The Operating System wars are still raging, and Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard has bested the new Windows 7 operating system in several speed tests, and a crucial battery life test, according to CNet. Windows 7 did outperform Snow Leopard in some other tests, such as gaming, where Call of Duty 4 had five extra FPS (21fps vs 26fps) in Windows 7, but that’s not too surprising considering that most game developers spend far more time optimizing performance for Windows due to it’s greater gaming market share.

If you haven’t upgraded to Snow Leopard yet, you really should. You can upgrade from Tiger (Unofficially) or Leopard flawlessly and you can buy Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard for $25 at Amazon which includes free shipping. It’s well worth the $25.

[ CNet via AppleInsider ]

I use my MacBook almost exclusively at home and so I frequently forget to discharge and recharge the battery, which is a recommended procedure to have your notebook battery last as long as possible.

For people like me who often run with the powercharger attached to their Mac laptop, Apple.com offers a nice simple reminder via Calendar application. There’s not much to it, just add the reminder to your Calendar and it pops up once a month and reminds you to run your battery down so that it can recharge again, thus helping to maintain maximum performance.
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Sunday funday again! Maybe dogs love Mac’s a little too much… at least in the case of this iBook which was somehow turned into a chew toy!

The amount of damage is pretty amazing, it looks like a pooch had his mouth on this thing for hours on end before someone finally found it. Virtually nothing is unscathed, it’s even missing keys and the screen has been chewed to oblivion, that can’t be healthy for a dogs diet.

Yikes. [ images via SmallDog (kind of a pun, get it? SmallDog electronics, dog chewed a macBook? Get it?? Ok I’ll see myself out of here) and Flickr ]

Wow. Bad dog! But dogs are great and so are Macs, so you know, compromise.

I came across the aptly named AppleSerialNumberInfo.com today and found it very useful for getting information about a Mac. Type in a Mac’s serial number and a whole slew of information will be reported back to you, including the build queue number, production week, extensive hardware information, unit specific repair and support programs, and so much more. If you want a bunch of information about your Mac, or if you’re troubleshooting a machine, this site is sure to come in handy so bookmark it!

There’s also a mobile version of the site so if you’re troubleshooting on the go, or your main machine is down, be sure to check that out.

We get a lot of comments and inquiries about disabling Spotlight, something that I don’t understand since I think it’s a fantastic application launcher. Opinion aside, if you have disabled Spotlight and want to remove the Spotlight menubar icon from your desktop, type the following command in the Mac Terminal:

Remove Spotlight menubar icon

sudo chmod 0 /System/Library/CoreServices/Spotlight.app

to reverse this and bring the Spotlight menubar icon back, type the following:

sudo chmod 755 /System/Library/CoreServices/Spotlight.app

So let’s say you have an extra Mac Mini laying around that is just not put to use, maybe the internal hardware pooped (oh, the worst pun for this isn’t it) out and it’s just good for nothing… well, don’t be so fast to flush that broken Mac Mini, you can turn it into a toilet paper dispenser!

I mean, I don’t know why you would, but I guess why not if you’re into geek chic decorating?

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I have become dependent on many command line applications I have installed through the open source MacPorts effort, and if you have too you’ll really appreciate this guide. When upgrading Mac OS X to a new major OS (say, upgrading Tiger to Snow Leopard) you may notice that some MacPorts installations get screwy and no longer work… but no worries, this simple walkthrough on MacPorts.org shows us how to easily reinstall all of our existing MacPorts software in just a few simple commands. Highly recommended reading for all MacPorts users:

MacPorts: Migrating a MacPorts install to a new major OS version or CPU architecture

If you have a Hackintosh PC, you may have noticed that in “About this Mac” you’ll most often see ‘Unknown’ as the CPU type. Yes you can dig around in system files and set it, but wouldn’t you like the CPU to be recognized on it’s own? Now you can! Check out this thread at InsanelyMac Forums where a forum user built a version of PC_EFI with CPU recognition built in. Sweet!

[ InsanelyMac Forums via StellaRolla ]

Do you come here and read OSXDaily often? You should! So, keep in touch. There are many ways to do this. How about subscribing to our RSS feed, or follow us on Twitter!

Both feeds will give you up to date posts directly from OS X Daily, so check them out. And of course, we’re on Facebook too.

Whatever is convenient for you, don’t forget to subscribe to OSXDaily and follow us for great tips, tricks, important news, and realistic rumors on all things Apple – whether it’s Mac, OS X, iOS, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, we’ve got it covered, and you’re sure to learn something new!
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Ever heard of MD5 and not sure what it was or what that meant? You’re likely not alone, but MD5 is important, and, with a little explaining, easy to understand. Let’s explain a bit about MD5, MD5 checksums, what it is, and why you should know about it.

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Have you ever wanted to make your MacBook or MacBook Pro’s keyboard lights dance to the music you are listening to? Has the thought never crossed your mind? Well me neither, but once I saw someone using this iTunes plugin on their MacBook Pro I was instantly hooked on the novelty. iSpazz is the name of the iTunes Visualizer Plugin and it works exactly as advertised, the keyboard lights will flash in sync to the music you’re listening to! It also has a feature to allow the screen’s backlight to flash too, but that just about sent me into a seizure like a bad Japanese cartoon so I’ll opt just for the keyboard lights. File this one under the ‘cool useless eye candy’ category!

Download the iSpazz iTunes plugin and drop it in ~/Library/iTunes/iTunes Plug-ins/ and from there you can select it as a visualizer option within iTunes.

Download now
Developer home

Apple Computer now has a 9.4% Market Share in the USA, putting it in 4th place behind HP, Dell, and Acer and above Toshiba. 9.4% is pretty remarkable considering just earlier in the year Apple was in 5th place with a 7.6% market share, and this is in the worst economic climate the USA has seen since the Great Depression! Way to go Apple! The survey states that Apple has an ‘unofficial’ market share of 4% worldwide. I’d be curious to know what country has the highest market share, judging by the amount of Mac’s at your average Starbucks, it’s probably the USA.

