MacOS on yozy//NET

Apple September 2018 Keynote Predictions

Mon, 27 Aug 2018 12:00:00 +0200

As a fun exercise I would like to make some predictions for the 2018 September Apple keynote. There are two rumored machines that should come out.

The new Mac Mini

According to rumors, this machine will be geared towards pro users. As usual, the statement is vague. What pro users? Developers, animators, writers?

Current Mac Minis mainly serve three purposes:

home media server
“rich man’s raspberry pi”
server in a colo

Professionals do not need home media servers, and since Apple does not make a standalone screen it means that the machine will have to be usable headless.

As such it will require Ethernet and power, which makes it possible to do away with all other ports. I expect Apple to offer a low-grade Xeon CPU option in order to allow for ECC ram and at least an option with 32G ram.

Why would Apple do this?

Nobody uses underpowered desktops today.
Apple needs and probably has a similar machine for internal usage.
The work on Xcode automation is useless if one cannot have an affordable Mac server.

The new MacBook Air

I expect Apple to sanitize their offering. Nobody except Apple pundits knows how are the machines named before they enter the Apple store.

I believe that Apple will:

Rename the current MacBook to MacBook Air.
Discontinue the 13″ MacBook Pro without TouchBar.
Introduce a new cheaper 13″ computer called MacBook.

This will make the lightest Mac have the Air moniker. The current MacBook is underpowered for the generic user and the current MacBook Pro without TouchBar is a compromised machine with no market.

CPU and Graphics

For CPU it will have the cheapest Intel 15W CPU Apple can get, with expensive upgrades to CPUs with the same TDP. It will not have a discrete GPU and no TouchBar.

Ports

People buying the Pro computer should be savvy enough to know which dongles to buy and people buying an ultra-light computer do not need peripherals.

However, Apple needs the Average Joe’s MacBook to work for most users today, not in an imaginary future. This means it needs at least one USB port. It does not need thunderbolt. It would be better with an HDMI port and an SD card slot but these are unlikely to be included.

I predict that it will have 2 USB-C ports for power and 1 or 2 USB-A ports (for symmetry).

Keyboard

If Apple wants to make this work they would need to backpedal to the old system. Even the new updated 2018 butterfly keyboard keeps failing. If they make a new body for this machine, it is possible that they would introduce a v4 of the butterfly switch mechanism.

What happens when you delete ~/.Trash folder on macOS

Tue, 15 May 2018 13:00:00 +0200

I have done some stupid stuff and managed to delete the ~/.Trash folder on my Mac. The result was surprising:

Your browser does not support the video tag.

To fix this you can type this in the shell:

mkdir ~/.Trash

This is clearly bad user experience. Somebody not knowing how to fix this will just assume that the trash stopped working. Even worse, they might miss the message and just click on Delete.

What should macOS do in this case, is to silently restore the trash folder and keep on humming.

DTerm and Fish shell, together

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 15:10:51 +0000

Fish shell does not seem to like to live within the DTerm terminal emulator. Sadly, DTerm seems in a state of abandon.

What I do now is to force bash as the shell used by DTerm. I do this by launching:

env SHELL=/bin/bash open /Applications/DTerm.app

Make Notes.app more beautiful

Mon, 11 Nov 2013 15:59:51 +0000

A bit of googling shows that the old version of the Notes.app will not work in Mavericks. But luckily one quickly finds out that the Resources folder is quite resourceful.

Namely there are two files that are interesting:

In /Applications/Notes.app/Contents/Resources there is a file named paper.tiff which looks like this:

Yup, this is the ugly texture under the text. Small change to it and we have something looking like a post-it already. Now, this method is not new and plenty has been written about it.

The other change is to change the default fonts, once again in /Applications/Notes.app/Contents/Resources/en.lproj there is a file called DefaultFonts.plist and it is quite straightforward. I am a huge fan of TektonPro for notes so I put in

<dict>
<key>FontName</key>
<string>TektonPro-Bold</string>
<key>Size</key>
<integer>14</integer>
</dict>

And ’lo my new Notes.app look:

I’ve made a quick mod to patch the files. You can grab it here:

Mod for Notes.app v1

Lock screen on Mac OS X with keyboard shortcut [updated]

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 16:56:37 +0000

Last update: 2017-11-18 for High Sierra

Luckily we now have a real shortcut without hacks using ⌃⌘Q

One of the issues that rises the most eyebrows while using Mac OS X is that there is no native way of simply locking your screen with a keyboard shortcut. Finally I have managed to compile all of the stuff on the Internet to come up with a simple yet real solution to this problem If you can not be bothered by reading the whole article here is the short version:

Run Keychain Access go to Preferences → General → Show keychain status in menubar.
Look at this tutorial.
Use the script from freespace’s github page instead of my example.

