As a newbie to the Mac but with Windows experience since 1990, I am finding the most subtle things the hardest to get used to. This post is about dragging items.
1. The first thing I am still getting used to in dragging a single item: in Windows a highlighted item can be immediately "clicked and
dragged." In OS X, it appears that very often you cannot drag an item unless you pause for a fraction of a second while on the item. However, the "fraction" seems to vary, sometimes being very short, and otherwise being longer. The result is I have to frequently try several times to get the object to drag.
2. Even worse, when multiple items are selected, it seems that sometimes they cannot be dragged no matter how long I pause. The action of attempting to drag simply un-highlights the items.
While I am typing this comment, I am trying to drag items in Mail. I have multiple items selected, and most of the time, anything I do to try to drag them fails, but simply reverses the selection on some items. On a rare occasion, the drag function works. It seems sometimes if I start the drag slowly, it works. I am still assuming that this failure is due to my lack of skills. But my instinct is to consider this a bug. What is the correct way to drag multiply selected items reliably?
Basic questions: When I drag an item to the desktop, say, a mail message, it always appears on the right side of the screen no matter where I release my mouse on the drop. Is there any way to have an item appear where I release the drag-and-drop, or will the dragged item always go to the right side of the desktop?
Another question: is there any way to select a bunch of mail messages and drag them into a folder. I know you can do it where all the emails get merged into one text file, but is there a way to keep them all as individual emails with a group drag and drop?
The question might be stupid but is there any way to deleted some selected items from Trash? As I see, either I can delete everything from Trash or none.
I frequently want to grab a ton of junk on say my desktop and sort them into folders. Process is "make new folder, select all the items I want to go in it, drag them to it, name folder, move folder to where I want". What I want it to be able to do is select all those items and have a contextual menu command "Make New folder from selected". Ideally, popping up an Open/Save dialog letting me choose where to put the new folder and allowing me to name it. On closing dialog, I have my new renamed folder with all my selected stuff in it, wherever I want on my HD with no extra dragging and clicking. Does this sound worthwhile to anyone else? Am I missing some way that this can be done? Seemed like an obvious thing to me, was kind of puzzled to discover (AFAIK) no way to do it.
I started using Aperture only a few days ago, my initial objective being to print a book. Unable to find the "Add selected items to new book" checkbox.
I have spent several hours putting many of my favourite music CDs into iTunes. All was going well, but suddenly when accessing the "Get Info" of a particular album in order to add Artwork I got a message like "Are you sure you want to get the information of Multiple items" (my emphasis). (The error message may not be word perfect because I clicked the "don't show again" box and haven't seen it since.) But the point is that I definitely did not have multiple items selected.
There is nothing I can now do to select "Get Info" for a single album, and as a consequence I will never be able to add Artwork again when necessary. I looked through the Internet and found references to the com.apple.itunes.plist. However although I can see this using Terminal I cannot find it using Finder! This is no better than Windows, and in fact rather worse: I tried to delete iTunes, since it is obviously corrupted in some obscure way, with a view to re-installing it. But I can't even do that because it is "needed by Mac OS X"!
Info: MacBook Pro (15-inch Late 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.4)
I was just wondering if there were any shortcuts (or anything) to get the size of a selection (in finder) of items in totality (not the individual size of each item). I have a folder with like 20 folders and 100 files, I want the size of the 100 files, I can select them all, but if I hit apple + I it will give me 100 info windows. Any way to get 1 info window with the total size? I can run the disk usage command with regex matching from the terminal, but that only goes so far if the file names are vastly different.
I can use command A to select all, and I can select multiple items with command and individually clicking each one, but not using Shift and clicking on the first and last items.
In windows I can use the control key+select and shift+select to select items say, 5-15 or select multiple individual files. In OS X shift+select and cmd+select do the same thing. They let me choose multiple individual files but I can't figure out how to choose a series of files like choosing 5-15. I realize I can drag my mouse over it and click a few files I don't want with shift+select but it's just annoying me that I can't find the command for what I want to do. From the search I did I got the impression that shift+select and cmd+select are supposed to do different things but for me the don't. Did I miss something?
