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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Ever wondered where on earth your Mac hard drives disk space has gone to? There’s little reason to wonder, because Mac OS X has a very simple disk usage summary tool that that will show you exactly where drive capacity is being used, conveniently sorted into a variety of file types.

Looking at the storage summary panel is a helpful way to determine if a Mac is running low on drive space, to figure out what file type is consuming the space and give you an idea on how to free up space, and the panel can also be helpful for determining if an upgraded hard drive would be a worthwhile investment for the Mac.

This tutorial will detail how you can view a disk usage and storage summary on a Mac.

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Users of the Safari web browser in the iOS world probably already know that you can close a single browser tab with either a tap of the (X) button, or by swiping the tab away to the left of the screen on the iPhone or iPad. But what if you have a whole bunch of browser tabs open at once that you want to close all together? Rather than swiping each and every one of them away or tapping a bunch of close buttons, you can use a quick trick to ditch all open Safari tabs.
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Web browsers generally work fine on the Mac, but every once in a while Safari in OS X will misbehave in some way or another. The most common of these issues encountered are typically things like random pages inexplicably being inaccessible or displaying oddly, stale cache being delivered (in normal person terms, that means an old version of a web page loads rather than the newest version), persistent notification warnings and dialog boxes, slow scrolling, or even just generally sluggish performance that doesn’t seem to have a particularly obvious cause. That, amongst other things is what we’re looking to resolve.
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Mission Control is the excellent window management utility in OS X that lets you get a quick overview of everything you have open. While Mission Control has always been able to drag windows and apps between different virtual desktop Spaces, a new ability has been added to modern versions of OS X that allows Mac users with multiple monitor setups to gain the same drag & drop support between external displays too.

While you don’t need multiple screens to use the basic drag & drop between Spaces feature, but we’re focusing on that multi-screen setup usage here. This greatly improves multi-display window management and organization, and it makes it easier than ever to reassign apps and all their windows to another display, move an entire Desktop space to a different screen, or just send a single app window to another display if you’d prefer to do that too.
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Do you use the Safari browser and shop on the web often from a Mac with Mac? If so, you can greatly speed up your checkouts and online ordering by storing credit cards securely within Safari’s AutoFill Keychain.

This makes it possible to instantly autofill card information when ordering on any site, and if you keep your address details in Safari’s Autofill it can make checking out with online purchases extremely fast, even on new checkout forms. Credit card data is obviously fairly sensitive, and Apple uses 256-bit AES encryption to keep the information secure. Additionally, you’ll still need to enter the cards security code (that number on the back) to complete a checkout.

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Twitter has long had integration into iOS and OS X, from being able to post new tweets or share various things through the service, but Siri is getting even more tweet-happy in the latest versions of iOS. Using a few simple commands, you can check the hoard consensus on any topic by just asking Siri. There are a few ways to use this, though to get the best results you’ll want to be fairly specific in your requests.
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Apple has released the third developer beta of iOS 7.1 to those registered with the iOS Dev program, several weeks after the prior build. As usual with Apple betas, the focus is on improvements to bugs and other feature enhancements.

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If your iPhone voicemail box gets hit up constantly and you actually listen to the messages, each voicemail message gets downloaded locally to the iPhone and takes up some storage space. For most users, this is usually an inconsequential amount of data ranging from 5MB-100MB, but for those who send a lot of calls directly to voicemail and have tons of locally stored messages, or whose message leavers dump a 15 minutes rant onto your voicemail, you may find the size to become a nuisance. Fortunately, it’s easy to clear out voicemail from the iPhone either with a single message or with multiple at a time, so whether you just want to declutter the iPhone a bit, lose that lengthy weirdo message someone left on your phone, or simply restore some additional storage capacity, you’ll find it just takes a moment or two to complete.

