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Customizations

1. If fresh installing don't go for APFS Case Sensitive (avoid incompatibility app issues) nor APFS Encrypted (better to use Vault per ChatGPT which protects your personal data versus the entire drive)
2. Finder,
   1. Preferences - Show all filename extensions
3. View
   1. Show Path Bar, Status Bar, Sidebar, 
4. Printer - Using native drivers will ensure updates are automatic.

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1. Outlook for Mac - Search will occasionally stop providing updated results. Rebuild the spotlight index if you notice this happening.
2. VLC Media Player - play DVDs and almost any video format
   

   1. To have multiple windows, run,

      Code Block
      language bash
      open -n /Application/VLC.app/

      Note, the playlist tends to go over the same place so it's not obvious sometimes if it worked. Figure out a parameter to fix this later.

   2. Clear recent files in dock 
   3. Possibly remove the function of recent files in dock (still to try)
3. Microsoft Office - Yeah you can't avoid it and using it since 2010 have not run into compatibility issues.
4. Kuvva (yet to try) - Wallpaper changer that pulls down nice wallpapers.
5. Secure Delete - Look for product. Apple dropped because they can't claim to guarantee with new ssd drives. Built into OS, drag files into garbage, then hold down apple key and right click, select "Secure Empty Trash".
6. Avaste Free Edition - As of 2012 top ranking antivirus for my use (but I do not rely on on-demand checking). Downside is no scheduling but not intrusive.
7. Avira Free Edition - As of 2012 2nd top ranking antivirus + can do automatic scheduled scans. Downside is disabling on demand keeps on resetting in Windows. No longer using.
8. Resize BrowseResize Browser Windowr Window - Useful for consistent screenshots.
9. HMA Online Proxy Browser - I use to change my country to see appropriate prices when browsing.
10. Online Collage Maker - By Adobe and good enough for the free features.
11. Canon Digital Photo Professional - Free tool to work with RAW CR2 files. To access top and bottom extra image parts of the CR2 image, Edit Image Button, Crop, Aspect Ration = Free, and change the selection.
12. Cursorcerer - Hide Cursor Useful to for casting a temporary background on the TV.

