Most hacks were built on Mac OS X, and several played off Mac OS X’s Unix core, such as Josef Wankerl’s OldSchoolEdit, which let you open any text file in the Unix editor emacs (or vi) in the Terminal.Ī few people hacked the Dock, making the icons somersault, roll around, or flee in horror from your mouse cursor. The Rest of the Best - Not everyone can win the Hack Contest, or even place in the top seven, but there were numerous valiant efforts. (It’s worth noting, for those unfamiliar with Clarus, that 'Moof!' is not a term of affection, and both the dogcow logo and her cry are bona fide trademarks of Apple Computer.

Many of the hacks were thus dogcow-oriented, and yells of 'Moof!' resounded throughout the evening whenever Clarus appeared on screen.

The theme 'ingredient' for the Hack Contest was Clarus the dogcow, a half-dog, half-cow creature that appears in the Page Setup dialog box in versions of the Mac OS up to Mac OS X. The theme of MacHack was 'Iron Hacker,' a reference to the popular Iron Chef TV show, which brings a level of competition to cooking normally seen only in crazed sports shows like American Gladiator and BattleBots (an Iron Chef fan site even noticed MacHack because of the theme). That’s down a bit from the last two years, but since the lower number meant the Hack Contest itself could end an hour earlier at 5 AM this year, no one complained. The hacks were many and varied again this year, with a total of 65 hacks, 26 of which came from the yoots (the proper plural of 'yoot' according to at least one sharp-eyed reader). Hacks that perform some useful task are generally greeted by the audience with derisive cries of 'Useful!', and pushing the benefits of a hack will elicit jeers of 'Marketing!' The centerpiece of the annual MacHack conference is the MacHax Group’s Best Hack Contest, in which the world’s best programmers compete (preferably during the preceding 48 hours) to come up with software that displays the ultimate in programming creativity, knowledge, or arcana, ideally presented with tongue firmly planted in cheek.

#1603: Replacing a 27-inch iMac, Luna Display turns a 27-inch iMac into a 5K display, OWC's affordable Thunderbolt 4 cables.

#1604: Universal Control how-to, show proxy icons in Monterey, Eat Your Books cookbook index.

#1605: OS updates with security and bug fixes, April Fools article retrospective, Audio Hijack 4, 5G home Internet.

#1606: Apple's self-sabotaging App Store policies, edit Slack messages easily, WWDC 2022 dates.

#1607: TidBITS 32nd anniversary, moving from 1Password to KeePass, pasting plain text, Mail fixes anchor links, RIP Eolake.

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