Except linux has proper click-through!
Yeah, one thing OS X doesn’t do is customizing it to work in non-Apple-approved ways. But you know, there’s a certain courage to forging a path contrary to all established usage… ;)
I hate myself for loving this Macbook.
BetterTouchTool where have you been all my life!!??!!!
It replaces so many of my little utilities like steermouse, cinch, karabiner, hammerspoon etc, and it does it better and all for $5.
Yeah, it’s definitely worth the money. Absolutely essential software for me.
Not as flexible as hammerspoon, but if you don’t need that (and I certainly don’t) it basically replaces a lot of software.
Unfortunately the developer declined my enhancement request to fix MacOS’s stupid-ass clickthrough behavior. That really does bug the living shit out of me.
Can’t you use AppleScript / Automator to tell an application to launch and then hide? You could potentially configure a droplet for that, and then invoke it with your BTT shortcut. Maybe worth trying, if you haven’t already.
For control-mousewheel, I use that to zoom my entire screen, which you can enable in accessibility settings. Works everywhere, and I use that all the time. For zooming in individual apps I use command-plus / minus, which works most places already (and plays nicely with command-0 to reset to native size).
I only want it to minimize or hide when it’s already running and showing, and I want that to trigger based on option-number, so the leftmost program would be option-1 and so on. That might be possible in applescript but I haven’t seen it yet.
I don’t want to zoom my entire screen.
I sort of went the other way. I got into Macs in 1987 with an SE, after having various PCs, C64s, Ataris, and Amigas. Moved to a Quadra 700 for a bit, then eventually after a hiatus into a series of MacBooks (all the while keeping PC type gaming machines). I even begged for and got an iMac and then a MacBook Pro at work when pretty much the default was some horrific way behind the times Windows laptop or dismal desktop.
But now, as my MacBook Pro ages and Windows 10 is so, well, good, I have become progressively unwilling to deal with Apple’s ecosystem stuff and their idiosyncrasies. Great hardware, fine OS, I just find it easier to work with Windows. When I had to get a travel/meeting computer last year, I went with a Surface Pro 4, and love it. Fast, reliable (so far), and easy to use. My MacBook Pro at home is simply my iTunes machine now, and my work computer seems snail like compared to my Surface, not to mention my gaming rig. As they won’t give me an up to date MacBook Pro (everyone has to have portable machines for continuity reasons), I may have to just see what I can squeeze out IT in the way of a Windows box–but only when we switch to 10; right now, the whole damn campus is still on 7.
I’m using a work-issued 2014 MacBook Air for my non-gaming computing nowadays. Any Windows penetration testing (heh penetration @BrianRubin) or security work I can do mostly in MacOS or else I switch to a circa 2013 Lenovo Yoga tablet that I never use the tablet mode for. Gaming, artwork, audio visual work is done on my 2013 Haswell tower.
The Air has an SSD, though, right? I think the biggest difference for me is that all my Windows machines are running on SSDs, and the MacBook at work is running on a 5400 RPM Winchester…
Eww, people still have magnetic boot drives?
Yes, the Airs were famously the first SSD-only laptops.
Have you tried it on the Mac, using a trackpad (or any non-3rd-party scrolling mechanism)? It’s addictive being able to zoom in so smoothly and effortlessly, on anything.
So I’ve been using one form of virtualization or another for years on my macbook to run windows. I used virtualbox first which isn’t bad for free but for more serious development work I wanted something more feature rich and performant. I then used vmware fusion for about the last 1.5 years for work and it wasn’t half bad. It did have it’s own weird quirks and issues especially with resolution, scaling, and dual 1440p external monitors but most you could work around or live with. Well, I finally gave parallels desktop 13 a try and after messing with it for a day and using visual studio 2017 for a couple of hours I think I found my new favorite. It just seems to do everything better and faster: startup, suspend, the neat little quick auto pause when the vm isn’t in focus so better battery life, solid performance, better resolution, scaling, multi monitor support. I few tweaks to the keyboard shortcuts and hardware settings and I have it running quite nicely now. And man do they make it easy to get windows 10 1703 up and running with as little friction and hassle as possible. For kicks I tried running overwatch and while it worked it’s still nowhere near bootcamp. Now, I’m just trying to decide between standard or pro.
I’m starting a new job soon and they gave me a 3K budget. I guess I’ll be getting one of the new macbook pro 15" to play around with soon. I need a mac since I’m going to be more mobile dev focused.
Yeah. ALL of our work machines have hard drives that were slow and crappy when they were new. I swapped my 1TB HD in my gaming machine for a Samsung 850 EVO SSD 1TB a year ago and never looked back. Will never, ever buy another old-school drive.
If you haven’t already, be sure to check the new keyboards. They have been mentionned negatively here and after touching them, I must confess I am not a fan either.
Agree. I’m sure part of it is just what I’m used to, but I don’t care much for the new kb or trackpads either.
A cursory tapping on the keyboard at an Apple Store isn’t going to do the job. I disliked the keyboard for the first month. Now, I don’t even notice it anymore. If that’s the only thing that would hold you back, I’d suggest giving yourself time to adapt. Humans can pretty much get used to anything.
One thing to be aware of, and which i learned at my expense, is that the new keyboards are much less tolerant - moreso than any expensive keyboard i’ve ever used in fact - to dust and dirt. Even tiny sandgrains can wedge in the keys and create enough leverage to break the extremely tiny plastic posts that hold the keycap into the butterfly switch. It’s not the switch itself that is in danger of breaking, it’s the posts between the keycap and the switch. So i’ve started to use a keyboard cover with the Macbook 12. Those ultratight tolerances that Apple can demand don’t always equate to durability.
So anyone getting a new Macbook today should almost certainly invest in a plastic keyboard cover. I also picked up a screen protector as well; same problem. Tiny, almost invisible grains of sand would embed themselves into the screen and damage it when closing the lid, because the distances between screen and keyboard are so tight.
The magnetic HD vs SSD in iMacs is the iMac’s greatest drawback. Apple still insists on creating “Fusion drive” upsells, which 4 years ago were a nice idea but with today’s prices a dual-drive solution makes way more sense for most use cases. And Fusion drive just doesn’t work as well as it did in the past. The original Fusion drives came with 128?gb of flash; now they come with 8 or 16 unless you get the 2 TB model.
I still despise the keyboard to this day. I primarily use my laptop connected to an external keyboard; if I had to use the built-in one I would be miserable.