From: bskendig@netcom.com (Brian Kendig) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 1994 09:41:38 PDT To: macgifts@mac.archive.umich.edu Subject: The Macintosh/Newton Easter Egg List .__________. .__________________________________________________. | Contents | | | |================| | The Macintosh/Newton Easter Egg List | . | Hardware | | compiled by Brian Kendig (bskendig@netcom.com) | . | System | | ____ | . | Other software | | Easter 1994 edition. | OK | | . | Useful tips . | | `----' | . `-------------|\-' `--------------------------------------------------' . |_\ ................................................. (c)1994 bsk \ Welcome to the Macintosh/Newton Easter Egg List! An "easter egg" (sometimes known as a "cookie") is something amusing or otherwise nonproductive (like a picture, a song, or the developers' names) hidden in your computer. It won't appear unless you do some action you wouldn't normally do, so you can't find it unless you're lucky or you know what you're looking for. Some really clever About boxes are mentioned in this list too, and I've also included a few interesting, useful, and little-known tips further down that are really handy to know. The list is getting so long, though, that I've been weeding out some of the trivial or very esoteric tricks. Too many applications will bring up "secret" things if you hold down the right keys and click in the right places, so I'm only keeping the more interesting easter eggs around. Please report any corrections to me! And if you find a really good easter egg, then please tell me about it and I'll put your name in here. You may (of course!) distribute information about these tricks freely, but please note the copyright on this collection -- I really don't like when people try to pass it off as their own work. If you'd like to use this material in a book or newsletter or distribute it commercially on electronic media like disks or CD-ROMs, please contact me first for permission, and you'll get it. :-) It would also be nice to let me know if you're including this list in a users' group collection. So far, this list has been printed in the WAMUG (Australia) and BMUG newsletters, translated into Japanese and printed in the Japanese users' group "MuON" newsletter, used in the books "Maximizing your Mac" and "Voodoo Mac", and distributed on Nautilus and Pacific Hitech CD-ROMs. Thanks to the people who have written similar lists, from which I've gotten plenty of ideas: J. D. Sterling Babcock and Mike Kimura, among others. For additional help, I thank Paul Franklin and Seth Pettie. Rene Ros has contributed so much that he deserves special mention, too! The list has grown to such a size that I can't personally verify every trick here, so if you just can't get something to work, please tell me! If you want to skip forward to the "Useful Tips" section, have your software search for three asterisks ('***') now. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Hardware Macintosh Plus >From MacsBug or the interrupt debugger, enter "G 40E118" (that's a zero, not an oh). (To get into the interrupt debugger, press the button on the left side of your machine closer to the back. If you're running System 7, just Shut Down your machine, then while the "you may turn off your Macintosh safely" dialog is displayed, press the button.) This gives you a tiny "Stolen from Apple Computer" message in the upper left-hand corner of your screen. ---------------- Macintosh SE >From MacsBug or the interrupt debugger, enter "G 41D89A". (See the trick above for info on how to get into the debugger.) This brings up a slideshow displaying four bitmap pictures of the Macintosh development team. Reboot (hit the button on the left side of the machine closer to the front, with the triangle on it) to get out of the endless cycle. Also, entering "G 4188A4" into the debugger gives you a tiny "Stolen from Apple Computer" message in the upper left-hand corner of your screen. [Contributed by J. D. Sterling Babcock.] ---------------- Macintosh Classic Hold down Command-Option-x-o right after you turn on or reboot the machine. This starts up the Classic from a minimal ROM-disk which contains System 6.0.3, Finder 6.1x, and AppleShare. (This version of the System is not recommended for use with the Classic, so you probably shouldn't boot off it to do any important work.) If you look at the ROM-disk with a program able to see invisible files (like ResEdit or MacTools), you'll find a folder named "Brought to you by" hidden there, containing more hidden folders bearing the names of the Classic designers. (The keys `X' and `O' were chosen because the development name of the Classic was the "Mac XO", or was it OX?) Also, there's an invisible application in the System Folder named "Launch" and set as the startup