www.it-ebooks.info www.it-ebooks.info Mac Hacks Chris Seibold www.it-ebooks.info Mac Hacks by Chris Seibold Copyright © 2013 Chris Seibold All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472 O’Reilly books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use Online editions are also available for most titles (http://my.safaribooksonline.com) For more information, contact our corporate/institutional sales department: 800-998-9938 or corporate@oreilly.com Editor: Dawn Mann Production Editor: Holly Bauer Proofreader: Kiel Van Horn Indexer: Angela Howard March 2013: Cover Designer: Randy Comer Interior Designers: Ronald Bilodeau and Edie Freedman Illustrator: Rebecca Demarest First Edition Revision History for the First Edition: 2013-02-28: First release See http://oreilly.com/catalog/errata.csp?isbn=9781449325589 for release details Nutshell Handbook, the Nutshell Handbook logo, and the O’Reilly logo are registered trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc Mac Hacks and related trade dress are trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks Where those designations appear in this book, and O’Reilly Media, Inc., was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in caps or initial caps While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author assume no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein ISBN: 978-1-449-32558-9 [LSI] www.it-ebooks.info Table of Contents Preface vii Before You Hack Hack 01 Create a Great Backup Hack 02 Create a Bootable Flash Drive Hack 03 Partition that Drive Nondestructively Hack 04 Get to Know Your User Account 14 Hack 05 Home Folder to Go 20 Hack 06 Fun with PLIST 28 Hack 07 Troubleshooting Mac OS X 33 Mountain Lion Hacks 41 Hack 08 Copy the Mountain Lion Installer to a Flash Drive 41 Hack 09 Resurrect Web Sharing in Mountain Lion 46 Hack 10 Make Notification Center Less Annoying 49 Hack 11 Quick Hacks for Mountain Lion 55 Hack 12 A Clean Install of Mountain Lion 61 Customize Your OS X Experience 65 Hack 13 Tame Your Browsers 65 Hack 14 Blog with Your Mac 70 Hack 15 Host a Web Page on Your Mac (and Get at Your Files Anytime) 76 Hack 16 Change the Startup Sound 83 Hack 17 Full Screen for (Almost) Any App 91 Hack 18 Create Custom Icons 94 Hacks for a More Informative Mac Hack 19 Quit the Finder Hack 20 Move a Widget to the Desktop 107 107 112 iii www.it-ebooks.info Hack 21 Turn Your Desktop into a Fount of Useful Info 116 Make It Automatic 121 Hack 22 Getting Things Done with AppleScript 121 Hack 23 Create a Service with Automator 128 Hack 24 Customize the Services Menu 131 Hack 25 Speed Things Up with Keybindings 137 Hack 26 Eject iTunes 140 Fun with Unix 143 Hack 27 Harmless Unix Tricks 143 Hack 28 Install Homebrew 149 Hack 29 Get Things Done Safely with the Command Line 153 Hack 30 Manipulate Images with ImageMagick 158 Hack 31 Customize the Dock with Terminal 163 Lock Down that Mac 169 Hack 32 Achieve Network Anonymity 169 Hack 33 Monitor Your Network Traffic 174 Hack 34 Protect Sensitive Files 180 Hack 35 Encrypt a USB Drive 187 Hack 36 Add Physical Security Measures to Your Mac 192 Other OSes 201 Hack 37 Run a Minecraft Server on Your Mac 201 Hack 38 Play Wii Games on Your Mac 207 Hack 39 Manage Your Devices with Profile Manager 211 Networking Hacks 227 Hack 40 Optimize Your WiFi 227 Hack 41 Secure Your Wireless Network 231 Hack 42 Use Your Mac as an Access Point 241 10 Multimedia Hacks 245 Hack 43 Turn Your Mac into a DVR 245 Hack 44 Master Torrents 249 Hack 45 Move Your iTunes Library 252 Hack 46 Get Free and Better-Sounding Music for iTunes 256 11 Hack Some Hardware 261 Hack 47 Have Your Mac Automagically Recognize You 261 Hack 48 Squeeze Some Speed out of an Aging MacBook Pro 266 Hack 49 Give Your Polycarbonate Mac a Dye Job 273 Hack 50 Get that iMac out of the Way 278 Hack 51 Use a Wiimote with Your Mac 287 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS www.it-ebooks.info Hack 52 Turn Your MacBook into a Tablet 291 Index 303 v TABLE OF CONTENTS www.it-ebooks.info www.it-ebooks.info Preface 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 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 How to Use This Book 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 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 is a good place to start if you haven’t used that in a while vii www.it-ebooks.info How This Book Is Organized 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 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 viii PREFACE www.it-ebooks.info ...www.it-ebooks.info Mac Hacks Chris Seibold www.it-ebooks.info Mac Hacks by Chris Seibold Copyright © 2013 Chris Seibold All rights reserved... Hack 47 Have Your Mac Automagically Recognize You 261 Hack 48 Squeeze Some Speed out of an Aging MacBook Pro 266 Hack 49 Give Your Polycarbonate Mac a Dye Job 273 Hack 50 Get that iMac out of the... backing up! Time Machine The most user-friendly way to back up your Mac is Time Machine (Figure 1-1), which is built into OS X and is incredibly easy to use The idea behind Time Machine is simple: