41–50 of 182 posts
I'm not sure I agree with much of these, which makes sense because this is definitely not 'sensible defaults' it is just someones preferred settings. I wouldn't copy this unless you know for sure this is how you want your system configured.
If you use these as they're written, you'll end up with a Brussels timezone, so yeah - definitely edit them beforehand.
Sorry, soon as I saw the line that disables the startup chime I knew everything here was wrong.
(a fun game whenever these silly scripts get posted is to count how many different security measures they silently disable with little to no warning to the naive)
I love that this document takes inscrutable OS X settings and translates them into familiar human-readable settings. I have no idea what "NSGlobalDomain NSNavPanelExpandedStateForSaveMode" is, but I understand what "Expand save panel by default" means. However, like other people, I'm not sure that I agree with this particular set of changes. Is there a project somewhere that packages these options into a GUI? I know…
Shameless sharing: github.com/echohack/macbot
This gives me the impression that command line configuration interface for MacOS is really good, at least compared to FreeBSD, Windows or Linux.
There are also a number of different commands (scutil, nvram, defaults, pmset, PlistBuddy, etc.) instead of common interface for things that seem related but aren't. Discoverability is horrible, even when you know the name of the setting you want to change. It is not immediately apparent what arguments are needed for "defaults write" based on the output of "defaults read" (possibly due to my own ignorance, but this raises the learning curve substantially).
Granted, there are a thousand different ways to configure any given Linux environment with varying degrees of difficulty, but I feel like many of the user preferences in the linked script would be better managed in dotfiles as they are in Linux (and other Unices and even for many apps on Mac OS).
Sorry, soon as I saw the line that disables the startup chime I knew everything here was wrong.
Sorry, soon as I saw the line that disables the startup chime I knew everything here was wrong.
Can you elaborate? I despise the startup chime and disable it on all of my Macs. Why should they announce a startup when none of my other devices do? Why would I want to wake a sleeping baby or annoy other library patrons? This is one of the most obnoxious decisions Apple ever forced on its users (and, yes, I was happy when the illuminated logo on the laptop lid was finally put to rest).
Sorry, soon as I saw the line that disables the startup chime I knew everything here was wrong.
It doesn’t get any better when a few lines further down he disables the LaunchServices quarantine and frames it as eliminating a dialogue box instead of as eliminating a major mitigation to browser vulnerabilities. (a fun game whenever these silly scripts get posted is to count how many different security measures they silently disable with little to no warning to the naive)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Presumably everyone thinks their own defaults are 'sensible', otherwise they wouldn't be using them. I think the most sensible defaults are those that come out of the box, rather than spending time tweaking things.
> Presumably everyone thinks their own defaults are 'sensible', otherwise they wouldn't be using them. Maybe, although I set my caps lock up to be escape when tapped and control when held, I don't think that would be sensible for many people at all unless the knew why they wanted it. > I think the most sensible defaults are those that come out of the box, rather than spending time tweaking things. This is probably tr…
Which was the only sensible thing to do when Apple dropped the ESC key ;)
I'm so used to caps == ESC now, it takes me a minute to realize what's wrong when I'm on a new system/keyboard.