application; anybody know what it does? [Thanks to Charles Gousha for the details.] ---------------- Macintosh SE/30 This trick requires that you have MacsBug installed. Press the interrupt switch to dump yourself into the system debugger, then use the command "dm 4082E853 20" to display a few bytes of memory from location 4082E853 onwards. The bytes there spell out, in ascii, "WHAT ARE YOU STARING AT?" [Contributed by Esa Ristila.] Also, type "g eb1000" into MacsBug or the interrupt debugger. This displays the "Macintosh SE/30 Engineering Hall of Fame". Entering "pc=e11000;g" works too. [Contributed by Aapo Puskala and Mark Gadzikowski.] ---------------- Macintosh IIci Set the system date to 9/20/89 (the release date of the IIci), and set your monitor to 8-bit color. Restart while holding Command-Option-c-i. You'll see a color picture of the IIci design team. Click the mouse to continue. (Other color settings might also work...) ---------------- Macintosh IIfx Set the system date to 3/19/90 (the release date of the IIfx), and restart while holding down Command-Option-f-x. You'll see a color picture of the IIfx design team. Click the mouse to continue. (Interestingly enough, this is the same picture used in the IIci.) [Thanks to Jeff Home for details.] ---------------- Macintosh IIsi Enter the debugger and type "dm 4086F088 20". The bytes there spell out "SO...WHAT ARE YOU STARING AT? " [Contributed by Jeff Home.] ---------------- Any Macintosh computer Every Mac will play interesting noises if it fails its internal RAM check. You can harmlessly force it to fail its check by pressing the Interrupt button on your system immediately after it starts booting up. Mac II systems play interesting chimes, Quadra AV's play drum solos, LC's play a flute, and the Power Macintoshes play a sound of a car wreck with glass breaking. [Contributed by Rick Warfield.] ---------------- Macintosh ROMs (any of them) With a debugger, look at the last few locations on the ROM of your machine. Developers put their initials there, as well as the date that the ROM was linked. For example, the 128k ROM (Mac Plus) contains, at $41FFC0-$41FFFF: ALR ELR BA BMB EHB JTC SC DLD PWD KWK LAK SEL BWed, Nov 6, 1985 which are the initials of Erich Ringewald, Bill Atkinson, Bill Bruffey, Ernie Beernik (sp?), Jerome Coonan, Steve Capps, Donn Denmann, Pat Dirks, Larry Kenyon, and three other unknown developers. [Contributed by Scott Lindhurst and Ed Tecot.] ---------------- Apple Fax Modem While holding down the button on the front panel, turn on the modem. The modem will beep three times. After the three beeps, press the button again three times, timed exactly in "rhythm" with the beeps. If your timing is correct, the modem will speak the digitally-recorded voices of the three developers saying their names ("Peter, Alan, Neal"). [Contributed by Neal Johnson and Alex Rosenberg.] ---------------- StyleWriter When you turn on your printer, hold down the RESET and FORM FEED keys to print a diagnostic test page, which lets you exercise the print head and see if any of the pins are damaged. [Contributed by Tommy Aenst.] ---------------- Newton Messagepad Write "About Newton" on your Messagepad, hilite it (hold the pen down until a large dot appears at its tip then draw a line across the words with it), then tap Assist. The names of all the Newton developers will appear. On the original Messagepad (now called the Messagepad 100), tap the clock in the lower left-hand corner of the display, and hold down on it. The display will show you the current temperature! (This is because the battery level indicator works by sensing temperature.) Go to the Map, tap "Find", then write "Elvis". It will briefly say "The King was sighted in" and choose a city name at random before it catches itself and says "not found". [All three of these were contributed by Scott Ryder.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- System ("7.0" means 7.0.0 or 7.0.1 and probably 7.1 also) Multifinder 1.0 (distributed with System Software prior to 6.0) Hold down Command and Option while selecting "About Multifinder" from the bottom of the Apple menu. A scrolling list of credits appears. [Contributed by Seth Theriault.] ---------------- Multifinder 6.0 Select "About Multifinder" and leave the dialog up for about an hour or more. (Yes, this means you can't use your machine meanwhile.) A message will appear: "I want my" "I want my" "I want my l--k and f--l" You can also see this message if you snoop around in the 'STR#' resources of Multifinder for a while with ResEdit. [Contributed by Tony Cooper and James Boswell.] ---------------- System 6.0.7, 6.0.8, or 7.0 Take a look through the data fork of the System File (with MacSnoop or MacTools, or open it with MS Word). (It's short.) The string "Help! Help! We're being held