You can use QuickLook from inside ‘Open File’ dialogue boxes in any application! Try it out yourself, go to File -> Open File and hit the Spacebar (or whatever hot-key you assigned QuickLook) on an image or text file, and like magic QuickLook opens the file in preview mode so that you can be sure … Read More

Stacks is nice but it has long needed a scrollable list view option… well it actually has one it’s just hidden! Here’s how to enable the Stacks list view, which is now my new favorite way to use Stacks. Launch the Terminal and type the following commands: defaults write com.apple.dock use-new-list-stack -bool YES killall Dock … Read More

There are two ways to enable the root super user account in Snow Leopard, the first is probably the quickest. Launch the Terminal and type the following command: sudo passwd root You’ll be asked for the admin password, then you’ll have to set a password for the root account. When you’re finished, the root account … Read More

In a move that has surprised many, Apple has decided to open source their multiprocessor task management technology known as Grand Central Dispatch. This comes as a surprise because the technology has barely gotten into the hands of customers through 10.6 Snow Leopard, and it’s widely considered to be a competitive advantage. So why would … Read More

While geeking around I discovered another way to check if your Mac is 64 bit compatible by using the command line. Launch terminal and type “sysctl hw |grep 64bit” Here’s me using the command on my MacBook which does not have a 64 bit processor: $ sysctl hw |grep 64bit hw.cpu64bit_capable: 0 on my friends … Read More

Disabling Spotlight in Snow Leopard is pretty easy, launch the Terminal and type the following command: sudo mdutil -a -i off This tells the Spotlight manager to disable all indexing on all volumes, the command will require your administrative password to execute. Re-enabling Spotlight in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is just as easy, … Read More

We know that Snow Leopard added some features to Mac OS X, but what about the things that Snow Leopard took away? Waffle has an updated list of things known to be removed from Snow Leopard, and there’s some interesting stuff on there. Here’s what I found to be most interesting (and surprising) that was … Read More

By default, Mac OS X Snow Leopard boots using a 32 bit kernel. You can force Snow Leopard 10.6 to use the 64 bit kernel by holding down the “6″ and “4″ keys during system boot. Likewise, you can switch back to the 32 bit kernel by holding down “3″ and “2″ during system boot. … Read More

Last week we wrote that some people thought of Snow Leopard as a disappointing upgrade because there wasn’t a new GUI included in it, specifically the ‘marble’ interface that has been speculated to exist for a while now. Those of us that have installed iTunes 9 may have noticed that the new iTunes application features … Read More

So you want a small lightweight portable Mac OS X machine, the closest thing Apple has in this area is the MacBook Air which is $1600 or more. No doubt about it, the MacBook Air is a great machine but I don’t want to spend anywhere near $1600 for another laptop when I already have … Read More