One of the best ways to kid-proof (and generally fool proof) an iPhone or iPad is to turn off in-app purchases. That’s great for the iOS world, but for the desktop you can do something similar by disabling access to the iTunes Store completely, this will prevent unintended purchases of apps, music, movies, books, or anything else, by blocking access to the entire store.
Read more »

Preview is a great basic image editing app bundled with Mac OS X, but newer versions of Mac OS have simplified the available image Export Format options down to JPEG, JPEG 2000, OpenEXR, PDF, PNG, and TIFF. Or at least that’s what you see on first glance, but it turns out you can still access all the traditional image format options from the Save, Save As, and Export screens just by using a simple key modifier when saving a file in Preview app on the Mac.

This is kind of a little known secret (well, at least until we told you about it!) but once you learn how to use it, you’ll be able to reveal many image format save options in the Preview for Mac application.

Read more »

GIMP is a popular and fairly powerful free image editor from the linux world that is basically like a freeware version of Photoshop, complete with many of the tools used for photo retouching and image manipulation that you’d expect. It’s is a great free PS alternative, but Mac users have long had to install X11 to get it to run. But not anymore!

The newest version of Gimp for Mac OS X is bundled as a self-contained native app, that means no X11 installations, no Xcode, nothing but a simple dmg download. Just download, and launch the app like any other.

Read more »

The next time you’re using Maps on an iPhone or iPad to get directions to get from point A to point B, do yourself a huge favor and use the Live Traffic feature to help plan your route. From the Maps app here is see live traffic in any area:

• Tap the page curl icon in the corner of Maps
• Tap the “Show Traffic” button, then tap the page curl again to return to Maps

With traffic view enabled, the roads end up color coded based on live traffic conditions:

• Green – easy sailing, no traffic
• Yellow – slow moving traffic, but it’s moving
• Red – basically gridlock, avoid if possible, high traffic

I thought this was a widely known feature, but some friends were absolutely amazed by it the other day so that tells me maybe it’s only the more savvy of us who know about this. The feature works the same on an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch, and Google Maps on the web, you just need internet access of some sort to use it. The feature should work just as well in iOS 6’s new Maps app, though when Google releases their own app it may be a good idea to download that as well.

Where is the Traffic Data Coming From?

You! Well, you and every other iPhone, Android, Blackberry, WindowsPhone, and every other smartphone user really. Google takes anonymous location data from GPS equipped cell phones and uses it to calculate traffic speeds and congestion, the result is an incredibly accurate crowdsourced picture of traffic that is updated live 24/7.

Don’t plan a trip without it!

Dashboard got a user interface overhaul with new versions of OS X and it now more closely resembles – surprise surprise – iOS and OS X’s very own Launchpad. You’ll find the new look when you go to add a widget to the Dashboard, and just like iOS you can now arrange all those widgets into Folders to prevent clutter and bring some organization to the widget collection.

Read more »

The latest versions of Mac OS let you move files directly into iCloud from your Mac, these files can then be opened on any other Mac or iOS device set up with the same iCloud account. This is extremely convenient if you want to quickly move a file around but don’t want to copy it manually or with a USB drive, particularly when text documents that are lightweight and easily sent around through the cloud.

Read more »

You can easily start and create conference calls on the iPhone regardless of what cell provider, network, or iOS version yo use. In fact, the iPhone phone app itself has a great feature that lets you add additional callers to any existing conversation or phone call, joining the calls together to create a conference call, and it’s surprisingly easy to use.

Let’s detail how to make a conference call with iPhone.

Read more »

Mac users with Mac OS X Mavericks, Yosemite, El Capitan, and Mountain Lion finally have the option to bring back the much-loved “Save As” feature that was removed from Lion. It’s slightly hidden though, and there’s a few quirks with it, but we’ll show you how to access “Save As” and even better, how to have it always be visible by enabling a reasonable keyboard shortcut to use the feature again with a simple keystroke.

Read more »

If you have a Mac laptop you probably know by now that OS X Mountain Lion removed the Time Remaining option from the menubar battery indicator, opting instead to show an iOS-like percentage left. For many of us, knowing the remaining battery life is valuable information, and thanks to a great free app you can not only see that number again in the menu bar, but you can push alerts of the remaining battery life to Notification Center in OS X.

