A new update labeled Java for OS X 2012-006 has been released for all versions of Mac OS X. The updates name is somewhat misleading however, in that instead of updating Java it actually uninstalls the Java applet plugin from all web browsers on the Mac. This is done as a security precaution to protect against potential malware, which has consistently used Java exploits as a means of attack. With Java removed from the browser (but not the OS), it forces Mac users to download the absolute newest version of Java directly from Oracle if the plugin is needed.

Installing the update removes will cause a “Missing Plugin” alert to appear if you visit a webpage that requires Java. In turn, that will direct you to Oracle to download the newest version of Java.

If you don’t find the update available on your Mac, it means you either uninstalled Java already, or you never installed it to begin with. Ignoring or hiding the update is also possible, though the security benefits of going through with it are strong.

For those that install the update but need Java to access certain websites, download the newest version of Java and then disable it on a per-browser basis, or even system-wide when it’s not needed.

Want to share a grocery list with someone? Maybe you have an important to-do list that you need to give a co-worker, or to anyone else with an iOS device or Mac?

You can now share any such list right from the Reminders app in Mac OS X, or you can even share the lists right from iCloud.com. The shared Reminders will be viewable on the recipients Mac, but perhaps more importantly, on their iOS device, and even location-based Reminders can be shared this way.

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Following up about Screen Sharing in Mac OS X, which lets you remote control a Mac from another Mac, you can also remotely access and control Macs from an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch using VNC.

There is minimal work involved to get this working, and if you already set up Screen Sharing you’re halfway there. A variety of paid solutions offer the same abilities described here, but we’ll show you how to do this completely for free and have it working in just a minute or two.

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For anyone who uses the command line regularly, a new tool called pkill makes killing processes significantly easier in modern releases of Mac OS and Mac OS X. Improving on the standard kill command, pkill easily supports wildcards, making it easy to terminate all processes belonging to a match or even a specific user.

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iOS now lets you upload images directly from Safari using standard web-based upload forms. Not only can you upload directly from the Photos library and Camera Roll now, but you can also upload an image directly from the camera after taking a picture.

There’s nothing fancy that you’ll need to do, just tap any normal upload button from Safari and you’ll see the pop-up image selector shown in the screenshot, whether you’re on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

This is obviously a great feature for anyone who shares pictures around the web through any of the many web-based image services, and also a nice change for bloggers, whether they’re professionals or just your moms simple blogspot. Prior to this, there wasn’t a way to do this outside of moving the photos to a computer and then uploading them that way, or using a native app that supported uploading directly to the given service.

Podcasts are great for entertainment and learning, but let’s face it, the new iOS Podcasts app is not so great for many users. Unless you’re running the app on an iPhone 5, it’s slow and frustrating to use on just about every other device, making it a major step backwards for iOS 6 users from listening to podcasts from the Music app. But there’s some good news, you can listen to your favorite podcasts from the Music app instead through two different methods.

Listen to Podcasts from Music App with Siri

Siri comes to the rescue now that it can launch apps, and this is much easier than the above sync method. You will need to have podcasts already downloaded to use this approach, and you’ll want to try it out yourself with a few different shows before committing to this method completely:

• Summon Siri and say “play podcast (podcast name)”
• The podcast starts playing immediately by way of Music app, where it can be found as “Now Playing”

This works great for many shows, but it has some issues with certain podcasts names. For example, Neil DeGrasse Tysons popular “Star Talk Radio” is often interpreted by Siri as “SH*T TALK” for some reason and won’t launch unless you annunciate the entire shows name. A bit odd, but that’s the way it goes.

Siri is the easier approach, but if your iPhone doesn’t run Siri then the Playlists method below is great too.

Listen to Podcasts from Music App via Playlists

If you don’t mind syncing podcasts over from iTunes the old fashioned way, you can listen to podcasts directly from the Music app again, even in iOS 6. Here’s the complete process to do so:

• Tap and hold on “Podcasts” until it jiggles, then tap (X) to delete it
• Double-tap Home button to bring up the task bar, then find “Music” and tap and hold on it, tapping (X) to quit the app
• Connect the iPhone, iPad, or iPod to iTunes and create a new playlist for podcasts, then sync podcasts the old fashioned way by adding them to that playlist
• Relaunch Music app from iOS, find your podcasts playlist, and enjoy

The obvious problem with this approach is the lack of streaming, and the need to preplan your listening habits, not to mention the unspeakable act of stepping back into the technological stone age and actually connecting a cable between your iOS device and computer. Nonetheless, it can be a much better alternative than fumbling around in the clunky and slow Podcasts app, especially for anyone using an iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, or iPod touch 4th gen.

