Want to see what the weather is going to be like for the next 6 days?

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Mac OS X has a handful of features that are dependent on a constant internet connection, and one of those is the new automatic update feature. Undeniably convenient, Mac OS X and all apps installed from the Mac App Store will automatically download and update themselves, but if you have metered internet or are using Personal Hotspot you’ll probably want to save the bandwidth and stop those updates from downloading themselves in the background.

This tutorial will show you how to change your Mac OS system software update settings to prevent automatically downloading of apps and software updates.

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Apple will launch the next iPhone on September 12, according to a rumor from the typically reliable AllThingsD. Citing sources, they say Apple has an event planned for an unspecific topic for the second week of September, and suggests the event will be for the new iPhone launch.

Pictures of what is claimed to be the next-generation iPhone have surfaced several times now, indicating components are being manufactured and leaked through various parts of the supply chain. Speaking of components, AllThingsD also posted a chart demonstrating substantial prepayment of component supplies by Apple, further suggesting an upcoming product launch:

The actual release date of the next iPhone remains unknown, but the device will likely ship with iOS 6 pre-installed, and Apple has said iOS 6 is set for a “Fall” release. Fall officially begins on September 22 of this year.

Update: Other media outlets including Bloomberg and the New York Times are now confirming the “iPhone 5” September 12 launch date, with Bloomberg reiterating an earlier rumor that Steve Jobs worked closely on the redesign before he passed away.

Update 2: The Wall Street Journal is also chiming in to confirm the September 12 date, saying the Apple event will discuss “new products” – note the plural, and then mentions the iPad mini:

The company is expected to hold an event on Sept. 12 to discuss new products, according to a person familiar with the matter. A new iPhone is expected later this year and Apple has also been working with suppliers on a new smaller cousin to the iPad.

iPad mini and a new iPhone launched on the same day? That would be something.

Autocorrect in iOS is pretty smart and usually gets things right, it also learns your habits and frequently typed words and will start autocorrecting what you type to the words you have used in the past. This can be a blessing and a curse, because if you accidentally corrected a word to a wrong one or a typo, the iPad/iPhone dictionary will want to use that new erroneous word as the correction. The solution to that problem is to reset autocorrect by clearing out the keyboard dictionary.

Resetting the auto-correct keyboard dictionary is the same on all versions of iOS and on the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Here’s what you will want to do:
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The hosts file maps hostnames to IP addresses, it’s present in virtually every OS in some form or another and in Mac OS X it’s stored at /etc/hosts, which requires administrative privileges to modify and generally a jump to the command line. Editing the hosts file allows you to do a variety of things like set local test domains, block websites and IP’s, downgrade iOS, troubleshoot weird iTunes errors, and much more.

If you need to edit your hosts file but you’re not savvy with Terminal and you’d rather avoid the command line entirely, check out the free Hosts preference pane. The third party Hosts panel lets you add, edit, and remove host files easily. If an item is checked, it’s stored in the hosts file, if it’s unchecked, it’s removed rather than commented out but continues to be stored in the preference panel for future use. Simple, easy to use, low maintenance, and should be perfect for anyone who needs to modify /etc/hosts but doesn’t want to get their hands too dirty with nano or vi.

• Download Hosts Preference Panel free from GitHub

Hosts works with most new versions of Mac OS x, including OS X 10.6.8, 10.7+, and 10.8 Mountain Lion.

Ideally the Hosts preference pane would include the management and multiple hosts file juggling that GasMask provides, but perhaps that’ll come in a future version.

Update: if changes aren’t taking effect, manually flush dns cache with dscacheutil.

With OS X Lion, Exposé merged with Spaces and became Mission Control, as a result the behavior of one of many peoples favorite window management features changed; you could no longer see all windows from all apps in a single screen. Instead, app windows were grouped by application and stacked atop one another. That incredibly useful old Expose feature of seeing all windows is back in OS X Mountain Lion though, and you just have to enable it to see everything from a single screen again:

1. Open System Preferences from the  Apple menu
2. Click on “Mission Control”
3. Uncheck the box next to “Group windows by application”
4. Do a three-fingered swipe up (or hit F9) to see the traditional Expose-style window manager

With Mountain Lion, you can also continue to perform the app-specific Expose style window view by hovering over the apps Dock icon and performing a three-fingered downward swipe.

