How-To: Create a Custom User Template in Snow
Leopard

post from TheAppleBlog on 16 March 2010 10:57:00 AM. © TheAppleBlog

Setting up your OS to your liking can be an art for some. What if you need to set up Snow Leopard to present every user with the same look and settings? By following these steps you can have every user who logs into the machine receive the same look, feel and preferences that you desire. What we’ll be doing is creating a new user, setting it up to look how we want, then copying the settings so every new user will get those preferences.

Setting Everything Up

Login under your admin account and open up Accounts pane in System Preferences.
Click the + to create a new Standard user.
As an example, we’ll use the name testuser.
Log off and log back in as testuser.
Set everything up the way you want. I customized the Dock, Safari’s home page and the Finder preferences.
When you are done customizing, log off the testuser account.

Copying the Files

Login under your admin account.
Navigate to the /System/Library folder in Finder.
Right-click on the User Template folder and choose Get info.
By default, you cannot browse this folder. Change the permissions so Everyone has Read & Write permissions.
Now we can open up the User Template folder & copy the English.lproj folder to your desktop. This will be our backup copy in case we want to restore it back.
Open up Terminal and navigate to the User Template folder.
cd /System/Library/User\ Template/English.lproj
Copy the testuser folder over, which will replace the defaults. You may get errors about some files that can’t be replaced. I haven’t seen it cause any issues though.
sudo cp -R ~testuser/* .
sudo cp -R ~testuser/.* .
Change the permissions for the User Template folder back so everyone has No Access again.

Test it Out

Create a new user to verify everything worked. I used the name testuser2.
Log off as admin and log back in as testuser2.
You will now see your customized settings. These will be used for all new users created on the system from this point on.

Conclusion

To put everything back the way it was, log in as admin and copy the English.lproj backup file on your desktop back to the /System/Library/User Template folder.

If you have a lab of Macs but aren’t using Open Directory, this is a nice solution to maintain some control over the OS presentation. This change will only affect new users. It has no effect on existing users, so keep that in mind. If you start getting constant requests for more customizations similar to this, setup a Snow Leopard Server and start using Workgroup Manager. The changes can be much easier to implement but the Server solution has a larger price-tag for that convenience.

Read The Full Article:
http://theappleblog.com/2010/03/16/how-to-create-a-custom-user-template-in-snow-l
eopard/

Digg this

Presented By:

post from MacNN | The Macintosh News Network on 16 March 2010 10:35:00 AM. © MacNN | The Macintosh News Network

Read The Full Article:
http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=9eeb8b6b0881facd5685f100197c5ada&p=4

Digg this

Apple holding off on ordering flash memory

post from MacNN | The Macintosh News Network on 16 March 2010 10:35:00 AM. © MacNN | The Macintosh News Network

Apple is refraining from buying flash memory due to high prices, industry leaks asserted this mornin...

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.macnn.com/click.phdo?i=9eeb8b6b0881facd5685f100197c5ada

Digg this

PayPal iPhone app uses Bump to send money

post from MacNN | The Macintosh News Network on 16 March 2010 10:30:00 AM. © MacNN | The Macintosh News Network

PayPal on Tuesday unveiled an update to its Send Money app for the iPhone and iPod touch. Version 2....

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.macnn.com/click.phdo?i=8c092f90aeaf4f8e9730f81c50b6023b

Digg this

Trader Vics LA Gives Away Tiki-themed iPhone
Cases To First 50 Customers

post from on 16 March 2010 10:00:00 AM. ©

Trader Vic's Los Angeles announces a special promotion whereby it will be giving away iTiki iPhone[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://prmac.com/release-id-11455.htm

Digg this

PhatWare releases PhatNotes 1.3 for iPhone and
iPod touch

post from on 16 March 2010 10:00:00 AM. ©

Spokane based PhatWare Corporation today announces an updated PhatNotes 1.3 for iPhone and iPod[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://prmac.com/release-id-11449.htm

Digg this

Google sells just 135,000 Nexus Ones in 2.5
months

post from MacNN | The Macintosh News Network on 16 March 2010 09:55:00 AM. © MacNN | The Macintosh News Network

In spite of early fanfare, Google has sold just 135,000 Nexus One phones in the past 2.5 months, acc...

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.macnn.com/click.phdo?i=384ea1f633081d2da86799f717a1ada1

Digg this

iKey : Untethered Jailbreak for iPhone 3GS and
iPod 3G

In last week we introduced you with iDongle, dongle for iPhone 3GS (new iBoot) that allows the launch of the jailbroken device without jailbreaking again. If you missed iDongle coverage check [here] and [here]. Today we?ll introduce you with a something[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ihackintoshfeed/~3/--Fmte5K3bI/

Digg this

iKey : Untethered Jailbreak Solution for iPhone
3GS and iPod 3G

Digg this

WD intros 1TB My Passport SE for Mac

Western Digital has expanded its line of My Passport SE drives with two new capacities, 750GB and 1T...

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.macnn.com/click.phdo?i=cb6987a7f46907b9a617ad0317c1122b