You are looking at a mockup of what the iPad 5 (right) will almost certainly look like. Side-by-side with the existing iPad (left), it’s slightly smaller with thinner bezels on the sides, and basically looks like a 10″ version of the iPad Mini.
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Siri has impressive comprehension but isn’t always perfect, and sometimes Siri can just misunderstand something or have a hard time with the spelling of certain words and names. If you find that Siri has made a mistake understanding what you’ve said, or if you just want to correct or change the question or command you asked of Siri, you can do that easily by editing the query text directly at the Siri screen:
You can modify the query text to whatever you want, but it’s really most appropriate for when a misunderstanding has taken place. The example below demonstrates adjusting the text on a weather inquiry:
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Between Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Canary builds, Opera, and the myriad of other apps, juggling between web browsers can be a pain. This is even more exaggerated since every browser wants to set itself as the default, and then, to go about changing the default web browser after the fact, you have to open Safari and dig around in it’s preferences even if you don’t want to use Safari. Frustrating right? If you feel that pain, Objektiv is for you, it’s a free app that makes switching between default web browsers in OS X extremely easy.
Objektiv gathers all browser apps on the Mac to reside as a menu bar item that makes managing the default extremely easy. That menu bar icon changes depending on which browser is currently set as the default. Then to switch between them, just pull down the menu item and select which browser you want to become the default, or use the accompanying hot-key keyboard shortcuts to instantly switch to a new default browser. There’s even an option to use a Command+Tab-style manager exclusively for web browsers, letting you quickly jump between them as necessary. It’s quick, out of the way, and so much faster than using each apps nag feature or poking in Safari’s preferences every time you need to swap.
For developers, designers, researchers, or anyone who does a decent amount of work in various web browsers, Objektiv is a must have app. It’s free, lightweight, and easy to use. Grab it, you’ll be happy you did.
Oh one quirk: however it decides which apps are web browsers isn’t always accurate. In testing, Objektiv identified and added Evernote and mPlayerX as browsers, which they obviously aren’t. To toss out any false positives, hold down the “Option / ALT” key and select items in the menu to yank them out of the Objektiv drop down.
Thanks to Yohannes for the heads up
The iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch make excellent digital readers, and the iBooks apps is where most people will spend their time reading books on the iOS platform. iBooks is deceptively simple though, and though it works great on it’s own, taking the time to learn a few things and adjust a few simple settings can make a world of difference in the readability of ebooks or anything else in your digital library. With that in mind, here are 5 simple tricks to get a better reading experience in iOS with the iBooks app.
Archive Utility is the little system app that launches anytime an archive needs to be dealt with by OS X, usually it launches itself, extracts a zip, sit, tar, gz, or whatever other archive file, then quits on it’s own. Lately there’s been widespread reports of weird problems with Archive Utility though, where a zip or any other archive file will not decompress, instead the Archive Utility app will just stop working completely, spinning itself into oblivion before freezing or crashing. Relaunching it just causes it to crash again. Annoying, but don’t worry, there’s an easy solution!
Those familiar with the command line know that running things with super user privileges is typically just a matter of using the sudo command. That still holds true with launching GUI apps into the OS X with root privileges, but it’s not just a matter of prepending sudo to the otherwise useful open command, because ‘open’ launches apps as the original user, with or without sudo. The solution instead is to use sudo pointing directly at the executable contained within a given applications package file.
The command syntax is as follows:
sudo /Path/To/Application/ApplicationName.app/Path/To/Executable
In most cases, that will be applications stored in the /Applications/ directory, and the executable is almost always stored in Package/Contents/MacOS/ as whatever the applications name is:
sudo /Applications/ApplicationName.app/Contents/MacOS/ApplicationName
For example, this command runs the familiar TextEdit app as root:
sudo /Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit
To launch TextEdit as a background app, meaning it wont close if you close the terminal window, apply the -b flag to sudo:
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We’ve shown you many of the great and legitimately useful things you can do with Siri, but there is much more to the intelligent voice assistant than meets the eye. Sure you can wing it to find out what Siri can do, but a better solution is to ask Siri directly… and it’ll tell you with a giant commands list!
The standard terminal appearance is just boring old black text on a white background. Apple included a few nice preset themes too, but to really make your terminals appearance stand out you’ll want to take the time to customize it yourself. While some of these tweaks are admittedly pure eye candy, others genuinely improve the command line experience and make using the terminal not only more attractive but easier to scan.
Follow along and try them all, or just pick and choose which makes the most sense for you.
A new contextual menu feature available in the OS X Finder make sending files out from a Mac faster than ever before, and perhaps even better, this trick can be used to send a file or document to multiple client recipients, be they on nearby Macs and iPads, or far away iPhones and iPod touches. The only requirement for the sender and the recipient is for iMessage to be set up on their device, which these days just about every OS X and iOS has.
