In what seems to be a never-ending series of revelations from the Steve Jobs biography, the man apparently revealed to his biographer Walter Isaacson that he had “cracked” the TV, perhaps hinting that Apple may release an actual HDTV set in the future.

This potential product bombshell was dropped by the Washington Post, who suggests that an integrated Apple TV was “Jobs’ final plan”, quoting Isaacson:

“He very much wanted to do for television sets what he had done for computers, music players, and phones: make them simple and elegant,”

“‘I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,’ he told me. ‘It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud.’ No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. ‘It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.’”

Rumors have long existed that Apple was working on an actual television set rather than the ‘hobby’ Apple TV set-top box. Here’s to hoping this rumor comes to fruition.

Who named Apple? Steve Jobs of course! The story behind the naming of the company has been revealed in Steve Jobs’ official biography by Walter Isaacson, and reflects Steve’s early vagabonding years when he ventured north from California and into the state of Oregon.

According to excerpts from the WSJ and AP, after some time spent working on apple orchards in that state, he was in the midst of a “fruitarian diet” and thought the simple name was “fun, spirited, and not intimidating“, the rest, of course, is history.

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Since iOS 5 you can now enable private browsing in Safari for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This allows you to browse the web without saving a record of browser history, cache, logins, searches, and whatever else would normally be visible by whoever comes across the iOS device.

Use Private Browsing in Safari on iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch

• Tap on “Settings” and then navigate to and tap on “Safari”
• Under ‘Privacy’ slide the switch next to “Private Browsing” so that it displays “ON”

You can further tweak the Safari privacy by adjusting cookie behavior in the same menu. At any point you can disable private browsing by going back to the same menu and sliding ‘ON’ to “OFF”.

If you do any online gift shopping, or a variety of other things on the web that you don’t want others to discover, this is a great feature to get used to enabling. Other than losing the convenience of saved logins and cookies, there is no harm with leaving private mode enabled all the time.

Apple has started to air TV commercials for the new iPhone 4S, the first of which focuses on Siri, the virtual intelligent voice assistant that is part of iOS 5 exclusive to the 4S. The ad features people asking questions to their iPhone, ranging from how to tie a bowtie to wondering about the weather, before Siri finally speaks in response to a question about needing a locksmith.

It’s a good commercial, although it certainly has a different feel to it than Apple’s past TV ads. Also fascinating is that the commercial itself is titled “Assistant” rather than “Siri”, but that may not mean much of anything.

The iPhone’s camera LED flash can be used to alert you to incoming calls, messages, and other alerts. With this feature enabled, anytime a call comes in the devices LED will flash repeatedly, even when the iPhone is on silent mode.

Enable LED Flash Alert for iPhone with iOS 5

• Tap on the “Settings” app and then on “General”
• Select “Accessibility” and toggle the ON switch next to “LED Flash for Alerts”

This was an old jailbreaking tweak, but Apple adopted it as an accessibility feature for iOS 5. Undeniably useful for those with hearing difficulties, it’s also genuinely useful for those of us who regularly keep their phones on mute.

Thanks to Barry S. for sending in the great tip!

Well here’s a security flaw in iOS 5 that will quickly get patched: anyone with a magnet (or a Smart Cover) can bypass the iPad 2′s locked passcode screen and access whatever app was previously left open. The passcode bypass was discovered by 9to5mac, who recorded a video demonstrating the security breach (embedded below).

From a locked iPad 2:

• Hold down the power button until the the slider appears across the top
• Close the iPad 2′s Smart Cover or swing a magnet over the magnetic points around the screen rim, then remove the Smart cover or magnet
• Click “Cancel” at the bottom of the lock screen

You’re now at the iOS 5 springboard, but the biggest security threat is when users have left an app open with sensitive data, since the lockscreen is bypassed directly to it. This could mean

Protection Against the iPad 2 Lock Screen Bypass:
For the time being, iPad 2 users are encouraged to disable the “Smart Cover unlocking” feature found in Settings > General.

