Fortune Magazine has named Steve Jobs the CEO of the decade, and it’s a pretty fitting title really, the guy is a powerhouse. Nearly 10 years ago Apple was struggling to find their place in the technology world, there were rumors of collapse and impending bankruptcy or buyouts, the first release of Mac OS X (10.0) was a slow cumbersome dud, and they had just entered an extremely crowded MP3 player market with a seemingly overpriced product with a weird name, the iPod. Apple stock at the time was right around $7. Now fast forward to today, where the iPod is the only MP3 player people talk about, the iPhone is taking over the cellular world, and Apple’s market capitalization is greater than Google’s, with their stock sitting comfortably at $193. CEO of the decade? After pulling all that off, that might be an understatement.

Here’s the readers digest version as to why they think Steve Jobs is so remarkable, summarized in the articles first paragraph:

Youthful founder gets booted from his company in the 1980s, returns in the 1990s, and in the following decade survives two brushes with death, one securities-law scandal, an also-ran product lineup, and his own often unpleasant demeanor to become the dominant personality in four distinct industries, a billionaire many times over, and CEO of the most valuable company in Silicon Valley.

As a longtime Apple fan I think the article leaves out some of the other obvious and important contributions, but I can’t argue with much of what they do cite. If you’re a part of the Cult of Jobs, or just a fan of Apple, the Fortune article is worth a read:

Fortune: Steve Jobs – CEO of the Decade

It’s baaaaaack! Like a relentless zombie in a bad horror flick that just can’t be killed, the Intel Atom chip is now supported again in the latest developer build of 10.6.2, 10C53. This doesn’t mean much since it’s just a developer build, but for now Hackintosh Netbook users can feel a bit better about their uncertain future. StellaRolla reports:

…the latest development build Atom appears to have resurrected itself zombie style in 10C535. The Atom lives another day, but nothing is concrete until the final version of 10.6.2 is out.

So that’s all fine and dandy, but will the Atom truly survive? Time will tell.

Thank you to OS X Daily reader Tony for notifying us of this change!

[ StellaRolla via ArsTechnica ]

Even if you have the Mac Dock icon magnification turned off in your system preferences of Mac OS X, you can still force Dock icons to magnify on the fly by using a simple keystroke.

This can be a helpful trick if a Mac Dock is set to be small and you want a better look at something, or perhaps you just want a better view of an icon before you select it.

Read more »

Anyone fascinated by the mystique of Apple should check out the CultOfMac.com interview with a man you’ve probably never heard of, Ken Segall. His claim to fame? He named the iMac, and was in charge of that whole ‘Think Different’ campaign. With how ubiquitous the iBranding has become, I find it really interesting that Steve Jobs didn’t like the iMac name at all and rejected it on several occasions, but started using it anyway:

“He rejected it twice but then it just appeared on the machine,” Segall says, laughing. “He never formally accepted it.”

Ken Segall then worked for Dell of all places, and he doesn’t exactly go out of his way to praise his more recent employer when comparing them to Apple:

“Dell and Apple: It’s night and day,” Segall says. “It’s a transactional world Dell lives in. It’s all about numbers. Everything they say about Apple making products for themselves is true. Apple — it’s about changing the world. For everyone else, it’s about the money.”

He also has a funny statement on his blog saying that “Dell is a company that really wants to be edgy.”

Does anyone else get the feeling that this guy just wants to work for Apple again? Anyway, read the interview, it’s a fascinating look into Apple company culture.

CultOfMac: Interview: The Man Who Named the iMac and Wrote Think Different

Note: Ken Segall was kind enough to correct our post here via the comments, he never actually worked for Dell, only their ad agency. The interview is still a great read, carry on.

You can use Spotlight as a calculator on the Mac, and it actually works impressively well. Yes, the Spotlight search feature can do calculations!

While many longtime OS X users probably know this, there are tons who are new to the Mac who aren’t aware that Spotlight is so robust, so the next time you need to quickly solve an equation, perform a calculation, or add up a handful of numbers for taxes, try using Spotlight Search on the Mac as a calculator to solve the equation. Here’s exactly how it works.

Read more »

TechCrunch is reporting that the blackra1n Jailbreak lets iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS owners running iPhone OS 3.1.2 use internet tethering. This is good news since Internet Tethering was recently killed off by the 3.1 update, but it’s bad news because now it’s pushing users to Jailbreak their iPhones in order to get a feature that used to be (and should be) included in the iPhone. Why AT&T is being so stubborn with the iPhone Internet Tethering capabilities is beyond me, I’m sure they’re just trying to figure out a way to charge us even more for it.

If you don’t mind jailbreaking your iPhone, go ahead and follow the very easy instructions on TechCrunch to enable internet tethering with iPhone OS 3.1.2:

BlackRa1n Jailbreak
TechCrunch: Tether an iPhone 3G/S with Jailbreak

Update: Apple has fixed the exploit!