And now for the long version.

Introduction

There are a lot of ways to work around this problem and many of them were already published on a zillion of blogs. In practice four methods prevail:

Setting the system to lock immediately upon launching the screensaver and then using the ctrl+⇧+⏏ (control+shift+eject) shortcut.
Enabling the Keychain Access menu item and then choosing lock screen from the menu (by mouse).
Enabling the multiple user login and then switching user.
Using a third party software, such as Quicksilver or Alfred.

Of course these methods have all some benefits and some drawbacks. When we look at them we can easily spot that only the option two actually does what we want: it locks the screen without closing the session, it is native and it has to be invoked by the user. However it does not use the feedback, so fails to satisfy the primary objective.

The real solution

It is extremely simple to assign a keyboard shortcut to any item in the application menu. Sadly, the task bar is not considered part of it and the keyboard shortcuts will not reach it. Enter AppleScript and Automator, solution to any problem there is! It took some digging but there actually is an AppleScript which clicks on menu items. With that we can create a service that will then be available thorough a global shortcut.

Preliminary

In order for this to work you need to enable the Keychain Access menu item. Run Keychain Access go to Preferences → General → Show keychain status in menubar,

Implementation

The path from a script to a service to a keyboard shortcut is already paved. I have already covered how to assign a global keyboard shortcut to a script so please refer to that.

The script

The actual script to use is taken from freespace’s github page and is actually based on an example provided by Apple itself. For the sake of consistency, here is the script:

tell application "System Events"
    get properties
    get every process
    if UI elements enabled then
        tell process "SystemUIServer"
            repeat with i from 1 to number of menu bar items of menu bar 1
                if description of menu bar item i of menu bar 1 is "Keychain menu extra" then
                    tell menu bar item i of menu bar 1
                        click
                        if name of menu item 1 of front menu is "Lock Screen" then
                            click menu item "Lock Screen" of front menu
                            exit repeat
                        end if
                    end tell
                end if
            end repeat
        end tell
    else
        tell application "System Preferences"
            activate
            set current pane to pane "com.apple.preference.universalaccess"
            display dialog "UI element scripting is not enabled. Check \"Enable access for assistive devices\""
        end tell
    end if
end tell

And for the sake of clarity: I did not code this script.

Add shortcuts for emoji characters to finally put the ± key to use

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 03:13:01 +0000

I have finally managed to find a use for the ± key on the Apple keyboard. This keyI have finally managed to find a use for the ± key on the Apple keyboard. This key bugged me since I got the computer as I have never ever seen it in a text and just can not understand why it would be on a keyboard in the first place.

Since there is a native text-expansion feature in OS X (Settings → Language & Text → Text) it seems that this character could serve as a perfect “marker” for some exotic shortcuts. The color emoticons available in the OS X make a perfect candidate since inserting them into text is quite a hassle as one has to go through the Special Character menu.

Thus I made shortcuts for some of them as illustrated here:

They help me navigate in plain text document and provide valuable highlighting options in places where other methods do not exist. Maybe this could help you too. Bugged me since I got the computer as I have never ever seen it in a text and just can not understand why it would be on a keyboard in the first place.

US Extended layout for Mac with switched `/~ and §/± keys

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 23:02:03 +0000

The Mac keyboard layout is weird. Some choices Apple made when designing it are good but some of them really come from outer space. Why would anybody need a ± symbol on his keyboard is beyond me. Luckily Ukelele software provides an acceptable solution.

Personally I use U.S. Extended layout for almost everything. The only time I switch is when I have a very lengthy french text to write. (Speaking of which, why does french layout have a  character directly on the keyboard? Just how often would anybody use that?). So, in order to keep the layout consistent with other keyboards I have made a U.S. Extended+ version which changes flips the §± and `~ keys around.

Download it here:

USExtended+

List of useful links to hack your OS X installation

Thu, 05 Jul 2012 08:00:40 +0000

This is more of a social bookmark than a full article. OS X is pretty neat but the ever-present philosophy of “our way of doing it is the right way” can be frustrating from time to time. Since I do not really like the trend of paraphrasing already written articles I will just dump a bunch of links here and say what I used them for.

