Did you know you can navigate around the iPad using only a keyboard, without touching the screen at all? It’s part of iOS Accessibility options called VoiceOver, and using keyboard navigation makes the iPad feel a lot more like a traditional computer, even sharing some of the keyboard shortcuts that Macs have to do things like the ever useful Command+Tab app switcher.
This is a very underused and little-known feature of iOS, and it can really improve and speed up workflow on the iPad for those who use external keyboards with the device.
Notes has been around in iOS for a while, but it’s new to the Mac with OS X Mountain Lion, and if you think it’s just a place to keep track of a few thoughts you’re greatly underestimating the usefulness of this app. In fact, Notes can function as a powerful cross-platform clipboard, because not only will it store your quick text notes, but Notes can actually store just about anything else too, including images and even documents and files – yes, files like PDF documents, zip archives, and much more. Read more »
If you’re tired of the existing alarm clock sounds and ringtones, you can select individual songs to be the alarm clock sound played by iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Yes, that means you can wake up to the sounds of your own music, if you so desire!
So, want to start the day hearing your favorite song as your alarm? Let’s get to it.
Another piece of early Apple history has been uncovered in a newly found unaired commercial for the original Macintosh computer. Filmed in 1983, the video features original Macintosh software designer Andy Hertzfeld discussing what he expects of the Macintosh, saying:
“I expect to be totally amazed at what people are going to do with Macintosh. Every person, unique individual, brings something to the machine, just as the machine brings something to them, and the interaction between the two makes amazing things happen. And I expect people to use Macintosh to totally blow my mind, two years out, you know the incredible energy that is going to be put into it is really going to do some amazing things.”
The video, embedded below, is along the same theme as another recently discovered original Macintosh commercial that also did not ever see the airwaves. Despite being 29 years old, these early unaired commercials have elements to them that align extremely well with even the modern Apple ads, with an obvious minimalism and a clear focus on what could be achieved with the product.
Macs have long dominated the realm of creatives, and musicians are no exception. This weeks great Mac setup comes to us from Vassilis T., a DJ in Thessaloniki, Greece. As you’d expect, the workstation is used to produce music, and the hardware shown includes:
iMac 27″ (mid-2011) with 8GB RAM
Pair of Stanton T62 turntables with Traktor Scratch Timecode Vinyls
Hercules DJ Console MK2 mixer
Apple Wireless Keyboard
Apple Magic Mouse
Logitech Z523 Speakers
The software running on the iMac is Traktor Scratch Pro.
It’s always fun to see the wide variety of things people do with their Macs and Apple gear.
If you have an interesting Mac setup you want featured, send us a good picture or two, a list of hardware shown, and a brief description of what the gear is used for to osxdailycom@gmail.com
Other than the Maps issues, the App Store in iOS 6 is probably the next most talked about change of the latest iOS system software. Though it’s undoubtedly a better user experience in a lot of ways, one area that really suffers is speed, and a lot of users are experiencing very sluggish behavior in the App Store whether it’s lag while trying to navigate around apps, browse the Top Charts, or just review and download from their purchase history. Most frustratingly, the App Store slowness can even impact the newest iOS devices, including the iPhone 5 and iPad 3rd gen.
Some people are blaming HTML5 and the heavy eyecandy and animations, but strangely, the sluggishness seems to come and go at random, and we think we’ve finally discovered the reason. Here’s how to fix it:
Open Settings, tap on “Privacy”, then tap on “Location Services”
Scroll to the bottom of the screen to find and tap on “System Services”
Look for “Genius for Apps” and flip the switch to OFF
For iOS 6 devices that have experienced the slow App Store problems, that “Genius for Apps” setting almost always has a grey or purple icon next to it, indicating that it’s been using location services recently. Turning this feature OFF seems to end the random speed issues of the App Store completely, presumably because the Genius feature is no longer doing whatever it does in the background while you navigate and use the store.
With App Genius off, double-tap the Home button, then tap and hold on the App Store icon to quit it. Relaunch App Store, and everything should be much faster again.
The Panorama camera is one of the better features of the iPhone Camera app, it makes taking incredible high-quality panoramic pictures ridiculously easy without adding any additional apps to your iPhone.
The amazing photography feature is built directly into iOS now and works on all modern iPhone devices as part of the Camera app.
If you’re unfamiliar with the iPhone panorama camera feature or you just haven’t used it yet, this walkthrough will show you how to use it, as well as offer some tips on getting good panorama images.