Essential Utilities

1. I adjust Keyboard Preferences in conjunction with the next 4 tools.
2. Better Snap Tool (App Store $2) - Get Windows 7 like snapping in addition to being able to use keyboard shortcuts to snap windows wherever you want. Also has loads of other features. Went through lots of tools like SizeUp before getting to this one. I use the following options,
   1. Keyboard Shortcuts
      1. CTRL-WinKey-Left = (this interferes with nudge for powerpoint) put window of left half - note this breaks Home of text doc shortcut on Mac (Winkey-Left is used by Mac OS for beginning of line)
      2. CTRL-WinKey-Right = (this interferes with nudge for powerpoint) put window on right half - note breaks End of text doc shortcut on Mac 
      3. WinKey-Up = center on screen using custom "snap area" of x=480, y=115, w=1,600, h=1,280 and move snap area to bottom right beside trash, click colour and make snap area invisible - but it breaks moving up a folder
      4. WinKey-Down = restore to previous position
   2. Additional customize,
      1. Extras - Double-click a windows titlebar - maximize
      2. Customizations - Uncheck "Restore old window size if window is dragged away again"
3. Keyboard Maestro (App Store $36) - Powerful shortcut utility. Very useful for me because I use an IBM keyboard. Common things I setup,
   1. Ensure Engine is set to run even if editor exists and also go back in and checkbox engine to start on login.
   2. Tin's OS Controls Macros - Configured for everything except at Groups Level exclude Terminal (want CTRL-C to work normally) and VMWare Fusion which interferes with more advanced keys,
      1. CTRL-V = clear out formatting before pasting | Filter Clipboard with Remove Styles, Type the Apple-V
      2. Home = WinKey-LARROW - Mac reserved combo, move to beginning of line instead of beginning of document | note use excludes so this does not collide with using same key in VMWare Fusion for Windows
      3. End = WinKey-RARROW - Mac reserved combo, move to end of line instead of end of document | note use excludes so this does not collide with using same key in VMWare Fusion for Windows
      4. Since I use Windows Virtual Machine at the same time so often)
         1. CTRL-C = copy
         2. CTRL-Z = undo
         3. I do more like CTRL-LARROW, END to make highlight text with keboard and skipping words work like Windows. Will write more, but it's all in the linked - Tin's OS Controls Macros
         4. ...
      5. To import the macros, File, import macros disabled and enable by clicking on the group Tin's OS Controls and clicking the checkbox at the bottom of the window.
   3. Pause = IBM keyboard; I wanted Winkey-Home - increase brightness (contacted author and he may eventually fix)
   4. ScrLk = IBM keyboard; I wanted Winkey-End - decrease brightness (contacted author and he may eventually fix)
   5. WinKey-L = Lock to Login Window
   6. CTRL-Break = CTRL-C in Terminal since I've over-ridden above
4. Spark with the Plain Clip Plug-in - Free but less powerful version of Keyboard Maestro. Not needed if you buy Keyboard Meastro.
5. The Unarchiver@ (App Store) - handles common formats such as rar that the built in compression software does not.
6. Araxis Merge 64-bit - Best diff tool I have ever found. (disable Ribbon Interface, check do not show splash window, add folder filter to ignore .svn folders and make the default encoding UTF-8 No BOM). If you have a Windows license you can use it on the Mac too. http://www.kaleidoscopeapp.com/ is in beta but it also looks like a very good alternative if you did not buy Araxis yet.
7. VMWare Fusion - allows you to virtualize operating systems. If you do not know what this means you are missing out.
   1. To allow HoeKey to work - Preferences, Keyboard & Mouse, Key Mappings and uncheck ⌘-V.
   2. To allow CTRL-Click to work in Windows 7 - Preferences, Keyboard & Mouse, Mouse Shortcuts and uncheck everything
8. TinyCal (App Store) - yet to try but it looks like what I want... simple visual calendar integrated with Google Calendar.
9. Go2Shell (App Store) - quickly jump to command line in viewed folder - note look at final setup instructions on app store - dragging to toolbar keep ⌘ key down
10. Pixia Image Viewer - Mac OS X does not support WebP. This image viewer is as advertised minimal "invisible". Once installed some extra steps. First go to preferences and add your home directory (or whatever you feel comfortable granting access to) and uncheck confirmation before opening a file. Right-click on WebP files and select Pixia to be the default tool to open.

Fix Home and End Key

Yet to try. This absolutely drives me nuts as a programmer. Home should go to the beginning of the line and end to the end of the line. On the Mac OS home takes you to the beginning of a document and end to the end of a document.

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This fixes things for more editors and applications. However, Browsers have their own wrinkle.

Download Mirror Website for Reading

Microsys A1 Website Download - Download an entire website. Superior to HTTrack when it comes to websites required authentication. You can login manually to start your session then initiate the download. Just make sure to exclude the logout link. In the 90's I used Teleport Pro which even back then was more feature rich. I have not looked at it since though.

Torrent

qBittorrent - Lighter weight than Transmission - used in yet with very similar features including a remote web interface. Unless you're a super power user this is the one to choose.

Transmission - Used to be my favourite, but given two malware attacks in 2016, I'd caution using it. Used in Ubuntu for a long time and it works great. Also nice is a web interface to manage your torrents from other computers or devices.

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1. Snagit - screen capture utility. Most used feature, autoscroll, which scrolls to capture all contents of a window.
2. Paparazzi - Free screen capture but only for browsers.
3. GoFullPage - Chrome Browser extension to capture entire webpage

Secure Your Data

MacPass -  a central place to keep your important data with one master password or master key file. I find this better now than KeePassX and using version 0.7.12.

KeePassX * - a central place to keep your important data with one master password or master key file. If you are using the Windows version at the same time, you will want to make sure to pick an older version of KeePass that matches KeePassX's data format. As of March 10, 2013 my version of KeePassX uses KeePass KDB (1.x).

Communication Utilities

Lacking here. What I'm looking for:

Terminal Manager as good as Putty Connection Manager but leveraging the existing Mac Terminal Program - would be nice to get putty functionality like right-click to paste and keep on top,

• • Possible candidate https://www.royalapplications.com/ts/osx/features

Mac OS X Spare Bundles - native OS capability to create an encrypted expandable file that is mounted as a disk image.

