text:
Share links (URLs) between iPads?
Is there any easy way to share links between iPads? For example, if my friend is looking at something interesting and wants to send it to me. Is email still the best way?

iMessage in iOS5 is a great alternative to email as you don't have to mess with a subject and it pushes the link quite rapidly to another iOS device.
Settings -> Messages -> iMessage (On)

Device-to-Device, only e-mail, or chat software you may both be connected to would be the quickest, non-invasive way.

Since when chat is less invasive than email? O_o

I wasn't really making a claim regarding E-mail vs Chat. More E-mail/Chat < Most Other Methods. (Things like Prowl, Boxcar, etc. Externally generated notifications.)

I wish I could move the accepted answer to qthrul's. His is quite obviously much more correct as of the release of iOS 5.

that sounds like a good idea to suggest on meta. Some way to deal with orphan questions.

AirDrop, a feature built into iOS 7, running on iPad 4th generation and later can be used to easily share links between iPads.

Email is probably the best option. Or you could use a social network site. Something like  Facebook is pretty good for stuff like that...

Yes, e-mail. There is actually no easier way on iOS.
But I'd advise setting up something like Yahoo Pipe or Twitter Mail so you can send a Carbon Copy to twitter, digg, delicious (all of which are good ways to share links) and / or google bookmarks to be able to choose to have your link into some kind of bookmarking other than private e-mails.

There is kind of an easier way on iOS, but not on iPad 1, and it needs preparation.
One side needs an iOS device with a camera, with the app RedLaser (or other QR code reading app). The other side needs an iOS device with this bookmarklet installed in Safari: http://code.google.com/p/qrbookmarklet/
Then the person reading the interesting article clicks the bookmark and a QR code of the URL pops up, and the other person scans the QR code in RedLaser which opens Safari with to that page.
Two touches for the person with the article, three for the other, no email.

@Tessallating I don't consider it easier needing a line of view and pointing to the device in the proper way. And he never said his friend is close by. I might want to share links with my friend in another country. But that's an interesting idea anyway. :P I still find the best way for doing it while nearby would be something like bonjour / bluetooth show devices nearby and send. But it would need to be integrated with the browser and to do it with safari jailbreak is needed, which breaks the "easy" part again.

For compatible iOS devices running iOS 7 and later, the easiest way to share URLs (and various other items) is to use AirDrop, a feature build into iOS.
AirDrop works only on iPad (4th generation) and later running iOS 7. The complete list of compatible iOS devices can be found here.
For more details, please go through the Apple Support article, Use AirDrop on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.


text:
Should I upgrade my mbp internal hard drive (160 gb) with a 64 gb SSD?

Possible Duplicates:
Does the use of SSD give one a dramatic performance boost?
Replace MacBook Pro hard disk with SSD

Should I upgrade my mbp internal hard drive (160 gb) with a 64 gb SSD? How much improvement will I see?

Duplicate: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/7345/does-the-use-of-ssd-give-one-a-dramatic-performance-boost

If you only use 40-50 gb on your disk, sure. The performance improvement will be very noticeable.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/

sort: votes


text:
Why does Airport Extreme disable LAN interfaces in client mode?
I have configured my wireless airport extreme to use client mode (hint: if this is not available in "manual configuration", start the assistent and it will appear in the menu ...).
This is working fine and I can access APX via my default wireless connection. However, I have a few systems attached to the LAN ports and these are not accessible.
I read that the APX is disabling the LAN ports in this configuration (why?) - is that true? Someone knows a way to have this configuration running in bridge (or routed mode, I don't care ...) mode?
Thanks a lot
sven

Short Answer
This is a security-related limitation of the 802.11 standard. The 802.11n-capable AirPort Express has a fancy feature to work around this limitation, but the AirPort Extremes and Time Capsules do not.
Long Answer
The IEEE 802.11 standard requires the Access Point (AP) to require each wireless station (STA) to authenticate and "associate" to the AP before the AP can process real network traffic from the STA. STAs are identified by their wireless Media Access Controller (MAC) address (a.k.a. "AirPort ID", hardware address, etc.).
Simple network bridge devices don't change the MAC addresses on network frames.  So if the AirPort Extreme tried to simply bridge traffic from the wired Ethernet devices on its LAN ports, those frames would still have those wired devices' source MAC addresses on them, and since those MAC addreses had never authenticated and associated with the AP, the AP would drop those frames for security reasons. Because this mode of joining an AP doesn't allow the Extreme to bridge frames from wired clients on its LAN port, the Extreme disables its LAN port to help users get the hint.
The 802.11 spec provides a standard way around this. It's called Wireless Distribution System (WDS). But WDS was under-specified in the 802.11 spec, lacks several important mechanisms, and various vendors' implementations aren't guaranteed to interoperate. So Apple chose to only officially support WDS between Apple AirPort Extreme, Express, and Time Capsule devices. So this isn't a solution for you if your AP is non-Apple. It's possible you could set it up manually and it may happen to work just fine, but Apple won't help you if it doesn't.
With the 802.11n-capable Extremes, Expresses, and Time Capsules, Apple provided an Apple-enhanced version of WDS that they just call "Extend the network", to provide the needed protocol mechanisms that bog-standard 802.11 WDS lacks. But again, no third party devices do this, so it's just and Apple-to-Apple thing.
The 802.11n-capable AirPort Express (note: not Extreme, just Express) has one special advantage here. It can do something an 802.11 engineer might call "Proxy STA" mode, where it not only joins a third-party AP was a STA, but it also spoofs the MAC addresses of all the wired Ethernet devices out its LAN port and performs 802.11 authentication and association as a proxy for those wired Ethernet devices, which allows the Express to bridge frames from those clients without the AP dropping them for security reasons. To the AP, all those MAC addresses looks like separate wireless clients; it has no idea that the Express is actually proxying for them all.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/


text:
What Window Management Options exist for OS X?
I'd like to do something with my windows on OS X, where something includes options like re-arranging, moving, re-sizing, remembering positions, cloning across Spaces, etc. What options exist?
Rules

One app per answer.
Use this format for the first two lines of your answer:
## [app name](link to website)
[App Store](link to appstore) (price)
Check for duplicates before adding new answers.
If you find a duplicate, vote it down and encourage its poster to upvote the original entry instead (and remove the dupe).
Include short description about what this Window Managing app does.

What makes this Window Manager app different than the others?
Is it focused on re-sizing using only the keyboard?
Is it focused on moving using only mouse gestures?
Etc.

Excellent questions and rules.  If we had a word / term to describe said something then that would accelerate the conversation and enable Google search of the subject matter.  If there is a term, please update the post to include this term.

Related: Move a full screen app to second monitor, Does MacOS have a keyboard shortcut for moving an individual window to another monitor?

Spectacle
Open source, available at GitHub, accepting donations
App Store link (will not be updated past version 0.6.9)

Center = Command+Option+C
Fullscreen = Command+Option+F
Left Half = Command+Option+←
Right Half = Command+Option+→
Top Half = Command+Option+↑
Bottom Half = Command+Option+↓
Upper Left Corner = Command+Control+←
Lower Left Corner = Command+Shift+Control+←
Upper Right Corner = Command+Control+→
Lower Right Corner = Command+Shift+Control+→
Left Display = Command+Option+Control+←
Right Display = Command+Option+Control+→
Top Display = Command+Option+Control+↑
Bottom Display = Command+Option+Control+↓
Undo = Command+Option+Z

Per Spectacle' Github:

Spectacle users have recommended Rectangle as an open source
alternative.

Rectangle is maintained as of 2020.
brew cask install rectangle

I've tried all the windows managers for OS X.  Most of them turn me off because they want to charge $10+ for functionality that comes built-in to Windows 7.  This was the first free one that's satisfied my need (hot keys to move and snap windows) with support of multiple monitors (which most of the other free ones did not)

Agree with taudep. Spectacle is simple, free, unobtrusive and takes only 1 minute or 2 to learn completely.

Thanks for that.  Lots of web searches turned up the other options listed below, but this was the first time I'd heard Spectacle mentioned, and it is exactly what I was looking for.

I can finally maximize windows now with the Cmd + Alt + F <3 Thank you

Note to anyone looking to use this with a 4k display.. it's pretty much useless.. you can only move windows between 1/2's and 1/3's of the whole screen.. so if you want to put 6-7 terminals side by side.. this wont help

... and if offer a straightforward key shortcut customization panel. Tried. Approved.

Too bad it can't handle custom window size/location combos. I like having some of my windows in specific positions with specific sizes. (Other than that appears to work well, I particularly liked the fact that the run on login option is not set by default.)

If you think the comparison between OS X's default window manager and Windows is bad, OS X's looks far worse compared to *nix window managers.  What, there's not even a way to push a window to the back, only the front?  Seriously?

Too bad it's not supporting mouse for taking actions. You can not drag the title bar to the side you want to get the window fit to half-left, half-right, fullscreen by dragging it on the left, right and top of the screen respectively.

Thanks for Spectacle! @xryl669, I also noticed this big difference in comparison to others, it lacks hot corners and hot sides, when controlling mouse only. You may check iSnap, which has the same functionality as Spectacle + hot corners. I've been using  this iSnap.app for two years so far, and it's FREE as well. It's lightweight and tiny as well, < 500Kb.

I'm using Sticker. Works well, free and simple.

spectacler app, made my day

This appears to be unmaintained. No updates in about a year as of my comment; doesn't appear to be any maintained / primary fork, either.

@ELLIOTTCABLE the last commit as of this comment was 3 months ago which updated the application dependencies.
Just because an application is not being actively developed does not mean it is poor quality or unmaintained.

I recently rewrote Spectacle in Swift, as a new app called Rectangle. Free and open source and has a few added features, like the drag to edge snapping.

No longer maintained: This repository has been archived by the owner on Jan 21, 2023. It is now read-only.

Moom by Many Tricks
App Store ($9.99)

Mouse controls

Zoom button controls (pop up controls when hovering over a Zoom button):

Move & zoom to: full screen, left, right, top, bottom, top-left, top-right, bottom-right, bottom-left.
Move & zoom to grid with customisable cells.
Move to other display.
Revert to original dimensions.

