A new third party tool called Siri0us has appeared that brings Siri Dictation (speech-to-text) to the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and iPod touch 4G. The add-on, which requires a jailbroken device, uses Nuance technology to work almost exactly like the dictation feature of Siri does to convert your speech to text. It’s accurate and initiated … Read More

For those who prefer the old fashioned method of reading printed directions on paper, maps and directions can be printed directly from an iPhone or iPad via the built-in Maps app in iOS 5. This is handy if you need to give someone else paper directions, or if you don’t want to potentially get a … Read More

The holiday classic “A Charlie Brown Christmas” is now available as an interactive story book on the iPad. Featuring digitally remastered illustrations from the original 1965 animated TV classic, it features voice narration and the soundtrack from the original Charlie Brown episode, but the experience has been optimized for iOS. You can play Schroeders piano, … Read More

“Siri, start my car”, “Siri, Set the thermostat to 72 degrees” – saying that to the iPhone and having an AI agent perform those tasks sounds futuristic doesn’t it? It’s not from the future though, it’s now, thanks to the ambitious work of a third party developer who created something called Siri Proxy. As the … Read More

Amazon is deeply discounting the base model MacBook Air 11.6″, slashing the price 15% taking $150 off the base $999 tag, bringing the price to $849.99 with free shipping. Amazon doesn’t charge sales tax for most states, making the deal even better for many. The Black Friday deal is live now, and presumably will continue … Read More

Apple started airing a new iPod Touch commercial titled “Share the Fun”, and in the process is about to launch a new song into popularity. Many of their recent commercials have featured minor instrumental soundtracks, but now they’re right back in their old habits of picking a catchy song for a TV ad and skyrockting … Read More

Apple has started to air a new iPod Touch commercial titled “Share The Fun”, the commercial features both the 4th gen white and black iPod touches being used to play games on Game Cnter, take pictures, tweet, use FaceTime, and a variety of other fun activities. This one is much more similar to the fun … Read More

Exposé was replaced with Mission Control in OS X Lion by name, but that doesn’t mean some of the most useful functions of Expose are gone, and in fact what you could see in Expose is still around in the newest versions of Mac OS X, including Mountain Lion 10.8 and newer. One very popular … Read More

Forgetting a user account password can be a major frustration for Mac users, but fortunately there are a some simple and secure ways to recover and reset a lost password on any Mac. One of the best ways to handle this situation and reset a lost password is to use an Apple ID, which allows … Read More

If you make any customizations to Mission Control, or if you encounter obvious problems with how Desktops and apps are handled and assigned, you can restart Mission Control without having to reboot the entire Mac.

If you’re recording video chat or just troubleshooting problems with iChat, knowing the frame rate and other video statistics can be helpful information. From the Video menu, pull down to “Connection Doctor”, then select the “Statistics” option from the pull-down menu to see the window shown up top. The group under “Local” is your own … Read More

If you signed up for iTunes Match and you’re seeing some peculiar icons in your music library alongside track names, don’t miss this chart put together by Apple that explains what each icon means, helping you troubleshoot the problem. The icons include: Cloud with a slash through it – ineligible for iTunes Match X’ed out … Read More

Quick Look is one of the better little features of Mac OS X, but a new hidden option in OS X makes QuickLook even better by allowing you to select, highlight, and copy text directly from the windows.

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:

Ever set a desktop background picture on the Mac and have no idea where the original wallpaper image is stored in OS X? Maybe you set an image from the web and lost it, or maybe you’ve wondered where that default background image is stored so you can share it with your iOS device or … Read More

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.

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 … Read More

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 … Read More