 port that supports 10/100/1000BASE-T networks). There is also Apple USB Ethernet Adapter ($29; provides an RJ-45 connector that supports 10/100BASE-T). MacBook Pro, 2016 Announced 2016/10/27. 13", 15". Larger trackpad. With Touch Bar, and Touch ID (first Mac to have Touch ID). The Touch ID is powered by its own ARM-based chip, T1. Display: P3 color gamut. AMD 450, 455, 460 GPU choices. Limited to 16 GB memory. Audio out headphone jack is analog only - no digital. (This is not much of an issue given that digital audio is available on its other ports.) MacBook Pro model, identify See Apple Article HT4132 "How to identify MacBook Pro models". Mach The Unix kernel which is at the heart of OS X. Has high-performance file I/O and networking. Created at Carnegie-Mellon University. mach Mac top-level file belonging to OS X. mach.sym Mac top-level file belonging to OS X. mach_kernel Mac top-level file belonging to OS X. Macintosh Affordable personal computer, coming after the unaffordable LISA. The Mac was a project that Jef Raskin started in 1979: he thought that naming computers after females was sexist, and his favorite apple was the Mcintosh; however, the name Mcintosh was the property of apple growers and McIntosh audo equipment; so he gave his computer the name Macintosh - a name variation on the apple which allows for a nickname, "Mac". Steve Jobs was drifting in Apple after the relative failure of his LISA, and he latched onto the intriguing Macintosh. He and Jef were "like oil and water", resulting in Jef being pushed out of the project: the Mac became Steve's product. The engineering manager was Bob Belleville, hired from Xerox PARC. According to Bill Duvall: "It would be nice to say that the philosophy and the image of the Mac were well established and that it was clear that we were setting forth on a new journey. In fact, nobody knew what the Mac was going to be. There were some good ideas, some good visions, and a lot of chaos. The project took twice as long as it should have, maybe three times as long as it should have, and the reason was just sorting out how the Mac should go, what it should look like." Though "Macintosh" was a project code name, it was adopted as the name of the finalized product. The Mac was announced January 24, 1984 in a renowned SuperBowl commercial directed by Ridley Scott. Macintosh, prepare it to go away When you intend to sell or give away your Macintosh, clean it per http://support.apple.com/kb/ht5189 . Macintosh Application Services Circa 1994 effort by Apple, in conjunction with IBM, to allow Macintosh software to run on IBM's PowerOpen systems. Mac OS 7, the familiar GUI, and PowerPC (and 680x0) Mac applications could then be used on an IBM system. Macintosh clones The 1996 and early 1997 misguided initiative by Apple to license the Mac OS to run on Motorola-based computers made by companies other than Apple, such as Umax, Power Computing, PowerBase and StarMax. The hapless Apple management of that period thought the move would foster market penetration of Macintosh technology, when what it would do was dilute the user experience that Apple should have been engineering as a combined hardware & software amalgam. With no Apple control of what hardware vendors were doing, Apple would end up with the same, bad situation that Microsoft engineered itself into, where it tries to supply an operating system and drivers to run on a wild array of hardware. When Steve Jobs took back control in late 1997, he put an abrupt end to the clone program. Macintosh disk space consumption So, you see your available disk space dwindling, and wonder where it's all going. Here are some places... Photos: Consume a lot of space: go into iPhoto and see what may be pruned; and keep in mind that iPhoto has its own trash bucket, so remember to empty that periodically. And don't forget iCloud: it defaults to Automatic Import of all of your photos that are in iCloud (for purposes of long-term preservation on a computer you own, allowing you to then clear space for more photos on your iPhone or other Apple mobile device). Mail: With IMAP and Exchange, Mail will mirror server content on your Mac, which can entail a large number of messages and thus a lot of space. Web browsers: They cache a lot of stuff, including page content, history of URLs visited, cookies, etc. Clean out what is no longer needed. Google Docs: If you use the Google Docs app for Macintosh you need to realize ] that, on your Mac disk it keeps a synchronized copy of all documents that you store in the Google cloud. This can be an invisible consumer of disk space. Other accounts: There may be other accounts defined on your Macintosh such that you should look beyond your own account's space utilization. Old account data: When an old account is removed, there is an option to preserve its data, just in case. Look in the /Users directory for oldies. iTunes: Don't overlook old iPod, iPhone, and iPad backups in your iTunes: go into iTunes Preferencs > Devices, and there delete obsolete backups. In Finder, go into the View menu, select Show View Options, and there check the boxes Size and Calculate all sizes: this will cause Finder to delve into every folder in your current view and compute the total space each is taking up. (This is usually turned off because of the overhead entailed.) Macintosh II The modular box Macintosh, circa 1996, which offered modularity in contrast with the all-in-one Macintosh models which preceded it. Memory note: A Mac II will not starat up if 4 MB SIMMs are installed in bank A: there will be a musical chime at start-up indicating a hardware failure. Install 4 MB SIMMs in bank B: bank A should have 256 KB or 1 MB SIMMs in bank A. To have more than 8 MB of physical RAM, the Mac II must have a PMMU installed, so that MODE32 can expand the system's memory map. Macintosh G5 The last of the PowerPC machines, utilizing IBM's 970 microprocessor. Apple expected IBM to develop the PowerPC to a 3 GHz speed and beyond; but IBM failed to do so, where the fastest was 2.7 GHz, such that Apple was falling behind the PC competition (and so Apple was forced to go Intel). The G5 tower was announced in June 2003 but did not actually become available until October of that year, due to various production issues. The G5 tower was beautifully engineered, both inside and out, being an all aluminum device. It featured a revolutionary cooling arrangement: Whereas it had been customary for a computer to have a "case fan", this made for uneven cooling. The G5's design stratified and segregated hardware elements with each in their own cooling channel: disks at the top, general electronics below that, processors and memory at the bottom. Macintosh G5 2003 dual processor This was a beautifully engineered machine, being the one dual-processor model in a set of three G5 towers announced in July of 2003. Its two processors ran at 2 GHz. It shipped with firmware level 5.0.7f0. The computer exhibited issues with its fans, where they would dramatically speed up to very noisy levels for no apparent reason. Apple engineered a corrective firmware level 5.1.4f0 to deal with this (downloadable from Apple's Support pages (http://support.apple.com/kb/DL627) - not supplied via Software Update. Macintosh HD The conventional label of the Macintosh hard drive. BSD name: disk0s2 See also: Recovery HD Macintosh LC II Memory: Can address a maximum of 10 MB. When SIMM slots are filled with 4 MB SIMMs, the lower 2 MB of RAM on the logic board cannot be addressed. Macintosh Java Runtime Java came to the Mac in early 1997 with this Apple software, as a free download, providing a JVM for OS 7.5,6. Macintosh processor choices The Macintosh started in 1984 with a Motorola 68xxx processor, and Apple stuck with Motorola as their processor line evolved. Around 1992 CEO John Sculley initiated a survey of RISC processor vendors: Sun SPARC, DEC Alpha, IBM POWER. That led to a partnership with IBM and Motorola to produce PowerPC processors. MacMAME Mac Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, a means for running classic arcade games on the Macintosh. Software would emulate the video game machine hardware, with ROM images culled from the original chipsets. The ROM images were the essence of the games and, of course, constituted copyrighted material; so getting ahold of such images was problematic. In October 2003, a company named StarROMs (www.starroms.com) was formed to legitimately sell such images, to the benefit of all concerned. But the companies holding the rights to the games decided not to participate, resulting in the demise of StarROMs in early 2006, returning the world to the former state. macOS As of OS X 10.12, the name of the operating system changes from OS X to macOS, to fall in line with the naming style of iOS, watchOS, tvOS. Announced 2016/06/13. __MACOSX Peculiar folder found in zip files create by performing an archive operation in OS X. This directory is to house resource fork metadata in the archive. This allows the OS X-specific metadata to be carried in the archive such that it can be re-implemented in another OS X system, or be ignored in preference for the ordinary data (data fork) in the archive, on a non-OS X system. The naming makes it apparent to the owner of a non-OS X system that the data is peculiar to OS X and can be ignored on their system. You can excise the __MACOSX directory from the zip file by performing the following from the command line: zip -d archive.zip "__MACOSX" MacPaint Early paint program for the Macintosh (and Lisa), written by Bill Atkinson. MacPing Ping utility included with MacX 1.5. Macworld IDG-run Macintosh expositions, in January on the west coast (usually, San Francisco) and June on the east coast (Boston). Apple used to be at both, but found that excessive, and so now just goes to the west coast Macworld, putting their June energies into the WorldWide Developer's Conference, where new products are often announced. That left the June Macworld rather empty; and, inevitably, it completely fizzled out. MacWrite Early Apple-produced text editing package for the Macintosh. Survived through about OS 8, as MacWrite II, thereafter succeeded by AppleWorks. MacX Apple's Xwindows software for the MacOS. Competes with eXodus from Powerlan USA. Version 1.5 can run on system 8.6 PPC machines with OpenTransport: perform Custom Install; select MacX, TCPTool, and fonts. http://www.apple.com.au/products/ networking/macosx/ Magic iMovie A way to create an "instant DVD" via iMovie... Plug your DV camcorder into your SuperDrive-equipped Mac. iMovie launches. Then simply select Magic iMovie. iMovie HD automatically imports all your video, assembles your movie from start to finish and burns it to DVD using iDVD. Magic Mouse Apple's new wireless (Bluetooth) mouse. In addition to operating as a standard mouse, its top surface functions in a multi-touch manner, supporting gestures. Introduced: 2009/10/20 OS requirement: Mac OS X v10.5.8 or later with Wireless Mouse Software Update 1.0* or Mac OS X v10.6.1 or later with Wireless Mouse Software Update 1.0. Shortcomings: When doing gestures, the mouse gets pulled from side to side, thus requiring some awkward attempts to hold it in place with the base of your hand. The batteries add mass to the unit, which can make it more tiring to move around than a light, wired mouse. Magic Toolbar Expected name for the OLED strip at the top of the keyboard on late 2016 MacBook Pro laptops. Magic Trackpad Apple's table top trackpad, to provide gesture-based control of the OS X interface and applications. It is wireless (Bluetooth), thus requiring batteries (two AA). As Bluetooth, there is a pairing operation for the trackpad to be used with a given Mac. There is a System Preferences entry for it, named Trackpad. Introduced 2010/07/27. OS requirement: Mac OS X v10.6.4 or later The Apple Magic Trackpad and built-in trackpads on Apple portable computers work on a principle called coupling capacitance. As your finger moves over the surface, the trackpad evaluates the change in capacitance between two layers of measurement electrodes built into the surface of the trackpad and translates that to cursor movement. Shortcomings: No middle-click gesture provided for it by Apple. Alternatives are: MagicPrefs http://magicprefs.com BetterTouchTool MiddleClick github.com/galonsky/MiddleClick/downloads Magic Trackpad 2 Wedge-shaped second generation trackpad for the Macintosh, to accompany their new Magic Keyboard. Introduced in October 2015. Lower profile. 29% more surface area. Force Touch (with OS X El Capitan). Built-in, rechargeable battery (via Lightning cable). Compatibility: Requires you run a Bluetooth 4.0-enabled Mac computer with OS X v10.11 or later. Most Macs introduced in 2012 and some made available in 2011 should be compatible with the new trackpad. Magic Trackpad, join to keyboard There are 3rd party products which join the trackpad and the Apple Wireless Keyboard together as a unit, allowing you to use the combination on your lap while sitting at the sofa, or on a desk. The best of these products is the Clique from Henge Docks, being a plastic tray which nests both units together. This allows keypad click and access to both of the power buttons while nested. A lesser choice is the MagicWand from Twelve South, which is a cylindrical channel into which the keyboard and trackpad snap. You lose the ability to conveniently click the trackpad, as well as access to the keyboard power button. Mactel The invented catchphrase for the Intel Macintosh series. MagSafe The magnetically held power connector on the MacBook Pro (2005/01/10), to deal with the problem of people catching their foot on the former rigidly connected connector. This one (patent pending) will simply drop away when someone snags the power cord, thus keeping the laptop from being yanked off the table. Mail (Apple Mail; Mac Mail; Mail.app) Facility in Mac OS X, allowing the use of various protocols. Aka "Mail.app". Choices for Account Type: POP IMAP Exchange Exchange IMAP Under Preferences: Account Options, one may need to fill in the otherwise null Account Path Prefix or IMAP Path Prefix field to limit mailbox scanning to one directory, to keep it from traversing your whole home directory. New mail alerting: You can define a sound to alert you to the arrival of mail. If running without sound: when new mail is waiting, a red circle appears on the Mail icon in the Dock with the number of unread messages in your mailboxes. Format: Plain text, rich text, HTML (Mail uses Safari's HTML rendering engine to display HTML: Safari is not launched to display HTML-encoded mail.) Mailboxes: ~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes tracks your mailboxes. While Panther used a drawer to allow your mailboxes to appear on either the left or right, Tiger eliminated the drawer and fixes them on the left. Trash: If Preferences->Acounts-> Mailbox Behaviors selects "Store deleted messages on the server", then the IMAP server file folder will be named "Deleted Messages". "Out": Your outgoing mail, as for example a reply, or a newly composed message. At times, a few pieces of mail may linger in there for a while, waiting for your designated SMTP relay system to accept them. In reading mail, the picture which shows up in the right side of the email headers section is derived from your Address Book, as associated with your the sender's email address. That is, pictures which you add to your Address Book for your correspondents will show up as you read their mail messages. (It is not the case that your sent mail will include your picture.) Folders (known folders): Because Mail.app goes through the IMAP server, it employs the folder conventions of the server. When you create a folder through Mail.app, it results in a file being created in the directory named in your "IMAP Path Prefix" advanced option and, in some IMAP servers, will result in the server-side home directory .mailboxlist file being updated to include the named folder. (Inversely, however, if you manually create a folder file in your server-side Mail directory, Mac Mail will see it without adding its name to the .mailboxlist file.) Further, the IMAP implementation may create a folder file containing a "placeholder" entry rather than just an empty file. In some circumstances, mail folder manipulation may occur outside of Mail.app: to cause Mail.app to see folders added to or removed from that Mail directory outside of Mail.app, go into the Mailbox->Online Status area and cycle the account Offline and back Online: the folder changes will show up. Note that if an item in your Mail folder is a symbolic link, its target file must exist for the symlink to show up as a folder in the Mac.app list. Note that if an item in your Mail folder is a symbolic link, its target file must exist for the symlink to show up as a folder in the Mac.app list. Mail.app is very sensitive to the format of the "<\n><\n>From ..." line - which can cause it not to index messages if you manually alter the file. In particular, it wants the day number as a 2 char field, where the first position should be a blank if the day is 1-9. Also, avoid renaming folders outside of the app, as it remembers info about the old name. Attachments: A convenient way to attach a file to a message is simply to drag and drop it into the body of the message. Password: When you enter Mac Mail, it will ask for your password to access your designated mail server, if you have not previously saved that password to the keychain. Mac Mail will subsequently remember and use that password for periodically checking the mail, for the duration of the Mac Mail appl lifetime. Note that if you are running xbiff on the mail server system, the action of Mac Mail in going at the new message(s) causes the xbiff highlighting to be cleared, as it thinks the new mail has been seen. Colored dots: A green dot in an email address indicates that the person is one of your iChat buddies and is available for chatting (as a more immediate opportunity to communicate with that person). Your sent mail will be given a header like: X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.619.2). IMAP server impact: Seen to result in two IMAP processes. Preferences: Are stored in XML in ~/Library/Preferences/ com.apple.mail.plist Timeout: Mac Mail provides no timeout value in its preferences, as when you need to keep it from timing out with slow IMAP servers. And there is no timeout spec apparent in the com.apple.mail.plist XML file. Housekeeping: Every once in a while, go into the Windows menu and choose Previous Recipients, and clear out oldies. Emacs compatibility: Honors emacs style movement and editing controls. Return Receipt capability: Does not have. (Return Receipt is dubious, anyway - see the Sendmail QuickFacts.) Note that iPhoto can share photos via email, but doesn't share the Mail accounts info: you have to separately set up accounts and maintain passwords in iPhoto. Fonts I like: Mailbox font: Lucida Grande 1 Message list font: Lucida Grande 12 Message font: Monaco 12 Fixed-width font: Andale Mono 12 (Monaco and Andale Mono are fixed-width fonts, which keep columns aligned.) http://www.apple.com/macosx/applications /mail.html Mac OS X Mail Tips, Tricks and Secrets: http://email.about.com/od/macosxmailtips Mail (Yosemite): Advanced accounts preferences https://support.apple.com/kb/PH19201 Mail: external storage You may want to store the mail on an external drive. The Mail app can't follow standard Mac OS aliases to such a new location: it has to be done via a Unix symbolic link. First, copy your ~/Library/Mail folder to the external drive and rename or delete the original. Then, in the Terminal utility, enter the command: ln -s /Volumes/<Your Drive>/Mail ~/Library/Mail If you're not clear on the new Mail location (the first operand to the ls command), just type "ln -s " and then drag your new-location Mail folder into the Terminal window, which will cause its path to be inserted into the command line you are forming. Mail: forward with headers A simple forward will not include the headers of the original message. To forward with the headers: Do Cmd+Option+U to show the headers; Do Cmd+A in the body of the message to select everything, including the headers; Now perform Forward. Mail: importing Most commonly, you would import content from an mbox format file (as created by Export). It imports into a mail folder on your Mac called Import, with a sub-folder called "mbox". Mail: mailbox size, number of msgs In the pane containing the list of mailboxes, find the gear icon in the bottom margin of the window pane. Click on the gear and select Get Info. All your folders are displayed, and you can sort by name, messages count, or folder size. Mail: mailboxes list font size In Mac Mail, the left pane's list of mailboxes may use a font that is too large for all the folders you want to be conveniently revealed. To change that, go into System Preferences > General and there adjust "Sidebar icon size". Mail: Out of Office setting Can be set by clicking on the gear icon (bottom left), then Get Account Info. Mail: outgoing Mac OS X Mail uses the topmost account in the account list as the default for outgoing messages. Mail: rules nuances Mail stops applying rules when a message is transferred to another mailbox by rules applied on a server or on a computer or device synced to the computer you're currently using. So, if you seek to have a given message moved from the Inbox to a certain folder and then have it marked as read, all that will happen is the move. Mail: sent messages The saving of sent messages is set via: Preferences > Accounts > Mailbox Behaviors, checkbox "Store sent messages on the server". Sent messages show up in the Sent folder when the server involved sends the message - not immediately when you click the "Send message" button. The time is thus when the server sends the message toward the recipient, not when your Mac sends the message to the server. Unchecking this box causes that account to disappear from the Sent folders area, but the folder and its messages remain intact: check the box again and everything is back. But: There have been problems, where sent messages are not saved for some reason. Unchecking the box, waiting a while, then rechecking the box has gotten it working again. Mail and blue vs. white folders A blue folder in the Mail mailboxes list is typically one which was created directly via New Mailbox, as for example one named Friends. In the Mac file system (~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/) it will be seen to have a .mbox suffix on it, such as Friends.mbox . Such folders can hold mail messages, as well as further folders which are created within them (such as Leslie, for example). A white folder designates a simple directory entry, which can be created on a Unix based mail server (but not a Windows based server, such as Exchange). Such folders are intended only for directory structure building, for housing true mail storage folders (as described above) under them. A white folder would be created starting in the usual way, via New Mailbox; but in the Name field, instead of just entering a mailbox name, you would enter a directory and mailbox name separated by a slash, like: Retailers/Sears which would result in the Retailers simple folder being white and the Sears mailbox folder being blue. Such a white folder would always have a triangle in front of it, which allows expansion to see further contents. In the Mac file system (~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/) it will be seen to be present with no extension on its name. In use, you will see that when you go to move a mail message around, Mail will not allow it to be moved into the Retailers folder, because that is not a mail-accepting folder: you could only move it into a subfolder (e.g. Sears). Mail and caching When using IMAP as the mail server access method, messages can be cached on the Mac, for searching content, while remaining in your Inbox on the mail server. Go into Preferences, and thereunder into Accounts. Choose the account you use for server access. Click on the Advanced tab. There you will see a choice titled "Keep copies of messages for offline viewing", which allows you to select one of: All messages and their attachments All messages, but omit attachments Only messages I've read Don't keep copies of any messages The first selection is the default and recommended setting. Note that such opportunity does not exist with POP, whose orientation is to move messages from the server, to the personal computer. Mail and line wrap (line breaks) In composing a new message, it is best to let the text flow in a paragraph, rather than attempting to render lines a certain length yourself, via newline (pressing Return). Mail will attempt to fill up to the 72nd column with whole words, and will put a space after the last word on the line and then continue on the next line. (The space at the end of the physical line allows ready re-flowing of received text - as Mac Mail does in receiving such a message.) This behavior is accompanied by email header line: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Format=Flowed is a message convention where a logical line is identified as continuing onto the next physical line by having at one space at the end of the first physical line, with non-blank, contination text starting in column 1 of the next physical line. This is per RFC 3676 (1999/08, which supersedes RFC2646). The SP CRLF sequence is termed a "soft line break". Where you can't get your recipients to use a more modern and capable mail reader, consider sending long-lined data in an attachment. Doing a web search on line wrap, you will find that many mail applications limit line length to 72...a value which dates back to the usable line length in IBM 80 column punch cards, where the last 8 columns of the card were used for card sequence numbering. There is no known system setting which governs the line wrap column in Apple Mail: it is simply hewing to conventions. Mail and mailboxes Mailboxes are the mail repositories as stored on the mail server, accessed and manipulated via IMAP commands. Keep in mind that the Mail app keeps a copy of your mailboxes, locally on the Mac, for rapid searching, in Library : Mail. If you interfere with mailboxes by, for example, replacing them on the server, the Mail app will be understandably befuddled, and will often react by then showing the mailbox empty. If you need to do things like replacing a mailbox on the server, first delete the mailbox from Mail app. The folder names as seen in Mail Preferences, vs. their IMAP server names, are: Mac Name IMAP Server Name -------- ---------------------- Drafts Drafts Sent Sent Messages Trash Deleted Messages (Actual folder names show up when you hover the pointer over an actual mailbox icon.) Mail's Preferences does not provide a means for changing the sent mail folder. You could use the Property List Editor to change the ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist SentMessagesMailboxName; but a more natural Mail method is to simply select a mailbox that you want to use for sent mail and then go into the Mailbox menu and in "Use This Mailbox For", choose Sent. Note that various mail clients have individual conventions for the name of the sent mail folder: Outlook will use the name "Sent Items" (which can be changed). Mail and multiple Deleted Messages In the MAILBOXES column you may see multiple Deleted Messages folders, with parenthetical qualifiers: what's that about? Normally, one has just a Trash folder, and that is actually folder name Deleted Messages on the mail server. That's how things are when you have a single Mac. Now you buy a second Mac, and freshly set up the Mail application on that Mac, going at your usual mail server. You then start seeing a Deleted Messages folder appear in the MAILBOXES column. The standard cause is that your two Mail implementations have differing Description name strings. The Mail application honors the distinction, and exposes the Deleted Messages folder, with an account name qualifier in parentheses. To fix this, go back and make the Description fields the same in the account preferences. Mail data transfer technique Say you have a bunch of photos that you want to transfer from your Mac to your campus time sharing system. You can achieve that via the IMAP protocol, as follows: In iPhoto, select the pics you want and Export them to some folder (doing Export retains their titles - otherwise you get the photo file names of the photos, which is typically unhelpful). In Mail, create a New message, and drag the photos into its body; then Save As Draft. With Mail open in a host IMAP session, drag the draft message to the desired host folder. Then, from a host logon session, open the folder with the host 'pine' or like command and save the photo attachments as host files. Taking this approach bypasses host SMTP processing and thus allows you to in effect directly deliver your package, avoiding delay and filtration issues. Mail deficiencies Known deficiencies in the Mail app: - Messages moved from one server type folders into another server type folders will end up with a datestamp of when the message was moved, thus replacing the original date (of when the message was received). For example, if you move a message from a local folder to an Exchange account folder, the datestamp will become that of when the message was moved. This seems to be a deficiency in the way that Mac Mail does the IMAP. The "fix" for this is to go into menu View > Message Attributes, where you will see "Date Received" checkmarked but not "Date Sent": choose Date Sent to cause messages display to use the "Date:" field in the mail header for the date. Consider additionally going into menu View > Sort By, which will show Date checkmarked: hold down the Option key, which will reveal Date Sent as an alternate choice: choose that. All this seems to pertain to Outlook for Mac as well. Thunderbird by default displays and sorts based on sent date. Outlook Express used the 'Received' date first, then drops to 'Date', then uses the local system time, to mark the received date. There has been much debate about what date to use (from "latest Received:" or "Date:") , and foibles, as seen in Mozilla bug 166254. Mail Downloads Folder within your Library folder, for when you are in Mail and right-click on an attachment and then do "Save to Downloads Folder". Mail Drop OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) Mail app function to allow you to send mail attachments which are larger than the recipient's mail server accepts. It does this by storing the attachment, encrypted, in iCloud. Receive the message on a Mac and you can directly get at the attachment: on other clients, a link to the attachment is provided. Mail message, change color You can highlight a message in the list of messages by selecting it, then go into the Format menu and select Show Colors, then double-click on a color. Mail searching Use the following to find according to mail characteristics: from: Find email senders; use quotation marks to specify names. Example: from:jules to: find email recipients. Example: to:spencer subject: find email subjects. Example: subject:"last week" date: - find emails by date. Example: date:10/20/2010 Example: date:<10/20/2010 The following operators are available: AND for a compound search, to find messages containing both words, as in luncheon AND Thursday. OR To match either search item. NOT Does not match this. () Use parentheses to group search terms. Mailbox, make read-only It's non-standard to do this, so there is no function provided in Mail to accomplish it; but you can achieve it through the Finder. Go into your Library folder, then the Mail folder. Find the folder which is named by your mail account, and in there find the folder to be changed. Do a Get Info on that folder. Under Sharing & Permissions, change from Read & Write to Read only. Mammoth/N90 Code name for the 4th generation iPhone, in May, 2010, prior to its introduction. Man page, access via Safari In the address bar, type like: x-man-page://cat and the Terminal utility will be launched to display the man page. Man page, generate PostScript of Doing 'man -t <Pagename> > save.ps' causes a man page to be generated to Stdout in PostScript form. Further, if you then do like open save.ps that will cause the Preview application to be launched on the file, converting the PostScript to PDF, which you may then save as such. Man pages, on the web http://www.osxfaq.com/MAN/Index/A.ws Marklar Apple's longstanding (2002+) fallback plan to use Intel processors should their PowerPC suppliers fail. This entails maintaining the capability of performing a build on Intel microprocessors. Also known as "OS X's Secret Double Life" and "Just in case". Since the beginning, OS X development has had to occur under the rules: 1. Designs must be processor independent. 2. Projects must be built for both PowerPC and Intel processors. (Marklar seems to derive from a SouthPark alien race whose only word is marklar yet they are able to communicate with the viewer quite effectively.) Note that multi-platform compatibility actually goes way back, to the way in which NextStep and OpenStep were engineered.) Mastered for iTunes New iTunes music category as of mid-February, 2012. To deliver music exactly as the artists and sound engineers intend it to be heard. This is an Apple program which specifies that music submissions to Apple should be in the highest resolution of the original recording: "as is", without any down-sampling or other degradation or accommodation to the former CD standard. Having high quality master material, Apple will then be in a position to, over time, regenerate iTunes content in higher resolution as technology advances and bandwidth, storage, battery life, and processor power increase. Whereas iTunes Plus (256 kbps) is the quality standard for iTunes offerings as of early 2012, it is likely to be higher in the future. (There has been some misinformation published by people who didn't understand the process, where those people suggested that music producers participating in the program were to generate AAC files using Apple-provided software and submit those AAC files to Apple. The reality is that, as specified above, producers are to submit the original, uncompressed music masters to Apple. The software that Apple makes available to producers is simply to allow them to hear how their music will sound when encoded to AAC at various bitrates.) The founders of Apple were huge fans of good music. As Tim Cook has said, "Music is in our DNA." Apple has always fostered the best possible relationship with musicians - sometimes at the risk of alienating record labels. Apple respects the music, and has always wanted to provide the best quality possible in a mass distribution scenario. This is one reason why Apple went with the AAC digital sound format from the beginning, rather than MP3 (where the MP3 encoders of the late 1990s were poor). Likewise, Apple provides the latest encoding improvements in iTunes releases. www.apple.com/itunes/mastered-for-itunes/ http://tarekith.com/mastered-for-itunes/ MBP MacBook Pro MBP-R MacBook Pro 2012 with Retina Display. Mcintosh See: Macintosh md* Metadata processes you may see running on your system, involved in indexing file system data for Spotlight to use. The mdimport process imports file hierarchies into the metadata datastore, and will be a promiment system process when there have been a bunch of file system changes needing indexing: it is the source of hard drive business. mdfind is the command to find files matching a given query. mdls is the command to list the metadata attributes for a file. mds is the metadata server. MDD Mirrored Drive Door - a distinguishing characteristic of the 2002 G4 Quicksilver tower systems, where the twin optical drives have mirror-like doors. mdfind OS X command for invoking Spotlight functionality to locate things. mdfind [-live] [-count] [-onlyin directory] [-name fileName | -s smartFolderName | Query] Query can be an expression or a sequence of words. -attr <attr> Fetches the value of the specified attribute -count Query only reports matching items count -onlyin <dir> Search only within given directory -live Query should stay active -name <name> Search on file name only -reprint Reprint results on live update -s <name> Show contents of smart folder <name> -0 Use NUL (``\0'') as a path separator, for use with xargs -0. Examples: mdfind image mdfind -onlyin ~ image mdfind -name stdlib.h mdfind "kMDItemAuthor == '*MyFavoriteAuthor*'" mdfind -live MyFavoriteAuthor mdworker The name of the system process which provides the data for the Spotlight function in OS X. The name means: metadata server worker/ See: Spotlight Me.com Apple's network address for the MobileMe domain. MobileMe was replaced by iCloud, but MobileMe had been a mail server, and it was infeasible for all the users to change their email address to iCloud.com; so Me.com survived, and remains the mail domain for iCloud email addresses. Meeting, schedule and invite attendees Do this via iCal... Create an event in iCal, then populat the "attendees" field. (Click the Info button if the event expansion is not in effect.) When ready, you can right-click on the event and perform Mail Event. Memory See also: Shared memory Memory, test The best utility to use for this is perhaps TechTool Deluxe, which comes on a CD provided with AppleCare Protection Plan. Memory leaks, detecting A MallocDebug application is available. It is a graphical tool for diagnosing all types of memory problems. MallocDebug includes a memory-leak analysis tool that you can use to identify leaks in your program. The interface for MallocDebug displays potential leaks using a call-graph structure so that you can easily locate the function that generated the leak. Memory usage Mac OS X provides the top, vm_stat, and vmmap command-line utilities for viewing statistics about virtual memory usage. Menu Bar The operating system main menu area, located at the top of the screen. Time and status icons are usually located on the right hand side. Items in the Menu Bar can be chosen to be there via the System Preferences area for that subsystem, such as AirPort, Battery, etc. The Eject icon is specially placed: In the Finder Go menu, choose "Go to Folder", then type or paste: /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras and in the Menu Extras folder, double-click "Eject.menu". See: Apple menu bar Merlot Code name for Mac OS X 10.2.2 update. Message box, produce from command line To put up an alert window, with just an "Ok" button: osascript -e 'tell app "Finder" to display alert "Example of alert"' To put up a modal window with "Ok" and "Cancel" buttons: osascript -e 'tell app "Finder" to display dialog "Dialog example"' You can customize the buttons, as in: buttons {"Skip", "Okay", "Cancel"} default button "Okay" cancel button "Skip" See also: osascript Messages app In iOS on the iPhone, this Apple-provided app handled SMS and MMS messages, being those conveyed by cellular communication companies. Such messaging was a cash cow for those companies, and a nagging pain for subscribers. In iOS 5, Apple added the iMessage technology & service to Messages, conveying text, photos, videos, locations, and contacts over the Internet, to Apple's new iCloud servers, and from their to any other registered Apple customer, no charge. If possible, Apple's iMessage facility will be used to send content: only when such access is not possible will the Messages app revert to cellular carrier facilities. Messages app (Mac) New in Mountain Lion. Supports AIM, Yahoo!, Google Talk, Jabber. Does not support Microsoft Communicator. Metal Apple's new technolgy term, introduced at WWDC 2014 for iOS devices. Basically combines OpenCL and OpenGL. Applies to the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) of Apple's new 64-bit A7 Application Processor used in its newest iOS devices: iPhone 5s, iPad Air and Retina iPad mini. The new technology's name actually derives from providing "close to the metal" graphics performance by slimming down the overhead imposed by existing graphics libraries like OpenGL. Metal speeds up 3D rendering and general compute tasks while freeing up the CPU to handle additional work, such as more sophisticated physics modeling or audio processing in video games, for example. Added to OS X in El Capitan. MFi Program "Made for iPhone/iPod/iPad" is a licensing program, launched in 2005, for developers of hardware and software peripherals that work with Apple's iPod, iPad and iPhone - the so-called iDevices. The name is a shortened version of the original long-form Made For iPod. The program covers various iDevice connectors including the headphone jack, original dock connector and the newer Lightning connector, as well as AirPlay support. Companies joining the MFi program and passing certification tests are able to display certain MFi-related logos on their product packaging, like the "Made for iPod" badge. MFS Macintosh File System: the original file system on the Macintosh. Replaced by HFS. Microphone Newer Macs have only line-level audio input and output. Standard microphones require pre-amplification to reach line-level. iMic from Griffin Technology is a good way to achieve that. See also: NE Mic Audio Adapter Microphone, external for Mac The internal microphone in your Mac is great for casual use, but may be inadequate for more demanding purposes, such as recording podcasts. Or, you may have a Mac Pro with no microphone, and thus need an external one. You may also want a good mic for the Dictation feature in Mountain Lion. A variety of USB microphones exist, which can be employed for getting good sound into your system. No drivers are involved in USB microphone deployment, as that technology is built into OS X. What you need to do is tell the OS to use the mic, and how, as outlined below. Note that you may want to use different microphones for different uses. For overall use: Go into System Preferences > Sound > Input and there select your mic, and adjust its input level. Dictation: Go into System Preferences > Sound > Dictation & Speech > Dictation and there select your mic. In iChat or FaceTime: Go into the Video menu and select your mic. In Amazon and Apple.com/Store you will often find negative reviews of USB mics where the person failed to perform basic set-up. The best mic for all your Apple devices is MiC, from www.apogeedigital.com. Microphone, PlainTalk 1990s Macintosh microphone technology. Draws power for its built-in preamplifier through the tip connector of its extra-long plug. It thus works only with Macs whose microphone jack has a matching power connector for this plug. Ordinary microphones may not work with PowerPC Macs because such mics generate very low signal levels, requiring amplification to meet Mac line-level sound input requirements. Plug: 3.5mm stereo or mono plug. Note that PlainTalk microphones are unidirectional. Microphones and headphones may be plugged and unplugged without restarting the computer: there is no electrical consequence to the action. PlainTalk was discontinued by Apple around the time of OS 10.1. Microphone location PowerBook 17: The built-in microphone is located at the bottom of the left speaker grill. Microsoft Office for Macintosh Office 2008 for Mac was the last version to run on PowerPC processors. (There was no Office 2010 for Mac - MS didn't do 2010 for the Mac.) Office 2011 for Mac runs only on Intel processors. Microsoft products for the Mac http://www.microsoft.com/mac Microsoft Project A product for Windows, to manage projects and review Gandtt charts. There is no MS Project application for the Macintosh, but there are 3rd party offerings: Merlin, by ProjectWizards.net Steelray Project Viewer for Mac OS X, by Steelray.com OpenProj, free software, at http://sourceforge.net/projects/openproj/ Migration Assistant Utilty to transfer your files and important settings from an older Mac to a new one, and both computers use OS X. MA originally operated by making internal use of Target Disk Mode, transferring files via FireWire. By 2013 this was more flexible, via one of the following means: Wireless (Wi-Fi) or Ethernet migration Migrating using FireWire or ThunderBolt Time Machine or other disk migration Note that you can connect two Macs together with an ordinary ethernet cable for the transfer: no need for a router or switch between them, no need for an ethernet crossover cable! Migration Assistant needs to be running on both the source and target Macs. Invoking Migration Assistant will close all applications running on the Mac (to prevent modification of the data being migrated). The data is copied rather than moved: it remains intact on the source OS X. Note further that this isn't a dumb file copying operation: it will logically reprocess data which needs it, as for example building database indexes afresh. This can result in the transfer mysteriously hanging, where the most common cause of such hangs is corrupted iTunes music. Appears as Transfer Your Information dialog in an OS 10.6 install. Apple Articles: HT5872 Mike Markkula Apple employee number 3, having provided the money and management savvy to convert the nascent Jobs-Wozniak partnership venture into a company. Markulla became 1/3 owner of the new Apple Computer Co. Mission Control OS 10.7 Lion feature which provides a comprehensive view of what's running on your Mac, including Expose, Spaces, Dashboard, and full-screen apps, all in one place. With a simple swipe gesture, your desktop zooms out to Mission Control. There you can see your open windows grouped by app, thumbnails of your full-screen apps, Dashboard, and even other Spaces, arranged in a unified view. And you can get to anything you see on Mission Control with just one click. MMS Multimedia Messaging Service. A standard way to send messages that include multimedia content (photos, audio, short movies) to and from mobile phones. It extends the core SMS (Short Message Service) capability that allowed exchange of text messages only up to 160 characters in length. Available on iPhone 3G and later, starting with iOS 3.1. As of iOS 5, messages sent using SMS or MMS are handled by iOS's iMessage technology, appearing in a green bubble, in the Messages app. Note that audio messages cannot be saved. See also: iMessage; SMS Mobile Documents Folder inside ~/Library in Lion for syncing (iWork) documents to iCloud. But you can use it directly: Any files (.pdf, .rtf, etc.) put into the ~/Library/Mobile Documents folder will automatically upload to iCloud and push to any other Mac you have that is signed in to the same iCloud account and has the 'Document & Data' iCloud preference checked. Lion even notifies you of version conflicts and allows you to resolve them when you open the document. Such documents do not show up in iOS devices, nor in iCloud.com. Consider creating an alias to it, to live on your desktop or in the Sidebar, so that you can conveniently drop copies of documents (PDFs, etc.) into it for propagation to your other Macs. The folder will not exist until you create an iWork document on your Mac, whereupon the folder will be created as a sync control area. MobileMe Reincarnation of .Mac (dot-Mac), announced 2008/06/09 at WWDC. Is push-based synching. MM is based upon SproutCore, a javascript framework. Web address: Me.com With the iCloud announcement of June 6,2011, MobileMe will be going away June 30, 2012. In Keychain, you will continue to see "MobileMe password" as the kind for accessing iCloud. MODE32 Is a system extension which allow Macintosh types II, IIx, IIcx, and SE30 to access more than 8 MB of RAM under System 7. There is a similar-function 32-bit enabler, but it is said to be buggy, and doesn't work with System 7.0, 7.5. Model numbers Formally known as Marketing model number. Sample: MA053LL/A for the AirPort Extreme Base Station. See also: Serial numbers Modern Document Model This is Apple's term for the way documents are saved and handled by applications which support the model beginning with Lion and modified by Mountain Lion. It is regimen inspired by file management in iOS, where files are tied to the applications that created them, rather than being some object somewhere in a file system. See also: Auto Save; Resume; Versions MOL Mac-On-Linux: lets you run the MacOS under PowerPC Linux. http://www.maconlinux.org/ http://www.ibrium.se/linux/ mac_on_linux.html Mono sound handling A video camera movie transferred to iMovie may exhibit sound coming from only the left channel, where this is due to the use of a monophonic microphone in the camera. This can be corrected at iMovie export time, to yield the same sound in both left and right channels. Select Export from iMovie's File menu, select To QuickTime from the Export pop-up menu and Expert Settings from the Formats pop-up menu, and click on the Export button. In the resulting Save Exported File As window, select Movie To QuickTime in the Export pop-up menu and click on the Options button. In the Movie Settings window that appears, click on the Settings button in the Sound portion of the window. In the resulting Sound Settings window, enable the Mono option and click on OK in both the Sound Settings and Movie Settings windows. Click on Save in the Save Exported File As window. Your movie will be saved with a mono soundtrack that places all sounds in the middle of the stereo field. If this problem occurs only with some individual clips, where the rest of the movie has stereo sound, that is best handled by re-editing those individual clips in QuickTime Pro, and then import them into iMovie again: In the project folder for your iMovie you will find files having names such as Clip 1, corresponding to the video clips imported with iMovie. Using QuickTime Player Pro, select Extract Tracks from the Edit menu, choose Sound Track in the Extract Tracks window, and click on the Extract button. This produces a new untitled QuickTime movie containing the clip's soundtrack, e.g. MonoFile. With this file active, select Export from the File menu and choose Sound To AIFF from the Export pop-up menu in the Save Exported File As window. Click on the Options button, and in the resulting Sound Settings window, enable the Mono option. Click on OK to dismiss this window, and click on Save in the Save Exported File As window to save your sound. You've just created a mono audio file with the sound in the middle of the stereo field. Go back to the clip file containing the extracted sound and in the Edit menu choose Delete Tracks. In window Delete Tracks, select Sound Track and click on the Delete button, which deletes the faulty audio file. Replace that with the mono file by activating the MonoFile by clicking on it, then press Cmd+A to select all of its contents, and do Cmd+C to copy them. Click on the clip file, select Add Scaled from the Edit menu, and save the file. This adds the contents of the Mono Audio file to the video clip file and produces a clip whose soundtrack comes out of both speakers. Repeat this procedure for each problem clip. When done, import those clips into iMovie. Mountain Lion See also: OS X Mountain Lion Mountain Lion printing Is a bit different than 10.7... When doing SMB type Windows printing, the phases of printing will be: Connecting... This is a short-term info box that appears after clicking Print. I believe it reflects the application connecting to CUPS through standard OS X APIs. Authentication Required Appears for the job, displayed in the printer queue display window (which is part of PrintCenter, PrinterProxy). Likely disappears quickly. Hold for Authentication Appears for the job, displayed in the printer queue display window. Will linger indefinitely if authentication is not performed. Clicking Resume should incite authentication. If you have the wrong username/password in place (e.g., your Mac's rather than your institutional account's), this will persist. Mouse, use keyboard instead This is achieved via Universal Access: Go into System Preferences and select Universal Access, and therein go to the Mouse section. There, turn Mouse Keys "On". Your numeric keypad now does all that a mouse can. (For details, go into Help and see the "Shortcuts for Mouse Keys" topic.) Now you can move around via the eight keys surrounding the '5' on the numeric keyboard, and press the 5 to effect (left) click. Bring up a contextual menu by holding down a Ctrl key and pressing 5 on the numeric keypad. The foolish, space-wasting numeric keypad is now finally doing something useful. See also: Universal Access Move file To move, rather than copy, a file, drag it while holding down the Command key. See also: Copy file Move your stuff to another Mac See: Migration Assistant Movie editing Quicktime Player can perform basic editing on a movie, such as trimming or splitting. iMovie obviously provides a lot of editing capability, but is fussy about what formats it will take for input. Movie production Most commonly, via iMovie as a DV or QuickTime source editing tool, producing QuickTime output. QuickTime Pro provides easy-to-use, low-cost consumer editing and encoding tool for the Mac and PC. Don't overlook Keynote as a movie authoring tool. Movie rentals See: Apple TV Take 2 Movie trailers Are at www.apple.com/trailers However, if you navigate there with your iPhone or iPod touch, you are instead sent to www.apple.com/trailers/iphone, which provides content more suited to the hand-held devices. (You can't get to that page with a desktop computer.) On that iphone-specific page, you will find "HD" selections on the page - but they don't work..."not found" ultimately results. Movie viewers There's QuickTime, of course, plus: MPlayer OS X; VideoLAN. Flip4Mac allows QuickTime Player to play Windows Media files with all the same control as QuickTime. (www.flip4mac.com) Movies in iCloud New, 2012/03. Purchased movies are now always available in iCloud. Resolution now 1080p. (The new iPad and third generation Apple TV will play the movies in 1080p video by default.) Does not impact your iCloud space, in that your purchases are just links to what's in Apple's repository. MPEG-2 Playback Component Provides QuickTime users with the ability to import and play back MPEG-2 content, including both multiplexed (a.k.a. muxed, where the audio and video tracks are interleaved together into one track) and non-multiplexed (a.k.a. elementary) streams. Is an optional, extra-cost ($19.99) add-on to QuickTime. It is needed by higher level software packages such as MPEG Streamclip. MPEG-2 Playback File Types: .mpg .mpeg .vob .vro .m2v .m2a .m2s www.apple.com/quicktime/mpeg2/ .mpkg file Is a Macintosh installer package that contains all the necessary installation files in a single Mac OS X package. Name stands for "meta