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Merge externally-sourced iTunes podcasts with existing ones
Apps
If you have downloaded podcasts from another source (in my case, a large podcast downloaded on a friend's much-faster connection) and brought them over to your computer, here's how to merge them with existing episodes of the same podcast:
  1. Copy the new podcast(s) to the folder where your pre-existing podcast files are stored. This is usually in the Music » iTunes » Podcasts folder, but do a search if it's not in there.
  2. Open up iTunes 8.1 or later and select File » Add to Library.
  3. Select the podcast files from the directory you added them to. You can select several files all the same time by Shift-clicking. Click Open once you have the files selected.
That's it; your new podcasts will automatically be added to your pre-existing ones in the right place.

[robg adds: I had an email exchange with the author, because for me, this process is automatic; just select Add to Library and everything works. The difference is that the author has disabled the 'Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library' option on the Advanced tab of iTunes' Preferences.]
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Change screen resolution in Terminal
UNIX
Terminal is very useful in managing of rooms of Macs with Apple Remote Desktop. One thing I do often is change the screen resolution. To do that, I use a custom Terminal program that's based largely on Jeffrey Osterman's code posted in this Mac OS X Hints Forums thread.

It is easy to compile (you'll need Xcode to do so, however), and it supersedes the old and missing cscreen. First, here's the code:
/*
* setgetscreenres.m
* 
* juanfc 2009-04-13
* Based on newscreen
*    Created by Jeffrey Osterman on 10/30/07.
*    Copyright 2007 Jeffrey Osterman. All rights reserved. 
*    PROVIDED AS IS AND WITH NO WARRANTIES WHATSOEVER
*    http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=59575
*
* COMPILE:
*    c++ setgetscreenres.m -framework ApplicationServices -o setgetscreenres
* USE:
*    setgetscreenres 1440 900
*/

#include <ApplicationServices/ApplicationServices.h>

bool MyDisplaySwitchToMode (CGDirectDisplayID display, CFDictionaryRef mode);

int main (int argc, const char * argv[])
{
	int	h; 							// horizontal resolution
	int v; 							// vertical resolution
	CFDictionaryRef switchMode; 	// mode to switch to
	CGDirectDisplayID mainDisplay;  // ID of main display

	CFDictionaryRef CGDisplayCurrentMode(CGDirectDisplayID display);

	if (argc == 1) {
	    CGRect screenFrame = CGDisplayBounds(kCGDirectMainDisplay);
		CGSize screenSize  = screenFrame.size;
		printf("%d %d\n", screenSize.width, screenSize.height);
		return 0;
	}
	if (argc != 3 || !(h = atoi(argv[1])) || !(v = atoi(argv[2])) ) {
		fprintf(stderr, "ERROR: Use %s horres vertres\n", argv[0]);
		return -1;
	}

	mainDisplay = CGMainDisplayID();

	switchMode = CGDisplayBestModeForParameters(mainDisplay, 32, h, v, NULL);

	if (! MyDisplaySwitchToMode(mainDisplay, switchMode)) {
	    fprintf(stderr, "Error changing resolution to %d %d\n", h, v);
		return 1;
	}

	return 0;
}

bool MyDisplaySwitchToMode (CGDirectDisplayID display, CFDictionaryRef mode)
{
	CGDisplayConfigRef config;
	if (CGBeginDisplayConfiguration(&config) == kCGErrorSuccess) {
		CGConfigureDisplayMode(config, display, mode);
		CGCompleteDisplayConfiguration(config, kCGConfigureForSession );
		return true;
	}
	return false;
}
Save that as a pure text file named setgetscreenres.m, then compile it in Terminal using the command shown in the code (assuming you're in the directory where the file is saved):
c++ setgetscreenres.m -framework ApplicationServices -o setgetscreenres
Move this file somewhere on your user's $PATH, and then use it by typing setgetscreenres hor_res vert_res, where hor_res and vert_res are the desire horizontal and vertical resolution.

[robg adds: I compiled this, then tested it, and it works as described.]
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10.4: Permanently disable spell check in TextEdit
Apps
First, I know what your thinking. Why do this? Well, we have a one-a-year project in which students must take a spelling test on the computer, but spell checking must be disabled. The computers are running 10.4, so your mileage will vary with 10.5. Since we could not find a good text editor solution that was familiar and easy on the eyes for K-12 students, I decided to look into the situation. In the end, we wound up using the bundled TextEdit, but I needed to figure out how to disable the underlined miss-pelled (yes, I did that on purpose) words, and prevent the user from running spell check at all.

To disable the underlines, I found a program called Despeller, which removes the underline by replacing the red-dot-line image with a blank image (note that this change affects every program, as it's a system-level change).

To prevent students from using TextEdit's spell check feature, I had to modify a .nib file within TextEdit.app itself.
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Possibly enable GPS tracking with iPhone display off
iPhone
There are lots of GPS applications for the iPhone which do live tracking of your position via GPS. Sadly, most of them don't work when the iPhone display is switched off. There are some exceptions, though. The newest release of RunKeeper Lite seems to include a workaround -- according to their blog, the iPhone display can be switched off and tracking still proceeds. Trails.app includes a nice display dimming feature, which switches the display off automatically when put into the pocket.

