Have you ever wanted to initiate the screen saver of your Mac by hitting a keystroke combination? You’re not alone, and that’s what we’re going to show you how to do here. While Mac OS X does not include this feature by default, we’ll demonstrate how to create an Automator system service that will accomplish the same feat, activating the screen saver by a keyboard shortcut of your choosing.

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Apple has released iTunes 11.3, adding multiple improvements to the iTunes Extra feature. iTunes Extras often include behind-the-scenes video clips, short films, galleries, director commentary, and other related supplementals to primary iTunes content.

The primary change brought with iTunes 11.3 is to include iTunes Extras with any purchased HD movies at no additional cost.

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If you listen to iTunes Radio throughout the day on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, sooner or later one of those songs you heard is going to get stuck in your head. When that happens, or when you’re just simply curious about the music you’ve been listening to and want to hear a particular song again, you just need to visit the iTunes Radio History.

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Stickies is an app that creates floating notes that can sit on your Mac desktop, it’s been around on the Mac for ages and tends to sit quietly forgotten in the Applications folder of Mac OS X. Often the lack of Stickies usage is either due to not knowing the app exists, or just not knowing how useful it can be, and that’s why this little trick is so great; you can instantly generate a note from just about anything.

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You may already know that you can add stock ticker symbols to the Notification Center on the iPhone, but if you don’t feel like tapping around, another option is to retrieve information on markets and equities through Siri. That also means you can get detailed stock market data on prices, highs and lows, dividends, and more, not only an iPhone, as is the case with the notifications option, but also on an iPad or iPod touch.

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Apple has posted a new video to the web titled “Pride”, which shows the companies participation in the annual San Francisco Pride Parade. The event, which celebrates equality and diversity with an emphasis on LBGT rights, was attended by Apple CEO Tim Cook and thousands of other Apple employees. Each Apple employee wore t-shirts specifically made for the event, with a rainbow outlined variation of the Apple logo and the text “Pride” underneath.

The text accompanying the video says the following:
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OS X Yosemite Developer Preview 3 has been released by Apple to all developers running current beta builds of OS X Yosemite, the next major version of Mac OS. The new build number of OS X 10.10 beta is versioned as 14A283o and will run on all compatible Macs.

The simplest way for Mac developers to get OS X Yosemite Developer Preview 3 is to update through the Mac App Store, accessible from the  Apple menu > Software Update. The update weighs in around 1.1GB. Registered Mac developers can also choose to download the complete installer from the Mac Dev Center and App Store.

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Apple has released the third beta release of iOS 8 to those registered with the iOS Developer Program. All eligible iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices can install the beta 3 update immediately, which is versioned as build number 12a4318c.

The update is said to include numerous bug fixes and improvements, and marks another milestone towards the fall public release of iOS 8.

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If you’ve ever sent an email that you immediately realized wasn’t complete, contained errors, or, even worse, was to the wrong person, you know that feeling of dread. For Gmail users, an optional setting offers a layer of forgiveness to those situations, providing for the ability to recall a sent email if acted upon quickly. This is particularly great for those of us who use Gmail as the default email client for mail sent from web browsers.

Currently limited to web mail users only, the Gmail “Undo Send” feature is considered experimental by Google, but it works flawlessly to recall an erroneous email message.
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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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