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Share your Mac Easter Eggs

AphoticD

AphoticD

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Feb 17, 2017
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One of my favourite memories of classic Mac OS was discovering "Easter Eggs". Many older apps had a "Secret About Box" or similar Easter eggs you could find by holding modifier keys (Usually cmd or option) while clicking around.

Mac OS X mostly eliminated this trend but I'm sure developers have quietly continued on with this tradition.

Does anyone have any little known Easter eggs for PowerPC OS X and our apps?

--

For example, just yesterday, after having used Leopard for a decade or so, I discovered that holding Ctrl-Shift while mousing over the dock toggles the magnify mode. Not quite a full 'egg' but a fun find nonetheless.
 
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This got fixed during the PowerPC era, but if we're discussing the little things...

I discovered having your Mac say "f---s sheep" (obviously, you have to have it say the swear word) will result in a big HONK between the two words. This worked up to 10.3 or 10.4. It did get fixed somewhere down the road to 10.5 and I know 10.5 could never do it.

If you haven't discovered the emacs games (not the eMac, but the emac command in terminal), then read here: https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CategoryGames
 
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Mactracker Secret About Box

While perusing the Mactracker.app Resources, looking for some hardware icons, I came across a suspiciously Easter-eggy looking image. Sure enough and in classic Mac OS style, holding down the option key while selecting "About Mactracker" revealed a Secret About Box. One of the classic Easter Egg styles of yesteryear.

I checked a few different versions, here are the results;

SecretAbout4.0.2.png
SecretAbout5.1.png
SecretAbout7.4.1.png


Kudos to the developer of this fantastic app.

Who else has found a Secret About Box in Mac OS X?
 
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Another completely frivolous Easter Egg, but according to this description of the PMU99 (Mitsubishi M16C/62F microprocessor), if you drop into Open Firmware on a Lombard and enter 'wink' or 'winks', the power LED will blink at you.

Curiously, I tested this on my Pismo and a couple of iBooks, but got 'unknown word'.

It may also apply to the Wallstreet or PDQ. Anyone want to confirm this? :)
 
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AphoticD said:
Another completely frivolous Easter Egg, but according to this description of the PMU99 (Mitsubishi M16C/62F microprocessor), if you drop into Open Firmware on a Lombard and enter 'wink' or 'winks', the power LED will blink at you.

Curiously, I tested this on my Pismo and a couple of iBooks, but got 'unknown word'.

It may also apply to the Wallstreet or PDQ. Anyone want to confirm this? :)
Click to expand...

Confirmed on my PDQ that it doesn't work. Same error: "unknown word"...
 
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got it working on my Pismo :D you have to select the PMU in OF first as it has its own "words" aka commands two of which are wink and winks :)

in the case of my Pismo type: dev via-pmu

then: wink

and enjoy :) (if you ever want to see the commands something in OF has type "words" and OF will list them all out)

(Spoiler alert heres a quick video of it in action on said Pismo :) )

 
Last edited:
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I don't know why that made me LOL, but that's awesome! Good work @LightBulbFun :)

I just tried it on the iBook G3 500;

dev via-pmu
wink
-- we get a couple of flashes. :cool:

then...
winks
-- it's now flashing forever! I didn't know how to stop it so I gave it the old three-finger salute (ctrl-cmd-power). o_O
 
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AphoticD said:
I don't know why that made me LOL, but that's awesome! Good work @LightBulbFun :)

I just tried it on the iBook G3 500;

dev via-pmu
wink
-- we get a couple of flashes. :cool:

then...
winks
-- it's now flashing forever! I didn't know how to stop it so I gave it the old three-finger salute (ctrl-cmd-power). o_O
Click to expand...

Glad its working for you :)

I also discovered via this that the Sleep LED on my 500Mhz snowbook is broken LOL

and yeah winks also makes the LED blink forever on my pismo until I shut-down/restart, sorta reminds me in a cartoon/animated kids movie where they press a button and it sticks down and all hell breaks lose while they run around in panic trying to get it to stop :D

im curious what other macs have this wink easter egg ill have to go round checking all of mine now :)
 
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AphoticD said:
I don't know why that made me LOL, but that's awesome! Good work @LightBulbFun :)

I just tried it on the iBook G3 500;

dev via-pmu
wink
-- we get a couple of flashes. :cool:

then...
winks
-- it's now flashing forever! I didn't know how to stop it so I gave it the old three-finger salute (ctrl-cmd-power). o_O
Click to expand...

dev via-pmu on the PDQ gives a "no active package can't find device" error. Must be a newworld machine- only thing...

Just tested it on my 12" PB G4. Works great :)
 
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LightBulbFun said:
easter egg time again! :)

I discovered that if you dev via-pmu in OF

you can type sleepledon and sleepledoff to turn the sleep LED light on or off :)
Click to expand...

Today I noticed the flashing LED throught the side vents on my iBook of my mSATA SSD.
And I was remembered off the cool gem that exists on Linux but not on OS X , HDD activity LED using the Sleep Light.

Can you elaborate on those commands ? What do I have to do exactly ?
[doublepost=1552078801][/doublepost]
Lastic said:
Today I noticed the flashing LED throught the side vents on my iBook of my mSATA SSD.
And I was remembered off the cool gem that exists on Linux but not on OS X , HDD activity LED using the Sleep Light.

Can you elaborate on those commands ? What do I have to do exactly ?
Click to expand...

@LightBulbFun those are OpenFirmware commands probably ?

I'm looking for a way to program the Sleep Light hence my question.
 
aye the commands are OpenFirmware commands :)

if you go to my post above with the youtube video, there are the commands to do so in the post :)

once you dev into the via-pmu the commands of possiable interest are, sleepledon sleepledoff wink and winks

(you can type the command "words" IIRC to see all the commands available for the via-pmu)
 
Lastic said:
And I was remembered off the cool gem that exists on Linux but not on OS X , HDD activity LED using the Sleep Light.
Click to expand...

I saw the option to turn that feature on recently, but I can't remember where...
 
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