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Mac users in higher security risk situations may wish to enable an optional firmware password on their machines,which offers an advanced level of protection. In short, a firmware password is a lower level layer of security that is set on the actual Mac logicboards firmware, rather than at the software layer like FileVault encryption or the standard login password. The result of setting an EFI password is that a Mac can not be booted from an external boot volume, single user mode, or target disk mode, and it also prevents resetting of PRAM and the ability to boot into Safe Mode, without logging in through the firmware password first. This effectively prevents a wide variety of methods that could potentially be used to compromise a Mac, and offers exceptional security for users who require such protection.

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Assistive Devices and Assistive Apps are applications and accessories which can control parts of the Mac and MacOS beyond the normal scope of app limits. While it’s primarily thought of as an Accessibility feature, it’s also commonly uses for general apps too, ranging from screen sharing functions, to apps that require microphone access, to even web browsers and many popular games. Because of it’s widespread usage
many users may need to enable assistive devices and apps, but what was once called “Assistive Devices” and controlled within the Universal Access / Accessibility control panel has since moved to a new generalized location in MacOS.
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This weeks featured desk setup belongs to Krishna Sadasivam, a sequential artist, designer, and illustrator, who uses his Apple and Mac gear to create awesome comics, digital illustrations, and cartoons. Let’s learn a bit more…
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Having recently went through the process of updating a handful of Macs to the latest versions of Mac OS X as part of a gifting tech support campaign, several Macs developed an odd flickering display problem that was only visible when an external monitor was connected to the Mac. On an 11″ MacBook Air, the screen flickers with any DVI or VGA display hooked up with the standard Min-iDisplayPort adapter, and displays only a white-black noise screen, like an ancient TV without an antenna. Meanwhile on a newer MacBook Pro, the problem exhibited as external display flickering with anything from DVI connections to HDMI, and with different brand monitors, but the screen would display properly just with a persistent randomized flicker. The video below demonstrates the MacBook Air flickering on and off with a noisy picture:
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Nearly all Mac users have a login and password required to access the Mac upon boot (and if you don’t, you should!), which provides a reasonable layer of password protection to keep out most prying eyes. Users with more advanced security needs may need to go further to protect their Mac from unauthorized access though, and because there are ways of resetting a Mac administrator password by using a variety of tricks, the simpler user login protections are not necessarily adequate for every user in higher security situations and at-risk environments.
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The wide variety of default iApps which come preinstalled on most Macs these days are all great applications, but if you don’t actually use them, they just take up disk space. Case in point are Garageband, iMovie, and iPhoto, three fantastic apps for making music, editing videos, and managing photos, but if you never use these apps then it may make sense to uninstall them, which can free up 5GB+ of disk space in the process. While 5GB may not sound like much for users with a huge 1TB internal disk drive, those running lower capacity SSD’s may find that 5GB of space better used for something else than unused apps.
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Mac OS X may come with plenty of great apps and utilities to get you started, but there are a few incredibly helpful utilities that are either missing or could be improved.

That’s what we’re focusing on here, with four of the most helpful third party utilities for Mac OS that everyone should have on their Mac, or at least review and consider. Best of all? They’re all free utilities!
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The Mac had a great year in 2013, with powerful new Macs on both the portable and desktop side, and the release of OS X Mavericks, which has been easily one of the best major updates to the Mac operating system in years. Here are thirteen of our favorite tip and tricks articles focusing on the Mac from the year past. From newbie tips to expert tricks, they may not have been the most popular but you’re sure to learn something new regardless of your knowledge level.

