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Backspace Key Not Working Mac: What You Should Know
I don't understand why my backspace key does not work on my Mac. I have several Mac computers (10+) and my backspace doesn't work. Why did I reinstall all of these to see if it is an issue on the ones without backspace? It works flawlessly on my new system. Please help and thanks. My Backspace key doesn't work on my Mac: Aug 12, 2024 — Hi I was trying to find out if my backspace would not work. If you could tell me that it's not an option I would be very pleased to hear it! I can't believe that my backspace key in Mac doesn't work! I have a mac running Mac OSX 10.6.4 (Snow Leopard) and can't get it to work! Furthermore, I tried to install the backspace-key-mod-kit, and it seems to be working fine, but then I do a copy and paste, copy a tab's contents from one window to another, paste into a code editor and I still have no go. Furthermore, I'm not sure if all these are related, it took me a while to find the problem. Is there anyway you can help me with how to stop my backspace key working? — Naveen Singh What's not working I used to hate my backspace key. It was a constant annoyance. Now I use it for deleting to delete on an external hard drive, and it's great. What's up with the backspace? What's wrong with mine? If a Mac has a backspace (delete) key problem, or other key/button problems, there may be an issue with the USB cable. Some people have reported that backspace does not work on a Mac, and there have been a few theories on what may be causing the issue. One of the more common theories is that the USB cable may not be properly installed. (See Troubleshooting Apple USB cables.) You can test if your USB cable will work with this one. A good test is a full reset to Mac OS X. Then perform the following steps: Open your computer. Disconnect your USB cable. Open the Accessories folder and enter “Reset” (without quotes). Press Enter. Press and release Option + F2. Click Command + R when your system appears. When you see this screen, just press and release Alt + F2. Repeat step 5 (Reset). When you see “System Recovery Options”, press Option + R.
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FAQ
What are the worst user interface design features that should be generally avoided but are in common use today?
Mapping the backspace key to the Back button on modern browsers. Are you kidding me? Google backspace key navigate and find nearly a quarter million posts dealing with this atrocity. (In all honesty while the vast majority are the likes of How to prevent the backspace key from navigating backwards a very few are How to restore backspace key navigation in Safari. Ahh those poor benighted saps. How I feel for them.) This dreadful and dangerous throwbackes to us via Internet Explorer which inherited it from the Windows Explorer and dates to a time when there was no such thing as the World Wide Web. Later when some evil coder at MS ported this misbegotten feature to IE the Web was a decidedly one-way italic street it was about finding italic and reading italic things not creating italic things. It has no place in a world where the Web is very much a two-way medium. It is wrong on so many levelsn It is the only italic single-key shortcut that triggers navigation away from the current page*. All other navigation involves a chord involving the Alt Ctrl or Command keys. This puts thosemands safely away from typical typing.n It can trigger the loss of significant amounts of unrecoverable data. How many times have you been filling in a form or writing a post of some sort then innocently pressed backspace (delete on a Mac but whatever) to delete a character only to have the entire page and all your work disappear before your eyes. Imagine your astonishment if in Microsoft Word pressing the tab key closed the current document without saving and opened the previous document you had edited. It is an artifact from a single (albeit central) program on a single (albeit majority) platform and has no place in other programs on other platforms particularly given that it was probably the wrong thing to do in the first instance backspace means delete the character to the left of the cursor or sometimes delete the selected item or but who ever thought that using it for go back one screen was a good idea? As one wag on Hacker News put it The turn signal doubles as the ejector-seat button. This needs fixing. n* Well tabbing to a or button and pressing Enter (erm Return) under certain circumstances may navigate away from the current page. Fine. Sue me. -)
What is the difference between the backspace key and the delete key?
When typing a document you face different keys and you have to know each key meaning in order to make the typing faster and improve the quality of the writing. From the first sight there is no difference between the backspace and delete key but it is not . They both delete symbols but the cursor moves left if you use backspace and it moves right if you use delete. These are the things which you should improve to make your typing the first rule is to remember about your back so keep it straight italic make a home position for your fingers italic you should think about setting some rhythm in the typing process italic It is a normal situation that the same keys may have different meanings so pay attention to this fact. So this is the difference and if you are an amateur it may not play a big role in your typing process. But if you learning to at the professional level it is important to take this fact into consideration since you would fast and would not have time to correct it. These are the things which should be automatized.
Does 3ds Max work on a Mac?
