Want to quickly end a phone call on iPhone 4? No problem, just press this self-installed End Call button decal! OK I doubt this would work, and in fact it would probably prevent the bars and calls from dropping, but it’s amusing nonetheless.

We just got this picture in our inbox, the sender didn’t provide a source but the picture is definitely funny. It looks like it’s supposed to be a parody of something available on the Apple site and I highly doubt it’s actually for sale (of course, knowing the internet it will probably become available for sale soon).

Personally I find the iPhone 4 antenna hooplah to be overblown media hype, but some of the jokes and iPhone 4 humor floating around is just hilarious.

Update: the decal is the work of talented designer Aaron Draczynski, thank you to those who tracked this down.

One of the subtle feature improvements of iOS 4 that I find myself using really often is the new ability to compress photos sent from the iPhone.

iOS 4 gives you four compression size options: Small, Medium, Large, and Actual Size. Not only is this feature nice to make quicker work of sending pictures, but it’s also a great way to reduce iPhone data usage which matters a lot more on the new tiered data plans.

To access this feature, all you need to do is take a picture as usual with an iOS 4 device, and then go to mail the picture to someone. You’ll then get a pop up screen that lets you choose compression options.

Right now this feature is only on the iPhone but I would bet that when iPad gets iOS 4 this fall (maybe with a refresh?) and the iPod touch is updated, they will have this option too.

No I’m not just super excited about the sudo command, the exclamation points are actually part of the usage of the sudo tool. If you want to quickly run the last command executed but as the root superuser, type the following:sudo !! An example of this would be if you’re trying to edit a system file that you need system privileges for. Instead of re-entering the entire command string preceded with sudo, just type sudo !! and the previous command (!!) will be run under sudo.

The iPad has a beautiful screen, there’s no doubt about it. What’s not so beautiful is the glare that you get with a glass screen, I can deal with the glare indoors in most situations but when working with an iPad outdoors it’s pretty difficult to maneuver in such a way that the glare isn’t distracting. Sure, you can pump up the brightness on the screen and that helps a bit, but I went looking for a better solution in the form of a screen cover that will reduce glare and also help get rid of the finger prints.
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You probably knew that you can navigate around music from the iTunes Dock icon, but did you know that it also includes a list of the ten most recently played songs? Just right-click on the iTunes dock icon and you’ll see a “Play Recent” list with the songs that you can then select from to play immediately.

The Nintendo 64 was another great console that had many great games, and you can relive many of the gaming experiences of the N64 by getting an emulator for Mac OS X. The N64 Emulator I use in Mac OS X is called SixtyForce, it opens and plays N64 ROM’s quite well and allows you to run the games at full screen or in windowed mode, customize your controls to use either a keyboard or USB gamepad, and more.

You can download SixtyForce for free at sixtyforce.com but you’ll have to get game ROM files elsewhere.

SixtyForce isn’t as full featured as some of the other emulators out there in the Windows world, but as far as I know it’s the best option for emulating the Nintendo 64 console natively in Mac OS X.

Do you love emulators too? In case you didn’t notice, we’re pretty big fans of emulators and the older game consoles around here. Here’s some of the other ones we’ve covered in the past:

PS2 Emulator for Mac – PCSX2 is the best PS2 emulator for Mac OS X that I’ve seen so far, it’s not perfect but it works.

Nintendo DS Emulator – Play Nintendo DS games in Mac OS X. Biggest downside is that it doesn’t support full-screen mode (yet at least).

SNES Emulator for Mac OS – SNES is my favorite console of all time, and SNES9x is arguably the best emulator for Mac OS X ever.

So you saw the latest iPhone 4 commercial and fell in love with FaceTime. You bring your iPhone 4 home, and you attempt to make a FaceTime connection with a friend… but nothing happens. What’s going on? It’s probably the wireless networks firewall settings.

I was recently speaking with an Apple employee and they told me that most of the problems people are having with FaceTime connectivity have nothing to do with the device itself, but instead it’s almost exclusively an issue with the network it’s being used on.

If you’re having problems connecting to FaceTime on a WiFi network, be sure the following ports are forwarded (or open) on the firewall: 53, 80, 443, 4080, 5223, and 16393-16472 (UDP).

Apple has dealt with enough of the port forwarding issues to release a support article on the topic, which is where the aforementioned port numbers are from. FaceTime isn’t alone here though, this is actually a really common problem with computer based video chat services like Skype and iChat too, and having the ports straightened out almost always solves the issue.

A friend of mine just got a free HP Mini 1000 from his job and was bored stiff with Windows XP, he couldn’t really think of a use for the netbook so I suggested installing Mac OS X on it. The little machine is an excellent candidate for a hackintosh, and the setup is just a matter of patience and following some good instructions like the one at MyMacNetbook: Guide to Snow Leopard on a HP Mini 1000. A few hours later and he’s running Snow Leopard on a tiny Hackintosh Netbook!

Have you ever put your Mac to sleep, only to find it awake seemingly on it’s own when you return to the machine? I’ve run into this mystery a few times, and with a few terminal commands you can help track down what caused your Mac to wake from sleep.

Launch the Terminal and type the following at the command line:

syslog |grep -i "Wake reason ="

You will then see a report from the system logs that looks like the following:
Sat Jul 10 08:49:33 MacBookPro kernel[0] : Wake reason = OHC1
Sat Jul 10 17:21:57 MacBookPro kernel[0] : Wake reason = PWRB
Sun Jul 11 08:34:20 MacBookPro kernel[0] : Wake reason = EHC2
Sun Jul 16 18:25:28 MacBookPro kernel[0] : Wake reason = OHC1


Now you’re going to want to look at the code next to the “Wake reason=” text. So what do these wake reason codes mean?

• OHC: stands for Open Host Controller, is usually USB or Firewire. If you see OHC1 or OHC2 it is almost certainly an external USB keyboard or mouse that has woken up the machine.
• EHC: standing for Enhanced Host Controller, is another USB interface, but can also be wireless devices and bluetooth since they are also on the USB bus of a Mac.
• USB: a USB device woke the machine up
• LID0: this is literally the lid of your MacBook or MacBook Pro, when you open the lid the machine wakes up from sleep.
• PWRB: PWRB stands for Power Button, which is the physical power button on your Mac
• RTC: Real Time Clock Alarm, is generally from wake-on-demand services like when you schedule sleep and wake on a Mac via the Energy Saver control panel. It can also be from launchd setting, user applications, backups, and other scheduled events.

There may be some other codes (like PCI, GEGE, etc) but the above are the ones that most people will encounter in the system logs. Once you find out these codes, you can really narrow down what is causing your Mac to wake up from sleep seemingly at random.

Note: You can also monitor the Wake Reason codes by looking at the Console if you are not comfortable with the command line. However, in my experience the Console is slower to search and use than the Terminal. This is usually because the default string match search in Console will look through all of your system and applications logs, including those from third parties.

Thank you to Matt for providing this awesome tip!

I really can’t emphasize it enough: you should get an external monitor, the increase in workflow and productivity is dramatic. Not to mention a desk looks great with two screens, like this aluminum iMac with the external LG display. Something about a good Mac setup just inspires creativity, what other computer does that? I don’t think any.

[ via Flickr ]

Update: The iPhone stand on the left is the Thermaltake Aluminum iPhone Holder