I’ve always preferred the way the original MacBook and MacBook Pro’s handled the function keys, in particularly the way F9, F10, and F11 are used to enter into Expose and Mission Control.

For a while now the function keys have changed, they default to playing music, adjusting keyboard backlighting, and adjusting volume levels, I like these features but I would rather press the ‘fn’ key to access those since I have grown used to the older way of hitting F10 to enter Expose.

Thankfully this is easily adjustable in Mac OS X, and you can switch Mac function keys to work as standard function keys if you’d like too.

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Property List files, or more commonly known as plist files, are basically Mac application specific preference files. They contain information and settings for various applications and are usually in the easily identifiable format of com.developer.Application.plist and located within the /Library/Preferences/ directories at the system and user level.

If you simply want to view a plist file, you can give it a glance with Quick Look, but what if you want to edit a plist file on the Mac? To properly edit and modify plist files in Mac OS X, you’ll want to get a dedicated app to do so, and fortunately Apple offers one such application which allows for easy safe editing and saving of plist files.

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You can make save a lot of clutter from showing in the Dock of Mac OS X by making applications minimize into their own Dock icon. What this means is that if you minimize an app, rather than having the little thumbnail stay on the right side of the Mac Dock, it will minimize directly into the apps icon instead. Fairly self explanatory and useful, right?

Here’s how to enable this handy little tidy Dock feature, it works in just about every version of Mac OS.

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NameChanger is a free app solution to quickly and easily batch rename files in Mac OS X. It has all the features you’d expect in a batch renaming app, and you can replace occurrences of text in filenames, use wildcards, append text or characters, add dates, make files sequential, and even remove characters, just select your options and you’ll see a live preview as to what the new names will be.

Using it is very easy, you can import files from the app, or use the standard drag-drop support feature. Adjust your parameters for renaming the file(s), and when you’re satisfied with the output of how you want the files to be renamed, all you need to do is click a button and away you go, the files are renamed quickly. There’s even a live preview of the changed names so you can be sure you get things right before initiating the changes.
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You can create a folder that is hidden from the default Finder GUI view by taking advantage of Mac OS X’s unix underpinnings. That probably sounds a lot more complex than it is however, and it turns out it’s actually really easy to make a completely hidden folder on the Mac.

This walkthrough details how to both make the hidden folder, and then how to access it yourself in Mac OS.

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If you want to discover the last time a specific command was used without actually executing it, follow this format at the command line:

!sudo:p

The above example will print back the last usage of the ‘sudo’ command without actually executing it, which is very useful in some situations (like the situation below, where the last time the sudo command was used was deleting everything recursively!). You will see the last used command printed directly below:

$ !sudo:p
sudo rm -rf /var/logs/*

This works with anything, even incomplete commands. Can’t remember that obscure command you used last week, but you know it started with a t? No problem!

!t:p
might print something like this:
time grep -c and rewin.sh

It’s important to note the :p modifier at the end of the command is what is responsible for printing out the command rather than executing it, which is the default behavior for the bash history command ! so if you had just typed !p it would execute the last time a command beginning with ‘p’ was executed, but !p:p will print out the command minus the execution.

I know what you’re thinking, you’re asking yourself “What would Steve Jobs head look like if it was carved out of mozzarella cheese?” right?

Well, here is your answer, from The Cooks Den.

Amazing huh? Someone carved that out of cheese, who would have known that is possible?

Ok, so we like Steve Jobs, and we like mozzarella cheese, so maybe this works out just fine?

I don’t know about you, but it kind of makes me want pizza, and a new Mac.

The resemblence is pretty good, huh?

Anyone good at carving cheese? I don’t even know where to begin.

What would happen if you tried to use the iPad as a skateboard? Well this is the internet, so of course someone asked that question, built an iPad skateboard, and then attempted to ride it, all while filming. File this under the stupid entertainment category, and thanks to 9to5mac for discovering the video. Spoiler: the iPad doesn’t survive.

Would you like to manually choose which graphics card is in use on a MacBook Pro? You can now keep track of which GPU is in use and then manually switch between the two graphics cards included within the MacBook Pro series, thanks to a third party utility called gfxCardStatus. It’s a free app and to be able to switch GPU on the fly all you need to do is download a utility called gfxCardStatus, we’ll show you how it works.

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Can you find a more awesome Mac setup? Check out these machines and their stats, they’re sure to make you envious:

Mac Pro
* Intel Xeon W3540 2.93Ghz Quad Core
* 6GB DDR3 1067 ECC RAM
* ATi Radeon HD 4870
* 1TB OS X
* 640GB Windows 7 64bit
* Dual 23″ Apple Cinema HD Displays

MacBook Pro 15″
* Intel Core 2 Duo 2.53Ghz
* 4GB DDR3 RAM
* nVidia GeForce 9400M / 9600GT 512MB
* 320GB 7,200 Western Digital Black HDD

And of course there’s a set of speakers, a couple external hard drives, and iPod, and an iPhone.

