You can hide unwanted System Preferences from appearing in the control panel without actually removing them. This is a helpful distinction for setting up other user accounts or just for hiding System Prefs you never access and no longer need:

• Open “System Preferences” from the  Apple menu and pull down the “View” menu, selecting “Customize”
• Uncheck each preference panel you want hidden, then click “Done”

For Mac OS X Lion and iCloud users, this is a simple way to ditch the now unnecessary MobileMe preferences from cluttering the options.

For setting up a limited user account, hiding many of the panels and then sorting the remaining panes alphabetically can make the entire System Preferences app easier to use.

The iPhone can be set to always hide the dialing phones number from the recipients caller ID’s. This works by initiating every phone call with the prefix *67 to force the number to appear as “Blocked” on the receiving caller ID. This is helpful for making anonymous phone calls, or if you just want to be sent to someones voicemail.

• Launch “Settings” and tap on “Phone”
• Tap on “Show My Caller ID”
• Slide to “OFF”

You can also manually prefix a number with *67 when dialing to make a one-off call that is blocked from caller ID. Generally speaking nobody likes receiving “Blocked” calls, so if you want your phone calls to be answered it’s a good idea to leave the iPhone’s Caller ID enabled.

Ever set a desktop background picture and have no idea where the original wallpaper image is stored? Or maybe you’ve wondered where that default background image is stored so you can share it with your iOS device? Me too, and using a defaults write debug command, you can display the full path to the currently active desktop image, directly on the wallpaper itself.

• Launch Terminal in /Applications/Utilities/
• Type the following defaults write command:

defaults write com.apple.dock desktop-picture-show-debug-text -bool TRUE;killall Dock

• Go to the desktop to see the path

After you’ve retrieved the desktop picture (use Command+Shift+G to bring up the Go To Folder window), you can hide the path text by using the following command:
defaults delete com.apple.dock desktop-picture-show-debug-text;killall Dock

Both of these commands automatically kill/refresh the Dock as well. If you’re not fond of the command line, you can find the path information in a hidden debug mode for Desktop System Preferences too.

Greg Joswiak is a Vice President of Marketing at Apple who focuses on promoting the iOS lineup. After working at Apple for 20 years, he has come up with four lessons that can help explain Apple’s incredible success. Shared at a recent speech in Cambridge, they are quoted below from Wall Street Journal:

Focus—”It means saying no, not saying yes. We do very few things at Apple. We are $100bn in revenue with very few products. There are only so many grade A players. If you spread yourself out over too many things, none of them will be great.”

Simplicity—”Make complex things simple. A lot of people think it means take something simple and leave it at its core essence. But it isn’t that. When you start to build something, it quickly becomes really complex. But that is when a lot of people stop. If you really know your product and the problems, then you can take something that is complex and then make it simple.”

Courage—”Courage drives a lot of decisions in business. Don’t hang on to ideas from the past even if they have been successful for you. You don’t build a product just because everyone else has one. ”

Best—”If you can’t enter the market and try and be the best in it, don’t enter it. You need that differentiation. At Apple if we can’t be the best then we are not interested in it.

Sounds like the spirit and influence of Steve Jobs to me.

Using a defaults write command, the iTunes Dock icon can be set to display a “Now Playing” song and artist pop-up that transitions in and out and music starts. It’s a nice addition, particularly if you’re playing songs from a shared network playlist and have iTunes hidden in the background.

Enable the iTunes song & artist Dock icon popups

Open the Terminal in /Applications/Utilities/ and type the following:
defaults write com.apple.dock itunes-notifications -bool TRUE

Now kill the Dock to relaunch it:
killall Dock

Start playing a song in iTunes to see the notification appear, it’ll disappear automatically and then reappear briefly anytime a new song starts.

If you decide you don’t like the notification, disabling the iTunes song popup is just as easy:
defaults delete com.apple.dock itunes-notifications

You won’t need to relaunch iTunes, but you will need to kill the Dock again.

This only works in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, if you try it in prior versions nothing happens. The tip comes from Keir Thomas, author of Mac Kung Fu, we found it by way of TheNextWeb.

Stanford University is on a roll lately offering a wide variety of free online courses to anyone, either through iTunes U on topics like iOS 5 Development, or through self-contained courses conducted entirely from the web that are free to enroll in. The latter is the case here, with Stanford offering 10 new online courses that are completely free to the public. Each class is taught by a renowned Stanford professor and is focused on technology and computer science, although two concentrate on the entrepreneurial side of things as well.

