Ready to restyle your desktop backgrounds and device wallpapers with something new? How about using one of these fancy 6 spaced out aurora style wallpapers? Offered in high resolution in a variety of color themes, you can look at your background and pretend you’re in Iceland or Alaska staring up at the night sky, watching the aurora borealis against the stars.

Each wallpaper is a 2500×2500 pixels, meaning they’re high enough resolution to look great on just about any size display you’re using, whether it’s an iPad, iPhone, MacBook, Android, or even a Windows PC.

Click on any image below to launch the full size into a new window:

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Most iPhone users spend a lot of time typing in Messages, the text messaging app native to iOS that sends iMessages between yourself and others. While the basic functionality is pretty straightforward, what’s perhaps a little less obvious is how to enter onto a new line when typing an iMessage without actually sending the message, or creating a line break, again without sending the message yet. The answer to this is right in front of us on the iOS Keyboard: the Return key.

This article will show you how to easily type line breaks and insert new lines into Messages on iPhone and iPad.

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Heading out to watch a fireworks show (it is the 4th of July you know) and plan to use your iPhone as your primary camera? Be sure to use these five tricks for taking the best possible fireworks pictures with your iPhone… it’s not quite a DSLR, but with some proper technique you can still capture great firework images with the iPhone.

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A variety of rumors, leaks, and dummy models have given us a very general idea of what iPhone 6 could look like when it’s launched this fall. But every visual rendition thus far has included some peculiar antenna lines on the back casing of the alleged iPhone 6, which many people concluded wasn’t particularly good looking.

Then a report from Nikkei surfaced, suggesting all current mockups of the next iPhone were overly crude, and those antenna gaps wouldn’t be visible in the final shipping version. That’s where these latest 3D renders come in, offering a new look at what iPhone 6 could potentially look like when it arrives in a few months, minus those fugly antenna gaps and lines. The result? An absolutely gorgeous iPhone that’s styled somewhere between the existing models and an iPad, with smooth lines, rounded edges, and an overall great look.

Check out the images below:

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The device Usage statistics shown in iOS Settings > General > Usage offer a quick look at how much capacity is available, actively being used by apps, and their respective data and caches. Similarly, usage data is also available to track app cellular data usage. Sometimes these usage statistics will appear blank though, showing a “No Data” message, and no amount of re-launching the Settings app seems to make a difference.

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The Terminal defaults to being a bunch of boring black on white text, and sure you can change the appearance to other themes, add colors, background images, opacity, transparencies, and other UI customizations, but what you really want is obviously a rainbow version of the cat command for input and output, right? Right, of course you want rainbow output, who wouldn’t want that?

That’s where the lolcat command line utility comes in, because lolcat is a concatenate utility that can serve as a very colorful cat replacement, or take any standard input and dump the output as a rainbow of text. Is this useful? Well, that’s up to you to decide, but it sure is fun and more lively looking.
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Most Mac users know that hitting the Command+W keyboard shortcut will close the currently active window, but with a slight modification and by adding an additional key press, you can close all windows in just about any Mac OS X app or the Mac Finder.

What is this super excellent keyboard shortcut for closing everything?

It’s easy to remember, just add Option to the traditional close shortcut making it this: Command + Option + W

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If you’ve ever reset an iPhone to factory default settings or restored a device to set it up as new, you may have run into this “Activation Error” message when going to set up the iPhone again. The accompanying message is somewhat vague and not particularly helpful, saying “Activation request could not be completed. If the problem persists, please contact customer care.” If you happen to be near an Apple Store then sure you can contact Customer Support or stop in to the Genius Bar to get past the Activation Error screen, but that’s not always practical. Fortunately, there are at least two other ways to get past the activation alert message and continue setting up the iPhone as usual.

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The photo-centric social network of Instagram has no shortage of amazing and inspiring pictures, but something that has probably bugged more people than just me is the inability to zoom in on images posted to the service. Many first-time instagram users try to ‘double-tap’ to zoom, which of course just “hearts'” the picture rather than zooming, and eventually they learn there is no way to zoom into photos on Instagram… well, natively at least.

That’s why this little trick is so cool, it uses a feature built into iOS to allow zooming into Instagram photos anyway, letting you see more details on your iPhone with a quick tap gesture.

