If you’ve ever wished there was a good network scanning utility for iOS you’ll be glad to find Fing. Fing is a free and powerful app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch that provides detailed network discovery and analysis tools right on your iDevice.
Capturing system audio on a Mac is not something that OS X has the native ability to be able to perform, but with the help of a great third party utility you can easily add that functionality to Mac OS X and any accompanying applications. This means you can capture and record audio output directly from anything that is playing on the Mac, whether that’s from apps like iTunes, Garageband, Spotify, or even just a web browser like Safari or Chrome.
iOS 6.1.3 is likely to patch the current Evasi0n jailbreak, one that has quickly become the most popular jailbreaking effort to reach Apple’s mobile iDevices, having run on over 7 million iPhones, iPads, and iPod touch. With information derived from the recently released developer build of iOS 6.1.3 beta 2, a member of the Evasi0n team, David Wang, discovered that Apple has patched at least one of the exploited bugs that allowed the jailbreak to function.
Speaking to Forbes in an interview:
Wang … analyzed the 6.1.3 beta 2 update and found that it patches at least one of the five bugs the jailbreak exploits, namely a flaw in the operating system’s time zone settings. The beta update likely signals the end of using evasi0n to hack new or updated devices after the update is released to users,
Wang mentions that with one such vulnerability patched, the jailbreak is likely to be rendered unusable, and goes on to speculate that all of the bugs that allowed for the Evasi0n jailbreak will probably be patched:
“If one of the vulnerabilities doesn’t work, evasi0n doesn’t work,” he says. “We could replace that part with a different vulnerability, but [Apple] will probably fix most if not all of the bugs we’ve used when 6.1.3 comes out.”
In short, this means if you enjoy the current Evasi0n jailbreak on any iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch running iOS 6.1.2 or earlier, you should avoid the iOS 6.1.3 update when it arrives in the near future. It’s entirely possible a new jailbreak will be released that gets around the patching, but in the meantime jailbreakers will find it safest to simply avoid the new iOS release entirely until it has been proven one way or another.
For those who don’t jailbreak, iOS 6.1.3 will likely be a minor update to include several bug fixes, including a patch for the bug that allows users to perform a series of actions to bypass a lock screen and gain access to a users contacts.
Apple started running a new TV commercial for the iPad during the Oscars. The spot is titled “Hollywood” and demonstrates both the iPad and iPad mini running various video applications aimed at videographers and producers. The new TV ad is embedded below:
Apps shown in the advertisement include iMovie, the iTunes Store, MovieSlate, 8mm, Action Movie FX, and Instant.
The ad follows the same rapid word ‘shout’ theme that was introduced with the two other recent iPad commercials, with the primary emphasis being on the Hollywood centric classic phrase of “Lights”, “Camera”, and “Action”.
These new ads seem to be rubbing some people the wrong way. Ken Segall, a creative director who had years of experience working with Apple’s advertising efforts in the past, suggests that Apple is now “battling” to keep up in the advertising department, saying “you can’t argue that Apple is still untouchable when it comes to advertising.“
For anyone who has taken an iPhone photo out in cold weather before, you know how chilly and uncomfortable it is to pull a warm glove off of your hands just so you can snap a quick picture of a nice snowy scene. That is usually necessary because the iPhone requires using the touch screen in order to launch the Camera app and then again to tap to take the photo. But that’s not necessarily the case, and you can leave your gloves on and keep your hands warm and still shoot pictures with the iPhone camera without ever touching the screen at all…
How? Just use Siri and the hardware volume buttons instead:
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The Apple TV is a great living room accessory, but many with media center and home theater PC experience prefer more powerful apps like Plex and XBMC for their additional features and broader video codec support. With XBMC you can play almost any video or audio format, access shared network drives for network playback, accept media streams from a LAN or the internet, install new user themes (skins), display weather and news information, and basically serve as a full fledged multimedia jukebox.