Snap to edges and corners (move & zoom when dragging a window to a display edge or corner).

Keyboard controls

Keyboard mode (triggered with a configurable hot key):

Actions: move, zoom, grow, shrink, center, revert, move to other display.
Configurable keys: ↑ → ↓ ← (with optional modifiers ⌘ ⌥ ⌃ ), Return, Space, Tab, Esc.

Custom controls

Fully customisable actions with menu and hot keys:

Actions: move, zoom, center, resize, grow, shrink, revert, arrange, move to other display.
Customisable grid.
Save and restore window layouts.
Hot keys can trigger a chain of multiple actions in sequence (eg: center followed by resize).

When purchased today, it was $10

I dumped Cinch and RightZoom since Moom provides the same functionality but sleeker.

Just tried Moom, doesn't seem to work very well :( some apps work for snapping, while others just don't work at all :(

BetterTouchTool (free $2.99, $7.50..$21)
BetterTouchTool is known for bringing more functionality to multi-touch trackpads and mice. It also allows you to to snap to the right/left sides, and all four corners. I would highly recommend this application.

+1 I think it's call BetterSnapTool now? I use it and it's easy to set your own keyboard shortcuts. It allows you to move to the next monitor too. What it's missing is remembering setup when unplugging monitors. I have two externals.

@oma BetterSnapTool has only the snapping features and it's also not a free app :) it's paid…

It's $1.99. I think free vs paid is just too black & white. This is practically free :) Right after I posted I noticed that BetterSnapTool was already mentioned below (http://apple.stackexchange.com/a/37892/3876). But I couldn't delete the comment as it was sent for review. I guess I was wrong about it being renamed.

ShiftIt (free)

Provides keyboard shortcuts for arranging windows into the four quadrants of the screen, or filling any of the four halves (top, bottom, left, right), or centering a window.

Note that Spectacle (recently added below) has a super-set of the functionality of ShiftIt. In addition to the ShiftIt shortcuts, it can move to another monitor, and has an Undo feature.

I was a user of ShiftIt, now I've moved onto Spectacle because of the support for multiple monitors.

Here's a link to Spectacle's website for those unfamiliar: http://spectacleapp.com/

Hi, the latest version of ShiftIt 1.6 https://github.com/downloads/fikovnik/ShiftIt/ShiftIt-develop-1.6.zip supports multiple displays and some other new features :-)

Looks like it is currently unmaintained: https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt but there are some interesting open pull requests.

Divvy by Mizage
App Store ($14)
Provides a grid window you can use to select (via mouse) the size+location of your window. Has a finer grained selection dialog, and you can add keyboard shortcuts for preset sizes/locations.
Activates via an icon in the menu bar, or by a configured global shortcut.

When OSX Mavericks changed the way multi-monitor worked, divvy stopped working for me. I have since moved to Amethyst.

I have used Divvy since before this post, and haven't had any issues even through Mavericks. Sorry to hear it stopped working.

thanks, it's not broken (as in doesn't launch) but the window behavior for multiple monitors is giving me trouble. Divvy wasn't the only thing that broke though and it might be my own fault for how customized my Mac environment is.

There's a preference in Divvy to "press a shortcut twice to cycle to secondary monitor". I have shortcuts for fullscreen and some other frequent positions, when I have a second monitor I just mash the combination twice. Try enabling that and give it a try. http://i.stack.imgur.com/zXoJo.png

@JasonSalaz how is Divvy working with Mavericks these days? It's been a few months since your comment.

I couldn't tell you if it's updated or not, but it's worked the same as the day that I first used it. Perfectly well. It suits my transition from built-in display, to thunderbolt display, and even multi display. The "press twice to cycle" feature is really amazingly good. I still love it and put it to use constantly.

@LuceGoose working perfectly here. (double display setup)

I still use Divvy. It's incredibly simple. Setup the hotkeys such that window resizing works the same as it would on a windows machine (Windows + Left => left 50%, Windows + Right => right 50%).

Moom (above) does basically everything both ShiftIt and Divvy do, combined; and it's cheaper, to boot. Check it out as a replacement, now.

Slate
Slate is a relatively new option that's meant to replace all the previous window management tools. To use it you create a ~/.slate file, like a bashrc for window management. This gives you tons of options so you can make it work however you'd like.
EDIT:
Phoenix
As some people have commented slate has seemingly been abandoned with a year since the last commit. Luckily I discovered Phoenix which is very similar to slate with similar configs.
Mjolnir
For a while, Phoenix got deprecated and substituted by Hydra, but now it's back in development, by another author, while Hydra is deprecated. Mjolnir is the successor to Appgrid, Zephyros, Phoenix, Hydra and Penknife, by the original author, Steven Degutis.
Mjolnir vs. other apps

OMG. +1 * 8 (that is an infinity symbol sideways).

And if the built-in commands aren't enough, you can now also use its JavaScript API to create configurations with more complex/conditional logic in response to your commands. There's even the ability to use event handlers for any of the basic app- and window-related events.

There is an issue open w/ it requesting command line support for triggering layouts. really hope they make that happen.

This doesn't let you recreate the linux window manager shortcuts with the mouse right? (alt+right-mouse+drag = window resize)

@mankoff an infinity symbol can be done with alt-5 (∞)

One thing I like about Slate is that it's probably the only app featured in this page which lets you set the same hotkey to toggle between multiple layouts (eg. Ctrl + Opt + Cmd + [ to toggle between left aligned 70%, 50% and 30% and Ctrl + Opt + Cmd + ] to toggle between right aligned 70%, 50% and 30%). Why have 6 shortcuts when you can have 2? As an extra, it also features an app switcher. Just call it up and switch to any open app by typing a single character key (letter or number).

The author of Slate seems to have stopped maintaining it.  There are tons of pull requests and open issues but no response: https://github.com/jigish/slate/network

Slate is brilliant. Unfortunately, as Adam notes, it's unmaintained and it even performs quite badly on my setup; Retina MBP + 27" Dell monitor.

SizeUp ($13) by Irradiated Software

SizeUp allows you to quickly position
a window to fill exactly half the
screen (splitscreen), a quarter of the
screen (quadrant), full screen, or
centered via the menu bar or
configurable system-wide shortcuts
(hotkeys). Similar to "tiled windows"
functionality available on other
operating systems

Much of the arranging options provided by SizeUp are available for free in ShiftIt. However, SizeUp does have some additional functionality that may be worth the $
Unique to SizeUp: It allows placement of a window at exact screen coordinates, X,Y, Width, and Height

SizeUp handles multiple monitors well (unlike Divy and ShiftIt).  If you're running multiple screens, this is the way to go.

Amethyst (open source, free)
Tiling window manager for OS X similar to xmonad. Was originally written as an alternative to fjolnir’s awesome xnomad but written in pure Objective-C. It’s expanded to include some more features like Spaces support not reliant on fragile private APIs.
Source code: http://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst/

BetterSnapTool
App Store ($1.99)
BetterSnapTool allows you to easily manage your window positions and sizes by either dragging them to one of your screens corners or to the top, left or right side of your screen. This lets you easily maximize your windows, position them side by side or even resize them to quarters of the screen.
In addition to that you can set custom keyboard shortcuts in order to move and resize your windows the way you want.
Because there are so many positions available, BetterSnapTool can also popup a menu from which you can select the one position you want.

Image source

For me, the killer feature of BetterSnapTool is the ability to define custom window sizes and link them all to keyboard shortcuts.

it doesnt play well with multiple monitors, and the areas are only activated when the CURSOR touches the area, not the window. very annoying. also, no support.

BetterSnapTool has some serious issues with Yosemite. My multitouch scrolling slows down after a day or so, which is immediately fixed by closing and opening BetterSnapTool. I just switched to Spectacle.

Working well here with multiple monitors on Mojave.

HazeOver: Distraction Dimmer
App Store $4.99
The app automatically puts a shade over all windows except for the currently focused one. The distinct idea is that with this app you don't have to manage the windows per se. No need to organize, minimize or hide windows. You focus on the window you're working with and stop caring about the rest.

The effect can be toggled with a keyboard shortcut
Intensity is adjustable with a mouse gesture
Options for handling multiple monitors

HazeOver is a great idea, and is well-implemented (I got it through the Setapp subscription service).  I especially like the multi-monitor support.  This means I can have, for example, an editor window highlighted on my main screen, and at the same time a window of a different app (such as Preview or Safari) highlighted on my secondary screen.  It complements rather than replaces the need for window management though, so I recommend combining it with another app, such as Moom.

I don't like full-screen mode - too much empty space - and I love being able to switch easily between apps or windows, so HazeOver has been perfect for me: background windows become less distracting but remain easily accessible.

I found that the overlay that the app produces to darken the background can interfere with other apps. For me, trying to fix these issues was not worth the "distraction dimmer" feature, so I uninstalled it. If you have no apps that are affected, fine. But if things start behaving in weird ways, try deactivating HazeOver first.

HyperDock
App Store ($9.99)
In addition to some other fluff (like window previews):

HyperDock brings advanced window management features to Mac OS:

Move & resize windows just by holding down keys and moving your mouse.
Automatically resize windows when dragging to screen edges (Window Snapping).

Afloat (free)

Keep windows afloat (heh) on top of all others.
Pin windows to the desktop (new!)
Move windows from anywhere, not just the title bar.
Turn a window into an "overlay" on your screen that doesn't hinder your work.
Show a window's file in the Finder with nothing more than your keyboard.
Resize windows from anywhere, not just the corner (new!), and more.

Notably, does not work on Carbon applications, like Finder and iTunes. Also, hasn't been updated since July 2011 (e.g. for Mountain Lion).

Zooom/2 ($20)

Move and resize windows by moving the mouse anywhere over the window. I hold down fn+⇧ to move and fn+ctrl to resize.
Magnetism. If you like snapping windows the the edges of the screen or other windows (as in many X window managers), you will love this.
Snap to a grid to line windows up (similar to Divvy).
Automatically raise windows when the mouse moves over them. (It doesn’t let you activate without raising, so I don’t use this feature.)
Show information overlay, so you can precisely set the dimensions if you need to.

This is the application I've been looking for! Thank you for posting it. I came for the hover-moving and resizing, but I'm staying for the magnetism.

