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.

Read more »

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.

Read more »

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.

Read more »

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.

Read more »

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.
Read more »

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:

Read more »

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.

Read more »

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!

You can run Mac OS X in Grayscale mode by adjusting the display settings in the Accessibility or Universal Access control panel. Likewise, you can stop a Mac from running in greyscale mode and get full color back by disabling the setting in the same system control panel.

This is an easy display settings adjustment to make, and it serves a variety of purposes.

Read more »

The Spirit Jailbreak for iPad has been released, it’s an untethered Jailbreak for any of the current iPhone OS devices, so the iPad as well as iPhone and iPod touch are supported. It’s still in beta so it’s definitely a good idea to sync and backup all your data before trying this out. Many of the Cydia apps not designed for iPad may run a little strange, look poorly, or even ‘screw up your system’ as the Spirit developers say. It’s also worth noting that Spirit is not a carrier unlock, so don’t expect to jump around mobile providers.

Here are the requirements:

* iPad, iPhone, iPod touch on firmware 3.1.2, 3.1.3, or 3.2.
* iTunes 9 (including 9.1.1).
* An activated device: one not stuck on the Connect to iTunes or Emergency Call screen.
* A Mac or Windows PC

If you’re interested in Jailbreaks, check out the Spirit Jailbreak developer for more.

If you want to be absolutely sure your data is wiped clean with virtually no chance of recovery, by anyone, using any possible known recovery tools, look no further than Apple’s Disk Utility tool. The process is simple, and it can apply to any Mac drive, whether that’s an internal hard drive, external hard drive, and any connected drive of any format, meaning it does not need to just be a Mac drive to become securely formatted.

First a quick explanation of how secure format works: the drive is formatted and cleared of data as usual, but then the drive is rewritten with new randomly generated data, effectively overwriting any existing data on the drive and making it impossible to access or recover. It doesn’t stop there though, because that process is repeated multiple times, depending on which setting choice you select when securely formatting a drive. Let’s begin:

Read more »

Upgrading to Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.3 was a painless procedure until I tried to access some SMB mounts… suddenly I had no write access to my samba drives! I was presented with this error message:

The operation can’t be completed because you don’t have permission to access some of the items.

Thankfully there’s a workaround of sorts and it is pretty straightforward.

Fixing the Samba/SMB write access problem in 10.6.3:
* Open smb.conf on the samba server in your favorite text editor
sudo nano /etc/smb.conf
* Find the global samba settings section under [global] and add the following line:
unix extensions = no
* Save and close smb.conf (in nano, Control-O followed by the return key to save, then Control-X to exit)
* Restart the smb server

The cause of the SMB error in Mac OS X 10.6.3:
After digging around I found the cause on SplatDot, and I can confirm I had the same error messages pertaining to wide links and unix extensions enabled at the same time, two parameters which are incompatible. This is why the fix works, you are disabling unix extensions (of course, you could disable wide links but there is a performance hit to that method) and the error will no longer occur.

I imagine this is just a bug in the way that Mac OS X 10.6.3 handles SMB shares and it will probably be fixed relatively quickly by Apple, and when it is fixed you can and should reactivate unix extensions again on the Samba server. Doing so is just a matter of removing the unix extensions = no line from the smb.conf file.