I would like to select a consecutive list of items (photo's) in 'view as icons' but I don't seem to be able to do that. It is possible in 'view as list/coloms' by selecting the first picture, press shift key, select last picture. But when I try to do this in 'view as icons' I can only select the first and the last picture. All the pictures in between are not selected. Am I doing something wrong? It is possible in windows iview icons by using the ctrl and shift keys, so I was wondering if it's also possible in mac.
so i used to be able to copy a group of items or a folder and paste it and if it was a larger file, it would take a little while. well, while that was pasting in the new location i could then copy a new set of items and paste them in another location. it would then process the paste of both of these things at the same time. it no longer does this. when i paste the second group of items, it sits there "estimating" until the first group of items is done.
Has anyone else got this issue? You have a bunch of files you want to move to trash. You highlight them all, then right click, but "Move to trash" is missing from the menu.
If I highlight just one, the "move to trash" option is there. But disappears when multiple items are selected.
Anyone else had this problem? Is there a fix I can do to get "move to trash" for multiple selected items back?
My new MBP won't let me select multiples items when I click the first icon, hold shift, and click the first one. I'm burning photos on dvds so not being able to do this is EXTREMELY frustrating.
When I select a handful of movies(really my tv shows) and right click get info and change the media type to TV shows it will not transfer. Though I can do it one by one but really who wants to do that? Running iTunes 8.0.2
Maybe this was discussed elsewhere; if so, I couldn't find it:
Often I need to select multiple separate items from a large folder of them; I use list view, and command-click on each item, and then drag the whole batch to the appropriate location. It appears that in Snow Leopard (unlike previous OS X versions), when if I scroll down the list to select further items, it jumps back to the top-most selected item after a couple seconds. This makes it completely impossible to select further items! Is there a preference to turn this "function" off? Why would anyone want such a thing? Even if it is what the Finder is meant to do, it seems implemented poorly, since if I grab the scrollbar slider and drag it down below my selected items, after the couple seconds the view jumps back to the topmost item, but the slider doesn't move. All it all, it feels like a glitch.
Any time I try to remove an icon from the dock or an item from the login items and then logout/restart they come right back. It's like OS X is remembering my last login and then just duplicating it. I can't get it to keep it the settings I give it. Google and a quick search of the forums gave me nothing.
My own account login items list in my systems preferences window is limited to one item- an istat menus helper app. But my mac hd/library/StartupItems folder contains two items that I don't recognize and don't think have much to do with starting up the computer. One is a Qmaster folder and another is named RDUSB00A3Startup. Each folder contains a few items, including a unix executable file and a plist file. My mac hd/system/library/StartupItems folder is empty. Can anyone please advise on whether the items in my mac hd/library/StartupItems folder are necessary and if deleting them could affect my computer? I don't use Qmaster and have no idea what the RDUSB00A3Startup folder is for.
I've been kicking around the idea of reformatting my iMac and starting fresh. It's not slow by any means (2.4ghz aluminum, 4gb ram, 320gb hd), but when I create a new user account I can tell the new account is faster. That is what is primarily pushing me to go ahead and reformat the computer with a completely fresh install, however it seems like I really don't need to go that far since it is only that user account that is drug down with over a year of accumulation in preferences, add-ons (such as Candybar 3, Perian, etc). The master account just is not "snappy" like a fresh account and I don't see a need in reformatting the computer if it is still fast on a new account, so. what to do? I don't want to reload all my apps in a fresh install if I don't have to, and one in particular (iMovieHD) I CAN'T reload since I can't find the disk anymore (one out of 30 disks I have goes wandering, it had to be that one).
What's REALLY been bugging me though, is Safari. I'm on 3.1.2 and it really just isn't cutting it. On my test account it is easily faster than on my master account. What all should I delete in my Safari app to get it back to factory fresh speeds without attempting to reinstall it? It takes about one full second longer to load on my master account Safari than on the fresh test account I made on my iMac. I can open Adobe Photoshop CS4 in under 4 seconds so I know the computer isn't dragging. It seems like it is mostly Safari that is sluggish, but then at times it seems like that neck snapping speed of opening windows in finder also is just slightly delayed making it feel not as fast. I dunno, what should I do from here to snap things up in Safari and maybe finder as well? It can't be much slowing me down with CS4 opening in under 4 seconds. I mean.... I can almost open Photoshop CS4 as fast as I can switch web pages so. Safari really isn't working out at the moment. I'm on the upgraded 22Mbps comcast package so I have plenty of pipeline behind my internet.
