Thursday, November 27, 2008

OS X Secrets

Awesome Preference Pane of secrets in OS X 10.5, for simple tweaks without using the Terminal from Nicholas Jitkoff maker of my favorite app launcher QuickSilver. Fair warning though, many of the tweaks are not officially supported and as such could cause issues with your system.

Secrets lets you customize many Mac OS settings that are hidden or incomplete.

Many of these values can harm your system if used improperly. Use it at your own risk.

Secrets

[Update] More cool than my first glance, it looks like it exposes not just OS X's undocumented tweaks, but it also exposes tweaks for all your apps. I'm not sure if it searches for all the possible switches in the system or if it's just pulling from an VERY extensive list.

Labels: Apple Mac OS X, OS X 10.5, Tweaks

Article Link posted by Edward at 9:03 AM
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Sunday, November 23, 2008

Mac OS X targeted by Trojan and backdoor tool | Tech News on ZDNet

Not as serious as it may seem, but the hackers do seem to be gaining some ground on OS X.

The Trojan is found on porn websites posing as a codec needed to play video files, a technique used to trick the user into downloading and installing it.

OSX.Lamzev.A is a hacker tool designed primarily to allow attackers to install backdoors in a user's system, according to Intego. However, the company dismissed the tool as a serious threat because a potential hacker has to have physical access to a system to install the backdoor.

Mac OS X targeted by Trojan and backdoor tool | Tech News on ZDNet

Labels: Apple Mac OS X, Security, Trojan Horse

Article Link posted by Edward at 11:42 PM
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Thursday, July 31, 2008

Tech: Disable Data Detectors

via DaringFireball, you can disable data detectors in Apple Mail with this command.

Labels: Apple Mac OS X, Apple Mail, Data Detector

Article Link posted by Edward at 6:28 PM
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Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Apple Mac pilot program at IBM Research

via Roughly Drafted, Interesting article about IBM's experiments in migrating to a less Windows centric work place.

Labels: Apple Mac OS X, IBM, Mac migration

Article Link posted by Edward at 5:01 PM
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OS X Invisible Bit

via Daring Fireball,

The invisible bit is metadata. In the same way that every file and folder has metadata such as created and modified dates, it has a boolean “invisible” bit. Files marked invisible are still readable and writable, they just don’t show up in the Finder or in Open and Save dialogs.

John Gruber also lists various methods for manipulating the invisible bit.

Labels: Apple Mac OS X, Invisible Bit

Article Link posted by Edward at 4:58 PM
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Thursday, March 27, 2008

MacBook Air Hacked Again...

Among an Ubuntu Linux, a Windows Vista, and an OS X laptop, the Apple MacBook Air was the first to be hacked in the CamSecWest hacking contest.

Kind of disappointing considering that OS X is supposed to be more secure.

Labels: Apple Mac OS X, Hack, Security

Article Link posted by Edward at 11:28 PM
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Sunday, January 13, 2008

ZFS on Mac OS X is now here

via OSNews.com it looks like a fully read / writable ZFS port ( with a few kinks )has arrived for OS X. It's in sync now with the Solaris version of ZFS, but is still not bootable for OS X. It'll be interesting to see how Apple will leverage ZFS in the future.

Labels: Apple Mac OS X, ZFS

Article Link posted by Edward at 12:57 AM
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Thursday, January 03, 2008

Printing Return Mailing Labels in OS X

1) Create a new document from a Template.
2) Select the 'Labels' template.
3) Check the Address box;
Type your return address;
Select 'Sheet';
Select your type of Label.
4) Select 'Entire page' in the Options tab; click New Document.
5) Print your labels.

Alternatively you can print labels from the AddressBook program. However, there is no way to repeat a single address. So you will need to create a while bunch of contacts with the same address and select them all to print.

Labels: Apple Mac OS X, Mailing Labels, Tips

posted by Edward at 12:51 PM
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Thursday, December 13, 2007

Interview with Nicholas Jitkoff ( Quicksilver )

Nice interview with Nicholas Jitkoff who wrote Quicksilver. There's a very interesting Google Tech Talk presentation by Nicholas in the article as well.

