Did Lion devour my cursor?
From what I’ve found when searching online, I’m not the only one who has their cursor periodically disappear in OSX Lion. Once in a while I’ll return to my Mac Mini (my iMac and Macbook Pro never have this problem) and my cursor is nowhere to be found. The mouse or trackpad still works; if you go way down on the screen over the dock the hover affect will work but the cursor is still not visible.
One way I found to bring the cursor back is to zoom the screen. If you don’t already know this, you can zoom in the screen at any time by holding down the ctrl key and scrolling up (or down depending on your system preferences). You can then zoom back to normal again by doing the opposite and, voila! Your cursor is back.
I can’t guarantee that this will work for you but it definitely works for me and I’ve heard from many others who say the same. Hopefully this tip will help you end the frustration of the missing Lion cursor.
Image By Manurguez (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Have you ever had one of your websites become inaccessible on only one of your computers? The site loads up fine on every other machine you try it on but on this one machine, nada. If you try to ping the domain you’ll likely be presented with an ‘unknown host’ error.
If your computer is a Mac you will likely first think to try dscacheutil -flushcache . However, this will not work for you unless you are using an older version of OS X. Now what you’ll have to do is the following:
sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder
In most cases this is what will work for you. I won’t bore you with a lengthy explanation of why. Just try it.
Here’s a fun infographic comparing Apple, the company to apples, the fruit.
A few of my favorite points:
- China produces 44% of the world’s apples and 100% of the world’s Apples
- the average apple weighs about the same as an Apple iPhone 4s (5oz. versus 4.9oz.)
- an iphone 4s is 33.6% glass
Thanks to MBA Online for putting this one together.
Apples to Apple: more similar than you might think
Place your cursor with the mouse
When entering long commands in the terminal, making changes or fixing mistakes in the middle of the command can slow you down. Moving your cursor over one character at a time to get the to point where the change is needed takes too much time! Fortunately on a Mac you can actually use your mouse to position the cursor wherever you want in the current line.
The trick is to hold down the ‘Option’ key while clicking. Move your mouse pointer where you want the cursor and ‘Option-Click’. When doing this the cursor will actually move to that point in the line. I didn’t believe it until I tried it. It really works! Another command line time saver.
Twitter iPhone App
If you’re like me an often come across useful links and tweets in your Twitter feed I can’t recommend this combination enough. I’ve used several different Twitter apps on my iPhones but the app that has one out for me is the actual app from Twitter. The app used to be called Tweetie and was a paid app. However, Twitter bought it in April of 2010 and made it free. Thanks Twitter!
I also use Instapaper to keep track of items on the net that I don’t have time for when I come across them but want to read later. I used Instapaper infrequently prior to using the Twitter iPhone app but since finding the built in integration my Instapaper use has exploded.
It’s so useful to be able to go through my Twitter feed when I’m stuck in a line-up or at a red light and add them to my Instapaper list in a couple taps. Then, when I have a bit more time to kill I can fire up Instapaper the app and read all those juicy items I didn’t have time for previously.
Instapaper iPhone App
Check out the Twitter iPhone App at the iTunes Store
Check out the Instapaper iPhone App at the iTunes Store
Check out the Instapaper site
Check out the Twitter site
