Steve Jobs has resigned from his role as CEO of Apple, but he will stay on as Chairman of the Board. Tim Cook, the current COO, will become CEO effective immediately.

Steve Jobs provided the following resignation letter:

To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:

I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.

I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.

As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.

I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.

Steve

We wish Steve the absolute best.

You can read more on Apple’s press release.

One of several changes to Mac OS X Lion is how resetting passwords is handled, previous versions of Mac OS X would have a password reset tool easily accessible from the Utilities menu but that isn’t available anymore. There are still multiple approaches to resetting a lost user password in OS X 10.7, this walkthrough will cover two different methods, the first is unique to Lion and the second is a traditional workaround to reset a password.

Method 1 – Reset a Lost Mac OS X Lion Password

You have to boot from a Lion Recovery drive, this can either be a recovery disk made with the Lion Disk Maker tool, or just by booting from the built-in Lion Recovery HD partition.

• Hold “Option” at boot and select the “Recovery” disk at the boot menu
• Wait for “Mac OS X Utilities” menu to appear, indicating that you are booted into recovery mode
• Click on the “Utilities” menu and select “Terminal”

• Type the following:

resetpassword

• Confirm the user account and then the password change and reboot Mac OS X 10.7 as usual with your new password

This replaces the “Reset Password” menu item that used to be in place prior to OS X 10.7, which was one of two original methods of resetting a Mac OS X 10.6 or prior password. Why the change to the Terminal method? Probably for increased security now that recovery partitions are standard with Lion.

The above method is by far the easiest, but if it’s unavailable for some reason, you can choose another method:
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The desktop in Mac OS X Lion has simplified the Finder window sidebars by showing just a few choices, with the emphasis on the ‘All My Files’ directory rather than individually pointing to your Pictures and Documents folders. If you prefer to see more from the Desktop window sidebars, you can customize what’s shown easily.

From the Mac OS X desktop:

• Pull down the Finder menu and select “Preferences” (or just hit Command+,)
• Click on the “Sidebar” icon
• Select the checkboxes next to items you want to appear in your desktop window sidebars

For reference, the defaults prior to Mac OS X 10.7 were to show most of the personal folders, like Movies, Music, Downloads, Documents, Pictures, Applications, and the user home folder.

The very first Macs user manual is a fun look at the past, and despite being 27 years old, there are still some undeniably Apple aspects to the manuals imagery and text. The intro paragraph from the first page is classic:

“You’re about to learn a new way to use a computer. If this is your first experience with a computer, you’re starting at a great time. If you’ve used “traditional” computers, you’ll appreciate the Macintosh difference. No more guessing what the computer wants. No more memorizing long commands with names only a programmer could love. With Macintosh, you’re in charge.”

Keep in mind that the original Macintosh was the first mainstream computer to use a mouse and a graphical user interface.

You can see some a few more pictures from the Macintosh User Manual below, but be sure to check out “Thoughts on (and pics of) the original Macintosh User Manual” for even more.

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Heads up to iOS devs out there, if you installed iOS 5 beta 6, you might find it useful to know that sixth beta is set to expire on September 29. At that point you’ll either need to have installed a newer beta, which will surely have been released by then, or downgrade iOS 5 back to 4.

For the rest of us this is worth noting because each time an iOS 5 beta expires, there’s a flurry of speculation from some individuals that Apple is causing iOS 5 beta devices to not work, but that is not the case, the beta is simply expiring.

On the other hand, some have taken this date to indicate some sort of iOS 5 release day, since the date is within the “Fall 2011″ timeline set by Apple, but it’s pretty unlikely that Apple would leave any meaningful dates openly available in their releases. Popular opinion at this point seems to be that iOS 5 will be released alongside iPhone 5 in October, with the possibility of pre-orders coming in late September.

The expiration date was found last week by ih8snow on Twitter

AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint will all sell the iPhone 5, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal. Todays WSJ’s report continues to specify a “mid-October” release date for the iPhone 5 on all carriers, which is contrary to the Reuters exclusive from earlier today which said late September.

Adding Sprint to the mix means that, if the T-Mobile & AT&T merger goes through, every major cellular carrier in the USA will offer the iPhone on their networks. Sprint is a CDMA network much like Verizon, and is the 3rd largest cell provider in the United States.

AirDrop is a great local peer-to-peer file sharing feature in Mac OS X Lion that is surprisingly useful. That said, the ‘pop’ or drop sound effect that you hear when someone AirDrops you a file has always annoyed me because it’s the same sound effect you hear when you get a new iChat message. Like many other things in OS X Lion, it’s easy to customize with some minor tweaking.

Before changing the sound effect you’ll need to get a new sound to replace it, so find a sound you want to use, but:

• The new sound effect must be in AIFF format. You can convert audio files to AIFF with iTunes or use a third party tool if you want
• Export the sound effect and name it “Invitation.aiff” and place it somewhere like the OS X Desktop for easy access.
• The shorter the sound effect, the better

A short sound is recommended because you don’t want an entire song playing when someone AirDrops you a file, but it will if you don’t shorten a long audio file.