Nope not as is. BTW Im guessing the Nintendo 3DS topic was added in error to this. It definitely not the same thing as 3ds Max. You have two options to get such a 3d modelling rendering program on a Mac. Install Windows on it either as a vitual machine inside something like Parallels or a dual boot using something like BootCamp. then install the Windows-only 3ds into that. Note 3ds (as well as many of its alternatives like Blender) tends to require quite a bit of hardware performance. In particular they have a big benefit from a decent graphics card - especially in the modelling process (which is where you be spending 99% of your own time). The rendering is something you can set and walk away from so it less of an issue though you still want something which can calculate the final image without taking weeks. Unfortunately not all Macs are adequate for this. In essence if your mac doesn have a pro designation it likely not up to the task. You may be able to run something like 3ds or Blender on it but it would be frustratingly slow and cumbersome.
How do I unhighlight a text in Foxit PDF reader?
In most PDF readers the way to un-highlight is to first select it then click on the button to highlight. Make sure that the selection matches exactly. Otherwise you might end up with more highlighted in the difference areas. If it a free-drawing highlight usually you need a select tool then you can click an individual highlight and hit the delete or backspace key to clear it. Some PDF apps don use thesemon easy-to-usemands but if you consider switching to an easier PDF reader I rmend Kdan PDF Reader s . It super easy to use and includes more editing features than most PDF readers on the market. You can annotatebine PDFs sign fill in forms and save to the cloud so that every document is available on all of your devices. Disclaimer Im from the Kdan team but I personally use the PDF reader app and find it to be one of the best ones out there. It free so you can download it now for iOS Android Windows or Mac and stop asking forums how your PDF reader works and start churning through your PDF tasks like theyre nothing!
What do software developers miss when switching from Linux to macOS?
So I'm a Software Developer was offered two laptops recently at work either a fancy top of the range Mac book pro or some crappy looking HP laptop. I've always used Linux on my desktop at work and had never previously used Mac OS but given the choice of laptop I thought I would dive in and get the fancy Macbook at least then I would have a genuine opinion on this whole apple thing everyone's been raving about. Well all in all I really like the Mac the hardware is great support for various propitiatory software (office tools email etc) are better than my experiences with Linux and I have access to every development tool I need. But over the last few months I've been noticing a few cracks. Things I miss Themunity I noticed an immediate difference whenever I started asking for or googling for help online it's hard to describe but since switching its like if there is no easy or obvious solution then people act like I'm doing it wrong and I should change to suit the workflow ed by the OS or software and that me asking for something that it doesn't do is some sort of heresy where as Linux is far more amodating and actively encourage customisation and doing things your own way and there's nearly always someone who wants to help. Choice of Window Manager environment Thanks to theirmon roots most Opensource software will run OK on mac and that means that much of the choice from Linux is there. Unfortunately however I don't have any choice over my Desktop Environment or Window Manager. I've been a tiling window manager user for 5+ years I miss you XMonad xxx I really really miss Xmonad that's the big one for me it's a niche window manager but I feel sad just thinking about it. I looked at the tiling window managers for MacOS and they're all just sorry hacks and just don't cut it. Not using the mouse Maybe I'm missing something but I have to constantly reach for the trackpad meta-Tab for some reason doesn't switch between all windows tab doesn't move between all elements on a window key bindings are simply not flexible enough to support moving between Screens Windows and Desktops efficiently (Desktops are mostly OK though). There might still be a number of things I need to learn but there is something really broken here Microsoft has done a better job here. Not knowing my system intimately While for many users and many distributions this might not hold for me at least and for the majority of the distros I use I know what every piece of software is and what every piece of software does - well nearly anyway - I am confident that I could build a GNU based OS from scratch myself. On my mac I don't have that level of clarity and I don't think I ever will. Summary No matter what platform I'm targeting for my work (we never target MacOS) I think using Vagrant (or maybe Docker) is a great way to work and being on MacOS encourages me to use these tools and maintain a clean host environment. For me using these virtual environments for development was alreadymon practice before moving to the mac so after moving to the mac this was no issue. For each of the 3 big Desktop OS each has their own Pros and Cons but as a software developer the tools exists to work efficiently andfortably in all 3 and while I may have switched my Desktop machine from Linux to Mac I still use GNU and Linux every day. Overall I am way morefortable and miss far less than I expected and in being a POSIXpliant OS I get native support for all the gnu tools and all the shells and utilities that a modern Linux environment has and to me that feels like home.
How does the Mac keyboard map to the Windows OS?
