Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual (Missing Manuals)

Chapter 18. Hacking Mac OS X

Chapter 9 shows you how to customize your desktop picture, error beep, and screen saver. But beyond those simple modifications, Mac OS X offers only a subset of the tweakable features found in, say, Windows. You can't record alert sounds, change the fonts used in the Finder, choose new colors for your scroll bars, and so on.

If you're sneaky, creative, or just different, however, you can indeed perform more dramatic visual and behavioral surgery on your copy of Mac OS X ”from changing the startup screen image to re placing the "poof" that appears when you drag something off the Dock with a new animation of your own. All you need is a few of Mac OS X's less obvious tools, or some free downloadable customizing software, and a few recipes like the ones in this chapter.

Some of these tricks are frivolous. Some are functional and useful. And although Apple sanctions not a one, all are perfectly safe.