Here are few early hacks to try.

1) Pressing  a key for long time gives accents, cedillas, etc. as IOS.

Neat stuff. But problem is if you really need to press a key long time there is an issue. Say you want to type Helloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Solution:

Switch it off<Type in terminal>:

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

you can switch back on by

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool true

Need to restart apps to use it.

2) Animated Window open.

Lion has added IOS like annimated effect while opening and closing any windows. Say its power option or opening a new safari tab. It looks good but also eats resource. If you want to save some resource or just hate those animations here is it.

Disable it<Type in terminal>:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAutomaticWindowAnimationsEnabled -bool false 

To enable it back

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAutomaticWindowAnimationsEnabled -bool true 

3) Disable restore for certain apps.

In lion while restarting you have the option of restore. But sometime you might feel that certains apps should not be restored. Like say your password manager or say some game or Vmware, either for personal data or may be because of performance. You can disable restore for particular app in the following way. Eg for quickTime player:

defaults write com.apple.Preview NSQuitAlwaysKeepsWindows -bool false defaults write com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX NSQuitAlwaysKeepsWindows -bool false 

Cont..

Who should try this hack? If any one is true for you its worth trying.

1. You have recently upgraded your RAM from 2GB to 4GB or above.
2. Your MAC Book Pro or what ever mac machine came with Leopard and you just installed snow leopard from somewhere.
3. You tried formatting and various stuffs still Firefox and Safari hands and various programs becomes “Not responding” and you need to kill them.

Ok then you should try.

Before doing that just check the following:

Thats all.

Now open Terminal (Finder and type terminal ) and type the following.
sudo systemsetup -setkernelbootarchitecture x86_64

It will ask for your administrator password. Provide it and restart your machine. Voila!

Facts:

Open activity monitor and see all the default apps has started as 64Bit now.

Kick 1) Any Mac explorer close button is opposite side of windows. Funny. I took an hr before getting habituated to it. I always try to search it on the right hand side. After a week now i try to search the same close button in my office XP on left side. We the end user always suffer

Kick 2) Where the hell is the maximize button. Being from windows i always used to open every application and maximize it but there is nothing called maximize in Mac. I suffer a lot for this. Tried to figure out some apps to do the same but after some day those digit forum geek friends (http://www.thinkdigit.com/forum/showthread.php?t=57559) actually explained me that there is no concept of maximize in Mac. Actually now i like the Mac concept. The “+” button on the top maximize the explorer only to the limit it requires. So if you have two folders in a folder why do you want the whole screen to show that up. So i feel that’s innovative. Mac rocks.

Kick 3) Mac don’t have a refresh thing on its desktop. Crap that was useless. Why the hell we need refresh on windows. Mac do the same without refresh.

Kick 4) Cool so far until unless last Wednesday when i took a 1/2 TB Segate Free Agent Go. I use windows on my desktop and mac on laptop and wanted to use my PHD(Portable hard drive) on both of them simultaneously but the big question. What will be the file format?

Try1: NTFS >> Mac can read NTFS and cannot write to it NTFS anyways is windows property so no problem with windows.

Try2: FAT32 >> Mac and Windows are happy with it. Both can read and write. But the tragedy is Fat32 supports only 1GB of max file size. Most of my movies are above 1GB. Sad i cant compress each and every movie.

So who came to my rescue?

NTFS-3G: This is a mac software which will allow to read and write NTFS on Mac. Download it here. http://www.ntfs-3g.org/ God bless ntfs 3g org.

Kick 5) I copied all my movies to my new drive. Now i can move around with my movies. But wait! How to search the whole thing. OK Mac support spotlight search but it doesn’t search external drives. What the hell! Windows is so good. I can search any file any where. But there should be some hack. Ya there is.

How to add external hardrives and portable drives to spotlight search?

