Update: Different wallpapers for different spaces is now a feature of Mac OS X Lion, here’s how to use it.

Spaces. Personally, it is my favorite addition to Apple’s Leopard operating system. I have become very accustomed to working with Spaces and have long desired the ability to set a different background for each virtual “space”. That is now possible thanks to SpaceSuit. Installation of SpaceSuit is a breeze and setting your backgrounds involves a simple drag and drop. The only downside or complaint I have thus far is that I can not figure out how to set unique backgrounds across my multiple monitors. Maybe a reader out there has figured out how to do this and can chime in. Anyways, Enjoy.

I have been a long time user of Skype and recently some of the features unique to the beta have caught my attention. In particular, I am enjoying the new screen sharing functionality. Frequently, I work remotely and find screen sharing crucial to collaboration. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to cruise over to skype.com and download the new beta. In addition, you can now use your SkypeOut credits to access participating public wifi hotspots across the globe!

Wallsaver is a freeware utility that allows you to easily take a screensaver and make it your desktop background, creating a nifty interactive effect that’s pleasant to look at. Aimed at older versions of OS X however, it’s not going to be for anyone, and furthermore, the Wallsaver app is basically a front-end to the command line tool that turns screen savers into wallpapers. The latter is probably a better approach but because it doesn’t require any additional downloads, but because it uses the command line it’s not going to be ideal for everyone.

Thus you have Wallsaver, which is a free download for those who are interested in going the simple route,

The application makes use of your Mac’s GPU (graphics processor) which leaves plenty of CPU power left over to carry on with your desktop tasks, though if you’re on a slower Mac you will notice a performance hit, so whether or not that is important to you is going to be a matter of personal opinion and what activities you’re participating in on the Mac. For example, you wouldn’t want to run such an app when you’re trying to play a game or maximum battery life.

Using the app is simple and pretty self explanatory. If you get sick of it, removing the screensaver background and reverting to your previous choice of desktop decor is as simple as right clicking and selecting “restore”.

To get WallSaver to work, you will need a Quartz Extreme capable graphics card with at least 32 MB of memory and, obviously, a screensaver to use it with. This covers literally just about any Mac around these days, but again, older Macs may have issues with the requirements and CPU toll on older hardware.

Updated on 12/18/2012 with additional comments and recommendations

Recently I connected my Mac to my linux based NFS server at home. I use NFS to access files from two other Linux boxes and on each server my UID (unique id) is set to 1000. In order for me to easily have full access to my NFS shares from OS X I changed my UID to match:
dscl . -change /Users/will UniqueID 501 1000
chown -R 1000 /Users/will

Remember to run the chown command afterwards, or you will not be able to access your home directory. Finally, log out and log in.

These days there are no shortage of ways to backup your Macintosh. Probably the most popular method available to an end-user is Apple’s Time Machine which is handled automatically after a simple setup through the GUI, or can be triggered to start at any time. Personally, I was very impressed with the ease of use offered by Time Machine, but I am a command line junkie so I must report on the alternatives available, four of which reside in the very command line of Mac OS X.

Read on for a few different methods that you can use at the Terminal to back up your Mac, using the ditto, rsync, asr, and hdiutil.

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Is Windows 7 really the Mac OS X slaying OS that so many claim it to be? Is it the greatest thing since sliced bread? There is all sorts of hooplah in the tech world about Microsofts Windows 7 beta, so why not see what the fuss is all about using your Mac? Rather than get a dual-boot setup going, it’s probably best for most users to run Windows 7 in a virtual environment within Mac OS X, and setting it up really isn’t too difficult. Here are several great walkthroughs on getting Windows 7 installed and running on your Mac.

DownloadSquad: Installing Windows 7 on a Mac – Getting Windows 7 running in Mac OS X using either Parallels, VMWare, or VirtualBox – you decide. Lot’s of screenshots to guide you.

