Bokeh is a photography effect that creates strong light blurs on any out of focus light, frequently rendered as circular blurry elements where a point of light is visible in the image. You’ll see it often in professional photography as well as more abstract artistically oriented photography, and it can help to create a depth of field and also add some very unique character to photos. But bokeh isn’t just for professionals with expensive lenses and DSLR cameras, you can get that same effect shooting with an iPhone as well. We’ll cover two easy ways to do it, one uses nothing but your iPhone, and the second uses the excellent third party lens attachment known as Olloclip.

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Many apps for both iOS and OS X store documents and app data directly in iCloud, this allows easy syncing between devices and also provides a certain extra level of backup for some apps, since it’s all stored in the cloud. On the other hand, you may want to remove some of those documents and app data from iCloud, and that’s what we’ll show you how to do easily directly from Mac OS X. This is done through the iCloud preference panel similar to how you can manage and delete iCloud backups for iOS devices from OS X, though obviously rather than deleting a device backup it’ll only be application data or specific documents that is being removed.

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You can quickly access AirPlay streaming right from the lock screen of any iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. The only requirement is that you have some form of audio (or video) playing with the lock screen active, and that can be playing from a default app like Music or from something like Pandora or Spotify.

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We all know that Apple products are quite popular around the world, but would you ever have guessed that the North Korean “Supreme Leader” Kim Jong Un is a Mac user? Well, he is, and in a recently released press photo from the North Korean state media you can see Kim Jong Un sitting at his desk reviewing plans to nuke America – yes, seriously that is the theme of the photo set – alongside a 21.5″ iMac. Specifically, the iMac is prior generation model with a side-loading SuperDrive, not the recent super-sleek thin revision, and NKNews says the photo can be “confirming long-held rumors of the Kim family’s passion for Apple Macs.”

Quite peculiar, indeed. Though perhaps it shouldn’t be too shocking considering that Kim Jong Un’s legendary father, Kim Jong Il, also had a favorite computer from our favorite fruit company too, and that was a MacBook Pro 15″.

Anyway… it’s Friday, so uh, yea, most interesting Mac setup post ever maybe?

Want to hide an app or two from appearing on the iOS home screen? Maybe you want to hide all apps downloaded from the App Store, but keep the defaults visible? Or maybe you just want to hide a stock app that shipped with your iPhone or iPad like Safari or iTunes? You can do all of the above or any of the above, and none of it requires any funky tweaks or downloads to perform. It turns out that hiding any type of app is really easy in iOS.

We’ll cover three different ways to hide apps, including hiding Apple’s default apps that ship with iOS devices which can’t be deleted, hiding downloaded apps from the App Store, and another approach that will hide anything from immediate view while still retaining the apps accessibility in iOS.
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Bookmarks saved within Safari will sync between all of your other iCloud equipped devices, assuming you have iCloud configured correctly do so. This means a website you bookmark on your Mac will sync over to an iPad, and something bookmarked on your iPhone will sync back to your Mac, iPad, and Windows PC, and vice versa. Bookmarking syncing is incredibly useful, and if you haven’t enabled it yet be sure to take a minute or two to do so.
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Ever needed a quick place to paste some text or make a quick note while you’re doing web work? Using a neat trick, you can turn any web browser window or tab into an instant notepad that you can write in, copy and paste out of, and even adjust the font sizes within. There really isn’t much to this trick, and it works in just about web browser on just about every platform, whether you’re currently in OS X, Windows, Linux, or whatever else.
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Some countries use fahrenheit, others use celsius, and if you’re an alien on an unusually extreme planet maybe you even use kelvin… whatever the case we’ve all run into the situation where someone from elsewhere is referring to a temperature in a scale you’re unfamiliar with. Obviously if someone in the USA says “wow it was 10 degrees!” that means it’s really cold weather, but if a native German said the same thing, that’s quite mild weather. Rather than trying to do the funky math in your head, just ask Siri. No, she won’t report the weather back directly in another temperature scale (we’ll cover that through a Settings adjustment, however), but she will perform temperature conversions from celsius to fahrenheit and vice versa.
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Nmap is a powerful command line network discovery utility that lets you review network inventory, host response and uptime, and perform security auditing through port scans, OS and firewall detection, and more. Though it’s free (and open source) and ships along with many versions of linux, it doesn’t come standard with Mac OS X installations, and thus must be installed separately. Nmap is generally fairly advanced, but it has plenty of useful applications even for those of us who are not network administrators and security professionals, and it can also be helpful for simple network setup tasks and troubleshooting.

