Here’s the thing: I’m not very good with computers. So to keep me from hurting myself too badly, I need the simplest interface available that allows me to run multiple applications. But most of the command keys shouldn’t work in this interface and I should only have Finder, file and Help menus. Luckily for my poor MacBook Airs, Apple thought of people like me when they wrote the Finder and invented something called Simple Finder which makes OS X even simpler than it is by default to use. To enable Simple Finder, just go to Parental controls, enable controls for a user and then check the box for Simple Finder.…
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Disable the Go To Folder Menu Item
For many environments, securing OS X is basically trying to make the computer act more like an iOS device. Some of the easier tasks involve disabling access to certain apps, sandboxing and controlling access to certain features. One of the steps en route to building an iOS-esque environment in OS X is to disable that Go to Folder… option. To do so, set the ProhibitGoToFolder key as true in com.apple.finder: defaults write com.apple.finder ProhibitGoToFolder -bool true Then reboot, or kill the Finder: killall Finder To undo, set the ProhibitGoToFolder as false: defaults write com.apple.finder ProhibitGoToFolder -bool false
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Programmatically Disable Notification Center in Mountain Lion (aka My Battery Life Sucks)
There are a few ways I like to extend my battery life on my MacBook Air. These days, it’s increasingly important to conserve battery life as the transition to Mountain Lion (Mac OS X 10.8) has caused my battery life to spiral into so much of a vortex that I am concerned that my laptop must be shooting raw electricity out of the bottom (which would certainly explain why my hair has a tendency to be perpendicular with the ground when I exit a plane). Ever since moving to Mountain Lion (yes, this includes 10.8.2), I’m lucky to get 3 hours of battery life out of the Mac that used…
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Showing iTunes Track & Song Titles In The Dock
When I’m writing, I like to listen to music in the background. When writing, I also like to have everything minimized so I can quickly grab a screenshot of the desktop where needed. This means that when I run into a track that doesn’t work with whatever I’m writing that I would need to unminimize iTunes, click the next button and then re-minimize iTunes. Awhile back I found a better way but can’t remember where for attribution. So, part of my default user template and imaging framework now includes setting the iTunes Dock icon to show the track that I’m playing so I can easily go to the next song,…
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Disable Shadows on Screencapture in OS X Mountain Lion
The process has changed a little bit in Mountain Lion for disabling shadows on screen shots, sometimes… By default, there’s no com.apple.screencapture manifest, so the first step is to create it with the boolean disable-shadow key set to true. This part is the same as with Lion: defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool TRUE Now check that disable-shadow shows as a 1: defaults read com.apple.screencapture But where it’s a little different is that you previously killed SystemUIServer w/out sudo: killall SystemUIServer SystemUIServer would then open back up and screenshots wouldn’t have shadows. And this still works sometimes. But now, I’ve noticed across the 30 or so systems in my lab that…
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A Better Way To Paste Addresses from Mail
One of my little irritations about OS X just got easier. When I’m using Mail and I copy and email address and paste it somewhere, it has the name of the contact bracing the email address wrapped with a . This is a royal pain. I am pretty sure that every single flippin’ time I’ve removed the cruft around the email address. While digging around in com.apple.mail I noticed a key for AddressesIncludeNameOnPasteboard that was set to True. Holy crap. Change to False and this minor irritation is gone. Viola, OS X is now even better: defaults write com.apple.mail AddressesIncludeNameOnPasteboard -bool FALSE To set it back: defaults write com.apple.mail AddressesIncludeNameOnPasteboard…
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Disable Rubber Band Scrolling In Lion & Up
10.7 and up have a little feature called elastic scrolling. When you get to the top of a page and you keep scrolling you see the linen background. There is a NAS devices whose web portals seems to be pretty shady overall, but specifically seems to lock up when this rubber band effect kicks in. So to disable: defaults write -g NSScrollViewRubberbanding -bool FALSE To disable the disable, or re-enable the effect: defaults write -g NSScrollViewRubberbanding -bool TRUE
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Powershell Goodies From Vexasoft
There are a number of features that make mass deployment of Mac OS X pretty easy. Some of these would be great to have in Windows. These range from systemconfiguration to networksetup and the ability to look at packages that have been installed and review their bills of material. Well, the good people at Vexasoft have built a number of Powershell libraries that, while they aren’t named as such, do a number of the features that these commands do, just for Windows clients via Powershell. And the best part is, a number of them are free. Let’s look at what some of these commands do: First, there are the cmdlets…
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Disable AutoUpdates in Google Chrome
More and more deployments seem to come with sending Google Chrome out to client systems. Chrome is yet another application with built-in updating to make the process of owning software a bit less tedious for end users. However, in large deployments, we usually need to disable such a feature. Given how talented they are, the Googlers that built the automatic updaters went ahead and showed great foresight and made it easy to disable. Simply set the checkInterval key in com.google.Keystone.Agent to 0, done using defaults here: defaults write com.google.Keystone.Agent checkInterval 0 Once disabled, use defaults to set the checkInterval key to how frequently you’d like the check to run (in…
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Finding iOS Device PINs
Each time you sync an iOS based device, a backup is made (unless you disable the option). These are stored in ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup. Here you will find a number of folders, each beginning with the UDID of the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch that has been backed up. The contents of these folders can be used to restore a device in the event that the device falls outside your control. Within the folders are a bunch of files with alphanumeric names that look garbled, even though some can be viewed using a standard text or property list editor (while others are binary). But there are also a bunch of other…