Hands-On Apple (Audio)

By TWiTTechnology

Hands-On Apple (Audio) episodes

June 19, 2020HOM 14: Aliases, What Are They Good For? - Aliases, soft links, and hard links explained
An alias can be used anywhere you can use a file or folder
Soft Links (ln -s original alias)

can cross the file system,

allows you to link between directories,

has different inode number and file permissions than original file,

permissions will not be updated,

has only the path of the original file, not the contents.

Hard Links (ln original copy)

can't cross the file system boundaries (i.e. A hardlink can only work on the same filesystem),

can't link directories,

has the same inode number and permissions of original file,

permissions will be updated if we change the permissions of source file,

has the actual contents of original file, so that you still can view the contents, even if the original file moved or removed.

Leo Laporte gives you helpful tips to get the most from your Mac every week on Hands-On Mac.

Host: Leo Laporte

Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/hands-on-mac

Discuss episodes in the TWiT Community.
Sponsor:
itpro.tv/twit use the code TWIT30
15 min
June 12, 2020HOM 13: 12 Hidden Free Fonts in Catalina - How to Get 12 Free Fonts for Your Mac
Steve Jobs loved typefaces and typography. He says his love began when he audited a calligraphy course at Reed College. I'm glad he did because one of the things that have distinguished the Mac since its beginning is its beautiful typefaces.
macOS comes with hundreds of beautiful fonts, but you may be interested to learn that if you have macOS Catalina, and I know you do by now, there are a dozen more hidden fonts that are just a download away. Some of these fonts are for other languages, Korean and Arabic, but most are beautiful fonts Apple licensed from prominent font works but didn't actually install, possibly to save space.
You can browse them by opening Font Book. When you see a font that's grayed out, you can install it by right-clicking and selecting Download from the menu.
I particularly like Canela, Publico, and Quotes. If you're worried about space you can also use font book to delete any fonts you don't want, especially any non-Roman fonts you know you won't need.
In the past having too many fonts could slow down machines considerably, but our modern Macs seem to be able to handle the giant library with aplomb. My system has nearly 300 fonts installed. Some of which I added myself. I collect Fixed Width fonts, because, as you know, I like to code. My current favorite programmers' font is the free Input from David Jonathan Ross and Font Bureau.
If like me, you love fonts, and if you feel like you have too many, or your Mac boot times are suffering, you can remove all but the official set using the Font book File→Restore Standard Fonts... command. It won't delete your added fonts forever, just move them into a folder. You can re-add them one by one or in one fell swoop at any time. There's also a Validate command that you might use if ever a font gives you trouble. Modern fonts are essentially little programs, and a poorly or maliciously designed font can wreak havoc on your system, so always get fonts from trusted sources, and validate them before installing.
And if you ever want to start a conversation with a programmer, just ask her what her favorite coding font is. Then grab a cup of tea, it's going to take some time.
For extra typography goodness, I recommend the book "Stop Stealing Sheep" by Erik Spiekermann and E.M. Ginger.
And most importantly, a profound thank you to Steve Jobs, whose love for calligraphy got this all started.
Leo Laporte gives you helpful tips to get the most from your Mac every week on Hands-On Mac

Host: Leo Laporte
Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/hands-on-mac
Discuss episodes in the TWiT Community.
Sponsor:
expressvpn.com/hom
15 min
June 12, 2020HOM 13: 12 Hidden Free Fonts in Catalina - How to Get 12 Free Fonts for Your Mac
Steve Jobs loved typefaces and typography. He says his love began when he audited a calligraphy course at Reed College. I'm glad he did because one of the things that have distinguished the Mac since its beginning is its beautiful typefaces.

macOS comes with hundreds of beautiful fonts, but you may be interested to learn that if you have macOS Catalina, and I know you do by now, there are a dozen more hidden fonts that are just a download away. Some of these fonts are for other languages, Korean and Arabic, but most are beautiful fonts Apple licensed from prominent font works but didn't actually install, possibly to save space.

