Which small Mac computer is "best" for KM?

I own a 27-inch iMac. It's rather big and heavy. I'm inclined to purchase a new, smaller Mac so I can take my software (part of which is written in KM macros) on the road in order to demo it to potential users. By doing this I can get feedback on new features without having to drag people to my house or dragging my iMac to other homes and businesses.

I'm likely to purchase a laptop or a Mac Mini. The laptop line got a recent refresh this week, but the Mini is a little stale. But as far as KM goes, are all models equally useful for demoing things? I guess a laptop can use trackpad gestures, while no other model can use that KM feature. Are there other KM features that work only on certain models of Macs?

So you need a portable one, a notebook. KM does not require any abnormal amounts of whatever. So you should be fine with the notebook that is able to run the stuff you need to run. KM is not a factor.

I can confirm that I've been running Keyboard Maestro on a 2015 MacBook (12") with 8GB of RAM, and it runs just fine.

That being said, I'd be looking at a MacBook Air, not a MacBook, since they seem to no longer be made by Apple :slight_smile:

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Thanks for the tip.

Apart from the KM trackpad gesture, I noticed an action (perhaps rudimentary) that works on the Touchpad. Not all Apple laptops have Touchpads.

I did notice several KM actions that work on "the screen". Do these actions work just as well when the screen happens to be an eGPU?

Is it possible that we could see a KM action in the future that uses the Touch ID to verify an identity? Just speculation. Perhaps the low level API for Touch ID is somehow protected from applications but there may still be a public API that an app like KM can use.

You can do that already:

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Maybe I’m not understanding what you mean by ”touch pad”. What Apple laptops DON’T have a touchpad ?

I think, he means “Touch Bar”.

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Yes that's correct. Sorry. "Touch Bar".

Tom, I forgot to say thanks for your tip. Thanks. That looks very interesting. I might put a "do nothing with administrator privileges" kind of action into some of my scripts.

I can confirm that Keyboard Maestro works just fine on my "headless" Macs, although if you are trying to do something like change the screen resolution, that might fail for obvious reasons.

If you want Keyboard Maestro to do something like "Move window the left half of the screen" that will work when connected via VNC, etc. just fine.

Thanks for explaining that.

Not sure if you are teasing me with this, or I just don’t understand what you are trying to say.

Anyway, the AppleScript instruction with adminstrator privileges is an extremely useful one: it allows you to execute shell commands (or other stuff) that require elevated privilegies without passing the password through KM or – possibly worse – modifying the sudoers file.

I wasn't teasing you. I was just thinking I could use any harmless AppleScript command to do nothing except force the user to authenticate. I hope my intent is clear.

Not yet :wink:

Do you want to make the whole macro to be executable only with administrator privileges, independently of the content?

So, that the user can only start/execute the macro as admin?

That sounds like what I want. Although I don't know what the phrase "independent of its content" means. I thought I just wanted a way to ensure at some point during a macro's execution that it's me who triggered it.

You could do some very simple “protection” like this:

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[demo] Password-“protected” Macro.kmmacros (3.7 KB)

or with the AppleScript mechanism from before:

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[demo] Password-“protected” Macro (with AS).kmmacros (3.6 KB)

Please note that both variants are equally insecure, because if someone can run your macro, then normally he has access to your computer and can just remove the actions from the macro.

It might offer some protection if the macro is run remotely.


An alternative would be to just test for the current user:

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[demo] Macro with User Check.kmmacros (2.9 KB)

Hi
I have an iMac27"-5K with the wide keyboard (including numerics)
I have ported some of my KM macros to my MacBook Pro with no problem.
You may however need to redefine shortcut keys that will run macro. I had to, because
I used the F13-F19 keys on the iMac and there are only F1-F12 on the macbookbro.
I find having the Touch Bar a great benefit
One other thing you may need to adjust will be as in my case, some of the mouseactions (like click here (X,Y)from center of found image) may need trimming to hit the right spot, since the screen resolution of the two Mac may not be the same