Mission Control is very powerful, check out 9 great tips for Mission Control or view our archives on the topic for more.

Pictures claiming to be an assembled next-generation black iPhone have surfaced through Japanese mobile repair shop iLabFactory (their website is currently down, but 9to5mac has posted all images).

The device shown has similar styling to an iPhone 4/4S but with an elongated chasis to accomodate the larger 4″ screen, and what looks like a dark aluminum backplate rather than glass. The photos closely match the appearance of past images discovered a few months ago, and also demonstrate the rumored smaller Dock connector and the headphone port relocated to the bottom of the device.
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Removing app icons from the Dock has been the same since the very beginning of Mac OS X: grab an icon and drag it off the Dock into a poof of dust, whereby the icon is no longer displayed in the Dock. That behavior has changed slightly with OS X Mountain Lion and carried through to OS X Mavericks, presumably to prevent accidental deletion of Dock apps. There are still two easy ways to remove Dock icons in OS X 10.8 and 10.9 though, pick either approach that works best for you.
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Apple has started airing three new Mac ads that focus on an Apple Store Genius who is called upon in three unusual circumstances. The TV spots started during the Olympic games and are quite unlike other ads Apple has put out recently.

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This weeks Mac setup comes to us from Claus F., an art director from Denmark who uses all the Apple hardware for creating commercials, leaflets, tickets, DVD art, magazines, ads, and other graphics work.

Hardware shown from left to right includes:

• MacBook Pro 1,1 (2006) – OS X 10.6.8
• iPad 1 (2010) WiFi/3G – iOS 5.1
• iMac 21.5″ (2010) 3.06 GHz, 16GB RAM – OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion
• Apple Magic Mouse & Wireless Keyboard
• Logitech Ergonomic mouse

Not shown is an iPhone 4.

It’s good to see some of the original Intel MacBook Pro hardware still around and kicking despite not supporting the latest two OS X releases, it’s really a testament to the build quality of Apple hardware. The iPad stand looks like a miniature easel, I haven’t seen one of those before but it looks quite nice and raises the iPad to a perfect level for something like AirDisplay.

Want your Mac setup featured? Send in a good picture or two with a list of hardware and a short description of what the gear is used for to osxdailycom@gmail.com

Mac OS X defaults to preventing applications from unidentified developers or sources from being launched. You’ll discover the message in Mac OS when you try to launch a Mac app that didn’t come from a verified source or from the Mac App Store, and you’ll get an alert dialog that says “[App name] can’t be opened because it is from an unidentified developer”.

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One Apple fan didn’t take kindly to the office message of “PLEASE DO NOT PRINT LARGE JOBS” (all in caps of course!) and decided to take on the note quite literally, printing an enormous rasterbatored image of the classic Steve Jobs portrait.

The original message was obviously aimed at preventing ginormous print jobs that hog printer queues office-folk are all too familiar with. This is completely stupid, but this is office rebellion and humor at its finest with an Apple twist, and though it probably belongs on Passive Aggressive Notes more than here, it’s too funny to ignore for a Friday.

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Dictation is available to the Mac with newer versions of system software, but despite being one of the major features of Mac OS you may find that it’s not enabled by default on some Macs.

It’s easy to enable Dictation on a Mac though and it’s even easier to use, let’s get started to learn how to enable this handy voice-to-text feature and then how to use it in Mac OS.
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Skeumorphism seems to be here to stay, but if you’re bent on ridding OS X apps like Contacts (Address Book) and Calendar (iCal) of any traces of the stitched leather appearance, Mountain Tweaks makes it as easy as a couple of clicks for OS X Mountain Lion users.

