Regardless of how many Mac’s you administer, there will surely come a time when you’ll need to retrieve relevant System Information. This can be done from the graphical interface with the Apple System Profiler utility, but often you’ll need to pull system details from the terminal as well.

Gathering system information from the command line is vital for system and network administration, so the next time you’ve accessed a machine through SSH, you can certainly find out what you need to know with two helpful command line tools. You can get almost any system details imaginable with these powerful utilities, each is slightly different, so here how, using the the sw_vers command and the system_profiler command:

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Reader Adam Smith writes in with the following question: “I am a new Mac user, and I love OSX! I have a MacBook Pro 15”. I would like to know though, is there a way that you can lock a MAC? Like in Windows, you can hit the shortcut “Windows Key + L”. Is there something similar in Mac or is there a script you can write? It’s just so I can leave my Mac while its doing stuff, lock it, so that no one else can play around with it. Thank you for your time.”

Yes there is a way to lock a Mac! Mac OS X doesn’t have an active workstation lock quite in the same manner as Windows, but you can still lock your Mac’s workstation and require a password for all users to access the machine. Here’s how to set this up:

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John Hicks of Hicks Design UK has created a gorgeus theme for us Mac users who like to read our RSS using a web-based reader. The skin looks suspiciously like a native OS X application and is available as a plugin for: Firefox, Camino, Safari, Omniweb and Opera.

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Preview is the default application to open just about any image or PDF file on your Mac, it’s a great program that blows anything comparable in the Windows world out of the water. One of the greatly underused features of Preview is the ability to view images and PDF files in full screen mode.

Entering full screen mode is very easy, it’s just a matter of hitting “Command-Shift-F” while a document is open in the Preview app.

If you’re wondering what to do next, here’s some more information and four great uses for Preview’s slideshow capabilities:

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One of my biggest peeves with Firefox 2 is how the tab system works with the scroll bar. Prior to version 2, tabs would squish in size to accommodate more.

Being a tab heavy user I found this to be perfectly adequate and I got used to how it works. Enter Firefox 2; instead of resizing the tabs, after a certain amount fill up your tab bar they start to go off screen and are accessible through a tab scroll bar.

Personally, I hate this scroll bar, so here’s how to get rid of it in Firefox:

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Many Mac users favor Safari as their web browser, it’s the Mac OS X default and generally pretty quick. Safari isn’t trouble free though, and if you’re having problems with Safari’s performance then this MacFixIt article is geared towards you. Jam packed with over 15 tips ranging from performance tweaks to troubleshooting the dreaded spinning beachballs, you’re sure to find something useful to aid you with Safari. Check it out:

Speeding up Safari: Reducing spinning pinwheels, other performance bottlenecks

We all know the familiar Mac OS X Software Update and App Store Updates panel, it pops up weekly to give us a nice GUI interface to install all the latest updates to our Apple software. But did you know that you can get the same list, query the available updates list, and even install updates from the command line?

Installing software updates from the command line is incredibly useful for remote management of machines, just SSH into a Mac and run the appropriate commands. Read on for more…

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It has long been speculated that Apple would change the brushed metal interface in Mac OS X to more closely resemble the iTunes appearance. The latest Mac OS X 10.5 build 9A410 shows us exactly that, a unified appearance that rids the operating system of the brushed metal look. The appearance change is relatively subtle, and looks almost identical to what the freeware utility UNO provides. With the release of Leopard pushed back until October, will the Mac OS X interface undergo more changes? Time will tell. Read on for screenshots of the latest build.

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Everyone hates backing up files, and often the annoyance turns into delaying the process, which is fine until you actually have a problem and need a backup. If you don’t want to do a complete system backup, at least save the essential files that define your user experience. BackityMac makes this task a whole lot easier, with easy options to backup your mail, bookmarks, system preferences, and your entire home folder. The program outputs the backup in the form of an image file that can then easily be restored. Good stuff, check it out!

