Apple has released iOS 8 update for all compatible devices, and while most users are best served by downloading the update through the Over-the-Air mechanism on their iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, another option is to install the update manually by means of IPSW firmware files. While not particularly difficult, updating with firmware is considered a bit more advanced, and it requires the download of a full firmware package file which is upwards of 6GB or so, which is considerably larger than the smaller delta update offered through OTA.

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Apple has released iOS 8 for all compatible iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices. The update offers significant improvements and many new features to prior versions of iOS and is recommended for all users to install on their devices. If you haven’t done so already, it’s a good idea to prepare for iOS 8 before updating the system software.

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If you’re like many Apple users, you may have multiple iPhone devices spanning a couple of generations, maybe an iPad or two, and maybe even a few iPods. They’re all easy to tell apart by looking at the physical devices, but if you backup your iOS device to a computer (and you should, in addition to iCloud), you may find the iTunes backup browser to have multiple listings that are basically the same name – despite the backups being for completely different devices.

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The default font size in the Mail app for Mac OS X is size 12 for emails and messages that are lacking styling, which tends to be most communications that are sent by email.

If you find the font size in Mail for Mac to be too small, or even too big, you’ll be pleased to know that changing the text size of email messages is quite simple. Not only can you change the font size for the email content itself, but also for other components of an email message, including the sender, recipients, subject line, and even the message list.

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Mac users who opt-in to use the Safari AutoFill username and password feature have a convenient way to show and retrieve those login credentials at any time. This is incredibly helpful if you’re prone to forget the passwords or logins for the billion and one websites we all use, and need to access that login data either for usage in another web browser or on another computer that doesn’t have iCloud Keychain enabled.

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Apple has released OS X Yosemite Public Beta 3 to those Mac users registered with the public beta program. Additionally, Apple released OS X Yosemite Developer Preview 8 to Mac developers. The two builds include bug fixes and feature enhancements, and appear to largely be the same, pushing the release of OS X 10.10 ever closer to the public launch this fall.

Separately, OS X Yosemite Beta Recovery 1.0 is also available as an update, which is aimed at resolving issues with the recovery boot partition for Yosemite beta users.

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Parental Controls are a great feature of Mac OS X that allows for restrictions to be placed on a specific user account on a Mac. These restrictions are varied and chosen by whoever set the parental control feature, ranging from setting time limits for computer use, to preventing certain web pages from being accessed, to even restricting app usage as deemed necessary. While it’s a handy feature, there are times when you may want to disable Parental Controls after they’ve been set, either for administrative purposes or because the set restrictions are no longer necessary.

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We recently shared the awesome iOS 8 default milky way wallpaper with you, but iOS 8 includes many more new wallpapers than just that. Ranging from great pictures of snowcapped trees, mountains, to many flower shots, and a few space pictures of planet earth and the moon, you can download them all below.

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This weeks featured Mac setup is the awesome workstation of Emir R., let’s dive right in and learn a bit more about the hardware, desk, lighting, and how everything is put to use:

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Apple is well known for choosing gorgeous wallpapers for iOS and OS X, and the release of iOS 8 is no different with it’s stunning default wallpaper of our own milky way galaxy glowing over a snowy mountain peak. While iOS 8 will be released to download shortly for everyone with a compatible device, you don’t have to wait that long to decorate your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, Android, or Windows PC with the gorgeous milky way shot.

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Many iPhone and iPad users recently discovered that a U2 album appeared on their iOS devices seemingly at random. Though part of a promotion from Apple and the band U2, which was a hit with U2 fans, this also caused a fair amount of confusion, as some people thought it was a bug or their Apple ID was hacked, of course neither being the intention of Apple. If you want to hide the U2 album from your iOS device, you can do that quickly in one of two ways, we’ll show you both.

Before trying to hide the album (and as a result, hide all iCloud music), it should be noted that the U2 album isn’t actually taking up any space on your iPhone or iPad by default, it just shows up in your Music app. The songs won’t download to the device unless you choose to download it locally by tapping on the little cloud icons alongside either the album or song names.

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You’ve decided which size iPhone 6 to get, and maybe you even plan to pre-order so that you can have it in your hands next week… but are you eligible for an upgrade and subsidy through your cellular phone provider? That’s what we’re going to find out, and it only takes a moment.

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Those interested in pre-ordering iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus will be able to do so from several retailers starting tonight at 12:01AM PST of Friday, September 12. Devices ordered tonight are assumed to ship and arrive at their destination on the release date of September 19.

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Apple has expanded their iCloud storage plan lineup to offer dramatically increased storage capacities for a monthly fee. The new pricing plans offer up to 2TB of total storage capacity, which should be plenty for just about any gadget owner, even if you have a handful of iPhones, iPads, and Macs in use on a single Apple ID.

Having adequate iCloud Storage is important because it allows you to make iCloud backups of iOS devices and files from Mac OS X apps. Additionally, Mac OS and iOS offers the iCloud Drive feature which will rely on the same cloud storage capacity for storing files as well.

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Deciding which size iPhone 6 to buy is no easy task, particularly if you’re going to pre-order this Friday and aren’t able to hold one of the devices in your hand before the big purchase. That’s where this little printable PDF file comes into play, which gives you an accurate idea of the physical size of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus against an existing iPhone 5 model.

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Anyone who develops just about anything for the web knows that following resource usage of a specific tab or window, or just tracking down an errant tab or window can be difficult, but Safari on the Mac has a hidden trick up it’s sleeve that makes it much easier; the ability to show web process IDs directly within the page and tab title of a Safari window.

This optional setting is aimed at advanced users and developers who have a reason to quickly see an individual webpage PID directly in a window title bar. For everyone else, it may be kind of useless, and a more user friendly approach is available in new versions of OS X, which allow users to see the URL of errant tabs and windows using a hover trick within Activity Monitor.

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Apple has released the final version of iOS 8, known as the Golden Master (GM) build, to those registered with the iOS Developer program. The final build is 12A365, and is notably unavailable as an OTA download from existing iOS 8 beta releases.

Developers can gain access to and download the appropriate iOS 8 GM IPSW files through the iOS Developer Center. The supported hardware remains the same as the earliest beta builds, including iPhone 4s, iPhone 5, iPhone 5s, iPhone 5c, iPad 2, iPad Air, iPad with Retina display, iPod touch 5th gen, and both iPad Mini models. New iPhone 6 models will ship with iOS 8 preinstalled.

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Apple has released iTunes 11.4 for OS X, the new version is required for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch to sync and function properly after updating those devices to iOS 8, making it a highly recommended download for all Mac users.

Mac users can find the iTunes 11.4 update available through the Software Update mechanism of OS X, and all iTunes users can also find the update available through the iTunes application itself.
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