If you use GitHub for version control or just to share and manage code, you ought to grab the brand new GitHub client for Mac OS X. It’s a great looking app that lets you find and manage repositories, check commit history and changes, sync and view branches, create and merge branches, compare and rollback commits, and everything else you’d expect from a version control client and the social code sharing site.

You can download GitHub for free or read more about it on the github blog.

The latest developer preview of Mac OS X Lion includes a nice looking new login screen that features an Apple logo placed over the ubiquitous Lion linen. If just plain linen wasn’t enough for you, now you can have the Apple logo version as your wallpaper too.

Click the image above or here for the giant full sized version

The image was converted from a PDF file, making the ginormous 3995×2500 resolution a little funky, but if you use any mortal sized screen it should look great.

Here is what it looks like on Lion’s login screen:
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The next iPhone will be released in September, according to a new report from Bloomberg. Citing several sources with apparent knowledge of Apple’s plans, here’s what Bloomberg seems to confirm about iPhone 5:

• A5 CPU, same as iPad 2
• 8 megapixel camera, up from the current 5mp
• iPhone 5 will “closely resemble the iPhone 4″
• iPhone 5 pushed back in order to ship with iOS 5

Apple has publicly announced the iOS 5 release date is set sometime this Fall. If Bloomberg is correct, then the release of iOS 5 and iPhone 5 will coincide with one another. This year, the Fall equinox falls on the Friday of September 23rd, which would leave a full business week afterwards for some dates to align, although Apple seems to have affinity for Tuesday and Wednesdays for product releases.

iPad 3?
Tossed into the report is also a brief mention of a “new iPad” that has a more responsive and higher resolution screen, coming in at 1/3 higher resolution than the current iPad 2 display. There is no timeline given, but presumably iPad 3 would be due out in 2012.

Most of Bloombergs report reiterates past iPhone 5 rumors, and there is a clear pattern forming of major news outlets reporting the same information about the next-gen iPhone. This does indicate some reliability, as we have seen the same reiteration of rumored hardware and specs leading up to the release of iPad 2, Verizon iPhone, iPhone 4, and even the MacBook Air.

You can plug any USB hard drive into a Time Capsule and expand the available disk space of the Time Capsule that way. This is then accessible as usual as a Network Attached Storage device for your Mac backups or whatever, and you can then even directly backup wirelessly to that external drive connected to the Time capsule using Time Machine.

Apparently this feature has existed since the dawn of Time Capsule, but I just inadvertently discovered this. This is great because it allows you to expand your Time Capsule storage yourself if you run out of space, but also because you can buy the cheaper model and then just attach a huge external drive to create a massive capacity NAS device.

You may have seen that Apple announced two new versions of the Time Capsule, they come in 2TB for $299 and 3TB for $499. Spending another $200 just to get another 1TB of storage seems a bit expensive, and that’s exactly where I found the tip on 9to5mac. In a post where they say the new 3TB Time Capsule price tag is “crazypants” they suggest you buy the 2TB model and then use your own 3TB drive for a total of 5TB of storage. This is great idea, and suddenly the Time Capsule became a lot more appealing to me, because this means less money for more storage.

If you feel like doing this, both the Seagate 3TB USB external hard drive and Western Digital 3TB USB external drive are $149 with free shipping from Amazon. Stack that on your brand spanking new Time Capsule 2TB, and you’ve got yourself some serious wireless storage capacity.

Firefox 5 is hot off the digital presses for Mac OS X, Linux, Windows, and Android. The new version is said to include over 1000 improvements and performance enhancements, with better HTML5, support for CSS animations, better tab handling, bug fixes, and more, but there’s nothing visibly different from 4.0 when you first launch the app.

If you already use Firefox 4, you can update to 5 directly through the “About” menu and apply the update, otherwise head on over to Mozilla.com to download the latest version.

Update: Lion is now available on App Store to download. Yes, you can still perform a clean install with the final release App Store version.

