If you spend time customizing the desktop icon placement, it can be pretty annoying to discover that after each restart of Mac OS X, the icons seem to take on a mind of their own and rearrange themselves, usually changing their position so that they are all aligned to the far right of the Mac desktop.

The reason for the automatic icon arrangement is simple: Sorting. Here’s how to turn this off:

• Click on the Mac desktop – you must select the desktop and not a folder
• Click on the “View” menu and pull down to “Sort By” and select “None”

This removes any sorting or arranging of the icons, which are easy to enable either by accident due to the keyboard shortcuts or because you just forgot that you turned sorting on a long time ago.

Thanks to @jakestanfield for the tip idea via Twitter. Jake provided the following image which shows off the frustration with sorting arrangements perfectly:

You can also change the icon sorting behavior in the “View Options” menu, by hitting Command+J from the desktop. You’ll still want to select “None” as the desktop behavior if you don’t want icons to be realigned on their own.

We recently wrote about the dscl utility and how it allows a Mac OS X Lion user to change a password without knowing the existing password. The lack of required admin authentication has since been widely reported as a bug, and a small Security Update will likely be issued by Apple sometime in the near future. Nonetheless, if you’re paranoid about someone getting ahold of your Mac and changing the user password without authorization, you can manually change the permissions of the dscl utility yourself, forcing it to require administrative privileges in order to be run.

• Launch Terminal (located at /Applications/Utilities/)
• Type the following command and hit return:

sudo chmod 100 /usr/bin/dscl

• You will be asked for the current administrative password to confirm the permissions change, enter it and hit return

This is a simple permissions fix that likely mimics what an official security update will do. Using sudo chmod 100 states that only the owner (root) is able to execute the dscl command, which effectively prevents other non-admin users from accessing the directory services utility without using the sudo command, and thus the administrator password.

There may be some unintended consequences of changing those permissions, but it’s unlikely to effect most users. If you do encounter some problems you can always change the permissions back, which look to be set as 755 by default.

A big thanks to “Tjb” who left this tip in the comments!

Update: Jim T left the following recommendation in the comments, suggesting another chmod command to change the permissions:

Instead, do this:

sudo chmod go-x /usr/bin/dscl

That will -only- remove the execute permission on group and other, leaving the other permissions (read & write, and root’s full permissions) completely as was before the change. To reverse, do:

sudo chmod go+x /usr/bin/dscl

Only touch the stuff you need to touch!

His reasoning is that chmod 100 is too restrictive in that it changes the command to execute only, where as before the root user could read, write, and execute.

The iPhone 5 will be announced on Tuesday, October 4, at an event led by Apple CEO Tim Cook. This apparent confirmation of a launch date comes from the usually very reliable AllThingsD, a branch of the Wall Street Journal, who has long been saying that the iPhone 5 will be unveiled sometime in October.

While the announcement will come in the first week of October, unless Apple’s plans change, the actual availability of the highly anticipated iPhone 5 will be another week or two later:

While Apple could certainly change its plans anytime, sources said that the Oct. 4 date has been selected by the company to showcase the iPhone 5. Sources added that the plan is now to make the new device available for purchase within a few weeks after the announcement.

There is no word on pre-orders, but “within a few weeks” would correspond with the October 15th availability date that France Telecom CEO recently spilled.

AllThingsD also suggests that while Tim Cook will lead the event, other Apple executives will likely make appearances to discuss specifics about the device and other products being announced. One could safely assume that the October 4th event will also be the iOS 5 public release, in addition to iCloud’s official launch and a first look at whatever the revised iPod lineup will be.

A new addition to Safari 5.1 in Mac OS X 10.7 is that web pages auto-refresh if they are left inactive for a period of time. The feature can seem unnecessary and even annoying, but there’s no clear preference option to disable reloading of pages. Thankfully, Stormcloud (via DaringFireball) shows us how to stop this pesky behavior in Safari 5.1. Here’s the play-by-play to disable it:

• Quit Safari, then launch the Terminal (located in /Applications/Utilities/) and enter the following command

defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeInternalDebugMenu 1

• Relaunch Safari and you’ll see a “Debug” menu appear on the far right, alongside “Help” (yes, this is different from the Develop menu)
• Pull down the new Debug menu and scroll down a ways until you see “Use Multi-process Windows” and select it so that it’s unchecked
• Open a new Safari window and if you see an [SP] next to the web pages title, you’re now in single process mode, which prevents the automatic refreshing of webpages

If you’re wondering why changing some setting called “multi-process windows” effects automatic reloading of web pages, Stormcloud provides a good description of what this feature is and how it works:

So what is a “multi-process window” anyway?

