Main: Apple: Mac OS X Hints:
 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |  |
10.5: Repair Time Machine after logic board changes
A little-known fact about Time Machine is that it depends on the MAC address of a computer to tell one system from another. This means that if you have your Mac repaired with a new logic board, or replace your system with a new one, you can't resume backups where you left off. If you know of the problem, though, it's not very hard to fix. You need to re-pair the backup to the new logic board's MAC address. Further complicating matters is the ACL which prevents you from changing the system ID information.
Create completely hidden accounts in 10.5 and 10.4.11
Those who manage large installed bases of Macs need to maintain one or more local administrative accounts on the machines, for remote administration, maintenance or troubleshooting. But, it can be undesirable to list an obvious administrator account in the Loginwindow; that same account hangs in the Fast User Switching menu, and in the Accounts Preference Pane. What to do?
Enable iSightCapture in 10.4.10+ and 10.5
A security fix in Leopard and 10.4.10 prevents the app iSightCapture from working unless it is run by the console user. Here is a workaround to get things going again. Create a simple AppleScript with the following command as the entire file:
Delete stuck outbound messages from Mail
I recently bought my parents a Mac mini, their first Mac. They like it, but unfortunately, only have access to the Internet over dial-up. They will often find that a message gets stuck in the outbox, and rather than wait for it to (eventually) send, they would rather just remove it. You can click on the message and hit the Delete button, but the message count for the outbox doesn't change. If you quit and restart Mail, the messages are still there. What does work is to remove the messages via the shell:
Ease shell operations using a spreadsheet
Diehard Unix gurus are going to be shocked to see Excel and the Unix shell mentioned in the same hint. Yet this can prove a very powerful combination for the average user. Unix gurus should read on, too. Say you want to remove a bunch of files from different locations in your file system, for instance, temporary files. The Unix way of doing things would be:
10.5: Send messages to offline contacts in iChat
I've checked iChat's built-in help, as well as Apple's site and couldn't find anything that has mentioned this. In Leopard, iChat has a sort of built in 'answering machine' that I hadn't noticed before. It works like this:
Temporarily override alignment guides in iWork
When I'm laying out photos to be printed, I normally use Pages to set them to the size and position I want. So it's a major annoyance that once there's a lot of stuff on the page, the picture I'm dragging will snap to the automatic alignment guides all the time -- so I'm forced to use the arrow keys for fine control.
Preview Quartz Composer (.qtz) files in Safari
I was hunting for a very specific screensaver the other day online, and was thrilled to find a direct link to the Quartz Composer (.qtz) file in question. So I clicked on the URL in Safari, expecting it to start downloading, and was pleasantly surprised when Safari began rendering the screensaver from directly within the active Safari window. Nice one!
Take steadier pictures and easier self-portraits on iPhone
Some times when I take a picture on my iPhone, the force of my finger hitting the snapshot button makes the iPhone move slightly at the last second and cause blur in the picture. To make it much easier to prevent this from happening, just hold your finger down on the camera icon before you steady the iPhone. As long as you keep your finger held down, it won't take the picture. Steady the phone, release your finger from the icon, and the picture will be taken.
Fix error 0xe00002c9 when mounting disk images
Recently I re-intalled Tiger from scratch on my old iBook G3. I let Apple's Software Update download all the relevant updates, and after the necessary restarts, I tried to mount a disk image. To my surprise, both the Finder and the Disk utility came up with an error (0xe00002c9) and refused to mount the disk image. I tried other disk images with the same result.
Order iChat's Window menu Command key shortcuts
I noticed this when I was helping my sister with iChat. She closed her AIM buddy list window and was unsure where the command was to open it -- it's faster just to ask me than dig around, it seems. So my first response was hit Cmd-1 (I'm training her to use the keyboard), the shortcut for Window ยป AIM Buddy List, but it didn't work. So I discovered that on her machine it was Command-2, while on mine, it was Command-1. Through this, I discovered that it's possible to change the value without doing anything in System Preferences.
10.5: Force Spotlight to index old Mail messages
I'm not sure if this is a 10.4 problem as well as 10.5, but it's something I've only just noticed.
Automatically file email in Mail based on sender's domain
While I'm a huge fan of Smart Folders in Mail, I've possibly been abusing them and not filing my mail at all. Once I had around 10,000 messages in my inbox, I decided that it was time to do something about it. Ideally, I'd have multiple sub-folders, such as Clients and Vendors, and then in these folders, I'd have Client Name A, Client Name B... and Vendor Name A, Vendor Name B, etc.
10.5: Hide the Time Machine volume in the Finder
I don't like to have icons cluttering my desktop. I have figured out a way to remove the Time Machine volume icon from the Finder without affecting Time Machine. I want other external drives to be visible, so the Finder's preferences are of no help here. Apple actually provides everything needed. I will explain how to remove the volume for Finder using Developer Tools, and without having Developer Tools installed (like me). Please note that Time Machine Volume refers to the volume Time Machine is backing up to, or any volume you would like to hide.
Announce incoming Mail message senders
Instead of a simple ding sound, it's possible to have Mail tell you a little more about incoming messages using speech synthesis. Create the following AppleScript in Script Editor:
Use iPhoto's Mail button to make image thumbnails
I often find myself wanting to FTP a photo so I can use it in my blog. I take my photos using a 6MP digital camera and store them in iPhoto.
Get a true Windows XP disc by using VirtualPC
I know there are hints here (1, 2) to turn the XP installation that came with VirtualPC into a usable disc for Boot Camp and/or Parallels.
10.5: One possible solution for Back to my Mac issues
Like many others, I've had trouble getting 'Back to my Mac' working. However, I noticed that If I connect my home computer (iMac) to my iDisk before leaving home, I'm then able to see/connect to it from any remote location from my MacBook Pro.
An AppleScript to send from NetNewsWire 3.1.1 to Tumblr
Here's an Applescript that sends the currently selected headline from NetNewsWire 3.1.1 to Tumblr. It does little error checking, and requires the user to create a new keychain key for http://www.tumblr.net, as there is some issue with the .com domain that I haven't figured out yet.
10.5: Another way to archive Time Machine backups
I recently updated my updated my MacBook with new hardware. I used Disk Utility to 'restore' my old drive onto the new drive. This worked great, except that Time Machine uses the MAC address to uniquely track Time Machine backups. Perhaps there is a way to convince TM to use my existing TM backup, but I couldn't find an easy way (if you know, please comment). However, I wanted to preserve my older backups.
| | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | |
