When I very first got my Mac I loaded up the OS X Dashboard with countless widgets, doing all sorts like checking share price levels to little puzzle games. However, I soon started to realise that some of my dock items where hogging precious memory, and stealing CPU cycles.. Not to mention the fact the only time I saw the widgets was when I accidentally ended up in the dashboard view.
Because of this I have been looking at ways to disable the Dashboard all together, sure, it’s a cool place to hand out, and a nice party trick.. However I’d much rather have the free memory and CPU cycles!
So, if you’d like to disable OS X Dashboard, launch a new Terminal session fro the utilities folder and copy/paste in the following commands:
defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES
As the Dashboard Process is controlled by the Dock, you will also need to relaunch the dock, to do this simply copy and paste the following code into the terminal window:
Killall Dock
As with all of the terminal tutorials I post they are easy to reverse, to re-enable the OS X Dashboard:
defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean NO
Then you will once again need to relaunch the dock:
Killall Dock
It really is as simple as that..
Fo
r a good few months now I have been happily migrating my computing habits and loosing my windows dependancy to shuffle over to being completely Mac based. When I first migrated over I was happily using Sun’s VirtualBox, but recently one of my friends told me about Parallels.
Cocktail is an award winning general purpose utility for Mac OS X. It is a smooth and powerful digital toolset with a variety of practical features that simplifies the use of advanced UNIX functions and helps Mac users around the world to get the most out of their computers. Cocktail is installed at more than 200 000 computers world wide.
 |
Disks |  |
System |
• Automatically check SMART (Self Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) status of disks
• Enable or disable journaling on selected disk
• Repair disk permissions permissions on selected disk
• Reset home directory permissions and Access Control Lists
• Set disk sleep (spindown) time
• Modify sleep settings for portable computers
• Allow or prevent mounting of external disks during system startup
• Enable or disable Sudden Motion Sensor
• Run periodic maintenance scripts
• Enable or disable Spotlight indexing of selected disk
• Erase Spotlight index for selected disk
• Set backup interval and modify other Time Machine settings
• Rebuild Launch Services database
• Update locate and whatis databases
• Change startup mode
• Set startup delay
• Force empty Trash
• Enable Kiosk mode
 |
Files |
|
|
| • Clear system caches, component caches, data detectors caches, Directory Service caches, dynamic link editor’s (dyld) shared cache, kernel caches, user caches, ColorSync caches, Dock caches, Java caches, QuickLook caches, QuickTime caches and font caches (including font caches created by applications from Adobe, Microsoft and Quark) • Clear trojan horses and worms such as Astht (AplS.Saprilt, Hovdy), Inqtana, iServices, Leap (CME-4, Oomp), RSPlug (Jahlav), Lamzev, PokerStealer or other malwares that may harm your system in any way. • Clear CUPS (Common Unix Printing System) job files, core files, virtual memory swap files and other temporary files • Clear Internet caches, cookies, download lists, form values, history files and page icons created by Safari, Camino, Firefox, OmniWeb, Opera and Shiira web browsers • Search for corrupted preference files • Manage (view, print and save) log files • Clear log files (manually or automatically rotate and/or remove archived copies of log files) • Delete DS Store files from disks or folders and their subfolders • Allow or prevent DS Store files creation on network volumes • Delete locked or inaccessible items • Lock or unlock files and folders |
 |
Network |
|
|
| • Change speed, duplex and MTU of network cards • Easily optimize network settings for common connection types (Dial-up/PPP, Bluetooth/GPRS/EDGE, Satellite, DSL/PPPoE, Cable modem and Fiber/FiOS) • Manually modify TCP receive and send window sizes, TCP slow link window size, UDP outgoing datagram size, UDP receive buffer size, receive and send buffer sizes for local stream sockets as well as state of delayed ACKs, NewReno Fast Recovery and RFC-1323 extensions • Configure the built-in (File Sharing) Mac OS X file server |
 |
Interface |  |
Pilot |
|
|
|
|
| • Customize look and features of Finder, Dock, Safari, Exposé, login window and other system services • Modify hidden settings of Address Book, Backup, Disk Utility, iCal, iTunes, Mail, QuickTime X, Remote Desktop, Screen Sharing and Terminal |
• Clean, repair and optimize your system with one click of the button • Schedule clearing of system, user and Internet caches, clearing of log files, repair of disk permissions and run of periodic maintenance scripts |
For a limited time only (until 27th December) you can get a copy of Cocktail from MacZOT for only $9.95£6.24 (Normally $19.95£12.50)
