This hint is about touching files from the Finder to update their mod time, much as you can do in Terminal with the touch command. Here's how:

1. Select files to be 'touched' in the Finder.
2. Press Command-Option-I to open the multiple item info inspector window (File » Show Inspector).
3. Toggle/activate the Open With pop-up menu. You needn't select anything, just click to activate the menu.

The file's modified timestamp will be updated to now time; tested in 10.6.2.

[robg adds: In my testing, I didn't have any luck with the time changing just by merely activating the menu; I had to select the currently-active option for the chosen files. If I selected files with different Open With settings (such that the pop-up menu reads Not Applicable), I couldn't change the modification timestamp at all via this method.]

This hint describes how to create an extra, encrypted FAT-32 partition on a MacBook Pro running Boot Camp with Snow Leopard and Windows 7 already in place. This partition can be accessed with read/write permissions from both the OS X and Windows side of the system.

Notice! This hint deals with partitioning and formatting, so you are at all times in a risk of losing your data. Please, create backups before you start to do anything!

First download and install the Perian QuickTime codec package, if you haven't done so already. Then download NicePlayer, and drag it to your Applications folder. Once that's done, launch NicePlayer and then quit it. Now open a new Terminal window and type the following to reload the Quick Look server:

qlmanage -r

Once you've done that, you should be able to open any MKV file in Quick Look. At this point, you can delete NicePlayer if you want, as it's already served its purpose. I've only tested this in Snow Leopard, but I assume it would work for Leopard as well, as NicePlayer only requires 10.4 or higher. On the off chance it doesn't work, though, you can try this QuickTime hack.

If you happen to not see as many Bonjour devices on your network as you know you should, check that IPV6 is enabled in the Network System Preferences panel (on the Advanced tab).

I don't know why, but it seems that Bonjour needs IPv6 to discover the whole network.

[robg adds: This is the first I've heard of this, and I can't really test it, as I have only a couple Bonjour-enabled devices, and they both show up regardless of whether IPv6 is enabled or not.]

When a program wants your attention, one way it can get it is to bounce its Dock icon.

In previous versions of the system, you had to make the Dock visible (assuming you kept it hidden) by moving your mouse into the Dock area before clicking on the bouncing icon.

Now in Snow Leopard, you can catch icon while it is "in the air." I know that this may not be the most useful hint, but this new behavior may not have been noticed by everyone yet. I like it; I find it much more intuitive.

As noted in this blog post, there is a confirmed bug in iTunes 9.0.2 that prevents Application Applescript bundles from displaying in the iTunes Scripts menu. I won't go into the details of the bug (as Doug Adams has already done a fine job in his linked post -- thanks, Doug!) -- but this is particularly troublesome in Snow Leopard, as you can't create "plain" application scripts.

If you make an alias to your iTunes Scripts folder (~/Library/iTunes/Scripts) and drop it in your user's Scripts folder (~/Library/Scripts), then as long as you have the system-wide Scripts Menu enabled, you'll be able to access all of your iTunes scripts (including ones that don't show up in iTunes 9.0.2), and any you might add, from the system Scripts Menu.

When Apple fixes the bug, simply delete the alias from your ~/Library/Scripts folder (or forget about it, as there's no harm or duplicates, and you'll be able to access the scripts from two places).

When I first set up Time Machine over the network, I realized that I didn't want the backup to happen using my regular user account, so that I could change my personal password at will. This hint quickly lists the steps you need to go through in order to make the change to an existing sparsebundle, so that you can keep doing incremental backups. It avoids the pain of a full backup after changing the user.

This setup assumes the following: Mac Pro with connected FW800 external drive and MacBook Pro laptop. Mac Pro backs up locally along with the MBP storing a sparsebundle over the network onto the same disk.

First, turn off Time Machine for the device associated with the sparsebundle you are changing. At a high level, the steps are:

1. Create a new user on the Mac Pro called backup.
2. Recursively change the permissions on the sparsebundle to include backup.
3. Check whether the mount works correctly from the MBP.
4. Turn Time Machine back on.

Read on for the detailed walkthrough...

I use a lot of technical terms and made-up abbreviations when I jot down notes in Stickies. This causes the spell checker to underline more or less every word in red, which is annoying. Luckily, there is a way to permanently disable spell checking, for all notes. In retrospect, it is really, really obvious how to do it, but it took me a while to figure it out.

First, make sure spell checking is disabled for the current note, using Edit » Spelling and Grammar » Check Spelling While Typing. Then, mark that note's settings as the default, using Note » Use as Default. (This will also set the note's color and font as the default.)

If you're a Linux or Windows convert, and you have a big library of either .DV files (Kino in Linux) or .AVI files (i.e. DV-AVI files, not to be confused with regular .AVI movies), I've found a much faster way to import them into iMovie. (There is a previous hint about this, but it appears to work for an older version of iMovie. The following is for using with iMovie 09+.)

First, make sure that you have the right kind of files. If you were using Kino in Linux (or perhaps some other video editing tool in MacOS), you have files with a .dv extension. Those are "raw" DV files and will work fine.

DV-AVI files also work and do not require conversion. These are not Windows AVI movies. These are actually DV files with an AVI wrapper around them. You would probably only have these if you imported video in Windows using something like Pinnacle Studio (what I was using prior to converting to Mac). Kino in Linux can also make DV-AVI files instead of its default .DV files. It's also possible that this will work only with Type 1 DV-AVI files; Type 2 files, where the audio file is in a separate file, may not work.

OK, so you have a bunch of directories with DV or DV-AVI files to import. Each directory that you're going to import is going to become an event, so make sure they're organized the way you want them to be organized.

If you make tiny apps that you distribute to friends and family who aren't particularly Mac-literate, you might find this snippet of code helpful: Basically, any app with that code inserted (and properly activated based on response to a user's action) moves itself to the trash.

How it works: it calls sleep 1 with a bash redirection command &> /dev/null &, which initiates the script, but returns to the app immediately. The effect is that your AppleScript app will exit before the second command moves the app to the trash.