Apr 27 2009
April Fool’s Pranks
By: Jon Gales
This is a special “holiday” version of PowerUser Monday. Supercharged with
lots of fun OS X pranks to pull on your family/friends/co-workers. You’ve probably
seen a few of these before, but some of these just got the go ahead from the
DOD (Department of Defense).
What’s That Number?
Go to the International pref pane and click the Numbers tab. For the
example
below I changed Symbol to 9, Decimal to 4 and Thousands to 6.
This
is
a
great
trick because if your victim uses the default calculator, all of the answers
will be off.
That’s Not What I Pressed!!!
Go to the International pref pane and click the Input tab. Check “Dvorak”
and then uncheck whatever was selected before. This will make the keyboard seemingly
go crazy. For example, MacMerc.com when written in the dvorak layout is: MajM.pjvjrm
Stop That Flashing
Go to the Universal Access tab and click the hearing tab. Check the
box next to “Flash the screen whenever an alert sound occurs”. This gets amazingly
annoying and almost no one knows where this jewel is stashed.
I Know What I Pressed Dammit
Go to the Universal Access tab and click Keyboard. Hit the radio button
for Sticky keys. Now try hitting command, control, option or shift. Muahaha.
Nooo… I Need My Friggin Keypad!
Go to the Universal Access tab and click Mouse. Hit the radio button
for Mouse Keys on. Try using that keypad now… If your company has an accountant
that uses a Mac, this is your chance to get back.
My Dock! My beautiful Dock!
Find a folder with 30-75 items and hit command-a to select all the items.
Now drag em to the Dock. The only way to get them out is one at a time… Don’t
try this unless you have a lot of free time (use it on your friend untested if
you have to)
That’s Not Photoshop!
This takes a lot of time, but it’s a quality trick. Think of an application
that your victim uses a LOT and one they don’t use very much (probably a Utility).
A
good
place
to
start
is
what
is
in
the
Dock.
- Take a screen shot (command-shift-3) so you’ll be able to make sure the
end product looks right.
- Command-click the icon of an app in
the
Dock
to
find
it
in
the
Finder and choose your second app.
- Using get info (command-I)
you can switch the icons all around. Just use the mouse and click
on the icon in the info panel and use copy/paste. To do it without losing
an icon, make a folder to store the icon temporarily. For instance, get info
on Mail.app, copy the icon, go to the folder’s info and paste the icon, copy
Word’s icon
and paste it on Mail.app, grab the Mail.app icon from the folder and paste
it to Word. Yes, this is pretty confusing but that’s what makes it fun.
- Once the icons are changed,
switch
the
names
- Once the names are done arrange the icons correctly in the Dock
(using the screen shot).
- Now trash the evidence.
If you can’t figure this out, don’t sweat it. If you can, I pity your friends.
User Submitted Tricks
Thanks to Simon Wheatley for these two tricks!
Create screenshot of a clean screen, no active apps or windows open.
- make that
screenshot your backdrop
– hide the dock to the left or right
– remove icons from the desktop (finder prefs)
– annoying but fun
2. Create a custom startup item in /library/startupitems/ that restarts
the computer each time it is booted. I took the time to create the
script and have posted it here.
I suggest that you make it a log-in item by going to System Preferences
> Login Items… If you make it a startup item most likely you’ll be
screwed over trying
to get rid of it. It is possible to force quit a log-in item (I have
tested this script). Enjoy! – Jon
–
Thanks to John Dough for this one (I swear that’s a real name 
)
- Take a screenshot of any state of the desktop [command-shift-3] Make
sure Finder is active. Ed-Note: Probably be best to take a screen shot
of what’s on the screen when you arrive to the desk.
- Open screen shot in photoshop.
- Select the path select tool (black arrow)
- Hit the F key until image is full
screen.
- This will give the impression that the computer is frozen as clicking on
any part of the image will do nothing.
Thanks to Slava for this one:
“Okay, here is a semi-mean way to torture your friends:
http://www.unsanity.org/slava/AppleBurnAlertNotifier-apr1.sit
Put it into Login Items for your friend or something. And we are not really that mean. We are just having fun. Our apologies if that actually scares anybody, even if it is April 1″
It’s genius… Just try it!
–
Thanks to Rick for this one:
I remapped my coworkers ExposÈ Desktop shortcut key to the Left Shift
button…only works for touch typists…hunt and peckers will be
looking at their keyboards when the windows are going crazy.
If you’ve got a killer trick please let me
know ASAP (before the 1st). And yes, I know about the
“Zoom” and “Black on White” features. They are just too well known to include.