# A couple Mac questions

Category: Geeks r Us

## Post 1 by LeoGuardian (You mean there is something outside of this room with my computer in it?) on Monday, 26-Jan-2015 16:06:52

These may have been asked, can't find the answers directly, so my apologies if this is a duplicate.
Is there such a command on the mac as what you get with swipe down with two fingers on the iPhone? I find one that reads the entire window from top but not from where you are. No, I don't have a track pad for my Mini, and I'm not buying one of those at the moment. I have a full size keyboard with the number pad and have been finding setting up the number pad commander to be of great use.
Ok second question: Brand new Mac Mini with 8 GB of ram. Probably not as much as the cool hipsters have, but it looked like enough for home use to me. I seem to get it in places where it will go "bsy busy busy" in either Safari or iTunes. I try and not use that web store that often. This is a 2014 Mac Mini, just bought it brand new last week from the Apple store.
I turned off the Geenie effect as well as set the contrast like they say, and removed a ton of items from my dock. I had over 20 there when I first got the mac, now have only a few, iTunes and App Store are no longer there.
It's not unbearable, but I did notice this "busy busy" indicator requiring a force quit. I do try to not use tab to accidentally end up in a html content area.
Oh running the latest Yosemite 10.1.
Anyway I do like it, using basic apps like Facebook and other sites in Safari, mail, done some poking around in Terminal (changed no settings there, don't worry), their Script Editor, stuff like that.
I didn't upgrade to iCloud Drive yet, as my phone is not set up for that yet.
Anyway, tips would be great.
Thanks.

## Post 2 by BigDogDaddy (Help me, I'm stuck to my chair!) on Monday, 26-Jan-2015 19:28:17

Leo, do you have a monitor connected to your mini? In the old days, not having a monitor connected would cause busy, from VO. If you ever get in that circle, command f5 and kill vo and press it again and bring it back. in 10.9 VO A will read from where, I am even though it reports reading what's in the voice over cursor. is that nnot your experience in the current OS?

## Post 3 by zackmack2000 ( extreme killer of the keys) on Tuesday, 27-Jan-2015 0:04:31

yeah, your gonna wanna get a display for that if you can. my old mac mini which is a 2010 moddle did that and it was so bad I couldn't do anything just about. I had to just use windows.

## Post 4 by season (the invisible soul) on Tuesday, 27-Jan-2015 8:50:55

Uncle Leo, assuming that you have the latest Mac mini, and running latest OS, which is OSX10.10, you shouldn't have much issues with it. However, if you have an old monitor, you might want to just put it on, and see if it speed things up. You no need to turn the morn on or anything, as long as the Mac can register it, that will do.

## Post 5 by LeoGuardian (You mean there is something outside of this room with my computer in it?) on Tuesday, 27-Jan-2015 10:14:18

