Emacs (not eMacs) is an open source project, bundled with every version of OS X. And it can’t be altered. I wrote about the Cookies recipe that Richard Stallman bundled with Emacs long ago. He also has some somewhat sexist dating tips and a bunch of other weird rantings that he bundled in there. But perhaps the best contribution is the games that Emacs comes with. These include doctor, dunnet (which would have been a great MMPORG), pong, snake, solitaire, tetris and the ever-so-popular gomoku. These games are located in the /usr/share/emacs/22.1/lisp/play directory. But you don’t access the games directly. Instead, you use the emacs command. To get started, fire…
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Challenges Sending Code Through Messages
Recently, I had a bit of a problem with some code I was sending back and forth through Messages. This was caused by smart quotes, which replace single and double quotation marks with directional quotation marks. This can cause a lot of problems. To disable smart quotes: defaults write com.apple.messageshelper.MessageController SOInputLineSettings -dict-add "automaticQuoteSubstitutionEnabled" -bool false
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Bash History Fun
We tend to use a lot of commands in the Terminal app. That is, after all, what it’s there fore. And there’s a nice history of what we do. There are also a number of ways to view and manage the bash history. The simplest of which is the history command, which will show the previous commands run. Here, we’ll simply run it: history Keep in mind that this shows the history based on context, so if you sudo bash, you’ll potentially see a different history. You can also use the bash built-in fc command, which has the additional awesomeness of being able to edit and re-run commands from the…
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Install Apple Configurator
Apple Configurator is a great tool to manage iOS devices. It’s also a pretty decent tool when you need to create profiles for use on Macs. Apple Configurator is easily installed using the Mac App Store. This involves 3 workflows: Prepare: Setup a device initially. Supervise: Manage a device using Apple Configurator long-term. Assign: Manage content on devices using Apple Configurator. However you plan on using Apple Configurator, the first step to use the product is to download it for free and install it on an OS X computer. To install Apple Configurator, first open the App Store and search for Apple Configurator. When listed, click on Apple Configurator. Then click on…
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5 Considerations for SMBs That Want To Move To Apple
Little article I/Bushel contributed to from Tech Republic covering considerations for small businesses looking to move to the Apple platform. It’s available at http://www.techrepublic.com/article/5-considerations-for-smbs-that-want-to-move-to-apple/#ftag=RSS56d97e7.
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Disable the What’s New/First Run Prompts in Office 2016
Office 2016 shuffled a few minor things around, as it usually does. And while preparing our users to enjoy their Office 2016 experience, admins would like to suppress those dialogs. To do so, we’ll need to write the kSubUIAppCompletedFirstRunSetup1507 key as boolean and true into each of the /Library/Preferences files for Office in OS X (e.g. com.microsoft.Word.plist). Here’s a quick scriptable that will take care of that for ya’: defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Word kSubUIAppCompletedFirstRunSetup1507 -bool true defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Outlook kSubUIAppCompletedFirstRunSetup1507 -bool true defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.PowerPoint kSubUIAppCompletedFirstRunSetup1507 -bool true defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Excel kSubUIAppCompletedFirstRunSetup1507 -bool true defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Word kSubUIAppCompletedFirstRunSetup1507 -bool true Update on October 29, 2015: A user may have already received…
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Hide Safari’s Bookmarks Bar
Safari has a bookmarks bar. Some people want to hide it. A lot of people used to do stuff like this by modifying the default user template in OS X. Not something we’ll be doing much in the future. So to do so with a script: defaults write com.apple.Safari ShowFavoritesBar -bool false To turn it back on: defaults write com.apple.Safari ShowFavoritesBar -bool true
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Disable Autocorrect In OS X Automated Workflows
I mess computers up a lot. And that means I have to reload operating systems a lot. I’ve also been having terrible issues caused by autocorrect. So… Let’s disable it. By sending the NSAutomaticSpellingCorrectionEnabled key as a false boolean into NSGlobalDomain: defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAutomaticSpellingCorrectionEnabled -bool false
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Disable File Extension Change Warning Dialog
By default in OS X, when you change an extension for a file, you get a warning. This is somewhat annoying to me, as I do this pretty frequently and have never almost accidentally done so. So to disable, send a FXEnable ExtensionChangeWarning key into com.apple.finder as false: defaults write com.apple.finder FXEnableExtensionChangeWarning -bool false To then undo, simply run with a true key: defaults write com.apple.finder FXEnableExtensionChangeWarning -bool true
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Disable Unicast ARP Cache Validation In OS X
As of OS X 10.9 (and in many cases more importantly in OS X Server for 10.9 and higher), OS X now performs ARP cache validation when trying to pass traffic over a router. If you are double NAT’d/use redundant gateways then the traffic can be interpreted as network redirection and cause some pretty bad packet loss/latency. You can disable this feature by turning off net.link.ether.net.arp_unicast_lim using sysctl: sysctl -w net.link.ether.inet.arp_unicast_lim=0 That will only disable unicast arp validation until the next reboot. If it fixes a latency problem you’re having then you can go ahead and make it permanent by adding the following line into /etc/sysctl.conf: net.link.ether.inet.arp_unicast_lim=0 If you’re still…