Cinch by Irradiated Software
App Store ($7)
A great application for bringing Windows 7 functionality to Mac OS X.
It allows you to drag a window to the top, right, or left and it will resize for you.Then, when you grab the window again, the window resizes itself to its original size.
Window management is the one thing Microsoft did get right. :-)

The app can also be tested before buying, directly from thier home page, http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/cinch/ That's what I'm doing right now.

Well, no, Windows window management it pretty bad compared to the unix/linux set.   Want to have your WM push a window to the back, or type in a window while keeping it in the back, or track the day/night cycle in its menu colors, use radial menus, auto-create menus for all the hosts you SSH to, tile, not tile, use window groups, default windows of a certain types or titles of any of your virtual displays, pan your monitor to arbitrary overlaps with your virtual screens, manage window on a different computer, etc, etc.  Unix/Linux/X - it's all there.

Magnet
App Store ($0.99)
This one is a simplified mash-up of Cinch and ShiftIt, bringing Windows 7 style docking along with a few helpful keyboard shortcuts.
I'm going to stick with SizeUp for its Spaces and multiple monitor support, but this is a good, cheap option.

It is now $1.99

I've been using this for about 6months and it's reliable, lightweight and exactly what I was looking for.

Sticker (FREE prior v1.0, then $4.99)

Version prior to 1.0 was FREE, can be downloaded here Sticker v0.91. It works flawlessly even on MacOS Mojave (10.14.4). The latest version can be downloaded from official website, and costs $4.99 after free trial.

Mouse only or mouse and keyboard.
Drag a window to the part of the screen you want the window to fill, hit an arrow key and it snaps the window to where you want it to be.
For example, if you already have a window that fills up 2/3 of the screen to the left, drag another window to the right 1/3 of the screen, hit an arrow key and it fills up that area with your other window.
It also allows dragging of windows to the side and top edges to snap windows to half screen or maximize (sides for half and top to maximize)
Here's a link to the video for more details http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYpGo_g0n88

After testing a few, this one is the easiest and offer the best features for free. I use it combined with Afloat to have floating windows and windows on all spaces. I'm using it on latest Yosemite.

@SimoneGianni Great to know you liked it and thanks for the good word. Please continue telling people about it.

I love the simplicity. I need nothing more. Haven't tried the others. They appear to give me what I wasn't looking for in the first place. I just needed full, left, right, fill. Sticker is doing just that. Nice!

I tried to use Sticker + Spectacle apps - and these work like a charm together! Sticker has mouse snapping, and does it really nice, spectacle does keyboard shortcuts excellently. If someone needs not that rich snapping + keyboard shortcuts, almost the same functionality, there is tiny iSnap utility, which mixes features of those two and has <500Kb size of the app.

arrows doesnt work on os x 10.11.4

Beware that versions below 1.0 had huge memory issues and some critical bugs. Keep an eye on memory usage and you'll see it going up.

The link to the chompstomp site is dead.

Stay ($15)
Stay automagically restores windows to a second monitor when it is connected. You need to set them up on the monitor and tell Stay to memorize the location before unplugging from the monitor.

Unfortunately, I had troubles when using multiple monitors that were on a different sides of the Macbook. I.e. at Home I have an external display on the left side, while at work I have it on the right of the Macbook. To make things more confusing for Stay, I also use the same monitor manufacturer/model so it gets confused sometimes.

Great app but it doesn't seem to know about the applications running on the machine and only can identify by title, so doesn't work well for Chrome browser, for example.  There is a means of specifying a regular expression to match the title which is fine for geeks (like me) but kind of wonky.  Also, I agree with @SinišaŠašić about multiple locations issue; I have the same issue.  It would be nice to be able to name the configurations, e.g. "Work" and "Home".  But it's a lifesaver overall and I strongly recommend it.

@TomHarrisonJr You can set a custom name on a stored layout by double clicking on the name. "Home" and "Work" work pretty nice :)

Amending my comment; turns out you can identify an application such as Chrome using the "Link Active Window To..." option.  This solved the issue I reported in cases where it wasn't always working.  Great app.

Optimal Layout ($14)
Optimal Layout is a powerful window manager with tools to switch and arrange your app windows:

Lists all your open app windows with a preview. Type to search the list.
Also searches your open tab titles from Safari, Google Chrome and Terminal.
Mouse positioning with a grid and buttons.
Create new positions and save them to the menubar.
Keyboard shortcuts to position windows, move them freely around the screen and snap them to the screen edges.
Highly customizable user interface.

And now the price has been lowered to $7!

Don't want to reboot a post, but doing it anyway. But it seems this app has presets, so with one click set all window sizes. Is that correct or should every window be set manually, one  at a time?

Breeze
App Store ($8)

Setup your window sizes/positions beforehand, then associate them with hotkeys

SizeWell
Donations accepted.
I have tried a few alternatives, but I keep coming back to this solution. For me, the features and configurability are just right:

zoom
one quarter
one third
one half
two-thirds
resolutions (on my display, from 320 x 480 to 1920 x 1200)
position (without resizing)
whole screen (maximise, without full screen)
next screen, previous screen.

It integrates with the Window menu, but I more often use it by right-clicking the zoom button of a window. Example:

SizeWell requires SIMBL.
Users may prefer EasySIMBL.

Arrange ($8.99)
Rearranges and resizes windows both with keyboard shortcuts, by selecting a predefined (grid-based) or freeform position/arrangement from an overlay hud-style window with the mouse, or by moving the window to active zones on the screen edges.
Each option supports multiple monitor configuration.
Screencast showing Arrange in action

MercuryMover ($20)
“[…] MercuryMover enables anyone to easily and conveniently move and/or resize the frontmost Window, directly from the their keyboard.
“Main Features:

Move and resize virtually any window without touching the mouse
Move and resize by 1, 10, 100 pixels at a time or to the edge of the current screen [in fact, freely configurable in the Prefernce file! thyx]
Configurable modifier keys
Unlimited undo/redo
Single key window center and maximize [after activation, e.g. ctrl+⌥+←, X]
Multi-screen aware [haven't tried that one]

Good idea. Haven't heard about most of the others.

NuKit
No longer available
The feature set of this newcomer includes a mouse-driven window mover and resizer. I use ctrl+←+Mouse movement for moving windows, ctrl+←+⌘+Mouse movement for resize. Fast on my MacBook 2,1.
Download the trial from their site, rather than buying blindly from the App Store - well, that's common sense for any app.
The other main modules are a quite simple launcher and a shortcut manager, which are also sold separately. Nulana promises to refine them soon. Nice: the launcher offers dictionary entries (copy function promised) and an automatic calculator with fractions.

DoublePane
App Store ($4.99)
It's cheap, lightweight, does the job (left half, right half, full screen, restore original window size).

I just found this searching for Alfred plugins.
Layouts is an AppleScript file and an Alfred Workflow to give you a lightweight window manager for your Mac. Out of the box, it allows you to resize your active window to top half, right half, bottom half, left half, top left quarter, top right quarter, bottom right quarter, bottom left quarter, center window and zoom (full screen).

Window Maker
MacPorts $0.00
One of my favorite window managers (albeit for X11) is Window Maker.

In every way possible, it reproduces the elegant look and feel of the NEXTSTEP user interface.

You can download the Window Maker source code, but it is also available on MacPorts if you'd like to use package management.

MacPorts
MacPorts is a robust, stable, mature and easy to use package management solution, for OS X. It is modeled after FreeBSD's ports system, which has been adopted as the basis of NetBSD's pkgsrc.
install Xcode 5.1.1
MacPorts requires an appropriate version of xcode; xcode_5.1.1.dmg is the most recent version for Mavericks (after registerring for a free developer account, and logging into developer.apple.com, that link will begin your xcode download). Once the download completes, open your Terminal.app and complete the installation:
 hdiutil attach -quiet -noverify -nobrowse -noautoopen ~/Downloads/xcode_5.1.1.dmg
 cp -npR /Volumes/Xcode/Xcode.app /Applications/
 hdiutil detach -quiet /Volumes/Xcode
 open -g /Applications/Xcode.app
 killall Xcode.app

install MacPorts
Get to know  MacPorts
 curl -Ok https://distfiles.macports.org/MacPorts/MacPorts-2.2.1.tar.bz2
 tar xf MacPorts-2.2.1.tar.bz2
 cd MacPorts-2.2.1
 ./configure
 make
 sudo make install     # *not war!*
 cd ..
 rm -rf Macports-*
 sudo /opt/local/bin/port -v selfupdate
 diskutil quiet repairPermissions /

add MacPorts to your $PATH:

 export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH
 export MANPATH=/opt/local/share/ man:$MANPATH

install Window Maker and extra themes
 sudo port -vsc install windowmaker wm_xtra

And you can keep everything updated simply with:

 sudo port -vsc selfupdate
 sudo port -vsc upgrade installed

If for whatever reason you are unsatisfied and/or need to remove MacPorts:

to completely uninstall MacPorts

 sudo port -dfp uninstall --follow-dependencies installed
 sudo port -dfp uninstall all
 sudo rm -rf /opt/local
 sudo rm -rf /Library/Tcl/macports*

Is Window Maker still possible to install on Monterey? How does it work? Can I use it as my desktop environment with Mac installed apps, like chrome or Iterm2?

Better Window Manager
$3.00
Better window Manager allows you to position and size windows where you like them, then save it's state and associate it with a keyboard shortcut so you can restore that window state any time.

iSnap
App Store (FREE)

has up to 7 hot corners on the screen (the big benefit in comparison to Spectacle);
supports shortcuts, around 9 shortcuts in total;
attaching positions: half left, half right, half top, half bottom, and 4 quarters of the screen.
has iSnap and iShake out of the box (iShake - shakes the window on shortcut, to draw attention if lost around tons of other screens);
managing the windows on your computer has become a snap! With the iSnap app, you can organize various windows to fit perfectly on your screen and access them simultaneously!
by clicking and dragging your windows to various sections on your screen, you can optimize productivity with a snap. iSnap offers you 3 different templates to choose for optimal productivity.

