Intro
ET OSX is a list of useful tools for the MacOS X, most of which live in the Applications folder on my startup drive. It started as a 'what's on my Mac' page on my personal site but quickly evolved into a blog of its own. I'm trying to focus most on of the tiny but useful utilities that sometimes save you lots of trouble and effort, and to omit for the most part the list of big guns, that one normally uses on a daily basis. The list serves two purposes, lets me easily answer 'how do I do this on the Mac' questions asked by other users, and helps me remember answers to the same questions myself.
Attending developers at this year's WWDC were given preview copies of Mac OS X's next major release 10.5 a.k.a. Leopard which was firs demoed exactly an year ago at WWDC'2006. The developer betas come as 6GB+ disk images, so in order to install them you have to burn the image to a dual layer DVD. Chances are your computer's not equipped with a dvd-dl burner drive (or if you're like me you have a dvd-dl burner but you don't want to waist a dvd-dl disc). In such case you can consult the seed note that came with your Leopard image, which explains that you can test Mac OS X beta if you have a Mac with 3 partitions:
Step 1: You download Leopard beta on your working boot partition
Step 2: Then clone the Leopard image on the second partition using Disk Utility
Step 3: Boot your computer from that second partition and install from it on the third one.
Trust me, it really is easier than it sounds. (If you don't have 3 partitions or disks available check out this post describing how to create them without loosing your data). Of course this whole process works with other type of installation for which you should boot from the installing media.
To make things even more interesting, you can stop at Step 2 above, then use System Preferences to restart your Mac in Target Diskt mode (or just restart and keep the T key pressed until you see the big FireWire logo on your screen). Now you can connect any other Mac via FireWire and start form your Leopard installation partition which will now act like an external disk drive for that new computer.
Then again, you can take the easy way out and just burn that dvd after all.
MacSaber (isnoop.net) - yet another fun showcase for the sudden motion sensor (SMS?!) that is built-in most of Apple's recent mobile computer models. This one mimics the sound of a star wars light saber, turning your laptop into a high-tech weapon, albeit very expensive.
iAlertU (www.ialertu.com) - this is one-of-a-kind alarm system for the MacBook. It lets you lock your MacBook via the infrared Apple Remote that came in the laptop box. When locked (or armed) iAlertU will detect movement of the MacBook by using the built-in motion sensor, the device that is supposed to prevent hard disk data loss. Upon movement detection iAlertU can produce an audio and visual alarm (very much like your car alarm system), and if this sounds like innocent fun for you, it can take a picture of whatever is in front of the laptop (via your built-in iSight camera) and then send an email with that picture included to a pre-specified email address. MacBook thieves, beware!
Comic Life (plasq.com) - great app that lets you easily create cartoon-like pages with your iPhoto albums or any collection of photos you have. Endless possibilites with this one, you can turn into another Frank Miller in several easy steps - you choose your cartoon-like template, add photos to it and then add conversation bubles between your subjects. All this using an intuitive GUI. 25$ commercial license, 30 day trial.