Communication Utilities

Termius (free version) - Do not use the App Store version - you can't SFTP files to your desktop - and instead use the dmg download. SSH Manager that allows multiple keys, tagging, sorting and all the trimmings. If you've already started using the app store, note to export your "hosts" setup as you lose it. Registered for the free version and it does everything I need. It looks to also allow port forwarding but yet to have tested it out.

Still to test: 

Something as nice as BitVise Tunnelier for port forwarding.

ExpandDrive (create a map drive over SSH for easy development). ExpandDrive hands down is the best tool I found yet for Mac and Windows.

Developer Utilities

...Proxy Country and Device Tester - See how your site reacts to geolocation and different devices.

Graphic Design

Napkin (appstore)  - Looks like a good Page Annotation utility with nice call-out features.

Nik Collection 1.2.11 - Black and White and Bokeh Effects + more. A very popular Photoshop Plugin and Standalone, this was made free by Google in 2016.

Photo Convert 5 - So far the simplest and best priced I found for WEBP support. Also a free non-batch version available for average users and to try it out. But no image resizing even in the purchase version.

XnConvert - Do many image formats, resizing and image adjustments. The best I've seen but more complex initial setup. However, if you do the initial setup and setup hot folders, it can be easy for non-techies to use. Free for home users.

Power User

Homebrew - package manager to download Linux command line tools in a controlled manner (it does not put things everywhere). After Homebrew is setup (instructions when using normal accounts), I install,

• wget
• exiftool - clean out gps and other meta data from image files

MacPorts - if you need to stick to older Mac OS X versions. In a multi-user normal account environment setup as follows,

• Install as your Admin Account through the GUI
• The install add to the shell '/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:" for the admin user
• Updates and installation of modules should be done through this account

Install your first module,

# confirm macports is working
port version
# which will show a version back
Version: 2.7.2


# install rsync as the Mac os X is very very old.
sudo port install rsync


# confirm you are now using the newer rsync from macports which now be 3.x instead of 2.6.x
rsynce --version

You will likely see a GUI pop-up to install x-code libraries. Choose yes to this. Only when this is done, then choose yes to "The following dependencies will be installed:".

For normal users, add to their shell environment file .zprofile script to use MacPorts

# MacPorts Installer addition on 2022-08-19_at_15:23:55: adding an appropriate PATH variable for use with MacPorts.
export PATH="/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH"
# Finished adapting your PATH environment variable for use with MacPorts.

Log into that user and check if there is already a .zprofile file,

cd ~
ls -al

In the output of the ls command look for the file. If it exists, you should edit it with an editor.... (still to write the instructions).

Likely .zprofile does not exist, so simply copy from the the admin's account which already has the right permissions setup,

cd ~
cp /Users/setup.admin/.zprofile ./ls -al# look for this,-rw-r--r-- 1 tin.pham staff 243 Aug 19 15:13 .zprofile

Mac OS X Native Terminal & Commands

Right-Click Terminal at GUI Folder - Go to Preferences, Keyboard, Services and enable "New Terminal at Folder"

caffeinate - disable sleep until CTRL-C is pressed

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sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist; sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist 

Running Home Servers with Ubuntu

If running home servers with Ubuntu, consider installing avahi-daemon to make name resolution of machines simple. The Ubuntu machines available via hostname.local  to your Macs.

Determine Mac Build Date

You can determine your Mac build date and a bunch of other information by using your serial number and hitting various websites that provide this service,

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I've now settled on Atom. It's no longer "young" when I started and is very fast. The only thing is the defaults are overall complex for what I need as a basic editor. So here's what I do.

1. Say no to installing Git Integration and disable it : Atom > Preferences > Packages > Core Packages > GitHub Integration > Disable
2. Hide the project panel : Atom > Preferences > Packages > Core Packages > tree-view > Disable

Trying Out 2014

Sublime - well they has a very slick website. Trying out Jan 16, 2013 version 2.0.1 Build 2217,

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