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Apple has delayed the release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard several months from it’s originally scheduled date of June 2007 to October 2007. The statement released by Apple says that the iPhone has distracted the operating system development team, and that the original deadline is no longer obtainable. Rumors are already circulating in the Mac web with some suggesting that Apple has delayed the release to include new features that have yet to be announced. We’re disappointed by the delay, but excited for whatever Apple is working on. Read the press release from Apple below:

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When you click the yellow minimize button in Mac OS X, the snazzy Genie effect pulls the window into the Dock. Although you can change between the Genie and Scale effect from within the Dock preference pane, there is a third hidden effect that Apple has chosen to keep out of the preference pane. The hidden effect is named ‘Suck’, it’s more attractive than the Scale effect, and speedier than the Genie effect.

We’ll show you how to activate any of these minimize effects from the command line of OS X by using defaults strings, and remind you that you can change between the standard effects through the preference panels too.

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By default, the Mac OS X Dock has a semitransparent white background that holsters the Dock’s icons. ClearDock is a nice little utility that allows you to customize the Dock background to be completely transparent, or if you’d prefer, you can select a different semitransparent color. It’s super easy to use, and best of all, it’s completely free. Check out the screenshot below to see the transparent effect in action.

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Hate it when a web site resizes your browser window? In Firefox, you can stop that.

While development etiquette has generally made web browsing a more pleasant experience over the years, removing such horrors as blinking text and the background midi. Unfortunately, there are a few annoyances still left on web sites, and one of the worst is the forced resizing of your web browser. Nothing peeves me more than having my browser window be resized to full screen without my permission, but if you’re a Firefox user, you can do something about it.

Here is how to disable the resizing of your browser window in Firefox.

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Any Mac user that has shared files from a Windows PC has surely found the always annoying and completely useless Thumbs.db files scattered around their directories. We’ve been asked about deleting Thumbs.db files a few times before, and typically we run a simple script from the command line, but there’s another even easier way of removing all Thumbs.db files from Mac OS X by using only Spotlight.

This quick little tutorial will show how to delete all Thumbs.db files from your Mac in one fell swoop.

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Updated: 11/27/2021 Ever wondered how to change the default web browser app on your Mac? Maybe you prefer Chrome to Safari, or maybe you want to use Firefox instead of Safari, or vice versa? Whatever your choice, it’s easy to do in macOS Monterey, macOS Big Sur, macOS Catalina, macOS Mojave, High Sierra, Sierra, OS X Yosemite and new versions, and older versions of Mac OS X too. This is not an unusual question, in fact, one of our readers Sarah R. writes in wondering about her Macs default web browser set in Mac OS:

“I downloaded Firefox and accidentally clicked the button for it to be set as my default web browser. Now every time I open a link it goes into Firefox instead of Safari. How do I get back to Safari as my default? Help!”

Don’t worry Sarah (and everyone else!), this isn’t the first time we’ve been asked about changing the default web browser on the Mac, so allow us to explain the remarkably simple answer – you’ll be changed back to whatever web browser you want in no time at all, whether it’s Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or any other.

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Mac rumor site AppleInsider is reporting that Apple has filed a patent for a finder feature that would allow different sized icons to be within the same window, with the size of the icon being representative of that items importance. This feature would make a lot of sense for many directories that are crowded with loads of folders and files needed for the application to run, but largely useless for the user to see or interact with. Read on for a mock-up illustration of how this feature would appear within Mac OS X.

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Tim Russell, the man behind the disabling favicon tip for Firefox, sent us another good Firefox tidbit today:

“The worst thing about Firefox is undoubtedly that any image larger than your browser size is automatically resized, which has the effect of distorting pictures and generally being annoying. For some reason, Firefox didn’t include the ability to turn this on and off in the standard preferences, but you can do it easily with the about:config dialog, as follows…”

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One of the essential functions of the command line of Mac OS X, Linux, or any Unix, is understanding some basics about how to use pipes. Essentially, pipes allow you to direct the output of one command into the input of another command, allowing the following command to manipulate, adjust, or work with the prior commands return. Knowing how and when to use pipes is vital to effective command line usage, and it’s a core piece of knowledge for Terminal users.

Without further introduction, here’s some information on command line pipes, what they do, and most importantly, how to use the pipes to control command line output, effectively ‘piping’ it to elsewhere:

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