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PowerPCFan

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 5, 2022
308
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I bet most of you knew this but if you didn't, typing this turns off indexing:

sudo mdutil -i off /Volumes/drivename (replace drivename with your hard drive name, or drag hard drive icon to Terminal)

It can be really helpful if your PPC machine is lagging after installing a new OS, or after plugging in a USB. Typing this turns off indexing for the drive that you put after /Volumes/

First message sent from my PowerBook G4
640MB RAM
867MHz
Leopard Webkit with Safari 5 RSS
 

eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Aug 31, 2011
29,658
28,433
I bet most of you knew this but if you didn't, typing this turns off indexing:

sudo mdutil -i off /Volumes/drivename (replace drivename with your hard drive name, or drag hard drive icon to Terminal)

It can be really helpful if your PPC machine is lagging after installing a new OS, or after plugging in a USB. Typing this turns off indexing for the drive that you put after /Volumes/

First message sent from my PowerBook G4
640MB RAM
867MHz
Leopard Webkit with Safari 5 RSS
If you use Onyx (for your appropriate Mac OS) you can kill Spotlight entirely.
 

PowerPCFan

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 5, 2022
308
106
If you use Onyx (for your appropriate Mac OS) you can kill Spotlight entirely.
I use Onyx a lot, but I usually use it for making custom login messages :)

Edit: I wouldn't do that because I use it for searching for apps.
 
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If you use Onyx (for your appropriate Mac OS) you can kill Spotlight entirely.

In our house, Spotlight is left be for most of the Macs (it’s, however, just too much for my clamshell iBook running 10.4.11 to handle, so I rely instead on EasyFind), but Dashboard gets the kibosh. (Dashboard, from its inception, makes me a complete crankypants.)
 
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eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Aug 31, 2011
29,658
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In our house, Spotlight is left be for most of the Macs (it’s, however, just too much for my clamshell iBook running 10.4.11 to handle, so I rely instead on EasyFind), but Dashboard gets the kibosh. (Dashboard, from its inception, makes me a complete crankypants.)
Spotlight and me got off to a bad start. First it was it's tendency to sync and hold up the system. That's a pretty big killer with PowerPC, so I struck back and killed the entire enchilada. At the time I was a heavy user of the dock anyway and quite used to the OS9 way of just opening Finder windows (and leaving some of them open). Also, shortcuts such as CMD+SHIFT+A and CMD+SHIFT+U still work. Just type the first few letters, your app is selected, CMD+O to open. Shrug.

At some point though I thought a launcher would do me some good as my hands are usually on the keyboard and I was tired of mousing to the dock. I got in to Quicksilver at that point and on my primary Macs that's what I use (instead of Spotlight). Quicksilver also has the feature of creating app shortcuts. CTRL+F for instance will launch EasyFind.

That's stuck with me even during my Intel transition. On my work Mac however, I'm not so inclined to be disabling things so I stick with Spotlight.
 
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Also, shortcuts such as CMD+A and CMD+U still work. Just type the first few letters, your app is selected, CMD+O to open. Shrug.

Is this Cmd-A and Cmd-U from within Finder? I’m aware of Cmd-Shift for both (being for Applications and Utilities window, respectively), though I’m unfamiliar with just Cmd-only from within Finder, other than to select all items in a window or on the Desktop itself.

At some point though I thought a launcher would do me some good as my hands are usually on the keyboard and I was tired of mousing to the dock. I got in to Quicksilver at that point and on my primary Macs that's what I use (instead of Spotlight). Quicksilver also has the feature of creating app shortcuts. CTRL+F for instance will launch EasyFind.

I really ought to give Quicksilver another go. I briefly trialled it once when the current Mac OS X version was still early in the Leopard days (late ’07/early ’08, as memory serves), but found the setting up for it and tailoring it for my needs was consuming more time than I could set aside (being at university full-time and working two jobs concurrently gave me fleetingly little time back then to tinker with new, everyday productivity software the way I can do now or could do prior to all that). I think the muscle memory of learning to remember which keystrokes could do what in Quicksilver was going to slow me down before it could help me with speeding up the ability for me to work/move faster.