Once you have saved your new audio file:

• Hit Command+Shift+G to bring up the “Go To Folder” window and enter the following path:

/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/

• Locate the file named “Invitation.aiff” and rename it to “Invitation-backup.aiff” – you will need to authenticate the name change, this allows you to revert the change back to the default AirDrop sound

• Drag and drop your own version of “Invitation.aiff” into the open /Resources/ folder, you will need to authenticate again
• Now open the Terminal from /Applications/Utilities/ and type:

killall Finder

• Have someone AirDrop you a new file and enjoy your new AirDrop sound effect

Anytime you want the default sound back, just delete your own Invitation.aiff and rename Invitation-backup.aiff back to Invitation.aiff, kill the Finder, and you’ll hear that familiar iChat pop sound again.

Check out some more OS X Lion tips while you’re at it.

Reuters is chiming in today with an exclusive that seems to confirm some of the existing next-gen iPhone rumors, most significant is that Apple is indeed planning on releasing two distinct iPhone models in the near future, an iPhone 5 and a lower priced iPhone 4(s?).

iPhone 4S: 8GB memory for $200 unsubsidized
First up is that Apple is going to produce a lower-end iPhone 4 with 8GB of onboard memory, the device will be sold around for $200 and is presumably aimed at emerging and pre-paid markets. The Reuters piece later discusses Apple’s explosive growth in Asia-Pacific and China, which suggests that could be the primary market for the cheaper iPhone.

iPhone 5: bigger screen, 8mp camera, better reception
As for iPhone 5, Reuters says that it “will have a bigger touch screen, better antenna and an 8-megapixel camera”, but they also suggest that the iPhone 5 looks much the same as the iPhone 4. This appears to be an ongoing statement, but new leaked cases and various mockups suggest it will have rounded curves instead of the existing iPhone 4 designs sharp lines.

Late September launch date for iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S
Reuters also confirms the rumors of a late September launch, but it remains unclear if that September date is for a full on product release or just when you can pre-order the next-gen iPhones. For what it’s worth, the WSJ/AllThingsD continues to believe that iPhone 5 will launch in October, but their date could also just be the actual shipping timeline of the device.

Dual Mode CDMA & GSM iPhone 5 in the Wild?
Finally, TechCrunch claims that an unnamed iOS developer has shown them proof of an iPhone 5 with dual-mode CDMA & GSM connectivity, matching the so called ‘world phone’ rumor. If that is indeed true, this would be a good move for Apple and consumers alike, since it would be cheaper for Apple to produce, and it would also allow iPhone 5 owners to bring their phone to other networks without incident.

Want to open the Finder and your standard desktop Mac OS X windows from LaunchPad? You can, but you have to drag the Finder application into LaunchPad. Here’s how to do this:

• From the Mac OS X desktop, hit Command+Shift+G to bring up “Go To Folder” and enter the following path:

/System/Library/CoreServices/

• Within /CoreServices/ locate and drag “Finder.app” to the LaunchPad icon in the Dock

Now LaunchPad will show the standard Finder icon, which if clicked on will open up your default Finder window choice, which is typically “All My Files” in OS X Lion.

This tip comes from @mrgan on Twitter, you can follow us there too.

A common complaint about free app giveaways is that they’re often constrained to the USA based iOS App Store, in other words if you’re outside of the US you don’t get in on deals like the recent Rage HD giveaway and the ongoing myriad of other free app offers. This is a bummer for anyone outside of the USA, but thankfully, it’s somewhat easy to alleviate.

How to Access and Download US-based iOS App Store Offers from Outside the USA

The core solution here is to just create an alternate iTunes account that is based in the USA. If you’re going to follow this solution and juggle multiple iTunes accounts, this menubar utility makes switching between them easy and is highly recommended.

Before you get started, you’ll need two things:

• Register another free email account, Gmail is free, quick, and easy
• Any valid US address – use your cousins, uncles, Apple’s, Google’s, etc

Got that? Let’s get started.

• Open the App Store from an iPhone or iPad, and from the “Featured” section scroll down to the bottom and select “Sign Out”
• Now while signed out, locate a free app to download in the App Store, anything in the ‘free download’ section should work
• Try and download the free app, and then select “Create Apple ID” when asked
• Follow the instructions to create a secondary iTunes account, be sure to select United States as the country
• At the credit card and payments screen, select “None” and continue – if you have any problem with this step read our guide on how to create an iTunes account without a credit card
• After you have registered the US iTunes account, verify and activate the account by checking your freshly created email account from the first step

Now you should have complete access to the US iTunes and App Store, which lets you download any of the free apps only available to US-based users. Yes, this technique should also work for the Mac App Store.

Additionally, if you want to access paid US App Store downloads, you can always buy a iTunes gift card and redeem the code on the credit-card free iTunes account to have a balance that is then able to purchase apps as usual.

This great tip comes from iDownloadBlog.