This thread on the MacFixIt forums discusses a hack to move items that would normally be on the right side of the dock (folders, hard drive icon, etc) to the left side of the dock. It's quite interesting, and some people might like to have things on the left instead of the right.
It requires a bit of work in the terminal and an editor, but it's not too intimidating.
If you're having a problem where text input boxes in applications are all black (making it impossible to see what you've typed), you're probably experiencing a corrup ColorSync preferences file.
At least, that's what this thread on the MacFixIt forums seems to indicate. There's some good dialog there, and the solution appears to be trashing the preferences file:
Having problems mounting disks? Both .img files and removable media? Take a look at your /etc/hostconfig file. It should be about 27 lines or so. Does it contain the line "AUTODISKMOUNT=-REMOVABLE-"? If the file fails either of these tests, it may be corrupt. How might this happen? Probably due to a System Preferences crash or general disk corruption. If you'd like a clean copy to restore with, along with instructions on how to do so, read the rest of this article.
Apple thoughtfully gave us command-H to hide the active app, but didn't provide a shortcut for hiding other apps. Jacco R. wrote in with a way to modify the Finder to provide such a shortcut.
Warning - Make sure you have a backup before you start hacking the system files! Also, this hack only works in the Finder, not any other applications. Finally, I have not tried this myself, but Jacco included a screenshot, and stated that it definitely worked in the Finder.
If you'd like to hack your finder to provide a Hide Others keyboard shortcut, read the rest of the article...
I discovered that you can jump to file names - sort of - in the Finder. You just have to hold down the shift key to do it. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, it doesn't recognize multiple keystrokes - so you can only jump to the first file starting with a specific letter.
If you find the word 'Trash', which appears when you mouse over the trash can in the dock, to be not quite what you want, it's easy to change. Open a terminal and type:
% cd /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj % sudo vi InfoPlist.strings
(don't type the % signs; those are the command-line prompt symbols)
This one-line file contains the name for the trash can. Change the name, save the file (in vi, use 'w!' to override the read-only warning), quit the dock (see the comments for a clean way to do this!), it will restart, and you'll have a new name on your trash.
This is in addition to the tips for added responsiveness.
I've been having problems with the Finder holding up on me after waking up from sleep. The Finder is rendered completely unresponsive as the the kernel takes up 50 percent of the CPU cycles. I then remembered what Steve Jobs said a while back about how Unix doesn't like to be put to sleep. I immediately thought the Energy Saver preferences.
Set the hard drive spindown to Never, and most of the large kernel freezeups should go away.
Hopefully this is fixed in 10.0.1, but for now, this is an adequate solution.
If you use the finder in column view mode, there is a way to play an MP3 that is quicker than any app so far: simply clicking once on the mp3 file will display a play bar in the next column containing the entire track. It plays almost immediately. Some draw-backs: only one MP3 can be played at a time with this method, and only the front finder window will play sound. Still though, if you just want a quicky, this is pretty sweet.