Scroll Switcher 1.0.2

Quite possibly the dumbest application ever written. On any platform, at any time.

Scroll Switcher 1.0.2
Rating: (four burnt toasts)

Fixamac Software (John Goodchild)
10932 Morrison Street Suite 201
North Hollywood CA 91601 US
1-818-512-4442

Collateral damage:
Your pride - count on substantial ontological pain
Not so slightly noticeable numbing of normal neurological activities
Quarter meg of your disk space wasted to replace a single fucking command line

This is quite possibly the dumbest application ever written. And no review can do this piece of shit justice as can the words of its author John Goodchild of scenic North Hollywood California US of A.

Scroll Switcher was created exclusively for Deborah Shadovitz and her Mac 101 and 102 seminars featured at the Macworld Conference and Expo, San Francisco, January 2003.

Here we have a box 'for the rest of us' and people still need rocket science courses?

And who is Deborah Shadovitz? According to her website Shadovitz is a 'Mac & Web specialist, entertaining speaker, engaging instructor' [sic].

[She also adds a bit further down her home page: 'Hi. I'm Deborah Shadovitz. People call me Deb.' Right away you know you're in good company.]

Anyway, back to Mr Goodchild and the fabulous legend of the birth of this great masterpiece.

Scroll Switcher was written during a car journey from Los Angeles to San Francisco for the 2003 Macworld Conference at the request of Deborah Shadovitz. She wanted users to have the efficiency of both scroll arrows at all both ends [sic] of the scroll bar but didn't want them to have to delve into the depths of the OS using the Terminal in order to set this hidden option.

Upon mentioning this to John Goodchild of Fixamac Software Inc, he offered to build her a simple application that would do just that without any worry about side effects to the OS. He went one better than what she envisioned, creating an application that not only set her desired scroll bars, but also enabled users to switch between all possible settings - in case they preferred one of the other configurations.

Together they offered it to attendees of Deborah's Mac 101 and 102 seminars.

The latest version of Scroll Switcher was updated and demonstrated during Deborah's 2005 Regional Mac Gathering held at the Beverly Garland Holiday Inn, North Hollywood, California.

OK, you needed a screenshot of this masterpiece to drool over, right? Here it is. Notice how everything's been made REAL BIG so you feel cozy and fuzzy with the app.

Notice as well the proud copyright at the bottom. Something this good should never be left anonymous.

But OK, it's time to humbly build on Deb's seminars.

Mac 103

Hi. Welcome to Mac 103. Thanks Deb!

Everybody having a good time? Great!

We are now going to delve into the deep evil innards of this intimidating operating system visited upon us by Bell Labs, the University of California at Berkeley, and NeXT.

Please fasten your seat-belts and brace yourselves for the shock. You might never be the same again.

Our step by step tutorial will teach you:

• The alphabet of greater Los Angeles.
• Where to find your computer keyboard.
• How to use your fingers and thumbs to press those tiny little keys.
• To never be afraid again.

In related news, tourists passing through Roswell insist they have seen new aliens viewing a closed circuit telecast of a computer seminar, laughing themselves silly, and bragging how easy it's going to be to conquer our planet.

ss102.dmg.zip: 105523 bytes. Expands from typically lame Apple zip file with phantom resource forks into ss102.dmg, 563,200 bytes. When mounted becomes 29 file items taking 224 kilobytes of your disk space.

App is of course a wrapper around a deliberately obfuscated AppleScript module which in turn is a wrapper around the 'defaults' commands given above (plus a fifth which reads the current setting).

00000000000001bc /usr/bin/defaults
0000000000000353 Double Both
000000000000036a read
000000000000038a Apple Global Domain
00000000000003a9 AppleScrollBarVariant
00000000000003fb DoubleBoth
0000000000000410 Double Max
0000000000000426 read
0000000000000436 Apple Global Domain
0000000000000455 AppleScrollBarVariant
0000000000000475 DoubleMax
0000000000000489 Single
000000000000049b read
00000000000004ab Apple Global Domain
00000000000004ca AppleScrollBarVariant
00000000000004ea Single
0000000000000836 write
0000000000000857 Apple Global Domain
0000000000000876 AppleScrollBarVariant
00000000000009c6 Finder.app
0000000000000a1c Macintosh HD
0000000000000a44 Finder.app
0000000000000aab CoreServices
0000000000000ae3 Macintosh HD:System:Library:CoreServices:Finder.app
0000000000000b53 System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app
0000000000000be5 read
0000000000000bf5 Apple Global Domain
0000000000000c14 AppleScrollBarVariant
0000000000000c66 Scroll arrow settings changed successfully.
0000000000000ccc Unable to restart the Finder because it is busy.
0000000000000d15 To apply changes, please log out and log back in.
0000000000000d5f read
0000000000000d6f Apple Global Domain
0000000000000d8e AppleScrollBarVariant
0000000000000ddd Apple Global Domain
0000000000000dfc AppleScrollBarVariant
0000000000001182 read
0000000000001192 Apple Global Domain
00000000000011b1 AppleScrollBarVariant
000000000000120e write
000000000000121f Apple Global Domain
000000000000123e AppleScrollBarVariant DoubleMax
0000000000001269 read
0000000000001279 Apple Global Domain
0000000000001298 AppleScrollBarVariant
00000000000015e4 Scroll Switcher will now quit.
0000000000001802 DoubleBoth
0000000000001844 Double Max
0000000000001866 Single
000000000000188a DoubleMax
00000000000018cb Double Both
00000000000018ee Single
000000000000193a Double Both
000000000000195d Double Max
0000000000001c96 Double Both
0000000000001d27 Double Max
0000000000001ef0 ss.applescript

And just in case you missed it, the app has the Legend of Deb and the Scroll Switcher yet again - in brightly polished brushed metal. Enjoy.

And if you're ever in the North Hollywood area near the Beverly Garland Holiday Inn, be sure to stop in to see Deb Shadovitz.

And if the names John Goodchild or Fixamac seem remotely familiar, maybe it's because you read about them here.