If you missed out on the $99 HP TouchPad deals that seem to have the entire tech web in a frenzy, don’t forget that you can experience WebOS for free right now on Mac OS X, just by using the SDK’s emulator. You’ll need to download VirtualBox and then the WebOS SDK which comes as a preconfigured virtual machine, but then you can toy around in WebOS and get a feel for the (possibly defunct) touch OS.

Here’s what you’ll need to get started:

• Download VirtualBox 4.0.12 for OS X (direct download link)
• Download Palm WebOS SDK (direct download link)

Installing the actual emulator is simple, even more so if you have any experience running virtual machines. Just download and run the WebOS SDK installer and when it’s finished the emulator will appear in /Applications ready for you to play around with.

It’s that simple, but if you need any more assistance you can read more on developer.palm.com.

Heads up to @mattgemmell on Twitter for the idea.

Wonder what differences between iOS vs Android users are? What about their personality traits and preferences in things like fashion, food, media consumption, technology, and politics? Or how about general life experience and spending habits?

Stereotypes abound in this giant iOS vs Android user profile infographic, and it covers a wide variety of data that spells out the differences between the average iOS user and Android user. Whether you believe the data or not, it’s an interesting look at the smartphone and tablet OS wars.

Full infographic below (it’s huge):
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Whether you made a Lion recovery drive with Apple’s Lion Recovery Disk Assistant Tool and you’re booting from that or you’re just relying on the Recovery HD partition, this technique works.

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Is autocorrect in Mac OS X Lion driving you nuts? We’ve received a fair amount of complaints regarding Mac OS X Lion’s spelling autocorrect feature erroneously correcting things like British English words to American English words, and changing the spelling of some words like “colour” to “color” and so on. The reason for this is a language priority setting that should be set beyond just specifying a generic language, and you can set a region specific form of English (or Spanish, Portuguese, etc) that will alleviate this behavior.

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Reading App Store reviews and opinions from a variety of websites only does so much, if you really want to know what an app is like, you have to use it yourself. Some apps offer light versions as free downloads on the App Store, but what about the others? What if you’re on the fence about upgrading to OS X Lion?

The easiest way to try out any Apple software is by just visiting an Apple Store and sitting down with one of their Macs. They’re bundled with a ton of apps at the stores so you can try out things like Mac OS X Lion, the entire iLife and iWork suites, Final Cut Pro X, Aperture, even a bunch of third party apps and games.

Beyond Macs, you can do the same with iPads, iPods, and iPhones, and Apple Stores typically load up their iOS gear with a wide variety of apps and games to experience. I’ve even heard stories of customers requesting to use and try certain apps, and Apple Store employees downloading the app for that trial purpose.

I saw this suggested on Lifehacker a while back, and initially though it was kind of dumb and obvious tip, but now I have found myself recommending to family and friends to go and try out some of the new apps in person, the same way they might check out new Apple hardware before buying. If you live near an Apple Store, why not? It beats trying to negotiate the App Store refund process, which doesn’t reimburse apps you just don’t like anyway.

Emoji are extremely popular picture characters and emoticons that are an integral part of Japanese tech culture and communication, but now with Mac OS X 10.7 the Emoji character set is available to everyone on a Mac regardless of your localization settings. Some of the characters are pretty funny so even if you have no intention on using them they’re fun to browse through.

• From almost any Mac OS X Lion app, select the “Edit” menu and pull down to “Special Characters”, or hit Command+Option+T
• From the character choices, click on “Emoji” and then choose a set: People, Nature, Objects, Places, Symbols



• Select the character you want to use and either drag and drop the Emoji character into a text field, or double-click on the icon in the “Font Variation” menu on the right

You’ll notice that not all third-party applications will accept or recognize Emoji characters, but all of the OS X Lion compatible apps that come from Apple do and most apps updated for Lion should too. If the app doesn’t support Emoji display, nothing will be shown.
💱😂😪😷😒😖👿🙆👴👸💂
Outside of the Mac, Emoji is included in iOS 5 for everyone too.

I’m not sure this qualifies for a traditional Mac setup post but it’s neat enough that it has to be posted. You’re looking at a Mac Pro with an old school VT220 connected to it functioning as a terminal, as you can see it’s working just fine too, running the ‘top’ command to show off the Mac Pro’s stats.

If this strikes your fancy, you can read more about how to set one up yourself on Jstn.cc

Just for fun, here’s the workstation minus the VT220 terminal, with just a Mac Pro, Cinema Display, and an iPad. It looks a bit lonely without the VT220:

And a closeup of the Vt220:
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Rage is a first person shooter for iOS where you blast your way through mutants in some post-apocalyptic disaster, it’s fairly similar to classics Doom and Quake, and that’s because ID Software created them all.

Both versions of the game, Rage and Rage HD, are available free for a limited time, with the HD version bringing higher resolution graphics and textures to iPhone 4, the latest iPod touch, and the iPad and iPad 2.

• Rage HD on the App Store

If you’re an iOS gamer, download it now for some weekend fun. Video of some gameplay action below.

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Apple has released iOS 5 beta 6 for developers to access through either OTA updates on the iOS device itself, or through the iOS Dev Center. Supported hardware continues to be all versions of iPad and iPad 2, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and the last two generations of iPod touch.

OTA updates are by the easiest method to get beta 6, accessed from tapping to Settings > General > Software Update, but you can also download iOS 5b6 IPSW files directly on the iOS dev Center. Alongside the 6th beta of iOS 5 comes iTunes 10.5 beta 6, which is necessary to install the latest iOS beta from IPSW, Xcode 4.2 preview 6, and a new iOS beta for Apple TV2.

The final version of iOS 5 will be released in the Fall, likely alongside the iPhone 5 in October, or possibly slightly earlier if the pre-order rumors are accurate.

Tired of tweaking OS X Lion on your own with all the defaults write commands? Don’t want to manually change iCals leather look back to aluminum? What about older tips like turning the Dock into 2D? Lion Tweaks to the rescue!

This little free app is an extremely easy GUI front-end to a ton of the customizations and tips that we’ve covered here on OSXDaily before, but since they can be activated from a central location at the click of a button, it’s very simple for even the most novice of users to change the way OS X Lion looks.

You can download LionTweaks right now for free (direct download link) or visit the developers website, it’s freeware but the dev is asking for donations.

Looking at what Lion Tweaks does is almost like reviewing our tip archives, with all of the tips below directly within the app and ready to use at the click of a yes/no button:
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