Easter Eggs?

paxtonandrew said:

Hello,

Does anybody remember the easter eggs that ware found in the early versions of Mac OS? The most recent one i can remember is in early developer editions of OSX (ten) where if you went <ctrl+alt(option)+delete> a dialogue box popped up and declared "This is not windows"

Does anybody know of any others to bring back a bit of mac nostalgia!

Click to expand...

No nostalgia involved, but holding shift and any of the expose keys will make the windows tile in slow motion.

You can also hold shift while minimizing/maximizing for slow motion.

I am unaware of any Easter Eggs in OS X. I remember a bunch from the pre-OS 9 days as well... those were the times.

I remember someone posted here that Stevie has forbidden easter eggs into the OS ... you can do a search... I'd believe that...Because

"This is not windows"

Indeed, Steve did hit Easter Eggs pretty hard with the "NO" stick. That aside, there are a few really cool features that I know of that are LIKE easter eggs, but they're documented features (Just not well known at all).

To make your desktop look REALLY cool, hit ctrl+option+apple+8. Hit it again to turn it off.

If you turn on speakable commands (or whatever its called) and tell it to "Tell me a Joke," it will. Pretty funny.

Go to the Applications folder, open pCalc2, go to the constants in the menu, and click on "ultamate anwser."

Kudos to anyone who know what that number means.

musicpyrite said:

Kudos to anyone who know what that number means.

Click to expand...

I somehow don't have that program, but I think the number displayed is 42, which is of course the answer to life and the universe

FriarCrazy said:

Indeed, Steve did hit Easter Eggs pretty hard with the "NO" stick. That aside, there are a few really cool features that I know of that are LIKE easter eggs, but they're documented features (Just not well known at all).

To make your desktop look REALLY cool, hit ctrl+option+apple+8. Hit it again to turn it off.

If you turn on speakable commands (or whatever its called) and tell it to "Tell me a Joke," it will. Pretty funny.

Click to expand...

That desktop trick is REALLY cool. I can't wait to go to the Apple store and freak everyone out and make them think I broke their very expensive G5's

Also, how do I do the "Tell me a Joke" thing? Where do I get into the speakable commands? I didn't even know Macs had that. It would be so cool if I could tell it to empty the trash, and it did, or open Safari, and it does.

System Prefs -> Speech
Under the Speech Recognition tab (Its the first one that comes up) turn Apple Speakable Items to "On"
Its pretty self explanitory from there, but you can PM me if you have trouble.

Also, an even better thing to do at the apple store is to open up the apps folder, select everything and then double click... The dock goes CRAZY! I call it the "Dock Dance," and you'll see why. I did it on a dual 1.8 at the grand opening at the Rosedale store in Minnesota and then hit expose... This photographer dude came over and he was like OMG WOW and he took a picture of all the windows.

the number displayed is 42, which is of course the answer to life and the universe

Click to expand...

He's right, of course. 42 translates directly into eastern istanbulian as "the answer to life and the universe". We love 42.

ctrl+option+command+8...

I thought this was just for portables, and was deemed as "stealth mode", convenient for warchalking at night. The mode puts out only white light, looking only like a small flashlight. Also, with the image colors reversed, the common large white areas on a screen are turned to black, putting out much less overall light. Why is mac so cool? Because it allows us to get on to windows wifi networks. And stealthily too.
-klon

pdpfilms said:

ctrl+option+command+8...

I thought this was just for portables, and was deemed as "stealth mode", convenient for warchalking at night. The mode puts out only white light, looking only like a small flashlight. Also, with the image colors reversed, the common large white areas on a screen are turned to black, putting out much less overall light. Why is mac so cool? Because it allows us to get on to windows wifi networks. And stealthily too.
-klon

Click to expand...

I never really thought of using it that way, sweet! I always knew it as an accessability feature, "high visibilty mode."

yeah, I use that feature a lot when my eyes are really tired. I would think that it would also be useful in a farkened classroom or meeting room where people don't want to be distracted by the beautiful, bright mac screen.

