Apple has released a new $199 entry-level iPod touch in a variety of colors. Perhaps most notable about the updated iPod touch is the addition of a 5 megapixel rear camera, which can capture 1080p video. Apple also reduced the price of the other 32GB and 64GB iPod touch devices.
One of the major changes that came along with the iOS visual overhaul was the removal of obvious buttons across the operating system and apps found on the iPhone and iPad. While the result is a cleaner, flatter, and more streamlined appearance in iOS, many users have found the removal of obvious buttons to be detrimental to usability, making it difficult to determine what is a tappable target and what is simply text on screen.
That hiccup is exactly what the optional Button Shapes feature aims to resolve, by bringing more obvious button shapes and tap targets back to iOS by using shading and underlining of buttons and actionable text elements.
Note: This is an advanced topic aimed at expert Mac users. Macs are generally thought of as secure, certainly at least compared to the alternative world of Windows. But the reality is that while Macs are generally more secure than Windows, there is still legitimate potential for malware getting through to Mac OS X, despite GateKeeper, XProtect, sandboxing, and code signing.
That’s what this excellent presentation from Patrick Wardle, the Director of Research at Synack, a cyber security solutions provider, explains quite well, offering a thoughtful and detailed look of the current security implementations built into Mac OS X, and how they could be circumvented by malicious intent to attack a Mac.
Additionally, the Synack overview goes further and provides an open source script called KnockKnock, which displays all Mac OS X binaries that are set to execute upon system boot, potentially helping advanced users to examine and verify if anything shady is running on a Mac.
The excellent document, titled “METHODS of MALWARE PERSISTENCE on OS X”, is broken into five major parts:
The next time you’re stuck trying to figure out a terminal command, or maybe you’re just trying to learn a new one, don’t be afraid to ask for help… from the OS X Terminal apps very own Help menu. Yes seriously, that’s because the Help menu of Terminal app can serve as a man (manual) page launcher for any installed command, service, or binary, as long as it has an accompanying man page, you’re good to access it from the help menu.
Even better, you can launch into a manual page this way entirely through a keystroke sequence. This is the quickest way to use the great instant man page trick that is hidden away in the Help feature of Terminal.app:
Apple has added a few additional channels to the Apple TV, including ABC News, PBS Kids, AOL On, and Willow. Additionally, the Flickr app has received an update on Apple TV to improve the photo browsing experience for that service. All new channels are free to access, with the exception of Willow.
Apple will have two new “rounder and thinner” iPhone models with larger screens to debut this year, according to a new Bloomberg report.
A jailbreak for iOS 7.1.1 has been released by a called Pangu. The untethered jailbreak tool supports just about any device capable of running iOS 7.1.1, including most new iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch models. The jailbreak is currently only available for Windows, with a Mac OS X version apparently in the works and due out soon.
You can customize the menu bar clock that appears in the upper right corner of your Mac to include more than just the current time, and one of the more useful things to add is the current date. This is particularly helpful in OS X because unless you have the Calendar app open all the time, you have to actually click on the clock to pull down into the menu to see the date and day of the week on Mac.
Did you know the quick access TLD trick in iOS expands into Mail app for quickly typing email addresses too? If you didn’t, you’re certainly not alone, and though many iPhone and iPad users are familiar with the Safari TLD shortcuts accessible on the iOS keyboard, not as many seem to know that this expands to the Mail application as well. To be clear, the TLD shortcuts we’re talking about automatically type out a Top Level Domain, like .com, .net, .org, .edu, and .us.
My iPhone 5 camera completely stopped working recently, and appeared to stay that way despite forced resets, killing camera apps, and every other traditional troubleshooting trick in the book. What do I mean by stopped working? I mean the Camera app loads, but the camera viewfinder shows nothing at all just a black screen, and other apps that’d tap into the iPhone camera also fail to function entirely. Instagram throws an “Error: Error Launching the camera. Please try again.” alert message, while most other apps just show a blank screen.
Most iPhone and iPad users know that you can tap and hold onto any text within iOS to select it, then by using the little draggable bars, you can adjust the size of the text selection rather easily too. While this is great for selecting a single word, a sentence, and even a small block of text, it’s not so great for choosing to highlight large groups of words like a lengthy paragraph, or just a generally large block of text. But not to worry, it turns out that iOS has a much better way of selecting large text blocks in one fell swoop, and it uses an easy to remember tap gesture that seems to be so little known that it’d almost qualify as a secret.
This weeks featured Mac workstation comes to us from Darren, a professional music producer with a great custom desk setup. Let’s check out the details:
Apple’s upcoming smartwatch will include multiple health sensors and come in variety of screen sizes, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal. Specifically, “The new wrist device from Apple will include more than 10 sensors including ones to track health and fitness” according to WSJ.
Nearly all web browsers default to keeping a list of recent searches which are easily retrievable as part of the browser history. Safari shows this recent search list when the URL bar is clicked into with the cursor, revealing the 10 most recent web search terms or phrases.
That recent search list can be convenient as it makes quick retrieval of prior search items easy, allowing for a quick return to past results without digging around in Safari’s history menus, but there are also times when you may not want that list to show anything at all, or at least want to clear out that recent search list in Safari for privacy purposes.
Apple will release a feature packed smartwatch this October, according to a new report from Reuters. Citing sources, Reuters says the smart watch will have a 2.5″ touch screen that is “slightly rectangular” with a face that protrudes slightly from it’s band in an “arched shape”. Additionally, the watch will apparently have wireless charging capabilities, and include a sensor that can detect the user’s pulse rate.
Mac users running OS X Yosemite Beta 2 can get a glimpse at the upcoming “dark mode” feature that was mentioned briefly during the Yosemite overview presentation during WWDC 2014. Essentially, dark mode turns many user interface elements of OS X Yosemite into significantly darker variations of themselves, swapping out whites and light grays for blacks and dark grays. With OS X 10.10 Developer Preview 2, this darkening effect is limited to menubar items and the Dock, but it’s possible the visual effect will reach the broader window coverage and theme of OS X Yosemite as well.
If you’re currently running the most recent version of OS X 10.10, you can try the incomplete dark mode effect out yourself by using a defaults write command.
While it’s fairly easy to copy a folder path from the Mac GUI and Finder, or even to copy the path into the Terminal with a drag & drop trick, going the other direction and getting the current path from the command line and then having it accessible to the broader OS X clipboard is a little trickier… well, at least until you know this handy little tip.
Swipe down from the top of your iPhone screen and you’ll bring about Notification Center, a nice overview panel which shows a weather forecast, calendar events, commute time, and stocks and their performance on the day, amongst other gathered notifications. While you can customize what’s shown here by toggling switches within the Notification Settings, what’s less obvious is how to add or edit the specific stock symbols shown in the iPhone Notifications panel. That’s what we’re going to cover here.
