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Very useful Macbook tips for a new user.

  1. How to use home and end keys
  2. How to take screenshots
  3. Get information about installed apps
  4. More keyboard key shortcuts

How to use home and end keys

To right-click on something, hold the control key and then click an item to get a right-click context menu. This is how you can customize Firefox on your Macintosh machine.

The page up and page down actions are accessed by holding the fn key and then pressing the up and down arrow keys. Home and End are the left and right arrow keys whilst holding the fn key down.

How to take screenshots

Press Shift-⌘-4 to take a screenshot. A cross-hair will appear. Drag a square around the area that is to be captured; then release to capture a PNG format image to the desktop.

Press the Shift-⌘-3 keyboard shortcut to take a screenshot of the entire screen and save it in your ~/Desktop directory.

If it is desired to capture a single window, press Shift-⌘-4, then the spacebar. Hover over a window to select it, then click to screenshot the window. Very simple.

Coding on a Mac. Using VIM.
Coding on a Mac. Using VIM.

Get information about installed apps

The lsappinfo utility will print information about installed Macintosh apps.

Johns-MacBook-Air:~ jason$ lsappinfo | grep Firefox
 3) "Firefox" ASN:0x0-0xb00b: 
    bundle path="/Applications/Firefox.app"
    executable path="/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox"
23) "FirefoxCP Web Content" ASN:0x0-0x29029: 
    bundle path="/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/plugin-container.app"
    executable path="/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/plugin-container.app/Contents/MacOS/plugin-container"
    parentASN="Firefox" ASN:0x0-0xb00b:  (inferred)
24) "FirefoxCP Web Content" ASN:0x0-0x2b02b: 
    bundle path="/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/plugin-container.app"
    executable path="/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/plugin-container.app/Contents/MacOS/plugin-container"
    parentASN="Firefox" ASN:0x0-0xb00b:  (inferred)
26) "FirefoxCP Web Content" ASN:0x0-0x30030: 
    bundle path="/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/plugin-container.app"
    executable path="/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/plugin-container.app/Contents/MacOS/plugin-container"
    parentASN="Firefox" ASN:0x0-0xb00b:  (inferred)
29) "FirefoxCP Web Content" ASN:0x0-0x35035: 
    bundle path="/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/plugin-container.app"
    executable path="/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/plugin-container.app/Contents/MacOS/plugin-container"
    parentASN="Firefox" ASN:0x0-0xb00b:  (inferred)

This shows the executable and bundle paths for the application.

Get information about disk I/O. The iostat command is very useful for viewing disk activity.

Johns-MacBook-Air:~ jason$ iostat
              disk0               disk2       cpu    load average
    KB/t  tps  MB/s     KB/t  tps  MB/s  us sy id   1m   5m   15m
   31.42   20  0.62   105.72    0  0.01   7  4 89  1.80 1.45 1.37

More keyboard key shortcuts

Press the ⌘-Right arrow key shortcut to jump to the end of a line. ⌘-left arrow is the shortcut to jump to the beginning. Shift-⌘-left arrow will select the whole line from the end. If you are at the end of a textfile, pressing Shift-⌘-up arrow will select the entire file.

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