prisoner in a system software factory!" is in the data fork, with a list of the names of the Blue Meanies (the System 7 developers). In System 7.1, the string is slightly different. "We're still being held prisoner..." [Contributed by Kevin Bolduan, Seth Theriault, and Tim Hammett.] ---------------- System 6.0.7J (Kanjitalk) Set the clock to January 1, 1992 (or any year?), and restart. The startup screen says "Happy new year" in Japanese. [Contributed by Junio Hamano.] ---------------- System 7.0 With ResEdit, take a look at STR# resource -16415 in the System file. The first string in the resource reads "May you code in interesting times." [Posted to Usenet by Nigel Stanger.] Also, while running System 7, try renaming a disk to "Like Wow Man. HFS For 7.0!" (where the space after 'Man.' is actually an option-space; you'll have to type this somewhere else like the Notepad then cut/paste it into the disk name). Then eject the disk with Command-E, and double- click on the greyed-out disk icon. The Mac will ask you to please re-insert "HFS for 7.0 by dns and ksct". (The intials are of David N. Feldman and Kenny S. C. Tung, who wrote the HFS extensions for System 7.) Other disk names work, due to the way the name is checked; try "KMEG JJ KS" or "Hello world JS N A DTP". [Found by Francois Grieu and mentioned in TidBITS #143.] ---------------- Finder 7.0 Hold down Option while choosing "About This Macintosh". (The menu option changes to "About the Finder", and if balloon help is turned on, the balloon for it reads "Displays a dialog with the original Finder picture.") This brings up the original picture of the mountains from "About the Finder" in System 1.0. If the creation date of the invisible "Desktop Folder" is May 13, 1991 (System 7's release date) or later, the names of all the Finder developers through Mac and Lisa history also scroll by. Hold down Command-Option while choosing "About" to get a goofy-face cursor. Also, "Get Info" on an alias, turn on Balloon Help, and point to the icon's italicized name. Then point to a place right below the very beginning of the name; you'll have to hunt for the exact spot. The Balloon help on the italicized name reads "The underline indicates that..." And the Balloon Help on the little invisible point right below the beginning of the name reads "This is the system software version..." but there's nothing there. Oops. [Contributed by David Richardson and John Feinberg.] ---------------- System 7 Tune-Up 1.1.1 The owner resource of this third-Tune-Up release contains the question everybody asked when it was released: "Again?" [Contributed by Rene Ros.] ---------------- Caches 7.0.1 (on a Quadra) Turn on balloon help and point to the version number; the balloon reads "Wink, wink." Option-clicking the version number makes the "040" icon whoosh to the side, revealing the name of the programmer who wrote it. [Contribued by Kemi Jona.] ---------------- Caps Lock 7.0.1 (on a PowerBook 100, 140, 145, or 170) Turn on balloon help and point to the Caps Lock file icon. The balloon help reads: "This file allows your Macintosh TIM or Derringer to display an icon..." (These were the working names of the first PowerBooks; Apple forgot to change the extension before System 7.0.1 was released! Whoops.) [Contributed by Seth Theriault and Fabian Hahn.] ---------------- Color Control Panel 7.0 Click on the Sample Text a few times. The strings "by Dean Yu" "& Vincent Lo" alternate. Also, if you're running version 7.1 of the control panel, "& Don Louv" sneaks in there every sixteenth click. [Contributed by Don Louv.] ---------------- Labels Control Panel 7.0 Delete all the label names in the Labels control panel, and reboot. The labels are now "None," "a", "l", "a", "n", "j", "e", "f". (Who are Alan and Jef? Beats me...) ---------------- Map Control Panel Type MID as the city name, and click Find. The stored point MID is actually "Middle of Nowhere", an insignificant location in the middle of the South Atlantic. (This one was added in version 7.0.) Clicking on the "7.0" puts "v7.0, by Mark Davis" into the city name field until you release the mouse button. Option-clicking on Find repeatedly will take you alphabetically to every city the Map knows. Opening the control panel while you hold down the shift key will display a magnified map (the resolution is the same, so it's very jagged). Opening it with option held down magnifies it more, and shift-option magnifies it even more to the point of being really blocky. Clicking somewhere in the map and dragging your pointer off the edge of it will scroll around the world. You can paste a new picture into the control panel; the Scrapbook that comes with System 7 includes a particularly good color map. [Contributed by Takeshi Miyazaki and Doc O'Leary.] ---------------- Memory Control Panel 