Mac Pranks for April Fools Day

It’s April Fools today, which means the world is full of pranksters and the internet is largely useless and filled with outrageous stuff. We’ll do our part but try to still be useful (sort of), so with this in mind here are some Mac pranks that are fun to pull on April Fools, or any day:

• Fake Kernel Panic – this looks and behaves like a real kernel panic, except it’s not one. This will ruin someones day, so be sure to tell them it’s a joke before they start reinstalling the Mac OS X or calling AppleCare
• Stick things to a MacBook Pro – all Mac portables have built-in magnets that are surprisingly strong. Scissors, pens, coins, ear buds, you name it and it’ll probably stick to their screen
• Engage in Apple Remote Control mischief – unless they are paired, all Apple Remotes will work with all compatible Macs, resulting in immediate mayhem in a room full of Macs
• Take a Screenshot of their Desktop and then set that as their desktop wallpaper – this is hilarious and fools nearly everyone, watch as they try to move icons and windows that are part of the background picture
• Rotate their screen orientation – flip someones monitor 90° or 180° vertically and enjoy the confusion, to make matters more confusing this flips the mouse too
• Invert the display colors – This is quick to implement and reverse, just hit Command+Option+Control+8 and the screen colors will be inverted
• Make Mac OS X look like iOS – not much of a prank and some users will enjoy this, but it might throw someone off

And any prank list wouldn’t be complete without an awesome April Fools Day animated gif from 1996… it’s sparkly and animated, just like the internet and the future!

The above cat picture is from Flickr, minus the incredibly stupid text overlay