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Authored by: keirthomas on Aug 13, '13 01:03:15PM

I think you underestimate the amount of work involved in "going to the Terminal". Some of the people who come up with those tips are the knights of the OS X hacks scene!

I've no idea how this guy found this "defaults write" hack but there are two ways of doing so that are known right now: (1) examining the app's prefs file, or (2) using GNU debugger to examine the app while it's running (as described by Arctic Mac (http://arcticmac.home.comcast.net/~arcticmac/tutorials/gdbFindingPrefs.html)).

This was shown quite nicely a year or two ago when people got annoyed at bouncing scrolling in certain apps (i.e. scroll too far and it stretches). People used these techniques to find a solution and, trust me, it takes quite a bit of effort and dedication. It's not trivial.

What sometimes happens, though, is that somebody turns up what seems like a great "defaults write" hack but doesn't realise it's actually a legitimate option offered in the preferences dialog box. That's what happened here. I've done it myself quite a few times when writing my book (I spotted them before publication) but it's inanely annoying.

So spare a little thought for these guys. They're not doing things dogmatically by the terminal because it gives them a kick. They're exploring and finding new capabilities and solutions within software.

Sadly, however, there aren't as many of these guys around as there used to be -- perhaps because it is so hard to do.

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Author of Mac Kung Fu
Over 400 tips, tricks, hints and hacks for OS X
My tips blog: http://mackungfu.org



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