This is a page full of changes, additions, programs, and preferences that I like to often set on my mac platforms. Refer to it when you get a new mac, or have recently reinstalled the OS.

Cool Mac programs

LiquidCD - cd burning app, also opens images .iso, .toast; free
Parallels - Win XP on mac intel; pay
- Microsoft Virtual PC - win xp on a power pc; pay
UnRarX - RAR utility; free open source
Transmit - sFTP, FTP, etc, really fast; pay
GeekBind - allows you to move windows around with shortcuts; PowerPC only?; free, but unsupported
SwitchResX - use non-standard resolutions; free
DashQuit - shows dashboard-widget ram usage and allows you to stop dashboard; free
Image editing - Photoshop rules, but takes too long to load for little repairs; Here are alternatives:
- LiveQuartz; free
- Doubletake; panorama stitcher, pay
- Seashore; free
- Chocoflopl; free
OnyX - Preventive system maintenance for OS X; free

Duhs - You have to have these

Safari or Firefox - Interweb ; free open source
Apple Mail or Thunderbird - email galore; free open source
VLC - plays all movies; free open source

Spotlight

Spotlight search speediness / usefulness
- Following treats spotlight more as a application launcher, than search
- System Preferences > Spotlight > uncheck all but ‘Applications’ and ‘System Preferences’

Tabbing between fields doesn't work

In firefox, you must correctly set the tabFocus option.
- Basically, go to about:config and set/add accessibility.tabfocus
- See details on mozillas knowledgebase: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Accessibility.tabfocus
You can set the OS X keyboard focus option
- Go to System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard Shortcuts tab
- Under ‘Full keyboard access:’, select All Controls

Various preferences

Turn on Text to Speech
- Turn on System Preferences > Speech > Text to Speech > Speek selected text...
- Command+Control+S for keyboard shortcut
Turn on Apple Screen Zoom
- System Preferences > Universal Access > Zoom On
Show server icons on desktop
- Finder > Preferences > General > select “Connected servers”

Sleep vs Hibernation

To easily switch between sleep and hibernation enter the following commands:

Normal sleep
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 1

Hibernate
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 3

Sleep

Puts key components off, but keeps RAM in RAM and power to many components.

Hibernate

Saves RAM to HDD and turns off entire computer. When it boots back up, it loads the RAM image from disk and you start from where you were.