Just when I thought my personal record uptime of 160 days on a MacBook server was exciting, one of our readers blew my uptime away… by almost a year!

Stephan Burlot‘s personal record uptime? A staggering 454 days with his iBook. Apparently the iBook monitors his homes electrical usage and runs Mac OS X 10.4.11.

If you didn’t know, uptime is just a measure of how long your computer has been running without a system reboot. A long system uptime is a geeky badge of honor of sorts, and obviously a nice sign of system stability. You can check your Mac uptime by typing ‘uptime’ into the Terminal.

So now we know that “Back to the Mac” refers to iOS coming back to it’s parent operating system, Mac OS X. Basically Apple is deciding to take some of the good ideas of the iOS experience (the iPad received particular emphasis) and bring them to the Mac Desktop.

Apple provided a limited sneak peak at Mac OS X Lion, including the upcoming Mac App Store. Seeing is believing though, so read on for screenshots and more information about each item.

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Features

Here are the main features reviewed by Apple, with screenshots to show them off where available.

• Multi-touch gestures – (we called it) – Apple knows that touch screen notebooks don’t work, trackpads and mice are the way to multitouch a desktop operating system. With this in mind, Lion will have advanced gesture support
• Mac App Store (we called it!) – The App Store revolutionized mobile applications, so of course they bring it to the Mac. Features are automatic installation, one-click downloads, automatic app updates, apps will be licensed for use on all of your Macs. This will be available first under 10.6 Snow Leopard in 90 days. On the developer side, the Mac App Store will have the same developer 70/30 split as the iOS App Store, and submissions will be accepted soon. See screenshot below of the Mac App Store:

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As we anticipated, FaceTime for Mac is now available… as a beta. FaceTime for Mac allows you to make FaceTime calls to iPhone 4 and iPod touch users directly from your Mac. What’s interesting is that Mac FaceTime client is it’s own independent application, it was not built into iChat, although I bet this will change come the release of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion next summer.

You can see the FaceTime for Mac client running in the above picture from Apple, and yes that’s the new MacBook Air featured in the picture.

Download FaceTime for Mac

You can download the Facetime beta for Mac OS X directly from Apple.com.

Update 6/5/2011: Apple has announced Mac OS X Lion release date is set for July, will cost $29.99, and is available as a download from the Mac App Store.

We were given a sneak peak at Mac OS X 10.7 Lion today, and Steve Jobs provided a release date: Summer of 2011. The Mac App Store (we called it!) will be available sooner, in just 90 days. FaceTime for Mac beta will be available to download immediately.

Want to see more? Check out Mac OS X Lion: Screenshots & Features

The iPhone Dev Team just released Pwnage Tool 4.1 for download. The latest PwnageTool update works to jailbreak the following devices with the 4.1 firmware: new Apple TV, iPad, iPod touch 3G & 4G, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and iPhone 3G.

Why is the PwnageTool 4.1 release useful? Pwnage Tool allows you to restore to custom IPSW files, in other words, you can restore pre-jailbroken firmware while maintaining your current baseband, thus allowing you to use a carrier unlock like ultrasn0w.

Pwnage Tool 4.1 Download

Currently PwnageTool 4.1 is only available for Mac users to download, there are several ways to get the file. The approach the iPhone Dev Team recommends is to download the torrent file from ThePirateBay:

PwnageTool Torrent – Pirate Bay Link

Many people cant access PirateBay so your other options are to use the provided download mirrors. Here’s a few direct links:

Mirror 1: fsckyou.org
Mirror 2: iPodTouchMastrFR.com

If either of those downloads don’t work for you, the Dev Team provides an updated download mirror list here, scroll to the bottom of the page to see it.
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The Back to the Mac event is scheduled to be live streamed directly from Apple today.

To watch the live video feed, go to http://www.apple.com/ at 10 AM PDT using Safari on either a Mac or iOS device.

Here’s the message from Apple’s PR team:

Apple® will broadcast its October 20 event online using Apple’s industry-leading HTTP Live Streaming, which is based on open standards. Viewing requires either a Mac® running Safari® on Mac OS® X version 10.6 Snow Leopard®, an iPhone® or iPod touch® running iOS 3.0 or higher, or an iPad™. The live broadcast will begin at 10:00 a.m. PDT on October 20, 2010 at www.apple.com.

Our quick predictions: Mac OS X 10.7, new MacBook Air, iLife ’11… Enjoy!

Adobe Creative Suite (CS) will automatically connect to the internet and attempt to initiate connections with Adobe Online Services and Service Update, this will happen regardless of you disabling the updates within the Adobe preferences for some reason. If you want to turn off the ability for Adobe CS to access the online services, kuler extensions, Adobe ConnectNow, Service Manager, and online help, this is how to do it. The instructions work for Adobe CS4 and CS5.
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According to a recent unconfirmed report, the CDMA iPhone, dubbed “iPhone 3,2″ is currently in “field test stage” and, surprisingly enough, includes a SIM card slot.

What does this mean exactly? Certainly easier production lines for Apple. And, perhaps future iPhones will be able to use whatever carrier they want. The addition of a SIM card slot would also make this new iPhone better for global roaming, where you can just buy a new SIM card for the local service (although a US purchased iPhone will need to unlock still).

The report comes from BoyGeniusReport.com:

The iPhone 3,2 could be the mythical CDMA + GSM/HSPA device that would support Verizon, AT&T, and the other current worldwide iPhone 4 carriers frequencies. The mid-cycle refresh would bring an updated antenna design for the current iPhone 4 and bring CDMA-compatibility; essentially, Verizon Wireless subscribers would have the same device as AT&T subscribers.

BGR has a reasonably accurate history of leaks and news, but like always this is just a rumor so take the information with a grain of salt. The debate is really about whether or not the upcoming CDMA iPhone will include a SIM card slot, nearly everyone agrees that the iPhone will be available on Verizon soon. Recent reports from the Wall Street Journal and New York Times suggest the Verizon iPhone release date is rapidly approaching, with the most reliable sources saying it may arrive as early as January of 2011.

The BGR report also indicates that the next iPhone 5 is currently in engineering verification phase. Most analysts expect an update to the iPhone 4 before the appearance of iPhone 5.

So you installed the limera1n jailbreak and now you want to use greenpois0n instead (or vice versa), what do you do? Using a tool called APTBackup, we can backup all your jailbroken apps, and then reinstall another jailbreak complete with all your previously installed jailbroken apps.

Yes, this process works to uninstall greenpois0n and install limera1n too. The procedure is the same on an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad.

Uninstall limera1n/greenpois0n and install greenpois0n/limera1n

This is a several stage process. You’ll backup your jailbroken apps, then uninstall the existing jailbreak, then re-jailbreak the iPhone, and finally restore the jailbroken app backups. Here are the steps to follow:
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This has to be one of the coolest iMac mods you can do: mounting the iMac to a wall.

Does this look awesome or what? The mount in the picture above is the VESA iMac Mount Adapter Kit which for $29 is actually quite a bit cheaper than I thought it would be (compare to LCD TV mounts at $100+).

I’d never seen this done so well before but one of our readers sent in a couple pictures of this VESA iMac wall mount kit, it works for both the 24″ and 27″ iMac models, as well as the new Apple LED Cinema Displays.

A wall mounted iMac would make for a great Mac media center, or just a super clean looking desk. If you’re curious about installation, it doesn’t look too complicated. Basically you unscrew the existing iMac base and then replace it with a bracket that attaches to the VESA mount system.

Here’s a video (in German) of a guy performing the installation and setup on a 27″ iMac:
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