You can browse them by opening Font Book. When you see a font that's grayed out, you can install it by right-clicking and selecting Download from the menu.

I particularly like Canela, Publico, and Quotes. If you're worried about space you can also use font book to delete any fonts you don't want, especially any non-Roman fonts you know you won't need.

In the past having too many fonts could slow down machines considerably, but our modern Macs seem to be able to handle the giant library with aplomb. My system has nearly 300 fonts installed. Some of which I added myself. I collect Fixed Width fonts, because, as you know, I like to code. My current favorite programmers' font is the free Input from David Jonathan Ross and Font Bureau.

If like me, you love fonts, and if you feel like you have too many, or your Mac boot times are suffering, you can remove all but the official set using the Font book File→Restore Standard Fonts... command. It won't delete your added fonts forever, just move them into a folder. You can re-add them one by one or in one fell swoop at any time. There's also a Validate command that you might use if ever a font gives you trouble. Modern fonts are essentially little programs, and a poorly or maliciously designed font can wreak havoc on your system, so always get fonts from trusted sources, and validate them before installing.

And if you ever want to start a conversation with a programmer, just ask her what her favorite coding font is. Then grab a cup of tea, it's going to take some time.

For extra typography goodness, I recommend the book "Stop Stealing Sheep" by Erik Spiekermann and E.M. Ginger.

And most importantly, a profound thank you to Steve Jobs, whose love for calligraphy got this all started.

Leo Laporte gives you helpful tips to get the most from your Mac every week on Hands-On Mac

Host: Leo Laporte

Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/hands-on-mac

Discuss episodes in the TWiT Community.
Sponsor:
expressvpn.com/hom
15 min
June 05, 2020HOM 12: Inside the Mac Filesystem - How to Navigate Your Mac Filesystem
The macOS filesystem is trickier than it looks! But once you know a few simple things, finding files on your Mac can be easy. Here is one place to start - Apple documents its file system here: https://twit.to/hom12
Leo Laporte gives you helpful tips to get the most from your Mac every week on Hands-On Mac.

Host: Leo Laporte
Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/hands-on-mac
Discuss episodes in the TWiT Community.
Sponsor:
expressvpn.com/hom
23 min
June 05, 2020HOM 12: Inside the Mac Filesystem - How to Navigate Your Mac Filesystem
The macOS filesystem is trickier than it looks! But once you know a few simple things, finding files on your Mac can be easy. Here is one place to start - Apple documents its file system here: https://twit.to/hom12

Leo Laporte gives you helpful tips to get the most from your Mac every week on Hands-On Mac.

Host: Leo Laporte

Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/hands-on-mac

Discuss episodes in the TWiT Community.
Sponsor:
expressvpn.com/hom
23 min
May 29, 2020HOM 11: Using an iPad as a Second Monitor - How to use an iPad as a Monitor
In years past programs like Duet Display and the hardware-based Luna Display let Mac users use their iPads as second displays. But these programs were "Sherlocked" by Apple when they released Sidecar for MacOS Catalina and iOS 13.
Duet and Luna are still around because they can do different things than Sidecar. For example, Duet works with Windows 10 as well as macOS. And Luna doesn't require the Mac and iPad use the same iCloud account. Both work with older versions of macOS, as well.
But if you're using Catalina and a late-model Mac and iPad, Sidecar is already installed and worth a try. Let me show you how Sidecar works, and a few tricks you can use to make it even better.
Leo Laporte gives you helpful tips to get the most from your Mac every week on Hands-On Mac

Host: Leo Laporte
Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/hands-on-mac
Discuss episodes in the TWiT Community.
Sponsor:
itpro.tv/twit use the code TWIT30
7 min
May 29, 2020HOM 11: Using an iPad as a Second Monitor - How to use an iPad as a Monitor
In years past programs like Duet Display and the hardware-based Luna Display let Mac users use their iPads as second displays. But these programs were "Sherlocked" by Apple when they released Sidecar for MacOS Catalina and iOS 13.