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The Maps app in Mac OS X is a useful tool to pre-plan routes, generate map files for offline usage, send directions to an iPhone, and much more, but one critical cartographic component that’s missing by default from all Maps views is any sort of scale indicator, making it difficult to get an idea of how far one thing is from another.

But not to worry, the Maps app in Mac OS has Scale as an option, you just have to toggle it on for the scale (in feet and miles, or meters and kilometers) to be visible.

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College students interested in buying a Mac, iPad, or iPhone now have an added incentive to make the purchase before the 2014 school year begins, thanks to Apple’s annual “Back to School” promotion.

This year, Apple is offering a $100 Apple Store Gift Card with the purchase of a Mac, and a $50 gift card with the purchase of an iPhone or iPad. Additionally, students will receive the standard educational discount on the qualifying purchases, which is usually in the realm of $100 off for a Mac computer, and $30 discounted from an iPad, while the iPhone is not discounted. The promotion runs from July 1, 2014, through September 9, 2014. Current model Macs and iPads are rarely discounted much by Apple or resellers, making the Back to School promo a reasonably good deal for students to take advantage of.

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The recently released iOS 7.1.2 update from Apple can already be jailbroken with the assistance of the Pangu jailbreak utility. The tool continues to work to jailbreak any iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch capable of running iOS 7.1.2, without any modifications.

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Apple has released an update to OS X Mavericks, versioned as 10.9.4. The update brings several significant bug fixes and security updates, and is recommended to install for all Mac users running OS X Mavericks.

Notably, the OS X 10.9.4 update resolves a frustrating problem where a Mac would not automatically rejoin a trusted Wi-Fi network, despite being within signal range. A fix is also included to improve the reliability of waking from sleep, a problem that usually manifests itself by making a Mac feel unresponsive when the computer is asleep, frequently on MacBook laptops. The update also fixes an issue where the Apple logo would sometimes appear incorrectly during boot. Also included is Safari 7.0.5 and some other minor bug and security updates.

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iOS 7.1.2 has been released by Apple, available for all iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices that are compatible with iOS 7. The update includes multiple bug fixes and security updates, and is recommended for all users to install. Additionally, an update to Apple TV versioned as 6.2 is available.

The official release notes accompanying the download are quite short, listed below:
“• Improves iBeacon connectivity and stability
• Fixes a bug with data transfer for some 3rd party accessories, including bar code scanners
• Corrects an issue with data protection class of Mail attachments”

There are multiple ways to update and install iOS 7.1.2, OTA is usually the easiest, but users can also choose to update through iTunes automatically or with IPSW files.

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Apple has released a new TV commercial for the iPhone 5S called “Parenthood”. The advertisement is about a minute long and features adults using the iPhone 5S for a variety of parenting tasks, ranging from functioning as a baby monitor, a tooth brush aid, drawing assistant, as a remote control for home automation tasks, to using the built-in Flashlight to check for monsters under a childs bed in a particularly great scene, amongst many other tasks. The commercial is soundtracked to a soft song called “Life of Dreams” by artist Julie Doiron.

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The weekend is here and that means it’s time for another featured Mac setup! This week we’re bring you the workstation of Waleed, a student and video editor who likes to keep his desk fairly minimalist. Let’s jump in and learn a bit more about the hardware and how it gets put to use:

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The 1.1.0 version of Pangu Jailbreak for iOS 7.1.1 is now available for users interested in jailbreaking their compatible iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices. Basically, if the device can run iOS 7.1.1, it can be jailbroken with the Pangu tool using a fairly straightforward process from a Windows PC or Mac, and that’s what this tutorial will demonstrate.

Jailbreaking is certainly not for everyone and there are legitimate reasons not to do it, leaving the activity best reserved for advanced users who have a strong reason to jailbreak their devices, and preferably with some experience with the process. Be sure to understand the risks before attempting to perform this action with your own iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch hardware. This is not something to take lightly, and we think the average user should not jailbreak their devices.

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A new version of the Pangu jailbreak for iOS 7.1.1 and iOS 7.1.2 is now available on both Mac OS X and Windows. Versioned as Pangu 1.1.0, the update includes a bug fix to resolve a boot loop issue, and now has a complete English translation, making the jailbreak process considerably easier for users who do not read Chinese. The jailbreak remains untethered, meaning users do not need the assistance of a computer or application to reboot their devices.

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