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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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.

Update: Note this article is for devices running iOS 6, if you’re running a modern version of iOS than go here to learn how to view and access iCloud Tabs in Safari for iOS as the steps have changed slightly, and the appearance is different too.

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:

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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.

Using iPhone 5 on T-Mobile is now this simple:

• Buy an unlocked iPhone 5 at full price ($650) – or get a Verizon iPhone 5 with unlocked SIM, or pay full price for an off-contract iPhone 5 from AT&T and restore the device through iTunes to unlock it
• 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.

Making things even better is a crowd-sourced T-Mobile 4G HSPA+ coverage map that 9to5mac discovered, showing where iPhone 5 users can get the fastest data speeds on T-Mobile:

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.