This is best used for images, smaller documents, PDF’s, and the like, and any large files should probably be transferred between Macs using traditional networking or with AirDrop. Because this uses iMessage, recipients in the PC world will not be able to get the file, you would need to use standard Windows file sharing instead. But for any receiver who is in the world of Apple, this is a great way to bulk send a document right from the file system.
From anywhere in the OS X Finder:
How long it takes to send depends on the speed of you and the recipients internet connections and the size of the file. Generally speaking, the smaller the file the better.
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The Evasi0n jailbreak utility has been released to provide and untethered jailbreak to all iOS 6 and iOS 6.1 devices. This is also the first jailbreak to be available for iPhone 5, making it a particularly exciting release for those who have been waiting for an iPhone 5 jailbreak.
Jailbreaking with the Evasion tool is surprisingly easy, but if you’re new to jailbroken devices and want to see how it goes we will walk through the process from start to finish. Additionally, we’ll cover a few common problems and troubleshooting solutions for some of the more frequently encountered issues.
Before beginning, you will need the following:
Most importantly, please take the time to back up the iOS device before beginning. This only takes a moment, and it allows you to restore from the backup in case something goes wrong, or if you want to undo the jailbreak without losing any of your personal data. To err on the completely safe side, you may want to manually back up to the computer with iTunes in addition to a remote backup with iCloud, guaranteeing a reliable backup is stored.
Once backed up, you are ready to start the jailbreak.
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The first iOS 6.1 untethered jailbreak has been released by a group known as The Evad3rs. The tool is called “Evasi0n” and runs on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux, allowing for any device running iOS 6.1 to be quickly jailbroken by following a few simple steps.
Those interested in Evasi0n will find the jailbreak compatible with iOS 6.1 running on iPhone 5, iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPod touch 4th & 5th gen, and apparently even works for iPad 3, iPad 4, and iPad Mini. iOS 6 is also supported on some devices.
Remember to backup to iTunes or to iCloud before proceeding.
Download links are courtesy of Evasion, more mirrors are available there if necessary:
Users will need a USB cable to connect the device to a computer and run through the initial jailbreaking process, despite Evasi0n being an untethered jailbreak. Once the jailbreak is complete, the untether means the iOS device can be rebooted freely away from a computer, without the need for boot assistance or ‘tethering’ to a PC running the original jailbreak app. That is what makes an untethered device more popular than a tethered release.
For those less familiar, jailbreaking unlocks Apple’s restrictions on iOS devices and allows for third party software to be installed on them without going just through Apple’s App Store. Once a device is jailbroken, a third party app market known as Cydia becomes available, where unique customizations can be found for things like lock screens, apps, and the addition of other features that are otherwise not possible. Jailbreaking is legal for iPhone devices, but there remains some unusual grey area technicalities for tablets like the iPad, and Apple does not approve of or sanction jailbreaking, which can lead to some difficulties trying to get such a device serviced. Whether or not running a jailbreak tool is worthwhile is entirely up to you, but they can be undone rather easily.
AirPlay and iTunes let you stream music to multiple devices simultaneously. This means you can have the same music playing on your desktop computer in sync with devices in other locations, like an iPhone or iPod touch connected to a speaker dock, an Apple TV in the living room, a media center running XBMC, or even another Mac or Windows PC elsewhere on the network, so long as that computer has an AirPlay receiver app running on it.
You will need the following to get started:
If you don’t have an AirPlay receiver like an Apple TV but still want to try this, consider downloading an app like Reflector or XBMC. Reflector has a free trial and allows for mirroring, and XBMC is free, functions as a full fledged media center, plus it works on Macs, Windows, Linux, Raspberry Pi’s, Android, and more. Either app will work for the purposes of functioning as an AirPlay receiver, and either will accept the music stream from iTunes.
For the most interesting results, have more AirPlay receivers available.
“Computer” is the local machine, keep that checked unless you don’t want the computer running iTunes to play music too. Other machines will be listed by their hardware ID or sharing names. Note that you can adjust the volume independently on each of the AirPlay receiving devices, meaning you don’t have to walk around to different rooms to adjust volume levels if you don’t want to, since the AirPlay feature of iTunes will let you control them all from a single location.
Music should play perfectly in sync everywhere, giving you a house-wide surround sound stereo system. If music is slightly off it will usually resolve itself fairly quickly, but sometimes bad wi-fi signals and connections will continue to have issues until an underlying network problem is addressed.
Everyone loves a good deal, and right now there are some particularly good deals on MacBook Pro Retina models available from Amazon. But if a brand new Mac isn’t in your immediate future, there’s also some pretty sweet discounts on existing SSD and RAM upgrades for MacBooks. Check them out…
Looking to buy a new Retina equipped MacBook Pro? You’re in luck, because Amazon is having some nice sales this weekend on Apple hardware, most notably the two base model Retina MacBook Pro’s are marked down by as much as 11%:
(11% off, normally $1699)
(9% off, normally $2199)The upper-end models are also marked down by 7%
if you’re in the market for either model with more disk space.