Quicksilver is one of my favorite Mac applications. It is hard to describe what it does because it can do so much but at the same time stay completely out of your way. It in short acts like a better Spotlight. The plugin system allows you to extend it's functionality to almost search for and do anything you want.

Labels: Apple Mac OS X, Nicholas Jitkoff, Quicksilver

Article Link posted by Edward at 7:23 PM
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Thursday, November 15, 2007

NTFS for OS X

via Uneasy Silence, Paragon Software Group has great solution if you need Read / Write access to a NTFS drive from your Mac:

Paragon NTFS for Mac

Labels: Apple Mac OS X, NTFS on Mac

Article Link posted by Edward at 3:06 PM
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Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Tech: Remote Desktop Connection client for Mac Beta 2

A new beta for the Mac version of Remote Desktop Connection client was released Oct. 31. Windows RDC is very useful and has always performed pretty well both on a LAN and over the internet. Beta 2 adds various bug fixes as well as the ability to open multiple sessions at the same time.

If you have Windows machines you need to manage remotely, check it out.

Labels: Apple Mac OS X, Microsoft RDC, Remote Desktop Connection

Article Link posted by Edward at 3:05 PM
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Saturday, November 10, 2007

Tech: Combining Multipart DMG files

If you have a series of multipart .dmg files you want to combine, all you need is OS X's built in Disk Utility; in fact there is no need to 'combine' the image files at all. Just make sure all your .dmg and .dmgpart files are in the same folder, then you can perform your standard 'burn' or 'restore' functions on the .dmg file. The .dmgpart segments will be automatically incorporated.

Alternatively you can use C-Command's DropDMG to combine or burn your images.

Labels: .dmgpart, Apple Mac OS X, Disk Utility, Segmented DMG

posted by Edward at 12:23 PM
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Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Tech: Quicksilver now Open Source!

TUAW.com reports that Quicksilver is now open source. If you haven't tried Quicksilver before, I highly recommend trying it out. Quicksilver is basically does what Spotlight does, but better.

I primarily use Quicksilver to launch programs, but the extremely flexible plugin system and huge list of plugins provide tons of extra feature to Quicksilver. You assign a hotkey to Quicksilver, and after that it allows you to launch a multitude of tasks from just a few key strokes.

MacRumors has a nice guide to the intricacies of using Quicksilver.

Labels: Apple Mac OS X, Free software, Mac Apps, Open Source, Quicksilver

Article Link posted by Edward at 5:38 PM
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Tech: Leopard Trojan / Phishing fix

Last week the net was swamped with reports of a new Mac malware, the OSX.RSPlug.A Trojan Horse. Macworld has a detailed report on what it does and how to remove it.

From MacWorld:

1. In the Finder, navigate to /Library -> Internet Plug-Ins, and delete the file named plugins.settings. Empty the trash. This deletes the tool that sets the rogue DNS Server information.


2. In Terminal, type sudo crontab -r and provide your admin password when asked. This deletes the root cron job that checks the DNS Server settings. You can prove it worked by typing sudo crontab -l; you should see the message “crontab: no crontab for root.”


3. Open your Network System Preferences panel, go to the DNS Server box, and copy the entries you can see to a Stickies note, TextEdit document, or memorize them. Now retype those same values in the box, then click Apply.


4. Reboot your Mac.

Bottom line is to follow typical 'safe computing' guidelines...

As always, the best way to avoid these things is to not install software from untrusted sources—especially if it comes as an installer package and requests your administrator’s password! But if you do get infected, at least you’ll know how to confirm you have an issue, and remove the troublesome software.

Labels: Apple Mac OS X, Malware, Security, Trojan Horse

Article Link posted by Edward at 11:01 AM
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Tech: OS X move bug

Be careful when you are 'moving' files to external or network drives. The following article demonstrates a particularly nasty bug if you lose connection to the destination drive during a move operation. File that were in the process of being moved will be lost.

Until Apple fixes this, you should copy your files and then manually delete the source instead of using the 'move' command in the Finder.

Labels: Apple Mac OS X, Apple Mac OSX Leopard, Bug, Finder

Article Link posted by Edward at 10:17 AM
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