Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

I found this helpful hint in the Slashdot comment area this evening and I wanted to pass it along. I would like to be able to give credit to the creator, but I don’t know his or her name. Whoever you are, thanks.

The home and end keys behave differently in Mac OS X than they do Windows. In Windows, to go to the beginning of a line, you press home, and to go to the end, you press end. In OS X, you go to the beginning of the line by pressing command-left arrow, and the end of the line with command-right arrow.

To change the Mac’s home and end keys to behave like Windows, create a text file named ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict (if the folder doesn’t exist, go ahead and create it) and add these lines:

/* Home/End keys like Windows */
{
"\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLine:"; /* home */
"\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLine:"; /* end */
"$\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLineAndModifySelection:"; /* shift + home */
"$\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLineAndModifySelection:"; /* shift + end */
}

Logout and login, and the home and end keys will work like Windows.

These changes appear to work in any OS X GUI app, but they don’t seem to apply to the Terminal. For those of you who are unaware, you can jump to the beginning of a Terminal line using control-a, and the end by pressing control-e.

Making headlines in the Mac world today is this article from the Denver Post about a study conducted by Louisville-based security firm SecureStill. The study concludes that any OS can be attacked, operating systems with current patches are reasonably secure, and operating systems with older patch revisions have the life expectancy of a Hershey bar in a blast furnace before they’re violated.

Ok, that all makes sense. But if you read to the bottom of the article, you’ll notice a detail that raises some questions.

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