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EXPERT ADVICE: Our resident genius solves your Mac and iOS problems

- HOWARD OAKLEY

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You have custom access

Select your Home folder, or any of the standard folders inside it like Documents, and Get Info.

In the lowest of the sections, Sharing & Permissions, does it report that "You have custom access"? Do you know what that means?

Custom access is Apple's jargon to let you know that macOS has set an Access Control List (ACL), in this case to prevent anyone from deleting those folders. If you're good with Terminal, you can use the command.

ls -there to see the details that the Finder is too coy to reveal. But oddly Apple doesn't explain any of this. If you've invested in a utility like TinkerTool System (bresink.com), you can view and change ACLs with ease. While they can get you into trouble if you're not careful, it's frustrating that Apple uses them but doesn't trust us to know about them.

How a processor can reach 1,600%

Q What does CPU % mean in Activity Monitor, and how can it exceed 100%?

by CHRIS PARRY

A Although Apple doesn't provide any A explanation , this figure seems to derive from what's known as active residency, the percentage of processor cycles that each core in the CPU is processing instructions rather than being idle. The number shown is the total of those percentages for each core, so if your Mac has eight cores, the maximum comes to 800%.