[This is one of the most basic of OS X tips, but I neglected to publish it earlier...most everyone is familiar with it, but I figured it was at least worth having in the system! -rob.]

There's a bug (feature?) in the PB in which new downloads from IE do not immediately show up in the finder.

There are a couple of ways to make them show immediately. The easy way is to go to the Download Manager window within IE, double-click the filename, and then click the Reveal in Finder button.

Alternatively, if you do something to the finder, the new files will show up. For example, create a new folder and drag it to the trash, and you should then see your newly downloaded files.

I assume this bug will be squashed before OS X 1.0 ships.

Want your Mac to power down every night at 11:00pm? User 'Gee4orce' posted the following tidbit to the MacNN OSX forums to accomplish just that feat. Here's how it's done:

1. Open a terminal session
   

2. su root

3. shutdown -h 2300

This will shutdown the computer at 11pm (2300 on a 24-hour clock). Replace the '2300' in the example with the (24-hour) time of your choosing. If you want to prevent the shutdown, you need to kill the process using either ProcessViewer or the 'kill' command.

Blimey! This is a biggie!!

First, here's what happened: my terminal.app blew up. I hadn't encountered the hint here that gives the easy fix (ie: grab /bin/tcsh from the Installer CD and chuck it in /bin - it seems that, somehow, things in /bin can get corrupted, which is very wierd, but that't another story!) so I reinstalled OS X. That worked fine and my terminal.app was fixed.

Lo and behold, though, I now had a USB option available in my Modem Port choice in PPP Connect Preferences. I am 100% sure that it was not there beofre I reinstalled, because I was stuck using my old Motorola serial 28.8 modem (eeewww - slow!) under OS X but I could use my Swann MacSurfer V.90 under OS 9. So, I selected the USB option, and was able to use my V.90 modem under MacOS X. Great!!!

Ahh, but no! Here come the problems...

OS X PB ships with version 1.3.12 of the Apache web server. If you'd like to run the latest release (1.3.14), there's a good article on stepwise.com explaining how to do so.

Their instructions leave you with two Apache installs, in case you want to revert to the prior version.

Some people (such as myself) have the need to run OS X services (such as Apache, ftp, ssh, telnet) on alternate ports. In my case, my router has a mini-http server, so I can't use port 80 for Apache, and my ISP blocks all ports below 1000 to prevent servers.

How do you work around this in OS X? For Apache, it's fairly simple. From a terminal session, edit (note: edits referred to in this article should be done as the root user; 'su' before editing!) the file /Library/Web Server/Configuration/apache.conf, and find the line that reads "Port 80." Replace 80 with the port you would like to use -- keep in mind that visitors to your site will have to enter:

http://siteaddress:portnum/

(where portnum is the number you chose)in order to see your pages.

[Editor's note: Please see the comments for the resolution of this issue]

I have recently bought a Handspring Visor. Thats a PDA with native USB-support. Unfortunately, the Desktop Software under Classic cannot access the USB-Port and thus not exchange Data unless I reboot into Mac OS 9.

Thanks for any help, ralf

[Editor's note: The cause and solution have been identified - see the comments for details!]

For a while now, I have been having a problem with the PDF compositor that comes with OSX public beta. What happens is whenever I open it, I get an unusually large window where half of it is filled with a weird pink/purple color wth the other half being those OSX stripes and it won't let me do anything except quit. any help would be appreciated. thanks.

[Editor's note: See the comments for a suggestion or two...]

Not sure what happened -- OS X hung, then after two hours of trying various things and then leaving it alone, the system displayed a kernel panic message and rebooted, after I pressed "r" as prompted. I finally had to clear the p-ram for the thing to even boot into OS 9. I followed Apple's instructions in the TILs and booted into single user mode after using the System Disk utility BUT ... fsck won't fix the error it finds: "Problem: Invalid LEOF, 28239, 1024"!!! And yes I've made sure to try -f -y -b16, etc.

It will boot into OS X if I let it (quite unstable and I don't like forceably rebooting Un*x boxen); and when the OS X disk utility is used to verify my OS X volume, it reports the exact same error. I even tried running Disk Doctor after booting into OS 9 but it can't fix the error either ... sigh =(

Am I out of luck, do I have to reinstall? Anyone have any suggestions or run into the same problem? Anyone know what to do in the future to avoid this type of problem?

Although it hasn't received much coverage, the services menu appears to be one of the niftier features of OS X. To get a brief example of how it works, open the Mail application, pick any message, reply to it, and select all the text. Make sure Terminal is also running, although you don't need to have a session open.

Under the Mail menu, select Services, then Terminal, and finally Word Count. All your text will be replaced by a series of three numbers - 7 57 362, in the test I ran. This translates to 7 lines, 57 words, and 362 characters.

For a second demo, start a new email message, and pick Time under the Terminal services menu. The current date and time will be pasted in your email.

Although these are neat demos, the real power appears to lie in the fact that we will (hopefully!) be able to add our own services in the final release. To see what this could look like, look at the Terminal Services menu under Terminal in the (you guessed it!) Terminal application.

Since the terminal application has incredible power, the ability to add a service which will then be available to any application seems like a very useful thing!

I added a test service, but I haven't been able to make it show up in the services menu in other apps yet, but I'll post something if I do.

Tim Mityok, of Public Acess Software, has created a patch that will prompt for your login password before unlocking the screen.

You can download the file (instructions are included), or visit Public Access Software's site for more detail.

Given the need for security on your X box, this is a good idea - Tim points out that it's not a feature he added, merely one that was included and not enabled in the Public Beta.