You can't hide the icon that it adds to the menubar, adding yet another usless application up there. Also it refuses to open and says to "Enable access for assistive devices and try again". But there is no such thing in System Preferences anymore.

@xApple, you are right, but consider the point, that this utility is tiny, ~0.3Mb. It would be too much to expect an advanced feature list here. I'm not forcing anyone to use it, I just shared what I've been using for 1.5 years. It simply does the job, not more, not less. iShake - appeared useless utility for me as well, I disabled it from the very beginning...

Flexiglass ($9.99)
Flexiglass is no longer available and the link is dead because Nulana was bought by Acronis.
Flexiglass featured complete and convenient window management with exclusive multi-touch gestures support, offering a simple way to manage many windows on a Mac with a mouse, keyboard, trackpad, and graphics tablet. It included different tools to move, resize, and arrange windows on the screen easily and joyfully.
Features

Move & Resize
Usually, when you want to move or resize a window on a Mac you are limited by its title bar or lower-right corner. Flexiglass adds a Linux style Alt-Dragging to manage windows.

Multi-Touch Gestures
You can use finger gestures on your MacBook trackpad or Magic trackpad to move and resize windows. Flexiglass can save different settings for a trackpad and mouse and automatically change them when you plug or unplug devices.

Quick Layouts
Quick Layouts was an intuitive snap feature. It was a simple solution for working with multiple windows which can be resized to take up halves or quarters of the screen or full screen.

Quick Layout Shortcuts
User-defined shortcuts allowed you to move windows to halves or quarters of the screen and back to original size.

Real Zoom & Real Close
These options made title bar buttons much more useful. Right-clicking on the green Zoom button will truly maximize a window to full screen. Right-clicking on the Close window button will quit the application.

Double-click to Zoom
Double-clicking on the window title bar was the easiest way to expand it to full screen.

Contrary to the first bullet, Flexiglass seems able to only resize from the lower right corner (whereas Linux would resize the corner of the quadrant you started dragging in). In testing, I also found the motion very choppy.

@duozmo I know I'm very late to the party with this answer, but you can resize from every corner and it doesn't seem choppy to me at all. It might have been difference in 2012, I don't recall. :)

It's a subtle distinction. In Linux-style alt-dragging, alt-dragging in, for example, the upper-left quadrant of the window would change the coordinates of the upper left corner (demo), whereas in Flexiglass it changes the lower right corner.

@duozmo Ah, you're right. I've never used that feature. And that does, indeed, seem a little choppy.

Flexiglass has been great for me. Simple, without a bunch of features I don't need.  Fast: no silly animations or whatever.  It just pops windows where they're needed without fuss.

FastScripts adds functionality to other window managers such as SizeUp, including a script for tiling all open windows. Scripts can be run by binding to keyboard shortcuts.
http://www.red-sweater.com/fastscript/

Magnets
App Store ($1.99)
Main features:

Snapping windows like Windows 7, works well with dual display

Video review on youtube

Gridsutra Lite
Standard suite of window management features, such as assigning hotkeys to various window sizes.
https://apps.apple.com/au/app/gridsutra-lite/id1195876099?mt=12

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoCNTCayS2E

ChunkWM (Free, Open Source)
It seems surprising to me that nobody seems to have mentioned chunkwm yet, a successor to kwm. It is the one solution with the user experience and feature sets closest to a traditional Unix tiling window manager, even much more so than Amethyst.
It supports all the intuitive tiling WM commands, including increasing/decreasing window size, swapping windows, changing focus between windows, spaces, monitors, etc. It even supports killing the currently focused window with one universal key, just as all the Unix window managers allow you to do.
The default keybindings are also very intuitive and easy to press.
It is in active development as of now (Mar 2019). The author has implemented a lot of difficult-to-implement functionalities, and now even plans to add the ability to throw a space onto another monitor, which no window manager on OSX has been able to achieve yet.
Definitely worth checking out if you're acquainted with various Unix tiling window managers.

chunkwm was archived and rebuilt as yabai recently, check it out here: https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai

I used to use an app called Zephyros which is open source on Github https://github.com/pd/zephyros
Loved it because its essentially infinitely configurable and very lightweight whereas a lot of the commercial apps I've tried are always unnecessarily heavy on resources which bugs the crap out of me.
But I've had trouble running Zephyros ever since I upgraded to Mavericks. :(
It's worth checking out though.

WindowKeys
App Store (Free currently)
Keyboard based minimal window manager. Shift to left, right, center, and drag adjust via keyboard. Adjust width, height, display. Switch between dragging windows or jumping.

WindowMizer
My favorite Window management utility is WindowMizer available from rgbworld.com.
It allows you to roll-up windows without losing your focus. A double-click rolls up the window to get it out of the way. Double-click and it returns to its full-size.

Split Screen Ultimate $19.99

Comes with Dual Monitor Support

Support Multiple languages including: English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish

And Most Important: Includes Drag and Snap feature - just like what you find in Microsoft Windows!
Disclosure: I own this app.

RayCast
Not in AppStore (free with paid team options)

Differenciator: It's actually a spotlight replacement like Bartender, but there are native options to move windows around with it and there are options to bind hotkeys to this. What I do is to just bind some shortcuts to common window actions and manage my windows using that. As a bonus, you get a fantastic piece of software as a Spotlight replacement (not affiliated).
It's keyboard only, you cannot special-resize using the mouse when using this method.

Use Gridsutra. Awesome UX and so easy to use. Apart from others, you will notice the effectiveness, easy of use, and features that no one else offers. Especially support for adobe package and the window sticking to corner. I am a happy customer and waiting for more excitement from that team.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
How do external storage devices work with the iPad?
The Apple iPad is a sexy little device, but I have no clues on how the OS on that thingy works, and since it does not come with a USB connection I'm having some problems with how data is moved around on that thingy.

Apple sells a USB converter that you can plug into the iPad so you can connect it with a camera. But could I do the same with a portable drive like Western Digital Passport? Can I move images back and forth between the IPad and the Passport?
Can I connect the iPad to a NAS and do the same: move images/stuff back and forth between the NAS and the iPad ...

Two topical scenarios would be:

Take a image from my canon camera, fix red eyes on the iPad and then store the image on a usb/mass storage device.
copy over the latest episode of my favourite show from the NAS, watch it on the IPad and then delete the copy. In some cases also be able to transfer files over the the NAS

Is this possible? Someone has told me the iPad is only a "viewer", and I understand it is not a creational device... the the simple scenarios described are my minimum spec

You'd need a computer to do those things.
I.e. you're be able to load the image directly from the camera, and edit them in an appropriate app, but then cannot move the image to the external drive (at least not with another app that allows you to do that). You can transfer the image back to your computer using iTunes, or share it e.g. using Dropbox and access it from there.

Regarding NAS access -- this might be possible (again) using an app that connects to the NAS and allows you to browse and open files there. The iOS itself doesn't expose any file system to the user, be it internal or external.
You'd need to use iTunes Home Sharing to do this without any additional software, requiring the NAS files being added to iTunes and your computer to be running.

What's possible on iPad (and any iOS device) is rather closely tied to the applications available for it. The system itself doesn't expose a lot of "power-user" features like (gasp) file system access to the user.

Apps like GoodReader have the capabilities to connect to FTP, iDisk, DropBox, and WebDAV servers and download content to the device.  Once its there, as long as there is an app capable of opening it, it should open accordingly.

@peelman True, that's what I meant by "what's possible is closely tied to the applications". Unfortunately, none of the options you mention help Jason.

that sucks, doesnt seem like the ipad fits me, maybe the samsung tab  or is it the same on it?

@Jason We don't provide product or shopping recommendations. In fact, your original question can be considered off topic for this site, as it relates to an electronic device, not a computer. Please do your own research.

@Daniel might not help Jason, but it may give a lead to anybody else who happens upon the question :)

@Daniel Beck, err... NO? The apple website does not tell you anything about if you are a advanced computer user the ipad would feel like a toy for a 3 year old

@Jason What are you referring to in your comment? And why do you think they should tell you what it doesn't do?

The simple answer to this is: use a cloud solution. There are a couple of free cloud storage service which are fantastic: dropbox.com and box.netfor example. They serve as a wireless NAS and many apps support in-app direct save and open files from those services.
Dropbox.com for example, allow you use your PC or Mac to download a small program, after you install and login, it creates a folder on your desktop. Now, go to your iPad and search for the "dropbox" app. After installing and log in, your iPad/iPhone now is sharing an online storage with your PC or Mac. Any files that are put in the Dropbox folder will show up on the iPad/iPhone.
Most files I share between iPad and iPhone are PDF and Word Files. There is an app called GoodReader, which supports dropbox. You can put the pdf/word into the dropbox folder on your PC or Mac, and then they will be accessible through GoodReader app.
Try the free dropbox app first and then search for other free apps that supports those services.
By the way, another great side benefit for using dropbox or box.net is that you can access all those files from any browser after logging in your account.

If you are willing to jailbreak the iPad, and are willing to live within the inherent limitations of the device, then yes, you can do this to some degree. It would require jailbreaking, then getting iFile from the Cydia app store. At this point you can manage the files on your own device. Next, to connect to other devices via USB, you will need to have a powered hub that all those devices are connected to, and then connect the hub to your iPad. Voila!, the iPad, iFile, and the devices should talk to each other just fine.
(You have to have a powered hub because the iPad does not deliver enough power to hard drives or similar USB devices directly.)
As far as a NAS, there may be an app already built that would permit management via the iPhone or iPad without jailbreaking, but to connect to a USB hard drive and manage any of the files you want will require a jailbreak and iFile and a powered hub.

I have a Synology DS213J and an iPad. I live in the Uk. Whilst visiting Chile, my photo 'workflow' was:

Camera to iPad via Apple USB converter
Upload to NAS via the free Synology DS File app and QuickConnect (which enables direct connection to the NAS from elsewhere in the world - with decent Wi-Fi).