package". Created by PackageMaker (q.v.). This is what you get when, in PackageMaker, you go into Install Properties and select Minimum Target: Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger. The icon is a brown cardboard box with its flaps open and four yellow inner boxes in view. See contents via: xar -t -f <FileName> See also: .pkg file MPlayer OS X 2 Multimedia player with playlist, supporting playback of all widely used media types (MPEG 1-4, DivX, AVI, ASF, Ogg Vorbis, RealMedia, QuickTime Movie, MPEG layer 1-3, AC3, WindowsMediaAudio etc.) and movie subtitles of various formats (MicroDVD Player, Subrip, etc.). It is based on MPlayer - movie player for Linux. See also: QuickTime Player MPN Marketing Part Number, as found on Apple product boxes, of the form: M######/#. Example: MA166Z/A. .mpp files See: Microsoft Project MPW Pre-OSX Macintosh programming environment named Macintosh Programmer's Workshop. Tended to be line-mode and cryptic, making it generally unpopular. http://developer.apple.com/tools/ mpw-tools/about_mpw.html MS-DOS (FAT) Windows-compatible file system format in Disk Utility. Is FAT32, which limits file size to 4 GB. For larger files, use "ExFAT" (q.v.). Multi-boot Refers to being able to boot from a choice of several operating systems, which would be installed and available on multiple disks (such as multiple hard drives in a Mac Pro) or multiple partitions on a single disk (Bootcamp is one example). The boot choice can be preassigned via System Preferences > Startup Disk. You can dynamically choose a boot source by holding down the Option key when powering up your Mac, until a list of choices appears. One challenge with multi-boot is that a given attached device (e.g., trackball) may require driver software which is not available with some operating systems or levels thereof. Multi-channel sound Is set up through a combination of the Sound preferences, to choose the output device, and the Audio MIDI Setup utility, to configure speakers and audio characteristics. See also: Dolby Digital 5.1 sound Multi-session CD A CD which has had multiple images burned to it, in multiple burn sessions. When such a CD is mounted, each session area on the CD will appear as a separate CD on the desktop. The ability to create multi-session CDs is new in OS 10.2. How to create multiple sessions: Lanuch the Disk Copy utility. Select New from the File menu, in order to create a new image from this session. When the image is prepared, select Burn Image from the File menu. In the After Burning section of the resulting Burn Disc window, select Allow Additional Burns. Then click on the Burn button to burn the contents of the image to the CD. Multi-Touch Touch screen interface technology patented by Apple, allowing full manipulation of screen image by touching, moving, and pulling. As of early 2006, there are demonstration videos on the Web. MultiFinder Its concept originated in 1985, as a couple of UC Berkeley students took the bus down to Apple to show the core Mac team a Mac Plus running the screen-filling MacWrite application - which they then shrank, to allow seeing the Finder, which was underneath. Apple treated the students to a limo ride back to their campus, and began work on what would become MultiFinder. Multiple Master Font format which uses an older technology, introduced by Adobe, for creating variations in font scaling or style. Jaguar was the first version of OS X to support Multiple Master fonts. Multiple-display support OS X 10.9 Mavericks finally supports having multiple displays with a finder menu bar at the top of each display and a dock at the bottom. MWSF MacWorld in San Francisco, the annual (January) west coast MacWorld convention, where new products are announced in the Apple chairman's keynote address. My Top Rated A Smart Playlist type in iTunes, for syncing to your device. Top rated tunes are those to which you have assigned the maximum of 5 stars. N20 Code number for 6th generation iPod nano. N81 Code number for the black iPod touch. N81A Code number for the white iPod touch. NE Mic Audio Adapter Griffin accessory which allows you to connect any unpowered microphone to a Mac which has a PlainTalk microphone connector, meaning mid-1990s Macs. Not for use with modern Macs, which take only line-level audio input. See also: Microphone, PlainTalk NetBoot 1999 feature in the Mac OS X server which allows multiple Macs to be booted and configured from a single server. Allows inexpensive Macs to share applications, data files, and other files that are stored on a powerful server. The client Macs don't even need a hard drive: each boots from a partition on the server, where your files and system preferences also reside. See also: NetRestore NetInfo Network administration tool that is part of OS X, through 10.4. It was part of the NeXTStep system that was ported in the development of OS X. As Mac OS X Server evolved, Apple replaced NetInfo with a service based on the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) that is often referred to as simply Open Directory. NetInfo was a powerful database that keeps track of various preferences, access privileges, and other administrative info that's needed to run the Mac. It knows which folders belong to individual users, as well as the access privileges associated with each user and folder. OS X Server relies heavily on NetInfo to establish users, access privileges, and the server's interaction with other computers and networks. Stores info in its own, hierarchical database, including user and password info (the "unixy" side of usr administration). The root user can also be enabled here. (Normally, it is not enabled: there is "administrator" instead.) The most common thing to change in NetInfo is the user login shell choice. Manage Netinfo via NetInfo Manager, in the Utilities folder, or via the command line (Doc: 'man netinfo'). As of 10.5 (Leopard), NetInfo is gone: The entire structure for managing local users, groups, and other such things has been completely replaced by local Directory Services, and the Netinfo Database is now a series of XML files living in /var/db/dslocal/. And the 'nicl' command line equivalent has been replaced by the 'dscl' command. See also: dscl; nicl; System Preferences NetRestore Whether you're deploying five, five thousand, or 32,000 systems, NetRestore is the software deployment solution for you. Built on Apple's Apple Software Restore technology, NetRestore can be used to quickly and accurately restore a master disk image to a computer's hard disk while that disk image is hosted locally, on a network via AFP, or on the internet via HTTP. NetRestore can also be used in conjunction with NetBoot to fully automate the deployment of a lab full of machines. NetRestore was designed to be very easy to use yet flexible, powerful, and extensible. Features: $(O#@(B Restores a disk image to a hard drive via block-level or file-level copying $(O#@(B Despite its name, NetRestore clones local hard drives and restores disk images located locally or across a network. $(O#@(B Pre and post-restore customization tools to set computer specific information such as the open firmware password, computer name, network settings, etc. $(O#@(B Full automation $(O#@(B Easy configuration $(O#@(B Customizable interface and tools $(O#@(B Includes a helper tool for easily creating master disk images and NetInstall-Restore image sets (for use with a NetBoot server) Open source and FREE, from www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/10507 et al. See also: NetBoot Network address See: IP address Network interface info Use the 'ipconfig' command, like: ipconfig getpacket en0 Use the 'ifconfig' command. Network sharing See: AirPort serving to nearby laptops Network trace Via the 'tcpdump' command, under sudo. (OS X does not provide 'wireshark' or 'tshark', as Linux has.) Examples: Capture traffic to host Xyz in file: tcpdump -w /tmp/cap host Xyz Report from that capture file: tcpdump -r /tmp/cap -s 0 -e -X -vvv where -X shows packet content in hex and ASCII; -vvv is most verbose output; -s 0 forces 64KB of packet reporting. Option -n may be used to suppress converting IP addresses to netnames, where that is problematic or to keep the reporting from taking a lot longer. Option -K may be used to eliminate "bad cksum" reporting, where the interface does checksums in its hardware. Note that tcpdump reporting is very physical, with no interpretation of packet content, as AIX ipreport does. Apple Article: HT3994 (Mac OS X: How to capture a packet trace) Networking Newer Mac systems are multi-homed, meaning that they are capable of using all of their network ports: ethernet connection, AirPort, Bluetooth, modem. For network traffic, the Mac will utilize available network ports in the order in which they are listed in the Network Port Configurations window. A good technique is to position AirPort ahead of Built-in Ethernet: whereas AirPort can be turned off from the menu bar, you can easily cause use of the ethernet port instead of AirPort. News iOS app introduced in WWDC 2015, to track articles reflecting your interests. Channels from major magazines and publishers. News about Apple Subscribe to Apple eNews: http://www.apple.com/enews/subscribe Newsstand app iOS 5+ app for magazines and newspapers to have their own sales and viewing app. Is built into iOS: is not downloadable from the iTunes App Store. Its big benefit is overnight downloading of content, ready for you in the morning (like home delivery in early morning). Separation has led to great visibility and sales for periodicals vendors. Newton Apple's first attempt at a hand-held computer, being a message pad written on with a stylus, with input parsed via handwriting recognition software (which was not very good). Newton was introduced in 1993, when Steve Jobs was away from Apple. When he returned in 1997, he quickly discontinued Newton as a big, pointless distraction for the company. On February 27, 1998 Apple announced cessation of development of the Newton OS, to sell off existing stock of the MessagePad 2100 and eMate 300 devices. NeXT The computer company which Steve Jobs founded after being ousted from Apple. The company produced a small assortment of computers based upon PowerPC technology, but really established itself for their software, which was object oriented, using Objective C as their programming language. The NeXT computer had a small following, but overall was as unsuccessful as the Apple Lisa. But one compelling asset which the company had was its object-oriented operating system. In 1996, Apple was thrashing around for some modern OS replacement for the aging MacOS. After the BeOS acquisition plans failed in late 1996, that November, Apple CEO Gilbert Amelio started discussions with Steve Jobs' NeXT. On Dec. 20, 1996, Apple announced plans to acquire NeXT Software, the company Jobs founded, for $400 million. As part of the deal, Jobs, who had been previously pushed out of Apple, returned to report to then CEO Dr. Gil Amelio. Apple finalized the acquisition of NeXT on 4 February 1997 for $429 million. NeXT's operating system became the basis for Mac OS X. Amelio later stated he felt he'd overpaid for NeXT. Steve Jobs is widely credited for bringing Apple back from the brink, but more than insightful management, it was the software and tools that came to Apple from his NeXT company that formed the foundation for Apple's future. NFS mounting in OS X NFS file system sharing is the dominant method in the Unix realm for having files accessible from multiple systems. This works by having the NFS daemon on a server system "export" an ordinary file system, usually to a limited list of systems. An NFS client system can then mount that file system by specifying the server host network address on the command line. Whereas OS X is Unix, one naturally expects such NFS mounting to work. It doesn't. You can attempt an NFS mount from the Finder's Go menu by choosing Connect to Server, and there enter: nfs://Server.edu/FSname or, as superuser in a Terminal session: mount_nfs server1:/FSname mntptdir you get "Permission denied". On the NFS server, you will find rejection caused by "weak authentication". The standard remediation for this is to include the 'resvport' option on the command line, to allegedly cause your NFS client to use what is called a privileged port number (0 - 1023), rather than a high number. So, you do: mount_nfs -o resvport server1:/FSname mntptdir you get "Permission denied", and the same "weak authentication" on the NFS server. (This, on AIX v4, v5 servers.) A packet trace on the NFS server reveals that despite the 'resvport' specification, your mount command is *still* using a high number. Argh. There are reports that having the NFS server export the file system with option 'insecure' gets by this: it does, where the NFS supports the option, but older NFS implementations such as AIX 5 don't have this. We have found that NFS mounting from Isilon servers works fine. nicl NetInfo command line utility See also: NetInfo Night mode You mean: Dark Mode Non-breaking Space Typing Option+Spacebar will keep your words together, and not split across lines. Norton File Saver Norton utility to facilitate recovery of files in case of disk problems. Creates hidden top-level disk files: Norton FS Data Norton FS Index Norton FS Volume Norton FS Volume 2 Not Charging Message seen at the top right of an iPad or similar Apple mobile devices when they are connected to the USB port of a Mac. It means that the USB port provides insufficient power to charge the devices, as when an iPad is connected to an older, white iMac. And even if the computer's USB port is sufficient to render charging, it may be a marginal source, where charging would take a long time. Larger mobile devices require hefty charging units. Notes iOS app provided by Apple, for writing notes on a "yellow pad". You can explicitly mail them, but they can also automatically sync (per recent updating of the note) to an IMAP-based mail facility, per your iOS device Settings for Notes, Default Account setting. (Note that Exchange is not inherently an IMAP server, so won't show up within Default Account choices.) On the IMAP mail server, the notes will be mail messages encoded in HTML. Important: For notes to propagate to iOS devices, they must be in an IMAP server's folder: if they are in your "On My Mac" folder under Notes, they will *not* propagate. There is the urge to perform a save of some kind, to preserve what you've written; but, like Stickies on the Mac, saving is automatic. In your Mac Mail Preferences, under Accounts, in Mailbox Behaviors, there is a "Show notes in inbox" checkbox which you can check or uncheck to allow or prevent new or updated notes from showing up there. And not only do notes show up in your Mac Inbox, but you can edit the notes there, and any changes in content or fonts show up on your iPad; and notes moved to the trash on the Mac disappear from the iPad - kind of mini-cloud processing. Notes can be found under REMINDERS in the left pane of Mac Mail. The font for notes in Mac Mail can be set independently of the iPad setting. (Helvetica 17 works well, lining up.) On an iOS device: There is no way to select font size, or bold or italic. In OS X, notes are stored in directory ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes/Data/Library/Notes Notes (Mac app) New in Mountain Lion, as a separate app - no longer a folder in left side of Mac Mail. Like iOS Notes and former Mac notes within Mail, notes are stored in an IMAP server mail folder, including a me.com mail account. (Does not sync in iCloud.) Has no preferences of its own. Notes problems When new Notes don't show up on your other devices, the common cause is the password for your mail account having changed but that new password has not been instated on the originating device. Notification Center In iOS: New in iOS 5. Before that, Push Notifications existed, but in the form of interrupting pop-ups, with no persistence for look-back. With NC, you swipe down from the top of the device screen to see all your notifications. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - In OS X: Notifications Center came to the Mac with OS 10.8, where you swipe from the right edge of your trackpad. The Weather portion needs you to go into System Preferences > Security > Privacy to there check the Weather box. Sound: It is Basso. As of 10.9 there is no provided means for choosing the sound made. NTFS OS X can format a partition in Microsoft FAT format, and can read files in it, but cannot write files in it. See also: FAT NTP time servers For time synchronization, you may use time.apple.com (Apple campus in Cupertino, CA) tick.usno.navy.mil (U.S. Naval Observatory's public NTP server) In ASIA: time.asia.apple.com In Europe: time.euro.apple.com NTP operates by a carefully timed exchange of data packets, so it's important to choose a time server that's geographically near to you to minimize network latency during the sync process. NuBus The card slot technology used in Macs starting in 1987. Lasted until about 1995, when replaced by the faster, industry standard PCI bus. Numbers iWork spreadsheet application. Platforms: Mac, iOS Export to: PDF; Excel; CSV Limitations: Cannot export spreadsheet to HTML form, as you might want to do in glossary creation. Numbers for iCloud Announced at WWDC 2013, initially available for try-out during the summer via beta.icloud.com, for developers. Documents can be dragged into the iCloud window, but not out: to get them out, either right-click and choose to download in Pages, PDF, or Excel (2004, .xsl) format, or Send a copy via email. Saving is automatic $(G!7(B just be outside any cell containing data. To introduce a formula, press '=' within a cell: this will cause Functions to appear in the right pane. Note that there is no capability to generate HTML output. See also: Pages for iCloud .numbers-tef Filename extension for a Numbers iCloud Document, designating that it can be opened by both the iOS and Mac OS X versions of Numbers. These -tef files are actually folder "packages", not standard files. Object code format (OS X) Such files conform to the Mach-O executable format. There is a 'pagestuff' tool to display information about the specified logical pages of a file conforming to the Mach-O executable format. Objective-C The official programming language for Apple product developers, in both the Mac OS and iOS environments. Objective-C came from the NextStep environment, which as the origin of Mac OS X. Objective-C is just a couple of Smalltalk-like extensions over C. A GCC compiler can compile it. Many people find the other object-oriented C, C++, too ugly, so Objective-C is more compelling. .m is the extension used for Objective-C files. Office software OpenOffice.org provides a free office software suite, consisting of: Writer, the word processor, for simple to complex documents; Calc, the spreadsheet, with 2D and 3D charting. See also: Microsoft Office "One more thing..." Famous feigned appendage to an Apple presentation used to introduce a new hardware product, usually major, as though it were an afterthought, as in saying "But there is one more thing...". Note that this phrase may be derived from the famed expression used by TV police lieutenant Frank Columbo, who seems to exit the suspect's room, but turns back and says, "Just one more thing...". That TV series started in 1971. open /usr/bin/open Command to open a file (or a directory or URL) or application, just as if you had double-clicked the file's icon. This is how you can launch an interactive application from the command line. Use the -W option to wait until the applications it opens (or that were already open) have exited. However, this may not be sufficient, as where synchronous scripting is involved. Examples: Open Safari: open /Applications/Safari.app/ Open the TextEdit application: open '/Volumes/Macintosh HD/ Applications/TextEdit.app' Show the Utilities folder in Finder: open '/Volumes/Macintosh HD/ Applications/Utilities' Show a URL in the browser (Safari): open http://www.apple.com/ "Open in 32-bit mode" A checkbox which shows up in Get Info for 64-bit applications, for them to operate in 64-bit mode. As of OS 10.6, most Apple-provided applications run in 64-bit mode. Safari is a prominent example. The flags is stored in the file com.apple.LaunchServices.plist in the user Preferences folder (~/Library/ Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist). That means that several users on the same machine could have different flags set for the same applications. See also: Boot in 64-bit mode OpenAFS on Mac AFS elements locations: Configuration files /var/db/openafs/etc/ In there, file ThisCell would contain the cell name (e.g., "bu.edu"). File CellServDB needs to be created with the database server machines for each cell that the local Cache Manager can contact (e.g., kerberos1,2,3). Startup Script /Library/StartupItems/OpenAFS/OpenAFS Startup configuration /Library/StartupItems/OpenAFS/ StartupParameters.plist Mount point /afs OpenDoc Mid 1990s component software, given up in 1997 in preference for Java, as part of Apple reorganization at that time, as Steve Jobs returned to run Apple. That was regarded as an expedient, given that Java provides the means to develop applications, whereas OpenDoc provided the means for developing user environments, including drag-and-drop user interfaces. OpenFirmware ROM A CHRP development. Contains only minimal hardware-addressing instructions - unlike the original Mac ROMs, which carried complex, machine-specific instruction sets. With OpenFirmware, most instructions are instead loaded into RAM. OpenGL OpenGL is the one of the graphics services in Mac OS X. (The others are Quartz and QuickTime.) OpenGL is a sophisticated open-source three-dimensional rendering system. Developed as an open source project (OPEN Graphics Library) by Silicon Graphics in the 1990s, OpenGL supports advanced 3D rendering. It is of primary interest to game and multimedia developers. It also has a role in scientific visualization. OpenGL replaces QuickDraw 3D. OpenType Font format introduced by Microsoft and Adobe in 1997, as an alternative to PostScript fonts. Supported in OS X as of 10.2. A single OpenType font file works on both Mac and Windows. Supports Unicode, so OpenType fonts can contain a much larger number of characters (tens of thousands) than PostScript (255) or TrueType fonts. Can be installed in any OS X font folder. Can do "tricks", such as characters substituting for others. Before OpenType, Adobe championed a font format named Multiple Masters. Mac OS X provides TrueType fonts: it does not install OpenType fonts: they usually come from installing certain third-party software, particularly Adobe applications. To inspect your fonts by type, launch the Font Book application and enter like "OpenType PostScript" in the Search box. Operating systems As of 2016, Apple has thsee operating systems: • macOS • iOS • watchOS • tvOS Oppenheimer, Peter Apple CFO; joined Apple in 1996, as controller. The Apple CFO oversees the controller, treasury, investor relations, tax, information services, internal audit, facilities, corporate development and human resources operations of the company. Optical drive, primary, eject 1. Press the Media Eject key (a pyramid over a flat, on newer keyboards). Repeat to close. 2. Hold down F12 on older keyboards. Repeating the operation will cause the tray to slide in. Optical drive, second, eject Like for primary, but hold down Option key. Option key Held down during boot, on G4 and later systems, will cause discovery and graphical display of bootable images, as icons. (Will also look for network bootables.) At this point, the Startup Manager is in control. See also: Startup Manager Orientation lock on iPhone The lock is on if in the status bar you see a circular arrow with a padlock inside it. If so, you can pull up the Control Center from the bottom of the screen and turn that off. OroborOSX X11 window manager: OS X version of Oroborus. You need to also download the underlying Xwindows: XDarwin is the best choice, being an OSX adaptation of Xfree86. http://oroborosx.sourceforge.net/ Start-up items are in Library/Preferencs/OroborOSX/ Launch Menu Items/StartupItems which lists the names of scripts contained in the same directory, whose names are ____.x11ap . You can launch those items from the Launch menu, and also "Edit Launch Menu Items". Provided is /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc, which can be manually run from the "Launch->Run xinitrc" menu item, unless you provide your own .xinitrc file in your home directory, for that to be run instead. You can have that xinitrc script run automatically by updating the StartupItems file to add the line "Run xinitrc". OroborOSX keyboard shortcuts Only work while the cursor is in the menubar - basically because OroborOSX only becomes the frontmost application when the cursor is in the menubar -it is XDarwin that is in front otherwise. OroborOSX usage Double-click the window bar to roll the window up like a window shade. Right-click the window bar to cause the window to roll up and iconify. The window icons are tucked away in the upper left corner of the monitor screen: moving the pointer there will expose them. Click and hold the pointer over the OroborOSX icon in the toolbar to pop up a full window selection list. OS Operating System. See: Mac OS OS upgrade OS X: You can perform an archive type upgrade, which saves replaced components in a directory named like: /Previous System 1/ . You can remove this old stuff and reclaim disk space by following Apple's docs.info Article 25461...which in summary is to do a Get Info on the folder, unlock it, and change ownership of the folder and contents to you, as administrator; then you can trash it. OS X See: Mac OS X OS X, reinstall Do this via Recovery Partition, which is present since Lion (OS X 10.7). Boot into Recovery Mode via the Recovery Partition by powering up your Internet-connected Mac while holding down the Command and R keys. Select "Install Mac OS X", click Continue. OS X Mavericks The official name of OS 10.9, announced 2013/06/11 and scheduled for fall, 2013. The naming departs from the big cats series (ran out of cats), to use the name of a California locale (big surf). Internally, OS X Mavericks is Darwin 13. Note that there is no emphasis on "merging" the Mac OS with that of Apple's mobile devices: that doesn't make sense, as each platform has its own needs. In particular, the desktop will never have a touch screen, owing to one's arm quickly fatiguing if held horizontally for any length of time. A further point is that even within the mobile OS, the iPhone and iPod touch have interface elements which differ from those on the iPad, owning to much less space to work with on the smaller devices. OS X Mountain Lion The official name of OS 10.8, scheduled for summer, 2012. Released 2012/07/25, for $19.99. Download size is 4.37 GB. There is no "Mac" at the front of the name, in Apple's evolution of the OS name. Desktop allpaper: Galaxy NGC 3190 Saving the download: When Mountain Lion is downloaded from the Mac App store, it will be in the Applications folder as "Install Mac OS X Mountain Lion". You can save a copy of that before completing the install - because it removed itself after the install. X11 is not included with Mountain Lion: see Apple Article 5293. Tech Specs: Apple Article SP654 Notes on some software compatibilities: Kensington Mouseworks, previously used for trackball preferences, should be disposed of, to use Trackball Works instead. 10.8.2: support.apple.com/kb/DL1581 Previous: Mac OS 10.7 (Lion) See also: Mountain Lion OS X Recovery Apple's facility in newer Macintoshes whereby recovery of operating system functionality can be achieved by one of the following means: - Restore your Mac from a Time Machine backup. - Verify and repair connected drives using Disk Utility. - Check your Internet connection or get help online using Safari. - Install or reinstall OS X. Installing OS X creates a recovery partition (about 650 MB) on the disk, which you can boot from by holding down Cmd+R when booting. (You can also see and select partitions by holding down the Option key when booting.) The partition is not visible in the Finder or Disk Utility. You can report it via command 'diskutil list'. BSD name: disk0s3 The recovery partition provides utilities, the ability to restore from Time Machine, or to access Apple's servers to reinstall the OS. In cases where the recovery partition is not accessible, recovery mode instead can occur over the Internet with Apple's servers. Ref: Apple Article HT4718 See also: Recovery HD osascript Command to execute AppleScripts and other Open Scripting Architecture (OSA) language scripts. See also: Message box Otto The robot mascot of the Automator facility in OS X. Our competition is confused Tim Cook's famous element of his keynote presentation at the 2013/10/22 Apple media event of at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco. Standing in front of an image of a road sign showing a convoluted and twisted arrow path, he said: "Our competition is different - they're confused. They chased after netbooks. Now they're trying to make PCs into tablets and tablets into PCs. Who knows what they will do next?" Package OS X: A special type of folder, containing an application and its support files, such as plug-ins. The hidden folder extension is .pkg, which you can verify with Get Info. A Package is most commonly encountered by OS X users from within a .dmg disk image file, downloaded from a software provider's site. A Package is shown to the Mac user as an application icon rather than suggesting a folder. Double-clicking on the Package launches the application, rather than opening the folder. To actually see the contents of the Package, right-click (Control+Click) on it for Show Package Contents. A Package is created by PackageMaker.app which is installed with the Mac OS X Developer tools disk in /Developer/Applications/ (If your Mac doesn't have this, install it from your purchased OS X disc, or download from the Apple Developers site (after registering as a developer). See also: Installer; .pkg file; pkgutil; Receipts PackageMaker An Xcode application in directory /Developer/Applications/ for building Packages of OS X software, for installation on a specified minimal level of Macintoshes, directed via a dialog with pre-defined actions. When launched, a window presents three tabs: Configuration; Requirements; Actions. "Include root in package" controls whether the enclosing directory of the package contents gets installed. That is usually left checkmarked, as it is usually desirable for the files to be installed within their own folder, not be planted as individual files into some unrelated directory. (If the object is a single file rather than a directory, the Include root choice will be grayed out. Normally, you save your work as a .pmdoc application file, which PackageMaker can later re-open for further development. When the construction is done, perform Build to create a .mpkg output (meta package), which is the thing that another Mac user can launch to install what you packaged. Note that PackageMaker can also open a package. This capability is handy where you might want to augment someone else's package to add a documentation file, for example. Doc: PackageMaker User Guide Introduction to PackageMaker User Guide Alternatives: The Iceberg package maker. Packet tracing See: Network trace Pages The word processor, page layout application in the iWork package. A document may be opened simply by dragging its icon over the Pages icon. Imports/opens: Plain text (.txt), Rich Text Format (.rtf and .rtfd), HTML (.html), AppleWorks 6 word processing (.cwk), Word (.doc), OpenOffice (.docx), and WordML (.xml). Notes: XML documents must be in Word format. Pages does not open PostScript or PDF files (use Preview for that). Exports: PDF, Word (.doc), HTML, RTF, plain text, ePub (ebooks; Article: HT4168). Note: No docx export capability - which is ironic, in that lowly TextEdit can. Is quite adept at opening Microsoft Word (.doc) files than AppleWorks, but can't handle some things, like Paragraph Borders (which are rather inconsequential). Images: Can be imported, placed, rotated, resized, etc. Getting an image file into the document is most easily performed by dragging the file's icon from the Finder. I don't see any means for doing a Get Info on imported images (for source file name, type, dpi, scaling, etc.). When you want place an oversized image (which exceeds the section format margin boundaries) or achieve a "bleed" toward the edge of the paper, select a "Fixed on page" type of Wrap, which accommodates overflowing margins, whereas "Moves with text" enforces margins and truncates the image. Drawing/authoring images: Limited capability, by doing Insert->Shape, and then altering fill, line type, color, width (stroke), shadow, and opacity via Inspector controls. Otherwise, author externally, as in other iLife apps. Fonts: To see what font is being used for current text, open the Fonts panel, and select Show Effects from the action menu (gear button). Text box: To create a floating text box, place a Shape anywhere on the page, then double-click it and type the text you want to be in it. Layers: An important concept. Elements (text blocks, images, etc.) added later are implicitly at a higher layer than elements placed earlier. This is why text in a text block is "repelled" by a newly placed image. Use the Arrange menu to adjust layering. Stored on disk, the Pages document is actually a collection of files. Note that iBooks Author is in essence a next generation Pages program. See also: iBooks Author; iWork Pages 2 New, 2006/01, part of iWork '06. New features: - New Apple-designed templates, including newsletters, posters, flyers, technical reports, invoices, project proposals, and storyboards. - Mail merge using Address Book contacts or groups to quickly and easily personalize documents. - Enhanced page navigation using page thumbnails to reorganize the pages in your document. - New Search view for listing all the occurrences of a word or phrase in a document and jumping to any one. www.apple.com/support/pages/hottips/ Pages for iCloud Announced at WWDC 2013, initially available for try-out during the summer via beta.icloud.com, for developers. Documents can be dragged into the iCloud window, but not out: to get them out, either right-click and choose to download in Pages, PDF, or Word (2004, .doc) format, or Send a copy via email. Note that there is no capability to generate HTML output. See also: Numbers for iCloud .pages-tef Filename extension for a Pages iCloud Document, designating that it can be opened by both the iOS and Mac OS X versions of Pages. These -tef files are actually folder "packages", not standard files. Pairing See: Apple Remote Panther Product code name for Mac OS 10.3 Released: 2003/09 Previous: Jaguar Next: Tiger System requirements: $(O#@(B Computer, one of: - Power Mac G3, G4 or G5; - iBook computer with 128 MB of physical RAM; - iMac - eMac - PowerBook G3 or G4 $(O#@(B Built-in USB. $(O#@(B Video conferencing requires a 600 MHz or faster PowerPC G3, a PowerPC G4, or a PowerPC G5 processor; broadband Internet access (100 Kbps or faster); and a compatible FireWire DV camera or web camera. $(O#@(B Internet access requires a compatible service provider; iDisk requires a .Mac account; fees may apply. See: Mac OS 10.3 PAP OS X: Printer Access Protocol, the standard method of printing over AppleTalk-based networks, including AppleTalk over ethernet. See also: ASIP Parallels bare metal solution Parallels Server 4.0 for Mac Bare Metal Edition is a virtualization solution that allows you to create and run virtual machines on bare Apple hardware. Parallels Desktop Commercial product for running another operating system in parallel with OS X, rather than as an alternate boot (Bootcamp). As of late 2009, can run 64-bit guest OS as well as 32-bit. By default, Parallels shares the Mac's networking connection, where the guest OS is using a private networking environment in Parallels, with addresses like 10.211.55.4. As such, applications outside that Mac which try to respond to that 10-net address obviously cannot reach the guest OS, to in any way respond to the application which may have sent a file containing that private network address. LICENSING: Note that its EULA says: "Scope of Use. You may use one copy of the Software activated by a license key on a single server (virtual or physical) owned, leased, or otherwise controlled by you." This sentence previously additionally had at its end ""at a single time." ...which had indicated that if you use it on a computer at home, turn that off, and then go to work to use on a computer there, one copy should be sufficient. Their revision further restricts this. Updates: The vendor periodically provides updates for only the current level of the product. Applying the update is tedious, with a protracted install at the OS X level, then having to log in to your Windows admin account and let the Parallels Tools update occur there and then reboot Windows. Windows install tips: Do not perform an express type install, as that will immediately ask for the product key, and can fail during install, claiming problems with the (valid) key. (The key will be entered after install.) Shortcomings: Does not support running a standard Mac OS such as 10.5 Leopard as a VM: only supports running 10.5 OS X Server. (Apple's license agreement doesn't permit the desktop versions of their OS to be run in virtualization, so all of the virtualization vendors including Parallels explicitly disable it from working.) Advisories: DO NOT interrupt Windows when it is launching. Windows remains crappy, even as of Windows 7. If you do interrupt Windows start-up, the next time you start it you will have to go through an ugly, time-consuming recovery operation. www.parallels.com kb.parallels.com Parallels Desktop, kickstart? A Linux kickstart via Parallels is problematic: you will get "No such file or directory" if you try, which seems to be due to the "boot:" occurring in a minimal Linux starter, which has no ability to read a Macintosh file system. You might instead try putting the kickstart file into an ISO and mounting that, to be referred to by the "ks=". Parallels Desktop, Linux limitations With a Linux VM, copy-paste is not available across the VM's boundaries (nor is drag-and-drop option) because not in Parallels Tools for Linux. Parallels Desktop, Linux root mail When doing testing an a Parallels VM running Linux, it is best to keep root mail from going to local staff. A good way to do that is to edit /etc/rootalias to limit email addresses. Parallels Desktop, Linux virt consoles In a Linux console view, Function keys are used to switch among the various virtual consoles, by holding down the Alt (Option) key and then pressing F1 or F2 or F3, etc. Standard Mac key settings thwart that. To get that functionality, go into System Preferences > Keyboard, and check the box "Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys". Now, Alt+F2 will work. Parallels Desktop, new VM A new virtual machine can be created from: - An installation disc; - An image file, on local disk (.iso, .dmg, .cdr, .app) Parallels Desktop, VPN usage Here you want to establish a VPN connection to your employer's site, at the OS X level, and also transparently use that VPN within a Parallels Windows virtual machine; but, the virtual machine just sits there at the "Verifying user name and password..." message." Solution: Rather than using the usual Shared Networking, set the virtual machine instance to use Bridged Networking (Default Adapter) instead. As part of this, make sure that the advanced options for the VPN in the host OS X are not set to send all traffic over the VPN connection - which is the default OS X setting, but might have inadvertently been changed. Note: vnic0 is the Parallels shared networking interface. Parallels Desktop, Windows 7 install If you have an activation key, do not enter it on the early screen of the Parallels virtual machine creation. (On the panel which asks for it, disable the Express Install checkbox.) If you enter the key early, the W7 install will loop on error: "The unattended answer file contains an invalid product key." Parallels Desktop considerations With Parallels in place on your Mac, be sure to go into the Spotlight preferences panel and, in the Privacy window, add the Documents/Parallels folder to that window, to eliminate the overhead of Spotlight indexing of the contents of your virtual machines. Parallels Desktop versions VERSION MAC OS SUPPORTED 5 10.6 (Snow Leopard) 7 10.7 (Lion) Lion can be guest OS. 8 10.8 (Mountain Lion) Mountain Lion can be guest OS. 9 10.9 (Mavericks) Parameter list file See: Property List Partition type, see Launch Disk Utility. Select the drive of interest, then do Get Info. Passbook In iOS, keep all your credit cards, store cards, rewards cards, and boarding passes in this. As of iOS 9, renamed to Walle. Passcode A numeric "password" which you enter into an Apple mobile device to gain access to it. Apple devices start out with no passcode. You may establish one, the basic being 4 numbers, but better if longer. The passcode can be alpanumeric, but that can be cumbersome. Note that establishing a passcode automatically turns on "data protection" (encryption). Password See: Encryption Password, reset on Macintosh If you have lost your administrator password, you can reset it. In current systems, reboot into Recovery mode, either by holding Command-R at startup or by holding down the Option key and then selecting the Recovery partition as the boot disk. Once in, choose Terminal in the Utilities menu, then enter the command: resetpassword. In the dialog which appears, select your boot drive, then choose your user account, then click the button to reset the account-F¢s password and supply a new-A one when prompted. In older systems, boot from the install disk (C key), and go far enough into that process (but not to actual install) to get menus: go into the Utilities menu > Reset Password... Password, test how good On OS X, do: md5 -s <ThePassword> Paste the result into a Google search and see if anyone has already cracked that. Passwords & similar sensitive tidbits We all have banking, merchant, and similar passwords and other sensitive tidbits of information we want to keep secure, but still convenient. Putting them into file on your hard drive is convenient, but not secure. Mac OS X provides a good solution: The Keychain Access utility provides a Secure Notes capability, to save small amounts of information, encrypted - an ideal solution. Launch Keychain Access and in the left pane click Secure Notes. At the bottom, click the '+' sign to add a new secure note (or, from the File menu, select New Secure Note Item. In the resulting windowette you name your note, and enter lines of information in the body of the note. Click Add when done to store it. To later see contents, double-click on it. Initially, you'll need to enter your login password to see it; but you can adjust as needed for subsequent access, per the security you desire. Pasteboard Old term for what is now the Clipboard (q.v.), being the temporary holder of copy-paste data. Patents Apple considers patents a key part of its research and development strategy. Apple's failed lawsuit against Microsoft for MS's alleged copyright infringement of the look and feel of the Macintosh was based upon copyright rather than patents. That failure caused Apple to resolve to seek patents on their software. PC disks, read All PowerPC Macs can read PC-formatted media. PDF, add signature/sign There are times when you are sent a PDF which you are supposed to sign and return. How? You can do that in Preview - OS X's PDF utility. To create a signature, go into Tools > Annotate > Signature > Manage Signatures. There, you have two choices: 1. Sign on the trackpad Somewhat awkward, and you need some kind of sylus. 2. Camera capture of signature on paper. This is more realistic, presuming that you have a camera on your Mac. Sign your name in dark ink on a piece of opaque white paper and hold that up to the camera such that the signature aligns with the displayed line, and it will be automatically captured. You may have to clear and repeat to get it just right. To use the signature, open the PDF you need to sign. Click on the toolbox icon to expose the markup toolbar. Therein, click on the Sign icon and click on the signature for it to appear on the document in preliminary form, which you then drag and size as needed. Note that the signature cannot be exported to another Mac (as you may want to do with a Mac which lacks a camera). Pdf, change Title (& other metadata) PDF metadata of an existing PDF cannot be changed in Preview, but you can do so as you create a copy... Open the PDF in Preview, then do: File > Print > PDF > Save as PDF... which provides the opportunity to set Title, Author, Subject, Keywords as you choose. PDF, copy onto iOS device See: iBooks PDFs PDF, create Various Mac apps allow saving as a PDF (1.3 PDF standard). But (issues): - File size is much larger than you might expect (because Quartz uses a generic compression method (zip) for all data in the PDF files it generates. The Preview appl's File menu has a "Save As PDF" function. If you select Print from the File menu of any application, the option "Save As PDF" is provided. Mac OS X creates a "Digital Master" PDF file, which is larger than a typical PDF file because the resolution of images in the file is not scaled down. The PDF file includes each font character used in the document (but not the whole font - which can make for problems when the document is taken to a foreign system). You can also create a PDF file of a document when you preview it in Preview by choosing File > Export. Note that Preview can be accessed automatically from any appl by doing Print, then selecting Preview. See also: PDF-X, create; Save As PDF PDF, create from Web image You can create a PDF from via Print, but that's not always the best way... Various Web functions will present you with certain page images that you would naturally like to save as a PDF. Banks in particular will render a multi-page statement image when you click on their "show your December statement". If you utilize the Print function to perform a "Save as PDF", you may notice in the page preview that the page images are truncated: some portion of the bottom of each page is cut off. This is the result of the bank rendering each image with an odd aspect ratio such that when it is generated into a Letter size image, the page height is excessive and so the bottom is sacrificed. You could try to futz with the Paper Size in the Print dialog in order to compensate, or try directly saving the Web page as a Web Archive, but the most straightforward way to deal with such page images is to right-click and choose "Open in Preview": you will see the page images in their natural aspect ratio, fully intact. From there you can perform a Save As to generate a file with the page images in their full fidelity. PDF, create smaller When saving a PDF in a sophisticated application (e.g., publishing), you can make its size much smaller... Go into Print, then click on the "Copies & Pages" pop-out menu and choose ColorSync; then, under Quartz Filter, choose the option Reduce File Size. Now, when you Save as PDF, the resulting size will be much smaller than usual. PDF, Save as, shortcut Saving a We page or image as a PDF involves too many steps, having to invoke Print, then pull down a menu to find "Save as PDF..." and choose that. A keyboard shortcut can be created: Invoke System Preferences, then Keyboard & Mouse. There, choose tab Keyboard Shortcuts. Go to the bottom and expand the All Applications diamond. Click the + sign to add a new shortcut. In the Menu Title box type "Save as PDF" and then press the Option and ';' keys together to create an ellipsis. In the Keyboard Shortcut box press the Command and P keys simultaneously. Click to Add the shortcut. Now, when you are on a page you want to save as a PDF, press Command + P simultaneously - twice. You will now be in the saving page. (There seems to be no way to form a keyboard shortcut which will get there directly - the processing always has to go through the Print function.) PDF and iOS See: iBooks PDFs PDF printing OS 10.3 added: 1. The ability to send a PDF directly from an application to the printer - this is what Acrobat 6.0.1 does, thus speeding up printing to non-PS printers. 2. Integrated Adobe Normalizer, providing a PS->PDF conversion in the printing system to allow printing of PS from apps like Quark and Illustrator to non-PS printers. A PDF is converted to PostScript or bitmap image via Core Graphics Rendering. To get the best quality when you print a PDF file, print the original. You can open PDF files in Preview or any other PDF file reader. If you preview a PDF file, then print the preview, you may notice a decrease in the quality of the printout because you are printing a PDF file created from a PDF file. See also: cgpdftops PDF size limit? There is no PDF size limit that I know of in either Mac OS X or iOS. In iOS, there is specific handling that should be observed with large PDFs: see "Cannot download attachment" in the MESSAGES section of this QuickFacts. PDF viewer Apple's Preview application is much faster than Adobe Acrobat Reader - particularly the bloated v6 AR. PDF viewing Use the Preview application. Best settings: In Preferences: Auto-scale Respect screen DPI for scale In View menu: Automatically Resize PDF-X, create The PDF-X variant of PDF is intended to assure that the PDF is fully portable, and in particular contains full font sets (not just used letters, as OS X's Save as PDF does). Up through OS 10.6 you could do this via Print > PDF > Save as PDF-X. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - In 10.7 the Save as PDF-X choice has been removed. Instead, you can: Print > PDF > Open PDF in Preview then File > Save, and in Quartz Filter you can choose Create Generic PDFX-3 Document. (Instead of Save, you can do Export, which amounts to the same thing.) But: This is saving a PDF from a PDF, and results in quality loss. In particular, images are not as sharp as the original - may look "smeary". You can "fix" this by modifying the filter: Open "/System/Library/Filters/Create Generic PDFX-3 Document" using a text editor and jump to the end of the file, to find a set of lines like: FlattenTransparencyResolution 72 72 Change the 72 occurrences to 300 or 600, to use that resolution for transparency flattening. You can make this filter available directly from the "PDF" menu on the Print... dialog: near the top of the file, look for lines that look like: Applications PDF Workflow Printing There, change the 'false' to 'true' for the lines following 'Printing' and 'PDF Workflow'. This will enable this new filter to show up on the PDF services and Printing PDF menus so you can select it directly. This spares the tedium of having to save the PDF from your application, then open and process it with Preview and resave it. PDF version: is 1.3 (versus 1.4 for basic Save as PDF) See also: Save as PDF-X Pending Updates Status of certain updates in your iOS App Store display. As of 2013, updates larger than 100 MB (e.g., Pages v2) require a wifi connection: cannot download over cellular. Performance, improve/optimize - Minimize the number of items you have on the desktop, as this can result in excess system overhead (windowserver process management). - Turn off AppleTalk if not used. Performance analysis In a terminal window, run 'top'. There is an AquaMon app available. Perl A powerful scripting language. OS X provides extensive info about Perl in its man pages. Do 'man perl' to get started, to thereafter do 'man perdsc' and similar to delve into sub areas. Permissions database The permissions on system files is maintained in a permissions database, as used in Disk Utility's Repair Disk Permissions function. Note that the contents of the permissions database can change with system updates, and thus you should not attempt to fix permissions of a long-running operating system using install media. Apple Articles: HT1452; HT2963 See also: .bom Personal Web Sharing Mac OS 10.5: Runs the Apache Web server which is built into OS X. The Sites folder in the directory of each user on the Mac then becomes publicly accessible, along with any files in that folder. You would want to prepare the contents of the folder beforehand: there is a short guide in the index.html file which is in that directory by default. To activate Personal Web Sharing: - In System Preferences, click Sharing. - Click Services. - Turn on Personal Web Sharing. See also: Web Sharing Photo cropping tip On an iOS device, you can crop a photo by going into the Camera Roll, select a picture, then Edit, then crop it, then save the result. A shortcut approach: When viewing the picture in the camera roll, pinch zoom it to fill the screen as a form of cropping, then simultaneously press the Wake/Sleep and Home buttons: that cropped image will instantly appear in your Camera Roll as a new image. Photo manipulation Download GIMP, a free alternative to Photoshop. Photo Sharing Formally, iCloud Photo Sharing. Can share to certain people (who can be sent email saying that the photo stream is available); or you can turn on Public Website to share on the Web, as a photo show area (not simply individual photos). Can share photos. Can share videos up to 5 minutes long, formats MP4, QuickTime, H.264, and MPEG-4, up to 720p resolution. Video sharing is new as of OS X 10.9 with iPhoto 9.5, and iOS 7. (Be aware that videos can take a while to upload to iCloud, and during that time will not evidence themselves in the shared album. If you use OS X 10.8, the shared albums will be visible, but the videos will not be evidenced.) When you add a person to the subscribers list, you are inviting them to subscribe, as the email sent to them will say. The subscribers list will show a question mark to the left of their email address until they do. Photos can be downloaded by the invitee; but videos are streamed from iCloud and cannot be downloaded. Procedure on a Mac: Select the photos you want to share. Click the Share button in the toolbar; choose Photo Stream from the pop-up menu; click New Photo Stream. Enter a name for your shared stream and the email addresses of people you want to subscribe to it; or, to let people who aren't iCloud users view your new shared stream on the web, select Public Website. The email recipient needs to open the email using the Apple Mail app an iPhone, iPad, iPod touch running iOS 6 or later; or via the Mail app on a Mac that is running OS X 10.8.2 or later and iPhoto 9.4 or Aperture 3.4 or later. (Opening the invitation email in a web mail facility such as Hotmail does not work.) Photo Stream (My Photo Stream) Apple's early cloud service for customer photos, which you can turn on. Take a photo on an iOS device or import a photo from your digital camera to your computer and the photo is automatically sent to iCloud, which then pushes a copy of that photo over any available Wi-Fi or Ethernet connection to the Photos app on your iOS devices, and iPhoto and Aperture on your OS 10.7+ Mac, and the Pictures Library on your PC. You can even view your Photo Stream album on your Apple TV. Photo Stream is a free service which Apple implemented early in their online services. It's a cache of recent (1000) photos - not a permanent repository - and is not part of iCloud proper, so Photo Stream content does not count against your iCloud storage allotment. Note that Photo Stream photos are not accessible via iCloud.com. For implicit privacy, Photo Stream is not turned on by default: On the Mac, go into System Preferences > iCloud and click the box for Photo Stream; On an iOS device, go into Settings > iCloud and select Photo Stream. Photos on your Apple mobile device are synched to iCloud, where an implicit property is that if you delete the photo from your device, then it is also removed from iCloud, because you want it gone. Permanent photos preservation is achieved through a Macintosh computer on which iPhoto is running and which has Automatic Import turned on (default) in Preferences > iCloud. So, if you have your Mac running and iPhoto is active, and then you delete a photo from your iPhone after having been on the phone for a while, it will be gone from iCloud but be preserved on your Mac. And I discovered that the function is even more interesting: more than 24 hours after I had deleted a photo from my iPhone, I turned on a home Mac, fired up iPhoto, and that photo came in from the cloud, to be preserved on that Mac, too. Apparently, Apple's servers remembered that other Mac having established Automatic Import such that iCloud hung onto the deleted photo in order to get it to that Mac when it fired up. To be phased out: As of early 2015, Apple is implementing iCloud Photo Library as the photos storage service, where photos (and videos) content will count against your iCloud storage allotment. Photographs See also: HDR Photos Apple's minimalist name for the Mac's new digital image media handler, in 2015. Was very briefly previewed at WWDC 2014, which Apple said would be available early in 2015. It will replace the old iPhoto app. What Apple did not say at the time is that Photos will also replace their high-end Aperture package, which is being discontinued. Photos is expected to be much more sophisticated than iPhoto, borrowing many features that were in Aperture; but it is not expected to be a pro app like Aperture was. Indeed, Apple was steering Aperture customers to Adobe's Lightroom pro app. When Photos is installed, it removes the iPhoto icon from the Dock, but the old app remains available in Applications. If you launch iPhoto then, it will prompt you to convert to Photos - a move which requires that you have enough space in your iCloud account to accommodate all the media files: if you have just the 5 GB default, that may not be enough. Photos has the concept of a System Photo Library, which is the collection which participates in your iCloud Photo Library. You can have other libraries, but only the System Photo Library's contents participate in iCloud. To work with other libraries: Before you double-click on the Photos app icon, hold down the Option key, to cause a list of libraries to appear, where you can choose which one to work with. The next time you launch Photos, it will have remembered that library, and will open it by default. But, still, only the library designated as the System Photo Library will participate in iCloud. You can have multiple photo libraries, but you can't have more than one open at a time - which makes photos migration awkward at best, where you would have to drag/copy photos out of one library, which Photos, re-launch to access a different library, then draw those photos into the library. Ping The social networking function built into iTunes 10 for people to be able to share info about music they like, as a way of furthering store sales. If you allowed iTunes to use Ping, it would send info to Apple as to your music liking preferences. Can be defeated in Preferences: uncheck it in General, check it in Parental; and hide the sidebar. Ping failed (quite spectacularly) primarily because it began as a partnership with Facebook that Facebook pulled the rug on just prior to launch, hoping to get further concessions from Apple. Rather than rebuilding it from scratch, Apple launched it anyway with rudimentary commenting features that devolved into forums of unregulated spam and harassment. Pink Code name for the object-oriented operating system which Apple developed as a possible follow-on to OS 9. Its name derived from a 1988 meeting of the Mac OS developers, where software improvements which could be developed reasonably soon were written on blue index cards, and more far out ideas on pink cards. In April, 1991 then CEO John Sculley demonstrated Pink to IBM. See also: Taligent Pismo Code name for the black G3 PowerBook with Firewire. Pixlet Pixlet is the first studio-grade codec for filmmakers, available exclusively in Mac OS X v10.3 Panther. Tuned for use with high-definition source, it allows digital film frames to play back in real time on any 1Ghz G4. Pixlet is focused on workflow, designed for digital filmmakers, animators and effects artists to easily review high-resolution image sequences on a standard PowerMac or PowerBook. Pixlet plays every frame of a sequence without frame-to-frame dependencies so that a media professional can scrutinize every detail of a sequence. Pixlet enables high-end digital film frames at 960x540 (at about 20 Mbps) to play in real time with a 1GHz G4 or faster Macintosh, while 1920x1080 frames (at about 40 Mbps) will play in real time on a dual 2GHz G5 or faster. This capability eliminates the need to invest in costly, proprietary hardware for the professional review process. .pkg file Is a Macintosh installer package that contains all the necessary installation files in a single Mac OS X package. Name stands for "package". (.pkg files are for installing software; .app files are runnable, installed applications.) Created by PackageMaker (q.v.). This is what you get when, in PackageMaker, you go into Install Properties and select Minimum Target: Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard. PackageMaker always generates a "flat package" (Flat Package Format) in this case. The icon is a brown cardboard box with its flaps open and one yellow inner box in view. You can see its contents several ways: - Right-click and choose Show Package Contents. But: if a "flat package", it will be an actual file, rather than a directory, such that Show Package Contents will not appear. - In Terminal: xar -t -f <FileName> - Use the Finder's Go To Folder function to go directly into the folder, like: ~/Downloads/Adobe/ AdbeRdr910_en_US_i386.pkg/Contents - Open it in PackageMaker; but: for Contents, reports "PackageRoot", but nothing under that. See also: Flat Package Format; mpkg pkgutil Command line utility for managing Packages (installable applications), to query and manipulate the installer package receipt database. Do 'man pkgutil' for usage info. Do 'pkgutil --pkgs' to see all installed packages. Notes on invocation options: --expand, --flatten To get the package contents, then later reconstruct the package as a new "file". This may not work, however: I've seen --expand report "could not open" on a .pkg file that 'ls -alR' could traverse and fully access. Note that expanding and reflattening a flat package has a side-effect of removing the package signing. The command-line installer tool will happily (at least as of this writing) install unsigned flat packages. --forget Will remove database info about the package - but will not delete the installed files. If you want the files to go away, perform --unlink first, then --forget. See also: Receipts Plain text When a file contains just ASCII text, it is considered "plain text". Standards call for standardized filename extensions to govern file handling, and OS X conforms to that. In Apple Mail, if you attach a plain text file without a .txt extension, it will be included with a MIME type of "Content-Type: application/octet-stream;". A file with an extension of .txt will be in a MIME type of "Content-Type: text/plain;". This causes the receiving mail client to regard the two differently, depending upon its programming. In Finder, if you do Get Info on a text file with a .txt extension, the preview will have "TXT" in it, whereas a file without an extension will have a preview icon with nothing in it. PlainTalk microphone As came with early 1990s Macintoshes. Part number 590-0670. Its plug was the special, elongated type for the special mic jack on the back of the Macintosh of that time. Whereas microphones typically emit puny signals whose level is only a few millivolts, Apple decided that rather than accept standard mic input, they would add power input to their mic, and have it internally amplify the signal to line level (about a tenth of a volt) before feeding that input the Mac. To provide power to the mic, they elongated its connector plug, adding a power connection at the tip. Being non-standard, this made for a lot of confusion. One the underside of the mic is a lip, for it to sit securely on top of your computer monitor, positioned for best voice input. Light gray color. See Apple Article 15884 for details. Plist See: Property List .plist Filename extension for a Property List file. The file may be formatted as XML, or may be the binary equivalent. If binary, the first 6 chars of the file are ASCII "bplist". If XML, the file starts with "<?xml". See: Property List .plist file, see contents 'defaults read _______.plist' plutil Command line utility for operating upon property list (.plist) files. /usr/bin/plutil It doesn't do a lot... Invoked as plutil <something>.plist it will just evaluate the file for correctness. But you commonly don't need a plist utility per se, as software managers internally provide that, as in 'pkgutil --forget <PackageID>'. See also: defaults; Property List .pmdoc Filename extension for the PackageMaker Document file, which is the "source code" which PackageMaker uses. The object is actually a directory, housing a set of small XML files. See: PackageMaker See also: .mpkg PMU Power Management Unit, as in Power Macs. See: PowerMac PMU reset podcast A word which originated in 2004, popularized by Apple's iPod music device, refers to the distribution of media files through a publisher/subscriber model. Anybody, through the use of basic computer hardware, can produce their own show for the internet audience. The Oxford American Dictionary has declared "podcast" to be the word of the year for 2005. Podcast Capture Lets you easily record and distribute podcasts. Requires access to a computer running Mac OS X Server with Podcast Producer. Podcast Producer OS X Server feature for creating podcasts, automating the encoding and uploading to server. Apple calls Podcast Producer "a complete, end-to-end solution for encoding, publishing, and distributing high-quality podcasts". The server provides a centralized place to manage both remote recording agents and workflows for processing content. The Podcast Capture.app is used on a Mac OS X client machine to contact the server. It can either submit content that is captured locally or direct a remote recording agent to capture content. Whether local or remote capture is involved, the captured content is uploaded to the server and a workflow is run to process the content. The workflows are actually executed on an Xgrid cluster that sits behind the Podcast Producer server. Since the workflow definitions are server-based, they can do any manipulation to the content that can be run on an Xgrid cluster, and publish to any destination that is available to that Xgrid cluster. http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/ features/podcasts.html Podcasts app New for iOS 5.1+ in June, 2012. Subscribing to a podcast using your device will not subscribe you to that podcast on your computer or other iOS devices; so you may want to use iTunes to subscribe to casts you want to have everywhere. Apple Article: HT5295 Port listeners, determine 'sudo lsof -i TCP -P | less With -P, port numbers are show; without -p, port names are shown. Portrait Mode Refers to Bokeh effect photos taken on the iPhone 7 Plus (not to holding the camera in portrait orientation). In this mode, your subject is in focus and stands out against an intentionally blurred background, thus featuring the subject while maintaining context. Ports used by Apple software products http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html ?artnum=106439 See also: iPhoto Post-PC era Apple's phrase for what began with the iPad 1, where you "just do", on an appliance type computing device. No hassles, no complexity, no system administration. During a joint interview with Bill Gates at an All Things Digital conference in 2007, Steve Jobs famously coined the phrase "post-PC device," defining it as "a category of devices that aren't as general purpose [as a PC], that are really more focused on specific functions, whether they're phones or iPods or Zunes or what have you." Microsoft obviously hated this terminology, as it spelled the beginning of the end for their dominant desktop software, and the beginning of a serious decline for PC makers. PostScript printers OS X sends PostScript Level 2. See also: LaserWriter IIg PostScript, convert to PDF Simply open in Preview, then Save. PostScript, save as (OS X) In 10.3 Jaguar: Select Print, then choose Output Options, click on "Save as File", and choose Format=PostScript. In 10.4 Tiger: Select Print, then choose PDF, and in the selection list choose Save PDF as PostScript. PostScript level in print jobs Is level 3. The first line is: %!PS-Adobe-3.0 PostScript printing on non-PostScript The StyleScript product supports inkjet printers printers from Apple, Canon, Epson, HP. PostScript viewing The Preview application will open a PostScript file, and convert it to PDF for viewing. (The filename extension should be .ps for the file to be known to be PostScript.) You can then save as PDF if you like. Note that a PostScript file may encode text as graphical images: when converted to PDF, the text is still graphical, and so you cannot search in it. In the shareware realm, there is the MacGhostView application. Power Computing Circa 1996 Macintosh clone maker, back when Apple sanctioned other hardware makers in an attempt to help them climb out of their business rut of the time. Power Computing offered a PowerCenter Mac OS system based upon the PowerPC 604 RISC microprocessor. Power Manager Early OS X name for the System Preference which later became the Energy Saver. To reset the Power Manager in a PowerBook: Have it shut down. Simultaneously press and release the Control_Shift+Option keys plus the power button, wait 5 seconds, then press the power button to restart the PowerBook. Power Nap OS X feature introduced at WWDC 2012 which allows more recent Macs to, via firmware, continue to perform tasks such as receiving email and updating software even when sleeping. Apple Article: HT5394 PowerBook The high-end laptop/notebook, its name indicative of being based upon the PowerPC microprocessor architecture. Succeeded by MacBook (q.v.), 2005/01/10. PowerBook, 17 inch (aluminum) Until 2005/10, max display resolution 1440 x 900; thereafter, 1680 x 1050 (36% more spacious, 46% brighter). The power adapter is 65 watts, part number 611-0250. PowerBook, G3, model names These were the black plastic PowerBooks, with the arguably more comfortable sculpted contours whose plastic did not feel cold as with later PowerBooks, which went to metal enclosures in order to achieve thinness. Screen resolution, maximum, was 1024x768 - which would become the standard for the iBook which followed. "Wallstreet" = SCSI only 233 MHz model: System Bus: 66 MHz Backside Bus: 116 MHz 250 MHz model: System Bus: 83 MHz Backside Bus: 125 MHz 292 MHz model: System Bus: 83 MHz Backside Bus: 146 MHz "PDQ" = SCSI 300 MHz model: System Bus: 66 MHz Backside Bus: 150 MHz "Lombard" = SCSI, USB (no FireWire) RAM: 64 - 384 MB 333 MHz model: System Bus: 66 MHz Backside Bus: 133 MHz 400 MHz model: System Bus: 66 MHz Backside Bus: 160 MHz "Pismo" = USB, FIREWIRE, AKA "FW" 500 MHz model: System Bus: 100 MHz Backside Bus: 200 MHz 400 MHz model: System Bus: 100 MHz Backside Bus: 160 MHz The G3 PowerBooks went up to 500 MHz. They were succeeded by the titanium G4 PowerBook models, which started at 500 MHz, and by G3 500 MHz iBooks. PowerBook, operating with lid closed See your PowerBook manual, topic "Using Your PowerBook With the Display Closed". It amounts to attaching a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, then waking it via the external keyboard. PowerBook batteries PowerBooks obviously contain a battery pack for their primary, portable power. In addition, there is a Backup Battery: its principal purpose is to sustain memory and the clock during the up-to-3 minutes that the battery pack is taken out of the PowerBook for replacement. Allowing the PowerBook's battery to be completely exhausted will then call upon the backup battery and exhaust it as well. A conspicuous symptom of this is the system clock reverting to 1969. PowerBook G4 (titanium), charging When plugged into AC power, the LEDs on the battery pack will stay lit. PowerBook G5 challenge As of 2005/01 there is no G5 PowerBook. To quote Apple in their Q1 2005 fiscal results conference call, this is "The mother of all thermal challenges." PowerBook rubber feet These may come off and get lost, which compromises the ventilation of the unit. Get replacements by calling 800-APL-CARE (see http://www.apple.com/support/ powerbook/doityourself/12al/) PowerMac The series name of the high-end Macintosh tower systems, based upon PowerPC microprocessors. Successor: Mac Pro PowerMac G4 AGP graphics System with 400, 450, 500 MHz PowerPC G4 PowerMac G4 PCI graphics System with 350, 400 MHz PowerPC G4 PowerMac PMU reset To reset the Power Management Unit inside your PowerMac, as when it fails to respond after a power outage (the power button may be glowing): 1. Shutdown and disconnect power. 2. Remove battery. 3. Hold down power button for more than 5 seconds. 4. Reinsert battery and reconnect power. 5. Boot. PowerPC Motorola microprocessor series, successor to the 68xxx family, adopted by Apple and IBM. IBM, Motorola, and Apple began creating the PowerPC architecture at the Somerset design center in Austin in the early 1990s. It has a special mode to do Little Endian work, which runs best on G3 and above microprocessors. Mac OS: 8.0 or better Apple transitioned from the Motorola 68xxx processors to PowerPC in years 1994-1996. http://www.ibm.com/technology/power/ about.html http://www.ibm.com/PowerPC -> www.ibm.com/chips/products/powerpc/ Note that Motorola in 2003 spun off PowerPC development to its Freescale Semiconductor, a wholly owned subsidiary of Motorola. IBM provided Apple with the G5 processor in 2004 and 2005; BUT: IBM failed Apple in being either unable or unwilling to get up to 3 GHz, or provide a low-power version for the PowerBook. This was crippling Apple's innovation momentum, and so the decision was made to finally break with this drag. Intel has great performance; and at least as important is performance per Watt. This was announced at the 2005 WWDC, 2005/06/06. Intel-based products will begin shipping 2006/06, with conversion just about complete 2007/06. OS X has been rigorously developed with processor independence since 2001 - just in case. (That effort has been named Marklar.) Indeed, Steve Jobs presented the 2005 WWDC keynote on a Pentium. There will be a Universal Binary to run on both PowerPC and Intel - essential in that older software must be supported for some time. Xcode 2.1 will begin this support. (Widgets and AppleScripts require no reworking. Carbon apps recompile fine.) Apple called Wolfram Research and asked them to recompile Mathematica on Intel, and it took all of two hours: this conversion is nothing like the conversion from OS 9 to Carbon. For old PowerPC binaries, there will be Rosetta to run them (through translation). See also: G3; G4; G5 PowerPC 970 The PowerPC architecture has always supported 64-bit memory addressing. IBM made sure the architecture could switch between 32- and 64-bit modes to support AIX, IBM's version of Unix. Building on this foundation, the 970 supports a flat address space of 64 bits for effective addresses and a 42-bit real address range. A fully associative segment-lookaside buffer (SLB) can cache up to 64 entries from the off-chip segment table. When running 32-bit programs, the 970 clears the upper 32 bits of all effective addresses and uses the first 16 entries of the SLB as on-chip segment registers, reducing the number of off-chip table accesses. PowerPC and 64 bits At original inception time, the PowerPC alliance promised to deliver three 32-bit processors - the 601, 603, and 604 - and one 64-bit implementation, the 620. All four chips eventually reached the market, but only the 32-bit processors succeeded. The ill-fated 620 first appeared on the PowerPC roadmap in 1991 and was first described at Microprocessor Forum in 1994, but it didn't ship until 1998. By then,it had grown so complex it was uneconomical. At 250mm, it was Motorola's largest slab of silicon. The 620 never made it into a Mac and soon vanished. PowerPC Linux Yellow Dog Linux is probably the best Linux for the PowerPC platform. www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/ydl/ PRAM Macintosh Parameter RAM. Stores: - Display and video settings such as refresh rate, screen resolution, number of colors; - Startup volume (disk) choice; - Speaker volume; - Recent kernel panic information, if any; - DVD region setting; - Other info such as time zone, OS 9 control panel settings, the number of hours the computer has been used. On the computer's main logic board there is a battery (cylindrical on older, tower Macs) that helps retain NVRAM/PRAM settings when the computer is shut down. If there are erratic startup problems and your computer is like 5 more more years old, the battery should be replaced. Removing this battery causes settings to revert to factory defaults. You can use the freebee TechTool program to save the settings across a battery change. Apple Articles: 86194; HT1242 See also: SMU PRAM, reset/zap An operation performed in rare circumstances, when the Mac seems screwed up in a hardware sense. Resets Parameter RAM (PRAM) and Non-Volatile RAM (NVRAM). Hold down the P, R, Apple, and Option keys immediately after hearing the Mac start-up tone. Resets startup disk, time zone, speaker volume setting. Does not reset DVD region code. On very rare occasions, this will not work to get the Mac working. In some Mac tower machines, a further remedy lies near the battery on the motherboard, where there is a tiny CUDA button: hold that down for a couple of seconds and see if the Mac can boot after that. .prefpane Preference pane filename extension. Is a package file which installs into System Preferences. Preferences files Your personal preferences files are in Library/Preferences/ System-wide preferences files are in /Library/Preferences/ See www.macfixit.com article "Preferences Files: The Complete Story" (story 20051116075622629). Preview OS X application to display: - Multi-page PDF documents. - Open PostScript (PS) or EPS files (they are converted to PDF). - View and export still images: BMP, GIF, JP2, JPEG, MacPaint, PDF, Photoshop, PICT, PNG, QuickTime, SGI, TGA, TIFF; with options. paste. (GIF support as of Tiger - even animated GIFs.) - Listen to sound ("Voice nn" files) created by iMovie (as in the Media sub-folder under the movie project, under the Movies folder in your home directory). PDF permissions are available under the Tools menu, Password selection in Panther, and Get Info in Tiger. What this reports may be primitive compared to Acrobat Reader. For example, where the Document Security section of AR will report "Not Allowed" for printing and other functions, Preview reports no more than "Encryption: Encrypted". Unfortunately, there is no support for simply dragging an image out to a save in a file. To convert, use Save As for a document, Export for images. Search tip: You may have trouble searching for multiple adjacent words, such as "heavy water", where Preview will turn up nothing, though you know that such a phrase is in the PDF. The problem is in the nature of word spacing in the PDF, where there actually may be two or more spaces between the words. The technique to deal with this is to enter the words, and then try inserting an increasing number of blanks between the words, which almost invariably then yields results. In rare circumstances, *removing* the spaces between the words oddly works. "Back/Forward" is for jumping to the previous or next position in the document which had been randomly selected, as from the document index. Zooming tips: Clicking on the Zoom In and Zoom Out icons results in rather big changes in size. For smaller increments, hold down the Option key as you click on those icons. Stability: Highly unstable through all releases of OS X. See Anomalies, below. (Note that conspicuously missing from the Preview app is a Feedback menu selection, as other major OS X apps have: Apple is not interested in feedback on this app.) Stringency: Often does not detect PDF file errors that Acrobat Reader will, which is to say that Preview does not strictly adhere to Adobe rules. Shortcomings: - Limited display of PDF properties. - Instability, particularly with large PDFs. Anomalies: Blank pages may reflect a PDF which requires a key to unlock its contents, as with eBooks: use Acrobat Reader to view the PDF, rather than Preview. But this may be a defect... Defects: - Downloading a PDF of significant size then saving a copy then trying to browse it in the same session always causes Preview to crash. - In Search, typing the first character of a search string (e.g., 'q') may cause Preview to crash. - In Searching a large PDF, typing the search string too fast often causes to crash. (One has to wait for it to finish the search on what has been typed thus far before typing the next character.) - Preview may show all blank pages in a PDF. This seems to be due to the PDF having been encoded with any form of compression, where Preview fails to deal with needed uncompression. Updates: Interestingly, the (rare) updates to Preview arrive in the Mac OS X Update, rather than as a separate application update. This is likely due to Preview's close ties to the operating system's PDF imaging model. Preview, checkerboard pattern If you open an image with Preview and see a checkerboard pattern, that indicates the presence of a transparent layer. To make it go away, simply uncheck the Show Document Background command in the View menu. Preview, crop photo See: Preview and image manipulation Preview, force it to open an image Preview may sense that some image files are problematic, and balk at showing them. If you believe a file to actually be okay, you can force Preview to open it by holding down Comman+Option while dragging the file onto/into Preview. Preview, image editing See: Instant alpha Preview, merge PDFs into one There are times when you want to create a single PDF from several, as for example when a mall floor plan provides each floor as a separate PDF. Here's how: - Open the first PDF in Preview. - Activate the Sidebar. - Drag the next PDF from the Finder *onto* the latest page icon. This will cause merging. If you instead dragged the next PDF to below the most recent page icon, that would simply constitute viewing two PDFs in one Preview window. - Perform Save or Save As. Preview and PDF editing PDFs are considered final form documents, so there's little that one should really do with them. When opened in Preview, the Edit tools are minimal as compared to editing a .png file. One might want to clean up a scan type PDF to remove noise and black bars, but that cannot be done as a PDF. (A PDF can be exported to a TIFF, and that image file can be edited, and then export that back to PDF form; but that cause the PDF to consist of images, such that there is no more text, per se.) Preview and PDF fonts Preview will not always do well in rendering fonts. One PDF I encountered displayed with all the characters impinging and slightly overlapping. This turned out to employ TradeGothic font, where Preview was not properly rendering character widths (as proportional width). Preview provides no report on the fonts being used in a PDF, as Acrobat Reader will. And if you go into Tools > Show Fonts, that will not help reveal them, either. Preview and image manipulation Cropping can be performed: Use the cropping tool to select the portion of the image that you want; Cmd+C to copy that; Cmd+N to open it in a new window; save that. Rotation: In 90-degree increments only. (See also: Rotation of images.) Double-clicking an image in some apps, like TextEdit, will cause Preview to be launched and the image to appear in a new Preview window, ready for work. Preview takes advantage of Core Image to achieve their fast-launching, fast-rendering results - achieving virtually real-time effects even on RAW and HDR source files. Preview annotations To delete them: Select the annotation and choose Delete from the Edit menu (or press the Delete key). To edit your annotations later, open the document again, choose View: Sidebar, and then, from the pop-up menu at the bottom of the sidebar, choose Annotations. Click on one of your annotations in the sidebar to make it active; you can now edit, move, or delete it. To edit links, select the Include Links option at the top of the sidebar, and click on a link to edit it in the Inspector. Preview behaviors Text looks "skeletal": You likely have Anti-alias turned off in the PDF section of Preferences. (Line art image may disappear if Anti-alias is turned on.) Preview bookmarks Bookmarks are local to your computer, in a com.apple.Preview.bookmarks.plist file - so you can't transfer them to other machines. Preview preference file Is: com.apple.Preview.plist Preview 3 Third generation of Preview, which comes with Tiger. Print & Fax The system preference area through Snow Leopard (10.6) for printer set-up. Thereafter replaced by Print & Scan. Print & Scan The system preference printing set-up in OS X 10.7 and 10.8. Thereafter replaced by Printers & Scanners. Print Center In Mac OS X 10.3, the Print Center has been replaced by the Printer Setup Utility. This is now the application you use to set up and access printers. Print queue display elements In System Preferences, under Print & Fax you can perform Open Print Queue on a given print queue to show the jobs in the queue. Some notes on content: Status column: Completed The job is fully accepted by the destination. Printing The job is being conveyed, or has been conveyed to the destination, and we are awaiting signal from there that the job has been fully taken. - The job is pending. Print Screen key? See: Screen capture PrintCore framework A system library that is responsible for managing printing interfaces (faxes, printers, etc.). Within this framework is a small tool called printtool, which is a background process that checks your specified printer to determine if it is available, if it is ready to print, or has errors such as low supply levels, and then quits. Printer, define via command line /usr/sbin/lpadmin -p __PrinterNameInCups__ -v __URL__ -m drv:///sample.drv/generic.ppd -D __PrinterNameInMacList__ -E -o printer-is-shared=false where the URL may be lpd://___ or selpms://___ or other. The URL supplies host identity so -h spec not needed. The -p printer name in CUPS is the stanza name in /etc/cups/printers.conf (do 'lpc status | grep :' to see) whereas the -D text is what OS X presents as the printer name. It is best to have the two names exactly or nearly the same, to prevent confusion. -E enables the destination and accepts jobs. (Without this, the default is that the printer will be established in a Paused state.) Printer, disable 'cupsdisable <PrinterName>" Printer, enable 'cupsenable <PrinterName>" Printer, LaserWriter IIg, add to OSX Seen to work best over AppleTalk (PAP), rather then LPD - even though the printer is attached via Ethernet. In CUPS printer.conf, like: <DefaultPrinter LaserWriter_IIg-1> Info LaserWriter IIg Location Local zone DeviceURI pap://*/LaserWriter%20IIg/LaserWriter State Idle Accepting Yes Shared Yes JobSheets none none QuotaPeriod 0 PageLimit 0 KLimit 0 To set it up: Go into the Printer Setup Utility; select Add; click on More Printers. Printer and scanner software See Apple Support Article HT201465 Printer device types supported 'lpinfo -v' for basic list 'lpinfo -l -v' for more info Printer icon, green circle equal sign A printer icon may have a green circle ("badge") positioned at its lower left, with a vertical equal sign inside the circle. This is an indication of a PrinterProxy definition. Printer drivers Apple provided drivers for many printer brands, as part of its CUPS support. The printer drivers for the CUPS system derive from refining generic driver sets to support new printer features, rather than being developed anew and distributed individually by printer vendors. As such, Apple periodically refreshes the driver updates that it supplies for the printers of various vendors. New drivers appear in the standard Mac OS X Software Update process. Apple Articles: HT3669: "OS X: Printer and scanner software available for download" Printer drivers, available 'lpinfo -m' The list is small, reflecting series of printers, not specific models, like: dymo.ppd Dymo Label Printer epson9.ppd Epson 9-Pin Series epson24.ppd Epson 24-Pin Series stcolor2.ppd Epson New Stylus Color Series stphoto2.ppd Epson New Stylus Photo Series stcolor.ppd Epson Stylus Color Series stphoto.ppd Epson Stylus Photo Series generpcl.ppd Generic PCL Laser Printer generic.ppd Generic PostScript Printer deskjet.ppd HP DeskJet Series laserjet.ppd HP LaserJet Series PCL 4/5 intelbar.ppd Intellitech IntelliBar Label Printer, 1.5 okidata9.ppd Oki 9-Pin Series okidat24.ppd Oki 24-Pin Series raw Raw Queue zebracpl.ppd Zebra CPCL Label Printer zebraep1.ppd Zebra EPL1 Label Printer zebraep2.ppd Zebra EPL2 Label Printer zebra.ppd Zebra ZPL Label Printer These drivers show up when you go to define a printer under "IP" and in the Use: selector choose Select Software. Printer drivers, installed Go into System Information. Select Software > Printer Software > Printers, which will show various vendor directories under /Library/Printers/. Printer options See: lpoptions Printer pooling (OS X) In Printer Setup Utility, select the printers you want pooled, then from the Printers menu, select Pool Printers Printer Setup Utility Your printer definition and management point, in OS 10.3 and 10.4 (but dropped in 10.5 as redundant to printer setup facilities under System Preferences). Click on Add to add a printer. This yields choice list: AppleTalk, Bluetooth, IP Printing, Open Directory, Rendezvous, USB, Windows Printing. To add a printer at a more advanced level, hold down the Option key as you click Add, which presents an additional choice named "Advanced": this provides the fields Device, Device Name, Device URI, Printer Model, where Device choices are: AppleTalk Printer Access Protocol, AppSocket/HP JetDirect, Bluetooth Printer (bluetooth), Fax Printer (fax), Internet Printing Protocol using HTTP, Internet Printing Protocol using IPP, LPD/LPR Host or Printer, Rendezvous registered printer, USB Printer, Windows Printer via SAMBA, Bluetooth-Modem, modem. In the printer list, columns are: Name Of printer. If LPR/LPD type, the Queue Name you specified and "on <Hostname>" reflecting the Printer Address you chose. Status As it implies. Stopped indicates that the printer's print job queue is stopped. If you want to continue to print, select the printer and choose Printers > Start Jobs. Kind If a defined printer, the type of printer you chose. Host Reflects hostname for discovered printers (Rendezvous, etc.). Is blank for LPR/LPD printers, where the hostname is part of the Name. Location Contains whatever annotation you add. Jobs The number of print jobs pending for the printer. May be print jobs that are waiting to start printing or that are being held. By default, the Location and Jobs columns are not shown: you can add them via the View, Columns menu selection. Note that you can drag columns to rearrange them. This utility is only for high-level printer establishment and management: to configure details such as default source paper tray, you need to go into the CUPS Web page. See: "Printers list and configuration" for more on that. Printer sharing (OS X) In Printer Setup Utility, Preferences, Printing: checkbox "Share my printers with other computers" Printer status 'lpq -P <PrinterName>' Printers, list via command 'lpc status | grep :' Printers, where definitions live In OS X, printer definitions live in two places: 1. /etc/cups/, in the printers.conf file and the ppd/<PrinterName>.ppd file thereunder. 2. ~/Library/Printers/ as <PrinterName>.app files (packages). Printers need to be in CUPS for functionality; they need to be in the Mac Printers directory to be visible in OS X (Print & Fax). Printers & Scanners The system preference printing set-up in OS X 10.9 and 10.10. Printers list and configuration OSX: CUPS keeps its printers list in /private/etc/cups/printers.conf which it generates into conventional file /etc/printcap. The printers.conf file only tracks the high level printer info: printer device capabilities, chosen tray source, etc. are tracked in file /private/etc/cups/ppd/<PrinterName>.ppd aka /etc/cups/ppd/<PrinterName>.ppd The default source paper tray is defined in this file on the line beginning with "*DefaultInputSlot", like: *DefaultInputSlot: Tray3_500 Such values are configured through the CUPS printer administration web page http://127.0.0.1:631/printers/ where you choose "Configure Printer" to make choice changes. (Note that neither System Preferences nor Printer Setup Utility provide the ability to configure details such as default source paper tray.) See also: LaserWriter IIg Printers list via System Profiler System Profiler is the older OS X name for the utility which is now named System Information. See next item. Printers list via System Information In OS X, a place you may not think to look for a list of your printers is in the System Information utility. Launch that and look under Hardware to click on Printers and see a list of defined printers, with their Status, Print Server, Driver Version, and Default yes/no. You can also use the command line: /usr/sbin/system_profiler SPPrintersDataType If you then step down the list of printers you will see each reported in more detail, with Status, Print Server, Driver Version, Default, URI, PPD, PPD File Version, PostScript Version. The URI will include the protocol type (HTTP, IPP, LPD, SMB, etc.). Printers status 'lpc status' Printers supported (PPD list) System>Library>Printers>PPDs>Contents> Resources>en.lproj Printing http://developer.apple.com/printing/ index.html Apple Article: HT3771 See: Desktop Printer Utility Printing, OS 9 Launch the app Desktop Printer Utility. This will cause a window called "New" to open. In it, select the driver called "LaserWriter 8". That should expose four or five options: Printer (AppleTalk) Printer (Infrared) Printer (LPR) Printer (no printer connection) Printer (USB) Translator (PostScript) For Unix server printing, use LPR. Printing, OS X A range of possible printing methods is available, with more recent releases based upon CUPS. CUPS uses PPD files to determine both the printer options and the final format required for a print job. Mac OS X includes many PPD files to support many printers. Mac OS X PPD files are stored in: - Apple LaserWriter PPD files are in /System/Library/Printers/PPDs; - Third party PPDs are stored in /Library/Printers/PPDs or they are dynamically generated by Gutenprint, an open source collection of free printer PPD files and filters. A given printer may have multiple PPD files. Printing, OS 10.7 (Lion) See Apple Article HT4670 (OS X Lion: Overview of printing) Printing, password dialog box pops up This is the result of the CUPS printer configuration entry containing "AuthInfoRequired username,password" as one would expect with Samba printing. This printer option is instated by default when a Samba printer is created, including "Windows printer via spoolss" with an smb:// URL. Printing, scale the output Do that in Page Setup (File menu). The scaling is a percentage: there is no "scale to fit" capability. Printing, spool files In OS X, the printing spool files are in PDF, and are converted to PostScript as necessary as transferred to print. Private Browsing Long a feature in Mac Safari and introduced in iOS 5 in October 2011, is a setting for the mobile Safari browser that disables several standard tracking and data collection features that are common to most browsers. Enabling Private Browsing blocks websites from placing cookies on your iOS device and prevents Safari from tracking your page and search history or auto-fill information. Beyond privacy, this also eliminates some overhead on your system, disk consumption, and complications arising from old cookies. prl_vm_app As seen in the OS X Activity Monitor, this is the name of the worker process for the Parallels virtual machine. It may well be using a lot of CPU time. /proc A view into the Unix kernel found on Linux systems, but not in OS X. Process, kill The most direct way is to simultaneously press Option+Command+Escape, to bring up the Force Quit Applications dialog, then select an application and Force Quict. Can be done in Activity Monitor, by selecting one and then clicking on Quit Process. Processes per user, limit As seen via the Csh built-in command 'limit', the "maxproc" value defines this. Neither the 'limit' nor 'unlimit' command can change this, as it is a fixed, system limit of the maximum number of processes a user may have active at one time. The way to alter the limit is to edit the standard /etc/sysctl.conf file which is now in OS 10.3, then reboot. For example, add: # Boost maxproc from 532 default: kern.maxproc=2048 # Boost the per-user limit (was 100): kern.maxprocperuid=512 See all values via 'sysctl -a'. ProcessWatcher Freeware to provide a very easy way of monitoring the processes running on your Mac or a remote Mac, including "background-only" applications. http://info-mac.acornsw.com/infomac/ _CONFIGURATION/PW-32.HTML Product announcements Tend to happen only in the US. New products will always be announced in the keynote address at Macworld in San Francisco. From time to time there will be special product announcements, usually held on a Tuesday, at 10:00 Pacific Time, in the Town Hall auditorium on the Apple campus in Cupertino. Evolutionary product upgrades (e.g., MacBook with higher density screen or faster processor) will typically just appear on the website, on a Tuesday. ProFile Apple's first hard drive, introduced in September 1981 at a price of US$ 3499. Initially for use with the Apple III personal computer. The original model had a formatted capacity of 5 MB and connected to a special interface card that plugged into an Apple III slot. In 1983 Apple offered a ProFile interface card for the Apple II, with software support for ProDOS and Apple Pascal. Later a 10 MB model was offered, but required an upgraded PROM/interface card to recognize the additional 5MB. Internally, the ProFile consisted of a bare Seagate ST-506 stepper motor drive and mechanism, without the usual Seagate electronics, a digital and an analog circuit board designed and manufactured by Apple, and a power supply. Programming language Objective C was for many years the chosen language for programming Apple products. Swift is the new language, introduced at the 2014 WWDC. Swift went open source on December 3, 2015 (Swift.org). IBM subsequently released a Swift Sandbox tool (http://swiftlang.ng.bluemix.net). Project McQueen Internal name of Apple's circa 2016 effort to reduce its dependence on services like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. Apple spends an estimated $1 billion or more on cloud services each year. Project Titan In February 2015 rumors started circulating that Apple had set up a project named Titan, with some 1000 people assigned to it, thought to be developing a self-driving minivan. This rumor was furthered by sightings of commercial vans driving in various parts of the country outfitted with self-driving and mapping equipment strapped onto them, reportedly rented by Apple. (These turned out to be just vans gathering data for Apple Maps street view.) The rumors are encouraged by Apple executives being car buffs. This may be a complete misinterpretation of what Apple is actually up to, which may be just furthering CarPlay. It doesn't seem to make sense for Apple to get into automobile production, given their repeated emphasis on sticking to what they do best and avoiding distractions. In January 2015 it was learned that Apple executives (chiefly, Jony Ive) were dissatisfied with the group's direction and progress $(G!7(B particularly given the internal poaching and external hiring involved to build up a staff of over 1000 people. At the same time, Steve Zadesky, a longtime Apple engineering lead who was initially put in charge of Project Titan, left the company. In September 2016 there are reports of dozens of people being laid off the project, and changing the project's goal from car production to autonomous navigation software. Property List A file, having an extension of .plist, containing property objects for a given application. Apple started using such files to normalize parameter specifications within its OS X Unix, to get away from the typical chaotic situation in Unix where each subsystem has its own peculiar format for coding specifications. Property list files may be "ASCII" form XML, containing text data encoded using Unicode UTF-8 and organized using the Extensible Markup Language (XML). If so, the first chars of the file are "<?xml". However, to save space and programmatic processing time, the files may be in binary form, the first 6 characters of the file then being "bplist", followed by a 2-char version number (the first being "00"). XML was used in OS 10.0 - 10.1. But while flexible and standard, it was inefficient. OS 10.2 introduced the binary format, and the plutil command, which can convert either way. As of 10.4, the binary form is the standard one. Its formal doc: http://opensource.apple.com/source/CF/ CF-550/CFBinaryPList.c The Property List Editor utility can handle any format plist file, allowing viewing and editing via that GUI. For command line access, use 'defaults'. The XML structure is a great programmatic convenience as it permits the information in the file to be organized hierarchically. Elements of XML correspond to entities such as arrays, dictionaries, strings, and other simple types. Individual properties can represent simple types or containers for other properties. Property list files are used throughout Mac OS X. These files can be tweaked to define greater control over application behaviors. As found in ~/Library/Preferences/ with a file name like com.apple.Safari.plist for Safari. Historical: Plist derives from what was developed in NeXTSTEP; but that was more like Perl, and not XML. Apple advanced the plist philosophy, using modern XML for its format. Ref: ADC Home > Reference Library > Documentation > Mac OS X > Runtime Configuration The "com.apple" portion uniquely identifies the plist as one created and maintained by the company named Apple, to prevent confusion with other vendors who may happen to introduce apps having the same name as Apple-provided apps. See also: 'defaults', 'plutil' commands. Property List Editor To edit a Property List (.plist file). Because a plist file may be XML or binary, using this tool allows editing regardless of format. Is installed with the Developer Tools, in /Developer/Applications/Utilities/, and so no usual user doc for it (look in the /Developer/Documentation directory). It is not really intended for non-developers. There are commercial products to handle the task, such as PlistEdit Pro 1.1. As of Xcode 4, Property List Editor is no longer included as a separate application and all editing of plist files is done within Xcode. The last stand-alone version was version 5.3 in Xcode 3.2.6. See also: 'plutil' command "Protected AAC audio file" Kind of audio file in iTunes. Denotes a file purchased from the iTunes Store prior to the introduction of the Digital Rights Management (DRM)-free iTunes Plus format in April 2009. "Protected," in this case, means the DRM built into the file restricts it to being used on devices authorized with the Apple ID used by buy the song. This prevents the song from being copied or shared. Upgrading a Protected AAC file to the iTunes Plus format causes it to change to "Purchased". Protected AAC/iTunes Plus songs have information embedded in them that identifies the user who bought them. See also: Purchased AAC audio file Proxy Icon At the top of a window (Finder, TextEdit) there may be a little icon in the top, title bar of the window, which you note that you can drag a copy of. In most cases this icon represents the path of the document: if you drag it into a TextExit window you will have the full path of the folder or file. Whereas that icon represents the file, you can drag it over the Mail app in the Dock, for example, to cause a copy of that document to be inserted into a new mail message as an attachment. In TextEdit, by holding down the Command key and then clicking on the Proxy Icon, the full path (folders hierarchy) of the file is revealed. In Leopard's Preview app, when viewing a PDF, the icon represents the full contents of the PDF, where you can drag it into a position in another Preview window to merge PDFs. pstopdf /usr/bin command to convert PostScript input into a PDF document. 'pstopdf [inputfile] [-o outname] [-l] [-p] [-i]' Puma Product code name for Mac OS 10.1 Previous: Cheetah Next: Jaguar "Purchased AAC audio file" Kind of audio file in iTunes. Denotes a file purchased from the iTunes Store, but it no longer has the DRM-based copy restrictions. All songs at the iTunes Store sold after April 2009 are in the DRM-free Purchased AAC audio file format. Upgrading a Protected AAC file to the iTunes Plus format causes it to change to "Purchased". You can play tunes on an unregistered computer if the tunes have somehow already been downloaded: if they haven't been downloaded, they cannot be, without registering the computer. See also: Protected AAC audio file Push Notification Service Announced at WWDC 2008 for apps to be notified of certain events, such as being out-bid in the auction you are into. Avoids having to run apps in the background. .pvm Filename extension for Parallels virtual machine. .qtch QuickTime cache filename extension, as found under ~/Library/Caches/QuickTime/downloads. QTSS QuickTime Streaming Server (q.v.) QTVR QuickTime Virtual Reality, which assembles numerous flat pictures of an object into an interactive virtual environment. QuarkXPress High-end desktop publishing package. Versions info: 4.1 or 5.0 run under Mac OS 8.5 to 9.2 6.0 runs on Mac OS X 10.2.x. Filename extensions: .qxb .qsd .qxl .qxt .xtg File header "magic"/signature: \0\0MMXPR3 Quartz OS X display technology. The Quartz layer is running DisplayPDF, a subset of PDF (analogous to the relationship of DisplayPS of the late NeXTStep, and regular PS): that is what gives the smooth and fast look of vector graphics and permits for blazing fast GL-accelerated PDF rendering. Text, by default, is rendered with smooth anti-aliasing. Quartz is the one of the graphics services in Mac OS X. (The others are OpenGL and QuickTime.) Quartz is the two dimensional graphics service in Mac OS X. It is the modern heart of the Mac OS X user experience, superseding QuickDraw and related managers. Quartz directly supports the Aqua user experience by displaying crisp two-dimensional graphics to create the user interface, including on-the-fly rendering and anti-aliasing. Quartz is based on the Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). PDF is the standard for electronic document distribution worldwide. PDF is a universal file format that preserves all of the fonts, formatting, colors and graphics of any source document--regardless of the application and platform used to create it. A PDF created by OS X will, as of 10.3, show a Producer: Mac OS X 10.1.4 Quartz PDFContext Quartz 2D The revolutionary composited windowing system based on the PDF format. As used by the Preview app. Quartz Extreme OS X 10.2; uses OpenGL to to optimize the rendering pipeline and thus accelerate the GUI on Macs with supported AGP graphics card and 16MB or more video RAM, further enhances graphics performance, particularly in compositing operations. Improves text by applying sub-pixel rendering to some of the system's four anti-aliasing modes for even better results on LCD screens. Quick Look Leopard feature to instantly preview files without opening applications. Works with all the popular filetypes, and plug-in modules are available for developers. To use Quick Look, simply select an item in the Finder and press the Space bar, or type Command-Y. An image of the selected item appears. (In the case of mp3s, the sound file also plays.) You don't even need to open the document's usual application. If it's a photo, for example, you can see it without waiting for iPhoto or Preview to open. To close the Quick Look preview, simply press the Space bar again, or the Esc(ape) key, or click the x in the preview window's upper-left corner. Alternately, you can type Command-Y or Command-W to close the image. Further tips: - By default, Quick Look opens images in their natural size. You can force full-screen display by holding down the Option key when tapping the Space bar. - When viewing an image, press the Option key to cause a '+' to appear: you can now click the left mouse button to enlarge the image in the window, and thereafter use the mouse to move around the visually cropped image. Press Shift+Option to be able to reduce the image size within the window. - If you want to preview additional items, don't close the preview window. Just highlight a new file in the Finder, and the open preview window displays the newly selected object. - Quick Look lets you view multiple-page documents. For longer files, a navigation scroll bar appears along the preview window's right margin. It even works with PDFs and Keynote presentations. - You can preview multiple items simultaneously. Just select several items in the Finder by lassoing them with your cursor. Or open one item in Quick Look, then use the up- and down-arrow keys to display other files in the same folder. - You can combine searches and Quick Look. Simply type keywords into a Finder window's Search Box to reveal files whose names or contents match the search terms. Select some or all of the results, open Quick Look via space bar or Command-Y, and use your up- and down-arrow keys to switch between the selected previews. There is CLI command 'qlmanage', the Quick Look Server debug and management tool. Quick Look and plain text It's common to get plain text attachments in Apple Mail, invoke Quick Look to peek at them - and all you get is a page icon with "Plain text" identifier next to it - no look at the contents. If you double-click on that page icon or the attachment icon in Mail, the attachment will be opened in Text Edit for viewing. So, why can't Quick Look handle plain text? Actually, it can, and will, if the file has a name extension of .txt but it's uncommon for plain text files to have any extension on their name, particularly in Unix. The absence of an extension precludes changing an Info.plist file to cause the desired handling of files. To see the content, you need to right-click on the attachment and then do Open Attachment, which will launch TextEdit to see it. See also: Plain text QuickDraw 3D Introduced in August, 1995, being the first instance of high-powered 3-D graphics on low-cost personal computers. Fabio Pettinati was the manager of 3-D graphics. QuickDraw GX Discontinued, but its essence was rolled into QuickTime 3.0, providing vector graphics facilities there. Quicksilver Mac PowerPC G4 system, 733 - 933 MHz QuickTake Apple's foray into digital photography, long before other companies came on board. There were several color camera models: 100: 320 x 240 pixels standard resolution; 640 x 480 high resolution 150: 640 x 480 Based on Kodak DC40. 