• Get Mountain Tweaks free from TweaksApp

Mountain Tweaks is a free download, just look for the tiny ‘here’ text on the page rather than clicking the blue download/pay button.

Download and launch Mountain Tweaks, click the “Mountain Lion” tab, and then click the “Yes” buttons for both of the Leather entries. Restoring back to the leather appearance is as simple as clicking “No” under the same tab.

If MountainTweaks feels familiar it’s because it’s the sister app of LionTweaks, which serves the same leather UI removal purpose for apps in OS X Lion.

As of now there’s no way to remove the skeumorphic interfaces of Notes or Reminders, but it’s pretty likely those will be modifiable too once someone figures it out.

After you’ve upgraded to OS X Mountain Lion on the primary Mac you bought it from, the installer app deletes itself from your /Applications/ folder. This makes sense for those who only own a single Mac, but if you plan on installing OS X Mountain Lion on multiple Macs or just want to create an additional boot USB drive for installs and upgrades, it’s kind of annoying.

If you fall into the multi-Mac category or want a backup of the installer around, you’ll need to re-download the Mountain Lion installer app from the Mac App Store – you will not be charged again for redownloading – here’s how:

• Launch the Mac App Store and hold down the “Option” while clicking on the “Purchases” tab
• Locate “OS X Mountain Lion” in the list, and click on the “Install” button to redownload
• Find the “Install OS X Mountain Lion” app in your /Applications/ folder when finished downloading

For those with bandwidth concerns it’s a good idea to make a copy of the Installer app somewhere so you don’t lose it again. Or just make a boot disk and not worry about it again.

Safari 6 is bundled with OS X Mountain Lion and it was just released for OS X Lion as well, and though it’s a very worthwhile update with some great features like the single search/url bar, one not-so-great change is the removal of the RSS subscribe button. The good news is a third party developer has already created a Safari extension that brings back an RSS button, and installing it is just a click away.

• Get the Safari Feed Extension here from RedSweater

Once the Subscribe to RSS button has been added to Safari, clicking on it will open the websites RSS feed into whatever your default RSS reader is. If you don’t have a dedicated feed reader like NetNewsWire or Google Reader, it will default to opening the feeds in Mail app.

This little extension has been making the rounds of the Apple-web today for good reason, anytime a long-existing feature disappears from a software release it can cause some confusion and disappointment.

By the way, if you haven’t subscribed to the OSXDaily RSS feed yet, join 50,000+ others and do so and you’ll never miss a beat from us. Our feed includes full posts, no nonsense. You can also subscribe to our RSS feed via email and get a daily newsletter of articles delivered to your inbox.

Multi-Mac households can buy OS X Mountain Lion once for $19.99 and use that single purchase to install and upgrade all of their other personal authorized Macs.

This is allowed by Apple’s generous Mac App Store licensing agreement that began with Lion, and though most people don’t bother to read the fine print, here’s the section of the OS X Mountain Lion 10.8 License Agreement that pertains to the matter:

“(i) to download, install, use, and run for personal, non-commercial use, one (1) copy of the Apple Software directly on each Apple-branded computer running OS X Lion or OS X Snow Leopard (“Mac computer”) that you own or control.”

Basically that means as long as the Macs share the same Apple ID, you will be able to easily re-download Mountain Lion on another Mac, whether it’s running Lion or Snow Leopard. You can also just copy the Installer over, or manually make a bootable Mountain Lion installer drive and use that to upgrade the other Macs in the household. Here are several approaches to getting the other Macs upgraded:

Method 1) Downloading Mountain Lion on Other Macs

The simplest way to upgrade other Macs is to just download the installer on other Macs. From the other computer(s) you wish to upgrade to Mountain Lion:

• Launch the Mac App Store and be sure you are logged in with the same Apple ID that you originally bought Mountain Lion with
• Click on the “Purchases” icon and locate “OS X Mountain Lion”, then click the “Install” button
• Run the installer as usual to upgrade the Mac

Don’t want to re-download OS X 10.8 from the App Store? You can also just copy the installer to other Macs. Here are two simple ways to do this over a network, the easy way with AirPort and the traditional way with File Sharing. The best time to do this is before upgrading the primary Mac so that you have easy access to the Mountain Lion installer without having to re-download it from the App Store.

