Mac

A cool skunkworks story from the days of Apple’s transition from 68K to PowerPC

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Ron Avitzur:

Graphing Calculator 1.0, which Apple bundled with the original PowerPC computers, originated under unique circumstances.

I used to be a contractor for Apple, working on a secret project. Unfortunately, the computer we were building never saw the light of day. The project was so plagued by politics and ego that when the engineers requested technical oversight, our manager hired a psychologist instead. In August 1993, the project was canceled. A year of my work evaporated, my contract ended, and I was unemployed.

I was frustrated by all the wasted effort, so I decided to uncancel my small part of the project. I had been paid to do a job, and I wanted to finish it. My electronic badge still opened Apple’s doors, so I just kept showing up.

I love this story. Ron kept showing up, determined to bring Graphing Calculator to life on the new (at the time) PowerPC chips. Be sure to read all the way down to the bet about being on the front page of the New York Times.

[H/T, @thisneedseditin]

Jean-Louis Gassée looks at Apple’s chip-flipping history, and the chance of an ARM Mac

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Jean-Louis Gassée, Monday Note:

In 2008, for $278M, Apple acquires Palo Alto Semiconductor, a semiconductor design company. Less than a year after the iPhone starts shipping, the intent is clear: instead of buying off-the-shelf ARM chips, Apple wants to design its own processors for future iPhones.

And:

Compared to modest first-year iPhone sales, spending $278M to acquire Palo Alto Semiconductor looks out of proportion. And, of course, let’s not forget a context where Intel reigns supreme having just “captured” the Mac. As always, references to Apple’s “well-known” arrogance are at the ready: Who do these guys think they are, what do they know about microprocessor design and manufacturing?

This is a great read. There’s insight into Apple’s path from 68K to PowerPC, the PowerPC to Intel, with lots of links and backup detail. And then Jean-Louis moves on to the possibility of iOS running on an ARM-based Mac, with both the good and the bad implications.

UPDATE: I originally wrote about the possibility for a speed increase for the Xcode iOS simulator. I started a Twitter thread asking about this and the response was pretty much no, that the code will be native either way (currently x86 code, if ported, it’ll be native ARM code, only difference would be if the ARM processor was significantly faster than the original x86 processor.)

Rollup of comments about rumored modular Mac Pro

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Michael Tsai doing his usual excellent job gathering comments and links relevant to the rumored 2019 Mac Pro. Two things stand out, though all are interesting:

This detailed story from TechCrunch Editor-in-Chief Matthew Panzarino. From the story:

I was invited back to Apple to talk to the people most responsible for shepherding the renewed pro product strategy. John Ternus, vice president of Hardware Engineering, Tom Boger, senior director of Mac Hardware Product Marketing, Jud Coplan, director of Video Apps Product Marketing and Xander Soren, director of Music Apps Product Marketing.

The interviews and demos took place over several hours, highlighting the way that Apple is approaching upgradability, development of its pro apps and, most interestingly, how it has changed its process to help it more fully grok how professionals actually use its products.

A great read.

And this comment, at the end of Tsai’s rollup, from John Gruber’s take:

Sure, I wish the new Mac Pro were coming sooner. But overall this story is fantastic news for pro users — it shows Apple not only cares about the pro market, but that they’ve changed course and decided that the best way to serve pros is to work with them hand in hand.

That sums it up for me. I’m glad Apple has seen the light, is focused on bring us a new Mac Pro. Also glad they are taking the time to get it right, bring us something that will be worthy of the Pro moniker.

I do get the frustration of people who would prefer that Apple ship an upgradeable box (basically, an officially blessed Hackintosh), so they’d have something today. But that’s not Apple’s way.

Interesting, too, that Apple has parted the curtains enough to reveal plans for a product that may not ship until next December, 2019, 20 months from now.

Why the next Mac processor transition won’t be like the last two

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Jason Snell, Macworld:

This week’s report from Bloomberg that Apple is planning on moving the Mac to its own chips starting in 2020 is the culmination of years of growing speculation about the future of the Mac. I’ve been impressed by Apple’s use of ARM chips in new Macs while being skeptical about the prospects of a full transition.

But if we accept the Bloomberg report—and it’s from reporter Mark Gurman’s sources, which are generally excellent—it’s time to shift from speculating about whether or not Apple would do this and start to analyze why the company would make this move, and what form the transition might take.

