Zombie Snow White on a MacBook? Yikes, this is rather horrifying but very fitting for Halloween.

Everyone has probably seen the Snow White decal stuck on the back of a MacBook by now, if you’re a Disney & Apple fan it’s an appropriate tribute to both, and, well, this is a very creepy twist on that. Would I put it on my MacBook? No, I don’t think I would, but then again my personal favorite decal is The Giving Tree, which is a whole lot friendlier. To each there own.

Happy Mac Halloween everyone! And thanks to CJ for sending this picture in.

Oh, and remember it’s not too late to grab a pumpkin and carve an Apple logo pumpkin or to get a creepy iPad wallpaper.

Here’s a nice trick if you need to continuously observe your Macs system usage. Attaching this flag to the iostat command you’ll get a constant stream of updated load information:

iostat -w1

You’ll then get a continuously updated stream of your hard disk usage, CPU split into user/system/idle, and your Macs load average:

iostat will keep running in this mode until you stop it with Control+C to halt it. You can also just run iostat on it’s own and it’ll spit out a one-off look at the system stats, or you can just use the top command for similar effect.

If mucking around in the command line isn’t your thing, you can get most of this information from the activity monitor, which functions as a task manager of sorts for Mac OS X but also details system usage information.

If you’re a writer, student, or blogger, the new MacBook Air might be your portable dream machine. For low CPU intensive tasks, the lightweight notebook boasts a battery life that is significantly better than the advertised time of 5 to 7 hours. AnandTech did some extensive reviews of the new MacBook Air and found the battery to last a staggering 7 to 11.2 hours for the 11″ MacBook Air and 13″ 2010 models respectively:

As glorified typewriters, you can’t beat the battery life offered by the MacBook Air. Light web browsing, document creation and music playback have minimal impact on the Air’s battery life. In fact, we actually beat Apple’s battery life claims in our light tests. The 11-inch Air delivers nearly 7 hours on a single charge and the 13-inch managed 11.2 hours. For a writer, you can’t do better than this.

The results were found with screen brightness at 50%, connected to WiFi, playing an MP3 in iTunes, and with no Flash player loaded while browsing the web. Here’s the chart of the new Air against other MacBook and MacBook Pro models:
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In the Halloween spirit, here’s a really creepy iPad wallpaper of a hand appearing behind foggy glass. Click on the image for a full size 1024×1024 version (hosted at imgur).

For whatever reason this picture reminds me of The Ring, ahh!

This is a comprehensive download list of all the firmware files for iPod touch 2G, iPod touch 3g, and iPod touch 4G, with IPSW from 3.1.2 to the current 4.1.0. All of these IPSW files are hosted with Apple and direct linked to their servers. If you have an iPhone, you can download iPhone firmware instead.

iPod Touch Firmware / IPSW Downloads

We are not hosting the firmware files, they are hosted with Apple. It’s best to right-click on the .ipsw link you need and save it directly to prevent your browser from trying to decompress the firmware package on its own.
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Here’s a cool MacBook mod, a user attached a black MacBook bezel on his white MacBook, creating an Oreo MacBook. I have a white MacBook and always imagined doing this and swapping in a black keyboard too after seeing the MacBook Pro come out with their black bezels and keys. Definitely a great mod and I think it’s one of the more creative Mac setups around.

I’m pretty sure this picture belongs to an OS X Daily reader, another one of our readers sent it in saying he found it following comments on an article, but I haven’t been able to track it down. If this is your MacBook and you want credit, please let us know!

Update: The Oreobook belongs to Joel Adria, you can follow the progress of creating the MacBook hybrid at his website.

Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac has been rated as the best version of Office to ever come to the Mac platform. If you need the powerful office suite, there’s no better place to buy than through Amazon, thanks to their generous discounts and free shipping.

Buy Office 2011 for Mac at a Discount

There are two versions available with different license packages, all offered with free shipping at a great discount of 8% to 14% off the retail price:

Home & Student – 3 License Family Pack – 13% off at $129.99 (MSRP: $149.99)

Home & Student – Single License – 8% off at $109.99 (MSRP: $119.99)

Home and Business – Single License – 13% off at $174.99 (MSRP: $199.99)

Home and Business – 2 License Pack – 14% off at $239.99 (MSRP: $279.99)

If you’re a family or a group of friends and you need to install Office on a few Macs, the cheapest route to go is to get the 3 license pack for home and students. Considering it’s only $20 more than the single license, you might as well get the 3 license pack and find people to split it with, it’s definitely the cheapest way to get Office 2011.

Does your Mac need more memory? How can you tell? Often when a Mac needs more RAM things will start slowing down and you’ll suffer a noticeable performance hit.

Here’s a 3-step process of how I determine if a Mac user needs additional memory. Using this method you can determine if you need more memory for your Mac too.
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You can delete entire typed words by holding down the Option key while you use the Delete key.

As far as I can tell this works all over Mac OS X and in most apps, including Safari, TextEdit, Terminal, Finder, iTunes, iChat, and more.

Do you want to buy Parallels 6 for $13.99, including free shipping? This looks like a one day only deal, but what a deal it is.

How to score Parallels 6 for $14 $17.99

Update: Parallels 5 for Mac on Amazon is now $17.99 after rebate. This is still a great deal because it is still eligible for the free upgrade to Parallels 6 which is a huge discount!
Here’s the deal, Parallels 5 is offered on the Amazon Daily Deals site today at a reduced price of $33.99, and it includes a mail-in rebate of $20, bringing the price to $13.99. But guess what? Parallels offers a free upgrade guarantee on version 5 purchased until November 30, 2010, meaning you get a free upgrade to Parallels 6.

Here’s what you’ll need to do:

• Find and buy Parallels 5 for Mac on Amazon for $33.99
• Fill out the $20 rebate form with the developer (the rebate code comes with Parallels 5)
• Save your Amazon receipt, then register and activate Parallels at https://www.parallels.com/account/ within 30 days of purchase
• Now go to http://www.parallels.com/keyfor6/request/ to fill out the free upgrade to Parallels 6 request. You will need the version 5 activation key and a digital copy of your Amazon invoice (taking a screenshot or digital picture of the Amazon receipt should work)

You must fill out the form by November 30, 2010 to get the free upgrade to Parallels 6. Parallels says that claims can take up to 6 to 8 days for processing, but user reports from the prior deal we posted indicate they process claims much faster than that.

Oh and if you’re wondering whether Parallels 6 is worth it, I’d say indeed it is, particularly if you’re a gamer. The gaming performance of Parallels 6 within Mac OS X is pretty amazing, here’s what ArsTechnica had to say about it:

The graphics can be jacked all the way up, and there’s no laggy latency—that’s pretty incredible

You can check out running Windows games in Parallels 6 for more. Apparently just running Windows on top of Mac OS X is pretty speedy with it too.

If you miss out on this deal, you can still use the rebate, Amazon discount, and upgrade guarantee to get Parallels 6 for cheap, but the price seems to fluctuate a bit. The rebate and upgrade guarantee are valid until November 30, 2010.