Alerts are shown stacked atop one another in Notification Center, sorting the Notifications by Time makes this more useful:

• Download Battery Time Remaining free from Github

You can configure the apps basic settings to alert you at whatever percentage level you want just by pulling down the menu bar. You’ll also find the Battery Time Remaining menu shows you some other important battery info, like the total charge capacity, the current battery cycle count, power usage, and the batteries temperature.

Whether your Mac is experiencing the battery life issues with Mountain Lion or not, this is a great free app and well worth downloading if you’re on the go and rely on a MacBooks battery to get things done. It’s also a lot more full-featured than a recently covered app that just displays the time remaining.

The next iPhone will be released for sale on Friday, September 21, a week and a half after the expected launch date of September 12, according to a series of reports from TechCrunch.

This speculative release date is based on TechCrunch sources within AT&T and Verizon citing a store employee vacation blackout at both companies beginning on September 21 and ending September 30:

We’ve received yet another bit of evidence confirming the next iPhone’s September 21 launch. According to an AT&T sales rep, AT&T staff has been given a vacation blackout from September 21 to September 30, just like Verizon employees. Our source also mentioned that blue carrier employees are undergoing training for an “iconic release.”

September 21 is one day before the official start of Fall, which Apple has provided as a vague release timeline for iOS 6.

The next iPhone (new iPhone, iPhone 5, whatever you want to call it) is expected to have a 4″ display and feature a taller chasis to accomodate the 16×9 screen. Multiple pictures claiming to be the device have leaked and appear to show a rather thin aluminum enclosure, available in both black and white. Other features are likely to include an A5X CPU, improved camera, and 4G LTE networking capabilities.

The default setting for Notification Center in both Mac OS X and iOS is to sort alerts from apps manually, a setting which doesn’t make much sense if you use Notifications as a timeline of events and want the most recent always on top. Fortunately, changing Notification Center to arrange alerts by time is as simple in OS X as with iOS:

Read more »

Did you know you can put calls on hold on iPhone? This suspends the phone call without hanging it up, but it prevents you from being able to hear the individual on the other end and they can’t hear you either. It’s a slightly hidden feature that you won’t see at the normal phone options, but here’s how to use it:

• While on a call, tap and hold on the “Mute” button until it turns to “Hold”
• Tap it again to resume the call as usual

Apparently this is only available on GSM enabled iPhones (AT&T and T-Mobile in the USA), and the Verizon and Sprint iPhone doesn’t support the feature on their networks. Users on CDMA networks can always just use the Mute feature instead though.

Dont miss even more iPhone tips.

Battery life on portable Macs running Mountain Lion improved slightly with the OS X 10.8.1 update, but still generally underperforms the same Macs running Lion. Since updating to OS X 10.8.1 from 10.8, we have conducted several unscientific tests on a variety of different Macs and found there is a minor improvement to battery life between the two versions of Mountain Lion, though most users probably won’t notice a significant change.

The hardest hit Macs tend to be any portable model with a Core i5 and Core i7 CPU from 2011 and 2012, including the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, while, interestingly, Core 2 Duo machines seem to be less impacted with battery performance remaining mostly the same in Mountain Lion as it was in Lion.

MacBook Air 13″ Core i7 (mid-2012)

• OS X 10.8.1 – 4:36
• OS X 10.8 – 4:33

MacBook Air 13″ Core i5 (mid-2012)

• OS X 10.8.1 – 4:48
• OS X 10.8 – 4:31

MacBook Air 11″ Core i5 (mid-2011)

• OS X 10.8.1 – 3:26
• OS X 10.8 – 3:32

MacBook Air 11″ Core 2 Duo (late-2010)

• OS X 10.8.1 – 5:45
• OS X 10.8 – 5:47

Not all Macs have been impacted negatively by Mountain Lion however, a MacBook Pro 2010 model reported no noticeable change in battery life regardless of the version of OS X running on it.

Read more »

Though Apple plans to launch the next iPhone on September 12, the smaller 7.85″ iPad “mini” will be released later at an event in October, according to a new report from AllThingsD.

Only after the next-generation iPhone is out the door and on sale will Apple announce the smaller iPad it’s been working on. That device, which is expected to have a display of less than eight inches, will be uncrated at a second special event, which sources said is currently scheduled for October.

