Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Tiger Edition

Chapter 18. Hacking Mac OS X

Chapter 9 shows you how to customize your desktop picture, error beep, and screen saver. But beyond those simple modifications, Mac OS X offers only a subset of the tweakable features found in, say, Windows. You can't record alert sounds, change the fonts used in the Finder, choose new colors for your scroll bars, and so on.

If you're sneaky, creative, or just different, however, you can indeed perform more dramatic visual and behavioral surgery on your copy of Mac OS X—from changing the startup screen image to re placing the "poof" that appears when you drag something off the Dock with a new animation of your own. All you need is a few of Mac OS X's less obvious tools, or some free downloadable customizing software, and a few recipes like the ones in this chapter.

Some of these tricks are frivolous. Some are functional and useful. And although Apple sanctions not a one, all are perfectly safe.

TinkerTool: Customization 101

If you poke around the Mac OS X Web sites and newsgroups long enough, you'll find little bits of Unix code being passed around. One of them purports to let you change the genie animation that you see when you minimize a window to the Dock. Another eliminates the drop shadow behind icon names on your desktop. Yet another lets you change the transparency of the Terminal window (Chapter 16)—a cool, although not especially practical, effect.

If you really want to fool around with these bits of Unix code, go for it. You can find most of these ...