lpadmin and lpoptions don't interact with OS X as you might think, or at least as they are documented. Here are some helpful notes and a script.
There are some good hints for adding printers via the command line with lpadmin: Managing multiple printers via the command line.
However, there is still confusion surrounding the setting of printer options from the command line, as a poster to Debian bugs pointed out back in 2006: lpoptions documentation doesn't. After doing some testing, here are the two main points to note:
If you use lpadmin and specify options with "-o", the PPD is altered and OS X will recognize the options for the printer.
However, if you setup the printer using lpadmin without any options, and later use lptoptions to set the options, they are not written to the PPD and the GUI is unaware of the printer's options.
More helpful hints about lpadmin and lpoptions:
lpoptions -p printername -l
Prints PPD options, "Default" is filtered from option name (similar to looking at the raw PPD)
It uses a colon when reporting key value pairs; replace that with an equals sign when specifying an option
The option name stops at the first slash
Example: The duplex option for HP printers will output like this "HPOption_Duplexer/Duplex Unit: *True False" When specified as a "-o" option it would be "HPOption_Duplexer=True"
lpadmin ... -o this=that
Alters the ppd that is placed in /etc/cups/ppd/ when the printer is installed
Unhelpful things: lpoptions -p printername
These are NOT the PPD options you want to set
lpoptions -o
This only writes options to: /private/etc/cups/lpoptions (run with sudo) or ~/.cups/lpoptions (run as current user), GUI apps are unaware of these options
This is less of a hint than a suggestion for a bookmark in your favorite web browser. Apple has a page listing dozens of standard keyboard shortcuts you can use at start-up, with the Finder, and with many applications. If you're a keyboard person, rather than a mouse person, you may find some shortcuts here that you didn't know. At a minimum, it's worth bookmarking this page to have a list of keys to press at startup, if you need to change boot disks, boot in Safe mode or boot from an optical disc (if your Mac still supports that).
In previous versions of OS X, you used to be able to quickly search for messages from a given domain just by typing it in on the search field. On Lion, this is a pain, because Mail tries to guess the actual sender a never lets you look at all the messages.
As a workaround, if you type "from:@domain" you will see messages from all email addresses from that domain. You can also use "to:@domain" to look for the messages that were sent to an email address at a given domain.
Battery life with my iPhone 4S was very poor, and I finally discovered why: I'm using a battery extender case. The problem is that the phone considers that the case is a source of AC power, so if have iTunes Wi-Fi sync on - which only operates when your phone is plugged in - you'll be syncing more than you might expect, since your phone is technically plugged in.
The solution is to either turn off Wi-Fi sync, or use an external battery pack that has an on-off switch so that you can control when it is actually sending current to the phone.
[kirkmc adds: I guess this makes sense. Apple says that Wi-Fi sync occurs when "The iOS device is plugged in to power." But this should only occur if two other conditions are met: "iTunes is open on the computer," and "The iOS device and the computer are on the same Wi-Fi network." So I would think that if you're not on the same network as your Mac, then nothing should happen. Perhaps the phone is constantly searching for that Mac?]
It seems that 10.7 no longer wants to run shell scripts from the script menu. This may also happen in 10.6, but I do not have an install to test it with.
No matter what script I try, the SystemUIServer crashes. And somewhere in the crash report is this ominous message:
This might have something to do with Apple tightening privileges for spawning processes, but it can be easily fixed by enclosing the shell script in AppleScript.
do shell script "sh ~/script.sh"
[kirkmc adds: I haven't tested this; I don't run shell scripts from the script menu, so I haven't seen crashes.]
Apparently, there are cases when exporting a song from GarageBand to iTunes results in a time-out. Apple has published a technical note explaining that this may occur if there are any open dialogs in iTunes. Make sure to close all such windows in iTunes - such as the Preferences or Info windows - before exporting songs from GarageBand.
A family member owns a Mac, and he was complaining it was getting slow - especially the Desktop. He had a lot of files on the Desktop, but none of them were visible on the Desktop itself, but only in a Finder window displaying the contents of the Desktop. The Desktop only showed two icons: the main hard disk, and a Time Machine hard disk. The Desktop itself was very slow, and often displayed a beachball.
However, when I looked in the Desktop folder, there were more than 2,700 image files. When I removed the image files from the Desktop folder, everything went back to normal.
So, don't over-clutter your Desktop, as it might slow down your Mac and even hide files.
[kirkmc adds: This isn't new, and there have been a couple of hints about this in the past; the only ones I can find were in 2005 and again in 2008. I think it's worth pointing it out again, though, to users who aren't aware of the issue. If you have a lot of files on the Desktop, it will slow down your Mac; if you have Show Icon Preview checked in the View Options, it will slow it down even more. Personally, I don't put any files on the Desktop for this reason.]
iTunes 10.6, just out, has a new feature that some music lovers will appreciate. In the past, you could auto-convert music files when syncing them to an iPod or iOS device, but only to 128 kbps. Now, with iTunes 10.6, you have three options: 128, 192 and 256 kbps. This is available in the Options section of the Summary tab for an iPod.
[kirkmc adds: While not strictly a hint, but rather a heads up for a new feature, this is a one that many iTunes users have been hoping for. I blogged about it, but thought it would be useful to have it here as well.]
While not everyone has this problem, if you do a lot of video work, you may have come across it:
a) You have a Mac Pro with dual video cards, and each video card can drive two monitors. You use 2 desktop monitors and 2 additional monitors (such as projectors on HDTVs, which is how I use this setup).
b) You want to turn on Display Mirroring, but not the expected way, where all four displays to show the same image. I wanted Monitor #1 to mirror to HDTV #3, and Monitor #2 to mirror to Projector #4. Typically, once all the displays appear in the Displays pane of System Preferences, all mirroring does is display the output of Monitor #1 on all four devices.
After several months of talking with Apple Geniuses, consulting multiple AV companies and purchasing useless video splitter boxes, we accidentally discovered a solution to our problem.
Open System Preferences > Displays. Hold down the option key while you drag any monitor icon on top of any other monitor icon. You will see those two icons layered on top of each other to imply mirroring. Now you can selectively mirror any monitor to any other monitor.
We have successfully used this on Snow Leopard and Lion, on Mac Pros.
[kirkmc adds: I'm a single-monitor guy, so I can't test this. If anyone has four monitors and a Mac Pro, feel free to tell us, in the comments, if it works correctly.]
Apple recently announced that iTunes in the Cloud was extended to include movies purchased from the iTunes Store. A post on the Tech of the Hub website points out that not only can you re-download or stream iTunes Store purchases, but that some "digital copies" of movies, which you get on some Blu-Ray discs, are also recognized.
So if you have any Blu-Rays with these digital copies, and you haven't bothered to put them in your iTunes library, you might want to do so. If they are matched, you can access them from other devices more easily.
Note: as the blog post points out, not all the movie studios are on board with this yet. So you will certainly find movies that don't match from digital copies.