Thanks guys.
The "Busy busy" is really only very intermittent. It doesn't lock me completely out, I just alt tab to another window and wait or force quit. I do have a 2007 / 2008 flat screen monitor but not a DVI to HDMI cable.
This is the newest Mac Mini with OS 10.1 as updated the day I got it.
Thanks for the tip on restarting VO.
Again, I really like it. One thing people don't talk about: You need not just go left and right, you can VO up and down also, which for me gives me a better view of things. I've helped sighted people with their Macs since System 7 so am pretty familiar in a abstract sort of way with how things are laid out.
Here's something funny though: I hadn't checked the menus for a Force Quit option: So I went into terminal for those of you Linux hacksters, and typed
ps -f
and got literally pages of processes so realized I had to figure out a GUI way to do that or pipe to file. Command Option Escape.
Can't say enough good things about the NumPadCommander. It's beautiful: you can really fly once you set it up to do normal things -- I've got mine set to treat 2, 6, 4 and 8 like VO left, right, up and down. Among other things. No need to hold down keys just to move, and that sort of aerial view instead of left / right or quicknav by element makes a ton of sense.
Everyone says interact with this and that is difficult. I did not find it to be so, or needing to only use a mac exclusively or any of those things you read online. My bread and butter is Windows, and anyone working in software development for mostly government and enterprise is likely to stay that way no matter how hard the Linux systems seem to be trying to get in. That being said, the interact with objects is the easy part, but that may be because I understand how a UI is understood by the system not just to the sighted user.
But there is one other thing I'd love to be able to do: Move To first item and Move to last item in group. It seems VO Home and VO End will go first / last on the entire screen. But sometimes you want to just jump to the first or last entry in the table or list.
I think the thing to remember if you've never used a mac, or helped someone with their mac, is that the concept of 'focus', as flaky as it can be on Windows at times, is not at all on the Mac. Sure, VoiceOver will sometimes say 'has keyboard focus,' in a surprising number of places actually. But I go back far enough to the days when Steve Jobs shipped macs with no arrow keys in order to get his users to use only pointing devices. A bit paternalistic / top-down in my opinion but that's how they roll. This way predates accessibility, BTW. The cursor thing isn't too bad, but I used a keyboard with my iPhone when I was a records officer for the Coast Guard Auxiliary and so had to get used to how that particular system works. Haven't done too much writing except in Terminal and Script Editor just to take a look under the hood. Sudo is your friend but your mileage may vary. This again differs from OS 9 where users had literally no command-line access to speak of. I'm not a CLI guy per se, meaning I don't default to command line, but it's the best way to see what's where underneath there and clean up hard drive turds left by applications.
Speaking of which, I notice there's no uninstall utility. When you ditch an application, you have to go into your home folder under libraries and find the *application* files. Libraries/preferences I think, then I ran
sudo rm *firefox*; sudo rm *Chrome*
Yeah I installed those don't find Firefox to be much of anything.
There's probably a GUI way to do that but it was just quicker.

## Post 6 by starfly (99956) on Tuesday, 27-Jan-2015 10:28:43

When you install an application other then apps from the app store on a mac you must first make sure the disk is mounted. Next plres vo-option plus spacebar when you have the disk image highlighted with the voice over cursor. The disk will open and you will have a install file. Again highlight the install file and press vo+option+spacebar to activate the install file. all though props for figuring out the geeky way to install applications on a mac Lio.

## Post 7 by The Roman Battle Mask (Making great use of my Employer's time.) on Tuesday, 27-Jan-2015 10:32:57

For everyone who doesn't want to plug a monitor in but wants there computer to think one is attached take a look at this $15 HDMI dongle.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FLZXGJ6/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B00FLZXGJ6&linkCode=as2&tag=bgsco-20

## Post 8 by LeoGuardian (You mean there is something outside of this room with my computer in it?) on Tuesday, 27-Jan-2015 11:27:31

Great, thanks.
I like my mac sitting inside a little cubby near my easy chair, far away from my office lol but where I can have a beer on one side and the mac on the other. Major reason I have not hooked up a monitor to it. this looks like a great buy if it becomes necessary

## Post 9 by Ed_G (Zone BBS is my Life) on Tuesday, 27-Jan-2015 15:05:45

Hi Leo. Command option up or down arrow will often take you to the top or
bottom of lists etc, such as your message list in the Apple Mail Inbox. Note that
I do mean command option, rather than control option/VO.

## Post 10 by Dana (Veteran Zoner) on Wednesday, 28-Jan-2015 0:43:19

Hi Leo, if you want to read from where you are to the end use VO w
Glad you are liking the mac.

## Post 11 by WillieTheWoof (I'll have the last word, thank you!) on Wednesday, 28-Jan-2015 9:20:15

Ed, your my hero. I new there was a command to move to the top and bottem of the list and forgot what it was. Thanks so much. I am teaching a student this evening and she will be utterly thrilled. Next, the command to read from curser to end is Vo-a. Vo-B reads from the beginning to the end and vo-W reads either the current word or the visible text in the voiceover curser which will usually not be an entire document but a word or two.

## Post 12 by LeoGuardian (You mean there is something outside of this room with my computer in it?) on Wednesday, 28-Jan-2015 12:18:16

Ah thanks guys.
I'll put that Vo-A on the num pad commander also. Thanks for both commands it really helps.
And yeah, for my home use the mac is proving very useful. Again, I don't see what folks say when they say 'forget what you know about Windows' or 'you can't use Windows and mac while learning', I use Windows to do my work as a developer every day. And at night can use my mac, it gets easier as I use it more. To be honest using the num pad commander really does help once I figured out how to change its keys to something useful.

