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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Need to quickly toggle a system setting on your iPhone or iPad like Bluetooth or Wi-Fi on or off? Want to turn down the brightness of your iPhone without touching it? Now you can just summon Siri and ask your very own iOS personal assistant to change some of the most frequently accessed system settings within iOS for you.

Hold down the Home button to bring about Siri, then try the following commands to initiate these requests from Siri:
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When opening a new page in Safari for iOS, the first thing seen is the “Favorites” page, which is basically a collection of website recommendations and bookmarks. That Favorites page is what you see when you have no active pages open in both normal and private mode, and also what you see when you tap the [+] button to open a new webpage in Safari.

If you find yourself visiting certain websites often (you know, like this awesome one right here) then you can easily add a bookmark to that Favorites page, making for super quick access anytime you open Safari. You can also easily edit what’s on that favorites page, customizing it to include only the links you want to see and access. Making these simple customizations turns the Favorites page into a sort of web-specific home screen, and it’s easy to do.
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Gatekeeper is an application level security feature on the Mac that aims to prevent unauthorized and unidentified apps from being launched in Mac OS X, thereby preventing potential security problems like exploits or trojans from running on a Mac. The feature is most often encountered when an app has been downloaded from the web, and upon attempting to launch the app a warning dialog will prompt the user with a message saying something along the lines of “This app can’t be opened because it is from an unidentified developer“.

We’ve covered how you can get bypass that error message on a case-by-case basis by using the right-click “Open” trick, but the latest version of Mac OS X brings another option which may be easier for some users to selectively launch apps and bypass Gatekeeper. This is advantageous because users can continue to retain the strict security preference of leaving Gatekeeper enabled and intact, which is generally recommended.

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Many users of the Mail app in OS X Mavericks have experienced significant problems, ranging from severe issues like randomly deleting emails to entire inboxes, to not signifying if emails have been read, amongst a wide variety of other more minor but annoying problems with the Mail app. Some of the issues have been so bad or annoying that a fair amount of OS X users had to stop using the Mail app completely, seeking alternative solutions, particularly for Gmail, to work around the bugs. But that is no longer necessary, and if you’re a Mail app user you can comfortably use Gmail and Mail in OS X Mavericks again without having to deal with some of the bugs and quirks that plagued the initial release.

Getting the essential Mail update for Mavericks is done through the App Store:
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With FaceTime Audio, the iPhone can now make free VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) calls directly from the built-in phone or FaceTime app, without the need for any third party services or applications. This basically means you make phone calls to anywhere in the world for free, so long as the recipient of the call is also using an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or iPod touch, and are running a modern version of iOS that supports FaceTime Audio.

The audio call quality of FaceTime Audio is impressively clear and sounds much better than a standard cellular connection anyway, so even if you’re not looking to use this service as a long distance replacement, it can offer a significant improvement to general phone conversations as well.
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Finder Tabs are one of the better Mavericks improvements brought to the Mac OS X Finder in years, letting you use the file system in a single window view, with each open folder or directory path as it’s own unique tab.

Used properly, Finder Tabs will prevent the enormous amounts of window clutter that can occur unintentionally when navigating around the Mac file system and juggling a handful of different windows and locations, but if you find yourself overwhelmed with Finder window overload you can use the excellent Merge feature to gather all windows into a single Finder window with tabs.
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