[ IDC via Electronista ]

Apple has released a list of software that has been deemed incompatible with 10.6 Snow Leopard. If you haven’t upgraded yet it’s possible you’re afraid of application incompatibilities, and rightly so. It’s worth taking a look to see if any version of the apps you are dependent on make the list.

These apps will be moved to an “incompatible software” directory upon installation of Snow Leopard:

• Parallels Desktop, ver. 2.5 and earlier
• McAfee VirusScan, ver. 8.6
• Norton AntiVirus ver. 11.0
• Internet Cleanup 5 ver. 5.0.4
• Application Enhancer ver. 2.0.1 and earlier
• Unsanity
• AT&T Laptop Connect Card ver. 1.0.4, 1.0.5, 1.10.0
• launch2net ver, 2.13.0
• iWOW plug-in for iTunes ver. 2.0
• Missing Sync for Palm Sony CLIE Driver ver. 6.0.4
• TonePort UX8 Driver ver. 4.1.0
• ioHD Driver ver. 6.0.3
• Silicon Image SiI3132 Drivers ver. 1.5.16.0

Apple: 10.6 Incompatible Software List

Is this the messiest desktop ever? I don’t know much about this photo, other than it shows a wildly chaotic Mac desktop with a few billion iChat conversations going on and that it’s taken by popular photographer Sam McGuire. If there was ever a need for Expose, I think this it it!

[ Sam McGuire via BallTilIFall ]

You can easily check the MD5 Hash of any file on your Mac, all you need to do is launch the Terminal and type the ‘md5’ command and point it at the file you wish to check the md5 has for.

How to Check MD5 Hash of a File on Mac

First launch the Terminal application, located in the /Applications/Utilities/ directory on the Mac. Next you’ll want to point the md5 command at the file you wish to check md5 hash for. For example, the syntax to check the MD5 hash of a file may look something like this:

md5 big_huge_file.iso

You’ll be returned with an MD5 Checksum Hash that you can check against the source MD5 code provided to you (or that a friend shares, you found online, or whatever).

An example of what the md5 hash will look is something like this:

MD5(big_huge_file.iso)= 20665acd5f59a8e22275c78e1490dcc7

The part after the = sign is the MD5 hash code that you can compare against the source to be sure that the file has retained it’s integrity through transmission. This is very handy when downloading large files, or if you want to make sure a file has not been modified, corrupted, or tampered with.

Checking MD5 Hash with openssl from the command line

Alternatively you can use the openssl command to check MD5 checksums on your Mac, like so:

openssl md5 big_huge_file.iso

The data returned to you will be the same whether you use the openssl command or the md5 command, it’s really just a matter of preference.

This simple md5 command works in Mac OS X and linux too, and it’s a simple way to verify what you are downloading or transferring has arrived intact.

This is a warning to all Snow Leopard users, be aware that a somewhat obscure Snow Leopard bug deletes ALL DATA from a user account, yikes! This will likely NOT effect you, but if you’re a Snow Leopard user you should understand the bug and the consequences. According to CNET:

“when logging into the guest account on their Mac first and then logging into their regular account, some users are finding all their data to be missing and their accounts completely reset.”

Apparently Apple is aware of this issue, and it’s not particularly widespread (suggesting it doesn’t happen all the time), but in any case Snow Leopard users should protect themselves and NOT use the Guest account for the time being! I’m sure Apple will release a bug fix rather quickly since this is gaining some mainstream press around the web.

If you’ve run into this problem and you’re freaking out, check out this page on CNET for a possible fix to restore data.

Personally, I love Snow Leopard and the only issues I’ve had are problems with Snow Leopard wireless connections.

One of my favorite add-ons for MacBook and MacBook Pro’s with the keyboard backlight is this awesome app from Lab Tick that allows you to manually control the keyboard backlighting via a menubar item that drops down with a little slider, kind of like how the sound menu item works.

Additionally, you can control the MacBook Backlit keyboard illumination via the function keys as well, but having the menubar item is very handy too, try it out yourself!

Labtick has been updated and works perfectly in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

Control the MacBook Backlit Keyboard Illumination

Control backlight via the Labtick Menubar Item:
* Lab Tick developer webpage here

* Direct Labtick download file (dmg)

Simply launch Labtick and you’ll find the menu bar item available, it’s a little slider that can adjust brightness of backlit keyboards up or down.

Control backlight via MacBook / Pro keyboard function keys:

* F8 turns off backlighting completely

* F9 dims keyboard backlighting

* F10 brightens keyboard backlight

If you have an older MacBook Pro with a backlit keyboard, and you’re running Mac OS X Snow Leopard, then give Labtick a try. It’s pretty cool to have backlight controls right in the menu bar!

The Polaroid film effect is a fun and retro look for digital images, and now you can make Polaroid style pictures without Photoshop! The nifty app called Poladroid is cross-platform compatible and works exactly as advertised: simply drag any image onto the Poladroid app and out comes a Polaroid style image.

Poladroid allows you to easily create digital versions of Polaroid style images, right from Mac OS, Mac OS X, or Windows. It’s super easy to use and quite fun, and the productions look even more Polaroid-ish than Instagram filters does.

The app itself is a little quirky and sort of slow, but that’s partially because the developer built in a virtual ‘development’ process much like the real Polaroids, you can even shake them around (by moving the image around the screen) to develop quicker. If you’re impatient, simply right-click on the image within the app and select to have the image saved now. By default the Polaroid images are dumped into ~/Pictures but you can adjust the setting in the preferences.

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