Thoughtful piece by Jason Snell. Definitely worth reading.

Obviously, this post is based on speculation. But, as Jason says, Mark Gurman has an excellent track record. The question of why Apple would do this is an obvious one. If this is Apple’s plan, no one outside the company can answer it. But two things spring to mind for me.

First, moving the Mac to a chipset that they design and build would give them that much more control over the full stack. Less reliance on outside vendors, the ability to create a more efficient and more powerful set of devices.

Second, moving the Mac to the same chipset as the iPad would (and this is way out of my league conjecture here) make it that much easier to merge macOS and iOS, somewhere down the line.

Michael Tsai’s rollup on comments about Apple’s reported plans for an ARM-based Mac

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Lots of interesting discussion on the implications of any move Apple might make to move Macs from Intel to ARM.

One point to keep in mind? If it does happen, this will be no easy transition for developers. As Rich Siegel points out in this tweet:

Anyone who says “you just have to click a check box” or “it’s trivial” without actually having done the transition for a shipping product is engaging in wish fulfillment or marketing.

If you are interested in a bit of detail on this, take a look at this tweet thread from yesterday. Lots of responses and paths off to specific sub-topics. Learned a lot.

The scorched earth nuclear option for removing Facebook from your Mac

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Andrew Orr, MacObserver:

We’ve shared plenty of tips on how to delete Facebook, remove third-party apps, control privacy settings, and delete bulk content. But what if you want to go even further? It turns out we can, and we can block Facebook completely by editing the hosts file.

In this guide we’ll be adding Facebook-owned domains to the hosts file, which will block them from our system. This is important because even if you deleted your Facebook account, Facebook can still track you around the web like Google does via its advertising platform.

This whole Facebook thing really has me torn. Personally, I was never a fan, at best a reluctant user. But I do get the benefit of reconnecting with old friends, that sort of thing.

But what I really hate is how deeply Facebook has embedded itself into the details of people’s personal data. So much so, that it has become almost impossible for the average person to extricate themselves from Facebook’s clutches.

Read the linked article, which walks you through one way of eliminating Facebook from your Mac. I’m not recommending this path. I don’t like any solution that has you disable a critical part of your Mac’s security infrastructure (in this case SIP). And, as is pointed out for iOS, and as Kirk McElhearn points out is possible for the Mac as well, you can use an ad blocker to achieve a similar end.

I take no fault with Andrew’s article. I’m using it as an example to point out how inexorably tied we’ve all become to Facebook.

What I’d like is a switch that let me remove myself from Facebook’s databases entirely, a do-not-track setting that Facebook would be required to respect. Fat chance of that happening.

Follow up on APFS and the Apple Store Genius Bar

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A few days ago, we ran a story, sourced from Charles Arthur and The Overspill, titled Beware taking your Mac running High Sierra to the Genius Bar: APFS might surprise them.

In a nutshell, Charles talks through taking his MacBook Pro, running macOS High Sierra, to the Apple Store for repair, and having his hard drive wiped because the tech did not detect that the drive was formatted as APFS.

As follow up to this, I spoke with a number of Apple Store employees, curious to see if this was a one-off situation, specific to one Apple Store, or if this was a hole in the system.

A few quotes:

Geniuses are required to take tests about all new hardware and software once it’s released. This is driven from the top at corporate. APFS is not news to Geniuses. Sometimes overly eager Technical Specialists or Technical Experts are allowed to take Mac appointments and APFS may be news to them.

And:

100% of the Geniuses I’ve worked with know about APFS.

And, in reference to the store manager contacting Charles and wanting feedback:

Managers almost always call when people fill out those surveys and indicate they had a negative experience or something went wrong. Apple’s deep concern for customer service is one of the things I love the most about the company.

The strongest takeaway from all this? Apple Geniuses really know their stuff and care about Apple. Small sample size, perhaps, but that’s what it feels like to me when I visit a store.

I’d also say, if you are at an Apple Store and things start going south, consider asking if the person helping you might be willing to bring someone else in to offer an opinion. The goal would be to escalate the problem without hurting anyone’s feelings. To me, this situation with Charles should not have happened.

