One of the many things that iOS and Mac switchers coming from the Windows world surely don’t miss is the infamous Blue Screen of Death. To celebrate your freedom from that dreaded BSOD, you can dress up your iPad or Mac with a hilarious blue screen wallpaper, which easily ranks up there with that awful Windows 95 background on the worst wallpaper scale, and rest easy knowing you’ll never have to see that horrible blue screen of problems again.
The latest version of Preview app from OS X Mountain Lion onward feature a couple of fun menu items that let you quickly add comic book styled speech bubbles to any photo. It’s extremely easy to use, but it’s also easy to overlook, so here’s how to use them to add some humor to any picture:
Open an image in Preview and click the “Show Edit Toolbar” button that looks like a square with a pen in it, or hit Command+Shift+A
Click on either the speech bubble icon or the thought bubble icon, then click and drag on the picture to place the bubble
Type what you want in the bubble, adjusting the font and size as desired using the Fonts panel
Thought and speech bubbles can be moved around and resized just by clicking on them, but once they’re saved they’re stuck in place. You probably don’t want to save a goofy modification over the original photo (even though it’s easy to revert back now), so use Export or Save As to save the styled image instead.
Bored? Launch Terminal and get ready for some completely stupid tricks to keep yourself entertained. You’ll be listening to Horse Ebooks blab away, watching Star Wars in ASCII, playing retro games, toasting your CPU cores with a repetitive phrase, and even talking to a virtual psychotherapist. The hidden joys of the command line are upon us:
Want to change what app icons show where on Apple TV? That’s now simple to accomplish.
If you’ve always wanted to change how your Apple TV home screen icons where arranged, you’ll be happy the feature has arrived. Indeed now you can arrange the majority of other tvOS icons just by doing the following with your remote on Apple TV:
Apple has issued minor “Supplemental Updates” to both OS X Lion and OS X Mountain Lion. The small releases focus on resolving a few prominent bugs, though the most noticeable is probably the fix for Lion users who are encountering extraordinarily long waits with Time Machine backups.
The updates are available through Apple menu > Software Update and require a restart.
OS X 10.8.2 Supplemental Update 1.0 (26.6MB)
– Resolves an issue that may cause certain Japanese characters to appear incorrectly in Mail
– Allows Safari to access secure sites when parental controls are enabled
– Addresses an issue that may prevent systems with more than 64 GB of RAM from starting up
– Resolves an issue that may cause DVD Player to unexpectedly quit
OS X 10.7.5 Supplemental Update 1.0 (2.2MB)
– Resolves an issue that may cause Time Machine backups to take a very long time to complete
– Addresses an issue that prevents certain applications signed with a Developer ID from launching
Even if you are not impacted by any of the bugs resolved by either supplemental update, it is recommended to keep system software up to date as part of a general Mac maintenance schedule.
We’ve all accidentally saved over a crucial file and lost something important, and that’s exactly what the Versions feature of Mac OS X aims to prevent by providing a history of a documents life. Modern versions of OS X with the Versions feature have improved dramatically, and it’s now easier to use and more logical than ever.
One of the particularly great abilities of this feature lets you immediately revert any document back to the last saved version of that file, here’s all you need to do: Read more »
Siri is surprisingly useful, and though the voice assistant can do a ton of stuff, it’s really best used when it’s either faster than manually tapping around a screen, or when you’re unable to because your hands are busy from driving or something else. Now that Siri can be enabled on more iOS devices than ever before, you should really start using it, and here are some genuinely useful things you can do with Siri to get started:
The iPhone 5 may be a lot tougher than it’s predecessor, but apparently it’s no match for lasers. For some reason or another someone decided to shoot a bunch of lasers at an iPhone 5 to see how it would hold up, and what do you know, it ends up destroying the iPhone. Entirely pointless, but at least they filmed the entire thing and you can watch it embedded below.
So while you should feel confident that dropping the device isn’t going to do much damage other than a simple nick or ding, whatever you do, just don’t shoot laser beams at your iPhone 5 if you want it to last.
Thanks to Safari in Mountain Lion and iOS 6, all open browser tabs are accessable between your Macs and iOS devices through iCloud.
Getting to those tabs is easy enough on a Mac and iPad, where clicking the cloud icon opens a list of available tabs, but on the iPhone and iPod touch it’s just slightly hidden:
Many of us were disappointed to learn T-Mobile didn’t officially pick up the iPhone 5, but it hardly matters when T-Mobile is making it easier than ever to use the newest iPhone on their network anyway. Not only that, but with the T-Mobile HSPA+ network rollout the reported data speeds in many regions are impressively fast. If you’re looking to save a bunch of money every month or you just hate contracts, this is probably the way to go.
Get an iPhone 5 compatible nano-SIM from T-Mobile – shave a micro-SIM yourself, visit a local store, or contact TMO support at 1-800-866-2453
Sign up for a T-Mobile plan – $30/month for 5GB of 4G data and unlimited SMS is their best web-only deal by far
Pop the T-Mobile nano SIM into the iPhone 5
We’ve received several confirmations from readers on how easy it is to get iPhone 5 working with T-Mobile in the USA, and also how helpful their reps are to get everything functioning. The web-only $30/month offering is such a ridiculously good deal – as long as you don’t spend much time talking – that you could easily pay off the full priced unsubsidized iPhone 5 in under a year when compared to paying for the expensive 4G data plans offered by AT&T, Verizon, or Sprint. Plus there’s no contract.
One 9to5mac user provided the following screenshot from Speed Test, showing an iPhone 5 downloading at a super-fast 13.45 Mbps with a speedy 3.38 Mbps upload speed.
For what it’s worth, those data speeds are significantly faster than standard 3G and 4G speeds on competing networks, though they aren’t as fast as an unencumbered LTE network. The only potential downside is when you leave a HPSA+ coverage area your data speeds will be dropped down to the 2G Edge network, and for that reason going the unofficial route to T-Mobile won’t be a viable solution for everyone.
AirPlay Mirroring arrived on the Mac with OS X Mountain Lion, but Macs built before 2011 don’t support the feature, and obviously any OS X version prior to 10.8 won’t have it either. That is, until you run AirParrot, which enables AirPlay Mirroring on any Mac (or Windows PC) running OS X 10.6.8 or later. Read more »
If you suspect someone is using your Mac while you’re away and getting into personal documents and files, the easiest way to quickly find out is by looking at the Recent Items list in OS X.
If you want to completely peg CPU to stress test a Mac, turn no further than the Terminal. Using the command line you can easily max out all CPU cores and induce huge load on a Mac, making it easy to determine things like what temperature the processor reaches under heavy load, if fans are working properly, how loud fans get, what battery life is like under immense workload, and other technical aspects that can be helpful for troubleshooting purposes. Though it’s a technical process, it’s quite simple to do and we’ll explain everything.
Emailing photos from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch is easier than ever in modern versions of iOS and iPad, because you can actually attach pictures right from the mail composition screen.
This is much simpler than the copy and paste method that was often used before to email out pictures from an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, and in many ways it’s easier than starting from Photos app too, since often you’re halfway through an email when you want to attach a picture to send out.
Now that Twitter is deeply integrated into OS X from Mountain Lion onward, you can easily add Twitter usernames and their accompanying profile pictures to your existing Contacts information automatically.
This is done by crossmatching data in your Contacts list with Twitter email addresses and phone numbers, which basically guarantees accuracy.
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.
Emailing photos from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch is easier than ever in modern versions of iOS and iPad, because you can actually attach pictures right from the mail composition screen. 
