Pushing ever closer to a GM and the final release date in the near future, iOS 5 beta 7 has just been seeded to developers. The newest iOS 5 beta can be downloaded as IPSW from the iOS Dev Center, or more easily, as an Over-the-Air (OTA) update, which can be accessed from iOS 5 beta 6 to download via tapping onto Settings > General > Software Update.

Just as prior updates, Apple recommends you use the “Erase all Contents and Settings” under Settings > General > Reset in order to install the latest beta.

The brief note attached to the OTA update says simply “This beta version of iOS 5 contains bug fixes and improvements.” and refers to the release notes on the iOS Developer Center.

Update: In addition to a new iOS 5 beta, iTunes 10.5 beta 7 and Xcode 4.2 beta 7 were also released.

If you’re one of the many Mac users who uses multiple Macs, say an iMac at home or work, and a MacBook on the go, you should get DropboxAppSync.

This free utility syncs your ~/Library/Application Support/ folder across multiple Macs via the free Dropbox service, allowing you to have the exact same app setups, like preferences, plugins, bookmarks, game files, cache, etc, on all of your Macs, regardless of where you are, as long as you have internet access.

To use DropboxAppSync, you need:

• Have a Dropbox account (2GB is free)
• Download DropboxAppSync (direct download or visit the devs homepage) on all Macs you want to havesync

Setup is very simple. Once you have Dropbox configured, quit your open applications, and then just launch DropboxAppSync on the first Mac that you want to be the primary /Application Support/ folder to be synced.

Approve the following message, which informs you that ~/Library/Application Support/ is about to head over to DropBox (via a symbolic link):

This utility will relocate your Application’s support folder to Dropbox. This may be unsupported by the developer! A backup copy of your application’s data will be saved to your desktop just in case…

This utility will save your data to:
Dropbox/Application Support/ApplicationName

If this utility finds your Application data on Dropbox already, it will simply link to the data on Dropbox instead of copying the data over. However, a backup copy will still be saved to your desktop.

Then you run DropboxAppSync on the other Macs, and the app is smart enough to already detect the app data exists so it will simply link to it, syncing your Macs apps.

The developer reminds us that not all apps may support being synced like this, but from user testing there haven’t been many reported issues.

The 2GB free Dropbox account should be adequate for this service with the vast majority of Macs and Mac apps – unless you have Steam games installed like TF2, which store all of their application data in your /Application Support/ folder and causes it to take up a lot of space. For example, without Steam my Application Support folder is about 700MB and I have tons of apps installed, but with Steam it’s well over 25GB. In that case, you’d want to pay for a larger Dropbox account, or just exclude Steam apps from being synced, but it would be an easy way to have all your game data the same on all your Macs rather than manually moving the Steam folder yourself.

Syncing app data across multiple Macs is something that iCloud should do, and hopefully it will in future versions, but in the meantime this is a great free solution.

The middle of the Amazon Rainforest is probably the last place you’d expect to see a brand new MacBook Air, but that’s exactly what Chief Almir of the Surui people is using in his fight to protect the Amazon. The internet, a partnership with Google, and Apple’s flagship ultraportable MacBook Air, have enabled the chief to track the tribes territory and report illegal logging of their homelands:

His partnership with Google, which began in 2007, has enabled the tribe to create an online “cultural map” of the Surui with stories from the tribe’s elders that are uploaded onto YouTube, as well as a geographical map of their territory created with GPS — equipped smartphones from Google. In 2009, Google employees taught the Surui to use cell phones to record illegal logging on their land. Tribal members can now take photos and videos that are geo-tagged and immediately upload the images to Google Earth. Law-enforcement officials can no longer claim ignorance of the problem when evidence of the deforestation is publicly available online.

You can see a great video below showing more Mac use in the jungle, and the full photo, which was taken by Ivan Kashinsky and used in the story on FastCompany about some of the most creative people in business for 2011.

I find this interesting and impressive for a number of reasons, but focusing on the Apple aspect, it’s remarkable in and of itself that a MacBook Air has ended up in the depths of the Amazon jungle, let alone in the midst of the immense tropical heat, moisture, and humidity, and has become a tribes computer of choice.

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If there’s only one keyboard shortcut you should remember in Mac OS X it’s this: Go To Folder. We refer to this keyboard command so frequently here on OSXDaily that we just sort of assume everyone knows it, but it’s so useful and powerful that it’s worth making an individual post about it.

Using “Go To Folder” is easy and you have two ways of accessing it from the Mac OS X desktop:

1. From the “Go” menu navigate down to “Go to Folder” or better yet…
2. Hit Command+Shift+G from the OS X desktop

Remember this keyboard shortcut. Whether you just like to make customizations to OS X, dig around in preference and cache files, or you want to navigate to complex directory path structures, this keyboard shortcut saves you a tremendous amount of time by allowing you to jump into paths in the Mac OS X file system without clicking around.

“Go To Folder” Tips

There are a few additional tips that are worth remembering when using the Go To Folder command: tab completion, and drag & drop support.

Tab Completion
Tab completion works like this, you start to type a directory path or filename and hit the Tab key to complete the text for you, preventing you from typing out the entire thing.

For example, if you want to navigate to /Users/YourName/Library/iTunes/ you can just do to this type /U (TAB) /Yo (TAB) /Li (TAB) /iT(TAB) where each time you hit the tab key the rest of the path will autocomplete. If you hear the system alert sound instead, that means there are other alternatives that start with the same first letters, so just type an additional letter in the sequence and hit tab.

We discussed tab completion a while ago but it’s worth mentioning again since it makes Command+Shift+G even speedier when digging deep.

