Ryan Tomayko

Mac OS X SSD tweaks —

Great set of tips for eking out disk performance on MacOS X, like disabling last access time tracking. These are just as useful in non-SSD configs.

Running Processes —

Dustin Sallings lays out a nice list of simple, non-pid-polling process supervision techniques available on various Unix and Linux environments. Great reference. I’m pretty sure the /etc/inittab respawn directive is one of the most underrated utilities in Linux server environments.

Blocks (from the Ars Technica review of Mac OS X 10.6) —

I didn’t know about this:

In Snow Leopard, Apple has introduced a C language extension called “blocks.” Blocks add closures and anonymous functions to C and the C-derived languages C++, Objective-C, and Objective C++.

They go on to list code samples in each language. The syntax is … not what I expected. Check out the section on LLVM and Clang also.

SmartSleep —

Interesting looking prefpane for MacOS X that tweaks some sleep settings:

“Just ‘sleep’ means that the notebook will go to sleep fast, but you loose the ability to change the battery. Just ‘sleep and hibernate’ will wake the computer fast, but sleeping will take ages as the contents of the memory are saved to disk before entering the sleep. MacOS uses ‘sleep and hibernate’ all the time by default. SmartSleep lets your notebook just ‘sleep’ while the battery has a high level. If the battery level drops below a certain point ( default is less then 20% or 20 minutes ) it will switch to ‘sleep and hibernate’. So you have the best of both worlds.”

Firefox 3 optimized builds for G5 / Intel —

Right on time.

Plainview - A full-screen web browser for Mac —

Free (as in beer). Built on WebKit. Simple. Beautiful.

Processes spawn faster than threads? —

Sometimes! Or, fork(2) is a very fast operation on legitimate operating systems. I didn’t realize it could be as fast as spawning a thread, though.

LimeChat: IRC Client for OSX —

I think I may finally be able to get rid of Colloquy.

DTerm - A command line anywhere and everywhere —

Payware GUI shell thingy for MacOS. This is not a QuickSilver/Launchbar clone. It’s more like a magical bash interpreter that knows things about what’s happening in various Mac GUI applications (like Finder, Safari, etc).

NetNewsWire is now free! —

I wonder why newsgator would make this free. Seems like there was a pretty decent slate of paying users. Losing ground to Google Reader? Eventual ad placement? Just wanted to be nice? Weird.

Run Internet Explorer 5/6/7 Natively in OS X —

This trumps Leopard for most important Mac development this year as far as I’m concerned. Words cannot explain the hatred I’ve developed for booting up multiple Parallels VMs to get at IE.

macvim - Google Code —

Absolutely beautiful new Vim port for OS X – sane GUI tabs, multiple windows, client/server mode, fonts look great. Stop building Carbon Vim from source!

Bwana —

Manual page URL handler for Safari (e.g., “man:bash”, “man:sort” in URL box). References to other man pages are hyperlinked very nicely and the pages themselves are formatted quite nicely.

Prism Prototype Now Available on Mac and Linux —

That was quick. IMO, the Mac needs this application more than other platform’s (including Windows) because of its document oriented application switching.

Mac Fonts @ OSX-E —

Blatant license violation!

Fear and loathing at the command line —

“To average users, the suggestion that they use the command line – or the shell, or the terminal, or whatever else you want to call it is only slightly less welcome than the suggestion that they go out and deliberately contract AIDS.” That’s a damn sham

Unison File Synchronizer - User Manual and Reference Guide —

I’m gonna give this a try for managing home directories now that I’ve convinced myself that version control is the wrong solution. I moved my homes from CVS to SVN a couple years ago and just tried going with bzr but VCS just isn’t right here.

Ten OS X Command Line Utilities you might not know about [osxdaily.com] —

About half of these will be well-known to the UNIX hacker but there’s a couple I’ve not seen elsewhere: lsbom, softwareupdate, screencapture, and lipo.

Exploring the Mac OS X Firewall [macdevcenter.com] —

Awesome look at using advanced features of ipfw(8) on OS X.

Using mutt on OS X [linsec.ca] —

This is pretty darn close to my configuration but I used the mutt-devel port… Oh, and my ~/.procmailrc is pretty insane also :)

Vi Input Manager Plugin —

“Essentially, this add Vi command functionality (albeit a small subset) to any (and all) text editors that use the Cocoa text system; e.g., Safari, TeXShop, XCode, etc.”