VMWare: Windows 7 on a Mac with VMWare Fusion – An ‘official’ walkthrough created by the VMWare team, this is comprehensive and straight from the source, can’t go wrong here

KristanKenney: Run Windows 7 within Sun VirtualBox – more comprehensive than the AppleInsider article below on setting up Windows 7 in Virtualbox.

AppleInsider: Installing Windows 7 Beta on a Mac with Sun VirtualBox – pretty straightforward install process using Sun VirtualBox (which I’ve never used before prior to reading this article)

Photo Booth is a really fun app that comes with all macs that have a built in iSight / FaceTime front facing camera.

Here are a couple tips that make using Photo Booth on your mac even more enjoyable; the ability to disable the ‘white screen’ flash and the ability to disable the 3 second countdown.

Try them out yourself, if you want to disable flash or the countdown in Photo Booth for Mac, here’s all you need to do:

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This post references software that no longer exists, notably the AIM (AOL Instant Messager) service, and cellular plans that are no longer relevant. Nonetheless we are keeping this post up for posterity sake. Long live AIM!

The iPhone 3G is awesome, we all know that, but the rate plans are not necessarily awesome for everyone, and some of the cellular plans may be cost prohibitive for the amount of text messages that you get. Wouldn’t it be great if you could send text messages (SMS) for free with iPhone?

Well guess what, you can get free SMS text messaging on your iPhone by using the AIM protocol. Yes, AOL Instant Messenger!

First you’ll need some kind of AIM client for your iPhone, so you can either download the AIM client for iPhone from the App Store, or even use Meebo.

Here’s the most important part, add a new buddy to your list, but use the full phone number with a + sign in front of it, like so: +18085551212.

The plus sign is crucial because thats what tells the AIM protocol that it is an SMS message.

Now you can SMS any phone on any carrier from your iPhone, without using any SMS messages or without having an SMS message plan!

If you’re confused, check out the screenshot which shows adding a cell phone number in iChat.

It’s a good idea to secure your Mac from prying eyes, and it doesn’t take a lot of work to set some basic security to Mac OS X. This will help protect a Mac and the important files you have on it, and I consider the following three tips to be 100% necessary for almost all Mac users, particularly if you’re either in a shared computing environment, an office, school, public place, and especially if you have a laptop.

Each of these three security tricks can be enabled via the System Preferences with the Account pane and the Security pane, respectively. What you’re going to be doing is requiring a password if the computer is woken from a ‘sleep’ state, including a screen saver, and also preventing the automatic login process, thus requiring a password to be entered if a Mac has been booted up or restarted. Finally, you’ll learn a simple keystroke to lockdown everything anytime you step away from the computer, thereby increasing the protection by restricting access.

Don’t worry if you’re not sure where to begin, we will walk you through the simple steps and you’ll have some added protection and security added to your Mac in just a few minutes.

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Like many other power users, I’m addicted to the Mac OS X command line, any reason at all for me to launch the terminal I take as an opportunity to learn more about the powerful backend of our favorite operating system.

Here I have gathered 5 useful commands that will make your life easier when you’re working in the command line interface of OS X, so launch the Terminal and try them out on your Mac! If you have any others that you think should be added to this list, feel free to post them in the comments, and be sure to check out 10 Mac OS X Command line utilities you might not know about for more.

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Life is officially easier for front-end web developers, you can now easily test browser compatibility by running Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 concurrently with a great utility called MultiFirefox. Simply install MultiFirefox, then rename one of the Firefox applications (to say, Firefox 3), and upon launch you can select either application version to run. MultiFirefox is fast, free, and simple to use, so check it out. Mac web developers rejoice!

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If you’re wondering how to mount an ISO image in Mac OS X, it is very easy. For most ISO images you can mount them simply by double-clicking the ISO image file, and it will go through the auto-mounter app within Mac OS X putting it on your desktop.

