Apple surprised everyone when they announced that OS X Mavericks would be released for free to Mac users, and that download is now available from the Mac App Store.

Don’t forget to prepare your Mac for the Mavericks update, but if you’re impatient, at the very least you need to start a Time Machine backup manually before installing the OS X 10.9 update. This insures that your important documents and data will be backed up in the unusual event that something goes wrong during the updating and installation process.

When you’re ready and you have at least 8GB of hard disk space available, you can grab the download right from the App Store:

• Get OS X Mavericks right now from the Mac App Store (direct link)

Users can update compatible Macs directly from OS X Lion, OS X Mountain Lion, and even OS X Snow Leopard.
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Apple has released iOS 7.0.3 for iPhone, iPad, and IPod touch users. The update includes iCloud Keychain support, which syncs your login and password data between iOS and OS X devices, fixes problems with iMessage, and also includes many bug fixes, feature enhancements, and security updates. iPhone 5S users will find an update to the accelerometer which allows it to calibrate accurately as well. Full release notes are at the bottom of this article.

iOS 7.0.3 is versioned as build 11B511. As usual, it remains a good idea to back up your device before installing new software updates, and you can do so to iCloud or to a computer with iTunes.
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Apple has released a new iPad Mini with Retina display. Announced alongside the the new iPad Air, it shares much of the same impressive hardware internals and specs, but unlike the iPad Air, the iPad Mini Retina is slightly more expensive.

iPad Mini Retina Specs

• 7.9″ Retina display with a resolution of 2048×1536 pixels
• 326 PPI (pixels per inch) display
• A7 64 bit CPU
• 802.11n MIMO Wi-Fi
• 10 hour battery life

The Mini Retina has a higher screen PPI than the full sized iPad Air, but otherwise much of the hardware is the same.

iPad Mini Retina Prices

• 16GB – $399
• 32GB – $499
• 64GB – $599
• 128GB – $699

As usual, LTE cellular models are available in each size at an additional $129.

iPad Mini Retina Release Date Scheduled for “Late November”

Apple has announced the new iPad Mini Retina will be released sometime in “Late November”, and though it’s unspecific, it should be available in time for the holiday shopping season. The full sized iPad Air is coming earlier, on November 1.

The original iPad Mini also sticks around at a slight price drop to $299, but the screen quality and performance is considerably lacking when compared to the new iPad Mini Retina model, and thus we think just about everyone who prefers the 7.9″ display should opt for the new Retina model, despite the price increase.

Apple has announced the all new iPad, and rather than naming it iPad 5, it has been renamed to iPad Air. Featuring a thinner screen bezel, a 20% thinner unibody aluminum enclosure, and as the iPad Air name suggests, it’s quite a bit lighter in weight tipping in at barely one pound.

iPad Air Specs

• 9.7″ Retina display
• A7 64 bit CPU
• M7 motion processor
• 5MP iSight camera
• 1080p HD video
• FaceTime HD camera
• Dual microphones
• 10 hour battery life
• 802.11n MIMO Wi-Fi, optional LTE model
• 1lbs weight

iPad Air is available in two different color options, a silver and white option, or a space grey and black model.

iPad Air Pricing

iPad Air pricing is consistent with prior iPad models:

• 16GB Wi-Fi model – $499
• 16GB LTE model – $629
• 32GB – $599
• 64GB – $699

All models will be available in an optional LTE version for an additional $129.

iPad Air Release Date Set for November 1

The iPad Air will be released on November 1 in a wide variety of countries, including the USA, much of Europe, and China.

Also still in the line up is the iPad 2, available at $399, but it would be hard to recommend for most uses. The difference in performance specs is so considerable between the older iPad 2 model and the iPad Air that just about everyone should opt for the iPad Air model, which will not only have a much longer shelf life, but also significantly improved performance. Also available starting at $399 is the all new iPad Mini Retina, which features much of the same hardware as the full sized iPad Air, but with a smaller display and enclosure.

Apple has announced the features, hardware specs, release date, and pricing details for the highly anticipated new Mac Pro. The new Mac Pro won’t come cheap, but the machine is an absolute beast of a workhorse aimed at the professional market. The base hardware configuration is as follows:

• Intel Xeon E5 CPU’s 3.7GHz Quad Core base, up to 12 cores as optional upgrade
• Up to 30MB of L3 Cache
• 12GB RAM on base mode, up to 64GB of RAM
• Dual workstation AMD FirePro GPU’s with 2GB VRAM each, up to 12GB of VRAM
• All SSD Flash based storage, 128GB, with up to 1TB of optional flash storage
• Supports up to three 4k displays
• Ships with OS X Mavericks
• Price starts at $2999
• Release set for December

All of that is fit in a tiny enclosure that runs very quietly, apparently producing the same fan noise as a Mac Mini. Also interesting to some will be that the new Mac Pro is built entirely in the USA.

Unlike the immediate release of OS X Mavericks and the MacBook Pro updates, the Mac Pro will arrive later in the year sometime in December. A precise release date was not named.

You can read more about the new Mac Pro at Apple.com.

Update: OS X Mavericks is now available as a free download, you can get it from the Mac App Store. Here is how to make an install drive with it.