Since upgrading to 10.9.4 i've been beset with numerous bugs and general odd system behavior. Previous to this update I had experience lag when using my Wacom Intuos 4 tablet. For example when doing a preview render in Maya the tablet would become unresponsive and laggy. This never occurred on my old Mac Pro 2008.Â
I noticed there was an update to the Wacom Drivers (6.3.8-2) so I did the update. After updating I've been experiencing dramatically slow screen redraw. So whenever I drag a window or scroll, the image stutters, flickers and lags as it tries to redraw to keep up with mouse position. This makes it impossible to use the computer. Â
I uninstalled the Wacom drivers and the lag and redraw errors persist. I looked at Activity Monitor to if it was some other system resource like Spotlight that was momentarily hogging resources. The only thing I notice is that the dreaded "kernel_task" seems to be using a lot of ram (1.46 GB) and cpu time (usually at the top of the list). Also, "com.apple.IconServicesAgent" seems to be using a lot of CPU time (usually #2 in the list).Â
Here's my EtreCheck system report: EtreCheck version: 1.9.15 (52)Report generated August 26, 2014 at 11:34:29 AM EDT Hardware Information: ? Mac Pro (Late 2013) (Verified) Mac Pro - model: MacPro6,1 1 3.5 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon E5 CPU: 6 cores 32 GB RAM Video Information: ?Â
So I have been having an issue with my MBP 13" since I bought it, about a month now. At first the guy at Bes@ Bu@ attributed it to the fact that I was pressing too hard on the trackpad and sent me on my way. Two weeks later and the same issue is still happening. So I return to the store and they take the drag lock off, which I have tried before and I tell them this is not the problem-I am not an idiot-I actually know a little about computers. Oh well so here it is another two weeks and the same issue is still going. What do I do? A little background-I need a computer to be able to work on-this is not an option.
Best Buy said that if there is something truly wrong with the trackpad then they will have to send it off to "somewhere" and it could be gone for 10-14 days. That is just unacceptable. Is anybody familiar with their "Black Tie" protection plan? would it be easier/better just to run the thing over with my truck? instead of dealing with the headaches of shipping it somewhere? Basically it seems like the mouse is dragging and locking on everything it can. I have to hold and move, or double hold and move, its hard to explain, but there is definitely an issue. But since I mainly work nights, its hard to bring it up to BB when there is an issue.
1st Question: I've set my MBP to drag with a double tap. However, when I release the trackpad it takes a full second (it seems) before I can go about doing something else. In other words, I'll double tap a window...drag it to where I want, and then have to wait a second or so before I can move the mouse pointer again or else it will continue to move the window.
Is there a setting somewhere to minimize the time necessary between the double tap lock and when my finger is removed from the trackpad?
If I want to uninstall an application, is dragging it to the trash the same as uninstalling it? I get the impression that it isn't. What about all the files the app has left behind?
I use both Firefox and Safari and often want to save a URL to my desktop to go back to the site later on to read it. Problem is: when I drag the favicon next to the URL in either browser down to my desktop, the icon on my desktop reverts to a generic "@" icon. I'm left with dozens of these identical icons--not so easy to browse. How do I get Leopard to preserve the favicon of a URL when I drag it from my URL window to my desktop from either Safari or Firefox?
How do I drag all the windows of say Compressor or FCP as a group? Is there a special keyboard command to just click on one window and then just drag your mouse to move all windows? I often would like to move Compressor to different sections of my screen. I cannot do that now without having to individually move all five windows.
Whenever I drag a tab out of the tab bar to make it open in a new window, it shows the window thumbnail and will not open in a new window (hangs up). Yes, I am letting go of the trackpad and it still does not work. I have tried removing the Safari plist and still no work.
I just bought a new MacBook Pro to supplement my iMac.If I remember correctly, when I hook up a laptop to my desktop I can access it the same way I would an external hard drive? I'm wondering if it's possible to drag and drop PROGRAMS (self contained ones are obvious, but I'm talking programs like Creative Suite 4) over to my new computer? I'm guessing that certain programs that require registration will need the registrations to be re-entered? Just wondering what's the best way to transfer specific applications from my desktop to my mac. Also, Will any specific conflicts arise by transferring from Leopard to Snow Leopard? (other than program compatibility issues)
On my MacBook Po I really like the (new) giant trackpad it always worked perfect until a while ago. Sometimes when I want to drag some files around it doesn't register I'm holding the trackpad down and it won't drag the file. Or it drags the file for a few pixels and release it by itself into the wrong folder. I have the same problem sometimes when I want to select some text, it only selects a piece of the text. Even if I work in Photoshop it doesn't always work great.
