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Here's an app that you don't see every day. I always find myself adjusting the display brightness when I wake up, and then forget to turn it down through at least half the night. Staring at this white screen I don't really know what kind of impact my eyes are going to suffer in a few years. Yet, I still do it. The only relief is knowing that I'm not alone in doing this. Proof? Now there's an app for just that!

If there's a more neglected or misunderstood Mac utility than the Terminal, OS X's built-in command-line app, we've yet to find it. In an age where Apple's $200 smart phone offers the most intuitive graphical user interface the world has ever seen, turning to a text-only command-line window can seem stubbornly retro, reminding us of audiophiles who vociferously insist that vinyl records sound better than music CDs. But there are plenty of reasons for using the command line beyond mere nostalgia: speed, flexibility, and familiarity with OS fundamentals, to name a few. We've collected 25 Terminal-based solutions for common desktop issues, because knowing these tricks is an invaluable addition to any Mac user's toolbox. And while there is no reason to abandon the Finder, think of mastering the Terminal as learning to drive a car with a manual transmission-once you can drive a stick, you can drive anything.

Any suggestions?

This started happening to me too (in my case, switching from US to British on its own will) but only after I started using the NoScript and Diigo Toolbar plugins for Firefox. I don't use Adium. The switch to British makes it a real pane to type microblogging hashtags, as the UK MacBook keyboard has no hash.

This looks like great (it is a mix of Bash and AppleScript) and it works very well for me. However if you are not familiar with simple Unix administration, you might prefer packaged freeware or shareware like StartupSound.prefPane or Psst.

Unfortunately, BGR made a mistake in publishing the story. The last line of the exchange was written to be said by Steve Jobs, when in fact it was Jason who emailed that in reply to Steve Jobs

Propagator provides a GUI for pushing out files to Macs on your local network. This is useful for OS X system administrators who wish to update all of their managed client machines with a specific file, most commonly property list (.plist) files. This functionality can also be achieved using Apple Remote Desktop, but a free alternative is always worth taking a look. My two favorite aspects of Propagator are its Common Places drop down menu for quickly specifying common locations to drop files (such as long ~/Library paths), and it's Set Ownership check box for giving proper ownership of the file to the right user accounts. The option to Lock Files After Copy prevents users (in my case, students and unknowing faculty) from messing with your work, accidentally or not.

The Omni Group on Tuesday decided to make three of its apps available as freeware. The applications are available for download with no restrictions. "We've been thinking about this for OmniWeb for a while because every other browser is free," Ken Case, CEO of the Omni Group, told Macworld. "We didn't feel comfortable charging for something that we are not updating as frequently as some other apps." The Omni Group said OmniWeb, OmniDazzle, OmniDiskSweeper, and OmniObjectMeter are all available with no licensing restrictions and are fully functional. The company said none of the applications are currently under active development.

I'm really fond of OmniDiskSweeper - a great utility! When disk space is tight, I've had too many clients throw away dozens or hundreds of little files they could have left alone. DiskSweeper quickly pinpoints that one, singularly big video file or non-essential folder that can free up gigs of space. It deserves a place in everyone's Utilities folder.

With many households now using more iOS devices than computers, it is important to be able to sync multiple devices to one Mac. This can be done using one of three main methods.

An Apple employee (call him "Alpha") who works in the iPhone Development Department has leaked some information to us recently, most of which will come as a surprise to many. The amount of shocking information leaked is beyond the grasp of an individual and shows how far Apple and AT&T will go to lock their users and steal their information while they have no clue about it.

Network Home Redirector... While network-based home directories provide many benefits, they also bring some unwanted headaches. These headaches usually come in the form of Microsoft Office User Data folder issues, as well as AFP performance issues when dealing with thousands, sometimes millions of cache files. If you would like to redirect some of that traffic to the local machine, instead of taxing your network and your AFP servers, NHR might be for you. Download the DMG file and choose the appropriate package installer(s) for your environment. That's it.

The MacEnterprise project is a community of IT professionals sharing information and solutions to support Macs in an enterprise. We collaborate on the deployment, management, and integration of Mac OS X client and server computers into multi-platform computing environments. We welcome your participation through suggestions, comments or contributions.

If only I had enough disc space on my MacBook!

Alternative to Front Row - I like Front Row but navigating among podcasts can be a nuisance - perhaps this can be hacked to make it easier

Intel MacBooks - especially the consumer MacBook or more recent MacBook Pro models offer easy do it yourself SSD hard drive upgrade options.

Apple first started advertising its products in the late 1970s. The 80s showed a wide variety of ads, some of which served to convince consumers that they should purchase a computer, and specifically an Apple. These ads were text-heavy and light on images, as were many computer and technology ads from that era. Apple ads really came into their heyday during the 1990s, with the "Think Different" campaign, which became very popular as they featured a number of famous people. Here's a stunning compilation of some of Apple's most notable advertisements from the 70s until the present day, including a few videos ads.

A great collection of Ads from Apple since the 70s... Enjoy.

HyperDither is an OS X image processing utility that converts color or grayscale images to 1 bit black & white using a sophisticated dithering routine. Way back in the early days of Macintosh, Bill Atkinson (of HyperCard, QuickDraw, MacPaint & nature photography fame) developed a very elegant dithering filter to convert greyscale image data to the 1 bit black & white Mac video display. The dithering produced by this routine was much higher quality than the now-a-days ubiquitous Floyd-Steinberg or "Error-diffusion" filter (used by QuickTime, PhotoShop).

The dither matrix was implemented an option in Apple's HyperScan software (A HyperCard stack with some XCMDs/XFCNs) that would connect to a flatbed scanner. HyperScan, and hence the most-excellent Atkinson dithering routine, has been unavailable for many, many years-but not forgotten! I was able to email Bill Atkinson in January, 2003 and inquire about the details of the algorithm; he was kind enough to respond with a brief write up of the routine-15 minutes later I had it up and running.
It's taken a few spare afternoons since 2003 to pack everything into a nice little application with documentation and an icon-better late than never!