All classes start January 2012, so enroll now if you want to start learning from one of the best universities in the world:

• CS 101 – Essentials of Computer Science for a zero experience audience
• Cryptography – Protecting information in computer systems
• Game Theory – Mathematical modeling of strategic interaction among rational agents
• Human-Computer Interaction – Designing technologies and interfaces that bring people joy rather than frustration
• Lean Launchpad – Turning an idea into a company
• Machine Learning – Getting computers to act without explicit direction
• Natural Language Processing – Algorithms and technology for dealing with human language data
• Probabilistic Graphical Models – Practical and theoretical methods of manipulating probability distributions
• Software as a Service – Engineering fundamentals for Agile SaaS development using Ruby on Rails
• Technology Entrepreneurship – Creating a successful startup

You won’t get college credit for completing the courses unless you’re a Stanford student, but they will provide you with a statement of accomplishment and a performance rating compared to other online students, and you’re pretty much guaranteed to learn something.

Free courses from Stanford University is a freakishly good deal, where undergrad tuition alone is about $40,000 a year!

Stanford has offered this style of online learning in the past, recently offering a free online “Intro to Databases” course conducted on the web. That class is wrapping up so if you enrolled in that one, these classes are a great opportunity to further relevant knowledge.

Our readers have some of the best setups and workstations out there. Case in point, this drool-worthy Mac setup is heavy on the Apple gear but crosses platforms for testing purposes.

From left to right there is: MacBook Pro 15″, iMac 27″ connected to a center Dell 22″ display but switches to a Dell Optiplex GX520 Windows machine, a 20″ Vuescape display connected to the white MacBook 13″, docked iPad 1, Dell Mini 1012, and a handful of peripherals including a Time Machine connected to a 1TB external drive, AirPort Extreme Base Station, Apple Remote, Apple Wireless Keyboard, and two Magic Trackpads. Plus the picture was taken with an iPhone 4S!

What an awesome setup, thanks for sending this to us Bryn!

You can send in your own to setup shots to osxdailycom@gmail.com – we get a load of entries but we’ll try to post them all eventually

Using iOS folders and some bookmarks, anyone can mimic the quick iOS Settings access of the popular jailbreak tweak SBSettings – minus the jailbreak. It’s simple and you don’t have to install anything but a few shortcuts:

• Launch Safari on iOS
• Go here and scroll until you see a list of settings names and click on them to create icon shortcuts to the settings you want quick access to
• Drag the shortcuts into each other to create a folder to then add more

Some of the most useful shortcuts to add are: Network, Brightness, Software Update, Bluetooth, WiFi, HotSpot, etc. Going to the bottom of the page will show the ‘old’ method of creating bookmarks through Safari rather than using profiles, you can go with whatever method you’re comfortable with. Most of the choices should behave on all iOS 5 hardware, but some are going to be limited to iPhone or 3G equipped iPads.

This is a great alternative for anyone wary of jailbreaking, or if you just don’t like the current tethered solutions. Found via MacStories

With iCloud and the “Find My iPhone” feature, you can send messages to your remote Apple gear. These come through in the form of a pop-up window in Mac OS X and a notification in iOS 5, and while there’s a variety of uses for this, it’s also a fun way to send a quick message to someone using your hardware, be it a loved one or a thief. You can also choose to play a pinging sound with the notification, it will repeatedly play at full volume until someone acknowledges the notification, guaranteeing that it can’t be ignored.

You’ll need iCloud enabled and have iOS 5+ on the iPad or iPhone, and OS X 10.7.2+ on the Mac, and all hardware must be sharing the same iCloud ID.

Send a Message to Your Apple Hardware from iCloud

We’re going to send a message to a MacBook Air for the purpose of this walkthrough, but it’s identical on an iPad, iPhone, iPod touch too:

• Go to iCloud.com and login
• Click on the “Find My iPhone” button – it will say iPhone even if you want to send a message to a Mac, iPad, or iPod



• A list of compatible devices will load in the left menu titled “My Devices” and the location of the device will appear on a map
• Click on the blue “i” button to bring up a the “Find My Mac” (or iPhone/iPad) control panel for that machine, select the “Play Sound or Send Message” button



• Type your message and click on “Send” , keep the ON switch for “Play Sound” if you want the loud pinging sound to repeat until the notification is acknowledged

Messages are delivered practically instantaneous. From the users end they look like the pop-up at the top of the screen, and the sender will get a confirmation in the email that is attached to their iCloud account:

Bonus points if you send a nice message to a significant other or loved one, or if you gently nudge your iPad hogging roommate who is addicted to Temple Run.

After you’ve made the transition to iCloud from MobileMe, the option to remove the old and now obsolete MobileMe menu bar icon disappears. It’s easy to get rid of though, as Tony R shows us in this tip he sent in:

• Hold down the Command key and click and hold on the old MobileMe icon, then just drag it out of the menubar

The little icon will disappear into a puff of smoke. You can use the same command key trick to rearrange menubar items and remove other ones as well.

If you haven’t done so yet don’t forget to get iCloud configured, the basic account is free and it’ll sync data between your Macs and iOS hardware easily.

Thanks for sending this in Tony R!