200: Mid 1997. 640 x 480 Made by Fuji. Four AA batteries. Storage: 2 MB solid-state floppy disk card (SSFDC), for up to 30 images at standard quality,l 20 at high quality. Transfer via serial cable of PC Card readers. QuickTime 3.0 Has better codec (compression, decompression), licensed from Sorenson Vision, faster and better than the previous Cinepak codec (which remains in QT3 for backward compatibility). Beware that movies compressed with QT3 need to be viewed with QT3. Audio improvements: voice compression algorithms from Qualcomm, music codec from QDesign, and a pair of MIDI applications from Roland. Streaming audio and video is now integral, to allow a movie to start playing as it is being downloaded. You can also tie multiple-resolution versions of a QT movie to a single link, to send the version most appropriate to the browser's data rate capabilities. Vector animation allows creating animated logos, text treatments, and other effects in small file sizes. New formats supported: DVCAM for digital video cameras; OpenDML, M-JPEG, and Avid Video Resolution M-JPEG. A new video effects architecture allows developers to create filters that can be applied in real time to QT movies. And QT3 is the first fully cross-platform version of QuickTime. With QT3, Apple decided to split out advanced features to a "QuickTime Pro" level within QuickTime - where all the software is in the base product, but activated with a key code purchased for $30. QuickTime 4.0 Provides real-time streaming capability, for audio and video. QuickTime 6 2002/10 Adds support for MPEG-4 video, AAC audio, JPEG2000, and Instant-On streaming. QuickTime 6.5 Includes enhanced support for 3GPP and 3GPP2 mobile networks. QuickTime 7 Pro $29.95 upgrade to QT7 allowing: Convert media formats Edit: cut, copy and paste video, add a new sound track, add annotations, rotate your video and more. Create immediate video with your iSight or other FireWire camera connected to your Mac. Record your podcast: Plug in a USB microphone and use QuickTime 7 Pro to capture audio that can be shared with the world as a podcast. QuickTime Broadcaster Apple's award-winning live encoding software that lets you produce professional-quality live events for online delivery - quickly, easily and affordably. Users connect to a URL like rtsp://someplace/teststream.sdp QuickTime extensions At perian.org you can obtain a QuickTime component that will allow the playing of AVI, FLV, and MKV file formats. QuickTime key shortcuts Applekey+RightArrow to play forward; Applekey+LeftArrow to play backward RightArrow to step forward; LeftArrow to step backward. UpArrow or DownArrow to adjust sound volume. Shift+UpArrow to adjust volume beyond normal maximum. Return or Spacebar will start or pause playback. You can select the part of the movie that's playing by holding down the Shift key, and then Cut, Copy, or Paste it. QuickTime Player Multimedia player. Works with various formats, but not necessarily AVI: use players like MPlayer OS X instead. Media formats supported by QuickTime Player: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3775 QuickTime Pro Is the Swiss Army knife of multimedia editing. It unlocks capabilities hidden in QuickTime Player to provide enhanced playback, simple editing, basic effects, and import/export of many types of media. Enumerated: - Record audio and video - Play movies at full screen - Save files from the Internet - Edit audio and video - Add special effects - Create slideshows from photos, which play like a movie. - Convert and save video, audio, and images to more than a hundred standard formats For example, with Pro, you can convert a movie to DV form, suitable for use in iMovie. Pro is an upgrade to QuickTime Player, purchasable from the Apple site. That purchase provides you with a registration key which unlocks the Pro capabilities embedded in the QuickTime Player software. Notes: - Does not export copyrighted or MPEG material. - To determine if your QuickTime Player is at the Pro level, launch it, then go into its menu and choose About QuickTime Player: if Pro, you will see that in the logo. You can also go into Registration, which will show you details. QuickTime Pro usage tips QTP can be used to combine clips, taking all or part of the source clips to create a combined movie. Open a new, empty movie via Cmd+N. When in a source clip, press Cmd+A to select the whole clip, or move the left (In) and right (Out) selection markers to delineate a selection of the clip. You can use the left and right arrow keys to fine-position your selection, and press I or O to set the start or end point of the selection. Then, drag the selection to the new, empty movie: this will result in a plus-sign appearing to denote that you are adding to the movie you are constructing. Advisory: When building a movie from clips, when you open the saved result you may be disappointed to see the movie "freeze" after getting to a certain point. What's actually happening is that it's displaying the last frame it found to actually be in the movie: if you move the pointer, you will find the rest of the movie black (nothing there). I have found that this creation problem is present when there are no markers evidenced in the movie being created. To get around that: after pasting the first clip into the intended movie, save it and close that window; then open the saved file. There will now be markers in the new movie, and pasting more clips into it will now yield good results. QuickTime Streaming Server Streams media via RTP/RTSP to local area networks, the Internet, and wireless networks. This is Apple's commercial version of it streaming server technology. Is built into Mac OS X Server. Lacking OS X Server, you could employ Darwin Streaming Server, the open source version of Apple's QuickTime Streaming Server technology. QuickView You mean: Quick Look RAID Reintroduced in MacOS Sierra (after having been removed in El Capitan. See also: Xserve RAID RAID 0 (striping) Can be set up with Disk Utility. RAM See: Memory Randy Ubillos Apple's chief architect of video, circa 2009-2011+. RAW digital image support See: Digital camera RAW support Reader Feature in Safari for reading web pages without clutter, in a readable font. Recent versions of Safari have been engineered to provide a Reader button, located in the right end of the address field. It will be clickable when the software is able to discern content from clutter in the web page. Why use it? Sometimes, it's just plain readability. People who create web pages sometimes mindlessly do so with a gray font on a white background, or a dark blue font on a black background - making the page difficult to read, at best. Click on Reader, and the content is suddenly fully legible. Reader will also work where a website very annoyingly insists that you watch a commercial before you can see the content. Reading List, original Safari 5.1 feature amounting to a new type of bookmark, for setting a pointer to Web articles you don't have time to read now, but would like to go back to later, when you have more time. When iCloud goes live, this is likely to be one of the synced items in it, so that you can then read the article on a different device of yours. Whereas this is just a bookmark to the article, and because articles can become unavailable over time, you may be better off clicking on Reader, to then save a copy of the article, without ads or other distractions, as a PDF, to assuredly be able to read it later. Reading List, without net connection As of OS X Mountain Lion, Web pages added to Safari's Reading List are saved as content, rather than a reference to the content, allowing you to later read them without a network connection. This capability is added in iOS 6. Ready To Print Status of a print job in a queue display, as when the queue has been Paused. (Do Resume to have the job begin processing.) Receipts Part of the Installer regimen, recording Packages (applications) which have been installed on the Mac. If installed in the user home directory, will be recorded in ~/Library/Receipts/ wherein there will simply be a .bom file and a .plist file. Homedir-installed packages can be reported via the command pkgutil --pkgs --volume ~ If installed for the system as a whole, will be recorded in /Library/Receipts/. In Mac OS 10.1 through 10.5, the installer places a *.pkg file (e.g., iWeb.pkg) into the "/Library/Receipts/" folder. As of Mac OS 10.6, Apple has moved from individual pkg receipt files to a common storage regimen, where /Library/Receipts/ now contains: - a "db" folder (seen empty) - InstallHistory.plist file housing all new package instances. And package .bom and .plist files are in /private/var/db/receipts/ as well. (Packages installed prior to the 10.6 regimen will live on as individual pkg files in /Library/Receipts/.) Packages installed for the system as a whole can be reported via: pkgutil --pkgs --volume ~ or, simply: pkgutil --pkgs If you must perform a reinstall, and you get a message saying that it is already installed, you can forcibly remove the receipt info: - Pre 10.6: Move the ___.pkg file out of the Receipts directory. - 10.6+: Things are more complex: you should not attempt to manually intervene in such system files. Instead, use the command line aid 'pkgutil --forget <PackageID>' for globally installed packages, or 'pkgutil --volume ~ --forget <PackageID>' for packages installed in the home directory. See also: Package; pkgutil Recovery HD In Maco OS 10.7, the name of a special partition on your boot disk to facilitate recovery from operating system corruption, now that the Mac OS is no longer being distributed on disc media. It is part of a new feature initially called Lion Recovery. Installing OS X creates a recovery partition (about 650 MB) on the disk, which you can boot from by holding down Cmd+R when booting. (You can also see and select partitions by holding down the Option key when booting.) The partition is not visible in the Finder or Disk Utility. You can report it via command 'diskutil list'. BSD name: disk0s3 The recovery partition provides utilities and the ability to restore from Time Machine. In cases where the recovery partition is not accessible, recovery mode instead can occur over the Internet with Apple's servers. Ref: Apple Article HT4718 See also: OS X Recovery Reflector See: AirPlay to Macintosh Reminders New in iOS 5. New in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. Had been a function of iCal, but was broken out to be its own app; and it stores its data in iCloud rather than in your IMAP server "Apple Mail To Do" folder. They sync to Exchange or iCloud. Remote (app) The name of the iPhone and iPod touch app which allows you to control iTunes on your computer or to control Apple TV, over the wireless network (rather than infrared, as the little Apple Remote does). The Remote app provides more visible control of those devices, where you can do things which you cannot with Apple Remote, such as randomly positioning playback. However, with the Apple Remote you can get into Apple TV settings, which you cannot do with the Remote app. Ports: Remote uses TCP port 3689 and UDP port 5353 to communicate with iTunes on the computer or with Apple TV. Remote access See: Apple Remote Desktop; Remote Desktop Connection Client Remote control See: Front Row Remote Desktop Connection Client (RDC) Free Microsoft software which allows a Mac user to connect to a Windows-based computer and work with programs and files on that computer. To connect to a Windows-based computer, you need network access and permissions to connect to the computer, and the computer must be running Terminal Services or Remote Desktop Services. The following Windows products support Remote Desktop connections: Windows XP Professional Windows Server 2003 Windows 2000 Server Windows 2000 Advanced Server Windows 2000 Datacenter Server Windows NT Server 4.0, Terminal Server Edition http://www.microsoft.com/mac/ otherproducts/otherproducts.aspx ?pid=remotedesktopclient See also: Apple Remote Desktop Remote Disc A capability introduced with the MacBook Air, 2008/01/16, allowing a Mac computer without an optical drive (as in the new MacBook Air) to "borrow" an optical drive on a Mac *or* PC running the accommodating Remote Disc software. That allowed the Air to perform software installs - but not use that remote optical drive in general (so no playing movies from DVDs). Remote Disc supports netbooting, so the MacBook Air can boot from its installation DVD in another computer's drive. See also: MacBook Air Remote Install Mac OS X OS X utility for installing OS X onto a Mac lacking an optical drive, such as the MacBook Air. The utility can be employed to make use of Disk Utility, Apple Hardware Test, or a utility DVD. Remote Login System Preferences, Sharing choice. Activates SSHD (actually, launchd), allowing SSH, SCP, and SFTP access. Remote Wipe A capability of the iPhone (iOS) software as of version 2, which added enterprise enhancements. You can do this yourself from the Find My iPhone function of MobileMe. What you may not realize is that if you participate in an Exchange mail system, in a non-IMAP manner, your phone is subject to remote wipe by Exchange's ActiveSync! What does Remote Wipe actually do? As of iPhone 3GS, it needs to do little more than delete the encryption key, a process that's nearly instantaneous: without the encryption key, your data is as good as wiped. In older phones, lacking encryption, a very time-consuming deletion of all data had to occur. There is no provided way to defeat Remote Wipe via a device setting. Rendezvous Zero-configuration (zeroconf) networking technology - a means of discovering and communicating with others on your subnet without going through middling services like AOLIM. Created by Apple in 1992. In 2005, Rendezvous was renamed to Bonjour as part of a trademark settlement with TIBCO Software, which filed suit against Apple in August 2003 for trademark infringement, claiming that it had been using the Rendezvous name since 1994. Apple was expected to change the name to "OpenTalk" based on a trademark application it filed on July 8, 2004 with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. However, the company filed another identical application on January 28, 2005 for Bonjour. See "Bonjour" for more details. Repair Disk Permissions See: Permissions database ResearchKit Apple's new open-source medical framework for creating apps to further medical research. Was announced during Apple's 2015 Spring Forward media event. The medical community wanted to work with Apple, rather than a compay like Google, because Apple is known for not exploiting customer data. ResearchKit derived from Apple's work on HealthKit: as they took their nascent techology to the medical community, the doctors and researchers saw the potential for much more. Reset printing system... Macintosh operation to reset the printing system. Does: - Deletes all queues and jobs. - Resets all printer settings to their default by deleting configuration files. - Performs a permissions check on the /tmp directory. Access this function as follows... In System Preferences > Print & Fax (Print & Scan in 10.7) do one of the following: 1. Hold down the Control key and click on any item in the left side printers list. 2. Hold down the Option key and click the "-". Why would you do this? Only in the rare circumstance where your printing system is hopelessly mired. But, note that you may be able to cure the situation via CUPS operations. But: This does not fix all permissions, where you should go on to Disk Utility to do Repair Disk Permissions there. Historical: Prior to OS 10.6, this capability was a menu option in the Printer Setup Utility (a utility no longer present in 10.6). See also: CUPS Resize window See: Window, resize Resource Through OS 9: A data structure which stores all the info to allow an application to operate. Includes many user-interface elements - windows, menus, etc. - which require frequent modification. Resource fork, OS X OS X does use resource forks, as did prior versions of the operating system. The resource fork is a hidden file based on the original filename as follows: original: filename.txt resource fork: ._filename.txt Resource limits Inspected and set via the csh 'limit' command, and maximized via 'unlimit'. (In C programming, via getrlimit(), setrlimit(), sysctl().) Restart Mac from keyboard Use the keyboard shortcut combo: Control+Command+Eject Quits all applications (after giving you a chance to save changes to open documents) and restarts the computer. (Apple+Control+PowerOnButton will abruptly shut down the Mac) See also: Shut down Mac from keyboard Resume New functionality as of OS Lion for any application to be able to pick up where it was when it was last closed. Resume also extends to your overall environment, where after a reboot all the positioning and applications you had open will return to that state. Retail retention rate Angela Ahrendts says, as of 2016, that the retention rate for retail employees in Apple is 87. This is in contrast to the averages retention rate of 20% for retail in general. Retail store, first In Tyson-F¢s Corner, VA, opened May 19,-A 2001. It was greeted the following day by a BusinessWeek commentary piece titled -Y´Sorry, Steve: Here-F¢s Why Apple Stores-A Won-F¢t Work-Y¡, by Cliff Edwards, arguing-A that Apple-F¢s focus on a few products and-A a -Y´perfectionist attention to-A aesthetics-Y¡ would limit the company-F¢s-A appeal in retail. Retail stores Apple originally sold through authorized retail computer stores, such as Tech Computer in Cambridge MA, with no mail-order sales. Later they tried selling their wares through larger retail stores such as Computer City; but Apple found their products being marginalized, often relegated to the rear of the store, with sales people talking up Windows computers instead. Apple tried again with these stores, funding an Apple section with a trained sales person for that area. That met with more success, but wasn't enough. Unsatisfied with the treatment big-box retailers were giving his products, Steve Jobs started withdrawing them, and brought on Ron Johnson from Target to design a store specifically for Macs. The first one opened in Tysons Corner, Va., in 2001. Apple stores were very successful, completely opposite the failure of other computer makers such as Gateway. (Predictably, copy-cat Microsoft waited for Apple to prove success in retail, then started opening their own stores, often almost next to the Apple stores.) See also: Blankenship Retina Display Apple's term for its high-density, high resolution display, introduced first on the iPhone (4th generation), then on the iPad and MacBook Pro. It is not an absolute density or resolution, but is of such dimensions that when the device is used at a normal distance, the pixels consituting the image cannot be individually perceived, and the effect is one of a very crisp image which exists unto itself without the distraction of contributory technology. The number and quality of the pixels needed for a Retina Display require significantly more power than a mediocre display, which makes for a larger battery, which has contributed to next device generations being slightly thicker rather than thinner than their preceding non-Retina displays. Retina HD Introduced with the iPhone 6: a new display technology called Retina HD, which resulted in wider viewer angles, higher resolutions, higher contrast and a thinner display. Reverse video of whole screen Press Control + Option + Command + 8 Revert To See: Versions rfc1918.address.not.used.<Domain> This is what you see when you invoke the command 'hostname' on a Mac, where DHCP is being used for networking. In this arrangement, there is obviously no dedicated network address. Rhapsody After the failed Copland effort, Apple bought the NeXT company (thereby also bringing back Steve Jobs) and began work on its next attempt at a modern OS: Rhapsody, the name based upon the concept of combining the OpenStep OS, the Mac OS, and Java. The thought was to create a Mac OS compatibility environment (code name: Blue Box), running on top of a kernel. In February 1997 the kernel choice was announced to be Mach. OpenStep (code name: Yellow Box) would likewise run on the kernel. Java applications would run alongside. In name-based sequence, Apple would evolve the Mac OS, with versioning: code-name Tempo in July 1997; code-name Allegro in January 1998, and code-name Sonata in mid 1998. That effort finally found its way, and evolved into Mac OS X. Developers first got a copy of Rhapsody in October, 1997. In May of 1998, Apple officially changes the name to OS X. See also: Copland Right click The Macintosh has historically been a single-button mouse product. Microsoft Windows went for a two-button approach, where the left mouse button corresponds to the Mac's single button, for choosing items and actions, with the right button basically for exposing item properties. In the OS X era, right-click is recognized and supported. On a purely single-button mouse (or older laptop trackpad), you can effect a right-click by holding down the Control key while clicking. Apple terminology: Apple uses the term "Secondary Click" for right-click. Apple Mighty Mouse: Is monolithic like a single-button mouse, but it has sensors to detect if you're pressing on the left or right side of the front of the mouse, whereby it can discern a left-click vs. right-click intention - but, its default configuration is to only left-click, so you need to go into the Mouse configuration panel to enable right-click. MacBook Pro, 2009: You can adjust the Trackpad preferences to have the bottom right (or left) corner be sensitized to be right-click. MacBook Pro, pre 2009: You can adjust the Trackpad preferences for a two-finger tap to be right-click. PowerBook: The third-party software called Sidetrack can be installed to replaces the Apple Driver on your Powerbook to provide more functions. Other: The Kensington trackball called the "Expert Mouse Pro" has four corner buttons which can be assigned functions, where assigning the bottom right button to be right-click is optimal. Parallels: Recognizes the OS X right click settings in its running of Windows. Ringtones A special ring for your phone, typically a segment of a tune. Ringtones are .m4r files. They can be up to 40 seconds. They can be produced in iTunes, from non-protected tunes, by setting the start-stop times in the Options for the tune, to produce a segment copy, then drag that copy to the desktop, change its type to .m4r, delete the copy from iTunes, and drag the adjusted copy from the desktop into iTunes, whereafter you can sync that new ringtone to your phone. ROIC Return on Invested Capital: an equation that calculates a company's ability to spend capital on profitable investments. Comparing a company's ROIC with its cost of capital should give you a pretty good idea of how efficient it is. ROKR E1 Motorola's iTunes-enabled cell phone, jointly announced with Apple, 2005/09/07. Apple realized that a logical iPod product extension was to incorporate tunes capability with a phone, and investigated production of such a unit. They thought it would be most expeditious to work with a prominent cell phone maker to add tunes to a phone. Motorola basically modified one of its phones, adding a tunes button which brought up a music menu, much like on an iPod. $249.99, with a 2-year service agreement. It turned out to be lame, artificially limited to 100 tunes, awkard to get tunes onto it, and with other usability problems. In particular, with no clickwheel, the device was far less usable than an iPod. A flop, even with heavy advertising. After seeing how dismal the cellphone industry's concept of integrated personal technology was, Apple had no other choice but to resume developing a properly designed cell phone themselves. The project was called Purple, where their first design was P1. It wasn't quite what they wanted, so they went on to a second design - P2 - which eventually became the successful iPhone. ROM See: OpenFirmware ROM Root access in OS X Through 10.4, via application Utilities -> Netinfo Manager Security -> Authenticate -> Enable Root User -> Change Root Password http://docs.info.apple.com/ article.html?artnum=106290 As of 10.5: Applications/Utilities/Directory Utility and in the Edit menu, choose Enable Root User and then type the root user password. As of 10.8, the Directory Utility is not directly accessible in Utilities: Go into System Preferences > Users & Groups, click on the Network Account Server button, then choose Open Directory Utility. Therein, go into the Edit menu and select Enable Root User, and give it a password. Root password, change (OS X) Presuming that root has previously been enabled, through 10.4 do: Via application Utilities -> Netinfo Manager Domain -> Security -> Change Root Password As of 10.5: Applications/Utilities/Directory Utility and in the Edit menu, choose Change Root Password Rosetta 2006/01 software for Intel Macs, for them to be able to run PowerPC programs. Largely based on the QuickTransit emulation software developed by Transitive (which is not open source and expensive). Is automatically installed in Leopard. In Snow Leopard, has to be separately installed. In Lion, Rosetta is now gone. Rotation of images OS 10.4 supports EXIF-standard rotation, while previous versions of OS X did not. EXIF-aware applications will show the rotated image, while others will not. Apple Article ID: 302669 RSS New as of OS 10.4 Safari. An RSS screensaver was also added. RSS was subsequently in Mac Mail. As of Mountain Lion, RSS was removed from Mac Mail, ostensibly because there were so few using it that it wasn't worth carrying in software development. .rtfd Rich text document with attachments. It is a "container" $(G!7(B meaning a directory $(G!7(B containing a TXT.rtf file plus any attachments. Usually, there are no attachments, so creating a .rtf file by itself makes more sense. In TextEdit, you can convert an opened .rtfd to a .rtf by going into the File menu and hold down the Option key to expose a Save As choice. RTSP Real Time Streaming Protocol. Accessed via Safari, it launches in QuickTime Player, and can feed mp4 or h.264 just fine. QuickTime Streaming Server, which uses an RTSP server to stream live or rebroadcast video feeds to viewers. RTSP does not work in iOS on the iPhone or other Apple handheld devices, where an error box pops up saying that the address is invalid. rvi0 Remote Virtual Interface (RVI) activated by the rvictl utility (installed with Xcode) for debugging iOS devices attached to your Mac via USB. Ref: Apple Technical Q&A QA1176 Safari The Mac OS X web browser, introduced in January, 2003 (as beta). Safari is based on the KHTML code - the open source HTML parser/renderer used in the Linux Konqueror Desktop Environment (KDE) 3.0.2 browser module. Safari also uses the JavaScriptCore, which "takes the cross-platform KJS library (also from KDE 3.0.2), and combines it with the PCRE regular expression library to work with Mac OS X. As with most modern web browsers, you can create a "web bookmark" on your desktop by dragging the contents of the URL box to the desktop. (The formal name of the object is Web Internet Location icon.) Note that if you encounter immediate "Host not found" errors when trying to reach well-known web sites, it can indicate that your Network settings specify a DNS server which is outside the domain in which you are operating, where such DNS servers may be reachable but answer external queries only for elements of their own domain, causing lookups to fail for addresses outside their domain. Certificates: Are installed in your keychain. Use the Keychain Access utility. Printing: Unless you tailor printing, you will find colored areas missing from your printed output because, by default, it does not print backgrounds (which tends to consume toner while adding no useful information to the output). To get them, go into the File menu, choose Print, and in the Safari area selection click the Print Backgrounds box. To print a frame of a webpage, hold down the Control key and click the frame you want to print. Then choose Print Frame from the shortcut menu. Autofill: Safari will automatically remember data entered into web forms, by website, and will automatically complete a web form line it recognizes. You may terminate such autofill entirely, or by website, through Preferences. (Note, however, that there is no apparent means for removing just one autofill item, as for example in a comments box in a form, where Safari has remembered the multiple comments you entered over time. PDFs: Safari will display PDFs, but is not as fast in searching them, as Preview is. Java, JavaScript: Turn off or on via Preferences:Security. Timeout: Safari has a 60 second timeout in waiting for web pages to load - which may be too little for plodding web servers. there is a SafariNoTimeout InputManager plug-in available to change this (to like 10 minutes). Tip: Command-Click on Safari title bar, on the title itself, to bring up a choice of path positions in that website. Web log signature: "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/125.5 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/125.9" See also: PDF Safari, PDFs handled by Acrobat Reader You may have installed Adobe Acrobat Reader to have it available for occasional use, instead of Preview; but Adobe intrusively does more than that when you install AR: it also installs a plug-in, such that Safari thereafter handles PDFs with Adobe's plug-in, rather than its own (faster) facilities. To get back to native OSX handling of browsed PDFs, go to the system folder /Library/Internet Plug-Ins and remove the AdobePDFViewer.plugin file (which you can move to some other folder for possible later reintroduction). The Acrobat Reader application has a Preference under the Internet choices as a checkbox titled "Display PDF in browser using:", but that is grayed out, so can't be modified. In Safari's Preferences, under Security, there is checkbox "Enable plug-ins", which you could uncheck to defeat the Adobe intrusion, but that affects other plug-ins as well. (Note that plug-ins do not show up under the Extensions tab.) Safari, see TLS certificate Go to the website's URL address, which shows a padlock in the URL window. Click on the padlock, then Show Certificate. Safari, speeding up http://www.macfixit.com/article.php ?story=20070416000657464 Safari 3.0 Formally introduced into Tiger as of the 10.4.11 update. Safari 4.0 Announced 2009/02/24, in public beta form for Mac and Windows. New in it: - Nitro engine: JavaScript 4.2 times faster than Safari 3. - Top Sites, Full History Search, Cover Flow, Tabs on Top. Available 2008/06/08. Safari and certificates Safari relies on the certificate store of the host operating system to determine if an SSL server certificate is trustworthy. Use Keychain Access to review and manage these certificates. Fraudulent SSL certificates can allow a man-in-the-middle attacker to redirect connections and intercept user credentials or other sensitive information. Safari and FTP Yes, Safari can do FTP (for downloads). In its URL field, enter an address of form: ftp://myusername@ftp.some.site This provides a Finder window showing the files and folders in the FTP server directory, where you may drag things from or to that window. But, like all FTP, this is insecure, as your username and password are passed as plain text; so, this FTP capability is best used only for "public" FTP sites, which do not require usernames (other than "anonymous") or passwords. Safari does not recognize URLs starting with "ftps://" or "sftp://". See also: FTPS; SFTP Safari and XML Native XML support is built into Safari, Safari has supported XML and XSLT since Safari version 3. Safari bookmarks Are stored in each user's Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist file. Safari Develop menu Safari includes a rather sophisticated menu for developers, to expose the details of Web server interactions and alter some behavior. Some abilities: - Change the User Agent - Web Inspector and Error Console, to show elements, resources, scripts, timeline, profiles, storage, console. (Cookie details are revealed under the Storage category.) - Debug JavaScript - Disable caches. - Disable images. - Disable styles. - Disable JavaScript. - Disable Runaway JavaScript timer. - Disable Site-specific Hacks. Settings are per window. To activate it: Go into Safari's Preferences, click the Advanced tab, then check the box next to "Show Develop menu in menu bar". With Develop in place, when viewing a web page you can also right-click on it and select Inspect Element, to go right to the details of that page element. Apple Article: PH11926 Safari features, specs http://www.apple.com/safari/features.html Safari history (versions) VERSION OS X 1.0.3 10.2 1.3.2 10.3 4.1.3 10.4 5.0.6 10.5 5.1.7 10.6 6.0.2 10.7 10.8 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Safari_version_history Safari levels Are listed on Web page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Safari_(web_browser) The first digit reported in the About Safari menu choice is the OS X version. For example, for Safari 3.1.1 on OS X 10.4, the number is 4525.18. For Safari 3.1.1 on OS X 10.5, the number is 5525.20. The second and subsequent digits are the WebKit version number (e.g., 525.20). Safari on Windows Announced at WWDC 2007, June 11, with Safari 3 demonstrated as much faster than Internet Explorer. For Windows XP and Vista. Same technology as Safari on Leopard. Safari performance Over time, Safari may slow down. Some things you can do about it: - Prune the forms cache from time to time. This cache is where Safari stores every field in a form that has ever been filled in, other than logins and passwords. Within Safari's preferences, choose AutoFill and then next to "Other forms" click Edit, and prune away, or remove all. You might uncheck all the Auto Fill boxes, but convenience votes against that: prune instead. - Empty the cache periodically, via the Safari menu, Empty Cache. (Consider preventing use of the cache, which you can do by rendering the /Library/Caches/Safari folder unwritable, in a manner shown below.) - The little favicons associated with the web sites that you visit are stored in a folder, so that they can appear in your bookmark list and give you an easier overview of the titles. Having a lot of these means more to load at start-up. If you are willing to dispense with the favicons, you need to empty their folder; and to keep performance optimal you can go a step further and prevent further stowage in that directory. To do so: Quit Safari, and locate your Library/Safari/Icons folder and empty its contents. Now select the folder, do Get Info on it, and change the Permissions section and change the Access to Read Only or No Access. - A corrupted keychain file may be involved (com.apple.security.plist). Run Keychain First Aid from within the Keychain Access utility (in the Window menu list). Do a Verify first. - Too little memory in your system slows everything. If tight, close unneeded apps and windows. Safari printing notes There is no opportunity to specify a title for the print job: they end up with a title of "Untitled". This is true of other browsers as well, such as Firefox. Safari Quick Look New in OS X 10.10.3, introduces 3-finger tap on a link to see the target page in a pop-over window, rather than opening in a tab or new window. The new window is fixed size, but you can scroll in it. Safari status bar When turned on, displays a full URL address at the bottom of the window when you hover over a link. The status display temporarily overlays what's at the bottom of the window, rather than permanently taking up valuable space. Control: Choose View > Show Status Bar Safari tips Some usage aids and tips... - Open a bunch of sites: Create a folder in the Bookmarks Bar and populate it with sites you collectively want to visit. When you want to open to them all (e.g., after launching Safari) do Cmd+click on that folder, and they all open in tabs in that window. You could instead use the Auto-Click checkbox next to the folder's name in the bookmarks display. - Quickly return to site top level: As you drill down into a site, Safari adds an orange circle with arrow to the right side of the address field at the top of the window. Simply click on that to return to the site top level. - Add to Bookmarks Bar by dragging: To the left of the URL in the address field is a small, square icon. You can drag that to the Bookmarks Bar to create an entry there for it. Safari Web Content In Mavericks era Safari 7, there is one process per open tab/window, each named Safari Web Content. Their memory utilization adds up. If you go into Activity Monitor utility and hover the pointer over a Safari Web Content entry, it will reveal the URL associated with the process. Obviously: The more windows and tabs you keep open in Safari, the more memory you will use and the more sluggish your system will be (because of paging and swapping). And if those sites have active page elements, CPU will be consumed. Safe Boot (Safe Mode) A Safe Boot is a special way to start Mac OS X 10.2 or later when troubleshooting, disabling non-Apple drivers and loading a minimal system. Perform it by holding down the Shift key during system startup. Safe Mode is the state which Mac OS X is in after a Safe Boot. Starting up into Safe Mode does three things to simplify the startup and operation of your computer: 1. It forces a directory check of the startup volume - a file system check which will correct problems therein. 2. It loads only required kernel extensions (some of the items in /System/Library/Extensions). 3. It runs only Apple-installed startup items (some of the items in /Library/StartupItems and /System/Library/StartupItems - and different than login items). Taken together, these changes can work around issues caused by software or directory damage on the startup volume. Safe Boot further performs a variety of smaller tasks which can fix problems: it will, for example, move font cache files to the trash, which can fix problems that word processors have been having. Some features don't work in Safe Mode... Safe Mode can be useful for troubleshooting. However, certain Mac OS X features do not work when you are started up in Safe Mode. For example, you can't use DVD Player, capture video in iMovie, use an AirPort card, use some audio input or output devices, or use an internal or external USB modem. See also: Apple Article ID 106464 Safe Mode, boot into To start up into Safe Mode (to "Safe Boot"), do this: - Be sure the computer is shut down. - Press the power button. - Immediately after you hear the startup tone, press and hold the Shift key. (The Shift key should be pressed as soon as possible after the startup tone, but not before.) - Release the Shift key when you see the gray Apple and progress indicator (looks like a spinning gear). During the startup, you will see "Safe Boot" on the Mac OS X startup screen. To leave Safe Mode, restart the computer normally, without holding any keys during startup. Ref: Apple Article ID 107392, 107393 Samba See: SMB; SMBX Samba client capability Prior to OS 10.1: No built-in client capability, so one had to use a supplementary package, like: Sharity... Sharity is a client for the CIFS (Common Internet File System) protocol, formerly known as SMB (Server Message Block). HTTP://www.obdev.at OS 10.1 and above: Select the Go menu and then select Connect to Server. The Finder keyboard shortcut is Command+K. This will open the Connect to Server dialog box. In this box there is a field labeled Address. In this field you want to enter: smb://workgroup;username@netbiosname /share The simple case of the access is like: smb://MyHostname/MyUserid Note: OS X hides "hidden" files - those whose name contains a period ("dot") as the first character. See "Hidden files" for more info. http://www.opensource.apple.com/projects /documentation/howto/html/osxsmb.html Samba file and print services sharing OS X: Yes, OS X allows to to partake in Samba services. Go menu -> Connect To Server. Samba mounting Enter in the SMB/CIFS authentication dialog box when you Connect To Server in the Finder: smb://WORKGROUP;username: password@machine_name/directory where workgroup is the name of the Windows workgroup/domain, etc. Samba printing: create printer ----------- In OS 10.5: Open System Preferences > Print & Fax; Under the printers list, click the + (plus-sign) symbol to add a printer; Click Advanced; In the dialog, choose Type: Windows which will initialize the URL with "smb://", whereafter you enter the structured address of the printer, of the form: smb://PrintServername/Printername or: smb://Username:Password@PrintServername /PrinterName or: smb://yourusername:yourpassword@AD/ PrintServername/PrinterName (but, in the above two, realize that including a clear-text password in exchanges is a bad idea) In the Name box, enter a convenient name for the printer, for later choosing, where the name becomes the CUPS printer name. (If you enter a name with spaces in it, like "publp at acs-smb", underscores will be substituted for the blanks in the CUPS printer name, so it will be "publp_at_acs-smb" in CUPS.) In Print Using, you can usually get by with Generic PostScript Printer. ----------- In OS 10.4: Open the "Printer Setup Utility". Click "Add". Hold down the "option" key, and click "More Printers" (which provides an Advanced choice). Choose "Advanced" at the bottom of the pulldown at the top of the window that pops up. For "Device:", choose "Windows printer via SAMBA" For "Device Name:", enter whatever you like. For "Device URI:", enter the structured address of the printer, of the form: smb://Username:Password@PrintServername /PrinterName or: smb://yourusername:yourpassword@AD/ PrintServername/PrinterName (but, in the above two, realize that including a clear-text password in exchanges is a bad idea) If the printer requires a password, the following may work: smb://login:Password@PrintServername /PrinterName ----------- Notes: This process establishes the basic printer instance. If you need to tailor CUPS parameters, you would do so from the command line. Samba server capability Via the Samba X 2.1 package provided by the Xamba project at Sourceforge. Samba X is no more than Samba, but wrapped in an easy to use installer package. SAP On May 5, 2016 Apple announced a partnership with SAP to implement native iOS apps with the SAP HANA platform. Sapphire A glass which is a crystalline form of aluminum oxide. It provides superior durability and scratch resistance to other forms of glass. Apple has been using it as the window for the cameras on the iPhone and on the home button for the new Touch ID-equipped iPhone 5s. Apple has contracted with GT Advanced Technologies to supply sapphire for current and future devices. See also: GT Advanced Technologies Save As A dialog for saving application data as a new file name. You are presented with a file name data entry field, and a folders context whereby you can choose a place to save the file. The folder display will have filenames grayed out, but sub-folders choosable. In various applications, the Save As function reprocesses the data, rather than simply spewing it out as Save does, which can result in a smaller file, from which useless stuff has been eliminated. Productivity "trick": Many times, the name for the file is similar to an existing file name in a folder. You can have the existing name copied to the file name data entry field by simply clicking on the grayed-out existing file name, allowing you to quickly modify the name rather than fully typing it. Save As is gone as of OS X 10.7 Lion, per the Modern Document Model (q.v): instead, use File > Duplicate. More specifically, Save As is hidden: in the File menu, Duplicate is shown by default; but if you hold down the Option key, Save As will appear instead of Duplicate; or, use the shortcut: Option + Shift + Command + S Save As PDF Choice in OS X. The Mac OS X 10.4 Help entry on this says: "This creates a digital master PDF file. All graphics are at full resolution, and the file includes each font character it uses." (Note that it does not include full font sets, which can make for problems. Use PDF-X if possible to assure completeness.) PDF files created by clicking Save As PDF in OS X are based on Adobe's PDF 1.3 and 1.4 specs. That means they're capable of supporting transparency, and that you can add security and password protection to your files (externally, using Acrobat 5.0). However, you cannot control any of the parameters used to create the file - you cannot control compression, for example, or color space. The process does embed and subset fonts, but it saves all colors as RGB, and PDF files created by Jaguar are only 72 dpi. As a result, clicking Save As PDF creates PDF files that are suitable for exchanging business documents -- bids, proposals, and other non-color-critical documents that are destined to be printed at low resolutions. ColorSync filers may be created and applied to create PDF/X-3 compliant PDF files, but that's not easy to do: without such filters, images are converted to RGB and EPS vector files may convert to low-resolution bitmap image files. The Save As PDF button isn't available in all applications - such as InDesign - but consider this a safety measure that prevents you from creating a PDF for high-quality reproduction that isn't up to snuff. Also note that you can create PDF files using Apple's PDF engine within OS X's Preview utility. Like Acrobat Reader, Preview lets you view PDF files, but you can also open other image file formats, such as JPEG and TIFF, and then export them from Preview as PDF by choosing File > Export. (Or, alternatively, open a PDF file in Preview and export it to another image file format.) See also: PDF, create Save as PDF-X Through OS 10.6 was a choice under Print > PDF > Save as PDF-X. In the 10.6 PDF menu, you will see a gray horizontal line, under which are: Mail PDF Save as PDF-X Save PDF to iPhoto Save PDF to Web Receipts Folder Those are all Automator workflow scripts, which live in /Library/PDF Services. Each is actually a Workflow "package" (directory). See also: PDF-X, create 'Save Image to "Downloads"' A choice when you right-click (Control+Click) on an image. To instead direct where the saving is to occur, you can hold down the Option key, to get "Save Image As..." . say OS X command to convert text to speech, using the same TTS engine OS X uses for VoiceOver. Example: say "This is a test" To say what's in a text file: say -f myfile.txt To create an audio file from text: say -f myfile.txt -o myfile.aiff Scanner software Some possible packages: Hamrick Software's VueScan (www.hamrick.com) LaserSoft's SilverFast (www.silverfast.com) TWAIN SANE (www.ellert.se/twain-sane/) Scanner usage with OS X The scanner you buy usually comes with an application which allows you to control scanning. You can alternately use scanner software as listed above. OS X also provides you with embedded scanner control software: - The Image Capture application allows scanner control. See its Help for usage info. - As of OS 10.6, the Preview application: From its File menu, select Import from Scanner. See its Help for usage info. Scientific calculator The OS X Calculator application has an excellent Scientific view. The iPhone/iPod touch calculator, when in landscape orientation, provides scientific capability. SCP server In System Preferences, activating Remote Login launches SSHD, which supports SSH, SCP, and SFTP access. (Actually, via launchd.) Screen brightness control Screens such as on the iMac tend to be overly bright (glaringly so in soft room light conditions), with the Displays brightness slider providing very little control of brightness range. There are thus a number of Mac apps to compensate for this, summarized below. (Note that some apps cheat: rather than actually dimming the screen, they apply an overlay to make the screen look darker, which impairs resolution and does nothing to save energy. Any such app with "shade" in its name is likely using this technique.) Shades This is the first one I tried. It worked well, providing individual control over multiple monitors from the menu bar (no running application). But development waned, and it stopped working as of Mavericks. Brightness Slider Control is from the menu bar (no running application). But controlability was poor, and there was no multiple-display support. Brigher Screen Lite Excellent control of brightness, down to very dim. But no individual control of multiple monitors. Is implented as an always- running app, so is always in the way when you do Command+Tab to choose from your apps. Fatal defect is that when you resume from screen saver, the screen is blaringly bright again, where you have to go into the app and just touch the slider. Screen capture (screen shots) Defined in System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts. If captured to file: - In OS 10.2+, it will be a PDF on the Desktop, named like "Picture 1". You can thereafter use the Preview app to display the image, or convert it to TIFF, GIF, JPEG, etc. - Earlier OSes saved the file as a TIFF on the Desktop. Capture shortcuts to Desktop file: Screen: Cmd Shift 3 Selection: Cmd Shift 4 Capture shortcuts to clipboard, for direct pasting use: Screen: Ctrl Cmd Shift 3 Selection: Ctrl Cmd Shift 4 Individual screen elements (icon, menu bar, etc.) can be cleanly captured to a desktop file as follows: Simultaneously press keys: Command Shift 4 then press the Spacebar. Instead of a cross-hair cursor, a small camera icon appears. When you move this camera icon over the element you'd like to capture, that element is highlighted. Click your mouse or trackpad, and you've captured a screenshot of just that element. To perform that capture to the clipboard rather than a file, additionally hold down the Ctrl key. Captures may also be effected via the handy Grab utility, provided with OS X. Captures don't work with DVD Player windows. Screen captures can also be performed via the Preview application: File > Take Screen Shot. See also: Grab Screen flash Occurs when an alert sound occurs and in System Preferences > Universal Access under the Hearing tab you have checked the box for "Flash the screen when an alert sound occurs". Screen lock (OS X) Go into System Preferences > "Security & Privacy", choose General tab. Click the checkbox next to "Require password after sleep or screen saver begins", and from the drop down menu select a time interval to require the password. Screen manager See: Desktop Manager Screen recording You can use QuickTime Player to make a video recording of your screen, or just a region of your screen to save as a movie file for later viewing. Choose File > New Screen Recording. To start recording what's occurring on your Mac's screen, click the round record button. You can record some of all of the screen: - If you want to record the entire screen, click anywhere on the screen to start recording. - To record just a smaller portion of the of the screen, drag your pointer to select the region of the screen you want to record, then click the Start Recording button within the region. Keep in mind that this is just screen recording - no sound. Screen Sharing This is a choice under the Sharing element of System Preferences. It gives permission for other Macs to access your running Mac OS X, for almost magical full screen control. (The protocol employed is VNC.) After Screen Sharing is turned on, access can be had from your home networking, or long distance networking. Within your home: In any Finder window, the shareable Mac should be found under the left pane's SHARED area. Double click on that, and then click on "Share Screen..." at the top of the window. After a successful password dialog, a pseudo-application called Screen Sharing will appear on your Mac, with a window containing a live image of exactly what's on the target Mac. Move a sub-window around and it moves within your shared screen session and on the targeted Mac. The screen sharer can do anything that that could be done natively on the controlled Mac. Even using the keys Apple+Tab works, to cycle among applications on the remote Mac. You cannot drag files from the remote Mac to your local Mac, or vice versa: use File Sharing for that. Note that the Screen Sharing pseudo app contains a Preferences section where you may turn on more robust security than is its default. For long distance screen sharing: the facility called Back to My Mac (q.v.) can come into play, for the remote Mac to be able to determine the current network address of the Mac you want to access. Screen sharing is of particular value in instructional environments, or to help a friend resolve a usage issue. Go into the View menu and Show Toolbar to have Clipboard access. Nuances: As the facility's name suggests, what is shared is the display. Audio/sound remains local to the originating Mac. Similarly, there is no control over booting: if you cause the originating Mac to reboot, you window will show "Reconnecting..." until the other Mac returns to its OS X level. Screen sharing via Messages Screen sharing, for both looking and acting, can be easily achieved within the OS X Messages app. Both parties register in their Accounts settings, then one contacts the other. The person who is to look in on the remote Mac then clicks on Details, selects Screen Sharing, and that then opens as a window. That person can then choose to either just look in ("binoculars") or to act on the other Mac. Voice communications can be active. screencapture OS X command for taking many different kinds of screenshots. It's similar to Grab.app and the keyboard shortcuts cmd + shift + 3 and cmd + shift + 4, except it's far more flexible. Screenshots See: Screen capture (screen shots) Scroll bar, force appearance In Mountain Lion and beyond, the scroll bar image is not shown, by default. To temporarily cause it to appear, as when you want to know your position in the data, just touch your Magic Trackpad with two fingers to temporarily cause the bar image to appear. SCSI First appeared on the Mac as Narrow SCSI in 1986, on the Mac Plus, with a throughput of 5 MB/s. Last appeared on the beige G3 tower machines, replaced by FireWire on the Blue&White G3 towers. Sculley, John Former Pepsi executive brought into Apple in April, 1983, hand-picked by Steve Jobs, to become Apple's new president and CEO. Jobs originally convinced Sculley to leave Pepsi with the famous line: "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or do you want to come with me and change the world?