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Surely every Mac user knows by now that you can drag and drop files directly into Mail messages to attach those files to an email, but did you know you can instantly create a new email with an attachment by dragging the file in question to Mail’s Dock icon instead?

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Mac OS X no longer includes a native RSS reader in Mail or Safari, something that just about no one is particularly pleased about, but a new free app brings RSS functionality back to OS X in perhaps the most logical new way: by embedding feeds into Notification Center.

Aptly named “RSS.app”, it’s a lightweight menubar item that you can add RSS feeds to. When posts are published from your chosen sites you will be alerted to them with a Notification. Opening Notification Center reveals all the feed items, and clicking on an entry opens the link into your default web browser.

• Download RSS Application free from the developer

Perfectly simple and totally free, this app is highly recommended for anyone looking for an unobtrusive RSS solution to add to OS X Mountain Lion’s Notification Center.

First launching RSS.app will require a right click and choosing “Open” to circumvent GateKeeper, afterwards pull down the familiar RSS icon menu and add feeds, make adjustments as appropriate, then choose “Refresh now” to update Notification Center.

There are a few quirks to the app, for example the feed for OSXDaily for some reason starts at about a week ago despite being updated less than an hour ago, but such bugs are probably relatively simple for the developer to work out. Also, if you add a ton of feeds then Notification Center gets too busy to really be useful, so you’d be better off keeping maybe 1-3 top feeds in Notification Center and throwing the rest into an RSS feed reading app like NetNewsWire.

On a strange side note, RSS.app was rejected from the official Mac App Store by Apple for supposedly not being useful enough… something which is truly hard to imagine considering how popular RSS remains as a medium of syndicating things around the web, and even more bizarre because similar paid apps are already on the Mac App Store right now. Maybe they’ll reconsider and accept the app if it’s resubmitted? Regardless, it’s free for now and very useful, so grab it while you can.

Excellent find from MacStories!

Screen Sharing supports drag and drop file copying to and from remote Macs, an excellent feature that was briefly covered in our recent guide to using Screen Sharing in Mac OS X. This offers a really simple way to move files around Macs that are not nearby, and it’s one of those tricks that you’ll really want to know about.

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The default voice for speaking text in iOS is the same voice as Siri, but if you want to switch it up and hear something different you can change the text-to-speech voice quite easily. Switching voices is a bit more fun than you’d expect though, at least with English, because you end up with different accents as well. To get use out of this you’ll first need text to speech enabled in iOS, you can do that along the way if you haven’t enabled it yet:

• Open “Settings” app and tap “General” then “Accessibility”
• Choose “Speak Selection” (turn it ON if you haven’t yet), then tap “Dialects”
• Tap to choose your new voice and accent

To check what the new voice sounds like, switch over to any app with text, tap and hold on a word or phrase, then choose “Speak Selection” to hear the new voice.

If you want your iPhone or iPad to sound exceedingly proper, it doesn’t get much better than the British English voice of Daniel. I’ve always been a fan of Australian accents so I went with Australian English, but all voice choices are very high quality. Obviously changing back to the default Siri voice is just a matter of choosing your primary countries language.

These voices can also be added to the Mac if you want to change things up there too, you’ll need any version of Mac OS X later than 10.7 to do so.

Apple has sent select members of the tech press invitations for a media event scheduled for next Tuesday, October 23, widely assumed to be the rumored iPad Mini event. The event will be held in San Jose, California, at the classic California Theater, and is scheduled to kick off at 10AM PST.

The invitation isn’t exactly subtle in hinting at the smaller iPad, with the phrase “We’ve got a little more to show you.” being the only text on the mailing image, as shown from The Loop.

iPad Mini rumors gathered more steam this morning after a ton of SKU’s showed up from 9to5mac indicating Apple will unload a barrage of new iPads next week, with up to 24 total models shipping, covering black and white models in three different size capacities, and models with and without LTE support.