I imagine this will get fixed relatively quickly, but you can do some funny (and potentially scary) things with Apple.com’s iTunes Affiliate sites just by modifying the URL parameters. The modified Apple.com URL is formed as follows:
http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/download/?artistName=OSXDaily.com&thumbnailUrl=https://cdn.osxdaily.com/wp-content/themes/osxdaily-leftalign/img/osxdailylogo2.jpg&itmsUrl=https://osxdaily.com&albumName=Best+Mac+Blog+Ever

Click here for the OSXDaily.com version of the XSS exploit on Apple.com – it is safe, it just displays what’s in the above screenshot.

You can put whatever you want in the URL by changing the text and image links, which has led to some extremely funny hacked versions of Apple’s iTunes website. Other users have further modified the URL to be able to include other webpages, javascripts, and flash content via iFrames of other sites, which opens the door for all sorts of problems. At this point it’s only funny because nobody has used it for nefarious purposes, but if the hole is open for too long don’t be surprised if someone does. OS X Daily reader Mark sent this tip in with a modified link that opened a series of popup windows and had an iframe displaying less than savory content, displayed under the apparent (although hacked) Apple.com branding, and that is exactly the kind of thing that needs to be avoided. Let’s hope Apple fixes this quickly.

Here are some more screenshots showing what the URL modification in action, preserved for posterity:

Here’s one taking the Windows 7 joke even further by inserting an iframe with the Microsoft site into the content:

[ Reader submission found via Reddit: Apple XSS Exploit – Thanks Mark! ]

The Mac OS X Dock becomes animated when an app is launching, with a continuous bouncing animation, and also when an app wants to get your attention, with a less consistent and more urgent animated bounce. Both of these can be effect alert methods, but they can also annoy some users.

Regardless, you can make all Dock animations completely, both when launching an app in MacOS X, and even when an application is trying to notify you of something. This is achieved by entering a command string into the terminal (the command line of Mac OS X).

Read more »

Bootcamp has been around a while, and it makes it pretty easy to install and run other Windows OS’s in conjunction with Mac OS X on the same Mac computer. It’s hard to have missed all the hooplah surrounding the Windows 7 launch, and many Mac users may want to try it out themselves, so with that in mind Apple created a pretty nice visual walkthrough on installing Windows 7 within Boot Camp.

If you’re in the market to run Windows 7 on your Mac natively without using a virtual machine, check out their guide, it’s really easy to follow and has lots of pictures to lead you along the installation process. Of course, you’ll need a copy of Windows 7 handy, and always back up your Mac before making any modifications to the file system, partition map, or drive!

• The Official Apple Guide to Installing Windows on your Mac

Don’t worry, if you find that Boot Camp and having Windows on your Mac has worn out it’s welcome, you can always remove it at any time.

(Triple-boot Windows 7 / Mac OS X / Boot Camp menu image courtesy of TUAW)

Rather than disabling the Caps Lock key on your Mac, consider a better idea for many users: simply reassign the key to a new keyboard function. This means that if you press the Caps Lock button, instead of initiating THE SCREAMING CAPS LOCK ALL UPPERCASE function, it could trigger something like the Control button, Command button, or Option button. Sound good? I think so to.

It’s easy to reassign the Caps Lock to a new keyboard button function, here’s what to do in all versions of Mac OS X:

1. Open the System Preferences app from the  Apple menu, and choose the ‘Keyboard’ preference panel
2. Select the “Modifier Keys” option and then locate “Caps Lock Key” from the list
3. Pull down the menu alongside that and choose another option to reassign the Caps Lock key to a new action; Control, Option, or Command

For example, I have a friend who remapped Caps Lock to function as a CONTROL key because it’s easier to press all three buttons at the same time for certain keyboard shortcuts. Of course, you’re free to pick whatever you want as the replacement, but it’s a great consideration that beats disabling the keys functionality entirely – otherwise you’re left with basically a dead key on the Apple keyboard.

If you switch these around, get confused, and decide you want to go back to the keyboard defaults, just click the “Restore Defaults” button to return to normal button functionality.

What do you think? Is this better than disabling the key completely? Or would you rather just lose it?

Need to migrate all of a Spaces set of windows to another Spaces screen in Mac OS X? Using a simple keystroke you can do just that.

To sweep all of your open apps and windows into a group via Spaces, here’s what you need to do and a quick overview of how this great trick works.
Read more »

It’s not out in the wild yet, but Mac OS X 10.6.2 is released and has been confirmed to kill support for the Intel Atom processor, this is especially important for Hackintosh users who have hacked various Atom based netbooks to run Snow Leopard. So what should you do if you have an Atom based Hackintosh Netbook? StellaRolla recommends staying with 10.6.1 (or 10.5.8 if you’re running Leopard on your Hackintosh, sine 10.5.9 will likely have the same Atom problems) for the time being, otherwise you can try upgrading to 10.6.2 but run an older or modified kernel. I think I’ll just stick to 10.6.1 when the update rolls around, I have a lot of confidence in the Hackintosh community so I imagine there will be a workaround rather quickly.