-Y$(A!v(B He was brought on for his marketing experience because Apple's board of directors reportedly viewed Jobs as too young to be CEO. But the two had very different styles, and conflicts arose. The board of directors sided with Sculley, and Steve Jobs was evicted from Apple in September, 1985. Under Sculley, Apple's sales grew from $800 million to $8 billion, and the Mac transitioned to the PowerPC platform. Without the Jobs vision, Apple subsequently floundered and neared demise. Sculley resigned from Apple in August, 1993, whereafter Apple *really* went adrift, with clueless Gil Amelio at the helm and a disarray of hum-drum computer products. Jobs was brought back in February, 1997, with the acquisition of his NeXT company, whereupon Jobs cut the company's 50 development tracks to 10, and terminated the lackluster Newton (which was created under Sculley). Sculley has said that it was a big mistake that he was ever brought on to helm Apple. SE All-in-one Macintosh, circa 1986, with a 9" monochrome display. Maximum memory: 4 MB. Season Pass In iTunes, the ability to rent a season's worth of TV show episodes, in advance of their showing, to view them when they become available. A Season Pass may cost $19.95, whereas each episode may rent for $0.99. Secure Enclave Apple's A7 and later processors have a feature called the Secure Enclave. This is a cryptographic co-processor that is fabricated with a unique ID (UID). Appeared in iPhone 5S. (Any iPhone with Touch ID inherently has SE.) Apple's iOS Security white paper states: "Each Secure Enclave is provisioned during fabrication with its own UID (Unique ID) that is not accessible to other parts of the system and is not known to Apple. When the device starts up, an ephemeral key is created, entangled with its UID, and used to encrypt the Secure Enclave's portion of the device's memory space." The Secure Enclave has its own secure boot process, software update system, and handles cryptographic key management and Touch ID fingerprint processing. Its memory is encrypted and its communication with the application processor is limited to a mailbox and shared data buffers. Security See: Gatekeeper security command See: Keychain command line tool Select text region Selecting text with the mouse usually only operates on line after line of that text. Sometimes, you want to select a rectangular region of text, as in omitting bullets at the front of consecutive lines. You can do so in a PDF being veiewed with the Preview app: hold down the Option key, and it turns into a '+', much like a cropping indicator, whereby you can then select on the desired region of text. This does not work in other applications, such as Safari. Serial number of Mac From the Apple menu, choose About This Mac. Now, where the grayed word "Version" appears, click on that, once to get the Build number, and once more to get the Serial Number. Serial numbers Of "finished goods" (major products): Until early 2006, had been 11-character alphanumeric serials. Thereafter, 18 numeric digits. Of components (boards, drives, kits): Until early 2006, had been 12-character alphanumeric. Thereafter, 17-character alphanumeric scheme. See also: Model numbers Services Under each application's own menu is a selection called Services, and thereunder various services, such as Grab, Mail, Speech, etc. Such services are serviceable only in applications written in OS X's Cocoa environment, such as TextEdit and Safari. Carbon apps cannot use Services. Note that such services cannot create documents: they can only provide a feed to or from the open application. Services, start, stop, restart Via the SystemStarter command. Setup Assistant When a new Mac is first booted, the Setup Assistant will appear, to guide the user through the setup process. Then it never appears again. If you want it to appear again, remove file /private/var/db/.AppleSetupDone . SFTP client To use SFTP (SSH mimicking FTP), use the command line command 'sftp'. Per its 'version' command, as of 10.6: SFTP protocol version 3 which does not mean that it necessarily used that version protocol to talk to the remote sshd, but that it is capable of that protocol version and earlier ones, where it will fall back to the version that the server is using (as specified in the server's file /etc/sshd_config, like "Protocol 2". See also: FTP; FTPS SFTP server In System Preferences, activating Remote Login launches SSHD, which supports SSH, SCP, and SFTP access. (Actually, via launchd.) Shared (OS X) Folder within the Users folder for sharing documents among users. Shared memory System-wide, is controlled by having the following commands in /etc/rc, in OS X 10.3: sysctl -w kern.sysv.shmmax sysctl -w kern.sysv.shmmin sysctl -w kern.sysv.shmmni sysctl -w kern.sysv.shmseg sysctl -w kern.sysv.shmall See also: Memory Sheet The official name of the dialog pane which slides out of a window's title bar. (In OS X, such dialogs are thus attached to the window: prior to OS X, they were free-floating, which could result in uncertainty as to what the dialog was associated with.) The speed with which the sheet appears is programmed to a default of 0.2 seconds. You can configure/reduce the time it takes via the one-line command: defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSWindowResizeTime ____ where a time of .001 would be essentially instantaneous. Shell, login, change See: Login shell, change Shell scripts To make a shell script double clickable, give it a file extension of ".command". When double-clicked, a Terminal window will open (and stick around afterwards) to run it. To not open a Terminal window, or you don't want the extension, set the file type to "application", which can be done with command: /Developer/Tools/SetFile -t APPL <ShellScriptName> Sherlock All-purpose search utility introduced in OS 8.5, replacing the old Find File function in the Finder. In addition to local searches for file names or text within local documents, it could also conduct simultaneous searches through Web search sites (AltaVista, Excite, etc.) and return ordered results. Sherlock carried into OS X, but never enjoyed much popularity, possibly because its purpose was obscure to many people, or that it was so separate as a function. As of 10.2 it was relegated to Web-only searching. In 10.4 it was replaced by the integrated Spotlight facility. "Ship to Store" Apple service where you can buy an item from their online store and pick it up at a retail store. This program was extended to refurbished products in June, 2013. Shortcut, create Simply highlight anything (text, URL) and drag the highlighted unit to the Desktop. Shut down at a designated time You can set this in Energy Saver. This is useful where you want the Mac to continue processing some current work, unattended, then shut down. Shut down Mac from keyboard To quit all applications (after giving you a chance to save changes to open documents), then shut down the computer, simultaneously press these keys: Control+Option+Command+Eject If that doesn't work, hold down the Power button for 6 seconds. See also: Restart Mac from keyboard Sidebar Added in Panther, this is is the vertical pane at the left side of a Finder window, where navigation aids are located, such as mounted disks and frequently accessed folders. Sidebar, add to (OSX) Any file system object can be added to the Sidebar, as a reference to that file system object. Select the file system object and then do Add To Sidebar (Command+T). See also: Desktop printer icon Sidebar, remove from (OSX) Simply drag the object out of the Sidebar boundary. Sidebar icon and font size The sidebar in all facilities (Finder, Mac Mail) may have its icon and text size changed by going into System Preferences > General and there adjust "Sidebar icon size". Sidebar printer icon (OSX) With a printer icon in the Sidebar, you can print by simply dragging and dropping a document onto the icon. Create a sidebar icon by first creating a Desktop printer icon (to establish a file system object). Then you can select that desktop printer icon and do Add To Sidebar from the Finder's File menu (Command+T). See also: Desktop printer icon Sierra The name of macOS 10.12, announced 2016/06/13. Signal numbers Do 'man signal' to see the set. Signatures (file signatures) Mac OSes up through 9 did not use the three-char extension convention to identify files, but signatures... Signatures are strings of eight bytes, four for the creator (the program which created the file) and four for the file type (text, picture, and so on). The correspondance between signatures and icons is managed by the Finder, for all programs which exist on a volume, in the Desktop file (an hidden system file which is never shown by the Macintosh but exists on every disk). With System 7 and upwards, the Desktop graduated to a double Desktop DB + Desktop DF These signatures are not saved in the resource fork of each file, but in the catalog tree (on the disk, in a management structure). Signed apps (Mac) See: Gatekeeper Single-app mode iOS 6 feature to allow locking an iPad into a single app. Useful where students are to take a test on an iPad and you don't want them going to Safari to look up answers; and where an iPad is to be used for self-guided tours in museums. Single-user mode Boot, holding down Apple+S. (This might be necessary when the OS won't boot into full-screen mode, where you might want to do like: fsck_hfs -d -r -y -f /dev/rdisk0s2) Siri Apple's intelligence voice recognition facility, first implemented on the iPhone, then iPad and Macintosh. The technology comes from a company called Nuance. It operates over the network, where Apple data center servers provide the data acquisition that is involved. Reports claim that the Siri development team is located in Boston. That's logical, as Siri's technology is based upon what the Nuance company developed, and they are in Burlington, MA. Competing technolgies: Google Now, Cortana (Microsoft) Where the name came from: The co-creator was the Norwegian Dag Kittalaus. In Norwegian, Siri means "beautiful woman who leads you to victory". The name was short enough, distinctive enough, and easy enough to say and spell that it could serve for both naming and vocally addressing this digital assistant. Sites Folder in your home area to contain elements for your personal Apache web server, per Personal Web Sharing (q.v.) or Web Sharing (q.v.). Sleep Via the Apple menu. Or... Key sequence: Command+Option+Eject To simply put your displays to sleep: Shift+Control+Eject Any key (Ctrl, etc.) should awaken it. Slide show, from folder files For example, you have a bunch of jpeg files in a folder, and would like to see them in a slide show. Select the files which are to participate, then right-click (Ctrl+Click) on any of them, and chose Slideshow from the presented menu. A slide show will take over the display. Slideover In iOS 9, the ability to have an app such as Messages slide over part of another application. Smart Connector 3-pin connection introduced on the edge of the original 12" iPad Pro, for docking it with a Smart Keyboard. The connector provides power to the device, eliminating the need for batteries in the keyboard, and the physical connection eliminates the need for Bluetooth, which saves power and possible connectivity issues. SMB Server Message Block, a Windows file sharing protocol. See also: SMBX SMB2 Circa 2010 new version of SMB. Mac OS 10.9 will use SMB2 as its default file sharing protocol, with AFP still available, but secondary. This will make Macs better performers in the enterprise. This displaces the SMBX stand-in. SMBX In OS 10.7, Apple replaced Samba Windows File Sharing with their own SMBX. Apple did this after Samba's open source developer team decided to move it to the strict GPLv3 license, which prevents Apple from commercially using the tool. Apple's SMBX supports both SMB1 and the newer SMB2 protocol, which is much faster and more efficient. SMBX will reportedly drop support for NT Domain Controller features that came with Samba. Benefits of SMBX include: - DFS support: Macs with OS X Lion can now connect to DFS shares. - Windows file sharing is faster and not as erratic as its Snow Leopard predecessor SMBX does SMB1 protocol, not SMB2. See also: SMB2 SMS Short Message Service. On cell phones, a way to to send short messages, 160 chars or less, from one phone to another, or from a PC to a phone. Also known as text messaging. Has always been available on iPhone. As of iOS 5, messages sent using SMS or MMS are handled by iOS's iMessage technology, appearing in a green bubble, in the Messages app. See also: iMessage; MMS SMU System Management Unit, as found on G5 Macs, is a microcontroller chip on the logic board that controls all power functions for your Mac. If the Mac is experiencing any power issue, resetting the SMU may resolve it. The SMU controls several functions, including: - Telling the computer when to turn on, turn off, sleep, wake, idle, etc. - Handling system resets from various commands. - Controlling the fans. Resetting the SMU can resolve some computer issues such as not starting up, not displaying video, sleep issues, fan noise issues, and so on. To reset the SMU on one of these iMacs: - Turn off the computer by choosing Shut Down from the Apple menu, or by holding the power button until the computer turns off. - Unplug all cables from the computer, including the power cord. - Wait 10 seconds. - Plug in the power cord while simultaneously pressing and holding the power button on the back of the computer. - Let go of the power button. - Press the power button once more to start up your iMac. Some Macs have a tiny SMU reset button on their logic board. Snap Grid turned on? If you're wondering whether you have Snap to Grid turned on for a particular window, just look in the bottom left-hand corner of the window. If Snap to Grid is turned on for that particular window, you'll see a tiny grid image. If Keep Arranged By Name is turned on, instead you'll see four tiny evenly spaced squares, representing folders. Snow Code name for the later Airport base station which has twin Ethernets. See also: Graphite SoC System on a chip, as in a self-contained processor: processor, graphics, I/O, memory controller. Software Update Gets system software updates from the Apple web site and installs, to keep your system up to date. When doing, it is best to NOT use wireless networking - and especially not VPN software, which displaces standard networking such that things could get messy if the software update is for the operating system. Log: /var/log/install.log Cache: In ~/Library/Caches, in folder com.apple.SoftwareUpdate/ That folder can be deleted, whereupon OS X will start a new one at the next Update. Apple Articles: 106692 See also: Installer Software Update via command line There is a '/usr/sbin/softwareupdate' command: start with 'softwareupdate --list' to get a list of available updates, then 'softwareupdate --install ...' to apply them. Software version command /usr/bin/sw_vers Invoked with out options, reports like: ProductName: Mac OS X ProductVersion: 10.8.4 BuildVersion: 12E55 Invoke for individual values like: sw_vers -productName Mac OS X sw_vers -productVersion 10.8.4 sw_vers -buildVersion 12E55 For hardware info, invoke: system_profiler SPHardwareDataType Sosumi See: Apple Corps Sound See also: Multi-channel sound Sound Check iTunes checkbox, under Playback, in Preferences, to have consistent playback sound levels among all the songs in your library and on your iPod, mostly to assure that you can hear soft passages on your iPod when in a noisy environment. Known in the audio world as dynamic range limiting. Sound conversion If you have QuickTime Pro, you can use QuickTime Player to convert most sound files to AIFF, WAV, or other formats. Sound recording There are various ways to record sound on a Macintosh... QuickTime Player: File > New Audio Recording. GarageBand: Full facility recording including sound editing. To record any audio which is playing on the Mac: Freeware called WireTap Pro. Requires installation of a kernel extension ("AmbrosiaAudioSupport"). There is a 30-day trial period. (www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/wiretap/) AudioX is a for-sale product for easy sound recording under OS X, from any input source (microphone, USB, FireWire, Audio In, etc.). A similar app is iRecordMusic: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/ moreinfo/mac/21432 Sound recording from CD iMovie can do this. Click its Audio. Sound recording from microphone In OS X, iMovie can allow your PowerBook or any Mac equipped with a microphone to function as a tape recorder. Open iMovie, establish a project, then click on Audio. At the bottom of the Audio window pane a Microphone area appears, with a volume meter plus a red start/stop recording button. Each time you press that button, a new sound capture segment is created in the major window, called like "Voice 02". To save, double-click on one of the segments to save them all, under the Movies folder in your Home directory, inside the movie project folder, Media sub-folder, as individual "Voice nn" files. (Though the file remains associated with appl iMovie, you can use the Preview appl to hear the sound, which is most easily achieved when listing files in column mode, so that a Preview play control is presented when the filename is clicked.) The amount of sound you can record is limited only to your free disk space. Advisory: Stream recording of any kind is rather sensitive. Do not unplug headphones when recording, which will disrupt the sound processing facilities and cause recording to stop. Sound recording from USB Sound recording purely within the digital domain is a challenge. The USB port can deliver digital audio to an external receiver, such as the Yamaha RP-U100; and the Yamaha will feed audio through its USB connection to the Mac, but there is no Mac application which will take that incoming digital stream and save it to a file. Macs through the G4 series had only analog stereo input and output mini jacks. The G5 iMac has digital audio out (a combination headphone out/optical audio out port to connect headphones or digital audio), but audio input is via analog audio line in port. The G5 PowerMac series has optical input and output (Toslink) audio ports, as well as analog input and output audio ports. Sound volume On a modern Mac, the keyboard contains sound volume controls marked with the speaker icon, where a simple speaker icon with no soundwaves emanating from it is the mute/unmute control, and the keys with one wave and many waves allow decreasing or increasing the volume. With those keys, sound may be increased or decreased in fixed increments. If you want finer control, hold down the Shift and Option keys while you press those speaker icon keys, and you will see the volume change in much smaller increments. You can also adjust volume from the menu bar, when Sound preferences have the box checked for "Show volume in menu bar". When you increase or decrease the volume, there will be audible feedback blips indicating such stepping. To defeat that blip feedback, go into Preference > Sound and uncheck the box "Play feedback when volume is changed"; or, to defeat it only while you are changing the volume (as when you are in a quiet environment), hold down the Shift key while adjusting the volume. If you attempt to adjust the volume with the keys and the on-screen volume indication shows a circle with a slash through it, that means that actual speaker volume is not being controlled from your Mac, but rather by the external sound device which is connected to your Mac, as via USB, such as the Yamaha RP-U100 USB receiver, or the Bose Companion 5 Multimedia Speaker System with its USB connection. Sounds Are conventionally stored in your home directory, in the Library/Sounds directory. Soundsticks Harman Kardon (Harman Multimedia) introduced this speaker system for the Mac in 2000, consisting of a power converter box, feeding a subwoofer, which via RCA connectors fed two "soundstick" speaker arrays in a vertical plastic cylinder about 10" high, centered above heavy base doughnuts. This system connected to the Mac via USB. Nice, but incompatible with home stereo and PCs. Soundsticks II 2004/01/06 variant on the original speaker system, providing conventional analog connectivity for home stereo and PC use. Features updated audio technology and touch volume control. Includes two 10-watt satellite speakers as well as a 20-watt subwoofer, which produces bass response down to 44Hz. (The new sticks are visually distinguishable from the old in that the new one sit in front of their donut base instead of inside it.) Retail price: $200. Spaces OS 10.5 Leopard feature for grouping applications into separate window sets. These are workspaces, where you can devote full attention to a single project or type of work without clutter or distractions from unrelated apps. Spaces is a form of multiple desktops. Spaces can be rearranged, and apps can be dragged across them (but not X11 or Stickies). Moving from Space to Space can be done via the keyboard. By default, you can move one Space left via Ctrl+LeftArrow and move right via Ctrl+RightArrow. You can change that sequence by going into System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts, and there alter the "Move left a space", "Move right a space" where better settings might be Ctrl + Opt + LeftArrow Ctrl + Opt + RightArrow and change the Mission Control keyboard shortcut to: Ctrl + Opt + UpArrow and change Application Windows keyboard shortcut to: Ctrl + Opt + DownArrow. In 10.7+, Spaces is less overt, being a subset of Mission Control. Sparse bundle Is a disk image format introduced in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard (.sparsebundle). Like sparse images (.sparseimage), a sparse bundle is a Read/Write format where the disk image only occupies as much space as the data it contains, up to the limit defined when it was created. Sparse bundles compact more efficiently than sparse images, meaning that it is faster to reclaim the unused free space in a sparse bundle than in an equivalent sparse image. While both sparse images and sparse bundles contain a file system, a sparse bundle is bundle-backed, meaning that it employs a specialized, hierarchical directory structure for grouping related resources. Within a sparse bundle, the bands subdirectory contains the actual data saved within the disk image. Sparse bundles are seen in Time Machine backups, as resident on Time Capsules. Sparse Disk Image In Disk Utility, when creating a disk image you have this Image Format choice. It allows you to define a maximum size for a new disk image, but use only as much space as the data currently in the disk image. So, if you create a 4 GB sparse image and then copy 1 GB of data into it, the disk image will be just 1 GB in size. Speak text OS X can speak text that you designate. Some apps support this in their Services area. Where such is not available, go into the Speech preference pane, then choose "Speak selected text when the key is pressed", then choose some key sequence for that activation. Now you can select an area of text in an arbitrary application and use the key sequence to start and stop the speaking of it. Speak text, via command Sample command: say "This is a test." Speech recognition The Mac was early into speech recognition with the OS 8,9 PlainTalk software, which allowed Finder control of tasks such as opening and closing via voice commands. Indeed, Macs of that era were shipped with plug-in microphones which sat on the top lip of your CRT. In OS X, you can control your computer using spoken commands, by turning on Speakable Items in Speech preferences. Given its early lead and record for innovation, it's bewildering why Apple failed to pursue generalized voice recognition software (VRS) for the Mac. Instead, Apple left it to other companies to tack on voice recognition, notably IBM's ViaVoice and MacSpeech's iListen. The standard for VRS software remains Dragon products. iOS devices, of course, have intrinsic speech recognition, beginning with Voice Control on the iPhone, leading to Siri capabilities in the iPhone 4S and the Siri subset of Dictation on the iPad 3. spoolss Print spooler router, corresponding to spoolss.exe in Windows. Was introduced to OS X in 10.7 (Lion). When setting up an OS X printer instance, under Advanced, there is Type "Windows printer via spoolss", for SMB printing to a Windows server. If printing to a Samba server, note that its smb.conf can have disable spoolss = Yes Spotlight Core technology introduced in Tiger, to search for text strings inside all files of any type. Keyboard shortcuts: Command+Space To bring up a Spotlight data entry box. Command+Option+Space To bring up a full-function Spotlight search dialog. Context search: Select text in an app and Control+Click to bring up context menu, where you can select "Search in Spotlight"; or do Command+Shift+F. Searching also possible via Unix commands: mdls List all of the metadata associated with any document. mdfind Search with many flexible options. mdutil Provides utility functions to manage the Spotlight indexes. The mdimport background process runs through the file system indexing new data, and is the cause of a busy disk. To facilitate searches: Consider adding special keywords to the Get Info for selected files. Limitations: Spotlight does not search inside application packages, in that their contents are not to be casually revealed. Spotlight ignores the following as it pursued indexing: Files in the trash Files inside zipped archives Files inside disk image (.dmg) files Time Machine backups Certain System files. The Spotlight internal management directory is /.Spotlight-V100/. (The version identifier may change over the years.) See also: mdfind Spotlight Comments Box in Get Info, wherein you can add text to accompany the file or directory, which will then show up in a Spotlight search. Tips: To effect a newline, hold down the Option key and press Return. Spotlight performance recommendations Spotlight is an aid to finding things on your Macintosh, but it may be doing more than you need, which adds overhead to your system and can slow down your Mac experience. Here are some things you can do to optimize performance... - If you use Parallels Desktop or other virtual machine product, it is definitely a good idea to exclude their directories from Spotlight indexing by adding the Documents/Parallels folder to the Spotlight preference Privacy list. - You would want metadata indexing of files either containing text or having meaningful names. Thus, you would most likely be better off excluding directories containing music or videos. - If you have a Mac Pro or other multi-disk or multiple-partition Mac, realize that the Spotlight that runs when you boot from each disk or partition will endeavor to index all other disks and partititions. What you may really only need is to be able to find things with that booted disk or partition - not your whole computer system. As you boot each disk or partition, go into Spotlight preferences and add all other disks and partitions to the Privacy panel list of things to be excluded. This will enormously reduce OS X overhead as well as save some disk space. - If you plug USB thumb drives or storage device cards into your Mac, don't overlook these as candidates for the Privacy list. Excluding a DVD-RAM disc, for example, will eliminate all that mysterious extra activity on the disc when it's mounted on your Mac. Spotlight preferences panel In System Preferences, there is a Spotlight panel, having multiple parts: Privacy: Any directory or file system added to this window is excluded from indexing. Particularly, as soon as you add a directory or file system to this window, the index for that element is erased. You might want to specially destroy an index where you have reason to believe that the index is defective, which could cause Spotlight mdworker processes to churn and add a lot of overhead to your Mac. To rebuild the index, first add the directory or file system to the Privacy window, then remove it. This will destroy the index and then allow naturall processing to rebuild it. (Allow lots of time for the rebuild, perhaps best done overnight when the Mac will not be needed.) Spotlight special handlings If you find mdworker processes busy most of the time, there may be an issue. If you have an SD card or the like plugged into your Mac, or an attached drive with an oddball file system type, you should exclude the device from Spotlight indexing: Go into System Preferences > Spotlight and add the volume or directory to the Privacy window. To prevent the indexing of a file, or a folder and everything under it, add the name extension ".noindex" to it. To prevent the indexing of a file system, create dummy file .metadata_never_index in the folder. Spring Forward Apple presentation Monday, March 9 2015 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time at the erba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Announced release of Apple Watch. Spring-Loaded Folders OS 9 facility, reintroduced in 10.2, whereby an object which you drag over a folder will cause the folder to automatically open if you hover there for a second with the object still held, allowing you to efficiently descend through folders without manually opening them first. .spx System Profile XML filename extension. As reported by System Profiler. Srouji, Johny Apple senior vice president for hardware technologies, circa 2016. Runs the division that makes processor chips. (Apple got into silicon design to be able to differentiate itself from the competition.) SSH (pre-OS X) MacSSH: http://www.macssh.com/ SSH 2 only; has X11 support. NiftyTelnet: http://www.lysator.liu.se/~jonasw/ freeware/niftyssh/ SSH1; no X11 forwarding. Commercial versions: www.F-Secure.com ($120 package) Resource list: www.cs.toronto.edu/~djast/ssh.html www.openssh.com/windows.html hpcf.nersc.gov/help/access/ssh_apps.html www.mindbright.se/mindterm SSH in OS X OS X includes OpenSSH. SSH X11 forwarding Will not result in a DISPLAY setting on the remote host unless you are running X11 on the originating Mac. sshd (OS X) Made available by doing the following: - In System Preferences, click Sharing. - Click Services and select the Remote Login checkbox. /usr/sbin/sshd Runs according to /etc/sshd_config. sshd version Do 'ssh -V'. Reports like: OpenSSH_5.2p1, OpenSSL 0.9.8r 8 Feb 2011 on OS X 10.6.8. Stacks Leopard feature to instantly get at the contents of folders in the Dock, which expand linearly or as a grid. Standalone installer Usually, to install an OS X update, you simply invoke Software Update from the Apple menu. But on rare occasions that doesn't work, and you can't get the Finder to come up, where you can't do a GUI type Software Update to repeat, so have to repeat it manually. From another machine, download the appropriate update from http://www.apple.com/support/ (search on "standalone installer" and the like 10.4.9 update. Use scp to get that update to your afflicted Mac. Install the update via like installer -pkg whatever.pkg -target / -verbose Then reboot. Startup items, OS 9 System Folder, Startup Items Startup items, OS X System Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Items Where located: /System/Library/StartupItems/ For operating sytem services. /Library/StartupItems/ For general services. $HOME/Library/StartupItems/ For user-owned services. Also, /Library/LaunchAgents/ may contain plist files to launch various processes when you boot or log in, an example being: org.macosforge.xquartz.startx.plist for X11. Startup Manager Allows you to choose the startup volume on late PowerPC-based Macs or any Intel-based Mac. Get into it by holding down the Option key during boot. In OS 10.8 and above there will be a Recovery partition presented for each startup volume. (This partition takes the place of the Recovery Disc that used to be supplied with Macs.) Problem: I encountered a situation where the Startup Manager took several minutes to display volumes, and the list would be inconsistent; and upon pressing Enter to boot from one, nothing happened. I found this to be caused, somehow, but a DVD writer that was turned on and connected to a FireWire port (no disc inside it). Upon disconnecting that DVD drive, volumes displayed promptly and booted no problem. See also: Recovery HD Startup sound/chime You will hear a rich-sounding "chime" at power-on time if your Mac is healthy. Otherwise you will hear beeps, whose count indicates the problem. See Apple Article HT1547 Startup sound/chime, mute The start-up chime exists to indicate that your Mac is healthy. But it's loud, and you may want to suppress it. As of 2013 Macs, holding down the keyboard sound-mute button or plugging into the speaker jack will not mute the loud start-up chime. To suppress it, you can do one of the following: - Easiest: Press the "no sound"/mute button on an Apple keyboard before shutting down. - Or: Go into System Preferences > Sound, select Output, then Internal Speakers, and click Mute. To permanently disable, do so in NVRAM: In a terminal window, enter the command: sudo nvram SystemAudioVolume=%80 You can also ameliorate via: sudo nvram SystemAudioVolume=3 sudo nvram SystemAudioVolume=%10 sudo nvram SystemAudioVolume=" " (a space inside the quotes) Do 'nvram -p' beforehand to see the original sound volume, which reports: SystemAudioVolume M (which probably means Max). You can return the chime to its original volume by setting that value, or via: sudo nvram -d SystemAudioVolume ------------ In earlier Macs ------------ If you have muted sound in System Preferences, when you reboot there will be no startup sound. To suppress the startup sound at boot time but leave your normal sound setting intact, hold down the Mute button during system startup. The most physical approach is to stick a headphone plug into the headphone jack. Steve Jobs See: Jobs, Steve Steve Wozniak Apple co-founder, the electronics guy. Was working at HP in 1976. Stickies OS X mini application emulating "yellow stickies". Note that emacs style movement and editing controls are honored. Stores (Apple Stores) http://www.apple.com/retail/ Store websites may have a refurbished section, with great values. strace command Not available. Equivalent is /usr/bin/dtruss. Streaming audio capture Via "Audio Hijack" shareware. Via WireTap Pro, available at www.ambrosiasw.com . Streaming video capture Via Snapz Pro, available at www.ambrosiasw.com . Summer deals An Apple tradition is a special offer, extending from about June 16 to September 20, for college-bound students, faculty, and staff to enjoy an educational pricing purchase with some rebate style bonus. In years prior to 2011 it had been an iPod or low end iPod touch. In 2011 it was a $100 Back to School Card to use on the Mac App Store, the App Store, the iTunes Store, and the iBookstore. SuperDrive Flamboyant name for the removeable media optical drive which Apple currently incorporates into its Macintosh computers. More generally, this name has been used for whatever device Apple has built into Macintosh computers, even dating back to the floppy disk drive era, when the name started being used in 1988. It is current defined as an optical drive capable of reading and writing CDs and DVDs, though specific speeds and sub-media support may evolve over time, as for example support for dual layer media. In some cases, customers can boost the capabilities of their SuperDrive via a firmware update, as for example accommodating newer media supporting faster write speeds. The name is an Apple trademark. In general: DVD-R, CD-RW, CD-R. Supports DVD-Video, DVD-ROM and DVD-R, as well as CD-ROM, CD-Audio, CD-R, CD-RW, CDI, CD Bridge, CD Extended, CD Mixed Mode and Photo CD media. The SuperDrive lineage has never supported DVD-RAM, alas. A 2x SuperDrive writes to 4x media at 1x. As of early 2009, Apple does not provide a Blu-ray capable optical drive, saying that the licensing is too daunting yet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdrive Contrast with: Combo Drive SuperDrive, as of 2009/03 18x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD-R DL/DVD-RW/CD-RW) Writes DVD+R and DVD-R discs at up to 18x speed Writes DVD+R DL and DVD-R DL discs at up to 8x speed Writes DVD+RW discs at up to 8x speed Writes DVD-RW discs at up to 6x speed Reads DVDs at up to 18x speed Writes CD-R and CD-RW discs at up to 32x speed Reads CDs at up to 32x speed SuperDrive, dual layer (2005) The SuperDrives built into the Power Mac G5 (Early 2005), iMac G5 (Ambient Light Sensor) computers, and eMac (Early 2005) computers support DVD+R DL media, which means in addition to reading Double-Layer DVDs, they can write to a DVD+R DL disc. While single-layer recordable DVDs hold up to 4.7 GB of data, Double-Layer discs have two layers of data, allowing the SuperDrive laser to read and write on both layers, almost doubling the storage to 8.5 GB. Such a drive shows up in System Profiler in the DVD-Write section like "+R DL,". Support coverage with Apple, check Enter your serial number at the bottom of page: http://www.apple.com/support/ Surveillance cameras www.dropcam.com seems to have good ones. Swap space in OS X Unlike most UNIX-based operating systems, Mac OS X does not use a preallocated swap partition for virtual memory. Instead, it uses all of the available space on the machine's boot partition, which it allocates dyamically: as an application uses more of its address space, the virtual memory system allocates additional swap file space on the root file system. Paging occurs in 4 KB increments. Note that processes are limited by traditional Unix Resource Limits (see the 'limit' built-in command in Csh). Ref: "Memory Management in Mac OS X", in the ADC area. Swift Programing language introduced at WWDC 2014. It builds upon groundwork invested in the company's development tools ranging from its LLVM compiler to its Cocoa and Foundation frameworks. At the end of 2015, Swift became an open language, now on Linux. Swift Playgrounds Announced at WWDC 2016, is a free interactive iOS app to allow youngsters to learn programming, in Swift. Not long after, Google copied this move, launching an Android programming course for beginners. Sysctl settings As of Panther (10.3), sysctl settings are taken from /etc/sysctl.conf, if coded there. See: /etc/sysctl.conf System Name of the folder which contains the Mac OS X system software. (Its name cannot be changed.) System _ (e.g., System 3) Early name for the Mac operating system. See: Mac OS _ System Information Mac OS X utility to report on all the hardware and software elements in the Macintosh. Before 10.7 was called System Profiler. See also: System Profiler command System Logs System logs may be examined through either: - The Console utility; or - The System Profiler, "Logs" system.log /var/log/system.log. Each start of OS X rotates the system.log files, such that system.log becomes system.log.0, and the other older copies (through system.log.9) move down and shift out of existence after generation 9. The older copies are gzipped. See also: System Logs System monitor Look into iPulse (shareware). System Preferences OS X collection of preferences for the way the system looks and performs - a new organization of what was Control Panels in the older Mac OS. Settings are stored in standard flat files using the XML format. The operating system has an application called System Preferences that contains the controls users need to customize system settings. Each user on a computer has a home directory for storing preferences, files and personal documents. One of the advantages of this storage method is easy migration: since there are no cryptic data stores to move - only standard XML files - a user can quickly migrate to a new Macintosh by simply copying the contents of their home directory to the new computer. OS X stores information about itself in a directory called NetInfo, which uses standard key-value pairs. IT administrators can inspect and modify the information using the NetInfo Manager application that ships with Mac OS X, he says. System Preferences: Display When using multiple monitors, opening the Display preference nicely puts up one window on each monitor. System Profiler Original OS X utility to report on all the hardware and software elements in the Macintosh. In 10.7+ is now System Information. System Profiler command /usr/sbin/system_profiler Invoke with -listDataTypes to see what sub-areas can be directly reported, where you can then invoke as 'system_profiler SPPrintersDataType', for example, to report all Mac printer definitions and 'system_profiler SPHardwareDataType' for processor and memory info. Invoked without operands, it reports everything - which takes time. (Note that the printer definitions within Mac OS are supplemented by CUPS configuration files.) Datatypes as of 10.8: SPParallelATADataType SPUniversalAccessDataType SPApplicationsDataType SPAudioDataType SPBluetoothDataType SPCardReaderDataType SPComponentDataType SPDeveloperToolsDataType SPDiagnosticsDataType SPDiscBurningDataType SPEthernetDataType SPExtensionsDataType SPFibreChannelDataType SPFireWireDataType SPFirewallDataType SPFontsDataType SPFrameworksDataType SPDisplaysDataType SPHardwareDataType SPHardwareRAIDDataType SPInstallHistoryDataType SPNetworkLocationDataType SPLogsDataType SPManagedClientDataType SPMemoryDataType SPModemDataType SPNetworkDataType SPPCIDataType SPParallelSCSIDataType SPPowerDataType SPPrefPaneDataType SPPrintersSoftwareDataType SPPrintersDataType SPConfigurationProfileDataType SPSASDataType SPSerialATADataType SPSoftwareDataType SPStartupItemDataType SPStorageDataType SPSyncServicesDataType SPThunderboltDataType SPUSBDataType SPNetworkVolumeDataType SPWWANDataType SPAirPortDataType System version (Mac) 'sw_vers' command shows like: ProductName: Mac OS X ProductVersion: 10.6.8 BuildVersion: 10K549 'sw_vers -productVersion' shows like: 10.6.8 T1 chip The Touch Bar controller chip in the October 2016 MacBook Pro. It is described as "a variant of the system-on-a-chip used in the Apple Watch", which in turn means that iOS is inside new Mac laptops in a support role, particular for the Touch ID capability in the strip. The chip boots from a 25MB ramdisk. T310 chip An expected follow-on chip to the T1, expected in later 2017 MacBook Pros. Tabs In web browser (Safari), let you see and easily switch between multiple websites or web pages without wrestling with the clutter of multiple windows. Taligent In October, 1991, IBM joined with Apple to form Taligent, a joint venture to complete the Apple-originated OS code-named Pink, which was demonstrated to IBM in April of that year. In December, 1995, Taligent becomes a wholly owned subsidiary of IBM, where it dissipated and was terminated in January, 1998. See also: Pink TAM See: Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh Taptic Engine Haptic (touch sensing) feedback device, first announced in the Apple Watch, and then found its way into the MacBook that was announced 2015/03/09. This kind of feedback subtly allows the user to feel that an action has been registered. The TE is the follow-on to the linear actuator that Apple had previously used for haptic feedback, where the TE provides a much more precise and natural experience. Asof iOS 10, there is a Taptic API. Target Disk Mode OS X: A protocol allowing you to mount the hard drive of one Mac (target) from another Mac (host), using a Firewire or SCSI connection. The target Mac's Firewire must be motherboard hardware, not an add-in card. To use, have the target Mac shut down, and connect the two computers (with Firewire), removing any other Firewire devices. Boot the target Mac by holding down the T key until a Firewire icon appears. The icon for the target Mac's drive should now show up on the other Mac. When done, perform an Eject of the drive icon and press the target Mac's power button. Was SCSI Disk Mode in OS 9. Not possible with USB connection. In TD mode, you cannot do: - Disk Utility First Aid functions to fix permissions or the disk. See also: Migration Assistant; Safe Mode TCON Timing controller chip in the 2014 Apple iMac with Retina 5K display. Designed by Apple's silicon engineers. The TCON tells every pixel what to do and when to do it. Tcsh See: Login shell TechTool Deluxe A powerful diagnostic utility that tests critical system components such as the processor, RAM, VRAM, the hard disk, and more. Where it finds problems, it can be allowed to correct them. Perhaps the best way to acquire this utility is by purchasing AppleCare Protection Plan, where TTD comes on CD-ROM in the box. TechTool Pro The ultimate version of the TechTool product. With it you can burn a DVD-ROM containing the bootable version of it, whereby you can work on a Mac's boot disk to analyze and fix problems. Its basic functionality consists of memory and disk tests. There are also useful tools available, including: File Optimization: To defragment files on the volume. Usually takes only a few minutes. Volume Optimization: To defragment the disk (best done after defraging files). This can take hours, and a lot of CPU power (which makes a laptop run hot for a long time). Tempo Code name for the OS 8.0 initiative which had to be undertaken to provide a successor to Mac OS 7.x after the Copland initiative failed in 1997. Terminal OS X line-mode interface to the operating system environment. A trick: To have a command operate on a file system object, drag a file or folder from the Finder into the Terminal window: this causes the object's path to be pasted into the window, after the command name you typed beforehand. From the Terminal, you can also open things... To open a folder: open /Users/MyName/Pictures To launch an application: open /Applications/calculator.app for example. If you invoke an XWindows function from within a Terminal session, be it local or remote, the X11 facility on the Mac will be launced to handle it, if X11 is installed on the Mac. Terminal fonts LCD screens tend to be inferior to CRTs in clarity of small details. Thus, when considering fonts for the Terminal application, one finds that most exhibit fuzziness as they attempt to interpolate over screen pixels. In any case, proportional fonts are inappropriate to "terminal" uses because they result in column misalignment. Fixed, or "mono" fonts are best suited to terminal uses. Here are viable candidates: Courier Adequate, but looks rather ugly. Lucida Grande A proportional font with rather clean lines, but slightly fuzzy and some odd character spacing. Monaco Dot matrix mono. Very much like VT100; some character form variations, as in 'v'. Taipei Dot matrix proportional. VT100 Dot matrix mono. Very much like Monaco; some character form variations, as in 'v'. My choice: VT100, 9 point. Text editor OS X: TextEdit There is also the amazingly free text editor called TextWrangler, available from http://www.barebones.com. Text to speech See: say Textbooks In an Apple Education Event in NYC at the Guggenheim Museum 2012/01/19, Apple announced support for multi-touch textbooks on the iPad (only). Consists of iBooks 2 on the iPad as the presentation facility, iBooks Author for constructing textbooks, and the iTunes U app for iOS devices as the organization point for a course where the material is in iTunes. This is to say that textbooks are in iBooks 2 and traditional course material is in the iTunes U portion of the iTunes store. TextEdit The standard text editor in OS X. Despite its humble name, TextEdit is quite powerful, able to work with MSWord, HTML, and .docx files. Incorporates Font Panel (q.v.). Can run in either Plain Text mode or Rich Text mode. In Plain Text mode, there is no toolbar at the top of the window, so no styles, justification, spacing, tabs, or ruler. Use Rich Text mode for full format control, and to add pictures to your document, which you can align left, right, or center, or use tabs and spaces to nudge the image. The ruler appears by default in this mode, which you can defeat in Preferences. The ruler dimension is inches (immutable). Margins: Normally, text paragraphs flow to the current width of the window. In Rich Text mode, you can use the downward pointing triangles to set the left and right margins. Such margins are honored in printing or otherwise imaging the document, but usually not in Copy-Paste into other apps, such as mail. (These margin settings govern text flow rather than physical limitations.) To physically restrict margins, you can go into Preferences and click "Wrap to Page", which causes the appearance of a page outline, with a margins rectangle within it, sized per your File > Page Setup page size choice. (Changing Wrap to Page affects newly opened documents, not documents already open.) Note that when you print, the text is inherently shifted into the safe boundaries of the printed page. TextEdit is a *relatively* simple program, compared to the Pages app, for example, but still offers a good degree of sophistication. Apple supplies the full source for it in the developer tools under /Developer/Examples/AppKit/TextEdit Image manipulation: If an image is already imported into a TextEdit document, simply double-click it to cause a copy of it to be opened in Preview, where you may crop or manipulate it. Pasting: You might save a Web page as a PDF, but that results in pagination which can interrupt an embedded table. Instead, you can select the page's contents and then paste it into TextEdit, where data exists in a vertical continuum rather than being cemented into a page position. In doing do, you may find a table's elements "squished" narrow. But you can correct that with the not-always-realized capability where you can grab the vertical line which comprises the column boundary and pull it horizontally to make the column wider, whereupon the data therein can expand to more comfortable dimensions. Lists: Can be bulleted, numeric, etc. When in a list item, you can start a new line within the item by holding down the Control key and press Return. Updates: The (rare) updates to TextEdit arrive in the Mac OS X Update, rather than as a separate application update. Mac 101: TextEdit: Apple Article HT2523 TextEdit and iCloud As of OS 10.8, TextEdit documents can be stored and managed in iCloud. This can be performed from the Open menu, which lists all your current files, which you can open for editing, duplicate, rename, or delete. Further, you can put your documents into folders as you do in iOS, by dragging one on top of another, which causes folder creation and folder naming opportunity. The folder will then show up in the Save menu, in its iCloud section, as a container for saving documents. Updates are distributed: Let's say you have a TextEdit document open on your work Mac. You go home, and there add to that document on your home Mac. When you return to work, you will find your update in your already-open TextEdit session there. Nice! TextEdit documents stored in iCloud can be deleted from System Preferences > iCloud > TextEdit. Copies of all documents stored in iCloud are automatically locally stored on your Mac, in the Mobile Documents folder, located inside the ~/Library folder. Note that TextEdit documented stored in iCloud cannot be accessed from the iCloud.com website or iOS: you have to access them from a Mac. TextEdit can open... As of OS 10.6: Plain Text (.txt) Can even open Word (.doc) documents Rich Text Format (.rtf) Rich Text Format Directory (.rtfd) HTML (.html) Web Archive (.webarchive) Open Document (.odt) Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) Microsoft Word 2003 XML (.xml) Microsoft Word 97 (.doc) (via NSTextView and NSTextStorage) TextEdit can save as... As of OS 10.6: Formatted text: Rich Text Format (.rtf) Rich Text Format Directory (.rtfd) Web Archive (.webarchive) Web page (.html) OpenDocument Text (.otd) Word 2007 Format (.docx) Word 2003 Format (.xml) Word 97 Format (.doc) PDF Plain, unformatted text: Unicode (UTF-8) Unicode (UTF-16) Western (Mac OS Roman) Western (Windows Latin 1) Japanese (Mac OS) Japanese (Shift JIS) Traditional Chinese (Mac OS) Korean (Mac OS) Simplified Chinese (Mac OS) Chinese (GB 18030) ...and many others, choosable. To do Save As, go into the File menu and hold down the Option key to have Save As appear. TextEdit can't do... Multiple columns: You can emulate two columns by creating a table with three columns, the middle one narrow, to serve as a gutter between the two real ones. Table column removal: You may import columnar data from somewhere and find that one column (e.g., 3rd