Drag & Drop Support
The Go To window also supports drag and drop, so if you already have a folder open somewhere or you just want to quickly retrieve the full path of something, just drag and drop a directory or file into the Go To Folder window.

The full path will type out for you, which you can either go directly to or quickly copy and paste to provide to another user. This also works with network paths and mounted volumes, so if you wanted to provide someone on your LAN with a quickly accessible path to a file or directory, that drag & drop feature is all the more useful.

Works in Save & Open Dialog Boxes Too
You can also use the “Go To” command from Save dialog boxes, so if you want to save or open a file from a long directory path, hit Command+Shift+G from an Open or Save window to bring it up.

Again, tab completion and drag and drop support works in here, and this is a much quicker way to access some directory paths than clicking around.

Is there a keyboard shortcut that is more useful than “Go To Folder”? I don’t think so, but let’s hear about it if there is one!

I would be convinced this was an April Fools joke out of Redmond were it not August, but no, it’s the new Windows 8 Explorer default interface.

While Apple is busy reducing clutter and creating minimalist interfaces, streamlining OS X and iOS, Microsoft is busy moving in the opposite direction. Believe it or not, these pictures show what, somehow, Microsoft has determined is the future of the user interface and file system; adding even more buttons, icons, actions, tabs, and whatever else they could stuff onto the already cluttered Windows Explorer interface.

Microsoft is proudly displaying this new UI to the world on a MSDN blog post titled “Improvements to Windows Explorer” (seriously).

Everything imaginable is jammed into your brand new ultra-cluttered window toolbar, and you thought Microsoft Office had a mess of an interface? I suppose once you get below the disastrous ‘home tab’ eating the top half of the window, it just looks like Windows 7:
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iPhoto is a great picture management app, but you may still occasionally want to access the original picture files for a variety of purposes, either to import them into another app or for backup purposes. This is easily done, but what exactly you are looking for depends on which version of iPhoto you are using.

Where iPhoto Pictures Are Stored

iPhoto pictures are stored within the home /Pictures/ directory, in a file called iPhoto Library. But with newer versions of iPhoto, iPhoto Library became a package file rather than a folder, so in order to access the original picture files you have to go one step further in one of two locations:

iPhoto 9 pictures location:
/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Masters/

iPhoto 8 and prior versions pictures location:
/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Originals/

Accessing the iPhoto Picture Files and Originals

You can either access the directory from Go To Folder command within the Mac OS X Desktop by hitting Command+Shift+G or by opening the directory manually:

• Open /Pictures/ and locate the “iPhoto Library” file
• Right-Click and select “Show Package Contents”
• Navigate to “Masters” or “Originals” to find your original iPhoto pictures

Picture Organization by /Year/Month/Date/
Regardless of the version of iPhoto, the pictures are stored and organized by folders based on dates, broken down by year, month, and day. For example, pictures imported on August 30th 2011 would be in the folder “2011″ followed by “August” and then within that directory, another named “30″. If you know exactly what import date you are looking for you can specify that as a full path and go directly to it, like so:

/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Masters/2011/August/30/

The precise path format varies slightly in iPhoto versions, and older versions may contain full dates in the directory in the format of “August 30, 2011″ but it’s not any more difficult to work with. These directories are also the same regardless of the device the pictures originated from, whether it’s from an iPhone or a digital camera.

Once you’re in the directory, you can copy these files over to elsewhere and it will not impact your iPhoto library assuming the originals remain in the library.

If opening up Activity Monitor is confusing or intimidating to you, or you just find it hard to track down that errant Chrome Worker process, try sorting the list by “All Processes, Hierarchically”.

Sorting by hierarchy breaks the processes down into apps and their child processes, grouping together things like all of the “Google Chrome Renderer” processes under Google Chrome, “Safari Web Content” under Safari, Terminal tasks and shells under Terminal, etc. This makes it very easy to kill process groups all at once, and also allows for easy parent and group sampling and management.

The other advantage is that you can now expand and collapse groups of child processes to clean up the process list, which I find to be much more organized and logical. Give it a try.

The default OS X Lion galaxy wallpaper is gorgeous, but there’s something fun about this pixelated version of it that makes it a joy on a desktop too. Click the image above or the link below for a full sized version of the background.

Click here to download the full version (2560×1600)

There’s a similar 8-bit Aurora image from Mac OS X Snow Leopard too if you’re on a pixel craze.

Thanks for sending this in Reg

The first beta version of iTunes Match has been released for developers to subscribe to. The service stores an entire music library within iCloud and allows you to stream or download your music from anywhere, including iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, a Mac, or even Windows PC. This is done without uploading files, instead iTunes Match scans your library and matches it within the iCloud service, even providing the music at a higher bit rate in the process.

To use iTunes Match beta, developers need the latest version of iOS 5 beta and iTunes 10.5 beta 6.1. Despite being a beta release, iTunes Match service costs $24.99 per year, but dev users will receive an additional 3 months of free service in addition to their 12 month plan. The cloud storage capacity of an iTunes Match library is separate from whats included in the iCloud plans, which makes the price even more competitive.

Those who aren’t developers will have to wait for iCloud and iTunes Match to be released alongside iOS 5 this fall.

You can watch two video walkthroughs below of iTunes Match beta in action:
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You’ll soon be able to run Linux on a select few iOS devices via a jailbreak hack. The port is being worked on by German iOS developer Patrick Wildt, and while it’s not entirely clear when Linux for iOS will be released, he is expected to unveil it publicly at MyGreatFest, a jailbreaking convention that is being held on September 17th.

Supported hardware is said to include the original iPad, iPhone 4, and iPod touch 4th generation, but the iPad 2 with it’s A5 CPU is currently left out due to complications with the hardware.

Pretty geeky but cool find from iDownload Blog.