## Post 13 by WillieTheWoof (I'll have the last word, thank you!) on Wednesday, 28-Jan-2015 16:47:45

Leo, as an instructor perhaps I can shed some light on this. It really depends where a person is coming from in there use of a computer, how open they are to new things and how difficult it is for them to change what they are used too. Here's a good example. My sister bought a Mac. Now, she's been a diehard Windows user all her life and very resistant to change. Anytime some new computer thing comes up she'll always say I never had to do that or go back to a more difficult way of doing things. As you pointed out the interacting concept seems to be the deal breaker for many. Well, she pleasantly surprised me and with great ease migrated to doing some tasks on the mac while not leaving Windows behind. There are others who just can't put the concepts together. For some I do recommend putting windows away for a time and living life on the mac to emerce one in to the environment. It's so easy to go back to what you are used to and not struggle through the process. Others like my sister and the person I am working with presently desire to learn and easily understand the differences and make the change easily. There are some things she loves doing on the mac and others she loves doing in windows. So, it's really all about the person and there is no right or wrong way to do it. I evaluate each student and try to fit the lesson to what they need. some I do tell to leave windows for a few weeks and live in Mac. Others I see can work with both easily. So, you sir are the latter and keep up the great work. There is room for both and I'm glad you've found that happy medium. Take care.

## Post 14 by LeoGuardian (You mean there is something outside of this room with my computer in it?) on Wednesday, 28-Jan-2015 18:07:02

Oh thanks. And thanks for the explanation. Now that I understand it's coming from computer instructors, I can better understand why someone might say that, at least for those who don't have to use one environment at work and one at home.
Thanks for the eplanation, well put.

## Post 15 by LeoGuardian (You mean there is something outside of this room with my computer in it?) on Thursday, 29-Jan-2015 11:37:48

All right, something odd: So last night I got a couple emails from my coast guard volunteer flotilla commander, and they all had large attachments. I didn't need these, they were sent to all of us but only relevant to a few. So, I went to delete them. As I tried to move between them, the mac went busy for awhile. in mail?
Is there some kind of disk utility I should have been running after the recent software upgrade, or after I first got it? Sort of like disk defragmenter on Windows? Unlike my Wife's MacBook Pro, my Mini has a SATA hard drive, not a solid state like Hers. It's a 1 TB hard drive, and I have 8 GB of RAM. I know a lot of people have 16 now, but 8 seemed sufficient for my uses. I got the out of the box $699 model.
Also, I tend to shut mine down when done, just as She does. I have not started on Time Machine for either of us yet, don't have a remote USB drive connected to my Airport Extreme Base Station router. I've read that you have to have the Time Capsule to make that work, which seems a bit dubious.
But Hers never does this "busy busy" type thing. That's what made me wonder if it has to do with needing to run a disk utility of some kind, or needing to let it just sit powered on for a few hours to run its own background daemons, for those familiar with that unix term. I imagine that's what the Mac does anyway though I have not checked.
Anyhow, it jus surprised me that the mac did this busy action in the mail app. Was it trying to quick view load these remote attachments? Is there a way to turn that preview pane for messages off? I know in enterprise situations we usually turn that stuff off and lock it off for most users because of security problems. I realize the Mac is a lot more sandboxed and this isn't such an issue. But anyway, anyone seen this?
Thanks,
Leo

## Post 16 by starfly (99956) on Friday, 30-Jan-2015 14:36:13

I saw this in mountain lion when attempting to use open office and yes when apple mail is loading its messeges. it happened on a midd 2012 mac with 8 gigs of ram. It was a mac book pro.

## Post 17 by WomanOfWisdom (Generic Zoner) on Friday, 30-Jan-2015 15:46:19

Here's a question for anybody who would know the answer. You know how, in Jaws, you can press the H key and quickly navigate through headings on a website so you don't have to read the entire site? Well, I haven't found a comparable command on the mac ...and I would like to knowif any quick navigation commands for long texts/websites exist for a mac. Like one of the other posters, I use both a mac and a pc. I use both for work, alternately.

