If you use Messages on the Mac to as a way to send texts, iMessages, Facebook chat, AIM, or whatever else, you’ve certainly noticed that new versions of Messages in OS X will automatically replace an emoticon with an emoji icon substitution. While many users like Emoji characters and they work great when messaging other Mac and iOS devices, not everyone may be thrilled with their text based emoticons getting replaced automatically.

If you’d rather send standard emoticons and not have them replaced with Emoji in Messages for Mac, you can turn off that substitution feature quickly.

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If you’ve ever waited for an update to appear on the iOS App Store, either for an available app, an app update itself, or for the Top and Featured pages to refresh, you know that sometimes the App Store can sit stale. While you can often trigger an update to show up by changing the date, quitting and re-launching the App Store, or even trashing the app in question, there’s actually a way to forcibly refresh the entire App Store on an iPhone or iPad without having to do any of that. Instead, you just need to perform a curious repetitive tap trick.

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Apple has released the first public beta of OS X Yosemite 10.10.4 to Mac users choosing to participate in the OS X Public Beta program, alongside the second beta of OS X 10.10.4 for registered Mac Developers. The build number of 14E11f is the same for both public beta and developer releases.

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Apple has released the first public beta version of iOS 8.4 to those registered to participate in the iOS Public Beta program. Additionally, the same build of 12H4086d has been released to registered developers labeled as iOS 8.4 beta 2.

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So you want a gold Apple Watch Edition, but you don’t have a spare $12,000 laying around to buy the base model. Well, rather than spend a princely $12,000 on a gold Apple Watch Edition, why not spend $400 on the aluminum Sports model, and invest a couple bucks into some gold spray paint, masking tape, and an xacto knife?

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Facebook Messenger is a popular means of communicating, but the Mac doesn’t have a dedicated Facebook messaging app like the iPhone or Android does… or does it!?! Indeed, you can use Facebook Messenger to message friends from OS X, and in moments you can set up the Mac Messages app to function as a Facebook Messenger client in OS X.

Using Facebook Messenger from the Mac is really quite simple, but it’s entirely separate from configuring Facebook sharing from the Mac, so if you have done one but not the other, you’d need to complete both to have the full Facebook functions of sharing, posting, and messaging available to you in OS X.

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Many Mac users may not notice this, but modern versions of Safari support a new feature which automatically stops plug-ins from running in certain situations to save power on the computer. This is kind of like App Nap in OS X, except that it’s limited to plug-ins within the Safari browser itself, which means things like Flash, Java, QuickTime Player, and others, can potentially stop running automatically.

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Apple has introduced three commercials for the Apple Watch, each with a different focus and feature emphasis. Titled “Us”, “Up”, and “Rise”, the TV advertisements are airing now and are included below for easy viewing.

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The Mac includes a variety of powerful wireless network tools that offer many features which are helpful for administration and IT purposes, including the ability to sniff packets. Here we will demonstrate how to perform a packet trace in OS X easily by using the built-in Wi-Fi Diagnostics app. Using Wi-Fi Diagnostics Sniffer function is simple, and it requires no additional downloads nor does it require the usage of the command line.

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For some iMac users running OS X 10.10.3 (even post Supplemental Update 1), a software update is available that aims to resolve a peculiar bug that caused many iMacs to stall or crash when viewing JPEG image files in the Mac Finder or Preview app.

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The ability to quickly jump to a photo in the Finder file system of Mac OS has changed in the new Photos app. For now, the traditional “Reveal In Finder” option in Photos app for Mac OS X is missing, but that doesn’t mean you can’t show the original file in the Finder or access the photos from the Mac file system.

There are actually a few ways to access the original image file in the Finder from Photos app, and one method works almost exactly to the “Show In Finder” option that used to exist in iPhoto and Aperture. Read on to learn three different ways to reveal an original image file in the Mac Finder from Photos app for Mac.

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Led by CEO Tim Cook, Apple has been making notable efforts toward being a more environmentally responsible corporate citizen, investing in solar farms, hydropower efforts, renewable forests, recycling programs, and other projects which are generally considered positive given that humans currently live on planet Earth and lack a backup planet (sorry, there’s no Time Machine app for Earth – but if there was… dinosaurs!).

Apple even now has a nice subsection of their website devoted to covering their environmental efforts, and like many other sections of the Apple site, it’s filled with beautiful high resolution images that can be extracted and used as some lovely background wallpaper for the Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or heck, even a Windows PC or Android.

To celebrate Earth Day, here are nine absolutely lovely HD wallpapers of various environmental related projects that Apple is participating in, directly from the Apple website.

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Photos app is a great app to manage and browse large collections of pictures on a Mac, but some users prefer to manually sort their pictures using the file system of OS X, which means that if you add those pictures into Photos app they will be copied into the Photos library. That’s the intended behavior, but essentially that means Photos app defaults to creating duplicates of pictures that are manually added through the Finder or Import function, as the original picture stays in it’s origin location, but then a copy of the image is duplicated into the Photos Library.photoslibrary package in the user Pictures/ directory. By disabling the Importing feature, you will be able to use Photos app as a front-end photo browser to an existing folder hierarchy of images.

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By default, the Mac OS X Console app view is quite simple, displaying events and logs in nothing but plain text, which makes it not very different from viewing system logs from the command line on a Mac. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if you’re a Mac user who spends a fair amount of time with Console app for troubleshooting, administrative, or development purposes, you can improve your Console experience by making the app much easier to scan and read by adjusting some handy view options.

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Mac users can quickly disconnect from a wi-fi network by using the wireless menu in Mac OS X. This simple task is incredibly useful for managing and juggling multiple networks, whether for something as simple as using iPhone Wi-Fi Hotspot or even a more advanced task like packet sniffing.

It’s important to note disconnecting is not the same as turning off wi-fi entirely, as disconnecting keeps the Mac wi-fi card active and on and instead disassociates and disconnects from the currently connected wireless network.

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New versions of iOS offer an interesting featured called Suggested Apps, which uses your current location to recommend or suggest an app to use or download based on where you are and what you may be doing. For example, if you walk into a Starbucks, the Starbucks app could be recommended on the lock screen of your iPhone, or in the app switcher screen. The suggested apps are fairly subtle and many users probably won’t even notice them, displaying as a little faint icon in the bottom left corner of the iOS lock screen, across from the camera icon, basically in the same placement as Handoff icons appear on an iOS screen. Despite being very understated, not all users want suggested apps appearing unsolicited on the screens of their iPhone and iPad.

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This weeks featured Mac setup is the awesome workstation of Spiros P., the owner of a production company who has a really great pro setup.

Let’s jump in and learn a little bit more and see some more great setup pictures.

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Mac users coming from iPhoto may wish to move an iPhoto Library to the new Photos app. While importing is an option when first setting up the Photos app in OS X, many users many have skipped the initial setup screens and missed that opportunity to import pictures and images into Photos from apps like Aperture and iPhoto. Fortunately, it’s very easy to add an iPhoto library into the Mac Photos app at any time.

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