Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

List of hidden OS X features, tips and tricks

apple.stackexchange.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 66 posts

Re: List of hidden OS X features, tips and tricks

#11

Post by sgt »

Not a hidden feature - but what confuses some of my family members is that if they install an app in OS X, they click on a downloaded dmg (or it auto-opens), and they get this Finder window opening, without "Applications" visible.

Initially they just ran the application like this, as if it was installed.

However, I've explained that it needs to be moved to "Applications". This is difficult, seeing that if one clicks on Finder again, it doesn't bring up a new window.

I tell them to do File->New Finder Window, but I wish there was a more elegant solution to this.

Re: List of hidden OS X features, tips and tricks

#12

Post by bajsejohannes »

aatish wrote: post #5

I have one: press shift and alt while changing volume or brightness and you can change it in fine-grained steps. Not super useful, but kind of neat.

I love that little feature. The bad thing about it is that it doesn't work where I want it the most: The darkest backlight level is still the same. (It lets you set it to 1/4, but it's still the same as 1)

Re: List of hidden OS X features, tips and tricks

#13

Post by bcj »

aatish wrote: post #5

I have one: press shift and alt while changing volume or brightness and you can change it in fine-grained steps. Not super useful, but kind of neat.

Thanks. The controls for this used to be different (I think it was previously command-option-volume), and I had just assumed that they had removed this.

Re: List of hidden OS X features, tips and tricks

#17

Post by flyinRyan »

josteink wrote: post #14

Installing a OS free of patent-lawsuits and bad digital karma on your otherwise good hardware: http://blog.kylebarlow.com/2013/05/installing-ubuntu-1304-ra...

I don't believe in karma and don't think Ubuntu can ignore the game of patents. They've been able to so far because they are irrelevant in the desktop space.

Personally, I'm not willing to hobble my computing experience due to some hopeless ideology.

Re: List of hidden OS X features, tips and tricks

#19

Post by josteink »

dsego wrote: post #16
josteink wrote: post #14

Installing a OS free of patent-lawsuits and bad digital karma on your otherwise good hardware: http://blog.kylebarlow.com/2013/05/installing-ubuntu-1304-ra...

How is this relevant or connected to OS X hidden features?

Not all people know that a Mac is commodity PC-based hardware which you can install any operating system you like onto.

In that regard it is a hidden feature, but maybe more so for the Mac than for OS X.

Re: List of hidden OS X features, tips and tricks

#20

Post by arnehormann »

sgt wrote: post #11

Not a hidden feature - but what confuses some of my family members is that if they install an app in OS X, they click on a downloaded dmg (or it auto-opens), and they get this Finder window opening, without "Applications" visible. Initially they just ran the application like this, as if it was installed. However, I've explained that it needs to be moved to "Applications". This is difficult, seeing that if one clicks…

Does Cmd-N (when Finder is active: open a new Finder window) help?
Post reply on HN