Job done. Photos safe.


text:
Cold temperatures cause finger resistance on  iPad screen
I have an issue that I've been experiencing: semi-cold fingers, iPad, and/or room make for a very stubborn drawing experience (I'm an artist that uses the iPad).
I'm talking indoors, and it doesn't have to be that cold to trigger the problem: even slightly below normal room temperature.
There's a real resistance that happens. My fingers don't seamlessly glide around. Slows me down like heck.
I can't figure out how to fix it (I can rub my fingers quickly on my pants to create friction for a very quick fix).
Could this be a humidity or a room pressure thing?
It's not about too little oil on one's fingers or if the glass is clean. I can't find anything online, although I've talked to some folks who say they sometimes have this problem with their smartphones.
Anyone know anything about this; and, more importantly, how to circumvent it in a reasonable way?

Most random comment ever: I have a similar problem if I use my MacBook's trackpad if I have a tiny bit of banana residue on my fingers. Connection? Probably not. But I couldn't help sharing...

I find sometimes if I've been playing games on my iPhone for a while their starts to be an increase in resistance; also not sure how to solve this. I find wiping the screen helps, but guess this is different from being cold...

I've had similar issues, and my guess has been that it's due to poor circulation when the temperature drops.
The solutions I've come up with are to buy either:

a stylus
a pair of gloves with conductive tips (like these)
something like the GloveTips 3-Piece Touchscreen Texting Glove Tips (which you can apply to an existing pair of gloves).

Thanks Dori. In the interim I've actually found it to be a combination of cold glass/ screen mixed with moisture. Heating it up ( there are many ways/ things to do this safely) seems to do the trick....

Use some hand lotion or wash your hands and then try again. Dry fingers may cause that.

A lot people find anti-glare screen protectors do the trick! They're slightly textured.


text:
How can I re-install Mac App Store
I just deleted (via AppCleaner) my Mac App Store app (which I couldn't log into for 2 weeks) with the idea to re-get a fresh app via Software Update.
But Software Update doesn't download Mac App Store anymore.
How can I re-install Mac App Store on my Mac? Thank you.

Use your Time Machine backup to get it back.

There isn't a stand-alone Mac App Store updater. Your best bet is to reinstall Mac OS X 10.6.6, using the combo update. It's a 1.06 GB download, but it contains all the parts of prior updates (the 10.6.1, 10.6.2, 10.6.3, 10.6.4 and 10.6.5 updates) and should repair your current install.

BTW, that my erasing of app didn't help with signing in. But this answer did: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/7459/mac-app-store-works-like-trying-to-open-itunes-via-browser

@Boris: Thanks for letting me know. I'd thought that you had a two-part problem, but I figured that it was best for future questioners if I just answered the actual question you asked.


text:
i need to charge my ipod while connecting to an accessory
I'm looking to charge my iPod via USB or car charger while still being able to use a sync cable accessory with the iPod. I'm connecting an iCombie (which is a wireless adaptor) to my motorcycle helmet and want to be able to charge the iPod at the same time.

this sounds similar to http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/9044/, except that you need something that will work on a motorcycle

I think you are looking for something like the dockStubz Pass-Through connector
the idea is that the connector allows you to connect further 30 pin connectors to the bottom, then use a standard micro-USB cable to charge the device at the same time.


text:
Recall windows to the current space
Is there a way to recall an app to the current space?
This is possible by turning Spaces off, but that recalls all apps. I just want one.
Sometimes a Safari URL gets opened, and since there is a Safari window open on some desktops somewhere, there it goes. It takes a few minutes to find where the link opened. If I could just recall the browser to the current space, it would be nice.

I don't know how to fetch that window to the current space, but if you switch to the appropriate space where that window is located, you can click on the window title and while holding down the mouse button, press control + 1 to return that window the first space (or hold down control + whatever number space you want to drag it to).

Wow, very cool, I didn't know about that. That'll save a bunch of time compared to the dragging-to-the-edge-repeatedly thing I've been doing.

I'm not aware of any gathering feature. You can quickly move windows between spaces by activating it with the F6 key (or whatever you've set it to in Exposé & Spaces Preferences) to display all of them at once and, in that mode, drag windows from one space to another, pressing F6 again to return to normal viewing.


text:
Can I combine the address bar and the Google search bar in Safari?
The only reason I am using Chrome over Safari is the cool feature Chrome has namely the address bar acts as the search bar as well. Is there a way I can enable this feature in safari as well?

Unless you want the Google-suggestions to appear, too, I think you might be looking for the free (SIMBL) plug-in Keywurl.

SafariStand also offers this functionality, using the same SIMBL hack as Keywurl.
On the face of it, the main advantage of Keywurl over SafariStand seems to be its backward compatibility with Sogudi extensions, which is why I would recommend following Asmus' recommendation and use Keywurl.
On the more general point of browser selection, I switched from Safari to Google Chrome for the alleged speed improvement, smarter tab behaviour and search-in-addressbar functionalities. The two last functionalities seem more robust in Chrome than Safari to me (not sure about speed).


text:
Can't make Home Sharing work on my iPad
I've got the latest iTunes on my Mac [10.2.1(1)], I've downloaded iOS4.3 to my iPad, so I've got all the software that should be necessary, right?
My Apple I.D. and password have both been correctly entered on the Mac and the iPad. Home Sharing has been activated on the Mac, but the iPad can't see it.
Last night I was actually able to get it to function for a couple of hours, but this morning it was gone again. And even when it was working last night I could go to the "sharing" preferences pane in iTunes on my Mac and the status would read: Status: On, no users connected.
I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Can anyone help me out?

Just figured it out. All I had to do was restart my wireless router. Duh.
I didn't think it was at fault because I was getting a full signal to both the Mac and the iPad. But that was just the trick.
Works great now.

Router troubles, huh?
My iTunes sharing difficulties arose from the way I was moving libraries around:
Home sharing on iOS may not display some libraries
"This happens if you have duplicated your library by copying ~/Music/iTunes to one or more machine from another machine. Those libraries will be sharing the same library id and therefore IOs 4.3 is not able to distinguish them..."


text:
Adjusting the scale in GarageBand track visualization?
I've recorded some audio from an external mic and an acoustic guitar with a mic. I can hear it just fine when I play it back, but in the visualization it is almost invisible. There are just some really small bumps on the otherwise straight line.
Is it possible to adjust the scale of the visualization?

If you double click the track it will open the track editor which is a larger view that can be adjusted. Other than that I don't think GarageBand has that ability (unlike Logic).

This is what I needed. Why does Apple insist on not having these options accessible via the Menus?? I have to read the developers' minds .. or in this case find someone who has been able to do so!

I think you're running on the same problem that I faced when I asked this question. You don't have a visualization problem, but maybe a input level problem.

This is indeed the problem. I couldn't get good audio without an amplified input or a USB mic. In the end I opted for a Blue Snowball mic which is excellent, although obviously if you're using hardware mixers this may not be the best solution.


text:
Can a Mac Mini drive three monitors?
I'm the owner of three Samsung SyncMaster 245BW monitors (resolution: 1920 x 1200). I'm interested in getting a Mac Mini and was wondering if I'll be able to connect the Mac Mini to all three monitors such that I can have a separate desktop on each. Does the Mac Mini come with the hardware / software to do this? Thanks!

Similar question: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/4777/

There's also more applicable info at Mac book pro - can I plug two external monitors in? and Can I connect more than one external monitor to the new MacBook Air?.

First thing I noticed was Question id === 9999

Alot depends on what Mac Mini you have. Early Mac Minis only had a single DVI out, later versions had mini DVI out, still newer versions had a mini DVI and a mini DisplayPort out, and the newest all metal version has a mini DisplayPort and HDMI out and comes with an HDMI to DVI adapter.
Negrino was correct in saying that you could get a USB to DVI adapter but you might only have to get one of them, depending on your Mac Mini's video out ports. If you have an early G4 or Core Solo Mini, you would have to get 2 adapters.
For a little clarification, are you planning on mirroring your desktop 3 times or having 1 desktop extended over 3 monitors? If it is the first option then you could simply get a VGA or DVI Y adapter that would mirror the image coming out of one port to 2 or more monitors.

http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=101&cp_id=10114&cs_id=1011403&p_id=5325&seq=1&format=2 MonoPrice.com USB 2.0 to DVI adapter for $36.40 a piece.

Sorry, it is $39.20 a piece for 1 and $36.40 for 50 or more.

I have exactly the setup you describe, with a 2010 Mac Mini, with three Samsung 245BWs even. The same setup will work with a 2011 Mini as well. Just don't get anything older.
In my rig, one monitor is connected to the Mini's mini-DisplayPort port (with a mini-Displayport to HDMI cable), one is connected to the Mini's HDMI port (with an HDMI-DVI adapter), and the third is connected using a DisplayLink USB dongle of dubious Chinese manufacture.
All three run at the monitor's default 1920x1200 resolution. The two 'real' connections are fast and great for video and games, but the USB one is noticeably slower for video, so I deliberately use that one for e-mail, web, iTunes, and all those other 'on the side' applications.
The same would work with a 2011 (current) Mini, just sub in "Thunderbolt port" for mini-DisplayPort above.
When choosing a USB/HDMI adaptor, the key word you want is DisplayLink, and you must watch the specs VERY closely to be sure that 1920x1200 is supported. Many only work up to 1080, which is not quite enough. It took me three tries.

You can use the Mac Mini's built-in Mini DisplayPort port for one monitor, and use a USB to DVI adapter like the $99 unit from IOGEAR for each of the other two. That may not be financially attractive, of course. There are several other units from other manufacturers that also claim to do the job, so shop around.
If the Samsung monitors have HDMI ports, you might be able to use the Mac Mini's HDMI output with them. Or possibly use an HDMI to DVI adapter.

"Mac Mini 2.3 GHz (Mid 2011):  Intel HD Graphics 3000 integrated graphics, supports only one one connected Apple Thunderbolt Display
Mac Mini 2.5 GHz (Mid 2011): Mac mini with AMD graphics can support an HDMI compatible device on its HDMI port when using two Thunderbolt displays.
Mac Mini (Late 2012): can use an HDMI-compatible device on it's HDMI port while using one Thunderbolt display, or they can use two Thunderbolt displays."
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5219?viewlocale=en_US#dispnum

I have a 2012 i7 Mac Mini with three displays, none of them mirrored.
You can read more in my review of the J5 Create USB adapter. It doesn't have a refresh speed like a native display using the iMac GPU but for web browsing or light productivity work, the lag drawing to the third screen is observable but acceptable.