This confirms some speculation that has occurred about the timing of the next iPhone and iPad mini events, and AllThingsD suggests the two launches will be Apple’s biggest hardware announcements of the year.

AllThingsD is a sister publication to the Wall Street Journal and is generally viewed as a very reliable source of Apple rumors and leaks.

Little is known about the so-called “iPad Mini”, but piecing together rumors and some common sense suggests the following may be true about the hotly anticipated device:

• 7.85″ display running at 1024 x 768
• A5X CPU from current iPad 3
• Front and rear cameras
• 8GB base storage and up
• Weight of about half the current iPad 3
• Appearance to resemble a larger iPod touch with thin side bezels, similar to picture shown at top according to 9to5mac
• Ships with iOS 6, which is set for a “Fall” release
• $299 price point

All iPad models to date feature a 9.7″ display, and the smaller tablet space is currently dominated by the Kindle Fire and the Google Nexus 7 tablet.

This weeks awesome Mac setup comes to us from John K., the Director of Software Platforms for an R&D firm. The workstation is primarily used for software development for a wide variety of platforms, including iOS, Windows 7, Ubuntu, CentOS, and Open Solaris, the latter four of which run in VMWare on the Macs. Hardware shown includes:

• iMac 27″ (mid-2011) 2.7GHz Core i5, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD and 1TB SATA HD, running OS X 10.8
• Thunderbolt 27″ Display connected to the iMac
• MacBook Pro 15″ (late 2008) 2.9GHz Core 2 Duo, 8GB RAM, 480GB SSD, running OS X 10.8
• iPad 3 64GB with iOS 5.1.1 in a Crux360 keyboard case
• Apple Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad, and Wireless Keyboard

The MacBook Pro looks like it’s resting on an mStand , and if you haven’t seen the Crux iPad case before it basically turns the iPad into a tiny laptop, providing both a Bluetooth keyboard and full protection for the iPad that folds like a clam.

Do you want to have your Mac setup featured here? Send a good picture or two with a list of hardware and a brief description of what the workstation is used for to osxdailycom@gmail.com

Safari 6 has a great new way to quickly navigate through open browser tabs using gestures. To access the new tab preview screen, either use a two-fingered pinch inwards, or click the little box on the far right of the tabs:

Once in tab previews, use a two-finger gesture left or right to flip between open tabs. Click on any preview to immediately open that tab.

You can also hit Command+Shift+\ to get to the same tab view, and then use the keyboard arrow keys to navigate between the tabs.

This feature is new to Mac OS X but it’s fairly similar to how Safari on iPhone behaves when you’re switching between tabs and should be familiar to anyone who comes from an iPhone background.

Safari 6 comes with OS X Mountain Lion and is available for Lion users as well.

Auto-fill is one of the more useful features in iOS since it prevents you from having to use the slow touch keyboard to re-enter logins and passwords and contact information like email addresses or phone numbers. The obvious problem with auto-fill though comes with shared iPads (or iPods/iPhones), where multiple people may be using the same device and going to the same web pages, only to find someone else is automatically being logged in or their information is being filled in. Not only can that be annoying, but it can be a privacy issue in some cases, so here is how to clear out the autofill information and then disable the feature:

• Open Settings and tap on “Safari”
• Tap “AutoFill” and then tap “Clear All” under ‘Names and Passwords’
• Next turn “Use Contact Info” and “Names and Passwords” to OFF

Now Safari in iOS will no longer keep that information, and it won’t automatically fill it in when you’re visiting a page with forms for emails, contacts, logins, etc.

A happy medium is to also only disable the “Names and Passwords” feature, but leave Contact Info enabled, making it simple to sign up for new services but not storing the actual passwords.

It’s worth pointing out this feature is disabled by default, so unless you turned it on to begin with you won’t need to do this. For single-user devices, this feature can be extremely useful, but it’s best used in conjunction with a strong passcode to prevent people from accessing websites with sensitive data.

Super Nintendo was one of the greatest game consoles of yesteryear, and with BSNES you can play the SNES classics right on your Mac running OS X Yosemite, OS X Mavericks, OS X Mountain Lion, and OS X Lion.

While BSNES may not be as full featured as the popular SNES9x alternative that works only on older versions of Mac OS X, but it’s still pretty good and is more than adequate if you’re itching to jump into some retro gaming (you’ll need to find abandonware game ROMs elsewhere).

Read more »