Bill Gates (clearly on crack): "Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day." —

“Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine.”

Updated vim binaries for OS X 10.3, 10.4 —

Vim 7.0.188 Universal and PPC binaries are up.

Vienna —

Nice looking Newsreader for Mac OS X (F/OSS with an Apache 2.0 license and public subversion repository).

SeamlessRDP —

Seamless window support for rdesktop (and perhaps Cocoa Remote Desktop). Similar to Parallel’s Coherence Mode for RDP.

Cocoa Remote Desktop —

A Cocoa port of rdesktop. Universal Binary, multiple concurrent sessions, no X11 makes it the best RDP client for Mac on paper.

JHymn —

Oh wow, I just ripped all my iTunes DRM’d songs down to unprotected AAC in about 10 minutes. These guys did a great job.

Mac OS X Things - Disable Dashboard —

I wanted to like it but…

DarwinPorts Guide —

Alright, it looks like I’m going to have to break down and learn how to package ports since none of this crap is working on Tiger.

The Apple Blog - Quicksilver Changes Everything —

Seriously.

Python Metadata Importer —

A Spotlight Plugin that imports and indexes Python source code. w00t!

Everything You Need to Know to Install Tiger —

Will be useful if amazon ever decides to ship my stuff.

Preparing for Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) Installation -- Avoiding issues before and after updating —

Notes on stuff that should be backed up and other tips for a smooth upgrade. The comment thread looks promising as well with everyone reporting in with problems and opinion.

Paul Graham - Return of the Mac

Clutter by Sprote Rsrch. —

“Clutter is a small Mac OS X application that lets you put music CDs on your desktop. You can drag them anywhere. Line them up neatly or put them in piles, it’s your choice.”

Treo DUN via Bluetooth for Mac —

Can’t wait..

Gish —

Supposedly kick ass video game for OS X, Linux, and Windows. Free demo available.

Apple of IBM's eye? —

Did IBM drop the x86 PC so it could start selling Mac’s? Interesting..

G4 Optimized Firefox builds.. —

Haven’t tried yet but these optimized builds are rumoured to blow the doors off the standard distribution.

HOW-TO: Get music OFF your iPod —

only takes 15 pages to explain.

Kula: 1001 —

A flickr desktop client.

Ted's Macintosh Tips and Tricks —

Excellent repository of OS X configurations, tips, applications, etc.

anacron for Mac OS X 10.3 —

Hard to believe this isn’t part of the standard distribution.

Mac Takes Honors as Best Unix Desktop —

“KDE and GNOME have both gotten much better, but let’s get real. They’re not even in the same ballpark.” — Ouch. True though…

Rixstep —

“A repository of every keyboard secret in OS X.”

Synergy —

“share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems” via PhotoMatt.

GNOME: We've overtaken Windows, bring on Apple —

Title is a bit misleading. GNOME feels they have reached Windows' level of functionality (I’d agree) and are now shooting to bring the featureset in line with Apple’s OS X.

Magical Macintosh Key Sequences —

Collection of poorly documented OS X key-sequences.

Goban —

Hey tkington! I noticed this come in on my OSX del.icio.us feed.

Useful OS X Keystrokes

Apache Web Serving With Mac OS X —

Six part series on OSX’s built in Apache httpd configuration.

Colloquy: IRC Client —

Solid OS X interface.

TerminalColors —

Modify the RGB values used for ANSI colors in Terminal.app.

Hacking Mac OS X Panther —

Sample chapters from book I need to buy.

macosxhints - All macosxhints Panther hints —

431 Total

Mac OS X Panther for Unix Geeks [safari.oreailly.com] —

“..this book is your guide to figuring out the BSD Unix system and Panther-specific components that you may find challenging.”

What is Mac OS X? —

This document attempts to give a hacker over-friendly answer to the question “What is Mac OS X?”.

itunes2rhythm.py —

Python script to convert iTunes xml database to rhythmbox xml database.

macosxhints - Get the most from X! —

OS X Hacks. Forum type format.

Brad Choate: OS X software inventory

MacMod - Your Mac Mod HQ —

Hardware mods.. Spooky!

Fink —

The Fink project wants to bring the full world of Unix Open Source software to Darwin and Mac OS X.