This review was edited in such a way my original message is not clear. Neither myself or the OP even mentioned an iMac. What is "obvious meta" and why was my answer butchered?

I have just recreated this setup using the j5 Create USB 3.0 adapter.  I'm noticing that the USBVGAsync process that is installed consistently uses 45% of one core on my CPU.  This causes the fan to kick in and is quite irritating.  Is this common, or is there some issue with my setup?

Updated info: if you get the current (2011) Mac Mini with AGP graphics (the higher-end version, not the one with built-in Intel graphics) it can drive three displays right out of the box: two from Thunderbolt and one from the HDMI port.
Note footnote (3) on this page:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4885

What do you mean by AGP graphics and how is it possible to connect Samsung SyncMaster 245BW chained over Thunderbolt?


text:
How can I get Gmail Chat to run in background on my iPhone?
For my iPhone, is there anyway to have gmail chat ping me, when a new chat occurs, and I am on another app?  Unlike Android or Blackberry, I am amazed that I have yet not found anything that works well on the iphone for chatting with friends.  Am I missing something here?  Or is this just one of the greatest overlooked features that my iPhone does not have.
And any solution offered can be either from the app store or cydia.  Thanks.

Trillian for iPhone works great for this.  Supports push notifications and multiple other IM networks besides Google Chat.

I'm a rather large fan of Beejive (iTunes Link). Supports push notifications, e-mail notifications, and server side idling up to 7 days without re-opening the app.
The (admitted) downside, is that the iPhone/iPad versions are different, not one universal app. For example, the above link is the iPhone ipa, and this is the iPad iTunes link.
$10 each. But they don't get any better. High quality app, great feature set, no ads (go figure), highly recommended.

You can try eBuddy for iPhone; signup then add your google account. It works the way you like.

Answering your question, iOS 4 allows apps to run in the background, but that doesn't work the same way as on the desktops. Background running apps should use very low memory and will be purged as soon as enough apps need the memory in front of it. So what you really need is pushing chat notifications, which helps save your phone battery because it's less power intensive and handled by the system.
Nimbuz is another great free option that also supports voice calling, many IMs, push (from experience I think it lasts between 24 hours and 3 days top), and used to work even with skype voice. now there's no third party client that works with skype at all as far as I know.
It is my current favorite and I've tried many options, tho I haven't tried Trillian nor Beejive.
Fring is the first one for iPhone and is still great as well. It features video calling (between 2 frings). I prefer Nimbuzz because of little details, such as fring doesn't show from which protocol the specific profile is in the list.
In the end, the app you choose will be the best one for your personal taste, as there are plenty of good options.


text:
Do Apple retail stores allow trade-ins?
Is it possible to trade my 2009 MacBook Pro for store credit or something?

Yes, Apple has a Reuse and Recycling Program where you can get a Gift Card for the value of your computer.  Of course, what value they might consider it to have is another question.

That Program does not seem to be available at the retail stores, though. It talks about mailing it to them.

I don't see the problem. You are still getting the store credit that you can use in the store...

because to get the information from the old computer to the new after mailing in the computer would not be possible, and to buy the new one before mailing in the old would mean the "store credit" could not be used on that purchase.


text:
How to sync or backup iPhone contents to new Mac

Possible Duplicate:
transfering iphone data to another computer
How to synchronize iPhone with new Mac without losing data?

I have brought a new mac and would like to sync my iPhone content with the new mac (i.e. contact, calendar, apps and etc..) As the the first sync will erase all contents from my iPhone, is there any way to avoid it. If the iPhone backup has been performed on the old PC, can I restore all the content from the backup if the content was erased during sync with the new mac. Please advise.

I logged in, authorized and used "Transfer Purchases from iPhone" as described in @appleluntanyi's answer and the linked article.
When syncing apps, I got the dialog

Are you sure you want to sync apps? All existing apps and their data
on the iPhone "iPhone" will be replaced with apps from this iTunes
library.
Cancel / Sync Apps

When I synced anyway, it did in fact keep the app data, but it messed up the icon order and grouping.
So I would recommend syncing the iPhone to your old computer just in case, taking screenshots of your home screens if you want to remember how they were arranged, doing the login/auth/transfer as described in the article, and then syncing despite that incorrect dialog.
You can e.g. transfer the screenshots to the computer through Preview.app: File > Import from iPhone….


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PDF Voice Reader
I have been reading PDF files a lot lately and I would very much prefer it if someone could read it out aloud for me ;). Is there any software that you use that can read PDF files aloud so that you can hear it, rather than read?

I realize this question is specific to Mac users.  In case any Windows users come across this question, Foxit PDF Reader provides this functionality.

You can do this with OS X's built in speech synth and Preview PDF-reading app. Here's how:

Open System Preferences → Dictation & Speech → Text to Speech.
Check the box (if it isn't already checked) that is labeled "Speak selected text when the key is pressed". Then, click the "Change Key…" button to the right. Press the keyboard shortcut you want to use (I use shift-cmd-r).
Now, open you PDF in Preview. Select what you want with the Select tool, or use cmd-a to select everything. Press the key you set earlier, and your computer will think for a moment and then read you your PDF.
Press your key again to stop.

In newer versions (I use Sierra) it's now under System Preferences → Accessibility → Speech

An update for MacOS Big Sur (at least)

Go to System Preferences -> Accessibility -> Spoken Content
Make sure Speak selection is checked
Then highlight some text, right click, and click on Speech -> Start Speaking


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Where I can buy an original OS X Leopard PPC disc for my iMac G4?
I've a wonderful iMac G4 with 2 GB of RAM so I can install/upgrade from Panther to Leopard  but I cannot officially buy from Apple site!
Is there a possibility somewhere to buy an original disk?

Have you tried eBay?

You might be able to buy it from Apple.  I bought a two-versions-old OS from an Apple retail store.  They just don't keep them in stock, so you'll have to order it and then come back in a week to pick it up.

Besides maybe posting to Craigslist for a better deal, 10.5.6 is still available for sale on Amazon.
Please know there was no PPC-specific version of the installer (it works cross-architecture), so if you find one it will work on that Mac (as long as its processor is 867 Mhz or faster w/ 9 GB of free disk space and a DVD drive). It was only Tiger that had separate installers.

The best way to get Leopard is to find someone who had Leopard who then upgraded to Snow Leopard.
Because Apple doesn't sell "upgrades" as such (only full system versions), they can legally and legitimately give or sell you their Leopard disk.

One can usually find old versions of Mac OS on eBay.

I have seen it suggested that you can order via Apple’s phone sales line (+1-800-MY-APPLE). This may be a good option if you can not find it for less than original retail (US$129) through third-party retailers, auctions, or classified listings.


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macOS cpu/mem monitor in system tray (menu bar)
I would like to monitor CPU and memory usage in realtime with charts on a macOS system tray (menu bar). Is there a utility that provides such functionality?


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Remove video from iPod Nano 6th-generation
I did not know that we can't play videos on an iPod nano 6th generation. I added a video (180 MB) to my iPod but I can't access it . I cant see it in iTunes nor on my iPod. But when I connect my iPod to my system, in iTunes it shows that 180MB is occupied with videos (in the bar graph shown below which also shows the space occupied by songs, pics, etc). Can anyone please and tell me how to delete that video?

How did you ad the video? iTunes won't let you add videos to a 6th gen nano.
One thought: is it a music video? Those you would probably have to remove via the Music tab.
Edit: after trying with my own nano: if you send a music video to the iPod, it will be sent and show up as a video in the bar graph.

In the General tab for your Nano, check Manually Manage Media.
Now, there should be a triangle next to your iPod in the iTunes source list. You can click that triangle to display the sections of media on your iPod. Go to the Movies one, find your movie, select it, and press delete (if that doesn't do it, try cmd-delete).
Now, you can un-check Manually Manage if you want. This will re-enable automatic syncing and ejecting.

Very easy.Just open the device's content from the "my computer" and a folder with files will appear.Just delete it from there.I think you can't do that from iTunes.

Go to iTunes and find the video file in question.
Right-click it and select Get Info.
Select the Options tab.

Change the Media Kind to Music Video.

Click OK - this might take a while for large files but just wait it out.

After it is done you can now view the video file under the 'Music' category at the top left of iTunes for your device. This will give you all your music, so use the search box (top right) to locate your stupid video file. It will have a little TV icon next to it, making it easier to find. From there you can just delete like normal!

OK, this was a pain to figure out, but here's how I got it to work:
In iTunes, create a new Smart Playlist on the iPod, set it to match media type and set the criteria for whatever kind of video it was (in my case it was a 'Home Video'.) You can change the smart playlist criteria until you find it. When you do, go to info of the video and change the media type to 'Music Video', then it will show up in the music library along with all of your music. Then you can highlight and delete it as you would a song...
Hope this helps someone out there.
f.w.d

Some applications can load files onto iOS devices directly. For example, VLC (an excellent media player that can play almost every type of video known to man) will load files directly onto your device, even though it could be a filetype iOS doesn't play natively (.avi files for example).
These apps appear beneath the normal apps window in iTunes and allow you to browse your computer for files, which are then added using the + button. Likewise, the - button will remove files. Perhaps this mechanism can be used to elete your unwanted files.
I should add that VLC is no longer in the App Store (though it still works just fine if you installed it before the developer removed it) but there are other apps that operate in the same way.

The nano doesn't run iOS, so there's no apps tab.


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Unable to install from downloaded disk image file
My Mac G4 (running OS X 10.3.9) won't install from any .dmg file I download. It keeps popping up a message: "name of setup & no mountable file system" or "application file cannot be found". Is there some setting I need to change to get around this problem as I need to install some extra programs urgently.

