I'm generally very happy with MacOS (I'm running 10.4.10 on a 1.67GHz Powerbook G4 with 1.5GB RAM), but things can always get better...
Dashboard
After installing Little snitch I found out that there are indeed a lot of "phoning home" type applications. I don't mean to start a debate about this as I've noticed from similar threads that they turn into very heated discussions with one side accusing the other of becoming paranoid while the other side returning the accusation saying they're naive in trusting those apps as being issued by "the good guys".
I really don't care who's right or wrong. It's my computer which I paid good money for and I want to control what kind of information is sent to/from my machine, regardless contents. Whatever goes on "behind my back" is "spyware" in my book, and I don't like it a bit.
Having said all that I noticed that even MacOS does its bit of "phoning home". Little snitch caught something called "Dashboardadvisoryd". Searching the web for more info on the matter it seems it has something to do with MacOS checking with Apple if the widgets I have installed are legit or not. Something like that. I'm no programmer, and thus don't understand the deep innards of MacOS or any software, and would rather be on the safe side.
To me I find it strange that a computer needs to communicate with other computers across the Internet if the application isn't actually made for doing that (e.g. sending/receiving email, downloading files, surfing the web, chatting via Skype etc.). After all, the computer works just fine even if I physically disconnect it from the Internet!
I did find some articles on how to remove this "checking" using UNIX commands in the terminal. I'm generally no fan of this because it complicates things and makes it easy to forget how to enable again if I should ever choose to do that. I prefer applications that I can double-click which does that for me.
However, I failed in disabling this phoning-home "feature". What I did was rename the two files involved, hence disabling them. This is what I entered in the terminal window (note: they're both a single line long, which is hard to see here):
sudo mv /etc/mach_init.d/dashboardadvisoryd.plist /etc/mach_init.d/dashboardadvisoryd.plist.DISABLED
sudo mv /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.dashboard.advisory.fetch.plist com.apple.dashboard.advisory.fetch.plist.DISABLED
So that didn't work (perhaps the instructions I found only applied to earlier versions of MacOS 10.4.x, but not 10.4.10), so reading a bit more on the web about the issue and noticing that several people complained about the dashboard/widgets in general, claiming it takes up valuable memory and processor power, I questioned if I needed it at all.
Actually I never understood what widgets are for in the first place. I never had anything like this in MacOS prior to MacOS X or other computers. In "Classic", calculators and stuff like that was always available in the menu-bar as a normal application as far as I can remember.
So I decided to try to disable the Dashboard, but in a way which did not involve cryptic UNIX commands. I found the Widgets preference pane which allowed me to do this. Pressing F12 no longer started the widgets, but I noticed that the Dashboard icon in the dock still had that black triangle underneath it (indicating an active application), so I turned it on again and tried to turn it off with the enable/disable dashboard utility.
The triangle is still there, so I'm wondering if these tools don't work properly with MacOS 10.4.10 or if the Dashboard icon indeed shows that it's active even if it isn't? (I read somewhere that the Dashboard is part of the Dock).
Spotlight
I never quite understood what all the fuss was about. I find Spotlight cumbersome to use in comparison with most "straight forward" search-tools that I've used in the past, and frankly -searching inside of files kind of creeps me out a little. I've never had any need for that, and I must imagine that indexing everything on my hard drive must take a lot of computer processing power.
I know there are ways to disable Spotlight and shareware replacements, but they usually leave the Spotlight icon where it is, but of no use, and those other search applications have to be opened just like any application. Even more cumbersome.
I would like to still click on the upper right hand corner, but remove the "search inside of files" option, keeping just the filename-search.
One of the things I find irritating with Spotlight is that there's no way to just open the location of the file in question.
I know I can do a "Reveal in Finder" if I right-click (or CTRL-click in my case) a file-name, but only after choosing "Show all" in Spotlight, which opens a new window.
So, is there a way I can improve things the way I want?
Finally, are there other things I can disable or improve in other ways in order to make my computer run more efficiently?
(I already know about Onyx which allows you to mess around with "hidden features" of MacOS and have read several useful articles including 11 ways to optimize your Mac's performance and Tuning MacOSX performance).
