In the spirit of the season, this Mac treat involves Mac tricks. Here are three easy jokes you can play on your friends and family who use Macs. These jokes are fun in the office and also at home. Needless to say, you’ll need access to your targets computer. Please be respectful of their privacy while setting up these jokes.
1. Make your target think their Mac is weirdly frozen. (For this to really work, the Mac will need at least one application window open, such as a web browser.)
First, take a full screenshot of your target’s Mac desktop (by holding down the Command-Shift-3 keys all at once; the Command key is to the left of the space bar).
Next, set the target’s desktop image as the screenshot by moving the screenshot into the pictures folder, then browsing to System Preferences, then clicking the Desktop & Screen Saver button. Here you can easily select the screenshot as the desktop picture. When the turkey returns to their computer, they’ll eventually try to close or move the open application window. Of course, it will just be a static immovable photo that they’re trying to move! You can waltz to the rescue or let them puzzle over the problem.
2. This is a dead simple trick, but it works every time. If your target connects their keyboard and or mouse to their Mac, simply disconnect them but keep them propped up as if connected. They’ll figure it out in less than a minute—but for that minute they’ll be wondering what is going on!
3. The Universal Access panel in System Preferences has many options for radically transforming someone’s Mac. For example, under the Seeing tab in the Universal Access Panel, you can make the screen black on white, grayscale, or radically push up screen contrast. Likewise you can turn on the VoiceOver utility, or make the mouse pointer and cursor huge. These are all designed to assist in computer usability, but can be genuinely confusing if you don’t expect to see them. This is especially true for newer Mac users.
Have some tricks you’d like to suggest? Email them to ed@smalldog.com and I’ll post them to our blog Barkings!