Beware taking your Mac running High Sierra to the Genius Bar: APFS might surprise them

Written by

Charles Arthur, The Overspill:

I wrote a while back about the problems I had with my 2012 retina MacBook Pro, and its strange shutdowns – which I suspected, but couldn’t absolutely prove, were due to the graphics card problem that these models have been known to suffer from: when the discrete graphics card was activated, there was a chance it would go completely off the rails.

Finally it shut down and didn’t seem to want to start.

And:

The only way to absolutely prove that the problem with the computer was the graphics card, of course, was to take it to a Genius Bar. After eventually getting an appointment (the Mac Geniuses are rare, compared to the iPhone/iPad Geniuses), I turned up with the rMBP which I’d left for dead.

If you’ve got a Mac, especially if you are running High Sierra, take a few minutes to read this story.

My hope is that this is specific to Charles’ Apple Store and not a symptom of a much wider problem. And I do take heart in the fact that the store manager wanted feedback, wanted to find the problem with their systems.

But I do think this solution should have been driven from the top, at corporate. APFS is not news.

From the very end:

But anyhow, if your Mac does break down, and you’re on High Sierra, make sure to tell them if you’re on APFS when they come to the diagnostics. And if they tell you that you need to wipe your drive and start again, just make sure to ask them: “are you certain it’s that, or could it be your network drive can’t read the APFS file system on my machine?” It can’t hurt to ask.

Indeed.

How to change where AirDropped files are saved on your Mac

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This iDownloadBlog post is doubly useful:

  • As advertised in the headline, use it to change the default location for AirDropped files on your Mac.
  • Go through this reasonably painless process to learn about Automator.

Nice job by Joaquim Barbosa. Clever and well written.

Prototype Apple Macintosh Portable for sale on eBay

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I’ve been tracking this one wit great interest. From the description:

Up for sale is one of the rarest Apple computers you’ll find. This is a prototype/clear Macintosh Portable (M5126) backlit. I’ve been collecting for many years now and only know of four of these left in the world. All of which, based on my knowledge, exist in private collections i.e. Lonnie Mimm’s, an individual in Europe, this one, my personal collection. This is one of my favorite Apple computers and the fact this is a clear prototype make is unbelievably rare. The chances of one of these coming up for sale again are very low.

And:

The engineer I bought this from worked on the Macintosh Portable project. Another buddy of his, who also worked on the project and was leaving the Apple, said he planned on throwing this prototype out. The person I bought this from literally found it in his buddies trash before he left Apple. The engineer I bought this from kept it in his office until he left Apple and kept it safe for 28 years.

Follow the link, check out the pictures. Beautiful. From what I can tell, this is the prototype of this device, which Apple sold from 1989 to 1991 at the incredibly expensive price of $7,300 (about $14,000 in today’s dollars). Crazy.

As I write this, the prototype has a current bid of $8,100. Don’t tempt me, internet.

Adjusting EQ: iOS yes. Mac yes. HomePod? No.

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The HomePod is self-balancing, algorithmically adjusting its sound for the environment in which it’s placed.

Me? I like the sound. Have not yet felt the need to tweak it. But I do like a challenge. I came across this article from OSXDaily, which walks you through the process of tweaking your EQ for iOS.

I fired up some music, then went to Settings > Music and tapped EQ. There are 23 different canned EQ settings to choose from. The article recommends Late Night to maximize volume on your iPhone. Give that a try if you listen to music out of your iPhone speakers frequently.

Thought I’d try to AirPlay that EQ to HomePod.

With the music still playing, I went to Control Center, tapped the upper-right corner of the music player (bringing up AirPlay), and selected my HomePod. The music played, but when I tapped the various EQ settings, no change.

I went to iTunes on my Mac, launched System Preferences > Sound and tapped my HomePod. Back in iTunes, I tapped the EQ column in the current song (if you don’t see an EQ column, go to View > Show View Options and tap the Equalizer checkbox). No dice. Changing EQ does not impact HomePod.

This is me noodling, not at all a complaint. I love the HomePod sound. The EQ question comes up often enough, I thought I’d dig in, make sure I understood what was going on. Please return to your regularly scheduled programming.

iOS Messages and Smart Punctuation

Written by

John Gruber:

iOS 11 finally added a long-awaited feature for those of us who care about typographic details: smart punctuation. You can turn this on in Settings → General → Keyboards. When enabled, quotes and apostrophes (like “this” and ‘this’) are automatically turned into their proper counterparts (like “this” and ‘this’), two hyphens in a row (–) are turned into a proper em-dash (—), etc.