## Post 18 by LeoGuardian (You mean there is something outside of this room with my computer in it?) on Friday, 30-Jan-2015 16:46:18

What I do is push the left and right arrow keys together first, it says Quicknav On. Then you can use the following that I have discovered:
h = heading
x = list
l = link
c = checkbox
f = form control
b = button
1 through 6 are heading keys.
You can go to VoiceOver Utility which is the VO and f8. Then select Commanders in tha ttable and then you've got tabs, pick Quicknav and change things how you want.
I now have e doing edit boxes and f doing all form controls.
You have to assign both the f and the shifted f, which it recognizes as capital F.
Anyway hope that helps some.
RE: the busy busy issue, I left mine on for a few hours but haven't checked its monitors or even figured out how yet, and last night it was clean as a whistle.

## Post 19 by BigDogDaddy (Help me, I'm stuck to my chair!) on Friday, 30-Jan-2015 17:57:20

In addition to what leo said, if you don't turn quick nav on, you can press control option command and the letters indicated above for the different controls.

## Post 20 by Ed_G (Zone BBS is my Life) on Saturday, 31-Jan-2015 6:53:13

Hi. Quick keys on the web may not work by default even with quick nav
enabled. You may have to go into Voiceover Utility with VO f8, choose
Commanders from the table, click the Quick nav, tab, and tick the checkbox to
enable quick key navigation on the web.

## Post 21 by WillieTheWoof (I'll have the last word, thank you!) on Monday, 02-Feb-2015 9:24:34

Wow, I love all of this great mac info. I was going to offer something regarding navigation but you awesome folks beat me to it. Great!!!!

## Post 22 by Striker (Consider your self warned, i'm creative and offensive like handicap porn.) on Tuesday, 03-Feb-2015 1:37:04

You can also increase productivity a lot by setting up your keyboard commander
to do things like Open apps with one key stroke/move you to an already opened
app with the same keystroke.
another thing that is also very useful is activities.
Using activities, you can set profiles or actions voiceover always follows, in
particular situations.
for example... I have an activity that always turns off Quick nav when I focus on
night owl. I have another that turns it on, if not already, when I enter safari.
Both of those tools can be extremely powerful. In addition, you can also
customize trackpad commander, to add additional commands.

## Post 23 by WomanOfWisdom (Generic Zoner) on Tuesday, 03-Feb-2015 14:04:25

Thank you guys so much!! As with one of the other posters, I am also an adaptive tech instructor. I have my first mac student who is blind and I was honest and told her, I'll teach you what I know, but some of this, we'll be learning together. Thanks again for all of you all's help!!
Ash

## Post 24 by WillieTheWoof (I'll have the last word, thank you!) on Wednesday, 04-Feb-2015 15:51:45

Good afternoon Ashley. May I ask what materials you will be using for your instruction? Thanks.

## Post 25 by LeoGuardian (You mean there is something outside of this room with my computer in it?) on Wednesday, 04-Feb-2015 18:02:02

So, do you guys turn off autocorrect? I have lots of trouble using that. I can't tell it to ignore a particular correction, or at least I don't know how.
Thanks, and great to see several instructors helping the rest of us average types out on here.
Leo

## Post 26 by WillieTheWoof (I'll have the last word, thank you!) on Thursday, 05-Feb-2015 9:44:11

Leo, I leave it on because it has bailed me out of a few messes. what you should be able to do is backspace to delete the letters you don't want and just retype it and it should accept it. Sometimes it doesn't and yes, that can be a challenge. Also, if you do want to use the auto correct when you hear the sound of the popup you can press down arrow to bring you in to a list of suggestions and use left and right arrow to move between them and enter to select one. If you don't want them press escape and you should be brought out of the popup.

## Post 27 by WillieTheWoof (I'll have the last word, thank you!) on Thursday, 05-Feb-2015 9:44:48

Leo, I leave it on because it has bailed me out of a few messes. what you should be able to do is backspace to delete the letters you don't want and just retype it and it should accept it. Sometimes it doesn't and yes, that can be a challenge. Also, if you do want to use the auto correct when you hear the sound of the popup you can press down arrow to bring you in to a list of suggestions and use left and right arrow to move between them and enter to select one. If you don't want them press escape and you should be brought out of the popup.

