Mac Hacks
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Ostensibly, you buy a computer to get something done. The something
might be as simple as listening to MP3s you’ve ripped from your CD
collection or as challenging as editing a full-length feature film. Apple is
happy to sell you products to meet your needs. The trouble is, your needs
aren’t exactly the same needs as the next guy, and that’s where hacking
comes in. With a little (or a lot) of effort, you can make your Mac and
software perform in the manner you wish them to. Macs that do things exactly
the way you want makes the Apple experience that much better.
There are over 50 hacks in this book, and a passel of quick tips and
tricks. Some are simple enough—you’ve probably already pulled them off—while
others are a bit more challenging. All, to the right person, can be fun and
useful.
So what can you expect? There is a wide range of hacks here. Get your
iMac to hover with a VESA mount, swap in an SSD for that tired hard drive,
hear a different sound when you start your Mac, and a lot more. Tired of the
look of OS X? Discover ways to tweak interface elements. Worried about your
Mac’s security? You’re covered.
This is a book about hacking, so deciding how to use this book is
completely up to you. You could, if the inclination hits you, use the
pages for interesting origami projects. If you want to use the book in a
more traditional manner, just start reading—it doesn’t matter where. Each
hack is as self-contained as possible (and points to other hacks when not)
so there isn’t any reason not to crack open the book at random and start
reading.
Chapter 1
contains some hacks that
provide background for a lot of the other hacks in the book, so many
people will find that a useful place to start. Others might leap to the
specific chapter that seems most interesting. A lot of the hacks depend on
the command-line interface available via the Terminal program, so
Chapter 6
is a good place to start if you haven’t used
that in a while.
This book isn’t a mere tips-and-tricks compendium that tells you
where to click, where to drag, and what commands to type. It takes
advantage of OS X’s flexibility and new features, recognizes that there
are specific tasks you want to accomplish with the operating system and
related hardware and software, and offers bite-size pieces of
functionality you can put to use in a few minutes. It also shows how you
can expand on their usefulness yourself. To give you this kind of help,
the book is organized into 11
chapters:
- Chapter 1,
Before You Hack This is the place to start. It covers the steps you need to
take to protect your data and prepare your Mac before your start
hacking.- Chapter 2,
Mountain Lion Hacks Mountain Lion is the Mac’s latest and greatest operating
system, but just because it’s the newest version of OS X doesn’t
mean it’s perfect. Make your Mountain Lion experience better by
investigating this chapter.- Chapter 3,
Customize Your OS X Experience Your Mac is
yours
, so why use it
exclusively the way Apple intended you to? Discover slick ways to
blog, change the startup sound, and make (almost) any app full
screen.- Chapter 4,
Hacks for a More Informative
Mac Want to get information delivered right to your desktop? Want
constant access to a widget? Stop by this chapter and keep yourself
up to date on the world around
you.- Chapter 5,
Make It Automatic Computers are great at doing things without your intervention.
This chapter explains how to make your Mac automatically do drudge
work for you.- Chapter 6,
Fun with Unix There’s a ton of power hidden on the Unix side of your Mac. In
this chapter, you’ll learn how to safely tap into this power.- Chapter 7,
Lock Down that Mac Security isn’t just a good idea—it’s essential. Learn how to
protect your Mac from prying eyes (and sticky fingers) with the
useful hacks in this chapter.- Chapter 8,
Other OSes Got multiple Apple devices? Learn how to manage them from a
centralized location. Ever fancy playing a video game made for a
Nintendo on your Mac? This is the chapter for you.- Chapter 9,
Networking Hacks Check your WiFi signal with a hidden app and then lock it down
(you want a secure network!).- Chapter 10,
Multimedia Hacks Make your music sound better, never miss your favorite show,
and discover how to keep your iTunes library on a separate disk. If
any of those ideas appeal to you, this is your chapter.- Chapter 11,
Hack Some Hardware Hang that Mac from a VESA mount, get auto recognized by your
iPhone, destroy your kitchen with dye! All your daring hardware
hacks are in this chapter, so haul your toolbox next to your Mac and
get started.
This
book uses the following typographical conventions:
- Italic
Used to indicate new terms, URLs, filenames, file extensions,
directories, and folders.Constant widthUsed to show code examples, verbatim searches and commands,
the contents of files, and the output from commands.Constant width
boldShows commands or other text that should be typed literally by
the user.Constant width italicUsed in examples, tables, and commands to show text that
should be replaced with user-supplied values.