You can’t help but suspect this move is Apple’s attempt at shutting down the growing and popular Hackintosh Netbook community, since Apple has no product line that runs the Atom itself. Mac OS X runs absolutely flawlessly on much of the PC Netbook hardware, once it’s configured you wouldn’t know you’re not on a Mac. Maybe it’s in effort to kill the Atom Hackintoh Netbooks in anticipation of the rumored Tablet? Or maybe it’s something totally unrelated? Who knows, but for now, just take note that when the 10.6.2 upgrade comes out and you use a Hackintosh, you might want to avoid it for now.

StellaRolla: 10.6.2 kills Atom

Update: the most recent 10.6.2 build supports the Atom chip again, whether or not the final version of 10.6.2 will kill the Atom or not remains to be seen.

Update 2: The most recent 10.6.2 build does NOT SUPPORT the Intel Atom chip and this has been confirmed. See link for details.

Shell scripting is wildly useful and a powerful way to manipulate a lot of files and to automate behind-the-scenes tasks in Mac OS X. This guide is intended for Linux users but the Bash shell is also used in Mac OS X, and as far as I can tell everything in this bash shell scripting guide works the same across the two platforms. Before checking out the guide you might want to check what shell you are using in Mac OS X by typing the following in the Mac Terminal:

echo $SHELL

Something like /bin/bash or /bin/tcsh will be reported back to you, obviously this Bash scripting guide only works for the Bash shell. If you need to, you can change the default shell rather easily in the Terminal preferences, but Bash has been the default shell since 10.3 and continues to be in Snow Leopard.

LinuxHelp: 10 second guide to Bash Shell Scripting

If you’re looking for more, a much more advanced and complete guide to Bash scripting is available here:

Advanced Bash Scripting Guide

And if you really want to dive into shell scripting, a good book like Pro Bash Programming: Scripting the GNU/Linux Shell will do you wonders.

We’ve long been fans of the Dell Mini 10v for Hackintosh purposes, it’s small, quick, attractive, and can be obtained for surprisingly cheap in the $200 range. It looks like the rest of the blogworld is catching on to this little beast of a MacHack Netbook, Gizmodo has an excellent write up on installing Snow Leopard on the Dell Mini 10v, it’s definitely worth checking out. I’d highly recommend buying a refurbished unit from the Dell outlet to save yourself some serious cash (a friend got one for $189!), so check out our guide to a cheap Mac Netbook with the Dell Mini 10v, and then follow the Gizmodo guide to get it all up and running with Snow Leopard. For $200 you can’t go wrong!

Gizmodo: How to Hackintosh a Dell Mini 10v into the Ultimate Snow Leopard Netbook

As you may know by now, MAMP is a really useful instant webserver for your Mac that requires practically no setup or installation, you run the app and click “Start” – yes it’s that simple.

I use MAMP a lot for local web development and really like it, it’s probably the easiest way to develop locally with something like WordPress. I was going to write a full article on setting up MAMP and WordPress, but TUAW beat me to it! So rather than re-writing the wheel, let’s take a look at TUAW’s simple walkthrough on getting WordPress setup under MAMP:

TUAW: Getting Started with WordPress & MAMP on your Mac

If you’re still a little confused or want a more thorough walkthrough, check out this one at labs.dariux.com:

Labs.Dariux: Install and Run WordPress Locally with MAMP

If you do any kind of web work or development, you really should check out MAMP!

Happy web devs, enjoy your local WordPress setup.

If you’re a web developer you probably do a fair amount of development on your local machine using either the built-in Mac OS X Apache server or, in my case, something like MAMP. Because a local web server like this is really handy for testing this, you can make your local development life a bit easier by setting a local domain, and we’ll show you how to do that.

Read more »

Did you read that correctly? Your purchase of a Mac Mini becomes free after 2 years due to it’s energy efficiency. Yea, it sounds ridiculous I know, I didn’t believe it either, but recent Mini owner CJ Gill compared his months of electricity bills with a Mac Mini to the months before one when he had an HP Pavilion desktop PC, and the monthly electricity savings of roughly $20 are going to pay for his Mac Mini in about 2 years. Check out the power bills in this chart:

When someone first sent me the link to this blog post titled “Free Mac Mini! No Strings Attached!” I figured it was yet another one of those pyramid scams where you sign up for 50 offers and you get your friends to sign up for 20 more and then you get a free burrito that eventually morphs into a Mac Mini after you sell 300 more offers. How awesome is it that Apple’s claim of having the worlds most energy efficient desktop translates into significant cost savings, enough so that after a few years depending on the Mini model you buy, it becomes free! Simply amazing. I know what my next Mac purchase is going to be!

You can buy the latest Mac Mini for $579 at Amazon and it includes free shipping.

Ever wanted to play music while you’re working in the command line? Maybe you want to play a podcast from the command line on Mac?

With the command line tool ‘afplay’ you can do just that, you can play practically any audio file format, whether it’s M4A, AAC, MP3, WAV, AIFF, or whatever else is on your Mac, and you can start the audio right from the Terminal.

Read more »