Facebook recently began to auto-play videos that are contained within the news feed of the Facebook app for iOS (and presumably Android). Though the videos play without sound, that auto-play behavior can still greatly increase the iPhones cellular data usage due to the large size of video files as they are streamed to the device. Thus, most users who have data caps or who are without unlimited data plans will probably want to turn this feature off to conserve cell usage.
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Apple has crafted two new iPad Air ads based upon the original “Your Verse Anthem” TV commercial that started running recently. The new commercials are 30 second spots, with different imagery that centers around a theme of either light or sound, both of which feature shorter voice narration from the 80’s movie Dead Poet’s Society.
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The iPhone Home Screen has room for 20 app icons on the front page and four Dock icons across the bottom, with even more app spots available for the iPad. If that seems like 20 icons too many for you, using a little trick lets users create a completely blank home screen page in iOS, reducing the primary page to an empty screen that only shows the icons contained in the Dock. The result is a very minimalist home screen appearance for the first page which emphasizes the wallpaper, while no other apps will be visible until you swipe over to the other screen pages.
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The default subtitle text size for video playback can be fairly small in Mac OS X, and while it may be tolerable on a smaller screened device, once you send the Macs display it to a larger screen like a TV, it can be difficult to read. Fortunately, Mac OS X provides a lot of customization for subtitles, letting you change the font size, shadows, colors, and perhaps most important, the actual size of the captioned text. We’re going to focus on the latter, since the text size is usually what impacts readability of closed captioning the most. Whether you watch a lot of foreign films with subtitles, just want the text to be included with a video, or you use captioning for accessibility reasons, you’ll probably appreciate this change.
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Apple has released the 4th beta version of iOS 7.1 to those registered with the iOS Developer program. As usual with these updates, the release focuses on improving performance and refining features, resolving bugs, and making other adjustments to system functionality.

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Do you remember the original Time Machine backup animation of the slowly spinning green galaxy vortex? Triggered when a user entered Time Machine for backups, backup file management, or restoring files, the original animation was a snazzy space rendering that sort of looked like entering into a spinning black hole, shooting out stars and space dust, like the screenshot shown here.

Well, you can have that awesome space vortex as your screen saver on a Mac!
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Voice turn by turn navigation and directions are incredibly convenient and easily one of the best features of Apple Maps, but rather than fumbling around with your iPhone while driving, you can rely entirely on Siri. This makes turn-by-turn almost entirely hands free; you give Siri a voice command to start the directions, and then you get the exact navigation spoken to you through Siri as exits approach and roads change. Going further, you can use a dash mount and car charger to transform your iPhone into a dashboard mounted GPS navigator.

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It’s the weekend again, which means it’s time for another featured sweet Mac desk setup! This time we’re showing off the awesome workstation of Joey N., an IT Services Manager who uses plenty of Apple, Mac, and iOS gear for both professional and personal pursuits. Let’s get right to it and learn a bit more about the hardware and software used.
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The newest versions of Google Chrome have a fantastic feature addition that allow you to instantly see what open web browser tab or window is playing audio. That may seem ho-hum, but if you’ve ever gone on a wild goose chase trying to figure out which tab out of 50 million tabs is playing some video or music in the background, you’ll know how valuable this little improvement is since it can cut down the cumbersome process of manually going through various tabs and windows to find which tab or website is making sound.

And yes, this trick works to identify browsing tabs playing audio or video, any sound at all, on Chrome web browser for all platforms that support the browser, including Mac, Windows, and Linux.

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The Safari web browser for iOS provides for tremendous user control over how web cookies are handled on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, allowing users to choose to block all cookies, allow all cookies, or selectively block only third party tracking and advertiser cookies.
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The Mail compose window has long had an auto-complete function that lets you start typing a name or email address to see a list of suggestions for completing the contacts email. That list is based upon who you’ve email and also what contacts you have in your address book, but now with the newest versions of Mail app in OS X, you can access all your iCloud Contacts directly from the new message composer in a new way, with a searchable address book panel. Easy to use and even easier to overlook, here’s how to access the handy contacts list panel directly from a new email composition window, and how to get to full-time address book directly within the Mail app.

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Everyones favorite digital friend Siri can improve your music experience and song recollection by retrieving song lyrics for you. Whether you’re aiming for some spontaneous iPhone based Karaoke, looking to settle a dispute over what an artist is saying, wanting to add some lyrics to a song that is missing them, or just wondering what the lyrics to a given song are, Siri doesn’t care, anything goes.
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Though some of iOS 7’s appearance has become a matter of controversy, the one portion of the iOS facelift that is practically universally adored is the new, simplified, image-focused lock screen, which displays nothing but a clock and the date in minimally thin text overlaid against the devices wallpaper. It’s beautiful, and now thanks to a third party developer you can get that same gorgeously simple lock screen on your Mac through the usage of a free screen saver.
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Obviously the Weather app on iPhone will tell you temperatures and a five-day forecast, but the revised default iPhone Weather app can also provide additional weather information without having to ask Siri. This includes much more specific data, like humidity, the chance of rain, the wind speed and direction, and the current heat index.

You’d be forgiven for not knowing this upon first glance within the weather app though, because it’s either underneath other weather information, or it’s tucked away behind the initial temperature reading for any given location – depending on which version of iOS is on the iPhone you’re using. Not to worry, accessing the detailed weather info is simple though and we will show you how to get this data quickly.
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Many Mac users who come to the platform from the world of Windows have become accustomed to defragging their PC hard drives from time to time, and thus the inevitable question arrises: do you need to defragment a Macs hard drive? The answer is usually no, you don’t need to defrag a Mac as part of a maintenance routine. We’ll explain why that is the case, but there are exceptions to this and we’ll discuss those too for users who may benefit from defragging.

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Many of us use our iPhones for so many tasks that it’s easy to overlook some of the simpler functionality of the device, like making and ending phone calls. With that in mind, we’ve got a nice trick to hang up an active call faster, without having to touch the devices screen at all. It’s incredibly simple:

Hang up a call instantly by tapping the Sleep / Power button

Yes, the sleep/lock/power button at the top of the iPhone can also be used to hang up a call, without having to rely on touching the iPhone screen.
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This weeks featured Apple gear setup comes to us from Peter L., a professional music producer based in Manhattan. Let’s learn a bit about more about this pro studio setup, and what essential apps are used for both the OS X and iOS side of things.
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Apple has started to run a new iPad Air TV commercial that focuses on the devices creative potential, titled “Your Verse Anthem”. A vast assortment of beautiful and provocative imagery from around the world is displayed while a voiceover from Robin Williams plays in the background, quoting from a scene in the 1989 movie the Dead Poet’s Society. You can watch the full ad embedded below:
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