Mac OS X is wonderfully stable as an operating system, and although most software is written well, not all code is created equal. Crashing is just a fact of computing life and it frustrates us all, so it’s helpful to be able to pinpoint the cause of the problem. While the causes of some crashes are obvious, others are not, and this is when reading the Mac OS X crash logs can be so useful.

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Bash is the default shell in Mac OS X and has been since 10.3, it’s generally considered to be the de facto shell standard in the unix world. That said, there are some people who prefer to use the tcsh shell, or perhaps you just want to break away from the norm. Changing the default shell is pretty easy, but you will likely run into problems when running bash shell scripts. If you want to experiment with tcsh and use it as your default shell, here’s how to do it from the GUI in three easy steps:

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We’re all anxiously waiting for Apple to release Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, which is due to be out sometime in the next few months. To whet our appetites even more, the Mac rumor website ThinkSecret has posted a series of 28 pictures of various new features, updates, screensavers, and additions to the latest build of Leopard 9a343. How much of what we see here will appear in the final version? Time will tell. Enjoy the screenshots at ThinkSecret:

Leopard 9a343 Gallery

Want to make a portable USB flash drive OS X installer from Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, 10.5 Leopard, or 10.6 Snow Leopard? You can do that! And no, we don’t mean portable as in a laptop, but portable as in a USB flash drive that can install OS X onto Macs.

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The folks at the Beatnik Pad have released new builds of Firefox 2.0.0.2. The Firefox update includes many security fixes some of which were deemed “critical”. For those of you are unfamiliar with Beatnik Pad’s Firefox’s builds, they are optimized at compile time for the G4, G5 and the x86 Mac OS X architectures. Beatnik Pad also offers a version of Firefox with Mac OS X style widgets, and one with the standard Firefox widgets. The site is also a good resource for a couple of plugins that can make Firefox behave more like Safari. My personal favorite is “Fission” which takes the “page load” status bar and places it in the address bar in a similar fashion to what you’d find in Safari. Read on for a screenshot!

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Whether you’re a unix novice or veteran to the terminal, if you’re using the command line you’ll often find yourself looking up exactly how to use a specific command for either its understanding the commands full functionality or just to discover the proper syntax. Many of us will just google a command if we can’t seem to get things to work properly, but before you go that route you can also try the available resources that are built right in to the Terminal.

There’s no shame in needing assistance or needing to reference a manual page, so here are five ways to get some help right in the command line of OS X. Because most of these tricks are native to the command line and not OS X specific, they will work on a Mac and many other unix variations too, like Linux.

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How would you like to run Mac OS System 7 in Mac OS X? Never thought about it? Well we hadn’t really either but thanks to an app called Mini vMac you can easily run old school retro releases of Mac OS System 7 right on modern versions of Mac OS and Mac OS X!

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SIP is basically an Phone over IP protocol that allows for voice calling over the internet, kind of like Skype or FaceTime or similar voice and VOIP efforts. The Mac has some SIP clients, so if you need one you’ll find a variety of options.

One such SIP client for Mac is SJphone, which is a SIP client (softphone) that allows you to connect to a SIP server and/or another SIP client. One thing I really like about SJphone is its very simplistic interface and the ability to directly dial another computer.

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After several hundred times of logging into your Mac you may be tired of looking at the same old login screen. Maybe you’d like to have a customized login screen for your school or employer’s workstations.

Forget the $10 programs that automate the process, we’ll show you how to customize the login screen entirely on your own, for free. It’s not as difficult as you might think, and it’s a fun way to personalize your Mac a bit more. Be sure to check out the screenshot below for an example of the results.

This tutorial details how customize the login screen on Mac OS X Tiger 10.4, Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6, Mac OS X Leopard 10.5, and more.