Though the event is expected to focus on the smaller iPad, several new Mac models are also anticipated, including a retina 13″ MacBook Pro, new Mac Mini models, and possibly even new iMacs.

Now that Twitter is so deeply embedded into OS X from 10.8 onward, you’ll find convenient aspects of that integration throughout Mac apps. A surprisingly useful example is in the Contacts app bundled into OS X, where you can send tweets directly to users or check their timeline easily:

• Right-click on a users Twitter name, then choose
• “Tweet” to directly @message that person
• “View Tweets” to see a timeline of their tweets in the default web browser

If you’re not finding a persons Twitter information, you can either add it manually or, better yet, just import the usernames directly from Twitter into Mac OS X by way of System Preferences.

Heads up to Macgasm for the great tip and screenshot

An all new Retina MacBook Pro with 13″ display will launch alongside the iPad Mini next week on October 23, according to two new reports from reliable sources.

9to5Mac reports the smaller retina MacBook Pro will look and feel much like the Retina MacBook Pro 15″ model, and it will be sold in two configurations with differing processor and storage specification. Like it’s larger brother, it too will be sold alongside the standard 13″ MacBook Pro, though at a higher price than the non-retina version.

9to5mac is consistently reliable with such reports, and their report was later verified by AllThingsD, who is always reliable and well-connected with Apple. Other than confirming both the iPad Mini and new Retina MacBook Pro, AllThingsD says the 13″ Retina MacBook Pro will feature a 2,560×1,600 resolution screen.

Additional rumors have surfaced recently about a redesigned iMac in the pipleline, and even a redesigned iPad 3 with the smaller Lightning port, though neither of these claims have come from reliable sources yet.

For those with iPhones, iPads, and iPods who don’t want to be served more relevant ads by way of anonymous usage tracking, a new setting in iOS 6 allows users to flip a switch to limit such ad tracking on their device.

To be clear, this setting is about serving targeted advertisements based on anonymous usage data, it does not track anything personally identifiable. Apple says that by turning ON the feature “apps are not permitted to use the Advertising Identifier to serve you targeted ads“, meaning you’ll end up seeing more generic ads within apps instead of something more likely related to your interests.

• Open Settings and tap “General” then tap “About”
• Scroll to the bottom of About and tap “Advertising”
• Flip “Limit Ad Tracking” to ON

For desktop Mac users, there’s a similar Do Not Track feature in the newest versions of Safari, and there’s always general ad blockers available as plugins for just about every major web browser if you don’t want to see anything at all.

Update: For more thorough control of ad-based privacy options, you can also opt out of iAds and turn off location based iAds elsewhere in settings, thanks to Huang for sending these two tips in:

• Tap to Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services -> System Services
• Turn off “Location Based iAds”
• Turn off “Diagnostics and Usage”

Additionally, you can opt out directly from your iOS device via web browser:

• Open http://oo.apple.com/
• Turn off “Internet Based iAds”
• Press “Opt Out” to confirm

Saturday Night Live weighed in on the ridiculous nature of some of the iPhone 5 complaints this past weekend with an amusing skit that spoofs whiny tech journalists and their complaints with the Chinese factory workers who build the iPhone itself. It’s pretty funny and puts the outrageous complaints into some proper perspective, ranging from the Maps complaints to scratching issues, and just about everything in between, you’ll certainly get a laugh or two if you’ve been following some of the truly stupid controversy created by some tech press.

Some choice quotes: “everytime I point it straight at the sun there’s a very slight purplish hue in my photos!” and “it’s just too thin and light”, watch the video embedded below for the full segment, or check it out on Hulu:
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Siri is getting more and more useful, and one of the better uses for Siri are location based reminders. With location reminders, you can have Siri remind you to do things like make copies when you get to work, feed the cat when you get home, and just about any other task that would be helpful to be reminded of upon arrival or departure. This tends to work best with iPhone, but it works with iPad too as long as Siri is enabled.

