Stop .DS_Store file creation by Mac OS X

Mac OS X has an annoying habit of littering network shares with .DS_Store (Desktop Services Store) files. If you only use Mac OS X and other Unix based systems you may never actually see them, but in mixed environments they can become a bit of a nuisance. There is nothing critical stored in .DS_Store files, just Finder specific settings, such as icons size and location, view settings, etc.

To prevent .DS_Store from being created on network shares, run following command in terminal.

defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true

To revert changes and resume .DS_Store file creation run:

defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores false

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Disable mouse acceleration for Microsoft mouse in Mac OS X

One of the best things about Macbooks is a fantastic Apple trackpads. Unfortunately, this cannot be said about third party mouse support. Maybe I haven't used Macs for long enough, but I really hate mouse scrolling (and tracking) acceleration. What I want is linear predictable scrolling and tracking, regardless of how fast I'm moving the mouse or scrolling the wheel.

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Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk is of the GPT partition style

Issue

Cannot install Windows 8.1 on MacBook Pro 13.3 Retina (OS X Yosemite) from an external DVD drive. After booting from the Windows 8.1 installation DVD and trying to install Windows on BOOTCAMP partition, following error is displayed:

Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk is of the GPT partition style.
Windows cannot be installed to this hard disk space. Windows must be installed to a partition formatted as NTFS.

Trying to format the partition doesn't help.

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Disable startup items in Mac OSX

To disable per user startup items go to System Preferences > Users and Groups, then click on Login Items. To disable a startup item, simply uncheck the checkbox next to the item you want to disable. To add a new startup item, click on the + (plus) sign.

Read more: Disable startup items in Mac OSX