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iAlertU is a free alarm system for Intel Mac laptops and works like this: you activate the alarm via your remote or a menu, and if your Mac is moved or disturbed the screen starts flashing and a blaring an alarm sound. How does it do this? It uses your Mac’s built in SMS sensor to detect any movement of your Mac. If you spend a lot of time in libraries, coffee shops, or any public place, this app could really come in handy. While iAlertU is a really fun and creative program, be aware that it is beta software and therefore subject to some issues.

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If there are only two general usability tips that every Mac laptop owner must know about, these very well could be it. First, how to simulate a right click with your trackpad, and second, scrolling through documents much like is done with a scrollwheel.

I have long assumed these were common knowledge, but I’ve heard enough complaints and wishes and had to demonstrate them to enough people to prove otherwise. So if you don’t know about these two trackpad features, then you do now, and once you start using them, it’s impossible to go without. These work on just about every semi-modern Mac laptop made, whether it’s a G4 PowerBook, an Core i7 MacBook Pro Retina, or a MacBook Air. As long as the Mac laptop has a trackpad, you’re good.
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Apple spends a lot of time fine tuning our favorite products, resulting in stellar looking hardware and software, particularly visible in Mac OS X. It’s not hard to impress your friends and colleagues with the appearance, fluidity, and many great features we all enjoy. But if you’re in the mood to brag and be flashy, here is a list of five fun tips to show off some of the eye candy that’s built right into OS X.

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In our “Ten OS X Command Line utilities you might not know about” article, we briefly mentioned FinkCommander, a GUI frontend to the ‘fink’ command line utility. It is the easiest way we know of to explore the wonderful world of free Unix software on the Mac. We think it is such a useful app that we decided to pay some special attention to it.

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The popular Mac programming website CocoaDevCentral has put together two great online tutorials for learning Cocoa (Apple’s object-oriented programming environment). These tutorials are geared towards total programming newbies, and are a fun way to get your feet wet with Mac software development. On the software side, all you’ll need is Mac OS X 10.4 (or later) and Xcode installed. So if you have the tools, the patience, the curiosity, and willingness to learn, this is a great place to start!

Learn Cocoa – Part 1
Learn Cocoa – Part 2

If you’re a sucker for system stats and monitoring widgets, then CoreDuoTemp is for you. This little app stays quietly put in your menu bar displaying some useful stats including CPU usage, the current operating speed of your processor, and the current temperature of your Intel CPU. Of course this means you have to have an Intel Mac to get usage out of CoreDuoTemp. I have found it a necessity to have some kind of CPU monitor open at all times since certain Mac OS X applications tend to spaz out and make the processor run out of control. CoreDuoTemp is inconspicuous and lightweight, and thus far my monitoring app of choice.

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Ok, I admit, I’m easily distracted while on my Mac. I’ll intend to do something productive, but then my favorite webpage will refresh or an instant message will pop up and I’ll get sidetracked reading an article or chatting. It happens to the best of us.

If you are worried about desktop distractions, you can thank Freeverse software for their app called Think, which allows you to select a specific application and then forces a darkened screen over the background tasks.

Productivity saver? Maybe. Cool app? Yup.

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The title says it all, you can send and receive SMS text messages through AIM, Messages, or iChat by following these simple instructions. If you are so inclined, there is even a simple bash script allowing you to interface with iChat through the command line for such purposes. This is a great tip, and apparently the ability to send SMS messages through the AIM protocol has been around a while, and it still works today as long as you have AIM setup.

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Want to change the name of your Mac computer? You can change the identified computer name of a Mac easily from the Mac OS system settings. This not only changes the Macs computer name, but it also changes what the name of the Mac is as identified by other users on a network, and by default it will adjust the name shown at the command line prompt in Mac OS too.

You can change the name of a Mac at any time and for any reason. Changing the computer name of a Mac is really quite simple, and the setting location is within the file sharing portion of system preferences, whether you use file sharing or not. Let’s walk through this easy process to change the name of a Macintosh, you will find it’s the same in all versions of Mac OS X.

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