The other solar day my daughter was thwart by her math homework . She was plotting x and y coordinate onto a storage-battery grid , but a few of her resolution just did n’t line up . I suggest that we see to it her work , and in the back of my thinker I recalled that there might be a agile path to do that right on my Mac .
The app in question is Grapher , a usefulness you in all likelihood never realize has been installed on your Mac since 2005 . It is one of the unsung heroes of the Utilities booklet . Placed inside the Applications booklet , Utilities is the subfolder where Apple banishes apps that it want to keep as a standard part of OS X without giving them the pic that the main Applications folder supply .
Grapher is , as you might have gotten from the name , a pecker for in writing equivalence . It ’s got a lot of complex modes in both 2D and 3D , but for my daughter ’s simple 8th - grade math problem we used the most canonical of 2D graphs . Type in an equation and Grapher graphs it .
Can we chart it ? Yes we can .
If you did n’t know that Grapher existed , would you make out to look for it ? Such is life in the Utilities leaflet .
Unlike more prima parentage apps such as Calculator and Chess ( both living tumid in coating ) , Grapher must live in the relative obscurity of that subfolder . But it shares space with some pretty dandy apps , including Activity Monitor , one of the apps I practice the most . Activity Monitorkeeps me inform about how my Mac ’s processor , networking , memory , and storage are doing .
Also shining in the Utilities folder : Disk Utility , which lets you initialise and partition magnetic disk as well as make disk images;Migration Assistant , which aids in transferring data from your old Mac to a new model ; andTerminal , the app that give way you access to all the power of the Unix command - line .
Disk Utility is of the essence .
There are still a few eccentric person , though . Keychain Accessis where OS X memory board a lot of keep word , including the 1 from Wi - Fi electronic connection . If your Mac remember the password to a Wi - Fi mesh but you ’ve forgotten it , you’re able to see it up using Keychain Access . Just look for for the access peak ’s name , dawn on the web in the list , and type Command - I or snap theibutton at the bottom of the windowpane . Check the Show Password box at the bottom of the resulting windowpane , enter your Mac report countersign , and the Wi - Fi word will be displayed in plain text .
Grabis a screenshot public utility company that , in the other sidereal day of OS X , was really the only way to get dependable screenshots . It ’s long been surpassed by other utilities and the built - in Command - Shift–3 and Command - Shift–4 crosscut , but it can still be utilitarian on occasion , most especially for its ability to take a screenshot 10 s after you select the Timed Screen command from the Capture card . If you necessitate to shaft a Mac ’s interface into just the right-hand location for a screenshot , that can be useful . I likely use Grab once a class , but it does come in ready to hand .
I use Activity Monitor constantly .
If you ’re very lucky you may findQuickTime Player 7 in your Utilities booklet , too . Thecurrent version of QuickTime Playerlacks all sorts of feature film that the older version still supports , so Apple tolerate it to kick around in the Utilities folder .
But do n’t sympathize with the apps that survive in /Applications / Utilitiestoomuch . After all , it could be worse . Another rabble collection of apps exist in /System / Library / CoreServices / Applications , including the quite useful web Utility , Archive Utility , Screen Sharing , and Wireless Diagnostics . These apps are generally launched from other parts of OS X , rather than by double - clicking , which explains why they ’re so out of sight aside .
