Spotlight Issues

I'm not sure what upgrade did it but at one point, Spotlight became totally unusable for me. I think it was a major update that enabled web-searches as part of Spotlight.

Now I've been using Spotlight for years to launch applications. There's nothing easier when you're typing along and need to launch an application than hitting 'command - space' and continuing to work, or to do a quick bit of math, or a to take a quick note... the possibilities are endless (okay, not endless but it's a lot!). At some point, that quick little shortcut became a long, long pause.

Now recently I decided to tackle this issue as it became just too frustrating. I messed with the Spotlight preferences, I re-indexed, I searched, but eventually gave up until I launched activity monitor to see what was going on behind the scenes. I saw that 'suggestd' was pegging the CPU during that time. A quick search brought up this link which seems to have solved the problem.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7264893?start=0&tstart=0

Basically you need to delete the ~/Library/Suggestions folder and relogin. I'm sure there is some kind of cache in there that was corrupted somewhere along the way. Anyway, this was a great find for me and I'm happily back to using Spotlight on a regular basis.

OS X Screenshot Key Combinations

How many times have I looked these up?!?

From MacRumors.com

• Command-Shift-3: Take a screenshot of the screen, and save it as a file on the desktop 
• Command-Shift-4, then select an area: Take a screenshot of an area and save it as a file on the desktop 
• Command-Shift-4, then space, then click a window: Take a screenshot of a window and save it as a file on the desktop 
• Command-Control-Shift-3: Take a screenshot of the screen, and save it to the clipboard 
• Command-Control-Shift-4, then select an area: Take a screenshot of an area and save it to the clipboard 
• Command-Control-Shift-4, then space, then click a window: Take a screenshot of a window and save it to the clipboard

Mac Terminal Tricks

I use the Terminal application on my Mac all day long.  I have numerous different systems that I connect to for different tasks.  Generally, I have one terminal open and I can just ssh to various systems from that window.  Lately however, I have been customizing things a bit.  One thing I have liked is creating a default look (profile) for various systems so I know specifically what box I am on.  Some systems have nearly identical test / dev systems and the last thing I want to do is enter a command on a production system when it was meant for test.  Once inside the terminal application I can simply do a Shift-Command-N to bring up the command window and type in the profile for that system.  Since I can enter the initial command for each profile, this makes connecting to various systems with a specialized look very simple and easy.  So I can have my test system with green text and my production systems all glowing red.

*update*  It appears that you only get the custom colors and not the actual command.  I have posted in the Support Community. I'll update here if I get any response.

OS X Versions

For those of us with older Macs...

10.0.x    Cheetah                March 24, 2001

10.1.x    Puma                    September 25, 2001

10.2.x    Jaguar                   August 24, 2002

10.3.x    Panther                 October 24, 2003

10.4.x    Tiger                     April 29, 2005

10.5.x    Leopard                October 26, 2007

10.6.x    Snow Leopard      August 28, 2009  

10.7.x    Lion                      July 10, 2011

10.8.x    Mountain Lion      ??   (summer, 2012)

How to test OS X Mountain Lion's Gatekeeper in Lion, (Wed, Feb 22nd)

How to test OS X Mountain Lion's Gatekeeper in Lion, (Wed, Feb 22nd): While I started working on comparing various OS X hardening guides (see the prior diary from a coupl ...(more)...

An Early Look At Mac OS X 10.8

An Early Look At Mac OS X 10.8: adeelarshad82 writes "Earlier today Apple announced their next OS, Mountain Lion. According to an early look, OS X 10.8 does more to integrate social networking and file-synching into a personal computer than any other OS. It tightly integrates with the whole Apple ecosystem that includes iOS devices and the free iCloud sharing service. Moreover Mountain Lion adds a powerful new line of defense against future threats where a malware app is prevented from running even if it is deliberately downloaded to a computer. Even though Apple's clearly got a lot of fine-tuning to do—and possibly a few features to add, there's no doubt that Mountain Lion already looks very fine." Update: 02/16 15:04 GMT by T : New submitter StephenBrannen writes with some more details culled from CNET. The newest OS X has now been released to developers, with an official release date planned for this summer. "Mountain Lion, as it is called, will further blur the lines between iOS and its Mac OS. iOS features that are being ported include: Messages (replacing iChat), Notification Center, Game Center, Notes, and AirPlay mirroring. Also new to Mac OS is the addition of Gatekeeper, which should help prevent malware attacks on Apple products. Not announced is whether Siri will be ported to the Mac."

OS X Boot Key Combinations

I'm not sure where I got this but here it is for my reference.

Boot key combinations:

Everybody knows about some of these boot key combinations, but some of the more obscure combinations have been long forgotten (like how many of us have a Quadra AV and use a TV as a monitor!) – Check these out, you may need one of them someday!

C : Forces most Macs to boot from the CD-Rom drive instead of the internal hard drive. Only works with Apple ROM drives and with bootable CD discs.
D : Forces the first internal hard drive to be the startup disk.
N : Netboot (New World ROM machines only) – Looks for BOOTP or TFTP Server on the network to boot from.
R : Forces PowerBooks to reset their screen to default size (helpful if you’ve been hooked up to an external montior or projector!)
T : Target Disk Mode (FireWire) – Puts machines with built-in FireWire into target Disk mode so a system attached with a FireWire cable will have that device show up as a hard drive on their system. Very useful for PowerBooks!
Mouse Button Held Down : Ejects any mounted removable media.
Shift : Disables all extensions (Mac OS 7-9), or disables Login items when using Mac OS X 10.1.3 or later. Also works when booting Classic mode up just like you were using the OS natively.
Option : When using an Open Firmware "New World ROM" capable system, the System Picker will appear and query all mounted devices for bootable systems, returning a list of drives & what OS they have on them. On "Old World" systems the machine will simply boot into it’s default OS without any Finder windows open.
Space bar : Brings up Apple’s Extension Manager (or Casady & Greene’s Conflict Catcher, if installed) up at startup to allow you to modify your extension set.


Command-V : Boots Mac OS X into "Verbose Mode", reporting every console message generated during startup. Really shows what’s going on behind the scenes with your machine on startup!


Command-S : Boots Mac OS X into "Single User Mode" – helpful to fix problems with Mac OS X, if necessary.


Command-Option : Rebuilds the Desktop (Mac OS 7-9).


Command-Option-P-R : Erases PRAM if held down immediately after startup tone. Your machine will chime when it’s erased the PRAM, most people will hold this combination for a total of 3 chimes to really flush the PRAM out.


Command-Option-N-V : Erases NVRAM (Non-Volatile RAM). Used with later Power Macintosh systems mostly.


Command-Option-O-F : Boots the machine into Open Firmware (New World ROM systems only).


Command-Option-Shift-Delete : Forces your Mac to startup from its internal CD-ROM drive or an external hard drive. Very helpful if you have a 3rd party CD-ROM drive that is not an Apple ROM device.


Command-Option-Shift-Delete-#(where #= a SCSI DEVICE ID) : Boot from a specific SCSI device, if you have your 3rd party CD-ROM drive set to SCSI ID 3, you would press "3" as the # in the combination.