September Fools

I’d say this would be a great April Fools joke, but April is too far off to wait.

I highly recommend doing this to anyone who:

1. Has a Mac running OS X,
2. Grew up playing video games in the NES era, and
3. Has a sense of humor.

This is the perfect trick: It’s hilarious the first time, but then it gets old really quick. It’s also very easy to do, if you have the OS X Developer Tools installed. Here are the steps:

1. Download MegaManEffect. Play with it yourself a little bit (launch it, then launch any other app) to see what it does. Prepare tissues to wipe up your tears of laughter.
2. Copy the MegaManEffect app to your desktop or wherever.
3. Control-click on the app and choose “Show package contents.” Open the file MegaManEffect.app/Contents/Info.plist. If the machine has the OS X Developer Tools installed, it should open in Property List Editor automatically. Otherwise open it in TextEdit or the plain text editor of your choice.
4. If you’re using Property List editor, click the disclosure triangle next to Root, then highlight Root, and click the New Child button. Enter LSUIElement in the text field under the Property List column. Under the Value column, enter 1.

   OR

   In TextEdit, change the file to look like this near the middle-bottom:

   CFBundleVersion
   1.1
   LSUIElement
   1
   NSMainNibFile
   MainMenu

   Then save and quit. What this does is make the app a background app—when launched, it won’t show up in the Dock, the command-tab app switcher, or the force quit window.

5. Now we need to prevent the window from showing up. Open the file MegaManEffect.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/MainMenu.nib. It will open in Interface Builder. From the Tools menu, choose Show Inspector if it isn’t already on the screen. Select the app’s main window and uncheck “Visible at launch time” in the Attributes section of the Inspector window. Save and quit.
6. Copy your modified MegaManEffect app to your victim’s Users/Shared folder.
7. To be really evil, rename the app to .MegaManEffect.app to make the file itself invisible. You’ll have to do this from the Terminal:
   

   cd /Users/Shared
   mv MegaManEffect.app .MegaManEffect.app

8. And now for the most beautiful part: Make the app a login hook. That’s like a Login Item, except that there’s no GUI to access login hooks, so your victim can’t easily turn this off. Plus they can take effect for all accounts if you so desire. Enter the following in the Terminal all on one line:
   

   sudo defaults write com.apple.loginwindow LoginHook
   /Users/Shared/.MegaManEffect.app/Contents/MacOS/MegaManEffect

   Enter the admin password when prompted.

9. Now either log in and log back out again or, if you want this to take effect immediately, enter again in the Terminal:
   

   open /Users/Shared/.MegaManEffect.app

10. Wait for the hilarity to ensue.

To remove this, do the following:

1. Remove the login hook by entering in the Terminal:
   

   sudo defaults delete com.apple.loginwindow LoginHook

2. Delete the application by again entering in the Terminal:
   

   cd /Users/Shared
   mv .MegaManEffect.app MegaManEffect.app

   Then drag the now-visible app to the trash as usual.

I did this to my brother a while ago, and I can confirm that it is hilarious. I could hear the music every time he launched an app from across the hall in my room. If you’re reading this, Seth, it was I who violated your iMac. Mwahahaha!

Update Wed Sep 28 22:40:38 CDT 2005: Seth’s response:

FUCK YOU