Let OS X Create Passwords

If you’re looking for a memorable yet secure password (that is, one involving numbers, capital letters, and symbols), you can let OS X do the hard work, as follows:

1. Open Keychain Access, which is the application in OS X that handles password and certificate security. You’ll find it in the Utilities folder of the Applications view in Finder.

2. Once the app has started, click File→New Password Item. Don’t worry— we’re not actually going to create a new item for the keychain. Instead, we’re simply going to make use of its password tool.

3. In the dialog box that slides into view, click the small key icon alongside the Password textbox. This will open the Password Assistant, which is what we’re interested in.

4. In the Password Assistant dialog box, ensure the Type drop-down list is set to Memorable. Then look in the suggestion box for the password that’s been created for you. To generate another, once again select Memorable from the drop-down list.

5. The Length slider lets you create longer passwords, and it’s wise to slide this a little to the right. The green Quality bar shows how secure the password is, which is to say how theoretically easy it is to crack. However, a password of twelve letters is normally considered extremely strong within the wider security community, even if it means the green bar doesn’t entirely fill.

Once you’re happy, you should attempt to learn the password. This can be done by saying it out loud ten to twenty times or by typing it into a blank document the same number of times so that you learn it by rote.
You can close Password Assistant and then click the Cancel button to close the Keychain Access dialog box. You can then quit Keychain Access.

Control QuickTime Player Using Keys

The following keyboard shortcuts let you control QuickTime Player without touching the mouse:

• Space: Start playback, or stop it if it’s already playing. 

• Up/Down cursor keys: Increase/decrease playback volume. 

• Option+ Up/Down cursor key: Maximize/mute playback volume. 

• Left /Right cursor keys: Hold down to cue in slow-motion back and forward. Tap to advance frame by frame. 

• Command+ Left /Right cursor keys: Start cueing backward and forward; Space restores playback to normal (repeated presses of the cursor keys while still holding Command will speed up cueing). 

• Option+ Left/Right cursor keys: Move to beginning or end of movie file. 

• Command+ + / - : Increase/decrease the size of the playback window ( Command+ 1 restores it to its actual pixel dimensions).

Stop the Dock from Getting Broken

It’s very easy to accidentally re-size the Dock when using a Mac or delete icons from it. All it takes is a misclick of the mouse. The following two commands typed into a Terminal window will “freeze” the Dock, making it impossible to re-size it or to remove/rearrange/add icons:

defaults write com.apple.dock size-immutable -bool TRUE 
defaults write com.apple.dock contents-immutable -bool TRUE;killall Dock

To “unfreeze” the Dock so you can resize it and add/remove/rearrange icons, issue the following two commands in a Terminal window:

defaults delete com.apple.dock size-immutable 
defaults delete com.apple.dock contents-immutable;killall Dock

Notify from the Command Line

There’s no official way of making a notification pop-up appear from the command line. This would be useful to send a message that a certain command has completed, for example. The good news is that you can use a Ruby gem called terminal-notifier to do so (gems are extensions to the Ruby programming language that’s included with OS X). To install terminal-notifier, open a Terminal window in the usual way, and type the following:

sudo gem install terminal-notifier

Type your password when prompted. Installation should take seconds.

Using terminal-notifier is easy. Just use the -message command option to specify the message, which should appear within quotation marks (or be escaped in the usual way), and use the -title option to specify the title of the notification dialog. Here’s an example:

terminal-notifier -message "Mac Kung Fu goes places other books don't dare" -title "Mac Kung Fu"

You can also specify things to happen when the notification dialog is clicked: using -open, you can specify a URL (which must include its http:// component), for example. You can find more information at the GitHub site for terminal- notifier.

Turn Off Java

Java doesn’t come as an out-of-the-box install on OS X Mountain Lion, but it will be installed automatically when an app needs it. Any app you install that needs Java will therefore install it the first time it runs, but this raises an issue: Java has persistently been proven to be a serious security risk.

One solution is to simply turn off Java unless you need it. To do this, open Java Preferences, which is in the Utilities folder of the Applications list of Finder, and then remove the check alongside Enable Apple Plug-In and Web Start Applications. Then remove the checks under the On heading in the list of Java SE engines installed on your system.

Should an app start that needs Java, you’ll be shown an error to the effect that Java isn’t installed. Simply repeat the previous steps in reverse and enable Java—but don’t forget to disable it again afterward!

You might also want to disable access to Java within Safari, bearing in mind this is a typical attack vector for malware. To do so, start Safari, start System Preferences (application menu→Preferences), and select the Security tab. Then remove the check alongside Enable Java.

Use a VIP Mailbox

Mail features a way of prioritizing email from certain people who you value above others—a feature Apple calls the VIP mailbox (short for Very Important People, of course).

The feature isn’t activated by default and can’t be found on any menu but is actually easy to set up.

Configuring VIP Mail

To activate the feature, you must first mark at least one person who sends you email as a VIP. To do this, select any email from the individual, and then click the empty star alongside their name in the mail, or right-click their name in the From field of an email and select Add to VIPs.

Once you do this, a new VIP mailbox will appear in the mailbox list sidebar and Favorites toolbar (if you have either visible—you can select to view either from the View menu). Selecting the new mailbox will cause your mail to be filtered so that only VIPs are visible, although you can also further filter the list of mails by selecting individual VIPs in the list that appears beneath.

Be Notified Only of VIP Mail

You can configure Mail so that you’re notified within Notification Center only of new VIP mail. To do so, open Mail’s Preferences dialog box (Mail→Preferences), and ensure the General tab is selected. Then select VIPs from the New Message Notifications drop-down list.

To return to being notified of all mail at a future date, repeat this step, but select Inbox Only from the drop-down list.

Deactivate the VIP Mailbox

To remove somebody from the VIP list, simply click once more the star alongside their name in an email, or right-click their name and click Remove from VIPs. To completely deactivate the VIP function, remove all VIPs in this way, and then quit and restart Mail.

See Your Mac’s Serial Number

To quickly view your computer’s unique serial number, as well as the build version of OS X (that is, the internal code used by Apple to track software releases), click the Apple menu, and then select About This Mac. In the window that appears, click Version several times (beneath the large “OS X”) to cycle through the available information.

You will almost certainly need your serial number if you phone Apple for technical support.