10 Secret Features Hidden Inside Mac Software

Emacs psychoanalysis

Start up Terminal on your Mac. Type "emacs" and hit enter. Quickly press esc + x. Then type "psychoanalyze-pinhead" to see your Mac have a conversation with itself. To stop the scrolling conversation, press ctl + g.

The "suck" effect for minimizing a window

You can choose between the "scale" or "genie" effect when you minimize a window on your Mac. But there's a secret third choice called "suck."

Start up Terminal and type "defaults write com.apple.dock mineffect -string suck" and restart your computer. The new effect is activated.

Play Tetris!

Old Unix programmers hid a few games in the code. To play Tetris, start up Terminal. Type "emacs" then press esc + x. Then type "tetris" and it opens up a Tetris game!

Play Snake!

Another classic game hidden in the Unix shell -- follow the same instructions that you did for Tetris, but type "snake" instead of "tetris."

A significant event on every day of the year

To make your Terminal display a list of 365 significant events -- one for every day of the year -- just type "cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.history"

Your Mac can tell you a joke

Open the System Preferences. Go to the Speech pane. Turn on Speakable Items as well as Speak Back Text.

Say out loud to your computer, "Tell me a joke," and it will indulge you. There are a lot of different jokes, but if you keep asking for them, it will literally tell you to get back to work.

Hidden text on the Keynote icon

Sure, it says "Q4 2008" across the top, but the actual body of the text is the lyrics to "The Bitch of Living" from Spring Awakening.

Someone in Cupertino is a fan of musicals.

A dig on Windows

If you have a Windows server on your network, your Mac will display it as a CRT monitor with the Blue Screen of Death.

A secret recipe

Some goofy programmer hid a recipe for Mrs. Field's Cookies on your computer.

Fire up Terminal and type "open /usr/share/emacs/22.1/etc/COOKIES" to read it.

BONUS: Star Wars in ASCII

This isn't anything embedded in Mac software (you can do it in Windows or Linux as well), but it's pretty cool to access over Telnet.

In Terminal, type "telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl" to watch all of Star Wars: Episode IV in ASCII characters.

(Han fires first in this one. None of that revisionist nonsense.)