Note: Depending on what kind of Mac you have, you may need to do
slightly different things when this book tells you to right-click
something. If you have a two-button mouse, then simply right-click. If
you have a one-button mouse, then press the Command key and click. If
you have trackpad, you can two-finger click if you have that feature
turned on (set it up in the Trackpad preference pane).
This
book is here to help you get your job done. In general, you
may use the code in this book in your programs and documentation. You
don’t need to contact us for permission unless you’re reproducing a
significant portion of the code. For example, writing a program that uses
several chunks of code from this book doesn’t require permission, but
selling or distributing a CD-ROM of examples from O’Reilly books does.
Answering a question by citing this book and quoting example code doesn’t
require permission, but incorporating a significant amount of example code
from this book into your product’s documentation does.
We appreciate, but do not require, attribution. An attribution
usually includes the title, author, publisher, and ISBN, like so:
“
Mac Hacks
by Chris Seibold. Copyright 2013 Chris
Seibold, 978-1-4493-2558-9.”
If you feel your use of code examples falls outside fair use or the
permission given above, feel free to contact us at
[email protected]
.
David Chartier
(
[Hack #13]
,
[Hack #14]
,
[Hack #26]
) learned the ways of The Force on an IBM
Aptiva running Windows 95. After building, selling, and supporting PCs
for nearly a decade, he switched to a Mac midway through college and
hasn’t looked back. Since then he has written for
Macworld
,
Ars Technica
,
O’Reilly, and elsewhere. You can find his home on the web at
http://davidchartier.com
.
Charles Edge
(
[Hack #39]
) started looking
to share his knowledge of the Mac OS X Server operating system in 2004.
His first speaking appearance at a large conference was DefCon 2004.
Since then, he has spoken at conferences such as MacSysAdmin, Macworld,
LinuxWorld, and BlackHat. Charles has written nine books, including
Enterprise Mac Administrator’s Guide
,
Enterprise Mac Security
, and
Enterprise
iPhone and iPad Administrator’s Guide
. For the past 14 years,
he has been the Director of Technology for 318, a Mac-first consultancy
based in Santa Monica, CA. Charles is also the author of
http://krypted.com
, a site dedicated to heterogeneous
networking.
Phil Herlihy
(
[Hack #49]
and
[Hack #52]
) started out life as a
young mad scientist. He was raised by his parents (A CRAY-1
Supercomputer and a PDP-11) in New York C(ircu)ity. He’s a self-taught
engineer who spends his time relentlessly building, rebuilding, and
deconstructing, and only sleeps for about two hours a month. It’s
rumored that he runs on a quantum-caffeine drive. You can find his work
here:
http://braindeadlock.net
.
Connor Langford
(
[Hack #37]
) is a beta tester at Mac
Hacks Labs, a Minecraft super enthusiast, and a Webelos scout.
Todd Long
(images for
[Hack #18]
) is a professional graphic designer and
semi-professional backwoodsman residing in Knoxville, TN.
Gordon Meyer
(
[Hack #47]
) is a
Chicago-based writer and speaker who has authored dozens of software
manuals, numerous articles for Mac users and technical writers, and
Smart Home Hacks
, a leading book on do-it-yourself
home automation techniques.
John “Nemo” Nemerovski
(
[Hack #46]
) is Reviews Editor
for
MyMac
, the leading original-content Macintosh
consumer web magazine, for over 15 years.
Nathaniel Seibold
(
[Hack #37]
) is an assistant at Mac
Hacks Labs, a Minecraft enthusiast, and a Webelos scout.
Brett Terpstra
(
[Hack #9]
,
[Hack #23]
,
[Hack #24]
,
[Hack #25]
) is a coder, an author, a
web developer and a Mac lover. He finds joy in crafting regular
expressions and making hardware and software do things they weren’t
supposed to do. (Sometimes it’s even beneficial.) Brett shares almost
all of his digital hijinks at
http://brettterpstra.com
.
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First I’d like to thank everyone who reads this book and tries
something they wouldn’t have tried otherwise. You’re the people who make
the book go and you can reach me at
[email protected]
. I’d
also like to thank all the guest hackers. I also extend sincere and deeply
felt thanks to Dawn Mann, who did an especially inspired job with this
book, and I suspect this book will appeal (or be usable) to a wider
audience thanks to her tireless efforts. This book is much, much better
for going through Dawn than it would be if it had gone through an average
editor.
—
Chris Seibold