Where are all the Easter Eggs?
I thought it would be fun to post a few Easter Eggs over the weekend,
you know… since it’s Easter? But where the heck are they?
Easter Eggs, if you didn’t know, are messages, jokes, images, sounds or behaviors hidden in the code or file system of
an application or operating system as a gag. Easter Eggs are usually revealed by using an undocumented set of commands
or keystrokes.
The Mac OS of yore was chock full of Easter eggs, but legend has
it that Steve forbid them in OS X. If the legend is true, it explains why they are very few and very far between.
Then again, many Mac OS X “features” are so poorly documented, or not documented at all, so it’s often hard to tell
what’s an Easter egg and what’s merely missing from the documentation!
So far, most of what I’ve found are within applications, not the OS.
For example, open MS Word 2004 (I believe it works in Office X too). Select Zapfino font. Now type the word “Zapfino”
and watch what happens when you type the last letter. If you misspell it you’ll see the difference.
Ok, so that’s not exactly hilarious, but I think it qualifies as an Easter egg, nonetheless.
Monty Python fans will enjoy this: Select “Go to Folder” from the Go menu in the Finder and enter the following
string
/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.3/lib/python2.3/test/
Now double-click on the audiotest.au file.
There are a few fun Easter eggs you can access from the Terminal. For instance, LOTR fans will appreciate this
one.
Open the Terminal app and type:
grep OT /usr/share/calendar/calendar.hi*
(yes, the * is intentional and required)
Pretty neat, huh?
Since you’re already in the Terminal (you can stay in the same window or launch a new one - your choice), type:
appleping
That one is good for a giggle, right?
Fans of BBEdit might enjoy this one: Command-click in the title bar of the About BBEdit box for a few goodies.
No it’s your turn. Have you found any Easter eggs lately?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Oliver said 4:15PM on 6-16-2005
hmm, 'empty coffee pot: John Gruber' in that BBEdit one. I know he's a BBEdit user/fan but is there more to it?
btw, that MS Office 04 Zapfino one doesn't seem to work for me...
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Oliver said 4:15PM on 6-16-2005
in the BBEdit one, click one of the names.
For example, John Gruber takes you to a page about 'who grubered the coffee'.
Gruber Defined
gruber Pronunciation Key
n. Chiefly Northeastern U.S.
John Gruber. Resident of Philadelphia, PA. See Daring Fireball.
n. unit of measure
An amount of coffee insufficient to fill a cup, but sufficient to leave one without feeling obligated to brew more.
v. gruber, grubered
The act of leaving a gruber (see n. unit of measure).
Usage Note: grubering has been extended to include the water cooler, the box of coffee filters, the container of coffee and all other shared resources
While the double gruber is not uncommon, the triple gruber remains elusive.
http://bluemax.barebones.com/gruber_definition.html
http://bluemax.barebones.com/GruberCam.html
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Julian said 4:15PM on 6-16-2005
"For example, open MS Word 2004 (I believe it works in Office X too). Select Zapfino font. Now type the word Zapfino and watch what happens when you type the last letter. If you misspell it youll see the difference."
That's a feature of OpenType fonts with automatic glyph variants (not sure exactly what the feature is called). There are many words, not just "Zapfino" for which Zapfino will automatically change some or all of the glyphs and automatically add or remove ligatures.
Most of the other things mentioned aren't from Apple... they're from Python or BSD...
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dave said 4:15PM on 6-16-2005
Unless I'm missing something, I'm not finding this Zapfino easter egg that you speak of...
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Colin said 4:15PM on 6-16-2005
Here's a list of the numerous easter eggs in Burning Monkey Solitaire...
http://www.burningmonkey.com/egg_bms.html
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Casey said 4:15PM on 6-16-2005
Dave: Try that in TextEdit. It didn't want to do it in Word 2004 for me, but it's sweet looking in TextEdit.
And it's an application EVERY OS X user has.
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Spam Bait said 4:15PM on 6-16-2005
To #5
That person forgot "ringu" for BMS3 - a tribute to The Ring :-D
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Skunkworker said 4:15PM on 6-16-2005
In the System Preferences file, if you show package comments and get into the english.|proj and open up the NSPrefPaneGroups.strings there is a section called "Digital Hub" but no sysprefs us it
Wierd
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Winston said 4:15PM on 6-16-2005
If you are a video editor try this (it worked much more often pre-Final Cut HD, but we've seen it once since the upgrade).
After rendering video or capturing, allow your computer to idle overnight (eg set up a project rendering before you go home, or start a capture as you're leaving the office).
Every once in awhile when you come back in hte morning, there will be a cartoon bull at the bottom of the screen that has tons of hilarious things to say - puns and comments and jokes. Careful though, as soon as you touch the mouse he's gone.
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CyBeR said 4:15PM on 6-16-2005
#4:
That's because:
a) it's not an easter-egg but a (truly awesome) feature of OpenType fonts and OSX's font renderer actually using it
b) Microsoft Office seems to use a different font renderer that doesn't do this sort of thing. Try it in textedit instead, it's amazing.
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Keller said 12:20PM on 8-27-2005
About the Zapfino. #10 is right that it actually doesn't seem to happen in Word. And in TextEdit it doesn't happen when you have the font size at only 12, but crank it up to 18 or so and try it. The bottom line of the 'Z' will change to underline the whole word.
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Laurie said 4:15PM on 6-16-2005
Weird. It works for me in Word 2004 - not every single time, but 75% of the time and it works reliably in Entourage (if i enable html obviously). it does seem to work best in TextEdit.
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