shot

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.

1. Take a screen shot (command-shift-3) so you’ll be able to make sure the

   end product looks right.

2. Command-click the icon of an app in

   the

   Dock

   to

   find

   it

   in

   the

   Finder and choose your second app.

3. 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.

4. Once the icons are changed,

   switch

   the

   names

5. Once the names are done arrange the icons correctly in the Dock

   (using the screen shot).

6. 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

tested this script). Enjoy! – Jon

–

Thanks to John Dough for this one (I swear that’s a real name )

1. 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.

2. Open screen shot in photoshop.
3. Select the path select tool (black arrow)
4. Hit the F key until image is full

   screen.

5. 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:

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.

By admin • Articles, Power User Monday Tip of the Week • Comments Off • Tags: april fool, button, click, control option, dvorak layout, Finder, holiday version, info, Mail, mouse keys, muahaha, radio button, shot, sticky keys, tab, time, time don, trick, universal access, use