7.0 (on a machine capable of virtual memory) Turn on virtual memory and hold down Option while clicking on the pop-up menu used to choose a hard drive for your swapfile. This brings up a hierarchical pop-up menu with the names of the developers; each name points to a submenu with a few comments about the developer. [Contributed by Povl Hessellund Pedersen.] ---------------- Monitors Control Panel Click the version number in the control panel window. A box will pop up with the names of the people who wrote Monitors. While you hold down the mouse button, tap Option several times; this makes the smiley face stick out its tongue. After tapping Option several times, the names begin to get rearranged and some first and last names get replaced with "Blue" or "Meanies". [Thanks to Steve Noskowicz for details.] ---------------- Finder 7.0 and MacsBug Turn on Balloon Help and point to the MacsBug file. The balloon reads: "This file provides programmers with information proving that it really was a hardware problem..." ---------------- QuickTime Turn on Balloon Help and point to the QuickTime file. The balloon reads: "time n. A nonspatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past to the present to the future." [Contributed by Kristopher Nasadowski.] ---------------- Sound Control Panel 8.0.1 Hold down Option and select something from the popup menu. You get a weird sound and a credits dialog. [Contributed by Bronson Trevor and Noah Salzman.] On a Quadra AV system, go into the Effects section of the Sound control panel and click on the wave icon in the lower right-hand corner of the window. It draws a line and the words "by Jeff Boone". [Contributed by bwooster@aol.com.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Other Software Adobe Illustrator 5.0 Hold down Option while selecting the Tool Description box (in the lower left portion of the working window), and instead of the usual four choices, some new things appear: the number of shopping days until Christmas, the programmer's home phone number, a pair of eyes that watch the cursor, the phase of the moon, the number of mouse clicks since you opened the document, a random number, and so forth. [Contributed by David Darrow and Richard Foley.] ---------------- AppleLink CD Select "About AppleLinkCD" and hold down the Option key. The spinning CD turns into a spinning cat's head. [Contributed by Brian Golden.] ---------------- BBEdit 2.2 Change your Chooser name (in the System 6 Chooser or the System 7 Sharing Setup control panel) so that it contains "Mike" or "Michael", then hold down Option while you choose "About BBEdit...". Everyone in the About box will be given a first name of Mike, Michael, or something similar. [Contributed by Rich Siegel.] ---------------- CompuServe Information Manager 2.0.2 Click on the spinning earth in the About box, and hold the mouse button down. The earth spins in the other direction. Eventually, other windows will appear, giving credit to the authors. [Contributed by Rene Ros.] ---------------- Dark Castle If you play the game on December 25 (or if you set your system's clock to that date, and play the game), a Christmas tree appears in the foyer. [Contributed by Philip Craig.] ---------------- Disinfectant Select "About Disinfectant", and hold a menu down to pause the advancing virus names while the music plays (to prevent the foot from arriving too soon and stopping the music). John Norstad appears in one half of the dialog, while in the other half an animated sequence of virus names march out as the Monty Python theme song plays, until they get stomped by a huge foot. Holding down a menu pauses the viruses but not the music, and if you hold the menu down long enough, the entire theme song (John Philip Sousa's "Liberty Bell March") will play! (You may have to release the mouse button every now and then if the music does stop.) [Contributed by Dave Claytor and Mitchell Marmel.] ---------------- Finale 2.x Select "About Finale" and wait for a few seconds. The conductor walks away. [Contributed by Arthur Rishi.] ---------------- Fractal Forest (an After Dark 'Art of Darkness' module) Run this sometime around Christmas, and all the trees sprout Christmas ornaments. [Contributed by Phil Barrett.] ---------------- FrameMaker Put the word "Interleaf" into a document, and spell-check it. FrameMaker will substitute "FrameMaker" wherever it finds "Interleaf". (Interleaf is FrameMaker's competition.) [Contributed by Erik Ableson.] ---------------- HyperCard 2.x Hold down Option as you select "About Hypercard...". In 2.1, you get a dialog describing your system setup. In either 2.0 or 2.1, the chooser name, if you've entered one, appears in the "HyperCard by" title. (That is, if you entered "Joe Cool" as your name in the Chooser (6.0) or Sharing Setup (7.0), the