If you’d rather just upgrade an existing Mac, swapping a hard drive for an SSD and maxing out the RAM is always a good choice to gain some serious speed improvements. 16GB of RAM is offered at a huge discount and is a pretty amazing upgrade if your MacBook Pro supports it, and there two particularly good deals on popular SSD drives:
(28% off, usually $250
(34% off, normally $140
(normally $115)The SSD’s will fit just about any MacBook or MacBook Pro with a SATA 2.5″ drive bay, while the RAM is going to be limited to newer MacBook Pro’s that support 16GB. It’s always a good idea to double-check compatibility before buying and to run a RAM test after installing to make sure everything is A-OK.
As usual with Amazon, you get free shipping and some states don’t charge sales tax for online purchases, possibly making it an even better deal.
An unusual Mac bug has surfaced in OS X that causes any application to immediately crash just by typing a short character sequence.
The bug was first reported on OpenRadar and is thought to relate to the spell checking and autocorrection features, though the bug is also replicable in prior versions of Mac OS X suggesting that may not be the case.
If for some reason you want to try this out yourself, just type the following short string into any OS X app that has a text entry field:
File:///
The app will instantly crash, and because newer versions of OS X restore windows on re-open, it can lead to some pretty odd crash loops. The potential for crashing problems is made even worse with apps that sync across to other Macs, like Notes and iMessage, and can actually cause those apps to crash on other Macs.
To test this without the threat of an infinite app crash loop, you can do something like the following:
Quitting and reopening TextEdit may still contain the File:// crash entry, but so long as you do not place the cursor next to it and hit return you will be able to close that file and avoid any issues.
Technically, File:// followed quickly by any other character other than space makes the crash occur, but the triple /// is what is mentioned in the OpenRadar report.
The brief video below demonstrates the bug bringing down TextEdit:
There is some potential for nefarious misuse and even theoretical DOS attacks from websites that typed the syntax into a text field, but that shouldn’t be a widespread concern.
The unusual bug is gaining significant attention after it appeared on HackerNews and 9to5mac, and it will likely be patched by Apple quickly. If the patch will arrive separately or as part of OS X 10.8.3 remains to be seen, but 10.8.3 is nearing the end of it’s beta development cycle and could easily include a fix before the public release.
By turning Option into the Meta key, you will be able to use familiar meta commands to jump around and navigate text in places like Emacs or bash shell without twisting your fingers around to poke at Esc. This won’t be applicable or useful to everyone, but it’s one of those must-use tricks for frequent terminal users or for anyone coming to the Mac OS platform from a background in unix.
From iOS 6.1 onward, users can now reset the Advertising Identifier on any iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. This means you can basically throw all the anonymously gathered data about a device that is used to serve relevant ads out the window and start fresh, thereby removing any of the targeted data that has been accumulated and assigned to that Advertising ID.
Once confirmed, iOS will regenerate a new random blank ID.
You can also go the extra mile and turn iOS ad tracking off completely while you’re at that settings screen, which functions like a “Do Not Track” feature and prevents any of anonymous data accumulation from happening. What that will do is completely deny the ability for anonymous data to be gathered about the device to serve more relevant ads, outside of web cookies. For example if you have every Angry Birds app installed on the device and do 100 web searches for Angry Birds a day, disabling ad tracking would prevent you from seeing ads relevant to that topic.
Keeping in mind that all of the accumulated data is anonymous, there isn’t some universally important reason to reset the Ad ID and by no means should it be considered standard procedure. Because the data is anonymized, the reasons to reset the ID tend to be fairly unique situations:
Of course there are other reasons as well, but again it’s important to stress this isn’t some super important thing to think about for 99.5% of iOS users.
For some historical background, the Advertising Identifier is a relatively new creation, and previously advertisers tracked anonymous data by the actual device UDID. Because the UDID is tied to hardware and not possible to reset, Apple created the Advertising ID as an alternative to the UDID, one which can be freely reset and directly controlled by the user much like cookies and browser history can be managed at any time.
Bilinguals, polyglots, world citizens, foreign language students, and even travelers will be pleased to find that Apple Maps in iOS can be adjusted to show labels in local languages rather than always showing those locations labeled in English. This is a simple settings adjustment within Maps on any iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, and it can make a world of difference for looking at locations, here is how to get it working:
Good news for committed jailbreak fans, A4 based iOS devices can jailbreak iOS 6.1 right now. That means iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and iPod touch 4th gen only, no other hardware is supported with this redsn0w version. Another caveat is it being a tethered jailbreak, and if you’re not a fan of booting tethered you might just want to wait a tad bit longer for the official evasion untethered app to arrive shortly. For the impatient, we’ll cover how to jailbreak iOS 6.1 right now for any iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, or iPod touch 4th gen, using the redsn0w app for Mac OS X or Windows.
