Use This Easy Trick to See the Clock & Current Time When On an Active iPhone Call

May 28, 2014 - 2 Comments

Show the clock when on an iPhone phone call

Ever noticed that the current time and clock become inexplicably invisible on the iPhone lock screen when you’re on a phone call and using a headset or the earbuds? Yes, the call time is always visible to show you how long you’ve been on the call, but oddly the actual time of day becomes completely invisible, which is obviously annoying if you rely on an iPhone as your primary watch. That’s what this simple easy trick is for though, it lets you see the clock and current time instantly from the lock screen when on an active phone call.

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By Paul Horowitz - iPhone - 2 Comments

Open Folders as New Windows Instead of Tabs in Finder of Mac OS X

May 28, 2014 - 20 Comments

Open folders into new windows rather than tabs in Mac OS X

The Mac file system received tabbed window support in OS X Mavericks, which also caused opening new Finder windows into launching new tabs rather than an actual new Finder window. While this helps to cut down on window clutter when browsing the file system, it can also be kind of frustrating if you want to actually open a specific directory into a separate Finder window. Fortunately, there are a few workarounds to this, and you can open new windows instead of tabs in the OS X Finder by using a specific trick or by changing the default window behavior. We’ll cover both methods, so you can use whichever is most appropriate for your situations.

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By Paul Horowitz - Mac OS, Tips & Tricks - 20 Comments

iPhoto Thumbnails Not Showing Up? Here’s How to Fix That in Mac OS X

May 27, 2014 - 4 Comments

iPhoto thumbnails missing and a fix Many Mac users rely on iPhoto for their image management and to pull pictures from a digital camera, an iPhone, or Android, a generally flawless experience that makes handling tons of digital pictures easy. But once in a blue moon iPhoto goes awry and you may experience a variety of peculiarities with the image database, the most common of which seems to be the sporadic disappearance of photo thumbnails that typically display in the iPhoto apps browser.

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Recursively Create a Nested Directory Structure & All Subfolders with a Single Command

May 27, 2014 - 10 Comments

Create a nested directory structure with mkdir command Creating a series of nested directories within one another can be done instantly through the command line. This makes it very easy to immediately and recursively create a complex directory structure of folders within subfolders of subfolders, without having to navigate manually into each directory to create a new directory, then navigate again to that subdirectory to create yet another directory, and so on. Instead, a command line trick will create the complete intermediate directory path in one fell swoop.

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By Paul Horowitz - Command Line, Tips & Tricks - 10 Comments

How to Stop iTunes AutoFilling Unwanted Music Onto an iPhone / iPod touch / iPad

May 26, 2014 - 19 Comments

Stop Unwanted Music Autofill in iTunes to iOS

Have you ever wanted to just copy a song or two over to your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad from iTunes, only to have iTunes try to sync a whole barrage of unwanted music to the iOS device? That happens due to iTunes AutoFill, a feature that some users may enjoy as it will fill up an iOS device automatically with music, but it can be very annoying if you just want to manually add a few songs over yourself without having a whole set go along with it.

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By Paul Horowitz - iPad, iPhone, iTunes, Tips & Tricks - 19 Comments

9 Wildly Colored Galactic HD Wallpapers at 2048×2048 Resolution

May 25, 2014 - 5 Comments

Space ish wallpapers

Bored with your current wallpaper? Why not spruce up your home screen or desktop picture background with one of these four seven nine (added a few more per request) galactic-ish crazy colored abstract spacey-themed images?

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By Paul Horowitz - Customize - 5 Comments

Mac Setups: Quad Display Mac & PC Cyber Security Pro Workstation

May 25, 2014 - 25 Comments

MacBook Pro Cyber Security professional setup

This weeks featured Mac setup comes to us from Larry H, a Cyber Security pro who a combined Mac and Windows PC setup to make quite a workstation. Let’s jump in and learn a bit more…

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By OSXDaily - Mac Setups - 25 Comments

Remove Color Filters from Photos in iOS to Restore the Original Image

May 24, 2014 - 6 Comments

Restoring an unfiltered original image in iOS Photos app

Both the actively applied Camera filters and the later added Photos apps based color filtering in iOS can add some nice stylizing effects to pictures, helping to give them a unique look, but if you decide you’re no longer wanting an image to be filtered through a crazy color lens, you can actually easily remove the filter from the picture and restore it to the original untouched version.

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By Paul Horowitz - iPad, iPhone, Tips & Tricks - 6 Comments

Create ASCII Art Text Banners at the Command Line

May 23, 2014 - 9 Comments

ASCII art text banner

Graphics and large stylized text blocks constructed entirely out of the ASCII keyboard characters is called ASCII art. You may have seen it with the goofy ASCII Star Wars thing, but once upon a time it was very popular to stylize messages and images on BBS’s, IRC, MUDs, message boards, and across the early days of the internet in general, it has since largely fallen out of favor to, well, actual graphics and images. Nonetheless, the command line in Mac OS X provides a retro-throwback with it’s very own ASCII art banner creator, appropriately called ‘banner’.

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By Paul Horowitz - Command Line, Mac OS, Retro - 9 Comments

Instantly Eject All Mounted Drives & Disks from the Command Line in Mac OS X

May 22, 2014 - 18 Comments

Eject all mounted volumes from the command line of Mac OS X The next time you’re at the command line and need to eject every single mounted volume, hard drive, disk, disk image, and/or external drive attached to a Mac, you can instantly eject them all in one fell swoop with a handy osascript command string. This is great if you work frequently in the Terminal and you’re wanting to quickly pack up a workstation and head out, but it’s also very useful for remotely managing Macs through an ssh connection, or adding to a shell script, amongst other potential uses.

