By default your iPhone will automatically sync and create a backup each time your iPhone is connected to your computer. If you want to manually create an iPhone backup though, it is very easy.

How to start an iPhone backup:

• Plug your iPhone into your computer
• Launch iTunes
• Select your iPhone in the ‘DEVICES’ list
• Right-Click on your iPhone
• Select “Back Up”
• Wait for iPhone backup to complete

This will create a backup of your iPhone that you will be able to restore from later, and the procedure is the same in Mac OS or Windows. It is a good idea to create a current backup before you download and install the latest iOS version.

Does this work to backup my iPod touch or iPad?

Yes, backing up an iPhone, iPod, iPod Touch, or iPad, is all the same process and handled through iTunes in the exact same manner.

Additional iPhone Backup Resources

* How to speed up slow iPhone backups
* Find the location of iPhone backups and access the files directly

Notice anything different about that Dock? Some of the icons are translucent, and that is because they are hidden apps. You can enable this great feature yourself by entering the following command into the Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -bool YES
Then you have to kill the Dock for the changes to take effect
killall Dock

Now anytime you hide an application (Option+Click on the Desktop to hide the current application) the icon will turn transparent in the Mac OS X Dock. You can reverse this setting and have the icons visible as usual hidden or not by typing:
defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -bool NO
Then you must kill the Dock again for the changes to take effect and hidden app icons will no longer be transparent.

Thank you to Tyler Harden for sending in this tip!

When you launch a new Terminal window or tab in Mac OS X you’ll be greeted with a screen that looks something like this:
Last login: Tue Jun 22 10:59:29 on ttys003
Macintosh:~ user$
You can easily get rid of that ‘Last login’ message at the top by entering the following command:
touch .hushlogin
Now when you launch a new terminal you won’t see the message, changes take effect immediately. If you want to reverse this, all you have to do is remove the ‘touched’ .hushlogin file, by entering the following command:
rm .hushlogin

If you want to, you can create a custom MOTD with whatever message you want that will be displayed instead.

There are several reasons why backups can take forever on an iPhone, so here are a few tips you can try that should increase the speed of your iPhone backups and restores. Yes, these tips work on Mac OS and Windows, and for iPod Touch too.

Fix slow iPhone backups by deleting photos

If you have a large camera roll on your iPhone, you might be really slowing down your iPhone backups. This is because the iPhone backup process will copy all your pictures regardless of whether or not there have been any changes made to them. The solution? Regularly backup your iPhone photo’s and then delete the originals from the iPhone.

• Launch iPhoto (or Image Capture or whatever app you use to backup photos)
• Copy ALL images from your iPhone to your computer
• Ensure that you have backed up all your iPhone photos to the computer
• Delete ALL of the originals from the iPhone / iPod Touch
• Proceed to backup as usual through iTunes

Your backups should now go much faster. It is no coincidence that this tip is recommended by Apple Support, because it works.

I’ll be the first to admit that I was skeptical of this solution until I tried it myself; I had 1,728 photos saved in my iPhone camera roll. After I backed them all up into iPhoto and deleted all the originals from the phone, my iPhone backups speed improved dramatically – I went from a painfully slow four hour backup process to a more reasonable 45 minutes with this tip alone.

Delete old and unused apps from your iPhone

If you aren’t using an old app anymore, delete it, there’s not much reason to keep it around on your iPhone anymore. Deleting these ancient apps can help to speed up your iPhone backups too, since there is less data to transfer at each backup or restore.

Remove unused media from the iPhone

Old apps aren’t the only thing that can slow down backups, so can media. We already discussed deleting photos from your iPhone and the big improvement that makes in backup speed, but deleting other media can help too. If you find yourself never listening to some ancient albums, or watching those old TV shows you copied over 8 months ago, just go ahead and delete them from the iPhone. Deleting video files seems to be particularly effective.

Regularly backup your iPhone

Allowing too much time to pass between backups can really increase the amount of time necessary to backup your iPhone. Try to keep regular backups of your iPhone, just get in a habit of making one full backup once or twice a month. I have noticed a direct correlation between the length of time a backup takes to complete and how often I perform full backups: the longer time that passes between backups the slower the backup will be.

I’m trying to install iPhone OS 4 and the backup and install is really slow, help!

Many users are reporting very slow backup and install processes for updating their iPhone and iPod touch to iPhone OS 4. If you are experiencing this problem, I would highly recommend letting the backup and install run during a time you will not be using the phone for several hours, ideally overnight. Just start the iPhone OS 4.0 install and backup process and let it run while you sleep, you will wake up to the new OS4 being installed and you will have made a recent backup, which will speed up future backups and installations as well.

My iPhone backups are still extremely slow, help!

If you’ve tried all these methods and your iPhone backups are still extremely slow (and by extremely slow I mean well over a few hours, I’ve heard reports of up to 9 hours… yikes!) then you can try the last resort: Restore your iPhone to it’s original factory settings. Remember that by doing this without a backup you will LOSE ALL DATA ON YOUR IPHONE including all media, music, apps, phone numbers, notes, everything, so be absolutely certain that you don’t mind restoring to factory default settings without a backup. This almost always resolves the slow backup problem, but if you don’t have anything to restore to then you will have a completely blank iPhone with nothing on it. There are some suggestions that restoring the iPhone is necessary when there has been a filesystem corruption, which can lead to extremely slow backup speeds and other strange behavior. Again, you will lose all your iPhone data so this is a last resort.