1. Preparing a Mac for Mavericks – a simple guide to get any Mac ready for a major OS update, be it Mavericks or anything else
2. Creating an OS X Mavericks installer drive with a USB flash key – a bootable install drive for Mavericks makes installing the update on several Macs super easy, without having to redownload the whole thing on each machine
3. How to clean install Mavericks – many users updated to Mavericks directly from older versions of OS X, but a clean install can be the preferred option for some advanced users
4. 6 of the best simple tips for OS X Mavericks – get started with some of the easiest yet most rewarding tricks on Mavericks
5. Downgrading OS X Mavericks – decided you don’t like Mavericks? You may be able to downgrade if you use Time Machine
6. 7 of the most useful command line tips for OS X – knowing how to use Terminal app can open the door for all sorts of powerful tricks
7. Customize the login screen wallpaper image in Mavericks – bored with the OS X Login window? You can customize it to your liking
8. Put the OS X Dock into the screen corner – pin the dock into the corner of the display to customize your Mac a bit
9. Schedule Do Not Disturb to be more productive – the Do Not Disturb feature arrives to Mac OS X with scheduling, allowing you to ignore all those pestering notifications for a set time
10. Find the best wi-fi channel to use – the Wireless Tool in OS X can help you quickly discover and optimize your local wifi router and network
11. Recover deleted files from a Mac – using a third party utility you can often recover files that have been removed from a Mac… but you must act quick for the best results
12. 5 tricks using the Command key to improve your workflow – that little Command key can really boost your OS X workflow
13. Must-know usages of the ‘cd’ command – nearly all command line users are familiar with ‘cd’, and these tricks can help you master the command and get around much faster than before

Did we forget something you found awesome? Let us know in the comments! Don’t forget to check out our 13 iOS tips roundups for 2013 while you’re at it!

2013 was a big year for iOS, seeing the release of several new iPads, iPhones, and perhaps most noticeable of all, iOS 7 and it’s dramatic interface overhaul. To wrap up the year, we’re going to offer a roundup of our thirteen favorite articles on iOS and it’s accompanying devices. No, these certainly weren’t the most popular articles published by OSXDaily, but because they’re mostly tips lists and collections, they’re all knowledge-packed with tons of information that is sure to teach everyone something new.

1. 4 essentials everyone should know when getting started with iOS 7 – while some of iOS 7 stayed the same, some of it looked very different… these are some absolute essential tricks to familiarize yourself with the new experience
2. 5 simple usability tips to improve iOS 7 – a few adjustments can go a long way in improving usability and readability, and that’s exactly what these tips aim to do
3. Make your own beautiful abstract wallpapers in iOS – a simple guide for using Camera app and Snapseed to make your own gorgeous wallpapers that look fantastic on all iOS devices
4. 6 tricks to speed up iOS 7 – if you felt that installing the new update slowed down your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, this is for you
5. 8 ways to increase the battery life of iOS 7 devices – sure the whizz-bang flashy eye candy features of iOS 7 look great, but they can also negatively effect battery life
6. Boosting the battery life of an iPad Air or iPad Mini Retina – the two new iPads launched this year can get a nice boost to their already impressive battery lives by toggling a few Settings adjustments
7. 10 tips for using iOS Mail smarter and faster – email can be a burden, but these tricks are practically guaranteed to make you more productive when emailing from the mobile world of iOS
8. Safari keyboard shortcuts for iOS devices with external keyboards – if you use a Bluetooth keyboard with an iPad, these are must-knows
9. The ultimate Siri commands list – did you know that Siri could do this much?
10. 95 funny Siri commands that are sure to make you laugh – keep entertained for hours by asking Siri a bunch of silly questions and commands, you’re sure to get a chuckle out of the responses
11. iOS 7 vs iOS 6 visual comparisons – just how big of a change was iOS 7? Compare many visual elements and apps between 7 and iOS 6 to get an idea
12. The iOS 7 Jailbreak from Evasi0n – a new version of iOS was followed by a new untethered jailbreak, for those interested in that sort of thing
13. Reasons why you should NOT jailbreak – not sure if you should bother with the jailbreak or not? These are good reasons to avoid it, and it’s particularly valid for those who are less tech savvy

Think we’re missing anything? Let us know in the comments. And don’t miss our 13 for 2013 Mac OS X tip roundup as well!