Method 2) Transfer the Mountain Lion Installer Over AirDrop

If the Macs you’re upgrading are running Lion, using AirDrop to transfer the installer is by far the easiest solution and it will prevent you from having to download the 10.8 Installer app again from the App Store:

1. From the Mac you are copying the Installer from: open a new Finder window and navigate to /Applications/ and locate the file “Install OS X Mountain Lion.app” then open another Finder window and select “AirDrop” from the sidebar
2. From the Mac(s) you are transferring Mountain Lion installer to: open a new Finder window and choose “AirDrop” from the sidebar
3. Drag and drop “Install OS X Mountain Lion.app” to the destination Mac(s) in AirDrop, and accept the file transfer on the destination Macs
4. When finished copying, upgrade to OS X 10.8 as usual

For Macs without AirDrop support, use traditional File Sharing described next.

Method 3) Copying OS X Mountain Lion Installer to Other Macs via LAN

In order to do this, you’ll need to have downloaded the Mountain Lion installer and not installed it yet, or else you’d have to re-download Mountain Lion. This solution is best for multi-Mac networks and for those looking to upgrade to Snow Leopard

1. On all Macs you wish to copy the Installer to, enable File Sharing by going to  Apple menu > System Preferences > Sharing > check “File Sharing”
2. From the Finder of the Mac with Mountain Lion installer, go to /Applications/ to find the installer “Install OS X Mountain Lion.app”
3. Open a new Finder window and hit Command+K to bring up “Connect to Server”, choose “Browse” and connect to the shared Mac
4. Navigate to the shared Macs /Applications/ folder and copy “Install OS X Mountain Lion.app” to it
5. Repeat as necessary for other personal Macs

Alternative Multi-Mac Upgrade Methods

These are generally for more advanced users since most require the creation of boot disks:

• Copy the installer to a DVD or USB key – this method on it’s own will not be bootable
• Clean install OS X Mountain Lion with a boot disk
• Manually make a bootable Mountain Lion installer drive out of an extra USB drive or DVD
• Use a tool like Lion Disk Maker to create a boot DVD/USB

Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments. Happy upgrading!

Though most users are best served by the easy upgrade process to OS X Mountain Lion through the Mac App Store, some people want to perform a clean install and start with a blank slate. A clean install means the drive is completely erased and Mac OS X 10.8 is installed fresh, nothing else is on the drive, no apps are installed, and no files are included.

The process described below will format the selected Mac disk and erase everything on it, followed by performing a completely clean and fresh installation of OS X Mountain Lion.

We’d highly recommend backing up your Mac before performing a clean install, even if you have no intention on using it afterwards.

1. If you don’t have it yet, get Mountain Lion from the Mac App Store but do not install it yet (or redownload it if you did install it)
2. Create a bootable install drive for OS X Mountain Lion, make one manually with a USB drive or use the LionDiskMaker tool to automate the process with a USB or DVD
3. With the boot installer drive connected to the Mac, reboot and hold down the Option key
4. Choose the “Mac OS X Installer” startup volume from the boot menu
5. Select “Disk Utility” and choose the hard drive you wish to format, click the “Erase” tab, and then pull down the “Format” menu and select “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” as the type, name the drive if you wish
6. Click the “Erase” button and let the drive format – this is the point of no return
7. When finished, quit out of Disk Utility and now select the “Install Mac OS X” option from the menu
8. Choose your freshly formatted hard drive and install Mountain Lion

When the Mac reboots you will have a clean installation of Mac OS X 10.8 to work with.

At this point you can either import files and apps from the backup you made, manually copy over backed up files, or just start anew.