Fix Home and End keys behaviour

Home and End keys should go to the beginning and end of the line you are on while editing. In OS X they scroll to the top and the bottom of the current document, which is retarded.

I like keyboard repeat. Also I like to be able to copy text from QuickLook.

Use QuickLook from the terminal

I use this for my side-project of making Midnight Commander actually usable on OS X. So far I did not have time to really invest into it.

Best editor for Chinese text on Mac

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 16:15:27 +0000

I have spent some time (like an hour or so) looking for a good editor for Chinese script on Mac OS X. To my surprise most of what I have tried sucked in one or more ways.

Competitors

Of course, I have started with the editor I use to edit plaintext daily - iA Writer. For once, I have said to myself, the humongous font this editor uses would be very useful. Sadly, iA Writer uses the default OS X font for chinese. This derivate of Heiti is quite broken and many glyphs are wrong (this was pointed out to me by a native speaker). Also, line height of lines with chinese characters is weird, and it changes depending of the presence of non-chinese characters in it (including blank space). I have reported the issue to the authors and it was acknowledged so there might be a different font used in future versions… we will see.

So my first choice did not work out. No worries, there are plenty other editors to check. My second choice was MacVim, which is the best invention since sliced bread. The experience was very poor. The insert mode works well, as expected, however the normal mode hates IMKQIM input method. It would seem that Vim was not meant to be used with other than standard input methods, which is understandable.

Moving on. Since alternative software did not work out I tried the native solutions. TextEdit is usually a very good text editor, if you do not need any features. When writing immediately (in plain text mode), you will run into the same problem as with iA Writer : horrible font. You can change the font for plain text mode, of course, but you have to choose the right one. STSong is a good choice, with other fonts you might run into problems with line heights (as some fonts miss some glyphs). Fraise suffers from similar problems.

I have also tried Pages, it works really well, with the right fonts. Line heights are always OK. But it is not a plain text editor, and it has all the downsides of a text processor with hundreds of options.

Conclusion

Finally, I ended up with yet another editor. I have dug up the rusty FocusWriter which I have abandoned previously to iA Writer. The possibility to switch themes makes it a good choice for different scripts. My choice was the 华文细黑 font. Best of all FocusWriter is available on all platforms, so I just use that on Linux as well.

Edit 2015-10-18

iA Writer no longer has the aforementioned problems, at least in OSX 10.11

Fix the home and end keys in Firefox with Keyconfig and Vimperator

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 11:12:58 +0000

Somme funny man thought that it would be good to screw up the behavior of home and end keys in firefox on Mac. Nobody knows why and everybody is complaining. Also, the same genius have made the ⌘→ and ⌘← commands navigate in history instead of doing what they do in every other application which is “move to the end or beginning of the line”.

Oh well.. Luckily there IS a solution for this. The extension keyconfig will fix half of the problem. Get the keyconfing extension here and disable the incriminating keys. Many thanks to the author. Now you have working command keys. As for the home and end key, I fixed my problem in vimperator, since it is an extension I use on all of my firefoxes. Basically the idea is to remap home and end (along with +shift variants)) so they fire off the command+arrow commands. Here is the code, enjoy :

imap <Home> <M-Left>
imap <End> <M-Right>
imap <S-End> <M-S-Right>
imap <S-Home> <M-S-Left>

Either run it in the vimperator command line and do a :mkvimperatorrc! or put it directly into your configuration file.

Autocopy links of files uploaded to Dropbox public folder with a folder action

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 23:54:55 +0000

This tutorial is largely based on this post on the Dropbox forums, all credit on the script goes to the original author Christian G. My contribution is that this script also invokes a Growl message (thus, you will need Growl installed) also, the # character is replaced by %23 (because Dropbox does not like it much) Here goes the script :

on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving added_items
    try
        set the item_count to the number of items in the added_items
        if the item_count is equal to 1 then
            set theFile to item 1 of added_items
            set theRawFilename to ("" &amp; theFile)

            set tid to AppleScript's text item delimiters
            set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ":"
            set theFileName to (text item 6 of theRawFilename) as text
            set AppleScript's text item delimiters to tid