One of the new features in Safari 5.1 is a major new version of the underlying engine — WebKit2. Under WebKit2’s new process architecture, Safari consists of two separate processes — the “UI process” (the Safari application itself, including the address bar, toolbar, bookmarks bar, menus, etc.), and the “web process” (an independent process that loads and displays actual web pages).
Apart from other goals, the purpose of this is to provide some measure of crash protection. While it does prevent the entire Safari application from crashing (at least as far as I’ve seen), it doesn’t protect you from losing anything you’ve typed into text fields in web pages. All web content is handled by a single web process, so if any page malfunctions and causes the web process to crash, all open tabs will be reloaded, and anything you had typed into any of those pages will be lost. Furthermore, any downloads that were in progress will also be halted; you might be able to resume some downloads, but many will have to be started over. This can be very frustrating when downloading large files.

For that reason, the benefits of the new multi-process architecture are somewhat dubious, at least until Apple manages to address the issue of spontaneously reloading tabs (assuming it’s even possible to prevent this behavior without redesigning the overall architecture of WebKit again).

Basically, it’s a well intentioned feature, but it’s also causing some user headaches. In some cases it causes Safari to take up far more memory than it should, and it can even cause app slow downs. Presumably all of this will be fixed in a software update though.

The big caveat about running Safari 5.1 in single-process mode: many plugins and extensions don’t work, most notably (and annoyingly) ad blockers, ClickToFlash, and 1password. You’ll have to decide if that trade-off is worth it, or you can always just use Chrome or Firefox too.

A fair amount of users are reporting that upgrading to Mac OS X Lion has caused their Macs to run hotter in general and their fans to constantly engage, creating excessive and unusual fan noise. For users who have just performed an upgrade from 10.6, this is usually because of Spotlight and the mdworker & mds process combination, which irons itself out over the course of an hour or so.

If waiting it out hasn’t resolved the heat and fan noise for you, or those Spotlight processes aren’t running, you might want to try resetting the System Management Controller, or SMC. This seems to be particularly effective for MacBook Pro and MacBook Airs that are running hot with considerable fan noise after the Lion installation.

Fix Fan Noise & Heat in OS X Lion by Resetting SMC

For MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air models with internal batteries:

• Shut down your Mac
• Plug in the MagSafe adapter
• Press and hold Shift+Control+Option+Power button at the same time
• Release all keys and buttons simultaneously
• Press the power button to turn on your Mac as usual

Apple notes that the little LED light on the MagSafe adapter may change colors or states, or even briefly turn off when you reset the SMC, which could be an easy way to tell if it’s be done successfully.

This tip was left in our comments recently and several readers have responded or emailed us with positive results. To give further backing to the solution, Apple’s support doc lists the following as the first reason to reset the SMC: “The computer’s fans run at high speed although the computer is not experiencing heavy usage and is properly ventilated.

Resetting the SMC is a fairly common trick to fix some of the quirkier power and battery related problems on a Mac, and in many cases it works. If all else has failed, try this out, it just may solve your heat and fan noise issues with Lion.

Note: Anytime the SMC is reset you will typically lose custom power settings, so be prepared to go back into System Preferences to readjust Energy Saver settings again.

Apple’s customer satisfaction is at a new all time high, topping it’s own previous record but also continuing their dominating lead in the overall PC industry. The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) polled over 70,000 consumers and gave Apple a score of 88 out of 100 possible points, saying:

“In the eight years that Apple has led the PC industry in customer satisfaction, its stock price has increased by 2,300%. Apple’s winning combination of innovation and product diversification—including spinning off technologies into entirely new directions—has kept the company consistently at the leading edge.”

Perhaps this is one of the reasons that Apple is worth more than just about everything.

This news comes via ZDNet, who proposes that the reason for the remarkably high scores is simply a combination of reliable products, plus outstanding customer service and support, two things that Apple is routinely known for.

Few things are more annoying than reading text that is ALL IN UPPERCASE, but with the help of text transformation tools, we can instantly convert that obnoxious uppercase text into lowercase (or vice versa, if you really want to…).

For the purpose of this example, we’ll use TextEdit. You can either do this with an existing document, or you can just paste a block of text into the app, but we’ll assume you’re working with the entire document, pasted in from an email or otherwise:

• Select all UPPERCASE TEXT in the document by hitting Command+A
• With the text still highlighted, right-click anywhere on the text and navigate to “Transformations” then to “Make Lower Case”

The text casing transformation takes place instantly, and the converted text continues to be highlighted after changing casing. If you want to go the other route, just select “Make Upper Case” instead.