This might just be one of best Mac setups I’ve seen. I certainly wouldn’t mind having that hardware on my desk!

[ via DeviantArt ]

“The operation can’t be completed because an unexpected error occured (error code 0).”

You’re likely to see this error when you are attempting to copy files to an external hard drive that is formatted as FAT. FAT32 is a Windows file system that can be read and written to by Mac OS X.

The problem with FAT32 format is that they can not hold file sizes larger than 4GB, so if you are trying to copy a file that is larger than 4GB to a FAT32 formatted drive you will immediately be presented with the ‘error code 0’ message.

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Where in the US are the highest concentrations of Apple users? A report on Fortune shows us. Here are the top ten US markets for Apple:

* San Francisco / Silicon Valley / Bay Area, CA – Residents are 49% more likely than the average American to be Apple users, no surprise with Apple’s headquarters just down the road in Cupertino.
* Boston, MA – Nearly 1/3 of adults in the Boston area have an iPod, iPhone, or Mac.
* San Diego, CA – 31.8% of the areas residents are Mac users
* New York, NY – 4.9 million Mac users
* Washington, DC – residents are 39% more likely to use a Mac, iPod, or Apple
* Chicago, IL – 2.1 million Apple users
* Denver, CO – 29% of the population are Apple users
* Monterey / Salinas, CA – 28% of the population own or use Apple products
* Santa Barbara / Santa Maria / San Luis Obispo, CA – this beachy region of southern California boasts a nearly 28% Apple user rate
* Las Vegas, NV – 27.9% of adults use an Apple product

Looking at the map is pretty interesting, you can really see the concentration of Apple users is highest around large cities, which is no surprise considering most of the Apple Stores are based in metropolitan areas. California is truly an Apple state, I don’t think I have ever visited a coffee shop or cafe in the Bay Area and not seen a sea of glowing Mac logos. The same is certainly true for many universities, where Mac’s dominate classrooms and campuses.

Want to quickly share a file, test some code, or broadcast something? You can instantly create a web server out of the current directory by using nothing but python, yup, no apache, no nginx, no litespeed, all python, which ships with pretty much every unix variation these days. The command is remarkably simple considering how useful it is, and test it out yourself open up a Terminal window and any web browser.

This trick starts a simple web server instantly with nothing but python, it works in Mac OS X, Linux, FreeBSD, and any other unix platform that has python.

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Updated 5/31/2015: By default, iTunes will automatically launch when any compatible device is connected, be it an iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Nano, whatever.

Having iTunes open itself automatically can be helpful but it can also be annoying, it really depends on your user preferences. If you don’t want this to happen, you can easily turn off the automatic open feature within iTunes with a simple settings adjustment.
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Apple continues to dominate the news cycle, this time with high scores in a consumer satisfaction survey. The survey of 23,400 online shoppers determined that Apple ranks number one among online electronic and computer retailers. Additional bragging rights for Apple include ranking number four overall for consumer satisfaction, behind only Netflix, Amazon and Avon. Impressive stuff!

I have to say that this doesn’t surprise me too much. I’ve had some really positive experiences with Apple lately, it’s one of the few stores I actually look forward to purchasing things from.

CNN via AppleInsider

The Mac OS X Terminal can become slow to launch over time, but there’s an easy solution to speed it up again.

By deleting the Apple System Logs, you can shave the lag in opening and launching new Terminal windows/tabs dramatically, in my case from about a three second delay to instantaneous!

Here’s how to delete the log files and gain your Terminal app launch speed back:

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The latest version of VirtualBox allows you to create a Mac OS X guest host, providing the ability to virtualize different versions of Mac OS X. This is the first official support for Mac OS X running as a VM from VirtualBox, and is part of the latest beta.

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From time to time iTunes can take a very long time to open, typically because it is looking for the music library.

If you find iTunes to be taking a long time to launch, you might try this simple fix seems to resolve the slow application launch issues:

* Launch iTunes

* Immediately hit and hold the “Option” / ALT key

* Select your iTunes Library, on your computer, often located in the user home folder or /Music/iTunes/

* Click OK

iTunes should now but be considerably faster when loading and quitting.

The interesting thing is that you’re loading the same music library as before, so the speedup must be related to a more recent cache being available.

This should work with iTunes on both Mac and Windows.

If you have any other tips to speed up iTunes, share with us in the comments!