At least for some other applications, the following hint might be useful: If you start playing music with the iPod application, then open your GPS application and start tracking, you might be able to switch off the display with the lock button without losing tracking capability. If you turn the volume down, you won't hear the music. This may not work in all apps, so just give it a try.
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Transfer files using a direct Ethernet connection
Laptop Macs
With so many complaints about FireWire disappearing from the MacBooks, I wondered if large files could be copied using just an Ethernet cable. It was successful, and the transfer was rapid -- less than one minute to transfer 1.8 GB.

I used an aluminum MacBook connected via Ethernet cable directly to an aluminum iMac. AirPort cards were turned off on both computers, the Ethernet connections were active, and file sharing in the Sharing System Preferences panel was on. Under Shared in Finder, the computers recognized each other, allowing me to copy from one computer to the other.

[robg adds: This is a fairly basic tip, but I don't think we've covered it here before. Basically, the Mac OS is smart enough to set up a functional network if you connect two machines together using Ethernet (or FireWire) cable. Once connected, transfers will happen very quickly. Unfortunately, this doesn't help with the larger MacBook/FireWire issue, which is that you can't connect FireWire drives, video cameras, etc.]
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How to quit iTunes if it restarts when quit
Apps
Here’s a quick nifty little tip for a problem I encountered. I am the sort of person who has iTunes running 24/7, whether or not I’m listening to music. So, I very rarely ever quit iTunes, except when there is a software update for it. However, there is always this problem that when I quit iTunes, it automatically starts back up. This is extremely annoying.

A solution to this problem is that any time you want to quit iTunes and not have it start back up, open up Activity Monitor and search for the process genredetection. Quit this, and iTunes should then behave properly and quietly quit when you want it to.

[robg adds: This tip appears (with more detail and screenshots) in this post in the author's blog. As I wasn't experiencing this problem, and didn't have a process named genredetection, I went digging for the cause, and found this thread on the Apple Discussions (which referenced a post from MacUpdate). It turns out that the genredetection process comes from the SRS iWOW plug-in, and it's supposed to quit if iTunes quits normally. It seems, at least in some cases, that's not the case. An alternative solution then is to disable the plug-in when you need to quit iTunes.]
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Burn an AVI movie with subtitles to a DVD in one step
Apps
When you want to burn an AVI movie to DVD with a separate subtitle file (like .srt), you are normally forced to first properly encode the movie and then mux the subtitles over it.

You can save yourself a lot of time by installing the excellent Perian QuickTime plug-in. If you open a .avi (or .mkv for that matter) in QuickTime, Quick Look, or any other program that will call the Perian codec through QuickTime -- and you have a subtitle file present in the same folder as the .avi file -- you'll see that Perian will show the subtitles automatically.

You can also use this in Toast, etc. and burn an AVI with subtitles in one shot.
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Restore a full-disk .dmg file to a raw block device
Storage Devices
Like many others, I used Disk Utility to create a disk image (.dmg) from my full disk, with the expectation that I could restore this backup at a later date. Said date came all too soon, and I found myself accused by Disk Utility of offering it a corrupted image. Much investigation and much research followed: the image was not corrupt, but the graphical tools did not allow a multi-partition .dmg file to be restored, nor did they allow a full-disk .dmg file to be written to a raw disk or a block device.

Luckily for us all, this task is possible! I hope to spare you much of the suffering I experienced with this hint. For this occasional task, the hdid utility is your friend. You must use Terminal, as Disk Utility does not support this use.

First, mount the .dmg file as a block device only:
hdid -nomount "/Volumes/Diotallevi/Clean Checkpoints/WDC Image.dmg"
Second, determine the block device of the image and destination:
diskutil list
Third, use dd with an appropriate buffer size to copy over the whole block image, including partition table and boot sector. Note that it is extremely important on some hardware to use a large block size; you can expect a 20x speedup over the case without blocksize parameter.
dd if=/dev/disk3 of=/dev/disk2 bs=131072
Fourth, unmount everything and enjoy your copied disk. I get around two terabytes a day of transfer rate; I know of no way to skip sparse areas of the disk image, but could approximate it by dding the first few megabytes of the image, then using Apple System Restore to copy each volume individually.

Expect large speedups for sparse disks with this method. (This hint originally appeared on my site.)
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One way to handle compilations on the iPhone/iPod touch
iPhone
The preferences for the iPod program on the iPhone/iPod touch does currently have an option to hide compilations from the Artist's view. If your artist list is also filled with these entries, and you're annoyed by that, the first thing to do is probably to tell Apple about it.

As a temporary work around, create a Smart Playlist that contains only compilation tracks -- simply set Compilation to is true in the Smart Playlist setup. Next, select all tracks in this Smart Playlist, open the Info dialog (Command-I), go to the Sorting tab, and enter a special character (e.g. . or #) into the Sort Artist field. After synching, all compilation tracks appear at the end of the artist list (of course, in both iTunes and on the iPhone/iPod touch).

I got this tip from a post from "discostevie" in this thread on the Apple Discussions site.
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Create symbolic links for all items in a folder
UNIX
If, for some reason (space in my case), you want your applications to reside somewhere other than /Applications, you will still want to have links to those relocated programs in /Applications. For Apple applications, updates are likely to fail if the applications aren't located there, and tools like AppFresh only search that location.

Creating a bunch of aliases is tedious, so here's a quick Terminal trick (that I didn't think would work, as it doesn't under Linux):
$ cd /Applications
$ ln -s /path/to/apps/* .
Change /path/to/apps to the path to your replacement Applications folder, and then run those two Terminal commands (don't overlook the very-important . at the end of the second one), and you're done.
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