I always put iTunes into mini-player mode to conserve screen real estate, so I was pretty annoyed when iTunes 9 took away this feature when clicking the green resize button in the iTunes window. Thankfully getting it back is very easy but it’s an extra step, option-click the green maximize button to enter into the iTunes 9 mini player mode.

Note: as one of our readers points out below, the behavior of the green button was changed in iTunes 9.0.1 update, you no longer need to option-click if you upgrade to the latest version.

So, that’s iTunes 9, but it’s different again in iTunes 10, iTunes 11, and iTunes 12. Apple likes to keep everyone on their toes! When iTunes 13 and iTunes 14 comes out, it will surely be different again too…. maybe!

Teleport is undoubtedly one of the single most useful utilities available to anyone that owns more than one Mac. Using Teleport, you can share a single mouse and keyboard across multiple Mac’s, seamlessly! Setup is an absolute breeze, you need to install Teleport on all Mac’s that you want to use, and once it’s all up and running you can do some pretty amazing things, and accessing another Mac with your mouse & keyboard is as simple as if the other Mac was just an external monitor! Simply awesome.

Features of Teleport include:
* Share your Mouse and Keyboard across many Mac’s
* Share Clipboard / Copy & Paste across multiple Mac’s!
* Drag and Drop files between Mac’s!

Teleport is an absolute must-have for anyone who owns more than one Mac, it makes your life so much easier and will dramatically increase your productivity! I have Teleport setup on my iMac, and anytime my MacBook is at home I just place it on the desk next to my iMac and I can then access my MacBook through my iMac’s keyboard and mouse flawlessly!

Need help setting up Teleport? Here’s how to use Teleport to share a keyboard, mouse, and clipboard between different Macs.

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Another alternative called Synergy lets you share a mouse and keyboard between Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux

Remember BeOS? If you don’t that’s ok, it was an operating system that came out around 1995 and even though its performance was leaps and bounds above Mac OS System 8 and Windows 95 at the time, it never quite caught on, so it died off and seemingly disappeared.

Until now, that is. Now BeOS is reborn as Haiku, an open source lightweight operating system that you can easily run on a modern computer, whether it’s a Mac or PC.

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Need to get around the boot level Mac firmware password? You can bypass a firmware password by doing a little bit of a hardware hack. There’s many reasons you’d want to get around firmware protection, but here’s why we got the instructions from an anonymous submitter:

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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
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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 ]