I say “finally” because MacOS has had the feature in the standard text editing system for many years, and I can’t think of a good reason why it wasn’t in iOS years ago.

And:

In some recent update to iOS (I think 11.2.5, but it might have been an earlier 11.2.x update), smart punctuation stopped working in Messages — and as far as I can tell, only Messages. Why? My best guess: unintended consequences when sending SMS messages.

I’m kind of shocked that it took this long for smart punctuation (which has been around in the Mac universe forever) to come to iOS. And that take it out, put it back in again Messages story is an interesting wrinkle.

How iFixit became the world’s best iPhone teardown team

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[VIDEO] This is a terrific story, well told by Jason Koebler and the Motherboard team. From the video description:

Every year there’s a race to become the first to tear down the phone, with teams from around the world flying to Australia—where it’s first released—to compete to be the first to look inside the world’s most coveted new phone.

This video (embedded in the main Loop post) is riveting, well worth your time. If this sort of thing interests you, you might check out this Twitter thread, where Jason tells the story about dropping his MacBook, cracking the screen, and encountering iFixit for the first time.

The pros and cons of moving from a MacBook Pro to an iPad

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Charles Arthur, The Overspill:

A couple of weeks ago, I opened my Macbook Pro as usual. The keyboard lit up, as usual. I waited – there’s that pause while the display gathers itself (it’s a 2012 model) and the processor pulls everything together and presents the login window.

Except this time, nothing. The display didn’t light. There was the quiet sound of the fans going, but nothing. Oh dear. Closed the display, opened it to catch it unawares – no, that wasn’t going to fool it. After a bit more futzing around, I concluded that it was not in the mood to work. But I had work to do, and so I turned to my iPad Pro.

This is a well-written post, from someone who uses a MacBook Pro to maintain a blog. This is particularly interesting to me for the obvious connection to my work writing for and maintaining The Loop.

What I particularly like about this post is the objective list of the good and the bad. All of these comments resonated for me. If you’ve considered what it’d be like to move from MacBook to iPad, I’d encourage you to read this list of good and bad first.

How to transfer your iPhone or Mac Photo library to an external drive

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I think it’s incredibly important to backup your photos onto some form of removable media, tuck it away somewhere safe. This is in addition to your Time Machine or cloud backup.

Personally, I periodically backup all my photos to a single removable drive and store the drive in a safe deposit box.

All that said, this is a terrific article, with detail on prepping for backup, locating all relevant files, importing/moving as needed, and more. Worth reading and passing along.

This 1983 demo says so much about Apple’s past, present, and future

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[VIDEO] Harry McCracken, FastCompany:

On the evening of January 26, 1983, as a technology-smitten Boston University freshman, I attended the monthly meeting of the Boston Computer Society, which included a demo of Apple’s brand-new Lisa system. Though I know that I came away enormously impressed, I don’t exactly recall the event like it was yesterday. Actually, just one element was permanently etched onto my brain cells: the moment when the Lisa’s bitmapped, proportional, user-selectable typefaces flashed on screen. It was a mind-bender given that other PCs–like my beloved Atari 400–were capable only of displaying a single fixed-width font of no elegance whatsoever.

And:

What I didn’t realize until I watched the video is that seeing the meeting all over again wasn’t just an act of personal nostalgia. Between them, the IIe and Lisa, and the way Apple explained them to us BCS members, are full of lessons that remain resonant in the era of the iPhone.

First, read Harry’s article, it’s terrific. Then check the video of the meeting itself, embedded in the main Loop post. It’s a charming time capsule capture of a real moment in time.

Apple, their move to custom chips, and Macs with Apple-built processors

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Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:

Steve Jobs long believed Apple should own the technologies inside its products rather than rely on mashups of components from other chip makers, including Samsung, Intel and Imagination Technologies. In 2008, the company made a small but significant step in that direction by acquiring boutique chip maker P.A. Semi. Two years later, Jobs unveiled the iPad. The world focused on the tablet’s giant touchscreen, book-reading prowess and creativity apps. But the most ground-breaking technology was hidden away inside: the A4, Apple’s first processor designed in-house.

And:

Apple’s push into the complicated and pricey chips business makes sense so long as the company is selling 300 million devices a year.

