MacTricksAndTips.com

If you are a subscriber of this blog (you should be!), I mentioned about throttling bandwidth using Terminal. This trick was designed so certain ports would be throttled at different speeds. As a result you could manage how much each type of service could get. That trick used Terminal, since many people are not comfortable using Terminal I found a simple app that does exactly the same thing.

This is quite a big question that tends to pop up from time to time. It is about CPU intensive system (and normal) apps that you have know idea why they are going flat out on your computer. This can be trouble some, and can happen quite often for no reason. This post is going to list some of the techniques I use to get my computer back to normal. They are sort oflisted in order or completion. For example you go through the list one at a time. If you know of any more tips, please leave them in the comment.

Every time you Mac logs in it will run any item in your login items list. This post will explain about the login item interface and how you can use it for your advantage. For example I use the login item interface to run start up scripts, connect to remote disks and generally make life that bit easier. There is one problem with adding items to your login. The more applications and scripts you add the long it will take for your computer to start up and be ready for use.

This is quite a little interest on mine. Since I have a laptop I open and close the lid a lot when moving from one place to another. As a result some time I want to change what happens. For example keeping the Mac asleep when the lid is opened and keeping my Mac awake when the lid is closed. There isn’t any default methods of doing this within the system preferences. It needs a bit of hacking and using applications to work around this problem.

In most applications (except Word) there isn’t a quick and easy way to insert the date and time. This can for the most part be slightly annoying. But there is a very simple and easy solution. Using a Services plugin you can enable a couple of options to quickly insert the date and time in any Carbon application. For example TextEdit, Mail, Safari etc.

Did you know that on many menu items within Mac OS X there are three dots (…) called ellipsis. Ellipsis are very illusive and can be extremely confusing if you find something isn’t working and you haven’t got a clue why. The problem is down to ellipsis.

Quite a while ago I mentioned my Top 50 Terminal Commands. These were terminal commands that enabled you to access “hidden” features of the operating system. I reality they are not hidden, they are not on any preference pane. This is where the Secrets Preference Pane comes in. It includes hundreds of commands that enable you to find hidden settings at the click of a button. It is similar to working with Terminal except everything is organized in pleasant to view lists and drop down boxes for your convenience.

This is a quick tip to enable you to remove both screen savers and system preference panes from your system. It is not strictly an uninstallation, but it can move them to the trash, or hide them from view. Its a simple method that I didn’t know about until I started messing about inside the preference panes.