Dashboard
After installing Little snitch I found out that there are indeed a lot of "phoning home" type applications. I don't mean to start a debate about this as I've noticed from similar threads that they turn into very heated discussions with one side accusing the other of becoming paranoid while the other side returning the accusation saying they're naive in trusting those apps as being issued by "the good guys".
I really don't care who's right or wrong. It's my computer which I paid good money for and I want to control what kind of information is sent to/from my machine, regardless contents. Whatever goes on "behind my back" is "spyware" in my book, and I don't like it a bit.
Having said all that I noticed that even MacOS does its bit of "phoning home". Little snitch caught something called "Dashboardadvisoryd". Searching the web for more info on the matter it seems it has something to do with MacOS checking with Apple if the widgets I have installed are legit or not. Something like that. I'm no programmer, and thus don't understand the deep innards of MacOS or any software, and would rather be on the safe side.
To me I find it strange that a computer needs to communicate with other computers across the Internet if the application isn't actually made for doing that (e.g. sending/receiving email, downloading files, surfing the web, chatting via Skype etc.). After all, the computer works just fine even if I physically disconnect it from the Internet!
I did find some articles on how to remove this "checking" using UNIX commands in the terminal. I'm generally no fan of this because it complicates things and makes it easy to forget how to enable again if I should ever choose to do that. I prefer applications that I can double-click which does that for me.
However, I failed in disabling this phoning-home "feature". What I did was rename the two files involved, hence disabling them. This is what I entered in the terminal window (note: they're both a single line long, which is hard to see here):
sudo mv /etc/mach_init.d/dashboardadvisoryd.plist /etc/mach_init.d/dashboardadvisoryd.plist.DISABLED
sudo mv /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.dashboard.advisory.fetch.plist com.apple.dashboard.advisory.fetch.plist.DISABLED
So that didn't work (perhaps the instructions I found only applied to earlier versions of MacOS 10.4.x, but not 10.4.10), so reading a bit more on the web about the issue and noticing that several people complained about the dashboard/widgets in general, claiming it takes up valuable memory and processor power, I questioned if I needed it at all.
Actually I never understood what widgets are for in the first place. I never had anything like this in MacOS prior to MacOS X or other computers. In "Classic", calculators and stuff like that was always available in the menu-bar as a normal application as far as I can remember.
So I decided to try to disable the Dashboard, but in a way which did not involve cryptic UNIX commands. I found the Widgets preference pane which allowed me to do this. Pressing F12 no longer started the widgets, but I noticed that the Dashboard icon in the dock still had that black triangle underneath it (indicating an active application), so I turned it on again and tried to turn it off with the enable/disable dashboard utility.
The triangle is still there, so I'm wondering if these tools don't work properly with MacOS 10.4.10 or if the Dashboard icon indeed shows that it's active even if it isn't? (I read somewhere that the Dashboard is part of the Dock).
Spotlight
I never quite understood what all the fuss was about. I find Spotlight cumbersome to use in comparison with most "straight forward" search-tools that I've used in the past, and frankly -searching inside of files kind of creeps me out a little. I've never had any need for that, and I must imagine that indexing everything on my hard drive must take a lot of computer processing power.
I know there are ways to disable Spotlight and shareware replacements, but they usually leave the Spotlight icon where it is, but of no use, and those other search applications have to be opened just like any application. Even more cumbersome.
I would like to still click on the upper right hand corner, but remove the "search inside of files" option, keeping just the filename-search.
One of the things I find irritating with Spotlight is that there's no way to just open the location of the file in question.
I know I can do a "Reveal in Finder" if I right-click (or CTRL-click in my case) a file-name, but only after choosing "Show all" in Spotlight, which opens a new window.
So, is there a way I can improve things the way I want?
Finally, are there other things I can disable or improve in other ways in order to make my computer run more efficiently?
(I already know about Onyx which allows you to mess around with "hidden features" of MacOS and have read several useful articles including 11 ways to optimize your Mac's performance and Tuning MacOSX performance).