An interesting read. Lots of solid reasons for Apple to roll their own chips. Cost savings, for sure, but there’s also self-reliance. They can control chip production and act quickly if and when a flaw/vulnerability is discovered.

But most importantly:

So far, only two Mac lines include custom Apple processors: the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar and the iMac Pro. Apple is working on at least three updated Mac models with custom co-processors for release as soon as this year, including updated laptops and a new desktop, according to a person familiar with the plan.

Well, that’s pretty big news. And a logical next step, if true.

Will we see a Mac Pro this year based on Apple silicon? How about a MacBook Pro? Can’t wait.

What I wish the iPad would gain from the Mac

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Ryan Christoffel, MacStories:

If you want an iPad to supplement your iPhone and Mac, you can still get one in the $329 “just call me iPad” model introduced last spring. But the bulk of Apple’s iPad efforts of late have centered on making the device a capable replacement for the traditional computer. The iPad Pro and iOS 11 represent a new vision for the iPad. This vision puts the iPad not next to the Mac, but instead squarely in its place. It’s a vision embodied by the question, “What’s a computer?”

If the tagline “What’s a computer?” doesn’t ring a bell, take a moment to watch it.

Two key moments:

  • At about 30 seconds in, our hero does a super-Pro-move to fold up the keyboard. I’ve not yet found someone who can duplicate that move, at least not nearly as smoothly. Wonder how many takes that took.

  • At 55 seconds in, there’s the real payoff. “What’s a computer?” Apple is clearly pitching the iPad Pro as the be-all and end-all in devices.

Ryan’s MacStories post does a terrific job answering that question, painting the differences between a Mac and an iPad with absolutely no snark or venom. This is a wish list, an exploration of what the iPad still needs to cross the “What’s a computer?” divide.

Apple overhauls App Store web interface with new iOS-like design

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Chance Miller, 9to5Mac:

Apple today has rolled out a major redesign for the App Store web interface. The new redesign replaces the dated and clunky interface that previously housed the App Store on the web

The new redesign takes cues from the all-new App Store in iOS 11, which offers larger images, a focus on curation and reviews, and more. On the new webpage, you’ll see a larger app heading, preceded by “This app is only available on the App Store for iOS devices.”

To see this for yourself, here’s a link to today’s iOS app of the day, MUBI. Open the link on your Mac.

As Chance points out, there’s now a big warning towards the top of the page (blue background) telling you you have to go to the iOS App Store if you want to buy the app.

While the refreshed look is nice, it still feels like a broken marketing link, forcing me to switch devices (from my Mac to my iOS device) and type in the name of the app in an iOS App Store search field to find the app and make a purchase.

And this, from Craig Grannell, in a post entitled Apple’s App Store Preview needs to steal some ideas from Google Play:

It’s 2018. Apple has Apple Pay. If I’m sent to An App Store Preview page after reading an article about an amazing new iOS app, I should be able to buy it there and then, and send it to my iOS devices. Likewise, if I’m on my iPhone, I should be able to buy and send an iPad-only app to my iPad (or vice-versa). I shouldn’t have to remember it later, by sending myself an email or note.

There’s clearly a reason Apple is doing this. But to me, it’s just as clear that this is adding friction to the purchase process.

Safari 11 tips and tricks

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Apple Insider pulls together the details on what’s new with Safari 11 on both iOS and macOS. Don’t miss the video embedded at the top of the Apple Insider post.

How to set up Apple ID unlock on your Mac

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This is a great piece of advice from iMore’s Lory Gil. Follow along to make sure you have Apple ID unlock enabled on your Mac. Read through the rest of the post for related how-to info.

Even if you think you’ll never forget your password, this is a smart backup plan.

UPDATE: Looks like this option is moved, or just plain gone from High Sierra. Working with Lory to figure out the new way to do this, check Lory’s post over the next day or so for an update.

UPDATE 2: Turns out the issue is having FileVault enabled, and not specific to High Sierra. If you have FileVault enabled, have a recovery key, you won’t see the checkbox. Yeesh. Bad interface, I think. Better to have the checkbox in both cases, but dim it if FileVault enabled, with some kind of explainer.