Poorly worded question. Need more info. Detailed error messages. Possible duplicate: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/9364/cant-install-mac-os-x-combo-update-10-6

It is likely the disk images do not support Mac OS X 10.3.9.
The command line tool used to create disk images is called hdiutil. This hdiutil manual page documents the DMG format's history and compatibility with older editions of Mac OS X.
hdiutil manual page

I think a lot of the DMGs that you find on the internets today are compressed, which older disk utilities may not support. You might be SOL here  =\ (unless you upgrade or has another computer with a newer OS)


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What are those ._<name> files?
I downloaded a Java library and noticed, that for every file and directory there is a binary file of the form ._<name>. It contains something like:

"Mac OS X ... com.apple.quarantine ... com.google.Chrome"

Have those files been added by an Mac OS X IDE (I'm an Ubuntu user planning to use the library with Eclipse)? Can I safely remove those files?
TIA for your help!

Those are extended attribute files, which OSX uses when the filesystem doesn't support resource forks or extended attributes.  You don't care about them.  (The entry you quoted is a message to the Finder to display a "This file was downloaded at (date).  Downloaded programs may be unsafe.  Do you want to open it?" dialog along with a button which will open Chrome and take you to the page the file was downloaded from.)

While the attributes these files (technically "AppleDouble" files) are generally unnecessary, there are a few cases where they are actually important.  Alias files are an example that comes to mind -- without the type code, they won't even be recognized as aliases.

But on Ubuntu, they're not going to be recognized anyway.  (See the original question.)

agreed, as long as the files will be used on the Ubuntu system (where things like aliases wouldn't work anyway).  If they were going Mac -> Ubuntu -> Mac, then the AppleDoubles might matter.


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What is the location accuracy of a wifi only iPad?
what is the location accuracy of wifi version ipad?
If someone holds one iPad and walks in a big room, is there a way to detect the location of the iPad?

The accuracy is going to be very poor, particularly indoors where GPS doesn't work well.

@gabe there's not even a GPS on the wifi model

There is no GPS in the WiFI-only iPad. The accuracy of Location Services (the part of iOS that determines where you are) is dependent on a number of factors. iOS does account for this, though:

Applications that can display your location on the screen, including Maps, indicate your current (approximate) location using a blue marker. If your location can’t be determined precisely, a blue circle also appears around the marker. The size of the circle depends on how precisely your location can be determined—the smaller the circle, the greater the precision.

(Source)
To answer your base question, though, no. There's really no way for the iPad to track fine movements (such as within a room, or even within a building) with great degrees of accuracy without the 3G model, which does include a GPS chip.
Location Services on the WiFi model is intended just to find your general location, so apps can tell you what is nearby. It isn't meant to tell you exactly where you are.

There is a way. If there are 3 active WiFi Routers within reachable proximity, you can get WiFi triangulation that is pretty granular. No, it will never be as good as GPS, and just one access point won't pinpoint you at all, but something like a convention hall with lots of Access Point repeaters could make things pretty reliable.


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Can I change the color of my Mac OS X Terminal window depending on which server I am ssh-ed to?
I'd like to have the background as black for server 'foo' but have the background be say gray  or blue for server 'bar'.
I am worried I'll run the wrong command on the wrong ec2 instance because all the pwds are /home/ubuntu! How is everyone else solving this?

Not an exact duplicate, but pretty close. See: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/9740/can-i-tell-iterm-2-to-change-color-when-im-root

I want to do this too! In particular, I want the .login on each remote system to send the correct escape sequence to change the background colors. However, when I log out, I want the old colors restored...

you can use a script to connect to your servers, which also changes the bg color of your terminal before it connects.
http://www.macosxhints.ch/index.php?page=2&hintid=1001

This is a dead link with a German popup.

Use different bash scripts to launch each session and change the background color depending on the server.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4404242/programmatically-launch-terminal-app-with-a-specified-command-and-custom-colors

You may use iTerm2 bookmarks, where you can customize each bookmark with its own settings!

Further to the iTerm bookmarks that are in @nuc's answer where you have to create a profile for each machine and then make its script the ssh command.
iTerm also has some shell integration which you can use to choose different iTerm profiles (these include colour schemes) depending on the machine name. Thus your terminal changes colour when you ssh into a machine which you can do at any time and not just at the start of a session as in the above case.


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Unable to access my Mac keychain due to this
i am completely new to Mac.
Recently i tried to change the home folder name of my mac mini. i have gone through a website and followed some instructions to do that. finally i have ended up by creating a completely new user profile with a new home folder name. after some time i have decide to turn back to my old user and deleted the recently created user. This is where all my problems started. Now my deleted user folder is in my hard disk with the the following name - alpha(deleted). This folder is still being treated as my home folder even after logging in from a different user. I am unable to access even my keychain services through mac. Some softwares are asking me to reinstall on this user.... i ran into chaos with this. Can some one help me to make my current user as default and renew my keychain access... Please help me as this is of high priority for me.. Thank you

To change your home directory:

Go to System Preferences > Accounts
Authenticate
Right clic your user and select 'Advanced Options'
Type the new path to your home directory or select 'choose' to display a dialog
Select 'ok' to save the changes


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ERROR 1013 Restoring iPhone 4
I have a MacBook 2.4 Intel Core 2 Duo version 10.6.6 i updated the iTunes to the newest version 10.2.1 & and an iPhone 4 .. when i was updating to the newest software of the iPhone a error occurred 1013, i went to the apple store and they change my phone.. i came back to restore the iPhone again (the new one) and the same error happened is it my iTunes or my computer making my phone break down?

According to the Apple Support forums, it looks like a fix for this is to comment out gs.apple.com in your hosts file.
Comment it out in /etc/hosts by doing the following (taken from that page):

Open Finder
Hold down COMMAND + SHIFT keys and press 'G'
Enter "/private/etc/" in the field and press "Go"
Find "hosts" file in the directory
Drag the file to your desktop
Open it in text editor
Remove the line that has gs.apple.com entirely or put a # at the beginning of it to comment it out
Save the file
Drag it back to the /private/etc/ folder.
You'd need to enter your username and password to authenticate the move


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Copying web page content in Safari to HTML
Is there an easier way to copy and paste website content in HTML?
What I want to copy looks like this:
Product Information:

Length: S / M / L

Material: Polyester and Elasthane

Brand: Roxana Exclusive

Style: Basque

But when I paste it into my content box it looks like this:
Product Information
Length:
S / M / L
Material:
Polyester and Elasthane
Brand:
Roxana Exclusive
Style:
Basque

Then I need to edit it in an HTML editor to rearrange it.
Is there an app or plugin that will turn the text of the page into HTML so it looks right when I copy it into my content box (if that makes any sense)?

Try View->View Source. If the web site does not use too much javascript the data you want will be visible inside HTML markup.

Iv tried that, there is to much information there to find it, if it is even there. I don't think it is the source for the particular page i think it is the whole site. Do you not no of any apps or plugins i could get? Thanks :-)

No it will be the source of that page not the whole site

I'm not sure why you first asked this over in the Ubuntu forum... :)
Easiest standard way is to right-click / control-click on the table or whatever, select "Inspect Element", click on a higher or lower element if necessary (say, to go from a table cell to the whole table — very useful, that ability), then right-click / control-click and "Copy as HTML".
There might be extensions which make this easier.


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How can I remove email addresses from Mail's autocomplete?
How do remove or erase the emails that I use befor on iPad email, they are not on my contacts. As soon I start typing one email address I get a bunch of old address..how can I erase or remove that.

I've had this same concern and from what I understand Apple does not provide a method to accomplish this cleanup. There are many threads in Apple Support discussion board and they always end suggesting to email Apple the request for this ability.
However, if you own a PC, this gem popped up:
Can't delete Unwanted Email addresses, Auto-fill in saves them all !

Just checking, is this still the case with iOS 5?

I found this on a different question.

Open Mail.app. In the bar up top click on Window and you'll see in the drop down menu Previous Recipients click on that and a list of emails opens up that your system uses as it's preferred email address. That means you get to type one or two letters and "it" fills in the rest of the wording for you.
You have to erase these every time you enter in a new address for someone.
Otherwise your system keeps putting in old addresses when you try to email someone even though you put in the correct email address into contacts and may even have erased the old addresses.

When you start typing the email address, you get a list of suggested addresses. Tap on the circled i symbol on the right and then tap on „Remove from Recents“ at the bottom.


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Synchronise/Merge MP3 collections without duplication or huge copies
I have one drive containing about 90GB of MP3s which is used at home, it serves three Squeezebox players though the Slimserver software running on one of the desktop Macs.
I have a separate firewire drive containing about the same amount of music which I am very slowly cleaning up with Song Genie and I've finished the process of getting all the covers in better than 300x300 using CoverScout. Good tools if you are prepared to work more or less manually, they can come up with some pretty strange suggestions for covers & tag info at times. All this is from CDs I have in storage and I've even scanned some of the covers I couldn't find online. It's a long-term project and one day I want to know all of it is perfect.
Some of the music on the home collection isn't on my firewire drive, and vice versa. If I copy all of the firewire contents over the home collection that would probably work. However I'd really like to know what music is in the home collection that I haven't got because there's no way I'm copying un-tagged un-covered music over my fixed versions.
I could copy all the firewire drive MP3s over the home drive, then call the home drive contents the new cleanest and completest version but copy 90GB twice seems like a waste of time and there must be a clever way to do it?

iCloud is taking care of this, mostly. It's worth a bounty in case anyone has a really clever solution. Is there some Mac-based deduplication technology that could help? (and this could also apply to images)

You could have a look at dupeGuru Music Edition - I haven't used it myself, but it sounds helpful

Sounds like you need a merge/sync solution.  I personally often use arRsync - but there are lots.  Find one that allows you to prioritize one folder over the other when a match is found.  You may need to tag and apply album art to both copies, before they will be recognized as the same, though.

+1 for using a rsync based solution. I wrote a blog post about this specific issue (synchronizing music libraries using rsync) : http://tunecrux.com/restoring-files-scattered-backup-drive-rsync

@kraymer - juicy looking blog post!  Looks pretty technical, it's tickling my need to know stuff.  :-)  I will read it later, thanks for sharing.


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How can I run Flash applications on iOS?
How can I run Flash applications on iPad?

The community here may be able to suggest favorable alternatives to Flash depending on your needs -- perhaps you could be more specific as to what you'd like to run?

