While some writing and text apps have native word and character counters as part of their built-in feature set, not every app does. That can be changed easily though by creating a Mac OS X Service that will provide word counts and character counts from just about anywhere on a Mac that text is selectable. This means apps like TextEdit, the Quick Look preview panels, and even web browsers like Safari, Chrome, Firefox, all will gain the word/character counting feature that is easily accessible from a right-click. This is probably the best method of gaining a word counter into Mac apps that don’t support the feature natively.

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Looking for some new wallpaper to decorate your Mac desktop, or the home screen of an iPad or iPhone with? How about some that are themed with the Apple logo, or maybe even the 30th Mac Anniversary logo from this past week? That’s what this wallpaper roundup is focused on.

We’ve got 16 20 of them for you to work with. Half of these fan-made desktop backgrounds are featuring the standard Apple logo, while the other half are using the fancy multi-colored 30th anniversary Macintosh rendition of the Apple logo that was used on the anniversary Mac website (where the Mac anniversary icon font came from) or a slight variation thereof which removed the 3 but left the  Apple. There’s even an awesome retro ‘Think Different’ desktop picture in there. They’re all pretty snazzy, ranging from subtle gradients and colors, to some that are louder and brighter colors that will fit right into iOS, and even a few based on the familiar iOS nebula image and the big Mavericks wave from OS X. Check them all out below.

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Most iPhone and iPad users know the iOS multitasking screen is where you can quit the apps you no longer want open, and it’s also where you go to switch between any of the open apps on the device. But if you have a lot of apps open, you may notice that switching from the frontmost app card to one of the last is not exactly expedient, at least not until you use this fancy alternate swipe tip. The trick is to change the location of where you swipe at the multitasker, from the app panels to the app icons:

1. Double-tap the Home button to bring up the iOS multitasking screen
2. Swipe the app icons rather than the application panels

You should immediately notice the speed difference. The quicker you swipe on the app icons, the faster the app previews fly by on the screen. This means a few quick swipes on the icons will send you all the way from the start to the end of tons of open apps at orders of magnitude faster than swiping directly on the app preview panels.

A video and animated gif will demonstrate the effect visually, but users should really try it out themselves on their own iOS devices to feel the substantial difference.
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The weekend is here, which means it’s time to share another OSXDaily reader desk setup! This week we’ll show you the great Mac configuration of Patrick M., who uses his gear for just about everything. Let’s find out more about this great setup and what apps are used most…
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The Mac menu bar clock isn’t particularly fancy nor is it meant to be, but if you’re a tinkerer and like to customize things, you might find some enjoyment in adding some time-changing emoji characters to the clock as an addition to the standard AM / PM indicators that show up alongside the time.

Adding Emoji into the Mac Menu clock is a subtle customization with no third party utility needed to accomplish, it’s just a simple change you can make yourself through the System Preferences of MacOS and Mac OS X.

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If retro Macs built out out LEGO that double as iPad stands aren’t your thing, maybe you’ll enjoy this little Easter Egg of sorts that Apple seems to have left on their 30th Mac Anniversary website. It’s a free 62 character font of Mac icons, ranging from the original Macintosh 128k through the PowerBook lineup, 20th anniversary Mac, all the way to the modern iMac, Mac Pro, and MacBook Pro models.
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30 years ago today, Steve Jobs unveiled the very first Macintosh, and the rest, as they say, is history. If you’re looking for a unique way to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the beloved Mac, why not grab a pile of LEGO bricks and build your very own Macintosh 128k that happens to double as totally usable iPad holder and stand?
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Apple is planning to launch two new iPhone models this year, both with substantially larger screen sizes than what is currently offered by the company. The news comes from the consistently reliable and well sourced Wall Street Journal.
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Virtually all iPhone and iPad users should set an iOS passcode for their individual devices. This forces anyone attempting to use the device to enter a password before being able to unlock it or gain access to anything on the device, and it also requires the same passcode before any user is able to make adjustments to certain system preferences. Setting a device access code is very simple, and unless an iOS device never leaves home, work, or school, or doesn’t have any personal data on it, it should be considered an easy yet essential security tip for all users to safeguard their devices and data.

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Facebook recently began to auto-play videos that are contained within the news feed of the Facebook app for iOS (and presumably Android). Though the videos play without sound, that auto-play behavior can still greatly increase the iPhones cellular data usage due to the large size of video files as they are streamed to the device. Thus, most users who have data caps or who are without unlimited data plans will probably want to turn this feature off to conserve cell usage.
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Apple has crafted two new iPad Air ads based upon the original “Your Verse Anthem” TV commercial that started running recently. The new commercials are 30 second spots, with different imagery that centers around a theme of either light or sound, both of which feature shorter voice narration from the 80’s movie Dead Poet’s Society.
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The iPhone Home Screen has room for 20 app icons on the front page and four Dock icons across the bottom, with even more app spots available for the iPad. If that seems like 20 icons too many for you, using a little trick lets users create a completely blank home screen page in iOS, reducing the primary page to an empty screen that only shows the icons contained in the Dock. The result is a very minimalist home screen appearance for the first page which emphasizes the wallpaper, while no other apps will be visible until you swipe over to the other screen pages.
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The default subtitle text size for video playback can be fairly small in Mac OS X, and while it may be tolerable on a smaller screened device, once you send the Macs display it to a larger screen like a TV, it can be difficult to read. Fortunately, Mac OS X provides a lot of customization for subtitles, letting you change the font size, shadows, colors, and perhaps most important, the actual size of the captioned text. We’re going to focus on the latter, since the text size is usually what impacts readability of closed captioning the most. Whether you watch a lot of foreign films with subtitles, just want the text to be included with a video, or you use captioning for accessibility reasons, you’ll probably appreciate this change.
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Apple has released the 4th beta version of iOS 7.1 to those registered with the iOS Developer program. As usual with these updates, the release focuses on improving performance and refining features, resolving bugs, and making other adjustments to system functionality.

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Do you remember the original Time Machine backup animation of the slowly spinning green galaxy vortex? Triggered when a user entered Time Machine for backups, backup file management, or restoring files, the original animation was a snazzy space rendering that sort of looked like entering into a spinning black hole, shooting out stars and space dust, like the screenshot shown here.

Well, you can have that awesome space vortex as your screen saver on a Mac!
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Voice turn by turn navigation and directions are incredibly convenient and easily one of the best features of Apple Maps, but rather than fumbling around with your iPhone while driving, you can rely entirely on Siri. This makes turn-by-turn almost entirely hands free; you give Siri a voice command to start the directions, and then you get the exact navigation spoken to you through Siri as exits approach and roads change. Going further, you can use a dash mount and car charger to transform your iPhone into a dashboard mounted GPS navigator.

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It’s the weekend again, which means it’s time for another featured sweet Mac desk setup! This time we’re showing off the awesome workstation of Joey N., an IT Services Manager who uses plenty of Apple, Mac, and iOS gear for both professional and personal pursuits. Let’s get right to it and learn a bit more about the hardware and software used.
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The newest versions of Google Chrome have a fantastic feature addition that allow you to instantly see what open web browser tab or window is playing audio. That may seem ho-hum, but if you’ve ever gone on a wild goose chase trying to figure out which tab out of 50 million tabs is playing some video or music in the background, you’ll know how valuable this little improvement is since it can cut down the cumbersome process of manually going through various tabs and windows to find which tab or website is making sound.

And yes, this trick works to identify browsing tabs playing audio or video, any sound at all, on Chrome web browser for all platforms that support the browser, including Mac, Windows, and Linux.

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