FreeSpaceTab is a free utility that lets you manage hard disks and mounted volumes directly from the Mac OS X menu bar.

With an attractive and simple GUI, you can pull the menu down to see all mounted drives and partitions, arranged by volume type (local drives, disk images, network volumes, etc) as well as free space available on each volume. Drives can ejected on a per disk basis, or mass ejected if you want to unmount everything. Also nice, the menubar icon itself can be set to display available disk space on the default boot volume, allowing for an quick way to see available drive capacity.

These menubar apps are especially useful if you hide the Mac OS X desktop to reduce clutter, because they give you information and functionality that you’d otherwise need to access the desktop or a Finder window for.

• Download FreeSpace Tab from the Mac App Store (free)

FreeSpaceTab is a better solution than the recently discussed a hidden eject menu that can be enabled in Mac OS X, containing additional functionality as well as the ability to eject disks. All in all a worthwhile app to download, check it out.

If you’ve maintained old iPhone baseband in order to utilize carrier unlocks, you’ll be pleased to know that you can now upgrade to iOS 5.0.1 and jailbreak untethered the iPhone while preserving the unlockable baseband. The procedure is done by using the newest version of PwnageTool 5.0.1, and if you’re familiar with past versions of pwnage then you should be right at home, but nonetheless we will walk through the entire process.

Note: Only need a jailbreak? If you don’t need a carrier unlock, use this guide to jailbreak iOS 5.0.1 untethered with redsn0w, it’s faster and doesn’t include the baseband preservation.

Before proceeding, make sure you meet the following requirements:

• iPhone 4 or iPhone 3GS with preserved and unlockable baseband: 01.59.00, 04.26.08, 05.11.07, 05.13.04, 06.15.00
• iOS 5.0.1 IPSW – optional, depending on if you already have it stored locally or not
• iTunes 10.5.2
• PwnageTool 5.0.1 – download now

Assuming you meet all those requirements and you understand the risks, continue on. Read carefully or else you can accidentally update your baseband and lose your unlock.

Jailbreak iPhone with iOS 5.0.1 while Preserving Baseband Unlock

• Launch PwnageTool 5.0.1 and select your iPhone model, then click the next arrow
• Let PwnageTool search for firmware (or you can download iOS 5.0.1 firmware manually), select it and click the Next arrow again
• Click “Yes” when asked if you want to save the custom IPSW file to the desktop, and click yes/no depending on your activation
• Let PwnageTool build the custom IPSW, enter the administrator password when asked
• Now connect the iPhone to the computer and place it into DFU mode: Hold power button for 3 seconds, continue holding Power button and also hold the Home button for 10 seconds, release Power button but continue to hold Home button for another 15 seconds
• When DFU is confirmed, quit out of PwnageTool and launch iTunes
• Hold the Option key and click on “Restore” and select the custom firmware created by PwnageTool, located on the desktop
• iTunes will now restore the iPhone to the custom iOS 5.0.1 build, simultaneously jailbreaking the phone and also preserving the unlockable baseband
• After the device has been jailbroken and booted up, launch Cydia and download Ultrasn0w 1.2.5 to unlock the iPhone

The unlocked iPhone should now be good to use on another carrier. If you have trouble activating, use the original activated SIM card briefly to pass through activation, or run the newest version of redsn0w on top.

Typically we try to just post workstations for Mac setups, but Rejean H sent in pictures of what amounts to a giant collection of Macs built up over the years, and we just had to post it.

Ranging from some of the first Macs to be released, to the Macintosh Portable, Mac Classic, 20th Anniversary Mac, Power Mac 7200, 9500, Performas, eMac, G4 Cube, clamshell iBook, to modern aluminum iMacs and a new MacBook Air, this is a room full of one huge collection of Apple gear.

