This is the reason why most drives now have lights on them. If the light isn’t on (or, on some models, isn’t flashing) for longer than a couple seconds, it’s safe to unplug.
I haven’t found any lack of keyboard support on Macs. And that single-button mouse thing is the legend that won’t die. I don’t know when they first started supporting two+ buttons on mice, but I have been using them on Macs since the 1990s.
The handful of macs at my high school in the mid 2000s all had single button mice. I’ll have to stop by the college library when the spring semester starts and see what they are using now.
Macs have been sold with multi-button mice since at least as far back as 2005, and OS X has supported multiple buttons for a bit longer than that - just took a while for the hardware production to get going, I suppose.
I don’t know where you can find a single list, but take a look at the following:
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Search Mac Help for “Keyboard and other shortcuts” (searching for “Keyboard shortcuts” gives this as the top hit), which will take you to descriptions of all the shortcuts available, though spread out over many help pages, not a single list.
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In System Preferences, choose the Keyboard pane, then the Keyboard Shortcuts tab. This shows you (again, over several lists, not a single one) all the current system shortcuts, and also allows you to change them.
Just be aware that, since 2005, Apple mice still look like single-button mice but are, in reality, two-button mice (or better). The Mighty Mouse, introduced in 2005, had sensors under the surface to determine whether you were pressing on the left or right of the surface. The current mouse, the Magic Mouse, has a touch-sensitive surface that allows for swipes and multi-finger gestures in addition to clicks.
My Macs are my primary (and favorite) machines, but I really prefer Windows’ keyboard support to that of the Mac. Of course, Windows is slowly killing off its accelerator keys, judging by how horrible Office 10 has been to use.*
- No menus. My favorite accelerator keys sometimes work, and sometimes don’t work now. Instead of going to a menu, I have to hover over 20 icons to find what I used to know from keyboard muscle memory. At least Office 11 still has menus in addition to the stoopid ribbon (but not the same accelerator keys).
I am basing this on a MacBook I use at work. I have no idea what model it is, but it’s only a couple years old. It has a single bar button. It may be set up as Topologist describes, where the right half is right click, but functionally, it doesn’t work that way. Perhaps the software is not installed or set up properly, so it thinks it’s single button, but yeah, I think Apple’s 2 button support is not as it should be, but I don’t suggest it’s nonexistent.
I might be misunderstanding, but if you push “Alt,” then it pops up the keyboard shortcuts over the menu ribbon. It’s still not completely elegant, when you have to push several buttons in a row, but works okay for some commands.
OS X has supported two-button mice and trackballs with scroll wheels from its inception.
Stranger
Somewhat.
On Windows XP, you can quickly open any program or folder that is on your desktop. For example, pressing the Windows key and letter C will highlight the first desktop item whose name begins with “C”. Pressing it again will highlight the next C-named item. When the one you want is highlighted, pressing Enter will open it.
[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:1, topic:565197”]
[LIST=1]
[li]On Windows, you can grab any corner of a window to resize it. On Mac, only the lower-right corner works. Is there a Mac setting to make all four corners work? [/li][/quote]
Not natively, but PullTab, a 3rd party extension of Application Enhancer (.ape) will do it.
[QUOTE]
[li]On Windows Alt-Tab takes you from window to window. If you have two windows open in the same application, it will cycle through both. On MacOS, it takes you from application to application. If one window is obscured, you may never see it. I’d like to alter MacOS’ behavior. [/li][/quote]
“Obscured” ? Do you mean hidden/minimized or do you mean “some other window is covering it up”? Command-tilde (⌘-~) will rotate through the open (non-hidden) windows of the current application.
Apple has never had a two-button “clicker” on a laptop. That said, they have an (IMHO) much better way of getting a “right-click” - turn on “use two fingers for secondary click” in the Trackpad preferences. When this is turned on, placing two fingers on the trackpad and clicking results in a right-click. I find this far superior to an actual right-click button, which I am always hitting by accident on Windows laptops. Newer Apple laptops take this much farther, with all kinds of “gestures” supported.
I just stumbled upon the following page from Apple support and it made me think of this thread: Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts.
Hope that’s useful for someone out there…
I’m not in front of a Mac right now, so it’s hard to check, but in Tiger and Leopard I remember you had to go to the Accessibility system panel to turn on some of the keyboard controls (such as using keys to select a button).
OS X may have always had two-button mice, but the machines come out of the box configured for one button.
I set up my mom’s iMac straight out of the box in June and the thing was still configured with a one-button mouse by default. That was probably the first thing I changed after the account setup stuff was done.