Here’s the video showing the password bypass:

With the addition of the Mac App Store, transferring applications from one Mac to another is made extraordinarily simple and can be done entirely through the App Store itself. This is due to the Mac App Stores licensing agreement, which allows you to download and install Mac OS X apps on all of your personal machines, although they must all share the same Apple ID. Additionally, you can transfer apps manually over a network or with an external USB drive, but that method does not work with all apps and is therefore not entirely recommended. We’ll cover both and you can decide which is best for you:

Transferring Apps to Another Mac via Mac App Store

This is the recommended and most reliable method of transferring apps:

• Open the Mac App Store
• Click on the “Purchases” tab to list all of your installed Mac apps
• Find the app(s) you want to install on the other Mac, and click the “INSTALL” button on the right

Any apps that are not installed on the current Mac will display the “INSTALL” button rather than the lighter ‘INSTALLED’ or ‘UPDATE’. Unlike iOS, this has to be done manually even if you have set up iCloud, which does not automatically download Mac apps (yet at least). You can do the same thing with the OS X Lion installer if you’re looking to upgrade multiple Macs.

The downside to the Mac App Store method is that it re-downloads the app, and for users working with constricted bandwidth that may not be the best solution. For those situations, you can attempt the manual transfer via network or USB, but the reliability of this next method will vary depending on the app itself.

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Steve Jobs official biographer Walter Isaacson told 60 minutes that Mr Jobs refused early cancer treatment and later regretted his decision to try alternative therapies:

Apple CEO Steve Jobs refused to allow surgeons to perform what could have been life-saving surgery on his pancreatic cancer, says his biographer Walter Isaacson. In one of his deepest discussions with him, Isaacson says Jobs told him he regretted his decision to try alternative therapies and said he put off the operation because it was too invasive.

Early surgery could potentially have saved his life, and by the time the surgery did occur 9 months later in 2004, the cancer had spread to tissues surrounding his pancreas. Here’s a snippet on why Jobs refused the surgery early on:

“I’ve asked [Jobs why he didn't get an operation then] and he said, ‘I didn’t want my body to be opened…I didn’t want to be violated in that way,’” Isaacson recalls. So he waited nine months, while his wife and others urged him to do it, before getting the operation, reveals Isaacson. Asked by Kroft how such an intelligent man could make such a seemingly stupid decision, Isaacson replies, “I think that he kind of felt that if you ignore something, if you don’t want something to exist, you can have magical thinking…we talked about this a lot,” he tells Kroft. “He wanted to talk about it, how he regretted it….I think he felt he should have been operated on sooner.”

The idea that Jobs cancer was not adequately treated is a disturbing concept, but echoes closely the thoughts of Harvard medical researcher Ramzi Amri, who in a prominent thread on Quora, essentially asserted that Steve Jobs cancer should have been treatable and survivable.

The full 60 minutes segment on Steve Jobs with biographer Walter Isaacson airs this Sunday at 7PM on CBS. The official biography of Steve Jobs is to be released on October 24.

A nice addition to iOS 5 is the ability to rename your iOS device directly on the device itself rather than changing the name with iTunes. This works on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch:

• Tap on “Settings” and then “About”
• Tap on “Name” and enter the new device name

You’ll see the new name show up in iTunes too if you connect the device to a PC or Mac.

What seems like a minor change for convenience is really another step in the PC-free direction of iOS, breaking away from tethering your iPhones and iPads to computers. You can greatly push iOS hardware in the post-PC direction by setting up iCloud and using Wi-Fi sync as well, two other features new to iOS 5.

By request, here is a great 6 wallpaper pack of original variations on the classic OS X Aurora style wallpaper, each image is 2560×1600 and looks great on any Mac (or iPad). This pack was sent in to us but we can’t track down the source again, so thanks to whoever that was.

Download them all from DeviantArt

If you’re not sure where to find the download link on DeviantArt, we’ve pointed it out clearly below:
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