Duet and Luna are still around because they can do different things than Sidecar. For example, Duet works with Windows 10 as well as macOS. And Luna doesn't require the Mac and iPad use the same iCloud account. Both work with older versions of macOS, as well.

But if you're using Catalina and a late-model Mac and iPad, Sidecar is already installed and worth a try. Let me show you how Sidecar works, and a few tricks you can use to make it even better.

Leo Laporte gives you helpful tips to get the most from your Mac every week on Hands-On Mac

Host: Leo Laporte

Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/hands-on-mac

Discuss episodes in the TWiT Community.
Sponsor:
itpro.tv/twit use the code TWIT30
7 min
May 22, 2020HOM 10: Using FileVault to Secure Your Data - How to Encrypt your Data with Filevault
Filevault is Apple's proprietary full-disk encryption technology. It uses XTS-AES encryption, the industry-standard used by Microsoft's BitLocker, and the open-source Veracrypt among many others. It's fast, secure, and thanks to hardware support built-into all Macs with the T2 chip, it protects you without impacting efficiency or performance. Filevault is so efficient that it's on by default on all Macs sold today.
Why would you want to turn on Filevault on an older Mac? Suppose you lose your Mac. Anyone who has it could bypass your account login and access the disk directly. Which means anything your store on your hard drive would be vulnerable. Modern smartphones are encrypted, so should be the drive on your Mac.
Macs shipped with OS X Lion and later offer Filevault 2 - and that's the version we're referring to here. The original version was fairly limited. Filevault 2 is a great choice for all Mac users.
When FileVault is enabled the system invites the user to create a master password for the computer. If a user password is forgotten, the master password or recovery key may be used to decrypt the files instead.
Launch **System Preferences**.
Select **Security & Privacy**.
Click the **Lock** icon to enable changes.
Read the **WARNING**.
Click **Turn On FileVault**.
You must make a choice on whether you want to use your iCloud account as a key to unlock your encrypted disk or to create a recovery key. If you plan on having highly sensitive data that you want to ensure that no one but you can get access to, the select to create a recovery key. Otherwise choose to **Allow my iCloud Account to unlock my disk**.
If you've chosen to create a recovery key you must **store it in a safe place** not on your hard drive where you'll be able to retrieve it for recovery purposes. Otherwise your data will be unrecoverable.
Instead of using FileVault to encrypt a user's home directory, using Disk Utility a user can create an encrypted disk image themselves and store any subset of their home directory in there (for example, ~/Documents/private). This encrypted image behaves similar to a Filevault encrypted home directory but is under the user's maintenance.
Users who use FileVault 2 in OS X 10.9 and above can validate their key correctly works after encryption by running sudo fdesetup validaterecovery in Terminal after encryption has finished. The key must be in form xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx and will return true if correct.
Leo Laporte gives you helpful tips to get the most from your Mac every week on Hands-On Mac
Host: Leo Laporte

Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/hands-on-mac

Discuss episodes in the TWiT Community.
Sponsor:
LastPass.com/twit
11 min
May 22, 2020HOM 10: Using FileVault to Secure Your Data - How to Encrypt your Data with Filevault
Filevault is Apple's proprietary full-disk encryption technology. It uses XTS-AES encryption, the industry-standard used by Microsoft's BitLocker, and the open-source Veracrypt among many others. It's fast, secure, and thanks to hardware support built-into all Macs with the T2 chip, it protects you without impacting efficiency or performance. Filevault is so efficient that it's on by default on all Macs sold today.

Why would you want to turn on Filevault on an older Mac? Suppose you lose your Mac. Anyone who has it could bypass your account login and access the disk directly. Which means anything your store on your hard drive would be vulnerable. Modern smartphones are encrypted, so should be the drive on your Mac.