The Help menu in Mac OS X is an often underutilized feature that can quickly resolve a lot of questions about apps and the OS itself, making it an excellent resource to query any time you’re trying to find out about a particular feature, troubleshooting an issue, or you just want to learn more about the app in use.
To get the most out of an apps Help menu in OS X, memorize the keyboard shortcut to instantly access the Help Search function in every Mac app:
Didn’t get turn-by-turn voice navigation on your iPhone when you updated to iOS 6? Maybe you’re just not thrilled with Apple Maps? Get Scout right now while it’s free, it offers excellent voice navigated turn-by-turn directions on all iOS devices running iOS 4 or later, including the older iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS that were left out of Apple’s offering.
Scout uses TomTom and Telenav GPS to offer visual directions on the latest maps, so accuracy should be a nonissue. You’ll also find the standard features expected in navigation, mapping, and GPS apps, like real time traffic updates, favorites, commute estimates, weather, voice commands, and more. Not only is the app briefly available for free, but so is a full year of Scout Plus service.
Scout really is a great app in general, so whether your iPhone was left out of voice navigation or you just want a backup offering to iOS 6 Maps on your brand new iPhone 5, grab it for free while you can.
Ignoring specific software updates is a bit different now in modern versions of OS X now that updates are handled by the Mac App Store. From OS X El Capitan, Yosemite, Mavericks, Mountain Lion and onward, if you don’t want to install an update you will need to hide it from being visible within the Updates tab of the App Store itself. This differs from using the old ignore approach offered before the App Store began handling all updates available to the Mac operating system. Ultimately the new ignoring updates option is quite easy to use however, so you won’t find it difficult to either hide or later unhide any given update available to OS X this way.
Some iPhone 5 users are experiencing a variety of issues with wifi on the device, almost always revolving around inconsistently slow wireless connections. If you’re having this problem, you’re not alone, and the good news is you can almost certainly get an immediate improvement by setting manual DNS on the device.
Fixing Slow iPhone 5 Wi-Fi With Manual DNS Settings
For the impatient, you can immediately try Google’s DNS services (8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4), but for the best results you’ll want to follow the full process to find the fastest DNS servers:
Download NameBench on your Mac or PC and run it to discover the fastest DNS servers for your location, the test will take a few minutes
Take the best result and grab your iPhone 5
Open Settings, tap on “Wi-Fi”, and tap the blue arrow alongside the connected Wi-Fi network
Tap next to “DNS” to manually adjust the DNS entry (Didn’t run NameBench? Try 8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4)
Leave Settings and try running Speed Test again, browse the web, or doing anything online with the iPhone 5 using the same wi-fi connection. Everything should be leaps and bounds faster.
Interestingly enough, we’ve been here before, and using custom DNS entries directly on the iPhone has fixed slow wi-fi issues in the past. With the same solution working again, it suggests it’s a compatibility issue with how the iPhone is interacting with certain routers. This would explain why not everyone experiences the problem, and why the same iPhone has issues on some networks but not others.
For iPhone 5 owners that have not experienced the wi-fi issue, basically it’s a lot slower with intermittent connectivity.
One of the many subtle changes to iOS Mail app in modern versions is how marking emails works in the Mail app. The latest versions of Mail for iPhone and iPad now tuck the Mark as Unread option into a flag menu, which resides in the toolbar of an active email message.
This replaced what used to be a very obvious “Mark as Unread” option sitting atop each open email in prior releases of the iOS Mail app. The new feature is really quite nice once you get the hang of it, so here is how to mark emails as unread with the flag menu in iOS Mail:
Time Machine backups can be encrypted right from your Mac. This means the backed up data is extremely safe from prying eyes and the very unlikely event of a cracking attempt, and it also means you’ll need a password to access the encrypted backups yourself.
Enabling encrypted backups in Time Machine for Mac OS X can be done in two ways, either during setup of Time Machine, or turned on at a later date if you decide you want to encrypt other backups. We’ll cover both. Read more »
Have you ever wished you had x-ray vision so you could peer right through the enclosure of your iPhone 5 to see the fancy hardware insides? Now you can pretend you’re Superman with the help of a snazzy transparent wallpaper pack from iFixIt, which shows you precisely what the internals of an iPhone 5 look like as if the icons and UI were just hovering over raw hardware.
You’ll notice over half of the inside of the iPhone is devoted to the battery, and the rest is chips, circuit boards, a heat shield over the processor, ribbon cables, and all the other good stuff you find if you crack open any iOS device.
