Earlier today, I wanted to start a large download on my home machine. I normally do this via SSH and then the 'wget' (or 'curl') command. However, this particular page was using a PHP submission form, and I just could not get it to work in curl or wget (probably user error!). So I launched 'links', the text-mode browser instead. This worked fine, and the file began downloading.

Since it was a large file, and I had other things to do in the Terminal, I minimized the window to the dock. My machine immediately became very very slow and hard to use. I managed to get a "top -u 10" launched in my Terminal, and noticed that the Dock was using 70% of my CPU!

So I killed the dock process, thinking it had taken off for no good reason. The dock restarted, my minimized window came forward, and all was back to normal. Thinking things were OK now, I minimized the window again, only to have the same problem occur - completely unusable machine.

A little experimentation led me to the cause of the problem. Docked Terminal windows, at least as of 10.1.1 (probably 10.1, too, but I never checked) now "live update" their content in the dock! The 'links' program has a screen display that shows estimated download time remaining, and it updates in real time. So my dock was continuously trying to update that miniaturized window (over a remote connection, no less). Not a good situation! I'm not sure there's a workaround, other than what I did -- drag most of the window off the screen.

If you'd like to see the impact on your machine, read the rest of this article for a simple experiment you can run...

AppleScripts that worked fine in OS9 might not work in OSX. This is one of several postings relating to various problems that I have resolved while transitioning OS9 scripts to OSX. This one is related to:

Open for access file "file" -- from the Standard Additions

To see a walkthrough of what works in OS 9 vs. what works in OS X, read the rest of the article...

I found some very good news at VersionTracker. There's an app called Mac OS X SCSI CD-RW Helper that finally lets us burn CD's with our favorite SCSI drive in OS X. It works with Toast Titanium 5.1PR2 (and it looks like iTunes2 as well, but I haven't tested it yet).

This is what the people who wrote it have to say about it:

"The Mac OS X SCSI CD-RW Helper fixes a minor bug in Apple's driver for devices that support the MMC standard (Multi Media Command set). Virtually all CD-RW drives shipped in the last three years support some flavor of the MMC standard."

Check your software update panel -- 10.1.1 is now available (along with the new Airport software). According to Apple, the update includes improved support for USB and FireWire devices, improvements to CD and DVD burning, enhanced AFP, SMB and WebDav networking (maybe the iDisk will be usable on WebDAV now!), and improved printing support. Mail and the Finder have also been updated.

UPDATE: Apple has posted a very thorough what's new in 10.1.1 article on their site.

To switch between open windows WITHIN a given application, simultaneously press Command + tilde. Works for most apps I have tried; exceptions to date are MS Word Beta and, strangely, Finder! Seems this key mapping is already allocated in Finder (for Go to Folder). Anyone know if there is an alternate mapping which works in Finder?

[Editor's note: Simple tip, documented in most apps' menus, and yet often overlooked - so it's worth mentioning! As for Finder window switching, I haven't stumbled across anything. I mostly use a control-click on the Finder dock icon if I'm after one window in particular.]

Back in April, a tip detailed how to enable the crash reporting system in Mac OS X. With the release of 10.1, that tip is now irrelevant (but I linked here for those that haven't updated yet), as the method of enabling the crash reporter has changed.

In 10.1, the reporting system is now always running. To actually receive crash reports, however, you need to enable them. Open the Console application (in Applications -> Utilities) and open the Preferences. Click on the Crashes tab, and check the box as shown here. After that, if an application crashes, you should find a crash.log file in ~/Library/Logs/, which you can open in Console to see if it provides any useful information. Thanks to Cricket on the X4U mailing list for this useful tidbit!

Today I discovered that a font that I've been using for the past month is actually a MS Windows' True Type Font. I've just copied even more windows TTF into the Fonts folder and sure enough all of them work! I didn't even have to reboot or relogin for them to take effect.

Wheeee, off I go to show it off to those PC people. Thank you, OS X!

[Editor's note: This works as described, and probably as expected, since it's Apple's technology. What I can't remember from OS 9, though, is whether the fonts needed to be converted first.]

Holding down Cmd-V at startup will put MacOS X in "verbose" mode, displaying the Unix system message buffer instead of the Aqua splash screen and progress bar. For those who'd rather always boot in verbose mode (and don't want to hold down Cmd-V every time), the darwinfo.org FAQ explains how to set your Open Firmware parameters to support this.

Note that rebooting into MacOS 9 will reset these parameters, so this tip works only for as long as you stay pure. ;-)

I wondered for a long time how to erase a CD-RW with OS X. In fact, this is very simple (though I don't really like this method): it is done with Disk Utility (in Applications/Utilities).

I don't like it, because with this program, you can also erase any disk! I would have liked to create an Applescript to do it, but Disk Utility isn't scriptable...

[Editor's note: Although basic, this is one of the major changes with OS X. You no longer can erase a disk from the Finder - you must use Disk Utility. Keep this in mind when you look for "Erase..." in the Finder only to discover it's not there!]

OK, so for some systems, it's possible to choose the startup partition holding the OPTION key at startup. Great! But, what is really annoying is the 30 second delay the Mac asks for each time I do a startup with OPTION key.

The other day, I started doing that, but at the same time I had my mouse button down, because I wanted to eject a CD I forgot to eject before shutting down. The CD ejected, and ... the usual partition dialog appeared without any delay!

So I verified again and again ... and it works! Pressing the mouse button while you press the OPTION key at startup brings the partition boot dialog instantaneously, with no delays!

Anyone else tried this? My machine is a 2000 iMac DVSE 500 slot-loading with OSX10.1 OS9.2.1 and 384mb of RAM...