On a non jailbroken iDevice, your best options are either the SkyFire browser or the iSwifter app. SkyFire works only for video and iSwifter does work for some Flash content, but neither is a perfect solution, in my opinion. (iSwifter tends to have some funny browser behavior when it comes to touch input.)
Alternatively, you can install "Frash" on to a jailbroken iDevice. I've had varied success with this, however. Some flash apps work fine, most work to some degree, and then some don't work at all. There's no real guarantee what will or won't work with it (just as there isn't a guarantee of what will or won't work with iSwifter or SkyFire).

It appears that you can install Flash on a jailobroken iPhone.
Gizmodo article here, which links to the real article (from Redmond Pie).
The process looks reasonably involved, but it's got a how-to video to help you through it.
Hope this helps.


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Using a Bluetooth or USB remote to advance Keynote slides?
What would it take technically for the iPad to be able to allow Keynote slides to be advanced by a remote (like this -  http://www.targus.com/us/productdetail.aspx?regionId=7&sku=AMP18US)?
Or how about via Bluetooth?

The 2Screens iPad app works with their iPhone remote app for Keynote, PowerPoint, and PDFs through wifi. Apple's Keynote Remote app on an iPhone also offers remote control through wifi.

I’VE GOTTEN A REMOTE TO WORK WITH KEYNOTE ON IPAD
I’m like everyone else wanting a remote to advance slides. Today I got my Magic Trackpad to work with my iPad advancing slides in Keynote though BLUETOOTH. It works perfectly.
Let me go through steps.
1. Jailbroken Ipad (sorry only way around it)
2. Install Bt Stack Mouse – Cydia
3. Ran Bt Stack Mouse
4. Put Track Pad in discovery mode (took several attempts)
5. Once connected – it works like trackpad is supposed to. The pointer works as well.
To use it around the room — press the round rubber buttons on bottom of track pad.
Currently going HDMI out – working perfectly.
Cannot backup — but it advances perfectly from across the room.
OTHER NOTE: Keynote Remote App — with BT Stack Mouse it does recognize “home iphone” but won’t advance to input passcode. Maybe soon that one will work.
Enjoy your presentations with BlueTooth Remote for Keynote Ipad.

Just got WeBE++ to control iPad keynote presentation from iPhone.
Steps: jailbreak iPad - sorry only way around it
Download and install BTstack Mouse - Cydia
Download and install WeBe++ - Cydia
Run BTstack mouse
Run WeBe++
BTstack mouse will recognize WeBe++ as 'name iphone'
Connect -
Run keynote and load presentation - put presentation in play mode
Click iPhone screen once to advance slides.
Very nice.

I know of no RF or Bluetooth (or WiFi) remotes that work with Keynote for iPad at this time. Even the Apple Wireless Keyboard can't do it. I'm expecting the capability to be added in a future release, but there's no telling when that will be.


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How do I remove duplicate "Open With" context menu items in Finder.app?
For whatever reason, the "Open With" context menu in Finder is always listing every app four times (exactly).

I've also used Onyx.app to clear user and system caches, but I'm still left with four repetitions of each app under the "Open With" service. I have restarted the system a few times just to be sure it was not some temporary corruption of the list.
I'm running OS X 10.6.6 on a 2011 17" MacBook Pro with a recent fresh install of OS X (i.e. I didn't use Migration Assistant.app or a Time Machine backup).

no external or network drives mounted (including any time machine destinations)
Same list of duplicate apps if I create a new user account

How can I fix this so one app shows?

Do you have any other drives (external) connected? Like a Time Machine, a Clone or something?

Well, when I'm at work, I do have a Time Machine active, but when I posted this, I didn't have any other drives connected, except my synced iDisk.

It's certainly strange, could you please quickly create another user, log in and see if the new user exhibits the same behavior?

@Martín Marconcini Yes, I've verified that creating a brand new user account still exhibits this same behavior.

Since this problem happens at System Level, I'm not sure if these steps will do any difference.
I assume that, like you've said, you've rebuilt your LaunchDatabase. Just in case:

You can try the Command Line version of the above (In a terminal):
/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

Additionally, Default Apps is a nice and free System Preference pane to control default apps (based upon extension, type, etc.) You can pretty much see and associate everything from there. It should at least give you a hint whether the problem is in the association or the finder is doing something funky.
When did this start happening? Did you install something? I see you have Xcode 4, did you get it from the App Store or you have a Developer Profile and got it via direct download? Was this happening before? Does this happen with every type of file or only some specific ones?

After running lsregister (as mentioned in https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/10615/24322), relaunch the finder. (To do this, do an Option + Right Mouse Click on the Finder icon in the dock, then  select "relaunch".)

Thanks. I was having the same problem and your tip was the key to getting the above solution to work.

Mountain Lion you can relaunch Finder, at least I couldn't find it with ctrl+opt+click with mouse. All I did was just closing all Finder windows and click on the Finder icon to relaunch.

For a quicker and easy-to-remember way, you can alias the command shown in the top answer into lscleanup like so:
# Clean up LaunchServices to remove duplicates in the “Open With” menu.
alias lscleanup="/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user && killall Finder"`

Add that to your .aliases file (or any other file that runs when you open Terminal) and you won't have to remember that convoluted command ever again.

You can’t always run this with sudo.
/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

That alone didn't fix things for me. It wasn't until I ran the above command plainly (using  my user account privileges and not root/sudo permissions) that the problem was solved on my Mac.

This worked for me:
/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/\
LaunchServices.framework/Support/\
lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user
killall Finder

This is the bare minimum -- no extra commands, mouse clicking, aliases, or third-party applications. I borrowed it from the other answers, but I made it readable in less than 80 columns!

Thanks! This worked for me on macOS 12.6. I had a duplicate Visual Studio code entry I couldn't get rid of until I ran these commands

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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how to know imac crash reason
last day i put my mac on the whole night for downloading xcode.however today i noticed that it is shutdown in the morning.i used the "last" command to know when it was shutdown.it is showing time 11:00am and a word crash besides.how can i know the reason for this crash.is there any tool or utility to know the reason.is there any log of it stored in mac

Use Mac OS X's Console (found in /Applications/Utilities) to monitor your system logs by filtering their contents.
Check first system.log and console.log. Logs display their information in reverse chronological order,  scroll down to reach content around 11:00am.


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Is an iMac upgradable to a 256 GB SSD?
Can an i5 27 inch iMac with an exsisting 1 TB hard drive be upgraded to have an additional 256 GB SSD and if so, is it possible to remove Mac OSX from hard disk and re-install on SSD disk?

Yes, it's possible to replace your internal SATA drive with an SSD.
Read the iFixit iMac Intel 27'' Teardown guide to make sure you have all the tools/space to do that, it's not hard, but it requires you to be careful and do it with patience, especially when removing the screen (which must be done using suction cups).
You can replace the Optical Drive with a Data Doubler and install any SATA drive in it. For example using the OWC Data Doubler. Plan all this ahead, since you only want to do the iMac disassembly once. ;)
Make sure that the Data Doubler is compatible with your model (if not available you might have to wait a few weeks before they release a compatible model, it has always been like that).
That way you'll have an additional SSD Drive.
Regarding the second part of your question, yes, you can either put the original drive (1TB) in the Optical Drive and put the SSD where the original HDD was or you can install the SSD in the Data Doubler and boot from there.
You can always install OS X in the SSD, boot from it, migrate some information from your 1TB drive and when you're ready, format the old 1TB drive and use it as a secondary drive for whatever evil purposes you want, like to store your Home Folder (search Ask Different for instructions on how to do that).

+1 for "you only want to do the iMac disassembly once"

Thanks for details. From reading your answer it seems, if I want to leave original drive and optical disk alone, the only way to install SSD is in the Data Doubler which I don't what it is. I thought there would be exansion slot to just install SSD there.

@A M nope, the iMac, as big as it looks, it has no room to spare, so you'd have to sacrifice the Optical Drive. Given the benefits of SSD, I DO recommend that you upgrade your internal drive, which you can always use as an external one with a case via USB or FW or similar. The speed bonus is amazing :)

The internal drive is a 3.5" so it won't fit in the data doubler, but there isn't any reason you would care which drive is in which slot.

It is possible and Martin's answer has the details.  OWC offers a Turnkey Service to perform that upgrade: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/turnkey/iMac_2010_27.  They can fit up to three SSDs into a 27" iMac if you like.


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Is iphone purchased from Canadian online Apple Store factory unlocked?
I could not find iphone stack exchange site so I am posting here.
On Canadian Apple store iphone 4 is available for $659. Is this iphone 4 is the same iphone as factory unlocked new iphone 4 being sold on ebay for over $800? I am confused about the price difference if they are exactly same phones. Also would this iphone work with any GSM carrier in USA or other countries?

Yes, they are unlocked,  The price is going to be substantially higher since its not the subsidized price. They will work with any compatible GSM carriers including prepaid providers.
Some carriers (for instance T-Mobile USA) currently operate at a different radio frequency for their 3G data than the iPhone supports, so although being able to access data over the EDGE network (slower network that is used on virtually all GSM networks), it will not be able to take advantage of those 3G data services.
Purchases from the apple store online can only be shipped to the country of that specific apple store. So if you live in an area where they don't offer the unlocked versions of the phone, for instance in USA, the only way you would be able to get the unlocked version would be through someone who can have it shipped to their country. I am assuming that the factory unlocked versions being sold on eBay are from people who have realized this. Hope this makes sense.
Check out the FAQ section of the iPhone product page at the Canada Apple Online store which can probably answer any other similar questions.
http://store.apple.com/ca/browse/home/shop_iphone/family/iphone


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How do I access my google chrome sync'd bookmarks on my iPhone while I'm out n about?
I once used Foxmarks, then delicious and now google chrome bookmarks.
I think each one has sucked in different ways, but i'm at a stage where i'm using google for hosting all my core info, it makes to put bookmarks with them too.
Delicious just never innovated in chrome, and stayed a FF thing.
I like google chrome bookmarks cos they're with my google account and they sync nicely and quickly. Organization is nice too. Oh, and free
But how do I access it from afar?

Ever use X-marks? I use it for firefox and it's free and easy. Whenever you close firefox it syncs. If you need to access it from a different browser, you just go to xmarks.com and put in a name and password, and it takes you to your bookmarks as clickable links.