For Siri to adequately serve you location based reminders, you will need to have locations defined for yourself for places like Home, Work, School, etc, and addresses set for contacts. Don’t worry, if Siri doesn’t know the address for a contact or common place, you will be asked to provide one. You will also need to have Location Services turned ON for Reminders and Siri. This can be done through Settings > Privacy > Location Services.

Create Location-Based Reminders with Siri

To set a new location dependent reminder, summon Siri as usual then use verbiage like the following:

• Remind me to ___ when I get home
• Remind me to ___ when I leave home
• Remind me when I get to school to ___
• Remind me to ___ when I leave work
• Remind me to ___ when I get to work
• Remind me to ___ when I get to ___ house
• Remind me to ___ when I leave here

Example Reminders Dependent on Locations

Here are a few practical examples of how such phrases could work:

• Remind me to overfeed the dog when I get home
• Remind me to get gas when I leave
• Remind me to say happy birthday when I get to Moms house
• Remind me to pick up milk when I leave work
• Remind me to turn in my assignment when I get to school

For the last example, you do not need to specify a location because Siri will assume you mean leaving your current location as determined by GPS or internet. The reminder will therefore appear whenever you depart the current location, regardless of where or what it is.

As mentioned before, if Siri does not know the address for a location you request or a contact you mention, you will be asked to provide one by adjusting that contacts details.

Though Siri is still in beta, Siri is undoubtedly becoming more and more useful, and if you aren’t using it yet to perform common tasks you should start doing so now, intelligent assistants will only be getting better.

Oh and finally, if you don’t have Siri, remember that Mac users can also set Location Reminders with OS X 10.8 and later, though they are dependent on internet access in order to know where you are. If you do have a Mac and an iOS device with Siri though, any created reminder will sync across everything as long as the same iCloud account is used on each device.

Thanks to several commenters for the tip ideas

A new version of redsn0w has been released that allows jailbreaking iOS 6 for devices with the A4 CPU or prior, including iPhone 4, iPod touch 4th gen, and iPhone 3GS. This is a tethered jailbreak however, which means any time the iPhone is turned off, rebooted, or runs out of battery, it will need to be connected to a computer with a USB cable and booted with the help of Redsn0w in order to be usable again. Be sure to understand and be comfortable with the limitations and difference between tethered and untethered jailbreaks before considering.

Before beginning, update to iOS 6 manually or through OTA/iTunes.

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Macs can sync Mail, Calendars, and even Notes with Android phones and tablets with virtually the same seamless nature as Macs sync through iCloud with other Apple devices like the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. The only requirement to sync a Mac with an Android device is that you have a Gmail (Google) account, which if you’re using Android you almost certainly do.

If you have set up iCloud before, you will find setting up Android and Google syncing with a Mac to be very similar and just as easy. The process is basically the same as setting up a standard mail account with OS X, and if you haven’t done it yet then Mail app will become active with the Gmail account you use.

• Have the Android device configured with a Gmail account – this varies slightly per Android version and device so we won’t cover that here but chances are good you already have this set up anyway
• On the Mac, open System Preferences from the  Apple menu and click on “Mail, Contacts & Calendars”
• Click on “Gmail” to add the same Google/Gmail account, enter name, email address, and password then choose “Set Up”
• Be sure the checkboxes next to “Mail”, “Notes”, and “Calendar” are checked in the options, these are separate options in OS X Mountain Lion but the same in Lion

Mail syncs practically immediately, and additions to the Notes app in OS X 10.8+ are synced to Android via Gmail and tagged as Notes. As a result, pictures sync between OS X Notes and Gmail this way, despite not doing the same when syncing from OS X to iOS Notes, which in an obvious way makes syncing from a Mac to Android oddly better than to an iPhone, at least for the time being while that limitation exists. Calendars sync between iCal to Google Calendar as expected.

Now that Mail, Notes, and Calendars are syncing between Android and Mac OS X, what about your iTunes music? You can’t do it directly through iTunes itself, but you can sync your iTunes library and all of it’s music to any Android device easily with the free WinAmp app.

Going beyond the usual stuff, you can even move files between OS X and Android devices by using the free official Android File Transfer tool, further demonstrating just how easy and full featured it is to work with an Android device and a Mac.