top of the window will read "HyperCard by Joe Cool". If you have no Chooser name, one of the names of the many developers is put there.) Also, on any recent Mac (ones that require System 7.0.1 or 7.1), you will be told your system is a "Macintosh Macintosh". [Thanks to Seth Theriault for the details.] In the original release of HyperCard 2.0 (not 2.0v2), type "get 1/0" into the message box. Your Mac will crash with a "division by zero" error. Oops, talk about having full control over your computer! ---------------- Installer On version 3.0.1 (the one that comes with System 6.0.7 and 6.0.8), after dismissing the initial welcome dialog, type "ski". A humorous list of the developers will appear, and you will be able to choose from five wait-cursors: the hand with the moving fingers (standard), a spinning globe, the familiar spinning disc, the even more familiar wristwatch, and dots that move. [Contributed by John DeRosa and John Hawkinson.] On version 3.2 (the one that comes with System 7), hold down command and option while the Easy Install screen is up. The Help button becomes "About", and clicking on it brings up a few screens of credits. [Contributed by Matthew Russotto.] ---------------- Jam Session Choose "About Jam Session". The credits are displayed on the label of a record, and you can hear it click (as an old record does after it's played to the end). When you click the mouse to dismiss the dialog, you hear the scratching noise of the needle being lifted off the record. [Contributed by Joe Campbell.] ---------------- MacPaint 2.0 This only works on very early copies of MacPaint 2.0, before Claris caught it: Hold down Tab and Space while choosing "About MacPaint", and a bitmap of a well-known painting of a nude zebra-striped woman atop a white zebra appears. ---------------- Maelstrom >From the main screen (after it loads), press 'L'. This brings up a level select. "Turbofunk mode" makes the game play as quickly as the hardware you're using can support. Pressing 'X' on the main screen brings up a rather interesting poem that I think is from a song. If you play it around Christmastime, Christmas-tree balls appear on the title screen. [Contributed by Rob Kouwenberg.] ---------------- Metamorphosis Professional 2.0 Hold down Command and Option while selecting "About Metamorphosis Pro". A screen proclaiming "Bug Tussle Professional, The Totally Awesome Font Conversion Utility" is displayed, along with a list of developers. [Contributed by David Loebell and Karl-Koenig Koenigsson; extra thanks to David for sending me a picture of it, too! :) ] ---------------- Microsoft Excel 3.0 Open a new spreadsheet, then go to the last cell, IV16384. (Press Cmd-Right then Cmd-Down to jump there.) Use the scroll bars to scroll down and right more until only that cell is showing, then set that cell's width and height both to 0. All that will remain in your window will be the little square in the upper-left-hand corner that you normally click on to select the entire spreadsheet; click on it. The contents of the window will be replaced by a little Lotus-stomping then a list of Excel's programmers and beta-testers. When your normal Excel window comes back, scroll away to keep the show from repeating. [Contributed by Evan Torrie.] Set the style of any cell to "excel" (by selecting "Format Styles..." and typing "excel" without the quotes). Then choose "About Excel..." from the Apple menu and click on the big Excel icon. A brief animation ("So good, it hurts.") appears, and alternates with the names of the developers ("Recalc or Die!"). [Contributed by Rob Griffiths.] On a color Mac running System 6, launch Excel while you hold down Shift-3-D. Excel's "tool bar" will have the System 7 "three-d" look to it, instead of looking boring and flat like it usually does under System 6. [Contributed by Randy Lambertus.] ---------------- Microsoft Word On Word 3.01 or 4.x with the US dictionary (and maybe UK?), spellcheck the word "childcare". The spell-checker will suggest one word: "kidnaper" [sic]. [Contributed by Adam Shostack.] Also, try spellchecking "supression" [sic]. The spell-checker will include "Cupertino" among its choices. Could this be secret Apple-bashing? ;) [Contributed by Hiroki Morizono.] In Word 4.0, select "About Microsoft Word" and command-click on the Word icon. The resulting dialog gives the names of Word beta-testers. In Word 5.0, hold down Command and Shift as you select "Preferences" from the Tools menu. At the bottom of the preferences list will be a new item, Credits; select it to see listed the names of the Word 5 developers. [Contributed by Jonathan Leblang.] ---------------- Miracle Piano Software Work through a lesson on Christmas Day. It will "ho ho ho" at you when it evaluates your performance, and all bass clefs will be replaced by