Check out more pictures below:
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Spotlight is a wonderful feature of Mac OS X, but sometimes you don’t want it indexing everything. Whether it’s an external backup drive, a scratch disk, or just a private folder with files you don’t want easily found, excluding drives and directories from Spotlight is easy:

• Launch System Preferences from the  Apple menu and click on “Spotlight”
• Click on the “Privacy” tab
• Drag & drop folders or drives to exclude from the Spotlight index, or click the “+” plus icon in the corner to manually select hard drives or directories

Anything folder or drive in that list is effectively hidden from the Spotlight index, making the contents not appear in file searches.

This is a much better approach than disabling Spotlight if all you want to do is hide certain files from prying eyes.

If at any point you want these items to be reindexed and reincluded within Spotlights search results, all you need to do is highlight them in the privacy tab and delete them with the Delete key or by hitting the “-” minus button in the lower left. Removing items will trigger the mds and mdworker processes to run.

On a side note, because excluding items and then reincluding them also causes that directory or drive to be completely reindexed, this can be a helpful troubleshooting tip if you’re running into location specific problems with Spotlight.

This is a classic picture of a young Steve Jobs giving the finger to an IBM sign in 1983, it’s been circulating again after all these years thanks to Macintosh co-creator Andy Hertzfeld who posted the high res copy to Google+. Here’s the text that was posted along with the amusing image:

In memoriam for Steve Jobs as 2011 draws to a close, here’s one more rare photo that illustrates his rebellious spirit. In December 1983, a few weeks before the Mac launch, we made a quick trip to New York City to meet with Newsweek, who was considering doing a cover story on the Mac. The photo was taken spontaneously as we walked around Manhattan by Jean Pigozzi, a wild French jet setter who was hanging out with us at the time. Somehow I ended up with a copy of it. My editor begged me to include it in my book, but I was too timid to ask for permission, especially since IBM was still making CPUs for Apple at the time.

The book is his “Revolution in The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made“, which tells the story of how the original Macintosh was created. That subject was briefly discussed in the recent Steve Jobs biography as well.

The picture demonstrates the competitive nature of Jobs and early Apple, and although the image has been around a while this is the first higher resolution copy to surface. In the early days of Apple, IBM was largely considered the companies biggest competitor and enemy of sorts, as is demonstrated in the Ghostbusters spoof and of course the classic 1984 Superbowl commercial that launched the first Mac.

If you’ve been holding off on the Apple TV 2 4.4.4 update for an untethered jailbreak, you can now update the device without worry. A new version of Seas0npass has been released to to untether the Apple TV’s unique iOS 4.4.4 build, the tool remains extremely easy to use and supports most of the 3rd party plugins, including last.fm, XBMC, RSS feeds, and more.

Download Seas0nPass Untethered Jailbreak for Apple TV 4.4.4

• Download now (Mac OS X)
• Download now (Windows)

As you may have guessed, the latest version of Seasonpass uses the same untether from the newest redsn0w iOS 5.0.1 jailbreaks.

Despite many similarities, Apple continues to not label the Apple TV 2 build as iOS 5 for the device, and continues to release builds as version 4. Apple TV OS v 4.4 brought a variety of new features to the device, but most notable are AirPlay mirroring (fun with the iPhone) and the addition of several live video feeds and trailers, along with bug fixes.

Using Seas0nPass to Jailbreak Apple TV 4.4.4 Untethered

Before proceeding, update the Apple TV 2 to the latest 4.4.4 build, update iTunes, and download the appropriate Seas0npass version from above. You’ll also need the aluminum Apple TV remote and a microUSB cable to connect the Apple TV to the computer to perform the jailbreak.

• Launch Seas0npass and click the “Create IPSW” button
• Allow the custom IPSW to build and then connect the Apple TV to the computer via the USB cable, leaving the power cable disconnected
• Wait for the front light on the Apple TV to flash rapidly, then point the AppleTV remote at the device, following the onscreen instructions to place the ATV into DFU mode (hold both the MENU and PLAY/PAUSE buttons for 7 seconds)
• iTunes will now launch and begin restoring the Apple TV 2 to the custom jailbroken IPSW, the restore will be confirmed and the ATV2 is now jailbroken
• Verify the Apple TV 2 is jailbroken by looking for the red “FC” logo in the lower right corner of the screen, shown in the screenshot below

Enjoy the newly jailbroken Apple TV 2, it’s untethered meaning you don’t have to connect it to a computer to boot or do anything funky. If you run into any troubles, check out the support pages of Firecore, the makers of the Seas0npass app.