Apple has announced that OS X Mavericks will be released today, October 22. OS X Mavericks is the next major release of the Mac operating system, and includes over 200 features and enhancements for the Mac, with significant improvements to power management and memory efficiency.
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You can show the precise last time a specific file was opened, an app was launched, or folder was accessed on a Mac, and the information is visible directly in the OS X Finder. There are actually two simple ways to see this file access information, and both are equally useful though as you’ll see they’re best used for slightly different purposes.

Knowing the last file access time is useful for so many reasons, whether it’s determining the usage history of a file for your own purposes, or perhaps for more mildly forensic intentions, to help figure out more details about someone using a Mac and the specific access times of a file or app that was in use. Because it shows the date and time information, this goes beyond the Recent Items list trick which simply shows what files were opened.
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Apple has started airing the first iPhone 5S commercial, titled “Metal Mastered”. The TV ad focuses on the 5S’s optional gold color, as well as the fingerprint based TouchID sensor. The commercial shows liquid gold pouring into the shape of the iPhone 5S casing, which is then unlocked with a finger to display the iOS 7 home screen. Overall the theme is similar to the liquid plastic iPhone 5C ad that has been running for a while now.
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OS X Mavericks is the newest major operating system release for Mac users, versioned as OS X 10.9, and it’s now available as a free download. Packed with over 200 new feature enhancements and refinements, it includes some very handy new features that will make a lot of Mac users happy, ranging from Finder tags, to tabbed Finder windows, to improved battery life and power management. It’s a great release of OS X and all users that can update their Macs should do so, and that’s what we’re going to help you with; preparing your Mac for the OS X Mavericks update.
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Private Browsing is an optional Safari browsing mode that causes no data from the browsing session to be saved, this means no cache files, cookies, or browsing history will be stored or collected in iOS, making for a fairly anonymous session on the client side.

Using Safari Private Browsing is a popular browsing choice for a wide variety of reasons, and it’s now easier to use on every iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, because you can now toggle the setting on directly in Safari, and without losing all existing Safari browser pages. This offers considerable improvements over what existed previously, but like much of iOS post the major overhaul, it can be confusing to find until it has been pointed out to you.

Using the Private Browsing option in Safari with iOS 14, iOS 13, iOS 12, iOS 11, iOS 10, iOS 9, iOS 7, and iOS 8 (or newer) is very easy, and the feature works the same on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This tutorial will demonstrate how to use this great feature.

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Many have noticed that iOS 7’s overall appearance is largely dependent on the devices wallpaper, and a good or bad wallpaper can make or break the look of things along with general usability, particularly for the home screen. It turns out that some of the best looking wallpapers on iOS 7 are very abstract, multicolored, blurry images, and that’s what we’re going to focus on making here. I’ve sort of perfected a quick formula for creating nice wallpapers in iOS 7 directly on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, using an excellent free photo editing app called Snapseed. Snapseed is really great at making very nice professional looking photo adjustments on the go, but we’re going to use it to go the other direction; make a bad photo look even worse, thus creating an abstract blurred image that actually makes an excellent wallpaper.

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The iPhone now displays a small contact photo thumbnail alongside contacts in the “Favorites” section of the phone app. This certainly looks nice if you have a lot of custom pictures set for contacts, but having a bunch of goofy contact photos can look unprofessional in some environments, and for users without a contact photo it will make a boring thumbnail based on their initials. Perhaps most problematic is the annoying side effect of truncating longer names, which is shown in the screen shot below.

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Getting comfortable with the command line is often just a matter of learning a few command tricks and finding uses for them, and we’re going to offer six handy tricks that you’re almost certain to find some use out of regardless of your skill level in the Terminal.

Read on, you’ll be downloading files, using a better directory listing, killing processes quicker, re-running prior commands as root, finding past commands, and creating new files on the fly in no time.

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A very welcome change has arrived to the Photos app post iOS 7 that allows you to easily view only videos taken with an iOS device, presenting them in an easy to view and share format. This is a huge improvement to past editions of Photos app, and the new sorting feature prevents you from having to scroll endlessly through a gigantic Camera Roll to see what’s a movie amongst a million pictures.

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Music bought from iTunes and stored in iCloud are part of the iTunes Match service, which basically lets you store all your songs and music in iCloud, and can then be streamed and downloaded to your iOS devices. By default, those songs are shown in the iOS app Music playlist with a little cloud icon next to them.

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Did you remove a file or folder from your Mac drive or an external drive, and now you need it back? Don’t freak out yet because there is some potentially good news; you may be able to recover the deleted files from the Mac with the help of a third party tool called DiskDrill.

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Apple has sent out press invitations confirming the previously rumored October 22 event date. According to AllThingsD, Apple will unveil a new iPad and iPad Mini model, and likely provide a release date for OS X Mavericks and the new Mac Pro.

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Anyone who downloads files from around the web, ftp, torrents, and elsewhere will eventually wind up with a lot of archive clutter sitting around on their Mac in the form of tons of zip, rar, sit, and other compressed file formats. This is because the default behavior is set for archives to maintain their existence even after their contents are extracted, a reasonable but conservative setting that can cause users to forget about the original archive file(s).

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