candy canes. [Contributed by Hank Shiffman.] ---------------- Norton Utilities Command- or option-click the little rhomboid just in front of the version number in the About box. A list of the developers appears. (In 2.0, you get a great caricature.) [Contributed by Karl-Koenig Koenigsson and Larry Cunningham.] Also click on the man standing in front of the file tree. He holds up a flag in which scroll the names of everyone who worked on NU. [Contributed by Nabil Alatas.] In the Wipe program, version 2.0, option- or command-click on the rhomboid beside the version number in the About box. The cursor turns into a hand holding an eraser. Move it around the About box; zeroes are left in its wake. Fill the entire box with zeroes; a brief melody plays, and a picture of the developers appears. [Contributed by Larry Cunningham and Neil Corcoran.] In the Speed Disk program 1.0, command-click on the rhomboid beside the version number in the About box. The large letters that make up the name "SPEED DISK" swap themselves pair-by-pair until the name eventually unjumbles itself again. [Contributed by Andy Calder.] ---------------- Out Of This World Take a closer look at the game's file "FILE0146" with a GIF viewer; it's really a GIF file containing a message from one of the game's authors. [Contributed by Darren Cokin.] ---------------- Pagemaker 5.0 Hold down Tab, Shift, and Space while you select "About PageMaker", and a nice picture will appear. [Contributed by srsimons@aol.com.] ---------------- Quark XPress In version 3.1, turn on Balloon Help, select "About QuarkXPress", and point to the word 'Quark'. The balloon reads "A fundamental particle." [Contributed by Reuven Lerner.] In version 3.2, select a picture or text box with the Arrow Tool. Delete the box with Command-Option-Delete, and a little space alien walks out and zaps it away. [Contributed by David Darrow and Johnny Angel.] ---------------- QuicKeys 2.x Open the macro definition window, and click on the logo to bring up a credits window. Wait for about half a minute, and a bunny will walk across the window beating a drum. After it crosses, the message "QuicKeys keeps on going!" is displayed. (There's also a way to get a safe to drop on the bunny, but I don't know how. Anybody have any ideas?) [Contributed by Kenny Wong.] ---------------- ResEdit 2.x Hold down Shift, Option, and Command as you choose "About ResEdit." You get the chance to enter "pig mode" (oink oink oink). When you put ResEdit into pig mode, resources will be compacted and purged each time ResEdit goes through its event loop (several times a second). (However, since this makes ResEdit slower, it's not of much use outside Apple.) [Contributed by Ian Neath; info about "pig mode" from Chris Webster and Russell Street.] Also, just try holding down only command and option as you choose "About ResEdit"; this brings up credits for ResEdit. (as in who made ResEdit, not as in Star Trek money) ---------------- SimCity, and the other Maxis "Sim" games Type the word "FUND" in SimCity, and you will be given a few thousand dollars for free. Type the word "FUND" in SimLife, and the game will tell you "You are now $10,000 richer. Unfortunately, money has no value in this game." [Contributed by stewarpj@bigvax.alfred.edu.] ---------------- Simple Player (for QuickTime) 1.0 Hold down Option as you select "About Simple Player...". The two movie frames now have greyscaled cats in them. [Contributed by Scott Ryder.] ---------------- SoundEdit Choose "About SoundEdit". A burning fuse bomb "system error" blows up. ---------------- Spaceward Ho! 3.0 A ship with weapons, shields, and range all at 10 looks like a shark. One with all three up to 13 looks like a skeleton. Name a planet "Hope" or "Ship", then abandon it; you get a cute message about "abandoning hope" or "abandoning ship". Play the game on December 25 (or set your system clock to 12/25 and play), and the game will have a Christmastime theme. [Posted to Usenet by Gene Hsu, David Mika, and Adam Nash.] ---------------- Spectre When playing the game, type the three letters G-O-D in sequence. You are treated to a bird's-eye view of the entire battlefield at once. [Contributed by Jeff Ivler.] ---------------- SpeedyFinder 1.5 Use ResEdit to look at the 'YeHa' resources in the control panel. Some comments are hidden there, including the text "Tell me what you're doing looking at my resource fork?" [Contributed by Rene Ros.] ---------------- SpInside Macintosh and the Technical Notes (4.1.4 and others?) stacks Option-Shift-click on the dogcow. A dialog comes up with credits. When "Developer Technical Support" appears, click to dismiss the dialog. Then click anywhere else on the title screen. Click on the button to go to a tech note by number, and enter "Clarus the dogcow says Moof!" When it asks