Easy. Pull up Terminal. Write Sudo -s and enter your password. Now execute the following.

sudo mdutil -i “on” “/volumes/drivename”

Once this is done your new drive is added to spotlight index and again i say Mac rocks for Geeks!

Story cont….

The interface and other features though looks similar.

To get a copy just follow the link:
Mac user: http://picasa.google.com/mac/
Linux user: http://picasa.google.com/linux/

Here is a video for Mac user. You can see the features.

Here are the list of features for Linux users:

Sync your Picasa 3 and Picasa Web Albums edits Tired of having to manually re-upload your photos after making further edits? By enabling ‘Sync to Web,’ edits made to your photos in Picasa 3 are automatically transferred to your corresponding online albums. You can sync the following changes: Picasa 3 edits (Basic Fixes, Tuning, and Effects) Photos added or deleted in Picasa 3 Captions, tags, or geotags Getting started The Sync to Web button is located on the right side of each folder or album header. When you click this button, you’ll first be prompted to upload the photos in that folder or album to Picasa Web Albums. You can change the upload size, album privacy setting, or even add a watermark to your uploaded photos. When the upload is complete, any subsequent Picasa 3 edits to those photos will automatically transfer to your online album. Troubleshooting You can disable the sync feature at any time by clicking the Sync to Web button again, or by selecting Disable Sync in the drop-down menu to the right of the Share button in the folder or album header. All your photos and their edits up to this point remain online, but any new edits and changes will no longer be synchronized. The following changes don’t transfer to your online albums: Reordering photos Changes made to folder or album properties Changes made to filenames

Retouch your images Always want to be airbrushed? Use the Retouch tool to remove unsightly blemishes and improve photo quality. It can also help you to restore old photos with marks, water stains, and scratches to excellent condition. When editing any photo, just click the Retouch button on the ‘Basic Fixes’ tab. Adjust the size of your brush, and use the mouse scroll wheel to zoom in and out of the photo for precise edits. Click once to highlight the area you’d like to retouch, and then find another portion of the picture that should take the place of your highlighted area. Hover over this replacement area and click a second time.

Add text or watermarks to your photos

You can easily personalize your photos using the Watermark and Text tools.

Print captions

Your captions are about to see a little more action. You can now print your captions or photo file names on or below your photos.

Upload easily to Picasa Web Albums

Use the Drop Box to hold quic
k
uploads and upload throttling to multi-task during your upload.

Control your Picasa Web Albums settings

If you have an online album in Picasa Web Albums, you can now control the online settings through the corresponding folder or album in Picasa 3.

Manage folders on your computer

It’s now possible to move entire folders around on your hard drive from within Picasa 3.

Get more information about your photos

We’ve added new icons and tools to the Library view to quickly communicate useful information about your photos.

So by default MAC OS X won’t come with NTFS support. So one way is to customize during installation and choose NTFS 3G.

Else if you haven’t customized then follow the steps below!

1) Download and install MacFuse. Download link is here
2) Once installed now download NTFS 3G and install it. Download it from here

It will ask you for restart. Restart your comp and see the changes. Now you can use the same windows drive in mac. I am using vista and mac together and can share my files easily on both of them!

Before

After

NB: Remember the download links i provided was tested on MacOSX 10.5.4
So if you are using any other version of mac i would suggest to visit the following links:

• http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/
• http://macntfs-3g.blogspot.com/

This is a simple guide to create a “Quick and Easy” dual boot system. It will use the integrated boot selector from Darwin.

You will need:
1. (Surely) Mac OS X 10.4.6 JAS Install DVD (on a DVD-R not RW!)
2. (Surely) A PC with a compatible DVD drive (to install OS X, it’s necessary!)
3. (Maybe!) Windows XP Install CD

It’s simple and quite easy to understand but you must either:
* a – Start from scratch with an empty HDD (longest but easiest and requires item 3)
* b – Partition your disk with a program (as I don’t use these, I will no cover them here, there’s sufficient info on that everywhere)
* c – Start from an already partitionned Win XP system with sufficient space to install OS X on an unused partition. This “Quick and Easy” Solution, took 25 minutes for me to got OS X installed and running with a boot selector (installation of OS X included!).