Mac OS X Lion is around the corner, and mixed in with the excitement is some frustration based on a misunderstanding of the system requirements. The latest bout of frustration comes from a post on MacRumors titled “Lion Clean Install Requires Snow Leopard Disk?” that apparently quotes Steve Jobs responding to a users question regarding a clean install:
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Apple unleashed several major updates to its professional video editing software suite this morning, featuring Final Cut Pro X, Motion 5, and Compressor 4. Final Cut Pro X was rebuilt from the ground up and is said to reinvent video editing. Apple’s SVP Phil Schiller expresses his enthusiasm:

“Final Cut Pro X is the biggest advance in Pro video editing since the original Final Cut Pro. We have shown it to many of the world’s best Pro editors, and their jaws have dropped.”

Many popular Hollywood movies have been edited in prior versions of Final Cut Pro, giving some serious clout to it’s abilities, a few include X-Men: Origins, No Country for Old Men, Burn After Reading, 300, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Social Network, Where the Wild Things Are, Eat Pray Love, and True Grit.

Despite being a complete redesign with hoards of new features, the price of Final Cut Pro X and it’s component apps have actually dropped substantially, and they are all available as downloads through the Mac App Store:

• Final Cut Pro X – $299.99
• Compressor 4 – $49.99
• Motion 5 – $49.99

Each new app release is already at the top of the Mac App Store “Bestsellers” list, indicating both enthusiasm and a significant pent up demand for Apple’s latest video editing package.

System Requirements are a bit stricter this time around, requiring Mac OS X 10.6.7 or newer, an Open-CL capable graphics card or Intel HD Graphics 3000 or later, both must have at least 256MB of VRAM. Your Mac should also have at least 2GB of RAM, but 4GB (or more) is recommended. You can read more about the GPU requirements on Apple support.

Embedded below is a first-look walkthrough of Final Cut Pro X, for those interested.
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Uninstalling applications from Mac OS X is probably the easiest method of removing apps from any operating system, and it’s far easier on a Mac than anything you’ll encounter in the Windows world. It’s so simple that some new Mac users are left wondering what else they’re supposed to do, I have received several family tech support questions where they are determined to find an “Uninstall Programs” control panel like in Windows – this is not the case on a Mac, it’s dead simple.

First up we’ll cover the traditional method of just deleting the application. Then we’ll show you the even easier way that is new to Mac OS X Lion:

Uninstalling Applications in Mac OS X

This is the same method that has been around since the dawn of the Mac. All you need to do is select and delete the application:

• Navigate to /Applications and select the app you want to uninstall
• Either drag the application icon to the Trash, or right-click and select “Move to Trash”
• Right-click on the Trash can and select “Empty Trash”

If you prefer keystrokes, you can also just select the app icon and then hit Command+Delete to move the app to Trash, then empty the Trash and the app will be removed. This method works in versions of OS X prior to Snow Leopard as well. Now let’s move onto Lion, which makes uninstalling apps as simple as the iPhone:

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Just what you’ve been waiting for. Now you can hide your Facebook usage in plain sight with a crafty app called ExcellBook. That screenshot you see up top is Excellbook in use, it makes Facebook look like some boring old MS Excel spreadsheet, creating just about the best Facebook disguise I’ve ever seen.

Even the app icon looks kind of Microsoft Office-ish, which makes Excellbook a very sneaky cover that certainly hides Facebook well, assuming your company didn’t block Facebook access completely that is.

I tried the app out and it works as advertised, but I couldn’t figure out how to change the default language from Spanish, unless you can figure that out your boss might think you’re suddenly working in another language if they look too close. What’s the motivation here? Other than to kill productivity, TheNextWeb says the app is some kind of publicity stunt for a clothing company, but there’s no hint of that in the app.

You can download ExcellBook for Mac OS X or Windows at the appropriately named BeStupidAtWork.com.

Use it, don’t abuse it, and try not to get fired.

Ever wondered how Mac OS X would work with a large touch screen? Curious how iOS would perform on a bigger screen than the iPad’s 9.7″ display? These videos will show you how both of Apple’s fine OS’s look on a 21″ touch panel. The Mac OS X video is shown above and the iOS video is embedded below.

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