you "what did you say?", enter the same thing again. This will display the secret "Tech Note #31, About the Dogcow". (I'm not making this up; it's really in there!) If that doesn't work, then you can display the three pages of the Tech Note by typing "tnpict MooF1,1,0" in the message box (and MooF2 and MooF3). [Contributed by Brian Gaeke, Trevden, and Olav Brinkmann.] ---------------- TeachText 1.1, 1.2, and 7.0 Hold down the option key while you select "About TeachText..." Some "Thanks to" credits appear. [Contributed by Andrew Stoffel.] ---------------- THINK Pascal 4.0 Click in the lower left-hand corner of the About box. "THINK Pascal" will fade through a few amusing anagrams of itself. [Contributed by Rich Siegel.] Also, use ResEdit to look at the ICON resources; ICON #128 "THINK Pascal" is joined by ICON #129 "sPINacH TalK" and ICON #130 "PlaN sIT HacK". [Contributed by Fokko Dijkstra.] ---------------- THINK Reference In the entry for "FindWindow", go to the "Returns" section; the note for "inDrag" mentions parenthetically "transvestites take note". You can enter "Dogcow" in the text box to go to an amusing page about it. Go to the page about the 'itlc' resource (search for the text "the 'itlc'" then press Command-Period) then go one more page forward, and you will reach a page of programming tips. Also, let the application sit for about twenty minutes, then look at it; the "thinking man" eventually gets tired and rests his chin on his other hand. The length of time it takes before he gets tired is controlled by 'Draw' resource 128 ("I'm bored after # secs"). [Contributed by Omar Souka, and posted to Usenet by John Brewer.] ---------------- Vette! Select course 3 (starting on the Bay Bridge), but turn around and go _backwards_ for a ways (with the wall on your left and the ocean on your right, and traffic coming at you -- be careful!). After you've gone far enough, you will suddenly be in a very nicely-detailed area whose streets are named after the developers. ---------------- WriteNow 2.2 and 3.0 Select "About WriteNow", then option-click on the About dialog. Little men run out and change all the letters one-by-one. Trun on balloon help and point to the WriteNow 3.0 application icon. The balloon reads "This is the hottest WYSIWYG word processor around. It's blindingly fast. Try it...". [Contributed by Mark Cornick.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- *** Useful Things The Macintosh LC and Macintosh IIsi don't have restart and interrupt buttons like other Macs, so to generate these signals from the keyboard, press Command-Control-Power (the key with the triangle on it) for "reset" and just Command-Power for "interrupt." This also works with other newer Macs such as the IIvx. If your computer (under 7.0 or later only) seems to have crashed or frozen up, or is taking WAY too long to finish doing some task that it won't let you interrupt, press Command-Option-Escape. This will sometimes bring up a dialog that reads "Force 'application' to quit? Unsaved changes will be lost." The dialog has two buttons, "Force Quit" and "Cancel". Sometimes, clicking on "Force Quit" will kill the active application, allowing you to continue using your Mac without having to restart. Take advantage of this to save your other work and restart your Mac as soon as you can, because a crashed application might have trashed other things in memory. Use this at your own risk! Sometimes it won't work, but if your machine's hung, it could come in handy. If you quit all your open applications then use Command-Option-Escape to kill the Finder too, the Finder will come right back to life again -- but if you're holding down Command and Option as it's doing so, you can rebuild the desktop files on your hard drives. This is sometimes more convenient then holding down Command and Option while your machine's booting up. (Thanks to Alan Gordon for reminding me of this trick.) If you want to make some windows invisible because they're cluttering up your screen too much, you can use "Hide Application" or "Hide Others" from the Application menu at the top right of your screen. But if you want to hide the windows of the application you're using right now, just hold down the option key and click in another program's window; as you switch to that other application, this one's windows will disappear. Option-clicking on the desktop hides the windows and puts you into the Finder, which is handy. If you want to see precisely how much memory an application is using (as opposed to just how much is allocated to it), then bring up the "About this Macintosh" dialog and turn on Baloon Help. Point to one of the bars, and the baloon will say "This application is using xxx k out of the xxx k allocated to it." (Contributed by Georg Schwarz) To zap the PRAM (reset all of your