If you like getting those little Notification Center alerts when things happen, here's a way to get even more. iTunification gets information from iTunes when tracks change, and funnels this into Notification Center, so you can get a banner to see what the next track is.
This certainly isn't new, as GrowlTunes has been able to do this for a while (if you use Growl), and I get notifications from CoverSutra, an iTunes controller. On top of that, I'd be willing to bet pretty much anything that the next major update to iTunes has Notification Center support. But in the meantime, if you want simple banners to tell you what's playing, this is a good solution, and it's free.
Mountain Lion removed the ability to set the frequency of checks for software updates. The default frequency was always a week and it remains so.
To change the frequency, open com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.plist, found in /Library/Preferences, and change the ScheduleFrequency key from 7 to the number of days you prefer.
I prefer to be notified of updates daily, if available, so I changed the frequency to 1.
[kirkmc adds: Note that you'll need admin privileges to edit this file. You can do so with a text editor, or with Xcode, which presents a graphical interface for .plist files. ]
I noticed that my iChat-related AppleScripts had stopped working after the 10.8 upgrade. Apparently, Messages no longer answers to the name iChat; you have to edit your scripts to call "Messages" instead, like this:
tell application "Messages" to set status message to "On Mountain Lion"
I'm pretty sure the beta didn't break backwards compatibility like that, and I really can't think of a good reason for it.
[kirkmc adds: It's true that the name of an application like this changes it should probably still respond to the old name. So scripters beware. It's worth noting that both Contacts and Messages do respond to their old names if you search for them in Spotlight, though Calendar does not.]
The Click to Tweet button in Notification Center is just crying out for a way to activate it without taking your hands off your keyboard. Over at StackExchange, user Ewwis posted the following AppleScript. Save this and launch it with, say, LaunchBar or another launcher. It displays a dialog where you can post your tweet, then, when you click on OK, displays Notification Center and sends your tweet.
display dialog "Tweet?" default answer "" buttons {"OK"} default button 1
set mytweet to text returned of result
tell application "System Events"
tell process "Notification Center"
click menu bar item 1 of menu bar 1
click button 1 of UI element 1 of row 2 of table 1 of scroll area 1 of window "window"
keystroke mytweet
keystroke "D" using {command down, shift down}
keystroke space
end tell
end tell
In previous versions of OS X, you could access a secret Debug menu in iCal - now Calendar - offering many interesting options. Apple removed any way to activate this menu in Mountain Lion, but you can still access some options. I like to have two weeks displayed in week view in Calendar. To do so, quit Calendar and open Terminal, then type:
defaults write com.apple.iCal CalUIDebugDefaultDaysInWeekView XX
replacing XX with the number of days in the week. You can even use very large values, such as 90, to display 3 months in a week view, though each day will be very small.
To go back with the 7-days-a-week view, simply type:
In Mountain Lion, movies are now locked into Quicktime so the folder structure containing your .mts movie files on SD cards and devices is now all hidden under a file called PRIVATE. To get to the files, hold down the Control key and click on the PRIVATE file. In the popup menu, select Show Contents and repeat through the files until you reach your original .mts files, which can then be dragged to the desktop.
[kirkmc adds: I have to plead ignorance here. I don't have anything that puts movies on SD cards, so if others could confirm this I'd be grateful.]
In the Mountain Lion Reminders app you don't have to click the Inspector button (i) to edit a reminder; just double-click anywhere except on the title of the reminder.
[kirkmc adds: To be precise, you can edit the name of a reminder by double-clicking on it, just like any text in a word processor or text editor. But to display the Inspector window, you have to double-click somewhere in the same line, but not on the text. So you can double-click to the right of its name, if it's short, or if it's too long, you can double-click in the margins above or below it, or to the left of it. You can also click on a reminder and press Command-I to get the Info window. The help says to double-click a reminder, which is not quite true.]
If you go to the Time Machine System Preference and click on Select Disk, if you already have a disk set as your backup and you select a second disk, you are presented with a dialog asking if you want to delete the current disk or use both disks for Time Machine. You are told that if you us both disks, Time Machine will take turns backing up to both disks. Nice touch to allow backups at work and home to happen at the same time!
[kirkmc adds: This is one of the features that Apple mentioned about Time Machine in Mountain Lion. The backups rotate, and you can either use disks at home and at work, or even two disks in the same place if you are paranoid about backups (as I am).]
I like the new reminders app in 10.8, but I was disappointed to find that there is no way to create new reminders from outside the app (like, e.g., OmniFocus, which has a quick entry window that can be summoned with a keyboard shortcut). I created a service in Automator that allows such entry, albeit with limited functionality.
Create a new service in Automator and choose Service receives no input in any application at the top of the window. Next, in the Text library, choose Ask for Text and drag it to the right-hand part of the Automator window. Enter a prompt, such as "Enter a Reminder." Finally, from the Mail library, choose New Reminders Item and drag that below the Ask for Text item.
Save the service, and use the Services tab in the Keyboard preference pane of System Preferences to add a shortcut that will let you launch this from within any application.
This only allows you to set new reminders in a single list, with a single priority, and with no due date (unless you want everything due on the same day), but it's better than nothing. One more caveat: it's slightly unreliable, because some programs interfere with the Services menu or don't accept Services.
Apps that can access iCloud have a different Open dialog box than we've been used to seeing; the popup menu at the top that lets you navigate up the file path from your current location is missing.
Well, not missing, exactly, just hidden. When you are in the Open dialog, and choose On My Mac, you see the name of the application, then a dash, then the current folder. You can Command-click on the folder name to display a pop-up menu showing the full path for the current folder. There's no visual clue that this is present, but it works.