Alright iPhone developers, no more beta versions; version 4 of the iPhone/iPad SDK has been released on Apple’s Developer Center. The iPhone 4 SDK has been available in various iterations to those who are registered iPhone developers, but now anyone with an Apple dev login can download the Xcode & iPhone SDK 4 package for free. iPhone 4 SDK includes over 1500 new API’s for developers to tap into and create amazing experiences for touch devices that run iOS 4. Other highlights of iPhone 4 SDK include:

• Multitasking – seven new multitasking services to allow apps to perform tasks in the background while other apps run
• iAd – embed full-screen interactive ads directly within your applications, so users never have to leave the app
• Game Center – developer preview of the GameKit API’s that will allow for multiplayer gameplay on Apple’s new social gaming network
• Video Playback & Capture – full control over playback and capturing of videos and audio
• Calendar Access – apps will now be able to create and edit events within the Calendar app
• SMS within Apps – you can now embed the ability to compose and SMS messages within an app, just like Mail
• Quick Look – just like Mac OS X Quick Look, apps can quickly see previews of documents with Quick Look API
• Map Kit Improvements – developers can now draw overlays directly onto maps
• Full Photo & Media Library Access – apps now can directly access user photo and video

You can head on over to the iPhone Developer Downloads page on Apple.com to get version 4 of iPhone SDK, or read more about iPhone 4 SDK on Apple’s What’s New page.
Read more »

Multitasking, folders, wallpapers, and more, oh my! The wait is over, version 4.0 of iOS is available as a free download for compatible iPhone and iPod Touch devices. For those who recently bought iPhone 4, the new OS will come pre-installed when it ships later this week.

Download iPhone OS 4.0

You can download iPhone OS 4 directly from iTunes. To install the update, all you need to do is connect your iPhone or iPod Touch to your computer with iTunes open. iTunes will notify you when OS 4.0 is available and you will be able to download the software and update your device. Remember that prior to installing iOS 4 on your iPhone / iPod you will need to have downloaded and installed iTunes 9.2 as a prerequisite.

If iTunes does not notify you automatically of the iPhone OS 4 update being available, just click on the ‘Update’ button under the ‘Summary’ tab after you have selected your iPhone within iTunes, this will start the update and download process as well.

It’s always a good idea to backup your iPhone before installing any updates.

If you’re having problems, advanced users can also download iPhone IPSW directly from Apple. This is not recommended for novice computer users.

iPhone OS 4.0 Compatibility

iPhone OS 4 (more accurately, iOS 4) is compatible with iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 3G, and the 2nd and 3rd generation of iPod Touch devices. The feature set degrades on older devices, and the ability to multitask and change background pictures will not function on iPod Touch 2nd Gen or iPhone 3G, the original iPhone 2G doesn’t get the update at all.

The updated iOS 4 for iPad has the same feature set but will be made available in the fall. If you are interested, you can read more about the popular iOS 4 features.

As you’ll soon be able to tell, I am annoyed with Adobe Update Manager, and thankfully I found a way to disable it completely. In case you didn’t know, Adobe Update Manager starts itself automatically on system launch and takes over your Mac while it sorts out whatever it does that I don’t want it to do, it’s the very definition of annoying.

Unfortunately, Adobe doesn’t make this easy for the novice user, but bear with me and follow the steps exactly and you’ll disable the update manager from launching on it’s own.

Disable Adobe Update Manager

You need to create a file called com.adobe.AdobeUpdater.Admin.plist in your ~/Library/Preferences/ which can be done in two different ways, through the Terminal with a defaults write command, or by manually creating the file with a text editor.

Here’s how to do it through the command line:

* Launch Terminal (located in /Applications/Utilities/)
* At the command prompt, paste this command exactly

defaults write com.adobe.AdobeUpdater.Admin Disable.Update -bool yes
* Hit return to execute the command and create the plist file

You can double-check that the file has been created by looking in ~/Library/Preferences/ for the file. Now, theoretically at least, Adobe Update Manager will not launch on Mac user login and system boot.

There is also the option of manually creating the plist file, either though a plist editor or if you’re familiar with plists just by using a text editor.

Again you need to create a file located at /Library/Preferences with the name com.adobe.AdobeUpdater.Admin.plist with a boolean set true to “Disable.Update”, as you can see in the screenshot below:

Now you should be able to reboot your Mac, logout of a user, and anything as usual, without the annoyance of Adobe Update Manager barging in on your computing session. Stopped in it’s tracks!

I love Photoshop and Illustrator and use both frequently, but I’m really not a fan of some of the stuff that Adobe is piling into the installs nowadays. Remember when you would just have one folder that contained Photoshop? What happened to that? Now you have forty app folders spread out in fifteen directories buried here there and everywhere, Adobe is treating Mac OS X like it’s a Windows filesystem maze. One of my biggest peeves of this app gluttony is the independently launched Adobe Update Manager, it rears its annoying head often on System boot and there is no obvious way to disable it through the preferences. Guess what Adobe, when I want to update my independently installed 3rd party software I will do it myself! Don’t launch some program right after boot and have it take over my Mac!

You can immediately launch any file into its associated application from Quick Look preview mode by holding down the command key and then pressing the down arrow key, so if you’re looking at a PSD file it will launch in Photoshop, a JPG into Preview, MP3 into iTunes, etc, directly from Quick Look!

Thank you Greg for the handy tip!

Ok this post is really evolving so bare with us here. We originally posted a picture of the iPad in a Mac Plus and that was fun, but then a few readers wrote in with additional pictures and a video of an iPad in a Mac Classic, and finally a full on guide on how to create this great iPad case yourself.

Here’s a screenshot of the guide:

Read more »

Three 15″ Mac laptops: Unibody MacBook Pro, MacBook Pro, and a PowerBook G4. Pretty cool setup, although if it was me I’d probably sell off two of the machines and just get a nice external display on the newest unibody MBP.

[ via Flickr ]