We’ve all become accustomed to opening web pages in separate tabs in Safari, Google Chrome, and Firefox. In OS X 10.9 Mavericks, Apple gave us the capability to open different folders in tabs in Finder windows, making it easy to work in multiple folders with limited screen real estate.

In macOS 10.12 Sierra, Apple has gone one step further, building tab support system-wide so you can open windows in tabs in most Mac apps. Tab support is ‘free’ in apps, developers don’t need to do anything to support it and you won’t need to download an update to take advantage of it in most of your apps. So how do you get started with tabs and how can you use them in your everyday work?

First, to determine whether Sierra was able to add tab support to a particular app, look in the app’s *View* and *Window* menus. If you see *View > Show Tab Bar* and tab-related commands in the Window menu you’re good to go.

Next, if *Show Tab Bar* doesn’t have a checkmark in the *View* menu, choose it to reveal the tab bar, which appears between the app’s main toolbar and the document itself. You’ll see a tab for the current document or window, and (in most apps) a + button at the right side of the tab bar.

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One final setup step: By default, documents open in separate windows. To make them open in tabs, open *System Preferences> Dock*, and choose always from the *Prefer tabs when opening documents* pop-up menu. This setting applies to both existing documents and those you create by choosing *File > New*. Now that you have everything configured, here is what you can do:

**Create a new, empty tab**:

Click the + button in the tab bar

**Move between tabs**:

1. Click the desired tab
2. Choose Window > Show Next Tab or Show Previous Tab
3. Press the control-tab (next) or control-shift-tab (previous) keyboard shortcuts
4. Choose Window > Tab Name

**Merge multiple windows into tabs in one window**:

1. Drag a document’s tab from one window’s tab bar to the tab bar window in another window
2. Choose Window > Merge All Windows

**Move a tab to it’s own window**:

1. Drag the tab out of it’s tab bar until it becomes a thumbnail of the document
2. Choose Window > Move Tab to New Window

**Rearrange the order of the tabs**:

Drag a tab to the desired position

**Close a tab**:

1. Hover over the tab to see the X button at the left side of the tab; click the X
2. Choose File > Close Tab
3. Press Command-W

Getting used to tabs may require a little adjustment, but if you configure your Mac to always prefer tabs when opening documents, using tabs will quickly become second nature just as it likely did for you in web browsers.

_Dear Friends,_

I heard about sliding trucks and cars as ice coated the roads in Vermont. Just sunshine down here in Key West, though. I have been working on putting in a drip irrigation system for my plants in my yard and decided to check out the Rachio controller. It is a pretty slick device that you control with your iPhone or iPad that uses local weather reports to make sure you aren’t watering in the rain. I haven’t quite gotten it to work yet but I will report on that newest addition to my smart home.

We are continuing to support local hunger organizations both in Vermont and in the Keys so every time you buy from Small Dog Electronics we are making a contribution to the Vermont Food Bank or the SOS Mission here in Key West. I hope we have to write a big check on December 31 when this promotion is over.

Grace and I went up to Miami on Monday for our annual Miami Heat/Boston Celtics game which the C’s won handily. We stocked up on some food at Whole Foods on the way back to Key West. I love watching Grace use Apple Pay with her Apple Watch. For some reason she thinks she has to contort her arm as she waves it in front of the terminal. I love Apple Pay with the Watch, cashiers and other customers are still amazed at the magic.

This week’s “**Kibbles & Bytes Exclusive**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002499/ is the hard to find 128GB 9.7-inch iPad Pro with Wi-Fi and Cellular in Space Gray. This week we have a special bundle on this iPad that includes the Apple Pencil and the Smart Keyboard. Exclusively for Kibbles & Bytes readers this bundle is $80 off at “**$999.99!**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002499/

A reader of my last article pointed out a bit of a mistake on my part in saying that we generally don’t create AC electromagnets. When I said that, I was thinking of strictly electromagnets in the basic sense of the word. While AC electromagnets are always going to suffer from magnetic hysteresis (which can be reduced through materials and engineering), the changing of the poles is often not an issue since the electromagnet may be attracting something that itself is not a magnet. So the object would be attracted the same to either a north or a south pole. A solenoid is an electromagnet that pulls a metal plunger into its center. Since the plunger is likely not magnetic itself, it’s not necessary for solenoids to be powered by DC.

I was actually on vacation two weeks ago and when I’m relaxing at home, I often find myself watching youtube videos about interesting older technologies or just computer/electronics engineering type stuff. I saw one video in particular last week that was very interesting. It was explaining a very old type of computer memory called **delay line memory**. Well, old to me, I was born in 1988. Delay line memory would’ve been commonly used in computers starting in the late 1940s. The video on youtube was only marginally able to explain how it worked so I won’t try here, but it raised an interesting point about where all of our solid-state, semiconductor digital components came from.

These days, if you want solid state memory (RAM, NVRAM, etc) it’s an almost trivial affair. I have a micro SD card sitting on my desk at home that’s smaller than a penny and can store 64GB of data and has read/write speeds in excess of 100mbps. This is achieved largely through our ability to create microscopic devices called floating-gate MOSFETs (Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect-Transistors). These devices work by essentially keeping a charge stored for extended periods of time and they can be manufactured at incredibly small sizes. That’s the power of semiconductors for you!

But before we had devices like that, we actually used what I’ve been discussing in the past few articles here: induction. Magnetic core memory was initially developed in the late 1940s and was the preferred computer RAM up until about 1975. Magnetic core memory works by using lots and lots of little toroids (metal rings) with wires running through and around them. Through induction, the toroids can be “set” as having a magnetic field, or not having one (1s and 0s). By assembling the toroids in a grid or cube, you can have a nice “compact” block of memory. The grid pattern allows for an organized method of reading and writing chunks of data to the memory.

Because core memory uses simple magnetics as the storage mechanism, it’s actually a form of NVRAM (non-volatile RAM) which means the data persists even when the device is powered down. Flash drives and SSDs are examples of NVRAM. Core memory is also largely unaffected by electromagnetic pulses and ionizing radiation. For this reason, core memory was used past the 1970s on spacecraft including the space shuttle. Flight data recorded to core memory survived the explosion of the Challenger shuttle. Modern memory used in spacecraft is generally “radiation hardened” using insulating substrates, bit correction, shielding, or redundancy. Magnetoresistive RAM (MRAM) is a newer technology that promises to be more radiation resistant.

I think this article ended up being kind of a 30,000-foot view of this topic, and I’ve had to drop in some new terms and descriptions without complete explanations (transistors, semiconductors, etc). I might use next week to elaborate on some of these subjects. As always if there’s a topic you’d like me to explore, drop me an email!

As you are considering your end of year purchases, don’t forget to take into account section 179 deductions that may be available to your business. The tax code often allows you to deduct the full cost of equipment now, even as you’re paying for it over the next couple of years. So if you purchase or lease a $25,000 piece of equipment, tax savings could effectively reduce the cost to $16,250 ( assuming 35% tax bracket ). Contact your tax professional today to see how you can benefit from Section 179 so that you can plan your end-of-year purchases before time runs out! Contact “Rob Amon”:mailto:rob@smalldog.com or “Tony Amenta”:mailto:tony@smalldog.com to discuss these kinds of purchases further.