The answer varies somewhat depending upon how Windows is installed and what keyboard you're using. If you're just using a full sized Mac keyboard (which they may not even sell any more) then Command bes the Windows key Option bes Alt function keys 1-12 map over only when the Function key is pressed in conjunction and some of the more esoteric dedicated keys like Eject may be non-functional. On the newer mini keyboards such as on the newer Macbook Airs there is no backspace key and so Function+Delete must be used instead. However if installing Windows using Bootcamp the Bootcamp Setup Assistant may be used prior to installation to install Mac-related Windows drivers to a USB key. These drivers map some expected functionality to the otherwise non-functional keys e.g. Eject works as expected as do volume control and keyboard and screen brightness. The following video reviews the new Macbook Air and describes (at around the 33 mark) a bunch of the translated functions when using Windows instead of OSX.n
How long does it take for a lifelong Windows user to become comfortable using a MacBook Pro?
There is tl;dr at the end At work under my desk I have two workstations. One Windows Workstation one MacPro (from the time they made professional workstations with dual-CPU Xeon CPUs). Two years ago I decided to make an experiment and only use Mac for 4 days no matter what the task is. I have been using Windows since ; I used OS X since 25 occasionally for mail or some work-specific-tasks but then I would move files to Windows do the rest and finish the work there. Those 4 days I have tried to do everything on Apple hardware including my work research design and general experimenting with software and tools which I would otherwise do on Windows PC. I tried to use a Windows machine just for tasks there was no way to use Mac on that occasion. Apple MacBook Pro 3 Three Generations I used multiple MacBooks and they are different generations. If you don see much of the difference take a look at how MacBook Pro is written at the bottom of the screen. Model Name MacBook PronProcessor Name Intel Core i7nProcessor Speed 2.4 GHznNumber Of Processors 1nTotal Number Of Cores 4nMemory 8 GBnHDD SSD 256 GB MacBook Pro retina at that time costed $ for just bare 15 device. Missing DVD drive is not that big deal since I can buy $79 external DVD drive and carry it with me and plug it in USB port when I need it. Missing Ethernet port is a big deal for me but I could buy Apple USB Ethernet adapter for $29 and carry it around. The first thing I am missing is enough USB ports; there are only two. So if you plug in your USB DVD drive and USB Ethernet adapter there is no place neither for my External USB HDD nor USB thumb drive to copy a colleague several files. Even two USB Flash drives can not fit because ports are too close. I use W graphic tablet and 3DConnexion 3d mouse but there were no free USB port for those so I would need to buy additional USB hub for $29 with 4 ports . That would not be that bad if the that hub supported USB 3. so I could use my drives with full performance. Today they support USB 3 I believe. I had a presentation to show using projector but there was no jack for external DVI DisplayPort or VGA monitor. Luckily I can buy Apple mini-DVI to DVI adapter for only $19 . Touchpad is large and much morefortable than any touchpad I used by that time even though I am more of a mouse user. Keyboard is the mostfortable one I used on a laptop but I missed a numeric keypad some of my older laptops had. Keyboard would be better if the light came only from the letters and not also from the gap around keys. Retina display looks really good in some applications but most applications had even more jagged fonts and UI elements than any other laptop I have seen. UI elements in most applications were way too small forfortable usage and the eyestrain from working more than 3 hours was horrible. I was frowning for hours. Atop of that it has reflective screen and I am not a fan of it unless it is necessary as in case of touchscreen laptops which is by now on almost every laptop out there and it probably costs additional $3 to add. Since I sketch sometimes I need a laptop with stylus support and Apple does not give it to me (iPad Pro does not count its Pencil performs worse than styluses on Windows TabletPCs and iPad Pro lacks full Photoshop filesystem external display support and cost more than HP Spectre x36 2-in-1...) I also have to mention that this MacBook Pro retina was a cheaper version with speed of 2.3 GHz and has only 256GB drive so I needed a space in the bag for an additional external Hard Drive. It runs very hot even with just web surfing so placing it on a lap did not work out. I could not wear a watch while working on is as the Aluminum finish makes a noise people around me protested. I expected it to be quiet but I was disappointed. MacBook Pro with i7 is as loud as my laptop from 25 when doing something more processor intensive. Even copying files from HDD to USB Flash drive made it sound like a jet engine. On idle it is very quiet though. One day I forgot the power adapter at home and I have found out that the power connector is notpatible with previous generation of MacBook Pros. Verdict is It is OK if you are going to a place with solid WiFi connection where you won need DVD drive or external periphery external hard-drives or work with large files and you don need to connect it to external non-apple monitor or a projector and you are not using it in your lap or wear a wrist watch. It does not have that minimal look with all these adapters