macOS

Window Positioning

Rectangle

Rectangle is a free and open source window tiling software for macOS. It adds native windows snapping similar to Windows. It also adds a variety of shortcuts for more customizations. [7]

Shortcuts:

  • control + option + [left|right] arrow = Move a window to be on half of the screen.

Rosetta

Rosetta 1

Rosetta 1 was used to run PowerPC programs on Intel. It was provided in MacOS X 10.4 Tiger through 10.6 Snow Leopard. [3]

Rosetta 2

Rosetta 2 is used to run Intel programs on Arm. It was first added to macOS 11 Big Sur. [4] When an Intel program is executed, macOS will prompt the end-user to install Rosetta 2 if it is not installed already. [5]

Manually install Rosetta 2:

$ softwareupdate --install-rosetta

Enter an Intel-compatible shell on the CLI [6]:

$ arch-x86_64 zsh

Xcode

Xcode Developer Tools is a suite of different utilities for doing development on macOS. It can be installed from the App Store.

Common utilities [1]:

  • Command Line Tools = awk, git, make, sed, ssh, svc, tar, zip, and more.

  • SwiftUI = A user interface designer for Swift programs.

  • Terminal 2 = An advanced Termanial app that supports more colors, additional tabs, and full Unicode support.

  • Xcode IDE = A custom IDE tailored for development of apps on Apple products.

Homebrew

Homebrew is an unofficial package manager for macOS.

  • Install: /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

  • Search for a program to see if it can be installed: brew search <PACKAGE>

  • Update cached repository metadata: brew update

  • Install a CLI utility: brew install <APP>

  • Install a GUI app: brew install --cask <APP>

  • Upgrade a package: brew upgrade <PACKAGE>

  • Upgrade all packages: brew upgrade

  • View all programs, and their dependencies, installed by Homebrew: brew list

  • View only the programs, not their dependencies, that were installed by Homebrew: brew leaves

[2]

History

Bibliography

  1. “Xcode - Features.” Apple Developer. Accessed January 12, 2021. https://developer.apple.com/xcode/features/

  2. “Homebrew The Missing Package Manager for macOS (or Linux).” Homebrew. Accessed January 13, 2021. https://brew.sh/

  3. “ARCHIVED: In Mac OS X, how do I run PowerPC applications with Rosetta?” University Information Technology Services. January 18, 2018. Accessed July 5, 2023. https://kb.iu.edu/d/azjd

  4. “Apple ARM Macs: What you need to know now.” July 15, 2020. Accessed July 5, 2023. https://www.computerworld.com/article/3566912/apple-arm-macs-what-you-need-to-know-now.html

  5. “If you need to install Rosetta on your Mac.” Apple Support. June 26, 2023. Accessed July 5, 2023. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211861

  6. “How to Install x86_64 Homebrew Packages on Apple M1 MacBook.” Medium. July 26, 2021. Accessed July 5, 2023. https://medium.com/mkdir-awesome/how-to-install-x86-64-homebrew-packages-on-apple-m1-macbook-54ba295230f

  7. “How to get true window snapping in MacOS.” ZDNET. July 5, 2023. Accessed July 31, 2023. https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-get-true-window-snapping-in-macos/