The Mac OS X filesystem is a blend of powerful, ancient Unix underpinnings and the candy-coated shell known as the Macintosh Finder. To make this a reality, Mac OS X pulled off quite a switcheroo! It yanked the filesystem of Mac OS 9 and earlier out from underneath the Finder’s feet, replacing it with the utterly foreign world of the Unix filesystem and all that goes with it.
While all but invisible to the casual user, there are some cracks in the façade, visible upon closer inspection. Some are useful, others a little irritating, and still others simply fascinating and quite hack-worthy.
The hacks in this section poke and prod at the seams, revealing some useful techniques for backing up your system, tweaking files and folders, bending aliases to your will, understanding how it all fits together — even dumpster divingin the Trash a little.
Get Mac OS X Hacks now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