of five) is empty, and want to remove that column from the midst of the others. There is no ability to simply do that, but there is a method, which is to move the populated columns that are to the right of the empty one and then reduce the number of columns by one. Begin with the column just to the right of the empty one. Place the cursor at the beginning of the first entry in that column, hold down the Option key, and then drag vertically to select all occupants of that column. Perform Cut (Cmd+X) to extract. Now position the cursor in the first entry of the empty column to the left, and do Paste. You have shifted a column left. Repeat until the rightside columns are the empty ones, then go into Table control and reduce the number of columns, which takes out the rightside columns. TextEdit Keyboard shortcuts UpArrow Move up one line. DownArrow Move down one line. Ctrl+UpArrow Move up one page. Ctrl+DownArrow Move down one page. Cmd+UpArrow Go to top of document. Cmd+DownArrow Go to bottom of document. TextEdit margins Margins in TextEdit are unintuitive... Physical margins are always 1". Seeing the margins requires an adjustment. The editor likes to start in Wrap To Window mode, there the ruler's 0 is at the left edge of the window. If you type lines into this and let them flow, when you go to print you will see 1" margins and your text shrunken to fit. Alternately: If you go into Preferences > New Document and click the box "Wrap to page", or go into the Format menu and choose "Wrap to Page", an outline will appear to visualize the margins. When you print from this you will see your text lines as you expect, the text not shrunken as above. Above the ruler you will see downward facing triangles, denoting the left and right margins. You can move these toward the center to make the effective margins wider, but you cannot make the physical margins narrower than 1" with these control elements. The following *should* work, but DOES NOT work to alter margins... Start in the File menu, therein selecting "Page Layout...", where you'd likely choose US Letter. This will give you 1" margins around all edges. If you want custom margins, instead of US Letter choose "Manage Custom Sizes..." wherein you click on the + sign to define your own size name, then fill in the Paper Size and margin values. Apple Article TA23738 notes this margins behavioral non sequitur. The 1" enforced value may be to prevent edge issues in general with printers. If you *really* want to diddle with margins, you can do so by first creating an empty .rtf file (to be used as a copyable prototype), then in TextEdit preferences, under Open and Save, click "Ignore rich text commands in RTF files" and then edit the file again: this will expose the RTF language. In there, you will see like "margl1440": that defines the margin, left as 1440 units, where 1440 is 1". You can change/add margl, margr, margt, margb for the left, right, top and bottom margins values. Save that, then change the preferences back. Now, to create a document with these margins, first copy the prototype file you created to your desired document file name, and double-click to open under TextEdit to populate its contents, where it will have the desired physical margins. TextEdit printing Interestingly, the size of the printed text and content will be scaled to match the size of the window: if you pull the window much larger than the natural 8.5x11" letter sized content, the thing will be scaled down so that all the empty space bordering the text area will be fit into the output; so you need to adjust the size of the window to match the size of the sheet. You can use print preview to see this effect. TextEdit special features TextEdit has some helpful functions: Auto-complete text: You can partially type a work and press Escape to get a list of possible completions. Bulleted and numbered list of items: Type your list, one item per line, pressing Return at the end of each line. Select the list, then go to the right end of the TextEdit toolbar to select a list style from the pull-down menu. To add an item to the list, position to the end of the line preceding it and press Return. To finish the list, press Return twice after the last item. Contextual dictionary: With your cursor positioned at a work, press the sequence Control+Command+D to cause the word's dictionary entry to appear. TextEdit via command line /Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit textutil Useful command line tool to operate on text files of various formats, using the mechanisms provided by the Cocoa text system. Can convert to the following format: txt, html, rtf, rtfd, doc, docx, wordml, odt, webarchive. (A conspicuously missing format is .pages.) Example of converting an RTF file to HTML: textutil -convert html foo.rtf Tip: You might use this to generate HTML from RTF generated by the Pages app, in that the app lacks an export-to HTML. Info: man textutil "The Beat Goes On" Apple's September 5, 2007 iPods announcement, with the nano getting video and annoucement of the iPod touch, iTunes WiFi Music Store, and iPhone price drop. Theater Mode New in watchOS 3.2, turns on Silent Mode and keeps the screen dark until you tape the screen, or press the Digital Crown or side button. This keeps the watch from lighting up when you raise your arm to scratch your face or the like. Thesaurus Available from the Dictionary app. Think Different Was not just an early advertising campaign $(G!7(B it is an enduring trademark, extended in February 2016 to cover all of the company's growing line of products. Thunderbolt High speed desktop bus, engineered in a joint venture between Intel and Apple (Intel's Light Peak project). Introduced 2011/02/24 in the updated MacBook Pro laptops. The connector type is the same as the Mini DisplayPort. The initial incarnation is via copper wires, rather than optical, owing to the issue of providing in-chain electrical power to attached peripherals. Thunderbolt supports two channels of 10Gbps (equivalent to about 1280MBps) transfers in both directions, simultaneously. Intel demonstrated actual throughputs of up to 6.25Gbps (800MBps) using prototype consumer products. There's very little overhead, Intel notes, compared to USB 3.0, which promises 5Gbps but can only possibly deliver throughput of about 3Gbps. Existing electrical copper cables can carry Thunderbolt signals for about 3 meters (about 10 feet) between devices, and carry 10 watts of power. In the future, fiber optic cables will be available to extend signals to "tens of meters". Thunderbolt is not only fast, but also smart, supporting Target Disk Mode (something no version of USB can handle) and networking as a switched fabric interconnect. Apple had originally applied for the Thunderbolt trademark in Canada and the U.S., which they then transferred to Intel, for them to own. Thunderbolt Display See: Apple Thunderbolt Display Thunderbolt to FireWire Adapter Apple adapter, with a Thunderbolt connector at the computer end and a FireWire 800 connector at the other. $29. Supplies 7W of power. It is a convenience device, intended for allowing old self-powered FireWire devices to be used with circa 2013 Macintoshes. Some people ignore the published power-provided 7W value and attempt to attach power-hungry bus-powered FireWire devices to the adapter, and then complain that their devices don't work with it. Duh. TiBook Colloquial name for the Titanium PowerBook models. Tiger Product name for OS X 10.4, successor to 10.3 Panther, released 2005/04/28, built on Darwin 8. Will feature the inevitable filling out of 64 bit processor support. There is live file searching, called Spotlight, which borrows from iTunes music finding software, and will be in the OS, Address Book, Mail, System Preference. Queries can be saved. The technology is called Spotlight because it uses a spotlight effect to point out the search-hit icon, best seen in System Preferences. Spotlight is full content indexing, such as a little text entry in a large PDF! H.264 technology: Next generation of video, from the MPEG group, the open standard for the next generation of hi-def DVDs. It is a scalable codec: super high quality and ultra efficient. This is a follow-on to the MPEG4 (H.263) which Apple has been using - four times the quality at the same data rate (1.5 Mb/s) and file size! The technology fully scales, all the way from cell phone displays to cinematic. Safari RSS (Really Simple Syndication): Will be built into Safari, to accommodate news feeds, which are more timely than can be provided by web searches. Also includes Atom protocol. Core Image and Core Video: The still and moving imaging technology correspondent of Core Audio, which is built into the OS. Core Image processing will be done in the GPU. Takes input from Quartz and QuickTime. Can do real-time edge detection on H.264 video! Sync Services: Built in. Dashboard: Expose for widgets (for accessory apps). Automator: Visual scripting...like AppleScript for the rest of us. For example, select Internet, "Find linked images" to capture all images on a web page into an iPhoto album. Applications and their Automator capabilities can be selected and sequenced, with the results of the first being passed to the next in the sequence. iChat A/V: Video conferencing based upon H.264. Audio conferencing with up to 10 people; video conferencing with up to three remote people (You+3). Tiger supports the industry standard LP64 programming model supported by other 64-bit Unix systems. Tiger was previewed in the 2004/06 WWDC. System requirements: - PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor. - Built-in FireWire. - At least 256MB of physical RAM. - A built-in display or a display connected to an Apple-supplied video card supported by your computer. - At least 3.0 GB of available space on the hard drive; 4GB of disk space if installing XCode 2 developer tools. - DVD drive for installation (get CD media for $9.95) Previous: Panther Next: Leopard TIL Technical Information Library. Tim Cook on Apple's motivations During the company's annual shareholders meeting in 2014, a representative for conservative think tank NCPPR wanted Cook to commit to making moves that were profitable only for the company. Cook's rebuke was swift: "When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don't consider the bloody ROI [return on investment]", Cook said. "If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock," he continued. Time Capsule The clever name of the AirPort Extreme base station announced at the 2008 (01/15) Macworld, containing a 500 MB or 1 TB hard drive for wireless backups via Leopard's Time Machine. Later changed to 1 TB & 2 TB models. The key concept here is backing up your data regularly. To do this conventionally, you would have to religiously plug in a USB drive and turn it on - but few busy people would. A wireless access point, however, is almost always turned on - the ideal point of opportunity for incorporating an always-ready disk. Thus the whole concept of Time Capsule. TC has a USB port, which can be used to directly attach a printer or disk drive; or attach a USB hub, whereby you may attach multiple devices. A further feature of TC is the ability to copy the contents of its internal drive to a USB drive. This innocuous addition makes it possible to store off-site copies of your Time Machine backups - a critical component of a good backup strategy. Time Capsule has five MAC addresses: three for each of the LAN ports and WAN wired Ethernet port, and one for the wireless Ethernet port. TC reports the MAC address as "Ethernet ID". As of 2008/03, it is possible to instead have a USB drive attached to an AirPort Extreme base station and use Time Machine in concert with that combination, it's a more clunky arrangement. The interal drive is reportely formatted with the HFS+ journaled file system and contains two hidden Timed Capsule specific partitions, in addition to the main data volume.) Bridge mode: Means that the router portion is bypassed. As of 2011/06/21, the models available are now 2 TB and 3 TB. See also: Time machine Time Machine A natural backup/restore facility added in Leopard (OS X 10.5) which backs up changes since the last backup. Maintains a separate backup for each of your computers, according to the computer name in Sharing preferences. (If you change your computer name, that will incite a full backup.) Files are backed up in their entirety: there is no delta backup of just changed blocks within a file. Time Machine keeps: - Hourly backups for the past 24 hours - Daily backups for the past month - Weekly backups for all previous months The oldest backups are deleted when the backups disk becomes full. (By default, it notifies after old backups are deleted - a changeable option.) But: TM will not delete the last surviving backup. Previous backups can reportedly be moved from one backup disk to another (as when you buy a new drive) via Disk Utility: with the Restore option and drag in the desired source and destination, and let it go to work. Eject/unmount the source and tell Time Machine to use the just copied destination. When a backup starts, the assigned disk (e.g., Time Capsule) is mounted on mount point "Backup of <Computer Name>" and in OS X before 10.9, the Time Machine icon in the menu bar will show a clock running backward/counterclockwise. (10.9+ no longer does this: to reduce overhead, it puts a second arrowhead below the always-present one.) Message "Looking for backup disk" may dwell for a while if the disk is busy with another Mac's backup. Space available on the backup disk is reported in Time Machine preferences. The assigned Time Machine disk contains a single folder named Backups.backupdb which in turn contains a folder having the name of the computer (Computer Name, from the Sharing preference pane). In that are sub-folders for the backup times, name like "2010-02-06-113936". When Time Machine is running, the latest folder will have a name like "2010-04-03-145903.inProgress"; and there will be a symbolic link named "Latest" pointing at the latest folder. In each timestamped folder is a folder for each named disk on the computer. See also: tmutil Time Machine, Verify Backups With Mac OS X v10.6.4 or later, you can initiate a verification of your Time Capsule-based Time Machine backups. OS X help topic "Verifying your backups" briefly describes this. This function was introduced to verify Time Capsule backups, but may work on other disks. To perform: Hold the Option key and click the Time Machine menubar item. Choose Verify Backup from the Time Machine menu. This will initiate a verification of your most recent backup. To see progress, open Time Machine Preferences and observe the progress bar, which will say "Verifying backup..." under it, rather than the usual backup progress. A verify may take half an hour. Results are not reported in a window: go into the Console utility and search on "backup" to see results. If you have a Time Capsule, stay current with firmware updates for it to avoid problems. Time Machine and multi-boot systems Macintoshes such as Mac Pro can have multiple boot disks. If you run Time Machine backups from one Startup Disk, what happens? The backup will back up all disks in the computer, unless you exclude them. Booting from a different disk/partition and running Time Machine backup from there will see the same disk backups, and not create more. (All this presumes that computer naming is consistent across startup disks.) However, you really should perform backups only from one startup disk. Time Machine backups are serial If multiple Macs start performing backups, the first one must finish before others can proceed. Time Machine excludes To save space on your backup disk, consider excluding stuff. To do so, go into System Preferences, select Options, then click the + sign to select things to exclude. Exclude things which are readily reinstallable, such as applications. If you select the System folder and click Exclude, OS X will produce a dialog asking if you wish to exclude all other system files and applications, or just the chosen folder. Click Exclude All System Files, and the following descriptive item is then added to the list: System Files and Applications where the space involved isn't dramatic (about 11 GB), but helps. Also exclude the Developer folder, which involves about 9 GB. If you start excluding stuff that you previously had not excluded, the next backup will show: Backing Up: Deleting old files... Most of the Time Machine space consumption is user files, particularly movies, music, and photos. (Remember that iPhoto has its own Trash, so empty that periodically.) Time Machine restorals You can restore individual file system files, such as a TextExit file, or data that is managed through an application such as iPhoto or Mail, or a whole disk to a new Mac. You will launch Time Machine from its backwards-running clock icon in the Mac menu bar at the top of the screen. iPhoto: Always keep in mind that iPhoto has its own Trash. If you've lost a photo, it may be in there - which is where you should look first, before embarking upon a restoral expedition. Follow the recovery operation documented in iPhoto Help. And note that Apple has changed the restoral procedure, as noted in iPhoto Help and Article HT4927. For recent iPhoto releases, Time Machine restoral of photos is no longer performed within iPhoto, but outside it. To restore individual pictures, rather than the whole library, the restoral should be from a file in the Pictures/iPhoto Library folder. You can right-click on that folder and choose Show Package Contents from the resulting contextual menu, locate the Masters folder, and navigate down through the nested folders (they're nested by Year, Month, Day, Some Oddly Named Folder, and then the images for that day). Now fire up Time Machine and go back to a point before you tossed the images. Locate the images you want (you can use Quick Look within Time Machine to find just the images you desire) and restore them. That photo restoral is physical: the photo won't show up yet in iPhoto because it needs to be added to the database, which you can do by pulling the photo out of its Masters sub-folder to then drag into the iPhoto window. iTunes: Time Machine is not integrated with iTunes. This means that unlike other applications like Mail and iPhoto, you cannot simply restore an individual item such as a track or playlist back into the iTunes database. The only way to restore iTunes data from Time Machine is to do so by restoring physical files from ~/Music/iTunes/ to the desktop, and then go to the desktop and drag the file into iTunes, which will add it to the library and database. Defect: In Mavericks, invoking in a Multiple-Display environment results in the screen being black instead of presenting the interface. (This seems to be an artifact of an engineer's intention to make the other display black when Time Machine is active, so that you see only the TM content.) You can sometimes get around this by moving the Finder window to the secondary display and then invoke TM from the alternate display's menu bar, which will then start TM on the primary (e.g., iMac) display such that the Finder window slides into that. Another workaround is to go into the Displays preference pane and do Mirror Displays for the duration of the TM session. Ref: Apple Article HT1177 The OS 10.7 Lion feature called Versions is based upon Time Machine. See also: Versions Time servers See: NTP Time Synchronization control OS 9: Date & Time, "Use a network time server" checkbox. OS X: Date & Time, Network Time tab, "Use a network time server" checkbox. Time Synchronizer System Extension for automatic time synchronization and daylight savings time. Time Travel New in watchOS 2 (2015): turn the Digital Crown to see what's happening $(G!7(B and what has already happened $(G!7(B yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Time zone files OS X: In /usr/share/zoneinfo/. TinkerTool A freeware GUI application to give you an extended interface to your personal preference settings - some of which Apple hides from you. The tool will never change anything in the operating system: the integrity of your system is in no way risk. All settings are restricted to the user accounts who launch TinkerTool. You "uninstall" TinkerTool simply by dragging the application to the trash. One of its more useful function is to expose "hidden files" (dot files), which you would want to see when using Samba. TinkerTool System This one changes system settings, as invoked by the sysadmin. tmutil Time Machine utility Provides methods of controlling and interacting with Time Machine, as well as examining and manipulating Time Machine backups. Common abilities include restoring data from backups, editing exclusions, and comparing backups. Run as root. Syntax: tmutil Verb [Options] To turn Time Machine on or off: sudo tmutil enable sudo tmutil disable Start or stop backup: tmutil startbackup tmutil stopbackup Show where backups are stored: tmutil destinationinfo List the backups: tmutil listbackups The most recent backup: tmutil latestbackup See man page for details. Useful doc site: www.real-world-systems.com/docs/tmutil.1.html Tomes Files to be installed are stored in a special file called a Tome. Its contents are not ordinarily visible. There is a downloadable utility called TomeViewer which allows inspection. Toolbar (OS X) At the top of each window is a Toolbar Tool Bar area, to make it easy to navigate within the directory structure and display files in a chosen manner. A clickable button at the top right of the window controls whether the Toolbar is exposed. When opening a folder within a window: if the Toolbar is showing, the folder will open within that window; otherwise it will open in a separate window. Customize: View menu -> Customize Toolbar; or, Command+Option+Click on the top-right "pill" button. Also, drag items into and out of it. See also: Dock Touch ID Fingerprint sensor in the iPhone 5S, incorporated into the home button. You simply have to touch the button with a "registered" fingerprint. A metal ring around it provides a small electrical charge to allow sensing the topology of the fingerprint. There is a rugged sapphire window on the touch surface. Up to five different fingerprints are supported. The captured information is not in the form of imagery, but rather data about the fingerprint's details. Touch ID requires a passcode after 48 hours of disuse, a restart, or three failed fingerprint entry attempts. Touch ID shows Apple's genius in strategic planning, allowing Touch ID to be used in Apple Pay simply by holding your phone with one hand near the point of sale terminal: elegant, as demonstrated in the Apple video which introduced Apple Pay. This is in stark contrast to the goofy Samsung fingerprint "scanner" where you have to pull your finger over a bar-shaped sensor, thus requiring two hands. Touch ID represents great security, but alas it is not always in effect: You still need to have a rememberable password and expose that to enter it again: • After restarting your device • When more than 48 hours have elapsed from the last time you unlocked your device • To enter the Touch ID & Passcode setting (Reference: Apple support article HT204587) TouchDraw Affordable drawing program for Mac OS X and iOS devices. Native filename extension: .t2d This package is unique in being able to import and export Visio VDX files. Notes: - Arrows that "stick" to elements: You can use the line tool to draw a line between elements and then attach arrowheads to the ends, but they won't stay with the elements they point to as you move the elements around. Below the line tool is a tool showing a line with a bulb on each end: that's a "connector". Chose that tool and, when you touch to one element and then another, it causes the ends of the line to "stick" to both elements, where if you move them around, the line's ends stay with the element. - If when you print, the output contains a content page then an unexpected blank page, that's an indication that the page content has gotten beyond boundaries such that an overflow page has been created. Pull the content a bit closer to the center of the page to eliminate that. Libraries are stored in "*.t2l" files in the Documents Directory of TouchDraw. You can download .t2l files from sites such as https://app.box.com/s/5yd0p87pdzosfof6ug7g Visio To TouchDraw Converter: http://elevenworks.com/tools/visio-to-touchdraw/ Trackpad A rectangular pad, as typically found on laptop computers, allowing pointer and scrolling control, in the absence of an attached mouse or trackball. The aspect ratio of the pad is typically the same as that of the screen. Usage: Slide one finger across the pad to move the pointer on the screen. For finer movement, keep your finger on one spot and tilt it in the direction that you want the pointer to move, slightly: this causes the finger tip pressure position to change by slight degrees, and thus results in much more gradual pointer movement. Transfer Your Information The title of a dialog box that appears in at least OS 10.6 installation, offering to set up your new OS X instance with information from your prior OS X, be it on an adjoining computer or another disk volume within your current Macintosh (e.g, Mac Pro having multiple hard drives). This is a Migration Assistant function. See also: Migration Assistant Transmit Commercial FTP/SFTP client for Macintosh. Available in Mac App Store, $34. Claims to be the most Mac-like of available client applications. Vendor: Panic, Inc. Trash Trash, or Trashcan, is a container where "deleted" files are put, out of the way but recoverable in case you change your mind. You can move a file to the trash by selecting it and then go into the File menu to perform Move to Trash; or you can right-click on it (Ctrl+LeftClick) to there choose Move to Trash. As of OS 8, Move To Trash can be accomplished via keys Cmd+Delete. Files in the Trash cannot be opened, but you can inspect them with Quick Look. See also: Empty Trash Trash, emtptying quickly Press Shift+Cmd+Delete Trash, emtptying warning Can be suppressed in Finder preferences, under Advanced ("Show warning before emptying the Trash"). Trash Icon, OS X Located at the far right side of the Dock, pictured as a wire wastebasket. By default, a warning will pop up when you empty the Trash. This warning can be turned off via Finder Preferences, Advanced area; but it is healthies to leave the warning in place, as it is possible to inadvertently trash a large, data-laden folder. The Trash is physically the .Trash folder in your home directory. True Tone flash New on iPhone 5S, which has two flash LEDs: one white, one amber, which it fires as needed to adjust color and intensity to make flash photos appear more natural in color tone. tshark The text/terminal version of Wireshark: not supplied with OS X. See: Network trace Turn-by-turn navigation iOS 6 Maps app feature for getting voice-guided driving and walking instructions to reach a destination. Requires at least an A5 chip, so works in iPhone 4S+, iPad 2+. TV app Apple's app called simply "TV" is their attempt to consolidate the increasingly fragmented TV show viewing experience on iOS and tvOS devices. Became available 2016/12/12. Party to this app was Apple's effort to implement single-signon to facilitate access to restricted content. As of launch, Netflix is not participating in "TV". TV recorder (TVR) capability Via third-party products to watch TV from your Mac, and capture TV shows on its hard drive, allowing it to function like a DVR. Video compression is performed in the outboard box, so Mac processor power is not an issue. EyeTV 200 (elgato.com): Records to MPEG-1,2,4 format, which has limited transferability within the Mac (e.g., you have to use Toast to generate a DVD). Can export DV and QuickTime; but this is not as good as initial DV frame capture, because initial capture is MPEG, and that is quite lossy (much more than DV). Standard quality rate is 1.8 GB/hr; High quality rate is 2.7 GB/hr. 124-channel tuner. Program guide via titantv.com. Convenient DVR-like remote control. (Note that it is pronounced "iTV" :-) Formac Studio DV/TV: Records to professional DV format, which is universal to OS X, readily used by iMovie, Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere; provides optimal capture quality and frame-accurate editing. (Consider that DV format uses 215MB of disk space for each minute of video: 12.6 GB/hr.) Unlike a true DVR, you can't watch the program while recording it: the product is oriented toward capturing video for editing or preservation purposes, rather than TV viewing. 125-channel tuner. Program guide via titantv.com. No remote control. EvolutionTV http://www.miglia.com/index.html USB 2.0 TV Tuner with MPEG-2/4 and DivX Compression. AlchemyTV DVR TV tuner and Digital Video Recorder for PowerMacs. TVMax Watch and record TV on Mac www.miglia.com/products/video/tvmax/ index.html In contrast, a dedicated DVR such as offered by Panasonic tends to be an isolated, self-contained thing, jealously keeping its recorded data to itself. Because of movie studio paranoia, DVRs offer no digital video output capability and thus no way to get such captured data into a Mac for editing. For example, a Panasonic can burn a DVD-R, but that's not as good as DV input; and it can create a DVD-RAM, but its format is peculiar to the Panasonic and not usable on the Mac. TV shows Announced as part of the iTunes Store in the Apple Special Event 2005/10, as "One more thing...". First participants: ABC TV, Disney Channel. $1.99 per episode, available the day after broadcast. Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh (TAM) Special design, limited edition Macintosh, to celebrate Apple's 20th anniversary. It was an all-in-one design with a panel display (12" active matrix LCD), the whole looking like something Bang & Olufsen would design. Only a little over 10,000 of these models were produced. Came with integrated CD, floppy, hard drive, TV card, FM tuner, remote and speakers. It was prominently displayed in the Wayne mansion in the movie Batman & Robin. Introduced: March 20, 1997 Discontinued: March 14, 1998 Original MSRP price: $7,499 Twitter Is integrated into iOS 5, in an an unprecedented accommodation to a third party within Apple's products. Two-factor authentication Provided by Apple for your Apple ID. Apple calls it: two-step verification. How it operates: - Prompted by Apple, you enter your Apple ID and password. - Apple sends a multi-digit code number to one of your registered devices. - You enter that code, which verifies your identity and completes the sign-in. Apple Article: HT5570 Two-Sided An entry on the Print page, and under its Layout section. In the Print page proper, you can check the Two-Sided box to do the job; or go into Layout, where you will see choices: None Long-Edge binding (= "duplex") Short-Edge binding (= "tumble duplex") where you would normally select Long-Edge binding. If "Two-Sided" is grayed out, that is indicative of having defined the printer in OS 10.5 as Generic PostScript Printer rather than choosing a specific model driver such that a Duplex Unit checkbox is presented. In OS 10.6 you can do the same specific model driver selection process; or you can choose Generic PostScript Printer, where in Options you have available a checkbox named "Duplex Printing Unit" that you can check. You can fix this by going into System Preferences > Print & Fax, select Options & Supplies, then the Driver tab. Ubillos, Randy Apple's Chief Architect of Video Applications. He was the creator of the first three versions of Adobe Premiere and later developed KeyGrip, which was sold to Apple and released as Final Cut Pro. Ubillos continues to be the Chief Architect of Video Applications at Apple. UDF Universal Disk Format (1999). Is the file system format for DVD-RAM, DVD-ROM, DVD-Video, and packet-written CD-RW. There are, however, multiple levels of UDF, providing different capabilities: V1.0.2 Basic file system as used by DVD-Video (consumer movies). V1.5 Added support for (virtual) rewritability on CD-R and CD-RW media by intoducing the VAT structure, as used in file systems such as the product DirectCD by Roxio. V2.0 Added support for Stream Files, Access Control lists, and Power Calibration. V2.0.1 Added support for Real Time Files and Video Recording Files, as created on Panasonic DVR units (ability to copy, read and delete VOR files) V2.50 Added the Metadata Partition facilitating metadata clustering and optional duplication of file system information. UDF supports very large volumes. The OS X Help system never has any info on UDF. A UDF file system can be created, from the command line, by invoking 'newfs_udf'. OS 10.3 supports up to UDF 1.5, not 2.x. When it does recognize a UDF disc, OSX will mount a UDF disc by itself, but treats it ReadOnly - cannot write. OS 10.4 seemingly supports up to UDF 2.x, to the extent that it will consistently mount UDF discs - but only as read-only. The company Software Architects Inc. is a stalwart in UDF, where their ReadDVD! product is the basic mount & read method, and WriteUDF! is their writer. Ref: http://www.softarch.com/us/ products/UDFproductlist.html See also: DVR UDID Unique Device Identifier; the serial number of your iOS device (iPhone, iPad, iPod touch). Be aware that app makers may unscrupulously send your UDID out from your phone to their site or other companies who pay them for providing such info, as a means of profiling people for marketing purposes. UFS Unix File System, as can be used under OS X - but not for Mac OS 9, which does not understand Unix. If you boot into OS 9.1 and have a UFS disk in your configuration, OS 9 will not be able to see it. The only workaround known for this is to reformat the drive. Mac OS 9.1 (and earlier versions) can't see UFS drives. If you want to be able to see your OS X drives, partition them as HFS+ -- Now known as Mac OS Extended. Advantages: - Same as Unix - Case-sensitive filenames. Disadvantages: - Some applications may not install or run properly on UFS (Photoshop 7, Illustrator 10). - Performance sub-par: slower than HFS+. Copying an HFS/HFS+ file to a UFS volume is handled this way: The Finder splits out the information that is not in the data fork (particularly the type and creator codes) and writes this info to a hidden file in the same directory location as the copied file. This hidden file has the same name as the UFS file, except that it has a "dot-underscore" prefix. Thus, if you have an HFS+ file named MyMug.jpeg, when you copy it to a UFS volume, there will be a file named ._MyMug.jpeg in the same location. When the Finder copies a UFS file to an HFS or HFS+ volume, it looks for the hidden "dot-underscore" file. If one exists, it creates an HFS+ (or HFS) file, using the information in the hidden file to recreate the file's resource fork and Finder attributes. If the hidden file does not exist, the copied file has no resource fork. UID OS X: The Unix User ID number, used mostly to control file ownership/access. By default, the first user created is given UID 501 (usually, Administrator). UIDs less than 500 don't show up in the Accounts pane by default. To see a user's UID number, via command line, do like: id sally Note that added users are not stored in /etc/passwd: they are in /var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/, as <Username>.plist files. As for related GID values: 20 (staff) for standard user 80 (admin) for administrator UID, change First, enable the Unix root user (see: Root access in OS X). Log out of your Mac account. On the login screen, choose Other, and enter name 'root' and its password. At the shell prompt, enter: dscl . -read /Users/____ UniqueID to look up your username's UID. Now change it, like: dscl . -change /Users/____ UniqueID 501 999 Verify the change: dscl . -read /Users/____ UniqueID Now you need to change the ownership of all files and directories previously created under the old UID: find /Users/Alice -user 501 -print0 | xargs -0 chown -h 999 find /Library -user 501 -print0 | xargs -0 chown -h 999 find /Applications -user 501 -print0 | xargs -0 chown -h 999 find /usr -user 501 -print0 | xargs -0 chown -h 999 find /private/var/ -user 501 -print0 | xargs -0 chown -h 999 or just: find / -uid 501 -exec chown <NewUID> {} \; Now you can log out of Undo Command+Z is Apple's standard keyboard shortcut for undoing the latest operation. Repeat to keep undoing. Unicode International standard for character encoding, supporting more than 65,000 symbols in a font, and provides much better support for multiple languages. Unicode support Available in Mac OS 10.2 Lets you include many more characters in your documents than you could previously, including accented Latin characters (with such diacritics as tildes, cedillas, circumflexes, diaereses, macrons, haceks, and acute and grave accents), mathematical operators, and characters from such non-Roman alphabets as Arabic, Thai, and Hebrew. To access these characters, add a Character Palette to the menu bar: 1. Open System Preferences and click International. 2. Click the Input Menu tab. 3. Check the box next to Character Palette. Choose Show Character Palette from the Character Palette menu; then choose All from the View menu and click the Unicode Blocks tab. Use the Insert button to insert the character(s) you'd like to include in your document. Universal Access See: Mouse, use keyboard instead Universal Access settings You can see the settings in System Profiler, under Software. Universal Application (App) iOS: a single application that is optimized for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad devices. This is a single offering in the iTunes Store, which will sync to all those devices, to run in a tailored manner on each. Universal Binary Software packaged so that a given program will run in either PowerPC or Intel (x86) environments. In other contexts, such a combined file is termed a "fat binary". The universal binary format was introduced at the 2005 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference as a means to ease the transition from the existing PowerPC architecture to systems based on Intel processors, which began shipping in 2006. URL, email it to someone When looking at the Web page, do Cmd+Shift+I, which invokes Mail and inserts that URL into a new message. See also: Web page, email it to someone Universal Dock A docking unit for the gamut of Apple product incorporating the iPod connector, allowing the device to stand upright while it charges in the dock, and output through an attached cable. Accompanying the dock is an Apple Remote such that you can control the device from a distance. On the front of the dock is an IR "eye" for the remote. On the back is an iPod cable connector and a Line Out socket. You can connect your cable to an AC unit (USB Power Adapter) to simply charge your device, or to a computer or Apple TV unit to play sound and/or video. Whereas the device stands verticaly, the arrangement is unsuitable for on-device video playback for iPod touch and iPhone units, which display video horizontally. Various adapters allow various models of iPods and the iPhone to securely sit in this stand, the adapters being pieces of plastic shaped to properly hold the unit bottom of each uniquely designed product. It is intended that the dock be dedicated to the chosen device, in that the adapter is awkward to remove once installed. Early in the iPhone 3G introduction, Apple sold a special adapter for it to securely sit in previously sold Universal Docks. Part number: MB125G/A Apple Article: HT1380 Up-to-Date Program This program is active for Macs purchased soon after a new OS level has been released, where the Mac has the previous OS level installed on it. The purchaser can upgrade for free. http://www.apple.com/osx/uptodate/ URL, remove from Safari memory Go into Safari's History menu, where you can do Clear History to remove all URL remembrances, or Show All History to selectively remove things. URL, save as a file When looking at a link on a Web page, you can drag the underlined link to a directory, which results in the creation of a .webloc file whose name base is the name of the Web destination, and the content of the file is the URL to that location. USB Universal Serial Bus. Apple was an early adopter, first deploying it in the initial iMac design in 1988, displacing SCSI as the general data bus to external devices. USB audio Reasons why USB audio is preferable to the built-in computer audio: The inside of your computer is electrically very electrically noisy. High frequency noise from many sources can degrade a computer's audio input and output quality. USB audio provides a far cleaner and more effective way of getting sound in and out of the computer. The audio A/D and D/A circuitry is external from the computer away from noise that degrades audio performance. All signals are carried to and from your computer digitally through the USB connection. The net effect is audio quality that is far superior to what people have become accustomed to from their computers. Drawbacks with USB audio: - Latency problem: there is a delay between the time the signal goes into the computer for processing and the time you finally hear it through the USB port, largely due to software processing. Some USB hubs - not designed for USB audio - add more delay. While USB audio is fine for unidirectional (e.g., iTunes listening), the latency problem makes it infeasible for bidirectional use, such as a headset for voice communication through USB, where the delayed echo thwarts conversation. USB audio on the Mac Requires the Apple Audio Extension v. 1.3.3 or later installed on your Mac. The extension ships with current Macs (Mac OS 9.1 CD, v 1.2). You can record USB audio sound in iMovie. See also: iMic USB hubs Are generally designed for non-critical devices such as keyboards and mice: USB audio may suffer or not work at all. Griffin Technologies offers a properly designed USB hub. "Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as Keyboard & Mouse checkbox choice in standard function keys" System Preferences, particularly for use with the 2007 aluminum keyboard, so that pressing the Fn keys results in performing whatever function the running application bound to the keys, rather than invoking Expose or Dashboard. With that box checked, you would then press and hold the "fn" key to also press one of the Fn keys to change brightness, invoke Expose, etc. User Directive specifying the system username identity under which the httpd is to run. Example: User nobody See also: Group User, remove Via System Preferences -> Accounts Select the user account you want to delete, then click Delete (-). You may preserve the user's files, in which case they are stored in a disk image (__.dmg) in the Users/Deleted Users folder. To see the saved files, double-click the disk image in the /Deleted Users folder. You can drag the disk image to the Trash to dispose of the files. User pictures The picture that you choose for your account, from the repertoire provided by Apple, are in /Library/User Pictures/, like: /Library/User Pictures/Flowers/Red Rose.tif useradd On Unix, the useradd command adds a user account to the system. In Mac OS X, that is done from System Preferences, Users & Groups panels, or via command dscl (q.v.). Username (OS X) OS X, as a friendly kind of Unix, likes to have users identified by their natural names, like "John Smith", which can be more than 8 characters long. There is also a unixy 1-8 character username associated with the natural name, for command line and network operations. Users OS X: Folder containing user home directories. User accounts since 10.6 are being managed by OpenDirectory. The backend files related to users for OpenDirectory are represented here, as plist files: /var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/ The simplest way to get a list of users: ls /users See also: Applications; Library; Shared; System Users, management OS X: The management of multiple users occurs through System Preferences -> Users. See also: Automatic Login /usr/libexec/java_home Mac OS X command to report Java info. Invoked without operands, it reports the current JVM being used (JAVA_HOME). Options: -V/--verbose Print full JVM list, with architectures. -X/--xml Report full JVM list and additional data as XML plist. -h/--help Show command usage. /usr/share/zoneinfo/ OS X: The time zone info directory. /usr/share/zoneinfo/localtime OS X: Local time zone file. /usr/share/zoneinfo/GMT OS X: For UTC leap seconds. UVC support USB video device class (also USB video class or UVC) is a class of USB devices (device class) which are capable of streaming video. The most common example of such devices is the webcam, but can also include digital camcorders, analog video converters, television tuners, and still-image cameras. Mac OS X has included a UVC driver since 10.4.3. 10.4.9 allowed it to work with iChat. In the marketplace, any webcam box having the Windows Vista logo on it should conform to UVC. /var/db/.applesetupdone During boot, OS X looks for this file: if absent, it plays the "Welcome to <CurrentOS>" movie, then allows you to set up an administrator account. Removing this file is a way to recover from a situation where your usual admin account seems to have disappeared, locking you out, where you could 'rm' this file in Single User Mode then Version numbering scheme See Apple Technical Note TN1132 Versions OS 10.7 Lion+ facility where an application can keep multiple historical versions/generations of a document, allowing you to return to a previous version for reference or retrieval. Applications which initially do this: Pages, Numbers, TextEdit. Each time you open a document, OS X Lion automatically saves the current version. It also saves a new version every hour while you work, building a history of the document as you go. You can manually create a version of your saved document at any time by choosing File > Save a Version or press Command-S. What is saved: only the information that has changed since the last version, making efficient use of space on your hard drive. The OS manages the version history of a document, keeping hourly versions for a day, daily versions for a month, and weekly versions for all previous months. How it's used: Go into the File menu, and into Revert To. Choose Browse All Versions to see a Time Machine-like display of all prior versions. The 10.7 feature Auto Save is not related to Versions. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4753 Defect: Revert To is a Time Machine function, which in Mavericks results in a black screen where the interface should be. You can sometimes get around this by moving the Finder window to the secondary display and then invoke TM from the alternate display's menu bar, which will then start TM on the primary (e.g., iMac) display such that the Finder window slides into that. Another workaround is to go into the Displays preference pane and do Mirror Displays for the duration of the Revert. See also: Auto Save; Modern Document Model; Time Machine Resume OS 10.7 Lion facility where an application, when launched, will automatically reopen all windows (including all subwindows) that were open when you quit the application. See also: Auto Save; Modern Document Model; Versions Video capture product If you want to capture the video going through your HDMI or component video cables, a product line which makes this possible is Blackmagic Design Intensity. In concept, these are "wire tap" boxes, where the box is connected in the midst of your cabling, where it sends a copy of that stream out through a Thunderbolt or USB 3 cable to your computer, where provided video recording software (Media Express) is running. This allows you to record high definition video (and audio) at source quality. An example is to record what your video camcorder is imaging on its chip rather than having to suffer quality losses in recording on the camera's media. Another usage is capture of video game play. http://www.blackmagicdesign.com Video conversion products Grass Valley seems to be the company making the most prominent devices in this category. In the software arena MPEG-Streamclip is a capable converter. And don't overlook the video conversion capabilities built into iTunes. Video frame capture In OS 8, could be done via Apple Video Player. Video recording On an iOS device: All Apple mobile devices now have the ability to shoot video, via the Apple-provided Camera app. There is no set limit on how much video you can record: the only limits are the amount of storage space left on your device, and a realistic size for handling the resulting movie file. The Camera app does not do time lapse recording: you can buy a third party app such as Instalapse for that. On a Mac: Can be accomplished via iMovie or QuickTime Pro (File > New Video Recording). Works with iSight camera. An excellent commercial package is Voila, in the Mac App Store. It captures anything on the screen, including HD video. Highly rated. See also: Screen recording Video sharing See: iCloud Photo Sharing VirtualDV FireWire DV player/recorder software for OS X, available since 2003. Downloads as part of Apple's FireWire SDK. With this app, your Mac can look and behave like a DV camcorder, as in accepting video over FireWire, perhaps from one of the current cable boxes (for non-encoded video streams). Reads and writes raw .dv files - not QuickTime formatted files. DV modes available in version 1.0b13: DV25 NTSC (basic DV camcorder) DV25 PAL DVPro25 NTSC DVPro25 PAL DVPro50 NTSC DVPro50 PAL DVProHD 1080i/60 (100mbps HD version DV) DVProHD 1080i/50 DVProHD 720p/60 After changing the mode, you must quit and restart the app. Info about the SDK apps is available in the AVCVideoServices_ReadMe.rtfd found under the Examples directory. See also: AVCVideoCap VirtualDVHS2 Sample app provided in the FireWire SDK, to emulate a DVHS device within the Mac. Info about the SDK apps is available in the AVCVideoServices_ReadMe.rtfd found under the Examples directory. Virtual PC Connectix, then Microsoft, product for running Windows on the Macintosh. Microsoft is as sluggish to update this product as they are any other: it wasn't until more than two months after the release of Tiger that VPC 7.0.2 was released to allow VPC to fully work on Tiger. 