Apple’s new Maps app includes a really handy feature that lets you rotate the direction of maps on screen by swiveling your fingers, making it easier to follow directions and roads. While the maps are rotating, the compass will keep telling you where North is, as you’ll find when using the turn-by-turn navigation.

If you ever want to reorient Maps back to north/south though all you need to do is tap the compass icon in the upper right corner. This will instantly orient the compass and Map on an iPhone.

Tapping the compass icon causes Maps to immediate situate back to North being at the top of the screen, which was also the consistent setting in Maps prior to modern versions of iOS. This should work in all Maps apps from Google and Apple, so whether you’re using the built-in app or a third party solution try tapping on the Compass indicator to orient the direction again.

If you find ever yourself lost or disorientated somewhere, use this in conjunction with the compass tap to figure out exactly which way you’re facing.

A peculiar bug that’s impacting some iPhone 5 users leaves the iPhone unable to find a signal and rejoin a 3G/4G network after leaving an area with EDGE or no service. Despite being in a location with adequate cell coverage, the iPhone will just report “No Service”. This is most likely a software issue with iOS 6, and for the time being the two possible solutions are fairly lame but do work:

• Reboot the iPhone by powering off and on again
• Turn Airplane Mode ON and OFF

Unfortunately, the AirPlane Mode trick works only sometimes when going from EDGE, and the only guaranteed way to get reception again after losing it completely seems to be turning the iPhone on and off again. Strangely, toggling the “Cellular Data” switch does absolutely nothing to resolve the problem and is still unable to join a network. Some users have also reported success with the age-old trick of resetting Network Settings.

It’s hard to say how widespread this problem is, but it seems limited to iPhone 5 users who are in areas with weaker cell signals or a large amount of obstructions to signals, like mountains, heavy trees, and hills. For example, I live in an area with notoriously bad cell coverage and encounter the problem on a daily basis anytime I leave a 3G/4G coverage area. Hopefully an update to iOS will resolve the issue.

If you don’t use the Newsstand app in iOS there isn’t much reason to keep it around on the home screen, but for whatever reason Apple has made it impossible to move into a folder. A past bug let you move it, but that’s been patched with more recent versions of iOS.

Now for the good news, a new tweak lets you dump the Newsstand icon back into a folder, if you don’t mind a few caveats: first, once Newsstand is in the folder it’s basically unusable because it will crash, and second, you’ll have to connect your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to a computer and launch an app to put it into a folder in the first place. If you’re ok with those limitations, grab StifleStand and connect your iOS device to your Mac or PC, which will dump Newsstand into a folder called “Magic”.

• Get StifleStand for Mac or Windows

Moving Newsstand out of the folder makes it usable again, but StifleStand will have to be ran again to put it back into a folder. Not exactly convenient, but until Apple gives the native ability to move Newsstand around at will, it’ll do.

This app made the rounds recently, but it was originally limited to Mac users. Now with a Windows version available, anyone can finally hide the Newsstand icon. Thanks to MacStories for the discovery.

Most Mac OS X preferences are managed through easily accessible control panels, but going behind the scenes with defaults write commands can lead to some genuinely useful tweaks that can only be made through the command line. This list represents a compilation of some of the best defaults write commands out there, and even if you’re not an advanced user you’ll find some of these tricks to be well worth your while.

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Worried about scratching the back of your beautiful iPhone 5? Don’t want to wait for an official InvisibleShield to be released from ZAGG or the other film protector companies? Maybe you’re just cheap and don’t feel like shelling out the $30 to protect your $200+ iPhone investment?

Well, if you don’t mind having an incredibly ugly jimmy-rigged version, look no further than the plastic film that arrives on the back of new iPhone 5 when it’s fresh out of the box. Just cut off the tabs that cover the glass and make it otherwise easy to remove, and you’re left with a fairly well sealed protective cover over the most vulnerable aluminum. It looks… well, absolutely terrible… but apparently it works, at least until you get a case, find a real scratch shield, or maybe just get over the fact that anything in your pocket 365 days a year will probably end up with some character building scuffs on it.

This post is kind of a joke and kind of not, but if you’re actually worried about scratches it looks like real ZAGG invisibleSHIELDs are available now and can be had for a slight discount from Amazon. Grabbing one of those is probably a much better solution than leaving the plastic on the couch.

Thanks for sending this in ST

Launchpad’s new search function from OS X 10.8 onward make it an extremely fast app launcher, certainly faster than navigating multiple screenfuls of apps and clicking on app icons with a cursor. For the speediest launches, just do the following:

• Hit F4 and start typing the app name, then hit return

Is that quick or what?

For optimal speed, don’t bother typing the full name of the application, just type the first few letters, like “ter” for Terminal. If you end up in a situation where more than one app have similar names, either type another character or two or use the arrow keys to navigate between the searched apps within Launchpad.

New Macs have the F4 key mapped as a shortcut to open Launchpad, but older Macs can easily reassign F4 away from Dashboard and to Launchpad with just a click or two within System Preferences.

Whether or not this is faster than using Spotlight is going to come down to personal preferences and keyboard habits, but there’s one obvious advantage to using this Launchpad method over Spotlight; you won’t accidentally open a file or anything else, since Launchpad is apps only.

Siri is much more useful than many realize, and one of the best ways to use Siri while on the go is through your earbuds or earpods, the classic white headphones that come with all iOS devices. All you need is Siri enabled, and then connect the earbuds to your iPhone or iPad as you normally would, then it’s just a matter of summoning the virtual assistant and speaking commands.
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All My Files is one of those features of Mac OS X that was somewhat controversial at first, but once you start using it often, you can stop sorting files yourself in the Finder and just let All My Files, search, and Spotlight manage documents instead.

Nonetheless, there are still times when you’ll want to know where a file is actually located in the file system of OS X, and there’s a very easy way to jump to a file or items original location right from All My Files on the Mac:
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The iPhone is quickly becoming the primary camera for many of us, and though it makes a great point-and-shoot for your average pictures, it can also take surprisingly good close-up and macro shots. With that in mind, here are 5 tips to make the most of macro photography with the iPhone.

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Have multiple inboxes and different mail accounts set up on your iPhone or iPad? Changing the order of your mailboxes is easier than ever in iOS, you don’t even have to go into Settings with new versions of the software. Instead, if you want to arrange the order of mail accounts and mailboxes in Mail app, you can just use the following quick tutorial right from the Mail app to have them appear however you’d like.

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This weeks Mac setup comes to us from Ryan W., a chemistry student in the UK who has a nice desk full of Apple gear. Hardware shown includes:

• MacBook Air (2012) – Core i5 1.7GHz, 4GB RAM, 64GB SSD
• Mac Mini (2011) – Core i5 2.3GHz, 8GB RAM, 500GB HDD
• LG IPS22V 22″ 1080p Display connected to Mac Mini
• iPad 3 – 32GB Wi-Fi model
• iPhone 4 32GB
• Vestax Spin DJ Controller
• Apple Wireless Keyboard & Magic Mouse
• iPad keyboard dock
• Bose on-ear headphones

The app running on the iPad 3 is Molecules, a free app that shows rendered 3D molecules, certainly fitting for a chemistry student.

Have a Mac setup you want to share? Send us a good picture or two with a description of hardware and what you use it for to osxdailycom@gmail.com

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.

You can grab the full size wallpaper here or by clicking the image below.

This hilarious idea was found on Twitter, don’t forget to follow us there too.

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.

Preview is a surprisingly great app and often underutilized, don’t miss a bunch of our other Preview tips to really appreciate the default Mac image viewer for all it can do.

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:

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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:

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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:
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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:

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