## Post 28 by Ed_G (Zone BBS is my Life) on Thursday, 05-Feb-2015 16:27:48

Hi Leo. Yes I disable autocorrect. That's not a Mac thing though, I always do
and just use the spell checker after the fact.

## Post 29 by LeoGuardian (You mean there is something outside of this room with my computer in it?) on Thursday, 05-Feb-2015 17:15:11

Thanks for the suggestions. I've figured out how to in Safari, you have to do a context menu on the misspelled word and find spelling and grammar options then uncheck autocorrect. It's not in preferences.

## Post 30 by b3n (I'm going for the prolific poster awards!) on Friday, 06-Feb-2015 7:22:56

8GB of RAM is fine. I refurbish Macs and find that realisticly Yosemite needs 4 before it is usable but 8 just gives you a bit more breathing room and futureproofs you to a certain extent.
You should really consider putting a SSD into it though; Crucial M550 or MX100 if you're on a budget. Nice little hardware project for you that won't be overly complicated but will give amazing performance.

## Post 31 by LeoGuardian (You mean there is something outside of this room with my computer in it?) on Sunday, 15-Feb-2015 22:33:45

So I turned autocorrect back on and am now learning how to use that with the
suggested methods here. Thanks everybody.

## Post 32 by Striker (Consider your self warned, i'm creative and offensive like handicap porn.) on Monday, 16-Feb-2015 19:21:19

Its a little sad apple restricts full SSD speeds to macs with their drives in them.

## Post 33 by b3n (I'm going for the prolific poster awards!) on Monday, 16-Feb-2015 19:56:29

Realisticly it shouldn't slow the drive down. What they've done is not implement support for the TRIM ATA command on third party SSD's which (amongst other things depending on the OS) allows the OS to help the drive with garbage collection. Nearly every drive does garbage collection transparently to the OS even if TRIM isn't supported though; the only thing that TRIM does in this regard is gives the drive a bit of help from the point of view of the OS as to when it will be best to do it. As I say though, garbage collection will still take place anyway and most firmwares are pretty good at determining when to do it. This has been a problem for years and years though, so it's not like you'll be running a firmware that includes the first ever version of the garbage collection routene.
The one downside is that garbage collection without TRIM does increase the ware on the drive, but it's still not something you should be overly worried about. Before I sold it, the Samsung 840 EVO that I used in my laptop every day for around a year had around 3.5TB written to it and Samsung warranty the drive to upto 110TB of writes. Even if the lack of TRIM increases the amount of writes by 10X, I would still have in theory got just over 3 years of use out of it before I would need to replace it.
Getting back to Mac OS, you have a couple of options:
1. Just don't bother trying to enable TRIM. Good if you're wanting to run a vanilla install without modifying anything. The drive will carry on doing garbage collection.
2. Use a third party tool called TRIM enabler. This is straight forward if you are running Mavericks, less so if you're running Yosemite as you have to disable driver signing. It sounds like a huge security risk and if you're stupid then it probably is, but so long as you're careful as to what you install you really should be fine.
I do agree that it's a shame that Apple impose restrictions such as this. There are many horror stories online about people who have upgraded to Yosemite and have had issues, purely because they've chosen to upgrade to an SSD that they haven't purchased from Apple. I don't see myself moving away from an iPhone any tie soon, but it's for reasons like this why I will never by a Mac desktop or laptop. Not to mention that I really enjoy building computers which rules Apple out anyway.

## Post 34 by LeoGuardian (You mean there is something outside of this room with my computer in it?) on Wednesday, 18-Feb-2015 16:36:50

So, my mail app still tends to go busy for awhile. I did the SQLite3 solution for vaccuming out the envelope databases. I wish there was a way to turn off that damned preview only because if you move your cursor up and down in the list, you're changing the selection. I guess cursor tracking might help, turn that off then scroll up and down to view the list before selecting one. Anyway, I hate that it goes busy for apparently no rational reason. And Mail is the culprit, not other apps. The SQLite3 terminal solution I found when trying to find info on this topic online.