To start, you should have two system partitions with at least 10 GB each to get comfortable with Virtual Memory (both OS), the hibernation sleep mode of windows and the bunch of program you will install to use your PC/Mac to work/play/whatever.

We will start from scratch, other will get onboard later.

* 1.

First of all, put your Windows XP Install CD in the tray (no really!).

- When the installer will ask your where to install Windows, select your HDD and create two partitions of at least 10 GB for Windows XP and OS X. Use FAT 32 System because OS X can read/write on these drives but not on NTFS (read only). Leave the rest of the disk unused. (To be honest you could even set up the entire HDD from Win XP install but it’s easier from OS X).

- Install Windows on the partition you just created, Windows will always make the install partition the active partition and then boot from there.

* 2.

Setup Windows (The longer part!)

* 3.

(we take case b. and c. people here!)

Put the OS X Install DVD (Yes, again)

- When you are at the installation menu, choose from the menu Utilities -> Disc Utility.

- Then choose your disk and then either:

a: Select your OS X partition and go to the Erase Tab. Put “MacOSX” or any label in the label section (no special character as é à ù because it will be easier to call from the command line) and select Journalled MacOS type, click erase, this will format your partition to the Mac OS X format.

b: Select your unused Space and setup your drive from here. (For the more advanced users or the bold ones)

- Then, be sure to have your partition mounted (it’s said somewhere, but I don’t really remember) as you will need to access it from the terminal.

- Quit the Disk Utility, this will get you directly to the install menu.

- Then select, from the menu, Utilities -> Terminal.
You will get to the tiny command line of Darwin (as someone said: don’t panic, the terminal is your friend!)

- Then type: “diskutil list” (as always, without quotes).
Keep note of the EXACT DISK/PARTITION where your MacOSX partition is, it will be something like: disk0s2 (Disk 0, partition #2 here).

- Then type “fdisk -e /dev/rdisk0″.
The 0 is the number following the “disk” in disk0s2. Hint for the Noobs: replace the number, here 0, with YOUR OWN MacOSX disk number!

[note: you will be in the sub command prompt of the fdisk program.]

- Then type “p”, it will list the partitions of this HDD.
Verify the number of your MacOSX partition just be sure that it will be your OS X system partition and not another you will make active. The active partition (here Win XP) will be identified with an “*”.

- Type: “f 2″ where the 2 is the partition # in the “disk0s2″.
Hint for the Noobs: replace the number, here 2, with YOUR OWN MacOSX partition number!

This will mark your partition as the active partition for the boot sequence at PC start-up.

- Type: “write” to write your changes (it will ask you if it’s OK to set the changes on the next reboot, indeed, say Yes).

- Type: “exit” to exit fdisk program.

- Type: “exit” to exit Terminal.

- Close terminal with Command(ALT)-Q.

- Install OS X with the right options for your PC (go the the install FAQ to get some info on that).

- Reboot and enjoy the boot menu of Darwin when you press F8 while booting. You can select any OS and voilà!

In case it goes wrong and the partition doesn’t boot, just access the terminal from the DVD and repeat the Terminal procedure with the right partition. But to be sure it’s not because your partition is not a primary one, delete it with the Disk Utility of OS X to the “unused space” state and create it again, just in case.

Also, if OS X doesn’t boot at all on your PC, then your PC would be unstartable. Just put the DVD in the machine and repeat the Terminal procedure to change the starting partition to Win XP, but this should be an unlikely event as you are able to boot from the DVD.

Notes: It could certainly work for more OS like Linux, OS2, DOS or any obscure OS but I haven’t tried, so I could not write it here, but as the Boot selector seems quite flexible, it should work.