Thanks to the wonderful world of jailbreaking, you can now install the excellent free XBMC software on an Apple TV 2 running 5.2 (Apple TV 5.2 software shipped alongside iOS 6.1 for other idevices) and help to unleash the devices full potential as a home theater device. Getting it all up and running is slightly more complicated than your average jailbroken app installation process because there’s no Cydia, and you’ll be required to SSH into the ATV and then use a package manager to retrieve and install the appropriate XBMC files. But it’s really not too complicated, so follow along and you’ll be able to get it done in short order.
Requirements
Unfortunately, the Apple TV 3rd generation is not yet jailbroken and thus can not accept an installation of XBMC. Jailbreaking an Apple TV with Seas0nPass is very easy and fairly similar to the Evasi0n tool for mobile iOS devices, you’ll need to physically connect the Apple TV to a computer to perform the jailbreak. With base requirements met, you are ready to proceed.
This weeks great Mac workstation comes to us from Corey S., a professional videographer and photographer based out of Dallas, TX who uses a bunch of great Apple gear to get the job done. Studio hardware shown in this setup picture includes the following gear:
with Infinity 10″ subwoofer
The Fostex speakers are used for full sound reproduction, and it looks like there’s a few other pieces of hardware mixed in there alongside a couple of NHL hockey pucks and a nifty Death Star coaster. Great setup!
Keep your great Apple & Mac setup shots coming! Send us your own workstation pictures to osxdailycom@gmail.com, include a good picture or two, a brief list of the hardware – both Apple and otherwise, and don’t forget to mention what you use the gear for. All are welcome!
Have you ever wanted to block ads from showing up in apps on your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch like you can for web browsers on the desktop? Of course you have, and though you can block ads in Safari in iOS, you also can block ads from many apps by using a neat little network activity trick.
The type of ads this trick works to block within apps are those ads that hover over the display of many free apps and games, like what is shown at the top of this article.
Longtime command line users are probably familiar with the text based web browser lynx, which strips down the web to text-only format and allows for super-fast web browsing. But lynx (links, technically) can be compiled to support graphics and run within x11, which creates a highly effective web browser for low-bandwidth situations because it strips all formatting, css, javascript, flash, java, ads, and ajax from web sites, all you get is standard html with images, with everything loading lightning fast. Here is what the Google home page looks like in Lynx running in X11 with image support:
Apple has released the second developer beta of iOS 6.1.3, a minor point release to the mobile software suite that is said to include several bug fixes.
According to 9to5mac, the update features improvements to Apple Maps in Japan, and also addresses the lock screen bypass issue that was not resolved in the recently available iOS 6.1.2 update. The first beta of 6.1.3 only included the notes about Japan Maps enhancements, and thus the lock screen issue is a new addition to the developer build.
As usual with beta iOS software, the developer builds are only available to paying members of Apple’s official iOS Developer program at the Dev Center. Anyone can register for a free account, but beta releases are restricted to those paying yearly membership dues.
Adjusting the mouse pointer sizes on a Mac is a simple way to greatly improve accessibility for individuals with visual impairments. But it’s not the only reason to increase the size of the mouse pointer on the Mac screen, and there are other uses though, for example having a less dramatic difference with just a slightly larger cursor can be a nice way to ease locating the pointer on extra large screens or during presentations. Or you can go all the way and have a very large mouse cursor so that its’ extremely easy to find for anyone, which can be helpful for kids, some screen situations, and for users without perfect vision.
The latest versions of iPhoto (11+) and OS X (Mountain Lion+) support Photo Stream screen savers, this means you can have your Mac display a screen saver show that automatically updates the stream of photos based on pictures that are taken on the go with an iPhone, without ever having to manually copy pictures over to the computer or set them into folders like the old fashioned way..
Almost immediately after iOS 6.1.2 was released with a few bug fixes for the Microsoft Exchange data use problem, a new version of the Evasi0n jailbreak utility came out to handle any devices that were upgraded to 6.1.2. It’s still the same Evasi0n jailbreaking experience, untethered and all. Like prior versions of Evasion, the following devices running iOS 6.1.2 are supported: iPhone 5, iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad 2, iPad 3, iPad 4, and iPad mini, and the 4th and 5th generations of iPod touch.