Macs shipped with OS X Lion and later offer Filevault 2 - and that's the version we're referring to here. The original version was fairly limited. Filevault 2 is a great choice for all Mac users.
When FileVault is enabled the system invites the user to create a master password for the computer. If a user password is forgotten, the master password or recovery key may be used to decrypt the files instead.
Launch **System Preferences**.

Select **Security & Privacy**.

Click the **Lock** icon to enable changes.

Read the **WARNING**.

Click **Turn On FileVault**.
You must make a choice on whether you want to use your iCloud account as a key to unlock your encrypted disk or to create a recovery key. If you plan on having highly sensitive data that you want to ensure that no one but you can get access to, the select to create a recovery key. Otherwise choose to **Allow my iCloud Account to unlock my disk**.
If you've chosen to create a recovery key you must **store it in a safe place** not on your hard drive where you'll be able to retrieve it for recovery purposes. Otherwise your data will be unrecoverable.

Instead of using FileVault to encrypt a user's home directory, using Disk Utility a user can create an encrypted disk image themselves and store any subset of their home directory in there (for example, ~/Documents/private). This encrypted image behaves similar to a Filevault encrypted home directory but is under the user's maintenance.

Users who use FileVault 2 in OS X 10.9 and above can validate their key correctly works after encryption by running sudo fdesetup validaterecovery in Terminal after encryption has finished. The key must be in form xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx and will return true if correct.

Leo Laporte gives you helpful tips to get the most from your Mac every week on Hands-On Mac

Host: Leo Laporte

Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/hands-on-mac

Discuss episodes in the TWiT Community.
Sponsor:
LastPass.com/twit
11 min
May 15, 2020HOM 9: Homebrew Bundle: Set Up a Mac Fast - Install Multiple Mac Programs Fast with Homebrew
This episode requires Homebrew, so if you haven't yet installed it, watch last week's Hands on Mac and install it now.

Then open the Terminal and type

`homebrew bundle`

to install the bundler.

If you've been using homebrew you can automatically write a bundle with the command

`brew bundle dump`

add the —describe switch to get a comment before each item in the brewfile describing its use

`brew bundle dump —describe`

Last week we mentioned a cool tool called `mas` - if you've installed it you can also use brewfiles to install Mac App Store apps. brew bundle dump will automatically add these to your brewfile.

Save your brewfile to iCloud or locally and now when you set up a new Mac you can use it to automatically install everything.

Once you've created a brewfile, updating brew is as simple as issuing the command brew bundle.

Thanks to brew and mas, updating your Mac system entirely is as simple as:

`sudo softwareupdate -ia —verbose ; brew bundle -v ; brew cleanup ; brew doctor —verbose`

softwareupdate is a built-in MacOS command to update the system from the command line. To see which updates are needed type

`softwareupdate -l`

it will also let you know whether a reboot will be required

the -i switch can be used to specify individual components to be updated, -ia says update them all.

We covered the brew commands last week.

Combining softwareupdate with brew bundle -v will upgrade everything on your system that's been installed using mas or brew, too.

Leo Laporte gives you helpful tips to get the most from your Mac every week on Hands-On Mac.

Host: Leo Laporte

Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/hands-on-mac

Discuss episodes in the TWiT Community.
Sponsor:
expressvpn.com/hom
12 min

About Hands-On Apple (Audio)

From the publisher's feed

Hands-On Apple explores and explains the Mac — and beyond! From clever Terminal commands to little-known iOS settings, Mikah Sargent shares all the best tips and tricks for your Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Apple Watch. You'll get all the details on Apple's apps and the best apps in the App Store, you'll learn about awesome accessories for your Apple devices, and you'll explore updates to Apple's operating systems — including iOS, macOS, iPadOS, and watchOS. Hands-On Apple is your one-stop shop for Apple know-how.

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