That's stuck with me even during my Intel transition. On my work Mac however, I'm not so inclined to be disabling things so I stick with Spotlight.

Over on the Intel side, such as in High Sierra, I’ve had to disable a lot (starting with Notifications) or alter common-look-and-feel UX elements (like ridding of San Francisco in favour of Lucida Grande) for me to use the system the way I prefer (i.e., as close to Snow Leopard as one is able to bend the more recent macOS versions). One thing about the more recent iterations which bothers the heck out of me is the “green traffic light” no longer means “maximize window to full height/width” (i.e., the “+” when one mouses over), but “go full screen” (with the two triangles) unless one remembers to also hold down Option when clicking it.

I don’t readily know of a way to flip those UI options — much as I don’t know of a way for Preview, TextEdit, and other built-in system utilities to recognize Cmd-Shift-S as “Save as…” and not “Duplicate” or “Save a copy…”. As with the traffic lights, one has to remember to press Cmd-Opt-Shift-S. These are annoying — :cough: — features I’ll never get along with.

tl;dr: “Don’t mess with what’s worked since the Mac OS days, Apple. Oh no, wait, Jony just walked into the UX/UI room, heck it… 🤦‍♀️ ”
 

eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Aug 31, 2011
29,658
28,433
Is this Cmd-A and Cmd-U from within Finder? I’m aware of Cmd-Shift for both (being for Applications and Utilities window, respectively), though I’m unfamiliar with just Cmd-only from within Finder, other than to select all items in a window or on the Desktop itself.



I really ought to give Quicksilver another go. I briefly trialled it once when the current Mac OS X version was still early in the Leopard days (late ’07/early ’08, as memory serves), but found the setting up for it and tailoring it for my needs was consuming more time than I could set aside (being at university full-time and working two jobs concurrently gave me fleetingly little time back then to tinker with new, everyday productivity software the way I can do now or could do prior to all that). I think the muscle memory of learning to remember which keystrokes could do what in Quicksilver was going to slow me down before it could help me with speeding up the ability for me to work/move faster.



Over on the Intel side, such as in High Sierra, I’ve had to disable a lot (starting with Notifications) or alter common-look-and-feel UX elements (like ridding of San Francisco in favour of Lucida Grande) for me to use the system the way I prefer (i.e., as close to Snow Leopard as one is able to bend the more recent macOS versions). One thing about the more recent iterations which bothers the heck out of me is the “green traffic light” no longer means “maximize window to full height/width” (i.e., the “+” when one mouses over), but “go full screen” (with the two triangles) unless one remembers to also hold down Option when clicking it.

I don’t readily know of a way to flip those UI options — much as I don’t know of a way for Preview, TextEdit, and other built-in system utilities to recognize Cmd-Shift-S as “Save as…” and not “Duplicate” or “Save a copy…”. As with the traffic lights, one has to remember to press Cmd-Opt-Shift-S. These are annoying — :cough: — features I’ll never get along with.

tl;dr: “Don’t mess with what’s worked since the Mac OS days, Apple. Oh no, wait, Jony just walked into the UX/UI room, heck it… 🤦‍♀️ ”
Yes, those commands are in Finder and I forgot about SHIFT. I fixed my post.

As to Quicksilver, it installs a lot of options to allow for using it in various apps and on files and scripts and on and on. I just use it to launch apps and occasionally, when lazy to set a desired app up and then drop a file on it so that file opens in the desired app. Just installing it without all those other addons is fine.

The only thing I changed was the keyboard command to call it. I use CTRL+Space. Then just type in the first few letters of the app (or file) and press ENTER (or RETURN) to open. If you're looking for a different app than what pops up, pressing the down arrow will reveal everything it's finding.

I've set the theme to reflect a 'dark mode' but you don't have to. You can just leave it the default gray. It works all the same.

Screen Shot 2022-11-25 at 3.07.32 PM.png
 
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