2006/08/07: Microsoft announces that it has terminated work on a version of Virtual PC to run on Intel Macs. That leaves the Parallels virtualization software. Another lesson in Don't Depend Upon Microsoft...eager to take customer money, indifferent to serving. Virtual PC disks Virtual PC creates Mac files which serve as its disks, having a filename extension of .vhd - virtual hard drive. The operating system object in the Mac file system (e.g., Windows2000.vpc) is not a file, but rather a collective, like a Mac application. Virtual PC mouse The mouse inside Virtual PC shares the Mac mouse, and inherits the Mac environment mouse settings. Thus, there is no need to try to set up the mouse from inside Virtual PC. For example, if you are using a Kensington Expert Mouse Pro trackball, all of its settings (four clickers and six buttons) apply to both the Mac and VPC environments: if you install Kensington Mouseworks inside VPC, it will not see the mouse as a Kensington Expert Mouse, but rather a generic mouse, as per VPC definitions; but all the sophisticated functions as defined in the Mac environment remain in force. Virtual PC networking Choices: - Shared Networking: Employs Network Address Translation (NAT) to share your Mac's TCP/IP connection. If you go into VPC's Get Info and observe the IP ADDRESS value you will see a value like 192.168.131.65, which is a private subnet addr (which makes it look to OS X that a non-OSX firewall is running on the Mac). This is the most common setting, and is the safer choice; but it can prevent some desynchronized communication getting back to you, such as email which had the 192.168 subnet as a return address. - Virtual Switch: VPC uses its own, real TCP/IP address, separate from that of the Mac. No NAT. This is something best done where DHCP is available and your Windows PC Network settings use DHCP. (If your site requires you to use a VPN, as for wireless use, with this kind of networking you will have to emply both the Mac and Windows versions of the VPN.) If you go into VPC's Get Info you will find that the IP Address is n/a. See also: "Firewall unavailable" Virtual PC networking & Cisco VPN The best approach is to use VPC's Shared Networking setting. (Under Tiger, trying to use Virtual Switch causes an OS X failure, telling you to restart.) Virtual PC performance Its Get Info function reports that VPC runs as a "Pentium II with MMX": i.e., kinda slow. - Running in full-screen mode helps performance in the system not having to also manage non-Windows windows. (Full-screen mode also affords easier access to all the Windows desktop.) - Open the global Virtual PC Preferences from the Virtual PC menu. Select Sound and choose "Disable all PC sounds." - In Windows: - In the Display control panel, Effects tab, unclick "Use transition effects..." so as to make menu use more snappy. Visio (.vsd, .vst files) It is a challenge to find an OS X app which can open these diagram files. As the Dia app doc says: "Visio file format is a completely proprietary and undocumented file format." But apps I have found: TouchDraw Imports and exports VDX/XML Drawing format. Also on iOS. As of 2016 cannot open .vsdx files. However, the vendor provides a conversion service via web page: http://elevenworks.com/tools/visio-to-touchdraw/ which they say is "experimental" (and results reflect that). OmniGraffle Pro Expensive! VLC Video Lan Client: a very popular open source media player for the Mac and other platforms - now including the iPad. One of its strengths is the ability to play a wide variety of video formats (chart) and streaming support. VMware Apple was using VMware ESXi internally to run its internal server infrastructure. Apple found licensing fees to be onerous. In October 2015, reports said Apple will be ditching the VMware ESXi software in favor of KVM, a free alternative that does largely the same thing. The kind of software is called a "hypervisor," a way to essentially trick one server into thinking it's multiple servers, allowing for a higher level of efficiency. VNC Virtual Network Computing, a facility using the RFB protocol to access another computer to use it just like you were sitting at it, with full keyboard and mouse control, and GUI screen output. Used by Screen Sharing (q.v.). OS X has VNC capability built in: Go to Finder > Go > Connect to Server)I­ (or-A press Command+K) and enter vnc://______ with the address of the remote computer. This software is also used by the Back To My Mac screen-sharing feature. There is a free package on the Web called "Chicken of the VNC". Get from: www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/ networking_security/chickenofthevnc. html See also: Back to My Mac; Screen Sharing vnic0 Is the first Parallels shared networking interface. Will typically have a 10-net addresss like 10.211.55.2. Voice Control A feature available on the iPhone since the 3rd generation 3GS version, and the iPod touch 3rd generation, which allows function control via speaking commands. Operates with the iPod and phone apps. To activate: Hold the Home button down for about 2 seconds, until Voice Command and its distinctive sound appear. Then speak your command. Can also be activated via Apple's headphone cables having a remote control button. Most commonly used for initiating phone calls, as in saying the person's name: "Call Fred Futterman". Voice Control will repeat the name for verification, and then initiate the call. There is a Cancel button at the bottom of the Voice Control screen to terminate an errant command execution. Voice Memos iPhone 3.0 software provided this new Apple app for recording sound. Works with built-in mic or the one on connected headset. The recording can be sent via email, where it will have a filename of Memo.m4a and a content type of audio/x-m4a. Oddly, Voice Memos is not provided on the iPad, despite it having a microphone. (Beware: There is a "Voice Memos for iPad" app, but from a third party rather than Apple, and in addition to its purchase price, there is an undisclosed additional in-app fee for transferring your recordings out!) Voice recognition Circa 1995 Macs had Plain Talk included with the OS, which allowed basic control of the operating system via voice, where the Mac came with a microphone. Voice recording on Mac You can use Garage Band for that, wherein you can record and edit sound. VoiceOver New speech function in Tiger. Will read all of your webpages (and other text documents) out loud. An expansion of Universal Access, this on-or-off function reads stuff that you point to with your cursor. This is just one small perk of a powerful tool meant for people with disabilities, but it can be handy for anyone trying to multitask their way through the morning headlines. All of the standard Apple text-to-speech voices are there, including the familiar Fred, now 12 years old and sporting what sounds like a slight Russian accent. Keyboard shortcut: Command+F5 Speech is also available through each application's Services menu. VoiceOver navigation controls Are: Interact with an item: Control-Option-Shift-Down Arrow Stop interacting with an item: Control-Option-Shift-Up Arrow Read all text: Control-Option-A Move up: Control-Option-Up Arrow Move down: Control-Option-Down Arrow Move to previous: Control-Option-Left Arrow Move to next: Control-Option-Right Arrow List the items in a window: Control-Option-I List all links in a document: Control-Option-U Perform the default action for a selected item (e.g. follow a link): Control-Option-Space bar Pause/Continue reading: Control Verbosity menu: Control-Option-V Volume control See: Sound volume Volume names Beware using odd characters in volume names. I once had a problem where the MacX application could not locate its fonts. I discovered that its Preferences file used commas to separate font paths in its file - and there was a comma in the volume name! VPN in 10.6+, set up Go into System Preferences, then Network. Click '+' at the bottom of the left pane list and then choose VPN from the menu. Select details as appropriate: see your site coordinator. VPN support iOS: Since iOS 3.1. Supports PPTP (Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol) L2TP over IPSec (Layer Two Tunneling Protocol), and Cisco IPSec. OS X: Part of Internet Connect. Supports PPTP (Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol) and L2TP over IPSec (Layer Two Tunneling Protocol) over your Internet connection. As of OS 10.6, Cisco VPN is built in. Note that VPN takes over the TCP/IP stack, and so its activation requires termination of any current Internet connections. VPN client, Cisco This refers to the old, separately installed VPN client from Cisco, needed before OS 10.6, which provides a Cisco VPN client built in. Executables: /usr/local/bin/ Config: /etc/CiscoSystemsVPNClient/ There is a "Allow Local LAN Access" checkbox under Properties: this allows other computers on the local LAN to talk directly to the machine which has established a VPN. When this parameter is enabled: - You can access local resources (printer, fax, shared files, other systems) while connected. - You can access up to 10 networks. A network administrator at the central site configures a list of networks at the VPN Client side that you can access. - If you are connected to a central site, all traffic from your system goes through the IPSec tunnel except traffic to the networks excluded from doing so (in the network list). - If enabled on the VPN Client and permitted on the central-site VPN device, you can see a list of the local LANs that are available by choosing Statistics from the Status menu and clicking the Route Details tab. When this parameter is disabled, all traffic from your client system goes through the IPSec connection to the secure gateway. A good case where you would want to enable it is where you are using your laptop's ethernet port as a crossover to test a printer, and at the same time you want to use wireless to see the vendor's Web pages. Though the VPNClient application has not been launched, you will nevertheless find the following CiscoVPN messages in your system.log after boot: attempting to attach to all available ethernet interfaces. checking if we are already attached to interface: en1 no, not yet attached to interface: en1 interface: en1, filter attached. current MTU for en1 is 1500, saving it. checking if we are already attached to interface: en0 no, not yet attached to interface: en0 interface: en0, filter attached. current MTU for en0 is 1500, saving it. loading cisco ipsec kernel module. Uninstalling: There is no uninstaller at the Finder level - you need to go into Terminal or X11, then do sudo /usr/local/bin/vpn_uninstall W1 Apple's first wireless processor chip, announced 2016/09/07 as part of the AirPods wireless earpods. Wallet New name for Passbook, as of iOS 9. WALTR A very simple and straightforward Mac app which allows dragging and dropping any music or video file (even FLAC, MKV, AVI etc) onto an iPad or iPhone from the Mac, without iTunes. (Not available in the Mac App Store.) watchOS The OS for the Apple Watch, derived for the smaller device from iOS. This makes the third OS version from Apple, each tailored for its device category. This differs from Microsoft's latest approach of attemting to have a single OS for all devices. WAV files, create Can be done via MoviePlayer's export command if QuickTime Pro is installed. Web Archive Safari can save the full contents of a web page - text, images, etc. - in an archive format, allowing you to later see the whole as it existed on the website at that time, including all text and images. Filename extension: .webarchive The saved file is most naturally opened thereafter with Safari. It can also be opened with TextEdit, which will show the elements in a more primitive form, where the elements may be individually selected and copied. Web browsers Of course, the usual Netscape and Internet Explorer. OmniWeb is highly acclaimed. There is also Safari (http://www.apple.com/safari/) Web Inspector Part of the Web developer facility in Mac OS X Safari. Turn it on in Safari Preferences > Advanced > "Show Develop menu in menu bar". The Inspector can be attached to the bottom or right side of the page being inspected, or as a separate window. To make it a separate window, find the two-rectangles icon just to the right of the X in its menu bar and click that. To rejoin to the web page window, find the two icons at the far right top of the window, which in tiny form depict the inspector as at the bottom or right side of the window, and choose one. Web page, email it to someone When looking at the Web page, do Cmd+I, which invokes Mail and inserts that page into a new message. See also: URL, email it to someone Web page authoring applications Amaya is a good, free app for the Mac. Web Receipts Folder inside your Documents folder where Safari will save images of web pages which you put there through Print, PDF, Save PDF To Web Receipts Folder. Web Sharing Mac OS 10.6: Runs the Apache Web server which is built into OS X. The Sites folder in the directory of each user on the Mac then becomes publicly accessible, along with any files in that folder. You would want to prepare the contents of the folder beforehand: there is a short guide in the index.html file which is in that directory by default. To activate Web Sharing: - In System Preferences, click Sharing. - Turn on Web Sharing. Port: 80 (http) Runs under user/group: _www/_www Process: /usr/sbin/httpd -D FOREGROUND Config dir: /etc/apache2/ Config file: /etc/apache2/httpd.conf mod_* files: /usr/libexec/apache2/ Library: /Library/WebServer/ CGI-Executables/ Documents/ share/ Other: /private/etc/apache2/ Logging: /private/var/log/apache2/ access_log error_log In earlier levels was called Personal Web Sharing (q.v.). Turning off Web Sharing causes the httpd daemons to be shut down. Web Sharing Unlike File Sharing, doesn't allow connecting as the owner and accessing all files on the hard drive - unless the drive has been explicitly set for sharing. Make sure you turn off item sharing for all folders in the drive before activating sharing of the whole drive. .webarchive Filename suffix for a Web Archive (q.v.). Webcams Apple's iSight camera used to be the Mac standard camera, but that was discontinued. Mac OS 10.4.9 "Includes iChat support for USB Video Class webcams". Reportedly, the Xbox LIVE Vision Cam works on a Mac (VGA 640H x 480V video at 30 frames per second and still photos at 1.3 mega-pixels). See also: UVC support WebClip Leopard feature to allow end users to easily create a Widget from website elements. WebDAV support MacOS X supports WebDAV as a flavor of shared volume that you can mount through the Finder's Go -> Connect To menu command. And it's the way iCal outputs data to remote servers. "Welcome to Macintosh" movie, music Use the Terminal utility or X11 to get to directory location /System/Library/CoreServices/ Setup Assistant.app/Contents/Resources/ TransitionSection.bundle/Contents/ Resources/ Therein, you will find the files as: intro-sound.mp3 intro.mov where you will note that the sound and movie are separate. (With QuickTime Player Pro, you can readily combine the two into a full movie by opening both files, doing a Copy of the sound and then, in the movie window, perform Add To Movie, then Save As.) The "Welcome to Macintosh" music was actually the following in Mac OSes: Jaguar: Sofa Rockers by Sofa Surfers remixed by Kruder & Dorfmeister, The K&D Sessions Tiger: Bytecry, by Weevil Panther: Eple by Royksopp Western (ISO Latin 1) This is a character set choice in the desktop Safari brower, under View > Text Encoding. You can choose this instead of allowing Default. This is actually charset iso-8859-1, which is the character encoding for the Latin alphabet. It is a way to tell the browser to interpret what is arriving in HTML for text/html content type, and thus override what is in the page content's <meta> tag, if there is such in the page, or the <meta> tag added by the Web server, like: <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> "We've got a little more to show you" Tagline for the 2012/10/23 product announcement event at the California Theatre in San Jose, Calif. Wide Color As found on the iPhone 7 family, is Apple's name for the DCI-P3 color space. DCI-P3 was designed as a standard for digital movie projection for American film industry. Most displays use the older "standard RGB" (sRGB) with a narrower color space — the iPhone 7 is calibrated for both color profiles, and shifts between them as needed. Widget, remove Open the Widgets display. Click on the X. Click on Manage Widgets. Scroll down in the list and click the red, circled '-' to move the widget to the trash. Widgets Mini apps in Tiger. Hot key: F12 WiFi Assist iOS 9 feature which switches between WiFi and cellular data depending on the quality of your connection. If it detects that your WiFi is taking too long to respond or if its signal is poor, it will swap to cellular data. Wikipedia Available from the Dictionary app. The Wikipedia functionality is largely self-contained, with the exception that if you click on a picture to see a larger version, that is launched in your browser. Williams, Jeff Apple's VP of Operations. Williams is the person who oversees Apple's supply chain, much as Tim Cook did before Tim became Apple's CEO, and he was described by Walt Mossberg as the "quiet figure" behind many of Apple's popular products like the iPhone and the Apple Watch. Williams says he oversees 3,000 engineers in addition to the supply chain. Window, capture image of Use the Grab utility and go into its Capture menu. Window, maximize keyboard shortcut OS X does not comes with a shortcut for this - but you can create one... Go into System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts. Choose App Shortcuts. Click on "+" symbol to add a shortcut. In the dialog: Application = All Applications Menu Title = MaximizeWindow Keyboard Shortcut = Control + Option + Command + m (or some other sequence you want) Window, minimize In OS X, do one of: - Click on the yellow button (-) - Double-click the title bar - Keystrokes Cmd+M Window, move Click on the top of the window and hold down the button while dragging. This also brings that window to the foreground. To move a window in the background, also hold down the Command key during the operation. Window, resize The green dot in the upper left of the window frame can be clicked to resize the window, per the dimensions of the current screen hosting that window (a factor in multi-monitor usage). Or, you can drag the lower right corner of the frame to make the window a specific size. Window background image See: Finder window, background image Windows, restore when reopening app On Mac OS 7+, you can have applications remember their open windows when the application is terminated, such that the windows will be reopened when the app is relaunched. To have this in effect, go into System Preferences > General and uncheck "Close windows when quitting an application". Windows, run on Mac Possibly via the Q [kju:] freeware package (http://www.apple.com/downloads /macosx/unix_open_source/q[kju].html). Windows 7, Boot Camp support Apple Article: HT3920 ("About Boot Camp and Windows 7") says that it will be there by the end of 2009. Windows file names, truncate As of OS8, file names were still limited to 31 chars; but Windows now allows 255. The DOS Mounter control panel from Software Architects will truncate the long names. Windows Media Player 9.0 Can be downloaded from Microsoft.com. Gotchas: In their inimitable doofus fashion, MS insists upon pointlessly supplying the sofware as a .sitx file, so you need to get and install Stuffit Expander to unpack it, which in turn involves playing games with that company. Then, during the Media Player installation, you have to acquiesce to also install Rosetta (an optional install with Snow Leopard) - whereupon you realize that WMP is compiled for PowerPC only. If you acquiesce to Rosetta, you then discover that there is no plug-in, so media cannot be played from within Safari, thus making it impossible for you to participate in online presentations which server Windows Media. There is also the Flip4Mac package - but as of 2009/12 it does not work with Safari 4. Flip4Mac works with QuickTime Player, iMovie 6 and Final Cut Pro - but not Safari (no plug-in). Windows NT Server 4.0 Could serve Mac files, but only over slow AppleTalk. Windows 2000 allows sharing over TCP/IP - much faster. See also: AppleShare IP Windows Sharing OSX facility for allowing selected Windows users access shared folders on this computer using SMB/CIFS, as well as print to shared printers. Wired memory As seen as a label in Activity Monitor utility's System Memory report. That is memory used by the OS which is pretty much untouchable by applications. Wireless See: AirPort Wireless access points, report Launch System Profiler and click on Wi-Fi Via command line: /usr/sbin/system_profiler -detailLevel full SPAirPortDataType Wireless keyboard The Apple wireless keyboard is a compact style keyboard, with no numeric keypad and no dedicated Home, End, Page Up, Page Down keys; and there are four keys on the lower left instead of three, with the "fn" function shift where you may be accustomed to having the Control key. With this arrangement you have to effect Home and End (top and bottom) by holding down the fn key and press the up-arrow or down-arrow. Wireshark Packet/network tracing GUI: not supplied with OS X. (tshark is not supplied, either.) See: Network trace "Wish we could say more." The catchphrase on Apple's invitation to a 2014/09/09 announcment, to occur at the Flint Center for the Performing Arts on the campus of De Anza College in Cupertino (he same location where Steve Jobs introduced the original Mac 30 years ago). The Flint Center has a much higher seating capacity than other venues where Apple has unveiled products in the past, including the Yerba Buena Center and its own Cupertino campus. WMV Player 3rd party product which allows you to play Windows Media directly in your QuickTime Player. This eliminates the need for an additional player and provides the great playback experience and control that you've come to rely on with QuickTime Player. With the WMV Player component, you don't have to pass by Windows Media files when surfing the web, even if they are encoded in high definition. With the WMV Player, your playback experience improves and your viewing options increase. http://www.flip4mac.com Word completion OS X provides a word completion service. Just type the stem of a word in almost any OS X application text area (in TextEdit, Google search field, etc.) then hold down the Option key and press Esc. You will get a drop-down list of possible completions for that word, from which you can make a choice. WWDC World Wide Developers Conference. The annual, summer conference hosted by Apple, to bring together all interested software developers. (It may occur in June, July, or August.) Started in 1990 with 1300 attendees, addressing System 7, with one lab session. The WWDC is also now a point in the year for announcing momentous new products. Apple makes session videos available after the event, in their Developer website (like http://developer.apple.com/ videos/wwdc/2011/index.php) and via http://developer.apple.com/videos/ and in iTunes, found under "Developer" or "WWDC". WWDC 2011 June 6-10; San Francisco; Moscone West Covered: OS X Lion (10.7); iOS 5; iCloud (Steve Jobs back from medical leave to present). WWDC 15 2015, June 8 to 12. Title: The Epicenter of Change (The graphic for that has an apparent Apple TV "puck" in the middle of it, suggesting that Apple will have a new version of Apple TV which will serve as the nucleus of home stuff, which would mean HomeKit.) X Windows on iPad Several apps allow this: iSSH iLIVEx (TouchTerm provides terminal support, but not X11.) X Windows on iPhone, iPod touch One app is known to allow this: iSSH (TouchTerm provides terminal support, but not X11.) X Windows on OS X Available with OS X as of 10.3. Is based upon XFree86. Xterm window size is shown in the window bar when resizing. www.apple.com/macosx/features/x11/ How to run: http://developer.apple.com /darwin/runningx11.html Commercial products: Xtools, from Tenon Intersystems; eXodus, from Powerlan USA http://www.powerlan-usa.com/ Free packages: XDarwin (q.v.) XonX www.mrcla.com/XonX/ sourceforge.net/projects/xonx Xvnc www.cdc.noaa.gov/~jsw/macosx_xvnc Weirdx, the Java X-server www.jcraft.com/weirdx When a window is resized, the X-Y dimensions are shown in the title bar. If you launch a new window, if the X,Y dimensions are larger than the screen, they will be nicely limited to the actual screen size. This allows you to always specify a large number for the Y dimension, for example, and have the same lancher script do nicely on both a big CRT and a PowerBook or iBook. To tell X11 to take advantage of stereo visuals, enter: $ defaults write com.apple.x11 enable_stereo -bool true Having X11 as part of OS X is something of a nuisance for Apple in that X11 has perpetual security issues, which contributed 12% of the security patches in the 10.6.5 update, for example. Useful sites: http://www.chemistry.ucsc.edu/~wgscott /xtal/page1.html X11 (X11.app) Apple's X11R6 X-Windows application, based on the open source XFree86 project, the de facto-standard for X11. Official name: XQuartz Shipped with OS X as of Panther (10.3). The initial xterm window is governed by your ~/Library/Preferences/*X11* plists. www.apple.com/macosx/features/x11/ Note that not all the ingredients of X11 are in the .app package in the Applications folder: some are in Unix directories such as /usr/X11/. Some history: 2.1.5 In OS X 10.5.6. Works fine. 2.1.6 In OS X 10.5.7. Broken: cut-and-paste with other applications no longer works, and keystrokes (e.g., Cmd+`) don't work. 2.3.4 In OS X 10.6 Works fine. 2.3.6 In OS X 10.6 Works fine. 2.6.3 In OS X 10.7 Works fine. As of OS X 10.8, X11 will no longer be supplied: it can be obtained from the open source community (XQuartz project et al). See Apple Article 5293 (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5293), which directs to xquartz.macforge.net . X11 and focus As with standard Linux applications, switching between open windows requires clicking on each chosen window twice: the first click "focuses" on the window, which is to say makes it active, without regard to where the pointer is on the window; the second click is to interact with the content of the window where the pointer is. This "redudant" click-to-focus necessity can be eliminated... With X11 not running, open the Terminal utility and type the following: defaults write com.apple.x11 wm_ffm true to alter the focus-follows-mouse behavior. This adds the wm_ffm key to ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.x11.plist To undo it, enter: defaults write com.apple.x11 delete wm_ffm When X11 is next launched, all windows wil respond on the first click. X11 app for iOS? As of 2015, looks like there isn't one. The discontinued iSSH seems to have been the only terminal window app to do X11. This means that iOS devices are not suitable for Unix support personnel, who have to keep using MacBook portables for system support, rather than Apple tablets. X11 FAQ: http://developer.apple.com/qa/ qa2001/qa1232.html Unofficial FAQ: http://www.misplaced.net/fom/X11/ Mailing list: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo /x11-users X11 fonts Fonts are used fromm the OSX native repository hierarchy: your Library/Fonts directory or /System/Library/Fonts. If you add fonts to these, thereafter run xftcache as root". X11 Preferences Good settings for this: Pasteboard: Enable syncing Update Pasteboard when CLIPBOARD changes Update CLIPBOARD when Pasteboard changes Update PRIMARY (middle-click) when Pasteboard changes X11 programming www.geocities.com/jeff_louie/macx11.htm X11 reinstall Load the OS install CD and double-click on Optional Installs; then expand the Applications list and select X11. X11 window manager Is quartz-wm. You can run a different window manager by adding a ~/.xinitrc which runs that window manager. xACT X Audio Compression Toolkit. It is a GUI based front end written in AppleScript Studio for the Unix applications Shorten, shntool, monkey's audio compressor, flac, and cdda2wav with paranoia support. It also uses a modified md5sum and sox. It does the basic commands of these applications and adds a few features to speed up productivity in creation of etree.org standard filesets. Xander Soren Apple's director of music marketing, circa 2009-2011+. .Xauthority file Used via the X11 Preferences, Security frame, "Authenticate connections" checkbox. See the Xwindows QuickFacts for further info on this file. Xcode 4 Requires an Intel-based Mac running Mac OS X 10.7.0 Lion or later. Builds for Mac OS X SDK 10.7 and 10.6, and iOS SDK 5. Xcode Tools The Mac software development environment. Install the tools from the OS X package, or download from: http://developer.apple.com/tools/ macosxtools.html (Log in with your Apple account.) As of Xcode 4.1, is free from the Mac App Store. The install will create a /Developer/ directory. The Xcode application lives in the Applications subdirectory. Note that Xcode is not provided with a new Mac (too "civilian"). Normal Software Update operations on the Mac do not address Xcode: you have to go back to the Developer area to pick up the latest. Zero Link technology can speed development by sometimes eliminating the time-consuming linking stage of compiling. Fix and Continue technology allows coders to debug an app while it's running. Code Sense indexing and automatic code-completion make organizing large projects and tracking down the right colde for the right instruction a lot easier. The historic predecessor to Xcode was Project Builder, which originated in NeXT. Xcode 2.x is for Mac OS X 10.4.x. Xcode 4.1 Runs on OS 10.7. Includes Xcode IDE, Instruments, iOS Simulator, Mac OS X and iOS SDKs. Released 2011/07/20. XDarwin A project to bring XWindows to OS X, with an XFree86 code base ("X on X" project) and simple installation. The download delivers a clickable XInstall application, which employs an Aqua installation. Supports multiple monitors via Xinerama. It comes with the meager TWM window manager; so consider using OroborOSX instead (OS X version of Oroborus). XDarwin is incorporated into OroborOSX. www.xdarwin.org Mouse button simulation: Left Mouse Middle Command + mouse Right Option + mouse Package size: about 56 MB The official XDarwin ftp server is: ftp://ftp.xdarwin.com/xdarwin/ XInstall_10.1.sit In addition, there is a SourceForge mirror located at: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/ xonx/XInstall_10.1.sit See also: OroborOSX Xgrid 2003/01 software from Apple which allows you to tie together any number of desktop machines (Apple suggests using those with G4 and G5 processors) to work as a single machine to process a job: (supercomputing). When one of the computing hosts is idle, it can join the 'hive' and process part of the currently running job. For large research institutions, which often have huge student labs that are mostly idle from midnight to 6 a.m., this is a tremendous computing resource that can now be harnessed on the Mac side. http://www.apple.com/acg/xgrid/ .xml Filename suffix denoting XML content. Is seen for an eXported Music Library, as from doing an Export Library in iTunes. XPR3 Filename extension or internal file signature indicating a QuarkXpress 3 file. (File signature may start with chars: \0 \0 M M X P R 3) Xprotect.plist Apple's anti-malware property list file. Contains the signatures for identifying malware. New with Security Update 2011-003 in OS 10.6.7, May 31 2011. Xsan Apple's high performance, enterprise class Storage Area Network (SAN) file system. Xsan file system software combined with Apple's Xserve RAID storage hardware delivers a powerful, easy-to-manage, enterprise class SAN solution at a breakthrough low price. Shipping 2005/01. Xserve G5 won InfoWorld's "Best Server Hardware" award. Xserve Rack-mount Mac server system. OS: Mac OS X Server, utilizing HFS+ and HFS+ Journaled. Began as a G4. In 2005/01, went G5: Dual 64-bit 2.3GHz PowerPC G5 processors with over 35 gigaflops of processing power per system. With the industry's fastest front side 1U server system bus, running at up to 1.15GHz, Xserve offers up to 9.2GBps of bandwidth per processor and up to three 400GB drives, achieving a groundbreaking 1.2TB of hot-plug storage. (The G5 version employed the first 0.09 micron chips from IBM, allowing the G5 Xserve to maintain the low 1RU profile and maintain adequate cooling.) Discontinued in January, 2011; sort of replaced by a "server" version of the Mac Pro. Xserve RAID Massive storage in a rack-optimized 3U enclosure that delivers up to 3.5TB in a flexible, high-performance architecture. Xupport A graphical user interface that helps developers configure the many hidden options in Mac OS X. It provides many functions to maintain, optimize, backup and enhance Mac OS X. http://www.computer-support.ch/Xupport/ Yellow Box Circa 1997 architectural intention for Rhapsody (q.v.) to run OpenStep applications, in transitioning to what would later become OS X, based upon OS technology which Apple acquired by purchasing NeXT and its NextStep OS. Yellow Box was completely object-oriented, making it easy for developers to create applications by assembling code objects. Yellow Box was eventually renamed to Carbon. See also: Blue Box YouTube HTML5 Video Player By going to the following site within your browser, you can set a flag such that HTML 5 is used for viewing YouTube videos (on newer videos), rather than consumptive and flakey Flash. http://www.youtube.com/html5 where you can click in the box. YouTube video capture in Safari 6 Capturing (downloading) a video in the Mac Safari 6 is possible, via this procedure: - Open the Develop menu, select Show Page Resources. (If the Develop menu is not present, go into Preferences > Advanced and activate it.) - Start playing your movie, then pause it. - In the left side of the Develop area, open the folder Other, and wait for Videoplayback to appear: then hold down the Option key and double-click that item. - This will open a separate movie playback. Pause that. - Go into the URL, at the top of that page, and position to the end of the URL (Down-Arrow), then hold down the Option key and press Enter. - This will download your movie to the Downloads area. BUT: As of late 2013, YouTube is thwarting such downloading by special segmented serving of videos. Now, the best download approach is the following: Start watching your video, at the resolution you want; then, modify the URL to change "youtube.com" to "ssyoutube.com": this will move you over to en.savefrom.net where you will be presented with a list of format choices for that video, such as MP4 1080p to click on, which then starts your video download. Simple. ZFS Sun's advanced file system. Apple adopted it, in read-only mode, in Leopard, and was intending to go full-blown with it - but then Sun destabilized and was purchased by Oracle, and licensing became too cloudy to pursue. Apple abandoned pursuite in late 2009, sticking with HFS+, but working on their own solution, to accommodate their hand-held devices up through Mac desktops. See: Apple File System Zinio Well known digital magazine package. One subscribes to digital versions of magazines, and downloads new issues as they become available each month. The Zinio application then presents the issues and allows you to read them by page flipping. There are PC, Mac, iPad and iPhone versions. On the Mac, mags are stored in your main directory folder Zinio Library, as .zno files, like "Macworld - May-05.zno". www.zinio.com Zip files See: Archive MESSAGES/ERRORS: Backup Failed. Time Machine couldn't back up to "<DiskName>" Insufficient space on your Time Machine disk for all the data. You can either specify a larger disk or make the backup smaller by excluding files. But: the Time Machine preferences panel says "The oldest backups are deleted when your disk becomes full", and that doesn't seem to actually happen: it won't happen where there is only one backup, which TM should not remove. This situation can arise where multiple Macs are backing up to the same disk (e.g., Time Capsule) and one of the other Macs has an extensive history of backups, which are consuming most of the disk. To contend with that, go to the guilty Mac, go into its TM preferences, and exclude things like the Applications folder. This prevents future backups, but doesn't relieve the space issue. To do that, go into TM on that Mac, go to the folder above the Applications folder, right-click on the Applications folder, and choose 'Delete All Backups of "Applications"'. Allow some time for that to complete. Repeat with other file system objects as needed to make space. To verify that such backups are actually gone, simply go back in time. Cannot download attachment Experienced on an iOS device when tapping on PDF attachment in the Mail app, to download it. The email message will show a box saying like: Tap to download Sample document.pdf 35.2 MB Do not tap this (which is intended to show the attachment in the context of the mail, which may be too big for that). Further down, if you scroll there, is: This message was downloaded as plain text Download full message Tap the "Download full message", which then shows: Downloading full message where that section goes away after the download, leaving pdf Sample document.pdf Tap that, and it briefly says "Loading", then shows the PDF, which you can then transfer to iBooks via the "move to" icon in the upper right (a square with an upward arrow on it). Android users may see "Exceeds allowed download size". cgpdftops quit unexpectedly Experienced mostly with drag-and-drop printing. Cause elusive. If printing was drag-and-drop, try instead printing from within the app which is looking at the PDF, or have the PDF on disk and open it with Preview and try printing from that. Might be caused by insufficient disk space for converting the PDF to PostScript for CUPS printing. Update your OS if it hasn't been updated recently. Make sure that the paper size chosen for your printer definition is reasonable for the document being printed. (Trying to print a document having substantial dimensions to a small paper size is going to be problematic.) The application involved may be the problem. Use the Console utility to examine the CUPS log. Most printers handle PDF printing directly: see if you can skip the conversion to PostScript. com.apple.launchd.peruser.501: (jp.co.canon.CUPSPS2.BackGrounder[10313]) posix_spawn("/Library/Printers/Canon/CUPSPS2/BackGrounder/Canon PS2 BackGrounder.app/Contents/MacOS/Canon PS2 BackGrounder", ...): No such file or directory As seen in the system log. This is the result of having installed a Canon printer driver, which seems to be incomplete. Get rid of the issue by going into /Library/LaunchAgents/ to there remove file jp.co.canon.CUPSPS2.BG.plist Also go into ~/Library/Preferences/ and remove file jp.co.canon.CUPS.PS2.Printmonitor.plist Connected ... Connection Lost Encountered with a Magic Trackpad: it would endlessly cycle between these two on-screen messages. Turning bluetooth off and back on did not help, nor did re-pairing. Battery level indicated good. I changed the batteries and the problem went away. Connection Unsuccessful "<OtherDeviceName>" is not supported. Forget Device Experienced on an iPhone 6+, trying to Bluetooth pair with a current iMac. Power-cycling both doesn't help. Online forums are full of complaints about this: no resolutions found. eapolclient[1626]: en1 PEAP: authentication failed with status 1 Seen in system.log, as via the Console utility. Typically occurs in Lion (OS 10.7). The user sees a dialog box saying "Could not join <Network Name>: A connection timeout occurred." The eapolclient is used by Mac OS X to connect to 802.1x secured wireless networks. Apparently caused by OS X persisting in trying to use a stale Keychain password, where a more recent password is required. It can be fixed (for the lifetime of the new password) by going into the Keychain Access utility to delete the Password for the named network. The next interaction will cause a prompt for the new password, which will then be stored in the Keychain. The crux of the problem may be that the RADIUS server for the wireless access point is not prompting for a correct password - it is simply disregarding the incorrect (old) password. It should operate like Mac Mail, which gets protocol information that the password is incorrect, so prompts the user for a new one. Failed to load AppPortal plugin Experienced when Safari starts up in Mavericks. Seems to be caused by the presence of an appportal.sync file in your home directory - an empty, trigger file, which you can remove. You may also have an old Applications/Quest Software folder relating to this, which you should consider removing. Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display: Can be the result of downloading and installing XQuartz (X11), but not logging out and back in (or rebooting) in order to establish a clean environment and properly set variables. iPhone Not Charging Experienced when plugging an iPhone 6+ into a USB port on the back of an Apple 30" Cinema Display. Larger Apple mobile devices require more current to charge than smaller devices, and a hub type USB connection may have been designed in the days of iPods. Plug your device directly into the USB port on a modern Macintosh, or use the charger which came with your device. lpq: Unable to connect to server Typically, because the LPD service (port 515) on the server (as via the -h option) does not allow access from your computer. In Unix, this is controlled on the server by /etc/hosts.lpd, where the file likely does not contain a '+' spec to allow such access. Another cause is a site firewall which excludes LPD traffic, as a university typically would from off campus. Mail quit unexpectedly You launch Mac Mail and after a second or two of starting up, it crashes, producing a diagnostics window with that message, including an indication that there's something wrong with the IMAP format of the folder involved. Seen particularly after upgrading to Yosemite - on multiple Macs. This might occur with any folder, but in my case the folder was the Exchange "Deleted Messages" folder: "is not a library IMAP store". Cleaning out the folder helped somewhat, but crashes continued. The way I cured it was to remove the Exchange account and reinstate it. How to do that if you can't get Mail to run? Go into System Preferences and in Internet Accounts, un-check all the boxes for that account. Then you can get Mail to run to remove and reinstate the account, where that will re-download all the messages, which will take a while. But eventually, the problem returned. The problem may be due to a Rule, as for dealing with spam. Be suspicious of a rule which examines the whole mail message, as such scanning may run into gunk: try to avoid such. "no mountable file systems" As when trying to use a .dmg disk image, due to some defect in it. Repair may be possible: Launch Disk Utility and drag the disk image into the volumes list area. Select the disk image there, and click Repair Disk. On Hold (Authentication Required) Alternately seen as: On hold (Waiting for Authentication) Print job state, seen in the queue's display. The message is saying that the server to which the job is destined (per the printer definition) requires a username and password for use of that service. You can correct the job condition by going into System Preferences > Print & Fax and there Open Print Queue on the printer instance, click on the job to select it, then Resume it, which will cause the authentication dialog box to pop up afresh. If OS 10.6 and going to an Active Directory domain SMB type destination, assure having "AD\" in front of the username (not needed in 10.7+). (Users sometimes misquote this message as "Hold On Authentication".) Operation not permitted Basically, you are operating as an ordinary user, trying to execute a command which requires superuser powers, such as 'mount_nfs -o resvport'. Use 'sudo' to gain such powers. Optical Erase Failed Seen when trying to use Disk Utility to erase a (Memorex) CD-RW in a PowerBook G4 15" or 17" (drive: MATSHITA DVD-R UJ-815): the error message appears almost immediately. Trying command line 'diskutil eraseOptical quick /dev/disk1' says that it is starting the erase, but the disk remains unerased - no err msgs. Trying command line 'diskutil eraseOptical /dev/disk1' yields error "Erase encountered error -9993 on disk". The same disc erases fine with Disk Utility in a G5 SuperDrive (SONY DVD RW DW-U10A) and in an external, firewire LaCie CD-RW drive. Well, it did the first time: the second time, Disk Utility spun on "Preparing to erase optical media". Then I quit Disk Utility, went in again, and was able to initiate a quick erase; but after completion the disc ejected with error box "Burning the disk failed because this type of CD is not supported. (Error code 0x80020043). I've had a lot of trouble with Memorex CD-RW discs, and have seen CD-RW makers recommend disc brands which exclude Memorex. So: avoid Memorex. panic(cpu 0): Unable to find driver for this platform: "PowerBook3,2" This can happen when trying to reinstall after a situation as described in "Firmware updating: CAUTION!". The crux of the problem is that your original installation media (CD) that you are trying to use to reinstall and thus regain usability of your computer is too downlevel now, relative to the recently applied firmware update. Your best recourse is to purchase a current OS install package and use that. panic(cpu 0 caller 0x002DFAA8): Unable to find driver for this platform: "PowerMac1,1" Can occur when trying to use the gray Install CD from one type of Mac on a different and unrelated type: it's simply unsuitable. Print Error while printing. Messages seen after clicking Print, any application. Mac OS 10.8.1. This, after just recently defining the printer (Windows printer via spoolss). Generic PostScript Printer driver. Job does not get into Mac print queue. System error log shows: Printing failed because PMSessionEndDocumentNoDialog() returned -1765328243. The CUPS error log has nothing, indicating that the problem is before CUPS, meaning OS modules. Printing through printer definitions established months ago works. Try driver Generic PCL Printer: same error. Tried Repair Permissions: that reported fixing a bunch, but nothing adding access where there was none. Error still prevails. Delete printer and redefine as LPD, same Generic PostScript Printer driver: works. So problem seems to be with spoolss. Printer paused When you find a submitted job not printing, and you go to inspect the queue, and find this status. Click on the topmost job and then do Job Info. If it reports a backend error, and the Console utility display of the CUPS error_log shows "Printer did not respond after 300 seconds", then the printer may be turned off, its networking disconnected, or be firewalled such that access is not possible from the network you are trying to submit from. If trying from a wireless network, try instead from an ethernet cable connection: the printer may have been set up to accept connections from established ethernets, but not from more recent wireless networks. This has been seen to be caused by rogue DNS settings in the network configuration, further complicated by arbitrary proxy settings. The application "______" can't be opened. -1712 Seen where the application is already open, but perhaps not responding. You can right-click on the app and choose Force Quit; or press Command+Option+Esc for the Force Quit Applications dialog and choose that app. The backup disk image "Volumes/Data/<ComputerName>.sparsebundle" could not be accessed (error (null)). This cleared up after a Time Capsule power cycle. The disc can't be burned because communication between the computer and the disc drive failed (error code 0x80020022). Experienced when trying to burn a DVD-R disc (4.7 GB capacity) at 2x speed to internal Superdrive. Noticed that writing worked fine with the 4.3 GB file being burned, until it got to the 4 GB point. There are many Web postings on this problem. Burning CD-Rs and modest-sized files to DVD-R will work, which points to size being the issue. Perhaps software reaction to register wrap? Apple Article HT2718 superficially addresses this. There is no certain cure. The only mitigation is to burn at a lower speed - which may not be an offered choice. The document "_____" could not be opened. Encountered on Macintosh (10.8) in TextEdit when trying to do an Open on a document which had been stored in iCloud. Tried same thing from another Mac (10.7), but same problem. Copies of all documents stored in iCloud are also locally stored on your Mac, in the ~/Library/Mobile Documents folder, so I went there for a physical look. The document file was there, appropriately sized, but attempting to open it via TextEdit resulted in the same error message, and dragging it to the desktop or duplicate it in place resulted in error number -8060. Other files in the directory are fine. Quick Look would work on the problem document (so I grabbed an image of that, just in case). It could be opened in another text editor such as AquaEmacs: performed Save Buffer As to create a copy of the file in my standard folder. TextEdit could open that; so, discard the copy in iCloud and replace with this recovered one. The Mobile Documents folder then reflects the replacement. Whereas this was a single file issue, the long-running Fix Permissions was not attempted. The floppy disk image file _____ is not valid. Do you want to save the configuration of the virtual machine anyway? Encountered in Parallels when in Virtual Machine > Configure > Hardware > Floppy Disk, where you have prepared a .dmg file and renamed it to .fdd form, per the vendor's instructions, and still get this error. You may be doing this in attempting to set up a kickstart install of a Linux VM, where the kickstart file (ks.cfg) is to be on the floppy device, for convenience. Attempting to commit to this despite the error message will result in a launch error saying that there is no floppy device. The solution I've found is to go out on the 'net and download an actual floppy disk image, as from http://partitionlogic.org.uk/download/index.php and rename that xxxx.img file to Floppy.fdd, populate it with needed files (e.g., ks.cfg), and then then specify its use in that configuration area. The message "_____" could not be moved to the mailbox "_____" The destination mailbox "____" does not allow messages to be moved to it. Probably because of another, competing (IMAP) mail session, as where you left a Mail session active on your office Mac and are now trying to use Mail at home to access the same mailboxes. The operation cannot be completed because the item "token" is locked. Seen when trying to remove a .sparesebundle file from your Time Capsule's Data folder, in an attempt to get backups happening again. One approach is to perform the deletion from another computer which also uses that Time Capsule, where you are performing the operation from a computer other than the one for which the file is named, which should not have a lock. But, that may not work. Another approach: Make sure no backups are taking place. Turn OFF Time Machine on all Macs. Then pull the plug on the TC. Reboot all Macs. Once your Mac is back up & running, plug the TC back in. Now try deleting the disk image in question. The operation couldn't be completed. (SOAPWebServicesErrorDomain error -997.) Occurs in the OS X El Capitan Contacts app where there is an exclamation mark triangle next to Exchange. Clicking on the triangle shows the error. A recommendation is to go into System Preferences> Internet Accounts and remove the Exchange account, then reinstate it: that did no good. The server certificate is not trusted because there are no explicit trust settings Seen in a dialog box which appears when connecting to an SSL-based facility, such as engaging in an 802.1x wireless connection. This occurs because the certificate in use is for a locally defined resource or host, rather than a very public one. As such, the certificate must be accepted for the action to continue. In a situation where you trust what you are connecting to, you can click on Show Certificate and then mark the checkbox for "Always trust...". The server has encountered an error processing registration. Please try again later. Encountered when trying to log in to Apple ID and set up either Mac Messages or Mac Facetime. Going into the Console utility showed odd errors from the imagent process. Going into Activity Monitor and stopping the imagent process cured the problem. (The process will regenerate itself.) Make sure there were no alterations to file /private/etc/hosts. The transfer failed: internal error Encountered when trying to use bluetooth to send a file from a Mac to a paired Mac. This can be due to the target Mac allowing incoming files to be automatically stored, but in Sharing > Bluetooth, there is no folder assigned for it: shows "-". Assign a folder, then un-pair and then pair the two Macs, and transfers should then work. This certificate was signed by an unknown authority Encountered when using Mac Mail to an SMTP server on SSL port 465, and clicking on Show Certificate, where the error is portrayed. This indicates that the SSL certificate is not signed or approved by a company that the browser trusts. This occurs most often for one of the following reasons: - The web site is using a self-signed certificate. Self-signed certificates can be generated for free but they don't provide as much trust as a commercial certificate. You can tell your browser to trust the self-signed certificate or you can buy (or ask the site owner to buy) a trusted SSL certificate from a certificate authority. - The web site is using a free SSL Certificate. Free SSL Certificates are issued by a couple of free certificate authorities but their Root Certificate must be manually imported to each browser to get rid of this error. - The web site is using a trusted SSL certificate but it is missing a chain/intermediate certificate. Most trusted certificates require that you install at least one other intermediate/chain certificate on the server to link your certificate up to a trusted source. Got the installer screen, proceeded, then got error: This copy of the Install OS X El Capitan application can’t be verified. It may have been corrupted or tampered with during downloading. Encountered when attempting a clean install of El Capitan, from a prepared USB stick. Tried with both the Oct 12 2015 version and Jan 13 2016 version. Not a corruption issue. Postings suggest that this has something to do with the date/time, perhaps being incorrect in the installer instance of OS X. If so, circumvent this defect as follows: Go to Tools in the nav bar and open Terminal. Type command ‘date’ and see what it reports. If awry, fix by typing command: date MMDDHHmmYY replacing the letters as follows. MM - 2 digit month 01 - 12 DD - 2 digit date 01 - 31 HH - 2 digit hour 01 - 24 mm - 2 digit minute 01 - 59 YY - 2 digit year > 15 If that doesn’t work, maybe the installer is sensitive to the package date being stale: people have artificially set their clock date back to the package date, and the install worked. I found the date to be correct, but install still failed. I tried setting the date back to January 1, and then the install worked! This file is too large This file can not be viewed on your iPad because it is over 30 MB Experienced when trying to view a PDF being served by Apple's now-defunct iDisk service. This was a service limit in iDisk, not a limit in the iPad. This message has no content Encountered in Mac Mail (with a message from Exchange). May be a timing issue in the reading of header information. The message can be "fixed" by performing Delete on it, then Cmd+Z to bring it back...this time with its content available. Time Machine could not complete the backup to ______. The backup disk needs NNNN.nn GB for the backup but only NNN.nn are available. Select a larger backup disk or make the backup smaller by excluding files. Time Machine can automatically take care of pruning out old backups, in circumstances such as moving to a new computer, the fresh backup needed is just too much for the available space. If you know that your Time Machine target disk is large enough to handle backing up the disk(s) you intend, then you may need to go in and remove some old backups, via the command line. Go into the Terminal or X11 app. Enter the command 'tmutil listbackups'. If you see ancient backups that can go away, do 'sudo delete ________' on each name. If uou switched to a new Mac such that the former and new Mac had the same disk name (e.g., "Macintosh HD" or similar), the problem is that Time Machine is not accepting the former disk backup as eligible for this new Mac because the identities were different (there is UUID-based identity tracking). In this case, you can use a tmutil verb which causes the backup to be adoped by the new Mac, by doing like: tmutil associatedisk /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD /Volumes/Time\ Machine\ Backups/Backups.backupdb/ My\ Old\ iMac/Latest/Macintosh\ HD Deleting old backups: You can selectively delete old backups from within Time Machine: Enter Time Machine, then go back in time to the unwanted backup; now right-click in the middle of the Finder window being displayed by Time Machine and select Delete Backup. Alternately, you can use the command line, like: sudo tmutil delete /Volumes/Time\ Machine\ Backups/Backups.backupdb/ My\ iMac/2014-04-26-153950 or, you could more drastically remove an old Mac's backups: sudo tmutil delete /Volumes/DRIVE_NAME/Backups.backupdb/OLD_MAC_NAME Unable to connect Hard Disk 1 A file or device required for the operation of Hard Disk 1 does not exist or is used by another process, or you have no permission to access it. The virtual machine wil continue running, but the device will be disconnected. Parallels Desktop error message when attempting to boot a Windows VM. Fixing may not be possible. Some say that it's due to the permissions on the Documents/Parallels files are not right, and are keeping the invoker out. However, you may find all ownerships and permissions just fine. Some say that going into Virtual Machine > Configure > Hard Disk 1 to there select a different Source, and then switch back, will correct it. That may not work, either. The problem might be the content of the .hdd files. Another possibility is that the virtual disk has extended into multiple .hdd files, where the xml file governing them has extents information which is out of sync with the realities of those .hdd files: you may be able to correct this manually, but having this situation may indicate corruption. Unable to verify message signature Message in yellow banner seen when viewing a mail message in Mac Mail. Possible causes: - The message was modified in transit. In this case, ask the sender to resend the message. - The