ClipMenu is an awesome free clipboard history manager for Mac OS X that keeps track of nearly anything copied into the clipboard, ranging from plain and rich text, URLs, images, even files. ClipMenu defaults to remember 20 items but can be set to whatever you want, each clipboard item is then stored for easy retrieval from the menu. Just select an item from the menu and it gets copied into your active clipboard buffer ready to be pasted or used elsewhere.

Rather not add another menu item to OS X? No problem, you can have ClipMenu enabled but the menu hidden, instead opting for the history manager to be accessible via a keyboard shortcut instead (default is Command+Shift+V). Hit the key combo and a contextual menu will pop up anywhere the mouse is located. The app also supports saving “Snippets” of data that you use or access frequently for pasting, these are stored outside of the standard clipboard history and can be also be retrieved by a keyboard shortcut.

ClipMenu is powerful yet easy to use, and surprisingly customizable, right down to the menubar icon itself. It even works fine with the command line pbcopy and pbpaste tools. If there is a better clipboard manager for Mac OS X, I haven’t seen it.

• Download ClipMenu for free – compatible with OS X Lion and Snow Leopard

Do yourself a favor and download ClipMenu, set it to launch at Login, and never lose another copied item to the clipboard again.
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In 1984, Apple spoofed the classic Ghostbusters song by Ray Parker Jr, and this outrageously cheesy video is the result.

The video apparently played as the introduction to an Apple corporate event held in Hawaii to rally the international sales team. Instead of Ghostbusters, it’s “Blue Busters”, with Blue of course being a reference to Big Blue, or IBM. John Sculley and Steve Wozniak even make appearances in the video, and supposedly Steve Jobs is somewhere in there too as a Ghostbuster along with a few other Apple execs, although I couldn’t identify who was who.

Hilarious find by TheNextWeb, who also found a few more details from a YouTube commenter that happened to be at the event:

I was there in Oct. 1984. This was not an internal ad. I was a 1984 state of the art multimedia slide show with audio by Ray Parker Jr. who sang the original. There were also live dancers on the stage.

This was the opening presentation of the International Sales Meeting that introduced the Lightwriter later renamed Laserwriter.

Apple always used a current movie as a them for the sales meetings. in 1985 it was Back to the Future.

So, anyone found that 1985 video yet?

Apple history at it’s finest, or funniest at least.

Have you noticed when you try and move an application out of the /Applications folder in Mac OS X Lion you will end up creating an alias of the app instead? This is a security feature that is new to Lion, intended to help prevent accidentally deleting or moving apps, and in some ways it’s convenient way to quickly make an app alias.

If you want to move an app out of the Applications folder, hold down the Command key while dragging the app.

You will continue to need to enter the administrator password if you attempt to uninstall an app by dragging it into the Trash though.

Another day another version of redsn0w is released… Redsn0w 0.9.10b3 includes a bug fix that caused some apps to not be able to run after the jailbreak was completed. I didn’t run into any problems on an iPhone 4, but if you did encounter any issues with apps crashing with the prior redsn0w jailbreak then you can go ahead and use the latest version to resolve them.

To fix an existing jailbroken device, all you need to do is run the newest 0.9.10b3 version over your existing jailbreak, just be sure to uncheck the “Install Cydia” option.

Nothing else is different about this release, it continues to be an untethered jailbreak for iOS 5.0.1 on iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPod touch 3rd & 4th gen, and iPad 1. If you’re not sure what to do, read our guide to jailbreak iOS 5.0.1 untethered using Redsn0w.

Download Redsn0w 0.9.10b3

• Download now (Mac)
• Download now (Windows)

If you are not currently experiencing problems with your jailbreak, this is probably not a necessary download.