New macfag here. I just got a Macbook Pro for college and, being new to the OS, am unsure of the various methods of awesome desktop customization (if there are any). Other than changing the wallpaper and moving the Dock, what else can I do?
29 thoughts on “New macfag here. I just got a Macbook Pro for college and, being new”
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09/24/09(Thu)17:20
How cool!Good to see that there’s a few english learning norwegian instead of all norwegian learning english
Thanks for the help! 
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09/24/09(Thu)15:28
Ser du er norsk, så tror kansje jeg kan få mer hjelp da
Hvordan fikser man den til høyre, er helt fersking på å fikse på mac D:theconstructivecat@live.no <- hvis du ikke orker å poste her 
User posted image.
Interested.
MenuMeters (puts i/o stuff and hard drive status in the menubar)GeekTool. Still a bit glitchy (get the 2.x.x – not the 3.x bc its still unstable and can fuck your system.), with some help sites from google, and some copypasting basic strings of code you can put date, time, itunes song, cpu, etc on your desktop.changing icons of apps helps too. not nearly as customizable as windows but sufficient for me.also check out ‘dockables’ – basic processes put into an icon on the dock (sleep, restart, scrncap, empty trash)have fun
Thanks! I’ll definitely be checking some of this stuff out. And thanks for the heads-up on GeekTool – I wouldn’t have known that.
There’s a lot you can do.Like was mentioned there’s Geektool. This link is a pretty comprehensive list that addresses what most normal people will do.http://www.thememymac.com/2009/geektool/geektool-all-the-scripts-i-could-find-explained-for-beginners/Adium is a theme-able AIM, MSN, etc… program.XRG can be used for resource graphs but its not widely used. Menumeters is more commonDeviantart and Interfacelift will be your biggest sources for icons.Bowtie is the most common thing to put controls for iTunes in your menubar and an overlay to tell you what’s playing. There’s also YouControl:Tunes which isn’t nearly as skinnable, but I use it because I’m still using 10.4Also seen is Growl+HarwareGrowler, which is a somewhat skinnable(it comes with a decent amount already) notification app. A lot of programs can take advantage of it, such as Adium or Firefox, or using it to tell you when a drive mounts or you drop your IP Address(which happens to me a lot right now because I’m stealing a neighbors), so its nice to know when that drops before I try to navigate to another page and get hit with a load error.That should just about cover most of it.
And to show icon set for non-dock stuff better.
Geektool, Bowtie, dock skins, change the iconsthats all i do anyway, the results are, meh. pic related
is this some new spam we’re getting on /wg/?
no, he’s speaking to me in norwegian
So you two know eachother? I had actually even checked your screenshot to see if it was in something other than English…so I was confused. >_>
nei jeg er engelsk faktisk
jeg kjøpt meg macbook i bergen! jeg flyttet her ute 2 år siden 
det er bare Geektool! eg laget en Table, og sett det til circa 75% Opacity. enkelt! Beklage for meg ganske dritt norsk
ooooh, I see the flag now
I just got my new mac today from school to this helps!
alsoL: candybar- for icon changing magnifique for themes taskpaper- you may not need it, by keeping my todo list with geektool is made super easy with this thing.
LiteIcon is a good, free alternative to Candy Bar if you have reservations about illegal downloading and don’t want to pay for something.Magnifique does not work with Snow Leopard yet, according to their site.
but snow leapord sux anyway……..why would u want it?
Well considering the OP just bought a new Macbook, I’d have to say that he’s probably running Snow Leopard…
point made.
Nothing. Enjoy your overpriced garbage.
I am extremely interested in learning the Norsk language……is there a program similar to rosetta stone? Or does rosetta stone offer one?
I like how no one has mentioned Magnifique yet.Use Magnifique to change out your theme.I use Black Leopard, but Plexis and others are good too.
You can make it supercool like mine
butthey did-
We did, and I mentioned how their website says they don’t support Snow Leopard yet.
get a real unix-like OS
Leopard was a full Unix OS. Not sure about Snow Leopard.
Ecoute is definitely better, imo, than Bowtie or any of the other iTunes controllers simply because you don’t need iTunes open to use it. It’s a smaller footprint and easy to use, customizable, etc.Also,http://www.tuaw.com/2007/11/16/tuaw-tutorial-custom-stack-drawer-icons/to add "drawers" to your stacks.