Mac's internal settings): Under System 7, hold down Control-Option-P-R on a reboot. Under System 6, hold down Command, Option, Shift, and Tab while you select the Control Panel DA from the Apple menu. (Is this great, or what? ;-) In the Apple HD SC Setup program, press Command-I to manually select a format interleave ratio for your hard drive. [Contributed by J. D. Sterling Babcock.] In Disk First Aid, press Command-S to display a window that shows you in detail exactly what the program's doing. In ResEdit, if you want to see exactly what's happening when ResEdit is verifying a file, then hold down Option while you click on "Open" in the "Verify" file selection dialog box. [Contributed by Quinn.] The Installer can be used to de-install things! Click on "Customize", and when you hold down the Option key, the "Install" button becomes "Remove", allowing you to de-install whatever the Installer would normally have installed for you. [Contributed by Seth Theriault and Fred Condo.] If you want to eject a floppy disk at any time (even if your Mac doesn't notice that there's a disk in the drive), press Command-Shift-1 for the lower (or internal) drive or Command-Shift-2 for the upper (or external) drive. (If you press these when there's no disk in the drive, you might even be able to hear the drive mechanism moving.) If that doesn't work, reboot your Mac and immediately hold down the mouse button until the disk ejects. If THAT still won't work, unbend a paperclip and (very carefully!) push it straight into the small hole to the right of the drive slot to manually force the mechanism to eject. If things still really feel stuck, then DON'T FORCE the mechanism; your disk might be caught in the drive, and forcing things could damage your drive. Bring your Mac in for repairs. You can unmount and eject a disk at any time without having to drag it to the Trash by just selecting it and pressing Command-Y instead. [Contributed by Rich Rauch.] If you have more than one monitor hooked up, go into the Monitors control panel and hold down Option. A smiley-face will appear on the screen placement area for whichever monitor currently has the menu bar on it; you can drag the menu bar to other monitors. [Contributed by Seth Theriault.] Option-clicking on "Options..." in the Monitors control panel will let you set the gamma correction on your monitor. Gamma correction is used to help colors look less washed-out. If you have a Quadra and you want to turn the caches on or off immediately (instead of having to reboot first), hold down Option as you click on either button. However, this could have bad side-effects (such as messing up LocalTalk timing) until you reboot your system. If you're running System 7 on a slow machine (a Plus, SE, or Classic), there's a way you _might_ be able to get things to run just a bit faster. Many System file and Finder resources are stored in compressed form to save disk space, but of course the tradeoff is that it takes time to decompress them before they can be used. With ResEdit, carefully copy all the resources in the System file or the Finder and paste the resources back in on top of themselves (use the same ID's), and save your work; this effectively decompresses all the resources for good (because ResEdit can't save compressed resources). DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK -- you'll certainly want to have clean copies of your System and Finder around for a while after you do this, just in case. If you need to fit the System 7.0 printer drivers on an 800k System 6.0.5 (or .7 or .8) boot disk (for example, to use an old Mac without a hard drive on a network with System 7 machines), you can use ResEdit to remove enough resources from the "LaserWriter" 7.0 driver to make it fit. (As usual, do this at your own risk.) These resources, which are only useful in System 7 or with the TrueType INIT, are: All of types icl4, icl8, ics4, ics8, hwin, hdlg, dctb POST -8150 to -8084 STR# -8192 to -8182, -8138 to -8136, -5694 If you like playing with the Puzzle desk accessory (and even if you don't), you can copy the picture of two linked squares from the Scrapbook and paste it into the Puzzle. In fact, you can paste any picture into the Puzzle, and it will be sized to fit. You can also copy the picture from the Puzzle and look at the clipboard to see what it will look like solved. [Contributed by Povl H. Pedersen.] QuickTime has a nice undocumented feature: you can name a movie file to "Startup Movie" and put it in the System Folder, and it will be played on startup when QuickTime loads. In international system software this name will be different (in Swedish it's "Startfilm"); you can find the name it uses in STR resource -2020. [Contributed by Jim Kelm and Mattias Ericson.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-