Just go to the ‘Date & Time’ pane of the system preferences. On that page you can click ‘Show Date’ to start displaying the date. It’s a really simple tweak but one that can be extremely useful in everyday use of OS X.

With simple terminal commands, you can modify certain aspects of your Dock like enable highlighting in Stacks, disable 3d effects or pin the Dock to either side of your screen. You may also change certain menu titles of the Dock by modifying your system’s language files.

Changing the visual appearance of Mac OS is not only fun but also quite simple. Usually replacing a few images in the /System directory is all it takes as is the case with this mod. Before you do any modifying however, I recommend that you back up all files you overwrite. I find a good habit is to make a zip of the original files and leave it in the same directory. Check out leoparddocks.com for a great selection of PNG sprites Dock designs.

Check out Using Mac for this great post on tweeking your Mac OS Dock.

So if your Mac starts acting strange, these are some steps you can take to help properly recover it.

1. Log out of your current session

Try to restart your session. You can log out of your current session from the Apple menu or with the Cmd+Shift+Q keyboard shortcut.

2. Reboot

Attempting to restart your system may resolve more important issues such as improper hardware recognition. From the Apple menu, select Restart.

3. Disconnect all peripherals

If problems persist, you may want to unplug all peripherals before rebooting. They may be responsible for certain system crashes.

4. Reset the PMU

If you use a laptop, resetting the Power Management Unit may resolve some common problems. To reset the PMU, shut down your Mac, unplug the power adapter and remove the battery. Next, hold the power button for at least 5 seconds. You may now reinstall your battery, reconnect the unit to a power source and restart it.

Keep in mind that resetting the PMU puts certain settings such as sleep time and backlight parameters back to default.

5. Reset the PRAM

If you’re still experiencing problems, resetting the Parameter RAM or PRAM is recommended. Start your Mac and immediately hold down Option+P+R. The computer will restart. After you’ve heard the chimes twice, release the key combination and let your system start normally.

6. Repair disk permissions

Although repairing permissions seems to be less useful in Leopard than in previous versions, it never hurts run it and repaid any eventual problems.

From the Disk Utility, select your Startup disk and from the First Aid tab, click Repair Disk Permissions.

7. Repair your Startup disk

Also in the Disk Utility are the Verify Disk and Repair Disk functions. This will correct issues with the disk directory (road map to where the data is stored on a disk or volume). Please note that you cannot repair your Startup Disk while it is booted. To repair your primary Mac OS installation disk you will have to run the Disk Utility from your installation DVD.

8. Run Software Update

Installing Apple Software Updates may resolve bugs that are causing your system to crash. To check that you have the most current version of Mac OS, select Software Update from the Apple menu.

9. Reinstall Mac OS or seek further support

If you have done all of these things and are still experiencing problems, you may want to consider completely reinstalling Mac OS or contact an Apple Care Center.

If you’ve ever called Apple Support, that’s probably the first question you were asked before the person could help you. Well getting your serial number is pretty easy, in fact it just takes 4 clicks.

1. From the menu bar, click the Apple logo at the top left of your screen
2. Select About this Mac
3. Double-click the version number
4. Your serial number is revealed!

In a recent post, a commenter wondered if there was any way to get screen shot filenames back to how they were in Leopard. After a lot of searching and digging through system folders to find the answer, I discovered a lot of stuff about screen captures.

First it should be known that the correct term (at least in the Mac world) is screen capture. When you take one, SystemUIServer, a background process that controls several aspects of the Mac OS X user interface runs a program located at /usr/sbin/screencapture which has several different options for taking pictures of your screen. For instance, it can take window shots with or without shadow or open the taken picture in Preview. The full list of options can be found on its man page in the Mac OS X Reference Library.

When SystemUIServer triggers a screen capture, it uses a default set of options. Shadows are turned on, the picture is saved to the Desktop in PNG format, etc. Some of these options can be changed by rewriting to screencapture’s default preferences in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.screencapture.plist.

To modify the default preferences for screencapture, paste the following commands in the Terminal.

Disable/Enable window shadow

Window shadows are enabled by default. You can control this setting with the following property. This only applies when taking single-windows screen captures.

Disable

defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool true

Enable

defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool false

Change file format

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type <format>

Availible formats are :

• png (default)
• pdf
• jpg
• jp2 (JPG2000)
• gif
• tif (TIFF)
• bmp
• pict
• tga

Change capture folder

The default location is ~/Desktop however, you may change it to any path.