dangling from it. Otherwise bring a USB to Ethernet Adapter USB Hub External HDD or USB Flash drive USB DVD SuperDrive Apple mini-DVI to DVI adapter and don forget the mouse I also used Apple MacBook Pro 15u233 Model Name MacBook PronProcessor Name Intel Core i7nProcessor Speed GHznNumber of Processors 1nTotal Number of Cores 2nMemory 8 GB The other 15 inch MacBook pro I used had a DVD drive SD card reader and Ethernet port but did not have Retina display. It still had small keyboard only two USB ports and had other IMHO bad properties of MacBook Pro Retina mentioned before. It also did not have SSD drive but regular SATA HDD. It costed the same as retina but had .3GHz higher CPU speed. This is the first time I have seen a burn-in effect on a non-plasma screen. I would have a window on a screen for a few minutes and when I switched to something else I would still see the ghost of that window for the next several minutes. That was horrible for the design work as the slight shift of colors was always there by something that was on the screen a moment ago. Sometimes I would try to smooth the edge of something and later realize that it was just a ghosting from something before and that I have just created a new edge. The third MacBook I used had bad angles of viewing where the screen colors would almost invert when it is angled a bit too much down or up. I have seen that before only on cheap $25-$35 range laptops. Magic Mouse 3 $69 - Buttonless cordless mouse. I have found it to be very unergonomic with its flat shape and sharp corners. It was easy to get it because nobody in the office wanted it. Finger touch scroll is fine on websites or lists but I prefer a scroll-wheel with bumps so when I know I need to scroll exactly 7 items I can feel bumping over item 7 times. I use this for example when switching tabs in Firefox and it is hard to switch x tabs down without over- or under-scrolling. The direction of scroll is reversed but is easy to get used to and the settings can change. New Magic Mouse has been ridiculed on the web for having the charging port on the bottom so a mentioning it is enough. No middle click so there is no one-hand convenient way to open tabs or use panning in 3d applications or click to autoscroll etc. I am also missing two side buttons from my Logitech mouse. I decided after 3 days of usage that I would not be able to last through 4 days if I had to use that mouse but luckily it supported my Logitech mouse. DVD drive is not a drawer like with windows laptops but a slice unless you have MacBook Pro Retina or Air then it is a external box with slice which costs $79 and does not have an eject button so forget about using it on a Windows. Form over Function... or not? Everything Apple is too much a form over function... or is it actually cheapest-way-to-manufacture something over function. When you see something with straight vertical edges that can be made in 3d program using basic primitives and simple Boolean operations that was definitely not a decision based on usability research and definitely not based on aesthetics. Menu Bar One day I connected a Cintiq display as a second monitor. Now imagine drawing something on a Cintiq but you have a menu bar only on primary screen. I would put the pen down take a mouse move it to primary screen and click menu item then take the pen again and continue drawing. After 3 minutes you do not want to do it any more. Luckily in recent versions of OS X they added a menu bar on secondary screens also but I returned to Windows a long time since. OS X MacOS The only thing OS X excels is design of system settings. All settings are sorted in a logical manner and all you need is within 3 clicks and without scrolling required. Windows Control Panel was a mess but Windows 1 settings displayed linearly in a vertical list is even worse. Even though I used Mac for a long time I felt crippled by OS X. There are so many small things missing. Cut-Paste for files does not work; copy current path from explorer is easy but not from Finder; Not possible to paste files into the open dialog; drag&drop did not work as expected missing shell con menu extensions for everything one can think of... ...but then started the real problems like finding out that the software I wanted to use did not exist for Mac. 3ds Max does not exist there for example. Many experimental software does not work (for 3d UV uring work that I used a lot at that time) I wanted to use Kinect to scan something for a project and I also could not... Today Oculus Rift is not any more supported for Mac; Inability to choose nVidia GTX 97 or better on a mac will also leave it without VR headsetes support for now. After the 4 days I switched back and that is the biggest reason to try OS X for a week or two. After returning to Windows I have noticed how much it is easier to use and my productivity increased dramatically. The only thing I was missing when I returned was the Columns View from a OS X Finder which I got used to a lot but then in a few weeks I made a file manager with the similar columns view but I also went a step further and made all columns fit into the available space - so no more scrolling left-right to access ancestor folders. Now nothing else was missing. Bash Some people can not live without it so if that would be your reason for Mac it should not be. Windows 1 has beta version of Native Bash and with it support for Linuxmand-line tools which run directly on Windows in an environment that behaves like Linux! TL;DR; It depends on what you do on aputer If you only use Google services gmail google docs or other