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Authored by: scottbayes on Aug 13, '13 02:01:38PM

<<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. >>

There's a third way: I discovered (or found independently, not sure which) the iTunes half-star rating "defaults write" sequence that you often see on the net. I found it by going to /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS with Terminal and doing "nm iTunes" (this seems to no longer work on iTunes in 10.6.8, maybe Apple butchered the link format to keep idle hands off, or maybe my system has a problem, dunno), then groveling through the resulting textual output. Took about half an hour IIRC, since I was fishing, just looking for recognizable stuff, rather than searching. Had I been searching for this feature instead, then

$ nm iTunes | grep -i star

or

$ nm iTunes | grep -i half

would have found it in short order.

So I guess the other point is, though I have always wanted to be a hero :-), it's not really that heroic an act in most cases, just a matter of knowing developers' commonly-used shell commands and what kind of stuff to look for. Any UNIX and many MacOS developers already know what to do.

But I do wish Apple would stop sacrificing existing useful options to the God of Simplicity. If you're not part of the target market, life gets more difficult when they do this, not less.



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Authored by: keirthomas on Aug 14, '13 04:50:15AM
it's not really that heroic an act in most cases, just a matter of knowing developers' commonly-used shell commands and what kind of stuff to look for. Any UNIX and many MacOS developers already know what to do.

Indeed, and thanks for pointing out that command. I had a play with a few apps and already turned-up a few new interesting bits and pieces. I wonder if robg knows about this command?

However, the point is that the OP believed people were simply dropping down to the terminal then waving a magic wand to do things "the hard way", rather than using the preferences dialog box.

I wanted to make it clear that it's not trivial finding these things out. You yourself said you spent half a hour trawling through the results. That's the actions of somebody with dedication, not some fly-by-night dogmatist!

---
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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Authored by: scottbayes on Aug 14, '13 10:16:26AM

<< I wonder if robg knows about this command?>>

It was Rob I sent the half-star hint to after discovering it, IIRC. I'm pretty sure he knows all about nm.

Glad the info I posted helped you!



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