After installing 10.1 on my German system, I was unable to change the trash warning prefs (it would change but not stick).

I have discovered that it seems to be a problem of the German localization of 10.1. The GUI workaround that I found is to switch to English as a system language and uncheck the trash warning box. When you change back your original language setting, your Finder settings will stick.

A terminal session with the line "defaults write com.apple.finder WarnOnEmptyTrash false" should do the same (although I did not test!).

I've been following OSX since beta and I haven't seen this tip anywhere. If you edit the com.apple.finder.plist file in /Users/username/Library/Preferences, you can disable the preview pane in column view.

NOTE: All angle brackets are shown as square brackets in the following examples -- do not change them from angle brackets!

Open the file in TexEdit or some other text editor and scroll to the following area:

[key]StandardViewOptions[/key]
    [dict]
    [key]clmv[/key]

Within that [clmv] section, look for:

[key]ShowPreview[/key]
[true/]

Change the "true" to "false" (leave the "/"!) and then relaunch (via force-quit) the Finder. Now when you open column view, you will no longer get the preview pane! I found this out simply by looking at the preferences in the terminal using the "defaults" command and testing different values.

Editor's addition: There are a couple of other keys that do interesting things as well. Changing ColumnShowFolderArrow to 'false' removes the right-facing arrow that lets you drill down; changing ColumnShowIcons to 'false' removes the icons in front of the object names.

On my work machine, the entire [clmv] section was missing from finder.plist. I got a copy of the entire file from kaboom, and inserted the [clmv] key into my finder.plist file. If you're missing this section, too, read the rest of the article for a how-to on what you need to insert.

not a great hint but useful nonetheless, the show info menu in Get Info (command-I) now allows you to change more than one file at a time and if you wish to change the 'open with app' type it gives you a list of all possible apps, so you dont have to go find the right one. you can also change all 'other' types too, so all your .img files can be set to open with diskcopy or .sit files with stuffit.

To change the brightness of your screen, hit F14 or F15. This may not work on all hardware, it does work on a cube w. flatpanel display and X 10.1

(cubist)

[Editor: This had no effect on my third-party monitor ... which is not surprising. If it had worked, I would have been truly amazed!]

If you have one of the Apple Pro keyboards, the eject key now opens AND closes the CD tray in OS X 10.1. The good news for you non-Apple keyboard users is that the F12 key appears to do the same thing on most every Mac that has a tray-based CD system.

To hide an application while command-tabbing between your open apps, simply hold down "H" while that application is highlighted in the dock. Similarly, hold down "Q" to quit the selected application. This is a great way to hide or quit apps without making them active first.

The only thing to watch is that there's no "undo" for this -- once the app is hidden, it's hidden until selected. And when you release the "Q", the selected application quits immediately.

You can use contextual menus to copy files in the Finder. Control-click on the file you want to copy, and from the pop-up menu, choose "Copy [filename]". Then, in the folder you'd like to copy the item to, control-click in some whitespace and choose "Paste item." The entire file will be copied. If you choose "Paste" in a text editor, only the name of the file will be pasted.

[Editor's note: This is truly a 'copy' operation; the original files are left untouched. If you are trying to move the files, then remember to delete the originals after you've verified that the 'paste' worked successfully.]

In OS X 10.1, there are a number of menubar widgets, including some or all of a clock, Airport indicator, sound control, monitor control, and battery life indicator. If you hold down the command key and drag on any of these widgets, you can place them in any order you wish on the right-hand side of the menubar.

For example, you may wish to put the monitor or sound widget in the corner, in order to make it easier to hit with the mouse on the fly.

Click here to see a brief movie, courtesy of Andrew Welch at Ambrosia.

Although some of America's icons may have been damaged in the terrorist attack of September 11th, our spirit is intact, as shown in this photo by Thomas E. Franklin (AP Photo/The Record). My thoughts go out to all those directly impacted by this tragedy, and to those working in critical public service roles -- firefighters, police officers, doctors and nurses, volunteers, etc. May you all be safe and successful with your respective assisgnments.

Amazon.com has set up a Red Cross Donation Page, and they are waiving ALL their fees and giving 100% of the funds to the Red Cross. So far, they've collected in excess of $1,000,000. This is but one small way you can help with the relief efforts, even if you're not local to the affected areas.

In the now-trivial category of site-related information, I have emptied out the 'pending' queue from the last 36 hours. Due to a bug in Geeklog, these will not show as "new articles", but there is new stuff posted. Make sure you read the rest of the home page for all the new stories. After today, I will be out of town through Sunday evening without web access, which means that site updates will not return to a normal schedule until Monday the 17th.

Take care and be safe, and please, donate what you can (blood, money, supplies, time, thoughts) to help those who have been affected by the events of September 11th.

-rob.

A friend and myself have run into this one at different times...

if you have a window in list view, with a large number of items, scroll down (page down, whatever) to near the bottom, close the window, the next time you open it, it remebers where you were, which is good. now if you trash or move most of these files, close the window, then open it again (sometimes or all the time), it opens with no files visible, and you have to scroll up/page up to see the files

I've found a fix to get it sorted out again...change how it's sorted (instead of by name, change it to by date) after you have scrolled up to where you want it to open (for example, at the top of the list), now close the window. next time you open it, it should open where you last set it to.

I've seen this bug happen in both my downloads folder, and my mp3 folder, in both MacOS X 10.0.3 and 10.0.4. If this isn't clear, just ask me to try and re-explain it again =)