            set theWebSafeFileName to switchText from theFileName to "%20" instead of " "
            set theWebSafeFileName to switchText from theWebSafeFileName to "%23" instead of "#"

            set theURL to "http://dl.dropbox.com/u/YOUR_DROPBOX_ID/" &amp; theWebSafeFileName
            set the clipboard to theURL as text

            tell application "GrowlHelperApp"

                set the allNotificationsList to ¬
                    {"Public URL"}

                set the enabledNotificationsList to allNotificationsList

                register as application ¬
                    "CopyDropboxURL" all notifications allNotificationsList ¬
                    default notifications enabledNotificationsList ¬
                    icon of application "Dropbox"

                notify with name ¬
                    "Public URL" title ¬
                    "Dropbox Public Folder Updated" description ¬
                    (theURL &amp; " copied to clipboard.") application name "CopyDropboxURL"

            end tell
        end if
    end try
end adding folder items to

to switchText from t to r instead of s
    set d to text item delimiters
    set text item delimiters to s
    set t to t's text items
    set text item delimiters to r
    tell t to set t to item 1 &amp; ({""} &amp; rest)
    set text item delimiters to d
    t
end switchText

How to use this

First of allyou have to know your Dropbox user ID and change the YOUR_DROPBOX_ID to it. This is the number that appears after /u/ in your public Dropbox links. Now open the apple script editor and save this script into

Macintosh HD/Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts as CopyDropboxURL.scpt. Next navigate to your Dropbox public folder in finder, right click (or ⌘-click) it. Choose Services→Folder Actions Setup… from the menu. In the menu that opens choose the CopyDropboxURL.scpt.

Enable system volume control for a generic USB device in Snow Leopard

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 08:00:56 +0000

This post is mainly targeted at people who have used an X-Fi USB audio card with their PCs on Windows or Linux. Many of us got a bad surprise when we plugged it into our shiny new Macs and we couldn’t even control the volume of the device through the system.

This particular problem is due to lack of dedicated drivers made by Creative. It seems that they only make OS X drivers for cards specially targeted at Macs.

Luckily there is a way to work around this limitation using a piece of software called Soundflower. The procedure is very simple, just follow the four steps here:

Download and install SoundFlower (this might require a restart)
Set Soundflower (2ch) as your audio output device (hint: you can option (⌥)-click your volume control icon in the menu)
Launch Soundflowerbed (it was installed along with Soundflower)
In the 2 channel device output options select your USB card.

And it is done, you can happily use your volume control buttons once again.

Global keyboard actions in Snow Leopard without third-party software

Wed, 04 May 2011 08:00:15 +0000

When I first got to use Mac OS X I have wondered whether it is possible to do stuff which I was used to do (more or less) easily on Linux. Among others there is the possibility to assign keyboard shortcuts to arbitrary actions (and especially shell scripts). I found several tutorials on how to do this, but they often include third party software like Quicksilver. Since I want to keep my system as vanilla as possible I was searching for a way to do it otherwise, and found it.

Introducing Services

Snow Leopard has this great thing called Services, which is a very simple to use way of creating very powerful actions in no time. Now, usually these are bound to a specific application or context, but they can be global. Since it is much easier to explain something on an example, let us use a simple example. Following this article on how to pause iTunes for a short period of time.

Step 1

Open up the Automator.
Create a New Service.
In the ‘service receives selected’ drop-down box select no input in any application.
In the left sidebar find Run AppleScript and drag it into the workflow
Paste the code below on the place where it says ( Your script goes here )
Save the service as “Pause iTunes for 5 minutes”

The script in question follows:

tell application "iTunes"
    pause
    delay 300
    play
end tell

In the end the whole Automator window should look like this.

If you go to the current application’s menu now you should see your service in the Services sub-menu.

Step 2

Now the only thing that remains is to add a keyboard shortcut for this service. Open up System Preferences → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts. In the left panel click on Services and then click on the + button under the right panel. In the following dialog choose:

Application : All Applications
Menu Title : Pause iTunes for 5 minutes
Keyboard Shortcut : F10

Following shortcut illustrates the result. Note that it is vital that the Menu Title chosen is exactly the same as the name under which you have saved the service.

[Update] New services will be added to the list automatically. The only remaining thing is to add a shortcut key. This might be a feature of Lion or Mountain Lion as I do not recall it while using 10.6.

All done, you can now enjoy launching your script anywhere, anytime by pressing F10.