Tips n Tricks

Speed up your Mac

There is a file on all newly-installed OSX86 PCs called "AppleTPMACPI.kext," it tries to find a TPM chip that is only on the real Intel Developer Machines. It uses all system resources trying to accomplish its impossible task. Here is how to delete it:
Navigate your OSX86 Mac to this folder: "/System/Library/Extensions/" Delete the file "AppleTPMACPI.kext" in this folder, reboot. Your computer will spring to life.

Use any USB printer driver

This fix is very simple. OSx86 has universal binaries for all its pre-installed printer drivers. However, if your model doesn't have a pre-installed driver, you might be in a bit of a sticky situation. The problem is, even if you download your printers driver, it won't be listed in the driver list! That's because chances are the newly added driver is in PowerPC architecture. To fix this, right click "Printer Setup Utility" in Utilities, select "Get Info" and click "Open using Rosetta." Now, when you restart the setup utility, it will load PowerPC drivers in the driver list, and your newly added printer driver should now be visibly listed! Enjoy! - By Takuro

For HP printers, follow above and just pick any HP printer even if yours is not listed. All of them use the same driver. HP has a unified deskjet driver for Linux, BSD and OS/2 so it is reasonable to try this with any HP deskjet. Specifically tried and worked with HP PSC 1610.

Warning! Using any application to be ran as Rosetta will probably cause it to be slower. (Example, running Calculator normal is instant, running it with Rosetta takes longer because your Intel/AMD CPU isn't used to rosetta)

EDIT: Since the time of this entry, Apple has released an extensive driver pack for many printer models, including HP. Chances are that your printer is already supported, but if not, you can still try this trick.

Get disk burning to work with non-Apple drives

There is a quick patch to make iDVD, iTunes, and any other application with disk-burning features to utilize a non-Apple DVD or CD writer. In fact, iDVD refuses to run unless it finds an Apple cd burner. A patch has been around for a while now. It was originally created by Mac owners who had purchased non-Apple cd burners and wished to use them. The site for the patch is http://www.patchburn.de. When installing, make sure you click the expert/advanced properties and click the button that says patch "idvd 4." In addition, select all the other checkboxes for the heck of it. If your drive is not listed during installation, it is not supported. Good luck! (Note: this will not fix "DVD Player" application.)

Note that this is not needed in iDVD 6, as Apple removed this limitation; Steve Jobs announced it at MacWorld San Francisco 2006. The Apple-only limitation may also have been removed in other iLife '06 applications, but iDVD was the only one publicly announced.

Deadmoo's root password

The correct root password is "bovinity"!

But you don't need to remember it -- log in as deadmoo (password above), open a Terminal (Finder -> Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal), type:

sudo passwd root

.. and enter/confirm a new root password. You can now run su in the Terminal using the new password.

Make the CTRL Key the COMMAND key

I found that the Command key on my keyboard works much like the CTRL key in windows. Pressing Command-C and Command-V was doing copy and past commands, and Command-F would do a search in Firefox. I found that swapping the Mac's Command key with the Control key made life much easier.

Open the System Preferences and select Keyboard & Mouse under the hardware section. Click on Keyboard tab. Next press the Modifier Keys button located at the bottom left. Now swap the Control and Commands keys.

By default, the Command key is Alt, and is useful for such things as Alt+Tab (or in Macland, Command+Tab)

* It would also be interesting to do this with the Windows menu key on keyboards that have them