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How Much Cellular Data Does iMessage Use? Here’s How to Find Out on iPhone

May 22, 2014 - 22 Comments

How much data does iMessage use? iMessage sends text messages, pictures, and movies over cellular data rather than through the traditional SMS and MMS protocols, but have you ever wondered just how much of an iPhone data plan all your iMessage use is consuming? It turns out that you can find this information through a somewhat buried location in iOS Settings, and if you’re on a bandwidth capped data plan it may offer some actionable data to work with if you regularly find yourself hitting the limits of your cellular plan.

You’ll be able to find this information on any iPhone or cellular equipped iPad running a modern iOS release, though most of us use iMessage primarily on iPhones, which is why we’re going to focus on that device.

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By Paul Horowitz - iPad, iPhone, Tips & Tricks - 22 Comments

5 iPhone Camera Tips to Make You a Better Photographer

May 21, 2014 - 5 Comments

iPhone camera tips

Many iPhone users rely entirely on the iPhone as their camera of choice, so why not take the best pictures possible? That’s what these Camera app tips are for, helping you snap better photos and making you a better photographer by taking advantage of some of the wonderful features that are built into the camera app.

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By Paul Horowitz - iPhone, Tips & Tricks - 5 Comments

How to Use the Port Scanner in Mac OS X Network Utility

May 20, 2014 - 20 Comments

Scan ports from a Mac

Mac OS X comes with a bundled port scanner tool, just one of a variety of features tucked into the ever useful Network Utility app. That means you don’t need to bother with the command line or install more advanced tools like nmap to quickly scan for open ports on a given IP or domain, instead you can do it all through the friendly graphical interface. Despite being a fairly advanced utility, it’s actually very easy to use.

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By Paul Horowitz - Mac OS, Tips & Tricks - 20 Comments

How to Set the iOS Calendar to Start on a Monday Instead of Sunday

May 20, 2014 - 5 Comments

Calendar icon The iPhone and iPad Calendar app defaults to starting a week on Sunday, which is the generally accepted standard of most US calendars. Meanwhile, some other nations start the calendar week on Monday, and some users just prefer to start the week on the first weekday of Monday rather than the weekend of Sunday anyway. Whatever your choice, you can customize the way the iOS Calendar displays so that the week starts on a day of your choice.

For the purpose of this walkthrough, we’re going to aim to start the calender week on a Monday since that is the most common alternative, but if your personal schedule calls for it, you can choose to start the week on any other day too (Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, whatever). This works the same in iOS on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
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By Paul Horowitz - iPad, iPhone, Tips & Tricks - 5 Comments

Generate a Random Number with Siri

May 19, 2014 - 6 Comments

Siri Many iPhone and iPad users know that Siri has a huge range of capabilities surrounding specific actions, but fewer know that Siri can also serve more obscure functions, like generating a random number for you. This is handled through Siri’s data connection through Wolfram Alpha, and it’s effective at truly randomizing integers similar to the virtual assistants ability to create a random password. So, the next time you need a random number for any particular purpose, pull out your iOS device and summon Siri to ask for such a thing.

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By Paul Horowitz - iPad, iPhone, Tips & Tricks - 6 Comments

How to Get a List of Purchased Apps Not Installed on iPhone or iPad

May 19, 2014 - 7 Comments

App Store Those of us who have been using an iPhone or iPad for a while have likely acquired a sizable amount of iOS apps through purchases, downloads, promos for temporarily free apps, and general promo code redemptions, many of which end up deleted or removed after the initial install. If you ever want to quickly see a list of every app that you own but don’t actually have installed on the current iPhone or iPad, you can do that through a great App Store trick which we’ll discuss here. Additionally, you can then go a step further and take action, choosing to download some or all those previously purchased or redeemed apps again to the current device, if you want to.

Remember, app downloads and purchases are tied to a specific Apple ID, so you’ll want to be sure you are logged in using the same account. This is also one of the many reasons why it’s important to use the same Apple ID for all of your iOS devices over the years.

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By Paul Horowitz - iPad, iPhone, Tips & Tricks - 7 Comments

How to Check Bluetooth Keyboard Battery Levels from Command Line on Mac OS X

May 18, 2014 - 11 Comments

Get Bluetooth battery life from the command line of Mac OS X

Ever needed to remotely check the battery level of a Bluetooth keyboard connected to a Mac? Or maybe you’re just a heavy Terminal user and wanted to see the current battery life of a wireless keyboard without having to leave the command line? You can do that easily through the Terminal of either a remote or local Mac.

It should be mentioned that most Mac users are best served checking their attached Bluetooth devices battery levels directly from the Bluetooth menu, but advanced users may find this command line approach to be appealing, even if for just specific use cases.

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See a “Flash Out-of-Date” Message in Safari on Mac? Here’s How to Fix That

May 17, 2014 - 20 Comments

Flash Out-of-Date in Safari for Mac OS X Mac users who primarily browse the web with Safari will eventually notice the “Flash out-of-date” message appearing somewhere in the browser. This happens because the Mac will intentionally disable the Flash player plugin when it has become outdated, preventing any potential security breaches from occurring. As you probably guessed, this just means you need to update the Adobe Flash Player plugin to the latest version, but many users have done just that (or think they have) and still find the “Flash out-of-date” message appearing all over Safari and around the web. That’s what we’re aiming to address here, properly installing the latest version of Flash to get the plugin working again in Safari and to resolve that error message.

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