Thinking beyond TextEdit, the text transformations work across Mac OS X in all native cocoa apps, including Safari, iChat, iCal, Mail, Stickies, and any other third party app that included the service.

Similarly, another nifty text transformation in OS X Lion is the ability to convert text to spoken audio for iTunes with just the selection of text and a right-click.

There are a few ways to reset a password in Mac OS X 10.7 but both of those methods require reboots. This approach is different, it lets you change the password of the user currently logged into Mac OS X Lion, without knowing the user password, and without a reboot:

• Launch the Terminal, located in /Applications/Utilities/
• Type ‘whoami’ at the command line to get the current users precise login name, which will look something like this:

$ whoami
Will

• Type the following command, replacing ‘username’ at the end with the exact current users login name that you retrieved from whoami:

dscl localhost -passwd /Search/Users/username

• Enter the new password once, hit return, and confirm the new password again hitting return

The password is now changed.

No authentication is required, you simply enter the new password and confirm the changed password. This is much easier than the manual reset methods and it doesn’t require a reboot or any manipulation of user data in Mac OS X.

Remember that like anything else in the command line, capitalization matters, so if the username is reported back as “Will” that would be different than “will” – be sure to use the proper caps for the password to be changed.

This tip is undeniably useful for a wide variety of situations pertaining to system administration, troubleshooting, and theft recovery, but could also post a potential security risk. Regarding the security risk, it’s realistic to assume that if someone has a computer in their possession, little is safe unless the drive itself is encrypted.

This trick was included in a broader and more mischievous tip that we’ll stay away from, nonetheless thanks to Daniel for sending this in!

Update: Additional reports and comments are suggesting this is a bug in OS X Lion, if so we could expect a Security Update to Mac OS 10.7 in the near future that would remove the ability to run dscl without administrative authentication. We’ll keep you posted.

Whether you just use OS X’s Mail.app or an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, the Address Book in Mac OS X stores a lot of vital information that you don’t want to lose. If you’re going to be making any changes to how you sync this data, adjustments to where and how it’s stored, or just want to move it to another Mac, here’s how to back it up.

Exporting from Address Book

By far the easiest way is to just export the archive from Address Book.app itself:

• Go to the File menu scroll down to Export, then choose ‘Address Book Archive’
• Name the backup something meaningful and export the .abbu file to the desired location

The resulting .abbu file can only be read by Address Book, but it’s easy to reimport by going to File > Import. This file can then be stored for backup purposes, or if you just want to move or copy Address Book data and contacts to a new Mac but not include all of the other iPhone Backup files, this allows for that too.

Performing a Manual Backup

Alternatively, you can also do a manual backup of the Address Book, which is located at:

~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook

The quickest way to get there is by using Command+Shift+G and pasting that directory path in. You’ll want to keep the entire folder and its contents, so copy it elsewhere or just archive the entire thing to move somewhere safe.

It is definitely recommended to backup the Address Book one way or another before you do anything dramatic, I’d even suggest doing so before syncing with Google Contacts or anything similar, just to be safe with your data.

Another good use here is to export the file and to then reimport on your other Macs so that your contacts lists are consistent across multiple Macs. This will be achieved through iCloud as well, but if you don’t plan on using the service then manually doing so is always an option.

A new version of the redsn0w jailbreak tool has been released by the iPhone Dev Team, mostly as a feature enhancement update. Versioned as 0.9.9b1, the release includes a variety of new features, including:

• Automatic device and firmware detection via DFU mode
• Grabs some IPSW versions from Apple
• Caches custom and beta IPSW’s locally
• Easier tethered boot with preferences saved
• “Pwned DFU” option to quickly enter into DFU mode without the button sequence
• Various SHSH blob features pertaining to custom IPSW versions and storage on Cydia servers

Note that redsn0w 0.99b1 does not jailbreak any new iOS versions, nor does it provide an untether for existing jailbreaks that are still tethered. It will continue to jailbreak iOS 4.3.5, and for developers with access, the iOS 5 beta builds, on supported iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch models.

Download Redsn0w 0.9.9b1

As usual, versions are available for both Mac OS X and Windows users, and include the same feature set:

• Download Now (Mac)
• Download Now (Windows)

For those waiting for a new untether to come out, prepare to wait at least until iOS 5 has been made public.