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T-Mobile will begin to offer the iPhone on their USA network starting April 12. Unlike other US carriers, the iPhone comes to T-Mobile without the annual contract obligation, and instead includes a financing plan that usually brings the total cost of ownership down when compared to most other competing networks. T-Mobile also becomes the first US carrier to offer high definition voice calling with iPhone 5, dubbed “HD Voice”, a technology that is offered in other countries.
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As we all know, any time a photo is taken with the iPhone camera, a little shutter sound accompanies the snapping of the picture. That sound effect is all software, and so though you might expect there to be a simple settings change to toggle that sound effect off, well, you may be disappointed to learn there just isn’t such a setting.

But not to worry, you can take photos with the iPhone camera in silence, without hearing that shutter sound effect when you snap a picture. There’s a few tricks to take silent pictures with iPhone camera, let’s learn each:

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Unless an entire music library consists of only a single genre of music, it’s fairly rare to have find one equalizer setting for your iTunes collection to rule every single song or album. Sure there are some pretty good general settings, and the preset options are great too, but for the best experience with diverse playlists and music collections, consider setting individual equalizer settings for specific albums, artists, genres, or even songs on a per-song basis.

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Using the automatic log out feature is a good way to bring an additional layer of security to a Mac. It works just as you’d expect; after a predetermined amount of time has passed without activity, the active user account logs itself out. This means all currently running apps close out as well as all documents which save in their current state through the Versions & Resume features. Then, in order to use the Mac again, someone will have to log back in with appropriate user and password credentials, thereby preventing unauthorized access. And of course because of the relatively new OS X Resume feature, once you do log in again all of your past apps and documents will launch again where you left off.
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If you ever want to show off some great pictures from your iPhone, you can instantly start a slideshow from the Photos app. This under-appreciated feature is extremely easy to use, and it can be livened up a bit by adding some fitting music to play alongside the slideshow. Everything is remarkably easy to set up:
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Itching to upgrade to a new iPhone but don’t want to pay full price? You can easily find out when you are eligible for the subsidized upgrade rate, plus set an automatic reminder for when the new upgrade rate is available for your current plan. This is great if you want to upgrade your iPhone only when you are eligible for the discounted carrier subsidized rate, which is fairly common considering it’s quite a bit cheaper than paying the early-upgrade rates.
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Overloaded with too many active windows from too many apps? Want to quickly flip through them, minimize one, maybe maximize another? Maybe you’d just like to really focus and go full screen? We’ve got this all covered with some simple keyboard shortcuts that can improve workflow by speeding up window management and how you interact with app windows in MacOS and Mac OS X. This is not about Mission Control, this is about direct window management of any windows for any apps, so check out the keystrokes and let us know if we’re missing anything.

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Apple has added an optional two-step verification security authentication feature to Apple ID’s, the login which is used to manage everything from iCloud storage settings to iTunes and App Store purchases. With Two-Step Verification enabled, you’ll login as usual, but then be required to verify your identity by entering in a special verification code on a device before being able to make changes to that account, or before being able to make purchases on a new Mac or iOS device. Those verification codes are delivered either through SMS or through the Find My iPhone protocol, assuming it is set up, and you’ll also receive a Recovery Key that can be used if SMS or Find My iPhone is not available.
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As you know, OS X plays a sound when a new Notification pops up in Notification Center. That default sound is called “Basso”, a low toned sound effect that is kind of like a short tap on a low note piano key. CultOfMac hilariously describes the sound as a “frog fart”, and if you aren’t a fan of that alert sound and you don’t want to mute the sound effects for Notifications manually (or mute all system UI sounds, for that matter), you can easily change the alert sound yourself by tossing another .aiff file into a specific directory found in the user library folder. It’s not particularly complicated, but it can be a fun additional way to customize your Mac experience, so if you’re interested here is what you’ll need to do:

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