FriarCrazy said:

If you turn on speakable commands (or whatever its called) and tell it to "Tell me a Joke," it will. Pretty funny.

Click to expand...

My favorite speakable use is with the Chess app. I suck at chess - seriously, many single-cell organisms can handily beat me at it - but I love speaking my moves out loud and seeing them on the screen. I think it makes for a cool demo. An even better one for someone who can actually play the freaking game....

I remember there is one if you go through the terminal... damn I can't remember it for the life of me, but I think it brings up picks of the developers.... I think you had to use the man command. Anybody know the one I'm talking about? It's a pretty minor (but classic) type of easter egg.

there's a psychologist built into the terminal

but i can never remember how to open it.

FriarCrazy said:

I never really thought of using it that way, sweet! I always knew it as an accessability feature, "high visibilty mode."

Click to expand...

Yeah, that's not really an Easter Egg, just a keyboard shortcut for "Switch to White on Black" in the Universal Access panel of System Prefs. But no doubt about it, it is cool.

The only "egg" I've found so far is in Classic apps, when I go to a nav window, go into a network volume and select the path drop-down menu:

I can't really get the speech thing to work. I got it to recieve 'Tell Me a Joke' 2 times, and both times, it was a knock-knock joke, so I said "whose there?" and it blew me off.... Are there any techniques to get it to understand my voice? Do I let go of ESC right after I'm done talking?

KevRC4130 said:

I can't really get the speech thing to work. I got it to recieve 'Tell Me a Joke' 2 times, and both times, it was a knock-knock joke, so I said "whose there?" and it blew me off.... Are there any techniques to get it to understand my voice? Do I let go of ESC right after I'm done talking?

Click to expand...

I did that too... sure my housemates think I've lost the plot.

the terminal ones sound the most interesting to me. just the fact that you have to do some terminal weirdness to get to them is cool. (someday i will learn UNIX. today is not that day).

FriarCrazy said:

Also, an even better thing to do at the apple store is to open up the apps folder, select everything and then double click... The dock goes CRAZY! I call it the "Dock Dance," and you'll see why. I did it on a dual 1.8 at the grand opening at the Rosedale store in Minnesota and then hit expose... This photographer dude came over and he was like OMG WOW and he took a picture of all the windows.

Click to expand...

Guys, DO NOT DO THIS if you only have 256mb of ram.... I just did, my Powerbook could hardly run it was so overloaded, the fan came on, it took at least 10 minutes to get it all opened, then closed. Not only that, but it was lagging so much, I couldn't even see the icons dance . Stick with a rammed up G5 if you want to do this, I learned my lesson.... Happily, expose did work, and it WAS cool to see all of the files

FriarCrazy said:

Also, an even better thing to do at the apple store is to open up the apps folder, select everything and then double click... The dock goes CRAZY! I call it the "Dock Dance," and you'll see why. I did it on a dual 1.8 at the grand opening at the Rosedale store in Minnesota and then hit expose... This photographer dude came over and he was like OMG WOW and he took a picture of all the windows.

Click to expand...

That is so funny.

KevRC4130 said:

Guys, DO NOT DO THIS if you only have 256mb of ram.... I just did, my Powerbook could hardly run it was so overloaded, the fan came on, it took at least 10 minutes to get it all opened, then closed. Not only that, but it was lagging so much, I couldn't even see the icons dance . Stick with a rammed up G5 if you want to do this, I learned my lesson.... Happily, expose did work, and it WAS cool to see all of the files

Click to expand...

I was bored one day and did that on my Yikes G4 400 with 1GB of RAM just for kicks. Opened every application and utility at the same time. I knew it was going to take awhile, so I went and did something else. I can't remember exactly how long it took, but I think it took the better part of an hour, and rendered my computer unusable until reboot. But the good news is, it opened them all and never crashed. Needless to say, I won't be doing that again...

try to open a meta data file in text edit



heres what u get

FriarCrazy said:

To make your desktop look REALLY cool, hit ctrl+option+apple+8. Hit it again to turn it off.

Click to expand...

o.o that's pretty spiffy

the only one i sknow is to open up X11 and type in "xeyes" w/othe ""