We’re all incredibly reliant on our internet connections these days, but sometimes those connections aren’t so reliable. Whether it’s due to an ISP failure, a router being down, someone tripping over a cord somewhere, or whatever other occurrence, it can be frustrating to wait for a downed internet connection to come alive again. We’ve all known users who simply hit the “refresh” button on a web browser repeatedly to see when things revive, but there is a better way. Users who are comfortable with the command line can use a better solution, which utilizes the ping tool to detect an active internet connection and the text-to-speech say command to verbally announce when things are live again. Be sure to have the volume turned up on the Mac to use this.
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Apple has released the first iOS 7.1 beta to registered developers. The build arrives as 11D5099e, and is available for iPad Air, iPad Mini Retina, iPad 4, iPad 3, iPad 2, iPad mini 1, iPhone 5S, iPhone 5C, iPhone 5, iPhone 4S, and iPhone 4. The 5th gen iPod touch is the only supported iPod model. The iOS Dev Center labels the firmware downloads as model numbers, if uncertain, you can find out what model your device is by looking at the identification number located on the back of the device. Separately, the Apple TV also received a new beta build for developer testing.

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Newer versions of Mac OS brought significant improvements to multi-display support for Mac users who have their computer connected to an external screen or two.

One of the more helpful feature changes with multi-display support is the ability to access the Dock on any of the connected screens to a Mac through the use of a simple onscreen motion gesture trick. Learning this trick allows you to quickly show the Dock on any display connected to a Mac.

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File tagging on the Mac is part of Mac OS X, but those who have been using the Labels feature to help manage their files in prior versions of Mac OS X will notice it’s actually quite similar. Basically you ‘tag’ a file, and then it becomes associated with that tag, allowing for easy file sorting, searching, and management. Tagging is easy to use, and what are likely the two simplest ways to tag files are during the file saving process, which we discussed with some other basic Mavericks tips here, and also with the hugely useful drag & drop trick, which we’ll cover next.

Drag & drop tagging may be the single best way to use tags from the Finder, because not only can you tag a single file just by dropping it onto the tag you wish to assign, but it allows for rapid batch tagging of huge groups of files and folders with the same trick.
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This weeks awesome Mac setup comes to us from visual designer and Apple lover Mirko S. With a great looking desk and a very nice Macintosh configuration, here is the Apple gear and a few app recommendations that Mirko is using for his work, and why:
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It seems that an “Unable to Verify Update” error message arrives at random for some users with just about every single iOS software update, perhaps unsurprisingly, the problem has resurfaced for some when trying to download and install the recent 9.3, 7.0.4, and various other iOS updates. The error seems to be exclusive to using OTA (Over-The-Air) updates, and sometimes it reports an improper iOS version as being available, or tell you that an update “failed verification because you are no longer connected to the Internet” – despite having an active entirely functioning wi-fi connection. If you happen to encounter this error when trying to download and install any iOS update, you’ll be able to fix it in a minute or two using one of these tips outlined below.
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Many advanced users prefer to use firmware files when updating their iOS devices to the latest version, and every time an iOS update comes out we post direct download links for the latest versions. Every once in a while we get questions from users who wonder how we find those file links, since they’re tucked away on Apple’s download servers, seemingly hidden from the public view. Well, there isn’t any magic to this and it’s easily done through the command line with a simple trick that pulls a full list of IPSW files that are available directly from Apple. At it’s most basic form it lists literally everything, but with some minor changes to the command syntax you can sort for specific iOS versions or for files that match a specific piece of hardware.

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The Dock received a visual overhaul in OS X Mavericks which defaults to removing a minor transparency effect. It’s a subtle change that many users won’t even notice, but the difference is that now the content of windows, images, and items moved below/behind the Dock are no longer visible through what looks like a frosty window. With Mavericks, the frosty effect is stronger and there is no transparency at all, so anything behind the Dock becomes invisible.

Some users won’t care about this or even notice the difference, but for those who prefer the old look of a slightly transparent Dock or who use the auto-hiding Dock feature, it can make for a pleasant if not minor change. You should have some comfort with the command line to do this.
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iOS 7.0.4 has been released by Apple for compatible iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch models, with a build of 11B554a. The update includes several bug fixes and improvements, and addresses an issue with FaceTime calling that caused video chat and voice calls to fail continuously under some circumstances. Other small feature changes may be present, but have not been specifically mentioned or discovered yet.