Siri now lets you launch applications by just speaking a simple command to the iPhone, iPod, or iPad. This is a great feature for a variety of obvious reasons, and using it is simple:
Hold down the Home button to summon Siri, then say “Open [App Name]” or “Launch [App Name]”
Sometimes you can just say the app name as well, but that doesn’t always work. Nonetheless, with the “Launch” or “Open” prefix, apps will immediately launch and become the forefront app. You can even launch apps from the lock screen with Siri, though if you use a passcode you’ll have to enter it before the apps open.
The only real requirement here is that your device has iOS 6 installed and it’s compatible with Siri support, which means iPad 3, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, and iPod touch 5th gen, and obviously devices launched thereafter.
Guided Access, or what we to call “Kid Mode”, is a fantastic addition to iOS that lets you lock an iPhone or iPad into a single app. Well, great when it works as it’s intended, but it appears there’s a pretty frustrating bug that makes the feature work a little too well once it’s enabled in iOS 6 with some apps: triple-clicking the Home button doesn’t summon anything and you’re stuck in an app! This leaves you unable to leave Guided Access mode, but here’s a workaround to get out of it until the bug is resolved:
Hold the Home and Power button together for 15 seconds until a reboot is forced on the iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch
With the device rebooted, go back to Settings > Accessibility > Guided Access > and turn OFF as necessary
Because just about everything is disabled when the feature is on, even Force Quit won’t work. Yes that means you’ll have to reboot to escape from Guided Access in certain apps for the time being.
The stuck app bug doesn’t appear to impact any native Apple apps, but it does affect many popular third party apps. Expect a resolution soon that doesn’t involve rebooting with iOS 6.0.1 or a similar incremental update.
Facebook can now be integrated directly into Mac OS X, letting you easily post stuff to Facebook from just about anywhere on the Mac.
To setup Facebook integration in OS X, all you need is OS X 10.8.2 or later (full support is in Mountain Lion, Mavericks, Yosemite, etc) and a minute or so to get it configured. Once Facebook is setup in OS X, you’ll be able to post status updates from Notification Center, post directly to Facebook from Share Sheets, find your Facebook friends in Contacts, and even see a list of all Facebook notifications right in Notification Center. Sound good? OK great, here is how to set that up.
The iPad, iPod touch, and iPhone make excellent toys and learning tools for kids, but if you’ve seen a youngin’ with an iOS device you know it’s only a matter of time before the inquisitive mind of a child escapes the current application and ends up elsewhere. That inevitable sequence can be stopped in its tracks thanks to Guided Access, a great new feature brought to iOS in 6.0 that basically functions as “Kid Mode”, whereby any iOS device can be locked into an application with the hardware buttons disabled. This is one of those must-have features for teachers and parents, and using it is easy.
Enabling “Kid Mode” in iOS with Guided Access
As mentioned already, you will need iOS 6 or later to have this feature.
Open “Settings” and tap on “General”
Navigate to “Accessibility” and under the Learning section tap on “Guided Access”
Flip the switch to ON, then tap “Set Passcode” to set a password you’ll use to escape out of Guided Access mode
Choose whether or not to Enable Screen Sleep, turning it ON will help sustain battery life when the iPad, iPod, or iPhone is left inactive
Now that Guided Access is configured, you can use it to lock the iOS device into any app you want.
Using Guided Access to Lock Into an App
Launch any app as usual, then triple-click the Home button to summon the Accessibility menu
Tap “Guided Access” from the menu
Set the Guided Access rules and swipe areas on the thumbnailed screen to disable certain areas of the screen, choose whether touch input is on or off, and whether motion works
Tap “Next” to enter Guided Access mode
The iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch is now effectively locked into the current application, and pressing the Home button will no longer leave the app. Sooner or later you’ll surely want to escape out of this mode though, but only those with the passcode set earlier can do so.
Escaping Guided Access in iOS
Triple-click the Home button and enter the passcode chosen during setup of Guided Access to unlock the device
You’ll now be back to the usual behavior of iOS.
If you’d like to turn off Guided Access completely, just go back to Settings > Accessibility > Guided Access > and flip the setting to OFF. You’ll need to enter the passcode again to do so.
One of the many subtle changes to iOS Mail app in modern versions is how marking emails works in the Mail app. The latest versions of Mail for iPhone and iPad now tuck the Mark as Unread option into a flag menu, which resides in the toolbar of an active email message. 
Facebook can now be integrated directly into Mac OS X, letting you easily post stuff to Facebook from just about anywhere on the Mac.