## Post 35 by Ed_G (Zone BBS is my Life) on Sunday, 22-Feb-2015 3:08:49

You can turn preview off in Mail. It's not the most straight forward of
procedures, but here goes:
Put Mail into classic view by going into Preferences with control comma, select
Viewing, and tick the appropriate checkbox. Close the preferences.
Make sure trackpad commander and quicknav are both turned off.
Find the messages table, do not interact with it but press VO down arrow. You
should hear horizontal splitter.
Route the mouse to the splitter by pressing VO command f5.
Press down on the bottom of the trackpad, and use another finger to stroke the
trackpad towards where you're pressing, I used two hands for this.
When you press VO down arrow, there should now be nothing below the
horizontal splitter. Note that it may take a couple of attempts to get the
trackpad part right, it took me two.

## Post 36 by Ed_G (Zone BBS is my Life) on Sunday, 22-Feb-2015 6:24:03

BTW I should also have said that you can then turn classic view off again if you
want to, without the preview coming back.

## Post 37 by WillieTheWoof (I'll have the last word, thank you!) on Thursday, 26-Feb-2015 15:33:27

Ed, can't you just interact with the splitter and move it down?

## Post 38 by LeoGuardian (You mean there is something outside of this room with my computer in it?) on Thursday, 26-Feb-2015 22:02:53

Ed, thanks. I have no Track Pad, so tried it with the full sized keyboard that I
have. I tried interacting with the splitter and changing the values all to no
effect. The embedded html stuff is all still there. I even tried to drag the splitter
but it says it's not draggable. What value is it supposed to be at?

## Post 39 by LeoGuardian (You mean there is something outside of this room with my computer in it?) on Thursday, 26-Feb-2015 22:13:55

Oh guess what? I figured it out.
So, I had the wrong mailbox open. Open the default inbox, then do Ed's
instructions. Now if you're like me and don't have a trackpad, instead find the
vertical splitter below the messages table, interact with it and arrow all the way
down. Damn am I a happy man that my preview pane is gone! Maybe it's in
part a leftover from Windows, but I really hated selecting a message and auto
opening it! I'd much rather open what I want to open, and delete what I'd
rather delete.

## Post 40 by Striker (Consider your self warned, i'm creative and offensive like handicap porn.) on Thursday, 26-Feb-2015 22:59:01

Ah, ok. I was under the impression, based on some articles i'd read that apple
limits how fast the OS will write to non OEM SSD's so took that at face value
based on their benchmarks. Maybe this was over exaggerated a bit for clicks.

## Post 41 by LeoGuardian (You mean there is something outside of this room with my computer in it?) on Saturday, 28-Feb-2015 16:42:21

So my message Preview Pane came back, so here's what I did to help kill that:
Go into Preferences, and make sure Classic View is unchecked and then the
Summery popup button is what you want. By default it's set to 2 lines, you can
set it to none and boom! bye-bye preview pane, bye bye busy all the time.
I'm about happy as a pig in shit if this works correctly and remains persistent.

## Post 42 by Smiling Sunshine (I've now got the bronze prolific poster award! now going for the silver award!) on Sunday, 14-Feb-2016 10:20:02

This thread has been hugely helpful as I'm still stumbling through figuring out my Mac.
Would any of you tech instructors be interested in walking me through using templates in Pages via Skype or FaceTime? I've read books and articles but can't seem to figure a couple of things out. I work best when learning from an actual person. lol Dang auditory/kenesthetic learning style. lol
Anyway, I'd be willing to pay and I'm a quick learner.
Leo, it sounds like you've done quite a bit with your numpad commander. My keyboard doesn't have a numpad but I might be interested in purchasing a new one that is full sized. Is yours an Apple Keyboard or did you get a Windows keyboard? My biggest complaint is that my Apple keyboard has only one control key. That makes some VO shortcuts awkward. Even with choosing to use the capslock at my VO key, there are several keystrokes that would work better if I had a right control key as well. I know, I know, complain complain complain. lol

## Post 43 by LeoGuardian (You mean there is something outside of this room with my computer in it?) on Tuesday, 16-Feb-2016 18:19:27

Bought the full sized Apple Keyboard. A bit expensive but very nice in terms of being able to use the numpad commander. Maybe not as necessary now that the caps lokc acts as a VO key in El Capitan but still. I very much like it.