The iOS 7.0.4 update is small but users are still advised to backup their iOS devices to iCloud or iTunes, if not both, before installing the update on their respective hardware. The update is available for iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPhone 5S, iPhone 5C, iPad 2, iPad 3, iPad 4, iPad Air, iPad Mini, Retina iPad Mini, and the iPod touch 5th gen. Additionally, iOS 6.1.5 is available for the iPod touch 4th gen, which resolves the same FaceTime issues for that device.
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Many Mac users running OS X Yosemite and OS X Mavericks have noticed the purge command, which forces memory cache to be emptied as if it a computer was rebooted, throws an error when attempting to run through Terminal in OS X 10.9 or newer. In most cases that error message is “Unable to purge disk buffers: Operation not permitted”. This does not indicate that purge no longer works in Mavericks, it simply requires super user privileges to execute properly in the latest versions of Mac OS X.
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Want to see the weather for multiple locations at once on a single screen, without having to flip between locations in the Weather app of iPhone?

This is simple on the iPhone since modern iOS updates, and with holidays, summer, or ski season approaching for the northern or southern hemisphere it should be an increasingly popular trick to use when planning trips through various climatic zones.

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Finder is the file manager in OS X, and it’s actually one of the oldest components of the Mac operating system, having been around since the earliest days of Mac OS. Despite it’s long history, many users who have upgraded to OS X Mavericks have discovered some peculiar behavior with Finder, where it can become extremely sluggish and slow doing when in use, even when doing just about anything. With some minor investigation through Activity Monitor, it’s typical to discover that the Finder process is pegging CPU, sitting somewhere between 80% to 200% – again, Finder is seemingly doing nothing strenuous or out of the ordinary.

Having encountered this problem on several Macs that have been upgraded to 10.9 from 10.7 and 10.8 (it has yet to occur on a clean install of Mavericks for what it’s worth), a fairly reliable solution has been found to resolve the high CPU usage and speed issues with Mavericks Finder: trashing the plist file and forcing it to rebuild.
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Notification Center in Mac OS X sends a little pop-up alert in the corner of the screen when an event occurs. These are often in the form of a reminder originally made on an iPhone, a new inbound iMessage, a persistent software update or twenty, new emails, almost anything really. While obviously useful for many occasions, they can also quickly become a complete nuisance as they start to dominate a portion of your Macs screen.

There are a few solutions to the nonstop nagging notifications problems in Mac OS X; you can selectively ignore notifications as they come in, you can temporarily disable the feature for 24 hours by option+clicking the Notifications icon, or you can go all out and disable notification center completely, which is obviously a bit more extreme. Fortunately, modern MacOS releases from Mac OS X Mavericks onward include an excellent new option, borrowing from the Do Not Disturb feature of iOS and allowing a defined schedule to be set for when notifications and alerts are hidden, and when they are allowed.

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The iPad Air has a great battery life which is said to last up to 10 hours of continuous use, but like many other devices that are running iOS 7, the battery life of the device can be maximized by adjusting a few settings accordingly. Some of these tricks will reduce eye candy and special effects throughout iOS, but if you’re more concerned about squeezing out the maximum battery life of a device rather than blinding light, zips, zooms, and background updates, you’ll find the trade-offs to be well worth it.
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A full featured Apple Maps app is now bundled on all Macs running modern versions of Mac OS. Most people will probably use Maps to get directions and cruise around the globe for virtual tours, but there’s an excellent little feature that allows you to export any regions map as a PDF file.

This is useful for learning new locations, teaching geography, or my personal favorite, for travel planning. If you’re expecting to visit somewhere where there is limited or no cell reception, you can plan ahead and not worry about the mapping or cellular service situation by creating PDF maps on a Mac for the area and storing them on an iOS device.
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Just about every web developer or designer is familiar with Google Chrome’s Developer Tools, which allows for easy browser based debugging, tweaking, and adjusting of web pages and web applications. Those who live in web browsers and text editors know just how useful DevTools is, and with the help of a third party Chrome extension you can make Chrome an even better development tool by adding a Terminal to the existing array of developer tools. Yes, a terminal like Terminal.app, for super quick command line tweaks and adjustments, without ever leaving the Chrome browser.

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The latest versions of Safari in iOS support new keyboard shortcuts to help speed up web browsing and general web navigation for iPad and iPhone users that have external keyboards attached to their devices. Those who have memorized the keyboard shortcuts for Safari on the Mac will find these to be identical to their Mac OS X functions, except they’re in the highly mobile iOS world.

These will be primarily useful for an iPad with an external keyboard connected through Bluetooth or a keyboard case, but technically they’d work with an iPhone or iPod touch that has been connected to a secondary keyboard as well, if you happen to use a much smaller screened setup. Requirements are fairly straight forward, needing a modern iOS release, and one must have a physical keyboard synced to the device for the keystrokes to be available, as the onscreen virtual keyboard does not (yet) offer this type of functionality.

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Yes, back by popular demand are Mac Setups posts! After a lengthy multi-month hiatus, we are going to start covering weekly Mac and Apple setup posts again, so get your desks ready, cameras out, answer a few questions about what you do, and send us your submissions!

To kick things off again, we’re starting with the nice and clean desk setup of Jason B., an ICT Projects Manager who relies on his iMac to get the job done. Hardware shown on this desk includes:
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