Tuesday 23 July 2013

Mac Tips and Tricks

Recently I have been using a Macbook Pro for work (OS X 10.8.3), it's good but I have come across a few things that I am not used to and have discovered ways to fix them.  

Using Mac with regular UK keyboard
There are several problems:-
- Hash key in the wrong place
- @ key in the wrong place
- " key in the wrong place
- | symbol in the wrong place
- ~ key in the wrong place
- Home and End keys don't work
- Copy and paste are apple + c and apple + v

With regards to the standard keys there are several keyboard layouts you can download and use, the best of which I can find is the British (PC 105 alt) downloaded from the following location:-

http://liyang.hu/osx-british.xhtml

With regards to home and end keys see the following:-

http://lifehacker.com/225873/mac-switchers-tip--remap-the-home-and-end-keys

However the home and end keys still won't work in firefox! For this install the KeyFixer add-on:-

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/keyfixer/?src=search

With regards to copy and paste keys, you can go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts and set Application Keyboard Shortcuts > All Applications > Add Shortcut

- Copy ^C
- Undo ^Z
- Cut ^X
- Paste ^V  

Scroll doesn't work the same way

This is an easy one to change. Go to System Preferences > Trackpad > Scroll and Zoom > Scroll Direction: natural - untick this.  

Useful Software to install

iTerm2 - pretty similar to terminator in linux (which can also be installed for Mac):-

http://www.iterm2.com/#/section/home

csshX - cluster ssh for Mac:-

http://code.google.com/p/csshx/