I do a lot of command line work on my OS X machine, so the history saves me a lot of time running repeat commands and also refreshing my memory on commands that I haven't run in a while. Unfortunately, the default history length in OS X is 500 commands. That seems like a lot, but when you're running 50+ commands a day it can push older commands off the list pretty quickly. This is easily solved by setting the HISTFILESIZE in your .bash_profile file.

First, to find out what HISTFILESIZE is currently set at, run the following command from Terminal:

echo $HISTFILESIZE

To change this value, simply add the following line to your .bash_profile file (found in /Users/yourname/):

HISTFILESIZE=2000

This increases your bash history to 2000 items. It will take effect next time you open a Terminal window.

While my upgrade to OS x 10.6 Snow Leopard has been mostly smooth, there are a few annoying bugs I've come across. This one has to do with audio - upon reboot, audio gets set to mute no matter what settings I had the volume on before. Not a big problem, but annoying none the less. Here's how to fix it:

1. In Finder, navigate to Macintosh HD > Library > Preferences > Audio
2. Delete the following files:
   •      com.apple.audio.DeviceSettings.plist
   •      com.apple.audio.SystemSettings.plist
3. Open System Preferences > Sound
4. Set your sound to your preferred settings
5. Exit System Preferences and Reboot

There you go! After deleting those files, they will be re-created when you go into System Preferences and your audio will no longer be muted upon reboot.