Reading List is a great feature of Safari that syncs saved web pages between Safari on all of your Macs and iOS devices. This lets you save web pages to read later and works a lot like Pocket and Instapaper, except that it doesn’t require any additional downloads, toolbars, plugins, or third party apps in order to use, because it’s all built right into Safari in Mac OS X and iOS.
Though it may seem to directly compete with the likes of third party apps like Pocket, Reading List often works best as a temporary bookmark sharing service, letting you send and share links from one of your own devices to another and from computer to computer, without the cluttering of the actual Bookmarks menus with links and web pages you may only need to access once or twice. That is really it’s strong suite for many users, so keep that in mind when using Reading List, and don’t necessarily think of it as a Pocket/Instapaper replacement.
Fresh off the news that Macs at Apple’s corporate headquarters were hacked through (yet another) Java exploit, Apple has released an update for Java that closes that hole, and also disables Java on Macs that have not used the applet in over 30 days. The update is available to all OS X users running 10.7 or 10.8 who have either not manually uninstalled or disabled Java themselves.
Labeled as Java for OS X 2013-001, the update is available now through Software Update and is recommended for all Mac users to install as soon as possible:
The update is available through the Mac App Store for OS X Mountain Lion users.
Release notes accompanying the Java update are as follows:
Java for OS X 2013-001 delivers improved security, reliability, and compatibility by updating Java SE 6 to 1.6.0_41.
On systems that have not already installed Java for OS X 2012-006, this update disables the Java SE 6 applet plug-in. To use applets on a web page, click on the region labeled “Missing plug-in” to download the latest version of the Java applet plug-in from Oracle.
Please quit any web browsers and Java applications before installing this update.
The update is aimed to address the security exploit that was used against Apple, which was first reported by Reuters earlier today:
Apple Inc was recently attacked by hackers who infected the Macintosh computers of some employees, the company said on Tuesday in an unprecedented disclosure that described the widest known cyber attacks against Apple-made computers to date.
Unknown hackers infected the computers of some Apple workers when they visited a website for software developers that had been infected with malicious software. The malware had been designed to attack Mac computers, the company said in a statement provided to Reuters.
Other reports indicate the attack specifically created an open SSH connection on the targeted Macs, potentially allowing for remote access.
Java is frequently a source of malware and security problems on many computers, and it remains one of the few attack vectors that hackers can target Mac users through. Disabling Java system-wide and in web browsers is highly recommended for individuals who do not need it active either for development purposes or for access to certain banking websites. Those concerned about potential malware and trojans in OS X can read our article on some common sense tips to avoid infecting Macs.
iOS 6.1.2 has been released by Apple. The minor update to iOS includes a resolution for a battery drain bug that impacted users of Exchange servers which also caused excessive data usage, but does not fix the passcode bypass bug that exists in prior iOS 6 versions, which is instead targeted by an upcoming 6.1.3 update. The brief release notes mention only this for the 6.1.2 update:
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Activity Monitor and the traditional ‘kill’ command line tool are able to handle most process termination needs, but if you’ve ever needed to target and kill all processes belonging to a single user account, you know it can be a frustrating task. Though Activity Monitor allows you to sort “Other User Processes” and select multiple processes, it does not allow you to terminate multiple processes at the same time. Similarly, the standard kill and killall commands are generally aimed at specific processes, and not at every single task belonging to a specific user account. This is where the ‘pkill’ command comes in, which makes it simple to instantly kill every single process belonging to any user via the terminal.
You can post status updates and tweets to Facebook and Twitter by using nothing more than Siri. Why this may seem like a mere novelty at first, it’s actually extremely useful for situations where you’re occupied or can’t fiddle much with an iPhone, like when driving or running. Because you can summon Siri from the ear phones that come with all iOS devices, this lets you post to your social accounts hands free.
Before being able to post status updates to either social service, you’ll have to add or configure the appropriate accounts to iOS first. Once this is done, you’ll have access to Twitter and Facebook from Siri, and also from Notification Center.
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