How the keyboard can be used for commands, from its reserved keys, to key equivalents, interface controls, and keyboard actions. | Continue reading
Freeform 1.0, the return of network Locations, version change for Disk Utility, Sing in Music, Automator PDF actions, and more. | Continue reading
Apple has just released the update to macOS Ventura 13.1, and concomitant security updates to Monterey (12.6.2) and Big Sur (11.7.2). The download for 13.1 on Apple silicon is around 2.5 GB. As soo… | Continue reading
When he returned to London from Italy in 1921, he became increasingly distressed with the advent of modernism, and died the following year, a century ago today. | Continue reading
Making sense of the SMART indicators for NVMe SSDs, including all recent models fitted by Apple to Macs. | Continue reading
He died a century ago, perhaps the last painter to paint art for art’s sake, avoiding narrative or meaning. Paintings from the first half of his career. | Continue reading
I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 181. Here are my solutions to them. 1: Dry for ships, enclosed for prisoners, here for apps and trash. Click for a solution Dock Dry fo… | Continue reading
If macOS doesn’t include your preferred keyboard layout, here’s how to create your own, and put it to work. | Continue reading
Two paintings by van Gogh, and others show open fires and stoves heating homes and other places up to 1930. | Continue reading
The iPad Pro has the same M2 chip as a MacBook Air, a keyboard and trackpad, and a single Thunderbolt/USB4 port, but there the similarities end. | Continue reading
Paintings of open fires and stoves from 1565 to 1884 show how we lived through the winter before central heating. | Continue reading
Here are this weekend’s riddles to entertain you through family time, shopping and recreation. 1: Dry for ships, enclosed for prisoners, here for apps and trash. 2: Gaps between words for mul… | Continue reading
Rosetta 2 is key feature for the transition to Apple silicon, and is also available to run Intel x86_64 binaries in virtual macOS and Linux (in Ventura). | Continue reading
Weaving turned yarn into fabric ready to make into garments. Associations include industry, passing time, fidelity, and the myth of Arachne. | Continue reading
Now feature-complete with support for shared folders with the host Mac, and everything is in place for Rosetta 2 translation of x86_64 binaries within the VM. | Continue reading
Apple has just pushed an update to XProtect Remediator security software for Macs running Catalina or later, bringing it to version 86. Apple doesn’t release information about what security i… | Continue reading
Spinning natural fibres like wool into yarn was “women’s work” and had several connotations, here explored in paintings, and the origin of the word ‘spinster’. | Continue reading
Excessive CPU use by mds_stores is a common cause of sluggish performance. Explains what it does and what you can do bring it under control. | Continue reading
Two artists painted panoramas full of miniature stories, which assembled into broad summaries of contemporary society: Frith and Ford Madox Brown. | Continue reading
How to get your Mac to automatically convert an input string like ‘egrin’ into the grinning face emoji, using an Input Plugin. | Continue reading
He didn’t start painting in Impressionist style until about 1870, and a decade later was migrating towards what became Post-Impressionism. | Continue reading
Now fully supports shared folders, on Ventura hosts running Ventura in a VM. This gives access to faster storage, and to iCloud Drive as well. | Continue reading
A merchant has a wife and identical twin sons, with identical twin servants. They are separated by a shipwreck. Years later, chaos ensues. | Continue reading
I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 180. Here are my solutions to them. 1: Brisk marching pace for media ended three years ago. Click for a solution QuickTime Brisk marchi… | Continue reading
The life of an SSD should be more predictable than a hard disk. All you need is its TBW, and the total amount of data written to it so far. | Continue reading
On board RMS Carpathia as it rescued survivors from the Titanic was Cooper, the skyscraper painter, already at work on his gouaches of the scene. | Continue reading
Just 4 cores and 16 GB of memory were used for the virtual machine to run Xcode and build apps successfully, but only for local testing. | Continue reading
Millet was a central figure in American fine arts, as well as a painter in mid-century Salon style. When returning from Europe he and his friend died after the Titanic struck an iceberg. | Continue reading
Here are this weekend’s riddles to entertain you through family time, shopping and recreation. 1: Brisk marching pace for media ended three years ago. 2: Silica for the timepiece that renders… | Continue reading
The Finder is happy to create aliases to most files and folders, provided they aren’t immediately inside a bundle or package. Then it gets all fussy. But why? | Continue reading
The complicated story of Medea, who provided Jason with intelligence and potions to enable him to steal the Golden Fleece. A femme very fatale. | Continue reading
In extreme cases, excessive use of swap space on an internal SSD could lead to its premature death, and the end of life for that Mac. How could you assess that? | Continue reading
Paintings of sorceresses, who combine dark arts and seduction. Circe with Odysseus and Scylla, Melissa, Armida, Morgan le Fay and others. | Continue reading
Writing to the Data volume in a VM is dismally slow. Is using shared storage any quicker? What happens when you copy a VM to an external SSD, or to another Mac? | Continue reading
Two new narrative themes that became distinctive in the mid-19th century were contemporary English poetry, and the legends of King Arthur. | Continue reading
On Intel Macs, key combinations determine startup modes and more, but they have no effect on Apple silicon Macs. And how to deal with keyboard problems when logging in. | Continue reading
Describing himself as a Realist, normally avoiding painting landscapes, but concentrating on ballet dancers and ‘modern life’, he was the odd one out. | Continue reading
With Unified memory, don’t you simply add the main and graphics memory sizes from your Intel Mac to determine how much your Apple silicon Mac needs? | Continue reading
How a shunned bride consummates her marriage without her husband being aware, and tricks him out of the ring he insists he’d never give her. | Continue reading
I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 179. Here are my solutions to them. 1: Co-ordinate hues to keep them in harmony. Click for a solution ColorSync Co-ordinate (sync) hues… | Continue reading
Some threads are set to run in the background, and get allocated to the E cores. Could you run them in a VM, and effectively promote them to run on P cores instead? | Continue reading
Children on the cabbage patch, those toiling with the potatoes, digging beetroots, and a couple of unusual paintings with cucumbers and the true vegetable gardener. | Continue reading
Nearly 6 months ago, many thought the M2 Pro and Max would come in Macs in the autumn of this year. So why hasn’t Apple released them yet? | Continue reading
Caillebotte’s gardening almost stopped him from painting, and Vincent van Gogh shows vegetable gardens on the hill of Montmartre. | Continue reading
Here are this weekend’s riddles to entertain you through family time, shopping and recreation. 1: Co-ordinate hues to keep them in harmony. 2: Really the sixth, not second, the first of the &… | Continue reading
How can you set up a single external bootable disk to start up two different Apple silicon Macs, maybe one in the office and the other at home? | Continue reading
Pierrot and Harlequin went on to be clowns in the circus, and Pulcinella became Mr Punch in popular Punch and Judy shows. And they live on still. | Continue reading
Before you try editing or trashing that preference file, ask whether macOS in the form of cfprefsd isn’t going to undo your work. | Continue reading