sender's certificate may have expired. In this case, the sender needs to renew the certificate and then resend the message. - You need to indicate that you trust the sender's Secure/MIME (S/MIME) certificate. - The email address on the S/MIME certificate doesn't match the From address. This problem can occur if the addresses don't use the same case or if a message is redirected. For case mismatches, the sender needs to change the From email address so that it exactly matches what is used on the sender's S/MIME certificate. For redirected messages, the sender should not sign messages that they redirect. To view detailed information about why the message signature could not be verified, click Show Details in the email banner. "Waiting for job to complete..." Seen when opening the Print Queue display and seeing a previously submitted job lingering with that status, which is indicative of the IPP interaction being one-whole-job-at-a-time: synchronous. That is natural for print jobs going from a Macintosh to a printer. This state is the result of CUPS IPP printing having waitjob=true (a URI option) in effect. This is fine for a (USB) attached printer; but it is bad for a network printing service, where jobs from many places and users queue for eventual printing, in that this state will needlessly impede further job submission. To get around that, add the printer via the Advanced tab in Print & Fax, which unlike basic IP tab printer set-up, allows specification of a URL, where you can add waitjob=false to the URL (doc for this is in http://localhost:631/help/network.html). (You may be able to add this option in a basic IP tab printer set-up by filling in the Queue field using form "<QueueName>?waitjob=false".) Either setting method should result in the /etc/cups/printers.conf entry having a DeviceURI line with that value. "Waiting to complete..." This is a mis-reporting of the error message, which is actually "Waiting for job to complete..." (q.v.) Warning: Visiting this site may harm your computer! Seen in Safari when you try to visit a certain site. The message is triggered by Safari's new fraud-protection, which is driven by Google Safe Browsing. That setting is turned on in Safari > Preferences > Security, "Warn when visiting a fraudulent website." It is because the site was reported to StopBadware.org as a webpage that contains malware or other infected files. Says StopBadware: "The website you attempted to visit has been reported to StopBadware.org as a site that hosts or distributes badware. You landed on this page because members of the public reported this website to StopBadware.org as hosting or distributing badware. Though our researchers have not yet reviewed this website, once they do, this warning page will be replaced with a detailed report on the site's badware." Further: Google indexes website and pages every millisecond. When it encounters any suspicious website which tends to install or download any software into the PC without user consent, it flags it as suspicious site and tells the browser to show a warning message to user before entering that website. This behavior of browser can be controlled to not show you this warning page but it is recommended that you do not do that. Because once you enter such website without caution or security measure, your computer get infected with malwares / spywares /adwares which will eat up system resources and block your activities resulting in computer won't run properly. The cool thing is you can check the statistics of that malicious website flagged by Google and get detailed information about the risk. You can even check any website for possible vulnerability or risk in that for your computer. You are not connected to the Internet Type of messages seen in a Web browser, despite actually being connected to the Internet: from the Terminal utility, for example, you can do certain lookups and go at various website — but not all. This inconsistent situation is caused by partial DNS, as where you are at home and connecting to your employer's DNS, but not the DNS provided by your ISP. The solution is to add at least one of your ISP's DNS server addresses to your DNS servers list. You have updates available for other accounts. Message encountered when you attempt software update on an application (e.g., Xcode). The message does not appear when updating other applications. This is caused by recorded confusion as to the origin of the application as stored on the computer, where the information is what has been stored by Spotlight. The fix is to first go into Disk Utility to perform Repair Permissions; then go into System Preferences > Spotlight, and in the Privacy panel enter the name of your hard drive, then quit that then go back in there and remove the hard drive name to cause Spotlight to re-index the drive. Thereafter, the software update issue should be gone. You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button. White lettering in a black box that appears in the midst of trying to do things. It typically means that things are so bad that the OS could not produce a specific diagnostic message. One possible cause is a failing hard drive, where applications and modules being read from it arrive in memory in corrupted state. Possible causes: - OS defects (rare) - Hardware problems (more likely) Often 3rd party RAM or bad seated PCI cards, bad firmware on USB, Firewire (the FW800 problem with 10.3) and other external hardware. You could try re-seating the RAM modules, after inspecting their contacts; or swap module positions; or remove one module. - Laptop battery problem: I encountered this with a laptop which, plugged in to wall power, showed green where the power connecter attached to the laptop, indicating all good. The laptop would power up and run for maybe a few minutes, then show this message. It (finally) occurred to me to check the battery; so I pressed the small, circular battery assessment button - and not one of the adjoining, tiny LEDs lit. This was an older Mac laptop, with a removable battery, where the situation meant that the laptop was running that short period of time on the small internal battery meant to power the laptop just long enough for the main battery to be taken out and put back. So, was this a kaput battery? I removed it, inspected it (looked fine, no contact issues), then put it back in. At that point, the charger light shone yellow, and the first LED on the battery was flashing to indicate that the battery was charging. What the? Gold contacts don't corrode, but perhaps general air pollution made for insufficient contact on one or more battery pins. A good rule of thumb, then: in a laptop with a removable battery, take it out and put it back in maybe once a year. - Software - running in 'Kernel space'. Most commonly, drivers. Since the Protected memory model prevents any 'User space' application to talk direct to hardware, all this communication must go through drivers, and they must execute in 'Kernel space' and have a big possibility to wreak havoc if something goes wrong. Assure that you have current driver levels which are compatible with your OS level and hardware. To identify drivers, run System Profiler and look in Software, Extensions. Look to see if there is a /Library/Logs/panic.log, which supposedly will be updated with info about the kernel panic. A healthy thing to do is to run Disk Utility's First Aid, to Repair Disk Permissions and at least Verify Disk. If really stuck, try one or multiple of: - Reboot in Verbose Mode by holding down V key, which will cause display of everything the computer is doing during boot, where the last thing before the "restart" box appearing would be the bogey. - Reboot holding Command + S to start in Single User Mode Enter cmd: /sbin/fsck -fy Once your drive is checked, enter cmd: reboot - Reboot holding Command + Option + O = F to start in Open Firmware Mode Enter cmd: reset-nvram Enter cmd: reset-all Apple technotes: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh2238 http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1392 OS X ERROR NUMBERS: -1765328243 Matching credential not found SITUATIONS/CONDITIONS/SCENARIOS/COMMON PROBLEMS: 802.1x access attempt fails, immediate timeout (Could not join "<WAP name>". A connection timeout occurred.) Well, it can't be a timeout if it's immediate. What it really is: the radius server is rejecting the password. This commonly happens in a site with common authentication (e.g., Kerberos), where some device has energetically sent multiple wrong passwords in attempting mail or other access, inciting the authentication center to flag the account as attempting a break-in by password guessing, and disables access for half an hour or so. Once that bad-boy period expires, you will once again be able to access via 802.1x. A further contributor to this problem is having an obsolete 802.1x password in your Keychain. Go into the Keychain Access utility and delete the 802.1x password entry (which may have a name which begins with "WPA"). This should result in your next attempt being greeted by a prompt for username and password for 802.1x access, which then plants a new, viable password keychain entry. BU ticket INC11182036 was updated to include this info. "Advanced" tab field grayed out in OS X "Add Printer" Is caused by printer sharing being turned on. Go to System Preferences -> Sharing -> Printer Sharing and turn it off. Black screen in Time Machine restoral or Revert To See: Time Machine restorals Boot problems: see Start-up... Busy disk: Will happen when, in Finder, you go into a folder (Applications) containing applications (which are special folders), in list view, where the OS is compelled to run through each one determining how each one is, for Size display in the Finder. CD stuck in drive Hold down the mouse button as your Mac starts, to try to coerce a ejection. A more low-level method is to boot into Open Firmware by holding down the Command+Option+O+F keys at start-up: when the OF command line appears, type 'eject cd' and press Return, which may cause the CD to eject; then type 'reset-all' to reboot the Mac. Note that there is no "unbent paper clip" small hole opportunity to physically cause CD ejection. client-error-not-authorized Error message when you try to add a printer. This is often the result of changing the Mac CUPS server to use Kerberos authentication, either via the checkbox in the CUPS Web page for changing Basic Server Settings, or changing the /etc/cups/cupsd.conf file to have "DefaultAuthType Negotiate". That was probably an unintended change, where the Mac doesn't usually run Kerberos. You won't be able to use the CUPS Web page to change it back, so edit the cupsd.conf file to instead have "DefaultAuthType Basic" and have the cupsd see the change by doing 'kill -HUP' on its PID. DNS awry: 'dig' works on a hostname, but ping says it can't resolve name; browser claims not connected to the Internet Seen where DNS settings changes experiemented with in file /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist and, despite having put the file back the way it originally was and rebooting the Mac, this condition occurs. The reason was that rebooting was not sufficient to reinstate original settings. You need to restart mDNSResponder using these two commands, as superuser (sudo tcsh): launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist Be aware that OS X will attempt to process every file that it finds in the /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ directory, so don't leave editing version files in there. Dock won't show; Activity Monitor shows Dock looping In your home directory, go into the Library folder, then the Preferences folder therein, and rename or delete the com.apple.doc.plist file. This will usually cause the Dock's behavior to return to normal. Ethernet won't work: During the first few seconds of booting, the link lights are lit, but then go out, and don't come back on after the OS has been loaded. Running 'ifconfig en0 up' manually shows the ethernet itself okay, which indicates that something is preventing the boot sequence from doing that. Inspecting the console log reveals problems with configd, and configd is not running, as it should be. (It remembers configuration info for starting resources). Invoke it manually, under sudo (/usr/sbin/configd), and it fails, on a Bus Error. No man page: inspection of the module's binary indicated -d and -v invocation flags, suggesting debugging and verbosity. Reinvoked with both. That shows configd failing upon attempting a "Wireless" operation. Well, the machine contains no wireless card at the moment, and a recent Software Update was made to bring in the 3.1 Airport update. Cause and effect. Reinstalling an Airport card in the machine causes boot to make the ethernet services active, and configd runs. Let's try backing out, in phases: Unplug the Airport antenna from the card, but leave the card plugged into its slot... Okay. Unplug the Airport card... Okay. Conclusion: The first boot after installing device-dependent software may actually require the device to be present. iMac sounds three tones every five seconds Does not recognize just-installed memory modules. Review the specific requirements of your computer to assure acquiring the right type of memory modules. iTunes: Recent purchases not showing up I found this due to them being "hidden": go into Store > Account, log in, and within Account Information, iTunes in the Cloud, manage hidden purchases. The automatic hiding of new purchases is probably caused by your iTunes preferences > Downloads, having Automatic Downloads unchecked for Music. (Also check "Always check for available downloads".) Mail app crashes every time it is launched Encountered this under Yosemite, after some days of successfully using Mail under Yosemite. The crash report includes string "is not a Library IMAP store". Attempting to launch Mail while holding down Shift key did no good. Tried booting the Mac into Safe Mode: still the crashing. (That type of boot performs an fsck to correct any file system errors.) Running Disk Utility's Disk Permissions probably won't fix it. Something that works is to go into System Preferences > Internet Accounts and there click on one, uncheck its Mail choice, and try launching Mail: if it still crashes, do the same to another account, until Mail launches successfully, at which point you should delete crud messages and folders, which should help the crash situation. If still problems, you could try deleting a suspect Internet Account and then add it back. See also: www.macissues.com/2014/10/19/fix-mail-crashing-after-upgrading-to-yosemite/ Mail app not getting new messages So in Mail preferences, General, you do have "Check for new messages" set for a reasonable checking interval, yet new messages are not showing up automatically: you have to perform a Get All New Mail for the messages to show up. This is usually due to a missing setting... Go into Mail preferences > Accounts > Advanced, and there check: "Include when automatically checking for new messages". This setting works in concert with "Check for new messages". OS X not responding to mouse: Cause not known - may be specific to a given hardware combination. Unplugging/replugging the USB keyboard and mouse does no good, nor does quitting applications or playing with Expose. What will resume functionality is doing Command+Option+Esc, to bring up the Force Quit Applications: simply bringing that up (not forcing any appls) has been seen to reliably restore functionality. Paste not working Most commonly seen when you are in Safari, select some text, then go an an ASCII text editor session and attempt paste, but that pastes some previously picked up text rather than what you selected. This is typically due to the selected text containing special characters which are not in the standard ASCII character set, such as an em-dash. You would find that the paste would work just fine into a TextEdit session, which supports extended character sets. PDFs no longer show up in Safari window: One cause is the user having pointlessly installed Acrobat Reader, with it Safari plug-ins. Pointer not moving across multi-display Macintosh set-up: I encountered this when I had to move, where the iMac had been on the left and the 30" display was on the right, and in the new location their positions needed to swap. I figured out the fix: Go into System Preferences, select Displays, then Arrangement, and drag the display that is on the right to be on the left. PowerBook display video breakup: Your PowerBook has been working fine for years, but increasingly, as you push the lid back to adjust the display postion, you are experiencing video breakup: striated vertical lines, erratic colors, etc. The cause: The video cable conductors have suffered metal fatigue failure, and have broken inside the cable assembly. Video gets to the display via a cable which runs from a position on the motherboard about under the letter L on the keyboard, through the right side of the lid hinge, and then diagonally up to the upper left corner of the display panel, where there is video circuitry. Within the panel, the cable is a flat ribbon; but to get through the hinge area it has to transition to a round cross-section and then make a right-angle turn out of the hinge toward the connector on the motherboard. The portion of the cable where it enters the hinge is subject to stressful twisting as the lid is open and closed: over time, this ultimately results in wires breaking, internal insulation failing, electrical discontinuity and adjoining conductors making contact with each other. If you have a high-powered magnifying glass, you'll be able to see bare metal if you push the tape back a bit. Considerable hand work had to go into making the cable, where the manner in which the cable was wrapped in tape can contribute to the problem. The only solution is to replace the cable. In many cases the cable is labeled "Quanta Q41a, UC00366B HSE". Needless to say, it's a specialized part, with no new ones being made: you have to try to find a good, used cable. The best venue for this is eBay. Assure that the seller has a return policy. Approach this task if you have good mechanical skills, small tools (Phillips screwdriver, Torx drivers set), good eyesight, and steady hands. The task requires completely taking the PowerBook apart - even to having to split the lid open. There are good videos on YouTube showing disassembly. I've performed the operation successfully. Print button pulsates; no response when clicked (Mac OS 10.7) The print button pulsates to indicate that it is the action that will be taken if the Return/Enter key is pressed. Once pressed, the print dialog should disappear and the job should proceed to print. In this problem, the button is clicked, but nothing happens. (This, in feeding a Windows 2008 most often seen where the Mac was upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion rather than being purchased with Lion, and may reflect a faulty upgrade, or corrupt pre-existing configuration values; but sometimes it happens when a printer is freshly defined in 10.7. - - - - - - - - - - - - - Generic handling - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - First assure that the Mac is up to date on software (Software Update). Assure that the printer is defined per our MyPrint set-up instructions, with Generic Printer Driver. (This problem can be caused by faulty printer drivers for specific vendor printers, but such drivers should not be used unless there is a need to control unique printing elements on the printer, which is seldom needed.) Try deleting and redefining the printer instance, and see if it then works. On the print dialog page, instead of clicking Print, click PDF and then choose Save as PostScript: does that work? And if you double-click on the saved file, is the launched Preview application able to render the page? This tests the basic printing software, and if it works it means that the software is generally okay. In Print & Fax/Print & Scan, double-click on a printer instance to bring up its queue display. If any hung print jobs there, clear them. If not, go into the Printer menu there and select Log & History, which will open the CUPS error log via the Console utility. Examine that log for error indications: there should definitely be something. In the Disk Utility, do Repair Disk Permissions and see if that clears up issues. You can also check definitions in CUPS via http://localhost:631. If you can't find a remedy and there's no pain in losing the current printer definitions, perform a "Reset printing system"... In System Preferences > Print & Fax (Print & Scan in 10.7): hold down the Option key, click the "-", and commit to the action. - - - - - - - - - - Analysis, and a CUPS solution - - - - - - - - - - - A look at the CUPS error_log (as via the Console utility) shows a backend 256 error, as in: Connecting to printer... Set job-printer-state-message to "Connecting to printer...", current level=INFO Looking up "OUR.DOMAIN.local"... Failed to connect to "smb://:@PRTR.DOMAIN.local/": STATUS_INVALID_PARAMETER Set job-printer-state-message to "Unable to connect to server", current level=ERROR smb backend (PID=585) stopped with status 256 smb backend will exit with status 1 This is a CUPS environment issue, rather than OS X itself. In OS 10.6, when a printer is defined via the usual OS X System Preferences GUI (Advanced tab, "Windows"), it ends up with a CUPS option of "auth-info-required=none" (seen via command 'lpoptions -p <PrinterName>' via sudo). Going to print in 10.6 in the same Windows authentication environment, one clicks the Print button and the interaction then proceeds, the job going into the print queue; thereafter one has to Resume the job in that queue to get a pop-up authentication dialog, where one would enter "Domain/Username" and Password (and save in Keychain). CUPS then dynamically changes the printer option to be "auth-info-required=username,password" upon realizing that reality. In OS 10.7, when a printer is defined the same way, it ends up with the option "auth-info-required=negotiate", which is for Kerberos - which is appropriate for going through a Windows print server in a university enviroment (but otherwise may not be appropriate). CUPS may eventually get by this and finally put the job into the print queue and allow authentication to proceed, where one would enter "Username" (do *not* include Domain, in 10.7) and Password (and save in Keychain). (CUPS then sets the printer option to "auth-info-required=username,password"). Sometimes it remains stuck. I've found that when the stuck situation persists, I can do 'lpadmin -p <PrinterName> -o auth-info-required=username,password' via sudo to set what CUPS should ultimately set into /etc/cups/printers.conf, and then the printing works. Printed pages are upside-down Can be caused in the print dialog by going into Layout and checking the box for "Reverse page orientation". This is likely inconsequential, as the printed sheets could simply be rotated 180 degrees. Printing: Job won't transfer from Mac queue to network printer In a display of the printer queue, the job labors to process, with "Printing - Connecting to printer..." indication, but the job does not flow. The Mac printer instance then goes to Paused state, with job state "Ready to Print". Look in /var/log/cups/error_log (physically, or via Console utility): it may say "Connection refused", where the simple cause can be incorrect DNS servers listed. Another cause is firewall blockage, as when trying to submit from outside the institution's boundaries. (Use VPN to get around that.) Virus protection software is another cause of network connection failures, in being overly restrictive. One thing to check is that the printer definitions are using the appropriate protocol and network address and printer name. You can do that from the Terminal utility, via one of the two following commands: /usr/bin/lpstat -s or /usr/sbin/system_profiler SPPrintersDataType | less Delete and redefine the Mac printer instance if incorrect. In Sierra: rhythmic disk writing sound; secd process looping The secd process seems to be unfulfilled: it's filling the system log with complaints. Killing the process doesn't help, as it is re-spawned. Fix this by going to the iCloud settings panel and beginning the process to enable iCloud Keychain, where you get up to the point of being prompted for password, but you can cancel at that point. Then, secd magically stops looping. Safari URL auto-completion not happening: Can be due to someone having locked the controlling plist. Check by going into the Library folder in your home directory, then into Safari, then inspect the history.plist file via Get Info on it. If locked, unlock it. Screen periodically brightens for no apparent reason In System Preferences -> Universal Access, Hearing, you may have checked the box "Flash the screen when an alert sound occurs". Screen text is all white on dark colors In System Preferences -> Universal Access, Seeing, you may have checked the Display box "White on Black". Scrollbars suddenly showing - hadn't been before Seen where your Magic Trackpad batteries have run out of charge. Shutdown won't happen A simple cause is that a Time Machine backup is happening. Seen with OS 10.7 and above: Can happen where there is a dialog pending in a Space other than the one you are on. For example, you performed an Empty Trash earlier, but then moved to another application before the trash emptying began. This resulted in a dialog asking if you really want to permanently remove said items, but that dialog is now elsewhere. If you do Cmd+N in Finder to open a new Finder window, it should do so in the Space where the dialog is, thus taking you to it, where you can respond to the dialog and then shut down. Software Update hangs You launch Software Update, but the "Checking for new software" progress bar stops advancing, and giving it lots of time makes no difference. This can usually be quickly fixed by clearing Software Update's cache: Go into your Library folder, then into the Caches directory. There you will see a subdirectory named com.apple.SoftwareUpdate. Rename that to anything, like com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.save. Then relaunch Software Update, which will recreate that subdirectory and will most likely run fine now. If so, you can now safely remove the renamed copy. Start-up won't happen; screen shows gray apple, won't progress: This is seen where the OS you are trying to boot from is a lower level than what is required for the computer, as for example trying to boot an OS 10.5 or 10.6 Mac Pro mid 2010, which requires a minimum of OS 10.6.4. Start-up won't happen; screen stays blank: You press the power button, the Mac comes to life, the hard drive spins up, it sounds like there's progress, but start-up doesn't happen, and nothing appears on the screen. I encountered this with a Firewire hub connected to a G4 system, where it seems like the Mac is trying to query attached devices, but gets stuck. Unplug the Firewire and a fresh start works. Hubs can be problematic. Start-up won't happen: certain number of beeps, only: Apple Article HT1547 describes the situation.... 1 beep = no RAM installed 2 beeps = incompatible RAM types 3 beeps = no good banks 4 beeps = no good boot images in the boot ROM (and/or bad sys config block) 5 beeps = processor is not usable Trash won't fully empty; says an item is locked. And you see that the item is not locked. I've seen this where the filename contains a Carriage Return, like "Icon<CR>". To deal with it, I go into .Trash and use 'rm' to dispose of the file. X11 won't start: A simple cause is that your .bash_login isn't what it should be: move that out of the way and try restarting X11. You don't have any music on this Apple TV Annoying message on a version 4 Apple TV, despite having purchased lots of iTunes music that you would expect to show up. I experienced this one time, then it went away. I had found online posting suggesting that this was Apple forcing you to pay for either iTunes Match ($24.99 per year) or Apple Music ($9.99 per month), but that seems specious, in that you had indeed payed Apple for individual tunes. If necessary, a way around it is to have your Mac on the network with your Apple TV and play tunes from your Mac - which is essentially functioning as a server to the Apple TV anyway. PERFORMANCE BOOSTS: In the General Controls control panel, turn off Protect System Folder and Protect Applications Folder (known to slow down OS8). In the Memory control panel, set Disk Cache to 32KB per megabyte of system memory. (The Default button may do this properly.) Turn off File Sharing. Turn off Appletalk if not using it. APPLE AND UNIX (from http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbpoll=61): Apple has shipped several Unix-derived operating systems over the years; despite Apple's history of rolling its own operating systems, Unix flavors have long had a home at Apple. A/UX was a version of Unix developed by Apple for 68K machines in the late 1980s; it also pioneered Unix-based sharing of Macintosh files. TidBITS first wrote about A/UX way back in TidBITS 6. Apple stopped supporting A/UX in the early 90's and never ported it to PowerPC, but it was a solid product that gained some die-hard supporters. AIX -- This may be our trick answer: back in 1996, Apple shipped IBM's AIX on the short-lived Network Server line. The Network Servers were enormous systems with dual PCI buses, six PCI slots, secure hot-swappable drive bays, and (then) top-of-the-line PowerPC 604 processors. MkLinux -- In mid-1996, Apple ported Linux to PowerPC Macs and eventually issued three developer releases. The last release supported G3 systems (but not the iMac), and although Apple has ceased development on MkLInux, some of its engineering know-how found its way into Mac OS X, and MkLinux developement has subsequently been taken over by the MkLinux user community. (Tom Gewecke wrote two articles for TidBITS covering running various Linux operating systems on his Mac, one in TidBITS 407 and another in TidBITS 461.) Mac OS X Server -- More recently, Apple released Mac OS X Server, which (like the forthcoming Mac OS X) is built on BSD Unix and the Mach microkernel. Unlike Mac OS X, however, Mac OS X Server has been shipping for some time and lacks the new Aqua interface and associated technologies, but offers QuickTime streaming and unique Mac-only capabilities like the NetBoot server. Mac OS X Public Beta -- Of course, the public beta of Mac OS X is based on BSD Unix, although the command-line is safely tucked away behind the Aqua interface, since Apple intends Mac OS X to be the default operating system for all Macintosh users eventually. Apple intends to ship Mac OS X in early 2001. Darwin -- It's debatable whether Apple technically "ships" Darwin, its bare-bones open source operating system which exposes the guts of Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server without including proprietary Apple technologies like the Aqua interface. Darwin is being ported to Intel processors by the larger developer community, although there's absolutely no expectation at this time that Apple will develop Mac OS X or Mac OS X Server for Intel processors. But Apple isn't the only company making Unix for the Macintosh. In addition to the various Linux for PowerPC products, Tenon Intersystems has been shipping high-performance Unix-derived server environments and Macintosh applications that implement a full-fledged Unix. There have also been a number of third-party Unix efforts over the years - even we can't keep track of them all! GENERAL ADVICE: Do not install an application without uninstall information. This is like learning to fly without first learning how to land, and can result in a big mess. This advice applies to all operating system environments on all computers. Professionally written applications always include a standard installer, and some kind of uninstaller. Trivial (usually, freeware) applications are simply copied to the Applications folder. Other applications install via an arcane, private method and often provide no means of uninstallation, resulting in an amalgam which is entwined in the file systems and perhaps even kernel extensions. Simply dragging such an application to the trash removes only that part of it, perhaps resulting in a discontinuity which will create operational problems thereafter. APPLE COMPUTER DEVICE TYPES, MACHINE IDENTIFICATIONS: Personal computers: Machine Identification Model ---------------------- ---------------------------------------------- iMac,1 iMac (Revision A + B) iMac (Revision C) iMac (Revision D) iMac4,1 iMac (Intel Core Duo) MacBookPro1,1 MacBook Pro PowerMac1,1 Power Macintosh G3 (Blue & White) PowerMac1,2 Power Macintosh G4 (PCI-Graphics) PowerMac2,1 iMac (Slot-Loading CD-ROM) PowerMac2,2 iMac (Summer 2000) PowerMac3,1 Power Macintosh G4 (AGP-Graphics) PowerMac3,2 Power Macintosh G4 (AGP-Graphics) PowerMac3,3 Power Macintosh G4 (Gigabit Ethernet) PowerMac3,4 Power Macintosh G4 (Digital Audio) PowerMac3,5 Power Macintosh G4 (Quick Silver) Power Macintosh G4 (Quick Silver 2002) PowerMac3,6 Power Macintosh G4 (Mirrored Drive Doors) Power Macintosh G4 (FW 800) Power Macintosh G4 (Mirrored Drive Doors 2003) PowerMac4,1 iMac (Early 2001) iMac (Summer 2001) PowerMac4,2 iMac (Flat-Panel) PowerMac4,4 eMac eMac (ATI Graphics) eMac (1 GHz G4) PowerMac4,5 iMac (17-inch Flat-Panel) iMac (17-inch 1 GHz) PowerMac5,1 Power Macintosh G4 Cube Power Macintosh G4 Cube (Early 2001) PowerMac6,1 iMac (USB 2.0) PowerMac6,3 iMac (20-inch Flat-Panel) PowerMac6,4 eMac (USB 2.0), eMac (2005) PowerMac7,2 Power Macintosh G5, Power Macintosh G5 (Early 2005, dual 2.0 + 2.3 GHz) PowerMac7,3 Power Macintosh G5 (June 2004), Power Macintosh G5 (Early 2005, dual 2.7 GHz) PowerMac8,1 iMac G5 PowerMac8,2 iMac G5 (Ambient Light Sensor) PowerMac9,1 Power Macintosh G5 (Late 2004) PowerMac10,1 Mac mini PowerMac10,2 Mac mini (Late 2005) PowerMac11,2 Power Macintosh G5 (Late 2005) PowerMac12,1 iMac G5 (iSight) ADP2,1 Developer Transition Kit (Pentium 4-based 2005 Power Macintosh computer) Servers: Machine Identification Model RackMac1,1 Xserve RackMac1,2 Xserve (slot-loading) Xserve (Cluster Node) RackMac3,1 Xserve G5 Xserve G5 (Cluster Node) Xserve G5 (January 2005) Xserve G5 (Cluster Node, January 2005) Portable Computers (laptops): Machine Identification Model PowerBook1,1 PowerBook G3 (13") PowerBook G3 (12") PowerBook G3 (14", Rev. A) PowerBook G3 (14", Rev. B) PowerBook G3 (Bronze Keyboard) PowerBook2,1 iBook PowerBook2,2 iBook (FireWire) PowerBook3,1 PowerBook G3 (FireWire) PowerBook3,2 PowerBook G4 PowerBook3,3 PowerBook G4 (Gigabit Ethernet) PowerBook3,4 PowerBook G4 (DVI) PowerBook3,5 PowerBook G4 (1 GHz / 867 MHz) PowerBook4,1 iBook (Dual USB) iBook (Late 2001) PowerBook4,2 iBook (16 VRAM) PowerBook4,3 iBook (Opaque 16 VRAM) iBook (32 VRAM) iBook (Early 2003) PowerBook5,1 PowerBook G4 (17-inch) PowerBook5,2 PowerBook G4 (15-inch FW 800) PowerBook5,3 PowerBook G4 (17-inch 1.33 GHz) PowerBook5,4 PowerBook G4 (15-inch 1.5/1.33 GHz) PowerBook5,5 PowerBook G4 (17-inch 1.5 GHz) PowerBook5,6 PowerBook G4 (15-inch 1.67/1.5 GHz) PowerBook5,7 PowerBook G4 (17-inch 1.67 GHz) PowerBook5,8 PowerBook G4 (Double-Layer SD, 15-inch) PowerBook5,9 PowerBook G4 (Double-Layer SD, 17-inch) PowerBook6,1 PowerBook G4 (12-inch) PowerBook6,2 PowerBook G4 (12-inch DVI) PowerBook6,3 iBook G4 PowerBook6,4 PowerBook G4 (12-inch 1.33 GHz) PowerBook6,5 iBook G4 (Early 2004), iBook G4 (Late 2004) PowerBook6,7 iBook G4 (Mid 2005) PowerBook6,8 PowerBook G4 (12-inch 1.5 GHz) Apple "device-tree:compatible" definitions: Desktops and Minitowers, presented in roughly chronological order: AWACS - No DAVBus entry: "AAPL,e407" performa 6400_200 "AAPL,7300" 7200_90 "AAPL,7500" 7500_100 "AAPL,8500" 8600 DAVBus entry + sound node , "no device-id" "AAPL,9500" 9500_132 "AAPL,9500" 9600_233 "AAPL,Gossamer " g3_beige_266 "AAPL,PowerMac G3" g3_beige_300 DAVBus entry + sound node , "with device-id" "PowerMac1,1" g3bw_350 (burgundy, Device ID 4) "PowerMac1,1" g3bw_400 (burgundy, Device ID 4) "iMac" imac-Rev-A-233 (burgundy, Device ID 1) NB "device-tree:model" is "iMac,1" "PowerMac2,1" iMac DV ('99) (screamer, device ID 8) "iMac" imac-Rev.D-333 (burgundy, device ID 1) NB "device-tree:model" is "iMac,1" "PowerMac2,1" imac_400_1 (screamer, Device ID 8) "PowerMac2,1" imac_400_2 (screamer, Device ID 8) "PowerMac2,2" imac_500_1 (screamer, Device ID 11) "PowerMac2,2" imac-dv-2k (screamer, Device ID 11) "PowerMac1,2.PowerMac1,1" g4_pci_350 (burgundy, Device ID 4) "PowerMac3,1" g4_agp_400_1 (screamer, Device ID 5) "PowerMac3,1" g4_agp_400_2 (screamer, Device ID 5) "PowerMac3,1" g4_agp_450_1 (screamer, Device ID 5) "PowerMac3,1" g4_agp_450_6 (screamer, Device ID 5) "PowerMac3,1" g4_agp_500_1 (screamer, Device ID 5) "PowerMac3,1" g4_agp_500_2 (screamer, Device ID 5) "PowerMac3,3" dual_g4_500 (screamer, Device ID 5) i2s + sound entry (TUMBLER) "PowerMac3,4" g4_audio_466.html (tumbler, Device ID 14) Portable/Laptop (roughly chronological order) AWACS no DAVBus entry "AAPL,3400/2400" powerbook_3400 AWACS DAVBus + sound entry (no device ID) "AAPL,PowerBook1998" wallstreet_233 "AAPL,PowerBook1998" wallstreetI250 "AAPL,PowerBook1998" wallstreet_297 DAVBus + sound entry (with device ID). "PowerBook1,1" lombard 333 (screamer, Device ID 2) "PowerBook3,1" pismo_400 (screamer, Device ID 10) "PowerBook3,1" pismo_500 (screamer, Device ID 10) "PowerBook3,2" G4Titanium (screamer, Device ID 13) i2s + sound entry (DACA) "PowerBook2,1" ibook_300_2 (daca, Device ID 6) "PowerBook2,1" iBook 300_3 (daca, Device ID 6) "PowerBook2,2" ibook 2000 (iBook SE Firewire 466MHz ) (daca, Device ID 6) REFERENCES AND OTHER RESOURCES: An Introduction to Mac OS X Security http://developer.apple.com/internet/macosx/securityintro.html Accessories suppliers: http://www.caldrives.com/Accessories/Accessories.shtml (incl. replacement rubber feed for PowerBooks, speaker guards) Adware removal: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203987 App Store Review Guidelines: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/ Apple commercials and Macworld keynotes: http://www.esm.psu.edu/Faculty/Gray/movies.html Apple events videos: www.apple.com/apple-events Or go into iTunes podcasts and search on "keynotes" and "Apple Quarterly Earnings Call". Apple font uses: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typography_of_Apple_Inc Apple Forever (collector site, with pics of old equipment) http://www.apple-forever.com/start.html Apple IT Web area: http://www.apple.com/itpro Apple Press Releases: http://www.apple.com/pr/ http://www.apple.com/pr/library/ Apple products hardware service manuals: http://oldsite.auburnschl.edu/Technology/protected/applemanuals/ Apple promotional videos: http://mactv.uneasysilence.com/ http://www.esm.psu.edu/Faculty/Gray/movies.html Apple Store Shipping & Delivery: http://store.apple.com/us/help/shipping_delivery Apple Store for Education: http://store.apple.com/us-hed Apple Technical Information Library: http://til.info.apple.com Apple OS X security patches, cumulative doc: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61798 Apple .Mac web area: www.mac.com AppleScript: AppleScript for Absolute Starters (AS4AS): http://www.applescriptsourcebook.com/tips/AS4AS.html AppleScript code examples: http://www.squidoo.com/applescript Apple DVD-RAM info: http://www.apple.com.pl/infotech/varia/DVD/Apple.html MacPerl: http://ptf.com/macperl/ Batteries: http://www.apple.com/batteries/ Board of Directors: http://www.apple.com/pr/bios/bod.html CAD software for Mac: http://www.pure-mac.com/cad.html Classic, Rosetta, and 32/64 bit revisited: https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-2292 Codenames: http://www.appleinsider.com/codenames.shtml http://www.mackido.com/CodeNames/Hardware.html Comparative evaluation of W2k and MacOSX: http://home.cnet.com/software/0-429669-8-6112332-1.html Create an iTunes App Store Account Without a Credit Card: http://apples4teachers.wikispaces.com/file/view/iTunesAcct+No+CC.pdf http://techkon.net/how-to-create-us-itunes-accounts-without-credit-cards-2013/ http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2534 Darwin source code: http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/Current/ Daemons and server processes: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/ BPSystemStartup/index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/10000172i Dating: http://cupidtino.com/ Developer program: Enroll: https://developer.apple.com/programs/start/standard/ Are you already registered? Find out by going to this page: https://developer.apple.com/register/index.action Do-It-Yourself Repair & Upgrades: http://www.apple.com/support/diy/ http://www.apple.com/support/powerbook/doityourself/12a/l Emulators which run under OS X: http://guides.macrumors.com/Free_Emulators_for_Mac_OS_X "ePub Best Practices" sample document: http://images.apple.com/support/pages/docs/ePub_Best_Practices_EN.zip Executives/leadership: http://www.apple.com/pr/bios FAQ: http://www.cc.vt.edu/cc/us/docs/faqlib/Mac/hardwarefaq.html Fetch FTP app: http://fetchsoftworks.com Fibre Channel: http://www.apple.com/xserve/raid/fibre_channel.html Filemaker: http://www.apple.com/macosx/applications/filemaker/ Filename extensions: http://www.icdatamaster.com/ Final Cut Pro cameras support: http://help.apple.com/finalcutpro/cameras/en/ Flickr RSS Screensaver: http://www.pycs.net/bbum/2005/5/7/#200505072 Fonts: FontFreak: http://www.fontfreak.com/ Macintosh Font Vault: http://www.erik.co.uk/font/ Games: Board games: http://www.macgamesandmore.com/downloadfreemacboardgames.html Gestures: http://www.apple.com/macosx/whats-new/gestures.html Hints and tips: http://www.bombich.com/ History: http://www.apple-history.com PowerBook history: http://www.lowendmac.com/archive/2k0512.html How To: http://www.apple.com/findouthow/ http://www.apple.com/science/productivitylab/ How To Publish An Apple iBook: http://www.macnews.com/2010/08/10/gregs-bite-how-publish-apple-ibook iCal calendars: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/calendars/ iMac glossy screen issue: http://simon-mlogs.blogspot.com/2008/01/imac-screen-too-glossy.html http://www.macworld.com/article/139942/2009/04/mwvodcast103.html iMac screen face removal for cleaning: http://www.truveo.com/Removing-the-screen-cover-from-an-iMac/id/741327416 Investor reports and QuickTime audio streams of financial reports: http://investor.apple.com/ iOS adoption pie chart: https://developer.apple.com/devcenter/ios/checklist/ (Contrast with http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html) iOS devices list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_iOS_devices iOS in the car: http://www.apple.com/ios/whats-new/#carintegration iOS: Start Developing iOS Apps Today: https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#referencelibrary/GettingStarted/ RoadMapiOS/Introduction/Introduction.html iPhone (newest) availability tracking: http://www.istocknow.com/live/ iPhone Dev Center http://developer.apple.com/iphone/devcenter/designingcontent.html iTunes features: http://www.apple.com/itunes/features/ iTunes terms and conditions: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/us/terms.html Java version switching: http://www.rich-software.com/blogs/2009/07/ switching-java-versions-on-a-mac-setting-java_home-and-using-java-6-revisited/ Linux on G5: http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-ydlg5.html Logic board pictures: http://www.micromac.com/whats_new/logic_board_picture.html Mac 101: Getting started with the Mac: http://www.apple.com/support/mac101/ Mac 101: Mac Essentials: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304757 Mac in commercial uses: http://www.apple.com/macatwork/ Mac in science: http://www.apple.com/science Mac Mini: http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/pa-macmini1/ Mac model by serial number: https://selfsolve.apple.com/agreementWarrantyDynamic.do Mac OS Forge (open source software): http://www.macosforge.org/ Mac OS on Linux: www.ibrium.se/linux/mac_on_linux.html MacBook Pro images: http://www.apple.com/pr/products/macbook/macbook.html MacEnterprise mailing list: http://lists.psu.edu/archives/macenterprise.html Macintosh error codes: http://www.ed.psu.edu/etc/mac/errors.html Macintosh products guide: http://guide.apple.com/uscategories/tools.lasso Macintosh-Windows integration solutiong: http://www.macwindows.com/ Manuals: http://home.wanadoo.nl/manual.man/manuals.html Memory guide (part of Tom Cook's Computer Troubleshooting Tips): http://home.att.net/~t.f.cook/tc9e.htm "Memory Management in Mac OS X": http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Performance/Conceptual/ ManagingMemory/Concepts/AboutMemory.html Microphones 101: http://www.apple.com/pro/techniques/microphones101/ MIDI keyboards: http://www.midiman.net/products/en_us/Keystation88es-main.html Movies now in iCloud: www.apple.com/itunes/inside-itunes/2012/03/movies-now-available-on-icloud.html MPEG converter: MPEG Streamclip (free): http://www.alfanet.it/squared5/mpegstreamclip.html Music at Apple keynotes & presentations: http://i.tuaw.com/2009/06/18/its-all-about-the-music-tunes-from-apples-keynote-presentatio/ Music in Apple commercials, et al: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_music_used_by_Apple_Inc. Network home directory path name limits and content: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107695 Newly arrived products: http://guide.apple.com/newarrivals News readers: http://www.newsreaders.com/mac/utilities.html Newsroom: http://www.apple.com/newsroom/ Objective C primer: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#referencelibrary/GettingStarted/ Learning_Objective-C_A_Primer/ Older Macs: http://www.lowendmac.com Older system software (downloadable): http://www.info.apple.com/support/oldersoftwarelist.html Older Mac applications: mac.oldapps.com Open Transport Error Codes: http://www.cesoft.com/tech/oterrors.html OS X: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Os_x OS X commands list: http://ss64.com/osx/ OS X Digital Camera Support: http://www.apple.com/macosx/upgrade/cameras.html OS X FAQ: http://www.osxfaq.com OS X manual pages, online: developer.apple.com/Mac/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/index.html OS X "System Overview" book (PDF): http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/ SystemOverview/index.html OS X - Getting Started... publications http://developer.apple.com/gettingstarted/index.html Parallels product documentation: http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/resources/documentation/ Creating a Lion virtual machine using "Install Lion.app" http://kb.parallels.com/en/112614 Phishing email, report: reportphishing@apple.com Photo acquisition and handling: OfotoNow software, OS 8.6-9.2: www.ofoto.com/DownloadClient.jsp Photos, create movies by zooming/panning over images: Photo to Movie application http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/mac/15681 Podcasting: FAQ: http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/podcastsfaq.html Tips: http://www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts/ PowerBook carrying cases/bags/sleeves: Waterfield: http://www.sfbags.com/ Tom Bihn Factory: http://www.tombihn.com MacCase: http://www.mac-case.com/ Marware: http://www.marware.com/ Axio: http://www.axio-usa.com/ Booq: http://www.booqbags.com/ Radtech: http://www.radtech.us/Products/Notebook/ PowerBook 17": Sound system: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Hardware/Developer_Notes/ Macintosh_CPUs-G4/PowerBookG4_17inch/3Input-Output/ chapter_4_section_15.html Print-to-PDF mysteries revealed: http://www.macworld.com/article/1157024/pdfprinting.html Printer drivers supplied by Apple: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3669 Printer drivers for outdated printers: gimp-print.sourceforge.net Processes: http://www.westwind.com/reference/OS-X/background-processes.html Product feedback: www.apple.com/feedback Product pictures/images/photos: http://www.apple.com/pr/products/ Quick Tip of the Week: http://www.apple.com/business/theater/ QuickTime Movie Basics (for developers): http://developer.apple.com/documentation/QuickTime/RM/MovieBasics/ MTEditing/index.html Refurbished goods statement: http://store.apple.com/Catalog/US/Images/apple_certified.html Refurbished products on eBay (unofficial Apple store there): http://stores.ebay.com/Refurbished-Outlet Repair services: http://techrestore.com Fix laptops and replace glossy screens with non-glare screens. Roller coaster simulator (NoLimits): www.nolimitscoaster.com Demo: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/games/simulation_and_sports/ nolimitsrollercoastersimulation.html Safari technology demos: http://developer.apple.com/safaridemos/ Safari (5.1.7) for Windows: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1531 Scanner software: http://www.hamrick.com/ Screen Ruler: http://www.artissoftware.com/screentools/ruler.html Screen shot how-to for Mac: http://www.take-a-screenshot.org Seminars: http://seminars.apple.com/ Settings: http://www.macosxtips.co.uk/index_files/ terminal-commands-for-hidden-mac-os-x-settings.php Siri: http://www.apple.com/ios/siri/ Software: http://www.macforge.net/ Software License Agreements (SLAs): http://www.apple.com/legal/ Sound: "Introduction to Sound on the Macintosh" (pre-OSX): http://developer.apple.com/documentation/mac/Sound/Sound-13.html http://developer.apple.com/documentation/QuickTime/INMAC/SOUND/ imintrosound.htm Registered products: Show, request support, schedule repair: supportprofile.apple.com Specs, models: www.apple.com/support/specs http://everymac.com/systems/apple/ http://www.sunrem.com/database/ http://www.maconline.com/ Status of services, stores, iCloud: http://www.apple.com/support/systemstatus/ (Note that this page can report that all is well despite gross problems like App Store logins not working and Contact Apple Support failing.) Steve Jobs: Thoughts on Flash: https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ Tax holiday web page: http://store.apple.com/us/browse/campaigns/tax/holiday The Apple Museum (TAM): http://www.theapplemuseum.com Time Machine: http://www.apple.com/support/leopard/timemachine/ http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2007/10/mac-os-x-10-5.ars/14 Training: http://train.apple.com/ Troubleshooting solutions for the Mac: http://www.macfixit.com/ Ultimate Macintosh: members.aol.com/myee/umac.html Unix and open source software: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/unix_open_source/index.html Using Mac OS X: www.beavton.k12.or.us/staff_dev/Using_OSX.pdf Using Mac OS X To Share Files With Windows Machines: http://www.macobserver.com/tips/hotcocoa/2001/20010706.shtml Internals: http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/systems.html Vintage and obsolete products: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624 xv for OS X: http://homepage.mac.com/eric.lee/xv/ Yamaha CA/VIT USB & digital receiver: http://www.yamahamultimedia.com/yec/idx_cavit.asp Books: "Learn C on the Macintosh" APPLE'S GRATIS CONTRIBUTIONS TO TECHNOLOGY: FireWire (IEEE 1394) AIFF audio (music) format. Mini DisplayPort Canvas, originally created by Apple and contributed royalty free to the HTML5 specification, enables HTML5 developers to create animations and games without needing a plugin helper like Flash or Silverlight. WebKit, the circa 2002 Web browser engine derived from KHTML. WebKit2, the 2010 split process model where web content runs in a separate process. OBSERVATIONS: Microsoft's early 2009 commercials would like to claim that Macintoshes are overpriced, and that there is an "Apple tax", as Ballmer likes to say. The reality is that there is a Windows tax, as Windows users blithely spend appreciable amounts of money and a lot of unproductive time countering the mal-design of Windows. One example of that which struck me was the following, written by a customer using an HP printer in Windows: "Clean your computer registry with PC Scanning and Repairing Software. I do this at least twice per week using three vendors for only $65/year. This will ensure that no conflicting or unnecessary files are on your computer to slow it down or fragment some installed files." QUOTES: "Since any reasonable person would choose a Mac over a PC, Apple's market share does provide us with an accurate reading of the percentage of reasonable people in our society." -- Roger Ebert. "I can't imagine why any thinking person would want to stifle their brain cells with Windows, given the mind-expanding availability of the Macintosh alternative; but, then again, mediocrity has a huge following in this world." -- me "...the world's most innovative personal computer company...". -- Paul Otellini, president and CEO of Intel, 2005/06/06, speaking of Apple's decision to go Intel. "Microsoft offering a hand-held music player, Zune, to compete with the iPod is like George Constanza trying to exude coolness." -- me Asked for his thoughts on the 20th anniversary of the Macintosh, in 2004, Steve Jobs said: "All I can say is, I think the Mac reinvented the personal computer industry in the eighties, and Microsoft copied it in the nineties - and that's been a big success for them, too. We finally got out ahead again with Mac OS X, and I think you'll see Microsoft copying that in the future." And regarding television: "We don't think that televisions and personal computers are going to merge. We think basically you watch television to turn your brain off, and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on." "People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware." -- Alan Kay, cited at the iPhone introduction at Macworld, 2007/01 "Apple is the only lifestyle brand in the computer industry. It's the only company that people feel passionate about. ... Only Apple is really a lifestyle brand." -- Larry Ellison. "People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware." -- Alan Kay This quote was featured at the January 9, 2007 iPhone presentation by Steve Jobs as the fundamental approach of Apple. "It's really hard to design products by focus groups. People don't know what they want untul you show it to them." -- Steve Jobs "Apple continues to 'own' its category by innovating and leading the curve in a way that generates real benefits for consumers. It meets their rational and emotional needs, and makes life easier in a fun and relevant way. Apple is clear on what it stands for, and never stops refreshing its message to sustain the difference that makes it so desirable." -- Doreen Wang, Millward Brown's Global Head of BrandZ (This is file Apple.QuickFacts online as http://people.bu.edu/rbs/ThingsApple/Apple.QuickFacts )