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location <path>

Change the filename

This is where it gets tricky. You may change the name of the file with the property :

defaults write com.apple.screencapture name <string>

However, this only changes the first part of the filename. For example, changing the name to “Picture” will save screen captures as “Picture 2009-09-23 at 2.13.30 PM”. There seems to be no built-in way to revert back to the old screenshot filename although, anything can be achieved with Automator.

I’ve created a Automator folder action that will monitor the Desktop for screen capture files and rename them back to the old format. You can of course modify this to your own liking.

Installing the folder action

• Download RenameScreenCaptures.zip and unzip the file
• Place “Rename Screen Capture.workflow” in ~/Library/Workflows/Applications/Folder Actions/
• Right-click on your Desktop folder in your Home directory and select Folder Actions Setup form the Services menu
• When prompted to  Chose a Script to Attach popup, select Rename Screen Capture.workflow

Now when you take a screen capture, Folder Actions will kick in and renames the file sequentially.

Well for those of you who like me didn’t see the big white cat on Telestram’s site, here is where you can get the Flip4Mac WMV 2.3.0.7 Beta.

As in previous versions “Flip4Mac WMV includes an Internet plug-in that plays Windows Media streams within Safari and other web browsers.”

Changes in This Release

• Added support for Mac OS X Snow Leopard
• Local files now import in the background by default. This can be changed on a per-application basis in Flip4Mac WMV Preferences > Player > Advanced.
• Audio encoding and decoding is now handled by CoreAudio.
• Components now support multi-threaded applications.
• Added 64-bit support to the WebKit plugin and the Flip4Mac WMV Preference Pane.
• Opening WMV files from the Finder

There is an alternative, Perian: the swiss-army knife of Quicktime components. Perian is a free, open source QuickTime component (for those of you coming from Windows: a codec pack) that adds native support for many popular video formats.

The latest version, 1.1.4, now supports QuickTime X and adds support for the following formats:

• File formats: AVI, DIVX, FLV, MKV, GVI, VP6, and VFW
• Video types: MS-MPEG4 v1 & v2, DivX, 3ivx, H.264, Sorenson H.263, FLV/Sorenson Spark, FSV1, VP6, H263i, VP3, HuffYUV, FFVHuff, MPEG1 & MPEG2 Video, Fraps, Snow, NuppelVideo, Techsmith Screen Capture, DosBox Capture
• Audio types: Windows Media Audio v1 & v2, Flash ADPCM, Xiph Vorbis (in Matroska), and MPEG Layer I & II Audio, True Audio, DTS Coherent Acoustics, Nellymoser ASAO
• AVI support for: AAC, AC3 Audio, H.264, MPEG4, and VBR MP3
• Subtitle support for SSA/ASS and SRT

Luckily, we can stuff that clutter in a closet by hiding the icons on the desktop. Here’s how.

1. Open the Terminal located in /Applications/Utilities (or alternatively by searching for it in Spotlight).
2. Enter the following command at the prompt and press Enter. You can copy/paste the command just make sure it stays on one line.
   

   defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false

3. Restart the Finder by entering the following command in the Terminal and pressing Enter.
   

   killall Finder

   The Terminal is case sensitive so be sure to respect uppercase and lowercase characters.
4. Exit the terminal by entering the following command and press Enter.
   

   exit

5. Quit the Terminal application.

Your desktop will now be clean leaving you free to admire your desktop picture. You may still save files to the desktop and access them only you will have to do so in a Finder window.

Getting your desktop to show icons again is easily as simple.

1. Open the Terminal located in /Applications/Utilities (or alternatively by searching for it in Spotlight).
2. Enter the following command at the prompt and press Enter. You can copy/paste the command just make sure it stays on one line.
   

   defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool true

3. Restart the Finder by entering the following command in the Terminal and pressing Enter.
   

   killall Finder

4. Exit the terminal by entering the following command and press Enter.
   

   exit

5. Quit the Terminal application.

In Mac OS, like most operating systems that support multiple displays, you have the ability to specify which is your primary. The primary display houses the Dock and menu bar and is also where windows will open by default.

Changing you default monitor is easy. In the Displays panel of System Preferences, click on the Arrangement tab. Here you can set the relative positioning of your screens. By dragging the menu bar from one screen to an other, you change it as your primary display.

When Exposé is activated:

• ⌘+Tab cycles though the opened applications showing only their windows
• ⌘+1 sorts windows alphabetically
• ⌘+2 sorts windows by application