The demise of Transmit and the future of pro level iOS apps

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From the Panic blog, announcing the suspension of the iOS version of the very popular Transmit app:

Transmit iOS made about $35k in revenue in the last year, representing a minuscule fraction of our overall 2017 app revenue. That’s not enough to cover even a half-time developer working on the app. And the app needs full-time work — we’d love to be adding all of the new protocols we added in Transmit 5, as well as some dream features, but the low revenue would render that effort a guaranteed money-loser.

David Sparks from his blog:

Panic has made public statements about how little income they’re making off their pro-level iOS apps, and I really can’t blame them for pulling Transmit if it is losing them money.

What is even more upsetting is that an app of the calibre of Transmit for iOS is a financial failure and none of us are much surprised.

And:

I use Transmit both on my Mac and iOS devices. I don’t recall what I originally paid for Transmit, but I believe it was in the neighborhood of $50. Since then I’ve upgraded twice so let’s say I’ve now given Panic $100 for the privilege of having their app on my Mac.

When I bought Transmit for my iOS devices, I paid $10. That is it. I’ve been using the app for years and all the money Panic ever got out of me was $10, less than I’m going to spend today on lunch.

That’s the issue. Somehow, consoles like Nintendo Switch and the Xbox, as well as the Mac, have avoided the race to the bottom that makes iOS apps want to be free, or dependent on in app purchases. While in-app-purchases make sense for a game, it is a harder sell for a pro-level app.

Panic is pulling Transmit for iOS but keeping the Mac version. Part of the issue is the massive size of the iOS App Store compared to the Mac App Store. The iOS App Store is large enough that it attracts people willing to build something for free just for the experience. And once there’s a free alternative, it becomes exponentially harder to get people to pay for an alternative, even if it is a better experience.

The T2 chip makes the iMac Pro the start of a Mac revolution

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Jason Snell, Macworld:

The T2 processor isn’t doing the heavy lifting in the iMac Pro—that’s the Intel Xeon processor with between 8 and 14 processor cores. The T2 is the brain behind that brain, running the subsystems of the iMac Pro from a single piece of Apple-built silicon. The result is a simplified internal design that doesn’t require multiple components from multiple manufacturers.

Jason does a nice job here, digging into what makes an iMac Pro different than its ancestors. Pay special attention to the section “Boot twice for safety”. Very interesting.

When was the last time you saw a Mac commercial?

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David Gewirtz, writing for ZDNet, made this point about Apple, the Mac, and the emergence of Microsoft’s Surface line:

Think about the Apple of the past, the one fully-focused on the Mac. Would it have allowed Microsoft to gain such innovation ground with the Surface Studio and Surface Book products? Would it have gone years without even processor-bumping its models?

John Gruber, in this post, responded:

I’ve seen this argument made multiple times recently — that Microsoft’s innovative and deservedly well-regarded Surface lineup was only enabled by Apple taking its collective eye off the ball in the PC space. I don’t buy that at all.

There are two Macs that have languished in recent years: the Mac Pro and Mac Mini. Microsoft’s Surface lineup doesn’t have an entry in either of those categories. The Surface lineup is composed of laptops and the iMac-esque Surface Studio.

This is an interesting discussion. For all its fits and starts, the Surface lineup has matured. Microsoft has poured resources into it, both technically and in marketing.

Take a moment to head over to the official Apple YouTube page. Scroll, then scroll some more. The most recent Mac-specific commercial I see is from six months ago, when the iMac Pro was announced.

Look through the mix of commercials, draw your own conclusion.

How to make phone calls with your Mac

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The Mac has long had the ability to use your iPhone to make phone calls. But the setup process has changed over time.

If you are new to the setup, this is a terrific walk-through. And if you are an old hand, still worth a scan, just to get a sense of the newest setting options.

Solving a washed-out display problem

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Adam Engst, TidBITS:

Some months ago, I noticed that something was slightly wrong when I was using Google Chrome. I’d type something in the address bar and get the auto-complete suggestions appearing below, but when I arrowed down to select one of the items in the list, I couldn’t tell which was selected. It was as though I’d lost the gray highlight color.

And:

I normally have the background of BBEdit documents set to a very pale yellow, but they had somehow reverted to white. Plus, Web pages with light backgrounds were also showing with a garish, glaring white. Again, restarting and standard troubleshooting made no difference.

Follow the link for the whole detective story, and a lesson learned about Accessibility settings and keyboard shortcuts.