browser based work it will take you 1 minutes. Most shortcuts are the same. But if you do creative work it varies. I was mostly bothered by hardware that favors form over function and performance. I did it a-few-tasks-at-a-time and it took me years but I never switchedpletely because I think it would not be worth it. By switching to Mac I would actually loose a lot by investing my time into a closed ecosystem and abandoning much more exciting technology-rich future. There is more closed ecosystem than Apple and we want more freedom not less. If I wanted do switch ever and my job allowed it I would switch to Linux. OS X is used by only 7% of users instead of 9%+ market share Windows OS. As a software developer I would loose a lot of potential clients. As a 3D Artist and designer I want OS that will provide me with widest array of tools and technologies to do my work and I would loose a lot of programs and tools available only for Windows... and there is also DirectX for 3D acceleration that is better for 3D programs than OpenGL plus for games once VR technology ripens I plan to start playing. If you wanted to be IOS developer a Mac is what you need (although Visual Studio with Xamarin (now free) also supports writing one code andpiling for iOS+Android+Windows UWP at the same time). Apple has abandoned their servers and 3D professionals by canceling their 2-CPU systems and removing nVidia GPUs from all their products so also no CUDA performance increases. I would be also loosing a lot of freedom to do things my way and be forced to use devices in a way some dudes at Apple imagined that I should. Today I use a laptop made of aluminum with reflective screen and also without Ethernet port or DVD drive... but at least it has a touchscreen can be flipped and used as a tablet supports pressure sensitive stylus and costs less than MacBook Pro although it looks like MacBook Air (HP Spectre x36) and is much faster. The most importantly it runs the same OS as a smartphone my 8-inch tablet the Xbox and HoloLens. Switching to the darkside as you call it makes it harder to switch back. Once you want to use Oculus Rift or other VR headsets or other new technologies you will wish you did not do it. EDIT 216 In latest MacBook Pro Apple removed SD card slot HDMI port miniDP port regular USB ports ESC and other function keys drivers for the printers we have are also gone in the latest Mac OS and I am glad I never switched.
Why do Apple Mac keyboards have a 'return' key instead of an 'enter' key?
On the -writer to move to a new line on the page one had to make a carriage return. On manual -writers this was achieved by a lever and slide action. When electric -writers were produced this action was implemented by pressing the Return key. The Querty keyboard layout was originally developed for the -writer and because its layout was designed to put the most used keys in closest relation to the fingers and typists had been using this layout for many years it was logically adopted for personalputer keyboards. On theputer the Enter key is so called because it has been the keymonly used as the do it now key (hence enter) which in general word processing remains to move to the next line but in other cons may cause something else to happen. Many Apple keyboards actually have both words used on the key with enter at the top of the key and return at the bottom. Of course pressing the key doesn give two different signals for it is the programming in a particular application and con that will determine what happens when the key is pushed. In other words prior to theputer the pressing the key determined what happened whereas with theputer it is the programming that determines what happens after the key is pressed.
Any longtime Mac users in the photography or web design profession make the switch to Windows? Curious about good or bad experiences.
As a Graphic Designer I got a MacBookPro while learning Ruby on Rails for its Unix-like Terminal and to fit in with the other developers I was working with at the time. I learned a lot and used it as my main machine for a few years but one day the hard drive cable went and I was forced to scramble. I ended up going for the cheap horespower of a windows 1 desktop machine. For graphic design it handles the adobe suite the same as a mac accepts a huge monitor does gaming movies and everything else. For web development I start linux in a virtual machine and get access to a real linux terminal and all the goodies. The only mac program I missed was SequelPro (Mysql Database Program) as the linux alternatives were a little weird (DBeaver is probably the closes equivalent). Eventually I was able to fix my MBP but it lost its place as my daily driver and I haven't missed it. I do open it up to use SequelPro occasionally but the last time I opened it was to dual boot its windows 7 partition and use an older CAD program that I couldn get working elsewhere. I find straight linux in a VM much easier for Rails development as the mac had weird conflicts with routing and gems that made some simple tasks take enormous amounts of time (it took a Computer Science grad 637 hours to successfully get RVM and a couple other simple gems installed on my MBP for one project because of a weird Mac only GCC conflict) while straight linux had none of that. The Mac Book Pro itself is a good laptop design (apart from the lack of a real backspace key) but when forced with a decision I couldnt even find a new MBP with the kind of spec I would need if I wanted to get a new one with a top notch graphics card. I went to the dark side and haven missed the mac