I’ve had my new MacBook Pro since right before Christmas last year. That’s roughly four months. I finally got around to setting the default font size on the terminal application to a size that I can read without having to lean forward. Font sizes are expressed in points. 72 points is supposed to be an inch but characters are drawn on the screen by turning pixels on or off. The problem occurs when the number of pixels per inch changes, typically becoming greater. Then where there were say 2 pixels per point before there are now 3 or 4 pixels per point. If the program hasn’t been written to be aware of the different pixel densities between models of computer, the font appears smaller than it should on the newer computer.
I knew all of this, but I just couldn’t be bothered to take a couple of minutes to figure out where the preference setting was to change the default font setting on my computer. Now that I have, using the terminal program is a lot more comfortable.
That isn’t the only thing that I haven’t taken advantage of much yet. For example, the latest version of MacOS has a feature where you can split your screen between two applications, one taking up the left half of the screen the other taking up the right half of the screen. This is an ideal way to read directions on a web page with the browser in one half of the screen and follow them with another program on the other half of the screen, An instance from earlier today will show what I mean.
I was using the Python programming environment called Spyder, I needed to look up a detail about the language. Instead of switching back and forth between the two applications I put Spyder on the left side of the screen and Safari (the Apple web browser) on the right. That way, I could see both the Python manual in the browser and the program that I was writing at the same time.
There are a lot of things like that in our fast paced technological world. We learn to do something one way with our computer or phone or whatever. Then when they add a convenience feature we don’t even think to use it until long after we’ve upgraded our device.
Perhaps the point is, we should take a little bit of time every now and then to explore the features of our devices. We might find that they are even more useful than we knew.
Sweet dreams, don’t forget to tell the ones you love that you love them, and most important of all, be kind.