If for whatever reason that doesn’t work there are other methods to mount ISO’s within Mac OS X, and we’ll cover ways to do this with the built-in Disk Utility and a more advanced option of using the command line.
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Update – May 2011: We have written an up to date article on exactly how to change a short user name in Mac OS X. Please refer to that for further assistance, it will work on Snow Leopard and prior versions.

A while ago I made a typo when creating my short username in a fresh Mac OS X install, I figured it wasn’t a big deal and that I could change it easily in the User accounts system preference pane, but boy was I wrong. Unfortunately, changing your short username is not a matter of typing a new name in a field, but thankfully there are two fantastic write ups on three ways to change the short username in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.

The first tip, involving the creation of an alias by accessing an ‘Advanced Options’ area within the Accounts preference pane, is pretty nifty. You can access this area by doing the following:

Step 1): Unlock the Accounts preference pane by clicking on the lock icon
Step 2): Right click (or Control click) on the name of an account in the list and choose “Advanced Options” from the resulting menu.

So that’s where you create an alias and do some other fancy things, but this isn’t really a solution to the short username problem I had. So what else can we do? You can read the Macworld article or our own OSXDaily: Change a short user name in Mac OS X

Whether you’re a systems administrator or a web developer, or anything in between, chances are you’ll have to flush your DNS cache every once in a while to get things straightened out server-side, or even just for testing certain configurations.

Flushing your DNS cache in Mac OS X is actually really easy, but there are actually several different commands to use, and you will find the commands are unique to different versions of Mac OS X. We’ve got you covered regardless of what version of Mac OS X you’re running, from MacOS Sierra 10.12, 10.11, 10.13, OS X 10.10, OS X 10.9, all the way back to 10.4. So find your version of OS X, open your Terminal, and follow the appropriate directions below to get started.

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A MAC address is a unique identifier assigned to your network card, and some networks implement MAC address filtering as a method of security. Spoofing a MAC address can be desired for multiple reasons, and it is very easy to spoof your MAC address in macOS Monterey 12, macOS Big Sur 11, macOS Catalina, macOS Mojave 10.14, macOS High Sierra, Sierra 10.12, El Capitan, Yosemite 10.10, Mac OS X 10.4, 10.5, 10.6, 10.7, OS X 10.8, and OS X 10.9. For the purpose of this article, we are going to assume you want to spoof your Mac’s wireless MAC address, meaning your wi-fi card.

Without further ado, here’s a three step process on how you can spoof and change the MAC address in macOS and Mac OS X.

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A little known hidden trick allows for a nice cursor hover effect to follow your mouse as it goes over an application, folder, or item within an opened Dock stack of Mac OS X.

This makes navigating within Dock folder items a whole lot easier on the Mac and only takes a moment to turn on. To enable the secret option yourself with a defaults command, so here’s how to activate it.

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Quick Look is likely the only feature in Leopard 10.5 that I actually notice and something I would certainly miss if I went back to 10.4, it’s just too useful. The Unofficial Apple Weblog has a decent post listing 10 useful Quick Look usage tips, some are built right in and won’t require modification, while others will require 3rd party plugins to use. Here’s the full list, minus the detail:

1. Identify files on remote machines.
2. Preview the contents of Zip files (plug-in required).
3. Preview the contents of a folder (plug-in required).
4. Examine snippets of code with syntax highlighting intact.
6. Prep your iWork documents for use with Quick Look.
7. Enhance TextMate.
8. Preview fonts.
9. Quick Look and Cover Flow.
10. Send images to iPhoto.

If these sound appealing, read more at TUAW: 10 ways to get the most out of Quick Look

The Mac OS X desktop is attractive, highly functional, and very customizable, but by default the maximum icon size is 128×128 as adjusted through the normal Mac icon size settings.

While 128 x 128 pixels is pretty large, if you have a huge monitor, or you’re visually impaired, you may want larger icons so that they’re easier to see. This is where the command line comes in, where you can use a defaults write command to force the Mac OS X desktop to display icons as large as 1024 x 1024 pixels!

To do this yourself, launch the Terminal and type the following commands:
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