If your Bluetooth device connections seem flakey, or if your Apple wireless keyboard or Magic Mouse isn’t as responsive as you think it should be with your Mac, there are two easy ways to check Bluetooth signal strength in OS X. Using the Bluetooth signal data, you can then make adjustments accordingly to improve the connection, either by reducing obstructions, changing batteries, or limiting interference.

Here’s how you can check Bluetooth signal strength from OS X from the menu item, and from the preference panel:
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For those that rely on passwordless logins via ssh, rather than generating a new SSH key for a new client machine, you can easily move SSH keys from one computer to another. This is a quick and easy solution for a temporary machine or username or for use on an auxiliary workstation. You could also use this to copy SSH keys between user accounts on the same machine.

Moving SSH Keys Between Computers

If you’re already connected to a networked Mac, using the Finder is an easy way to copy the SSH keys. First you’ll want to show hidden files in OS X either through defaults write or a tool like DesktopUtility, then just open up the .ssh directory on both machines and do a drag and drop:

On the other hand, if you’re already in Terminal to enable hidden files, you may as well just use the command line to move them over.

Copying SSH Keys from the Command Line
Using the terminal is faster for many of us, you’ll obviously have to be connected to the other computer through a network for this to work.

cp .ssh/id_rsa* /Network/path/to/username/.ssh/

Simple enough, and will work for any version of OS X and most variations of unix or linux.

If you wanted to, you could also zip the key files and then transfer them through AirDrop, but that’s probably more work than necessary.

Because SSH keys allow for passwordless logins, you’ll want to securely delete or better yet securely format the hard drive before it goes to a new owner. This is especially true with temporary computers or loaner machines.

Want to quickly make an iPhone photo look even better? The iPhone Photos app includes a nice little trick called auto-enhance that will make a few various adjustments to an image that almost always improves the look of the photo being adjusted. It’s not an overwhelming effect by any means, it’s more of a subtle boost to contrast, saturation, and some other image qualities, which generally makes the picture look closer to how it would be seen in real life.

So sure, the iPhone takes pretty good pictures as is, but why not make your photos look even better by using the built-in Auto-Enhance tool? This article will show you how to easily use the auto-enhance tool on iPhone.

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With the countless paid options that offer file conversions out there, it’s always a huge relief to discover an excellent free service. Today that comes to us from Google, and if you’re looking to convert a PDF file to a DOC, while retaining it’s formatting and serving as a PDF editor too, you won’t find a better free choice than Google Docs, the web based office suite from Google. The other perk to this approach? It’s completely cross platform compatible, so you can convert and edit the document from any browser on any OS, be it Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X, and you’ll know the document will turn out the same every time.

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Yellow Jacket is an all new iPhone case that doubles as a powerful stun gun, zapping potential threats with 650,000 volts of electricity. Not only that, the case also doubles as an additional battery for the iPhone itself, providing up to an additional 20 hours of use – assuming you don’t use the stun feature of course. Sounds interesting, doesn’t it?

The story behind Yellow Jacket is also interesting if not disturbing, apparently it was created by a guy who was robbed at gunpoint in his own home. That story and more are told in the slightly overdramatic promotional video embedded below, but it does a good job of showing the cases application as a self defense tool.

As you probably expect, the Yellow Jacket case does add some additional bulk to the iPhone, totally about an inch thick and weighing 4oz. Even still, that could be a small price to pay for some added security for those who feel they need it.

The Yellow Jacket stungun case will retail for $125 after it’s produced, but can be “pre-ordered” through IndieGogo at $85 and $100. Current versions fit the iPhone 4 and 4S, but more smartphones will be supported soon.

• Check out Yellow Jacket on IndieGogo

We’ve seen some weird iPhone cases before, but this is certainly the most unique iPhone case I’ve heard of that actually serves a purpose. What do you think? Would you want a stun gun case for an iPhone either for yourself or a loved one?

Quite the find by Macgasm

Have you ever wanted to show a list of the entire download history of a Mac? Maybe you know you downloaded a file but you can’t quite pinpoint where you got it from and the “Get Info” trick didn’t work. Or maybe you are trying to track down a file that has been placed on a system that led to problems. Whether it’s for troubleshooting, personal interest, or forensics, the following command will show you everything that you’ve downloaded to a Mac regardless of the application that it came from:

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Tired of Auto-Save continuously saving files in the background? Does Versions annoy you with it’s saved states of your work in each apps? For the vast majority of users, Auto-Save and Versions are excellent features in Mac OS X, but some advanced users are annoyed with the features that came in Lion (and are here to stay in Mountain Lion, Mavericks, Yosemite, El Capitan). If you fall into that crowd here is how to disable the automatic file saving and the entire Versioning system on a per-application basis.

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On the rare occasion that you go to put a Mac to sleep and, well, it won’t sleep, there’s an easy to way to find out what the holdup is. Though this is a somewhat technical approach, it should give a good starting point to anyone who’s confused as to why something like automatic sleep isn’t taking effect, and hopefully provide a quick resolution to the problem.

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The lock screen of an iPhone (or iPad, iPod touch) defaults to showing a preview of all received Messages and SMS, showing both the senders name and the content of their text message. That can be very convenient, but it also has the potential for oversharing private information and dialog between others, which could lead to an embarrassing situation or the disclosure of unintended information to others. If you’d rather those messages be hidden from the lock screen of the iPhone, you can make an adjustment to accomplish your level of desired privacy.

This tutorial will walk through how to hide message previews from the lock screen of an iPhone.
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Paramiko is an SSH module for python that allows for secure connections to be made, and pycrypto is a cryptography toolkit for python.

Whether you need one or the other, or both, the easiest way to get them both installed through Mac OS X is through paramiko. No need to use HomeBrew, MacPorts, or any funky installers, you can do the entire thing yourself rather quickly. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you probably don’t need any of this.

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With all the recent rumors, there is a lot of talk on the tech web about the theoretical iPad mini. If you’ve been assuming the mini’s speculated 7.85″ screen would be about the same as a Kindle Fire or Nexus 7 tablet, you’ve assumed wrong, and as the above graphic demonstrates it’s actually a lot closer to an 8″ screen than 7″, which provides a whopping 40% larger usable screen surface than the 7″ tablet competitors.

Click the image above to see the full sized version, and don’t forget to check out some of the mockups of what a 7.85″ iPad might actually feel like.

Is anyone else increasingly hopeful the smaller iPad comes to market? The idea of a smaller and cheaper iPad is becoming very appealing to me.

Good find by DaringFireball

Wondering if your Mac will run OS X Mountain Lion? Most new Macs will, but here’s how to quickly find out for sure if yours is supported by the latest Mac OS version.

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The Golden Master seed of OS X Mountain Lion has been released to developers. Golden Master (GM) builds are typically the release version of software, indicating that a public version will arrive very soon. The GM build is 12A269 for Client and 12S302 for Server.

Registered developers can get a download code for Mountain Lion GM directly from Apple’s Dev Center, that code can be redeemed through the Mac App Store as usual. Developers can also download a new version of Xcode 4.4 development suite.

OS X Mountain Lion is versioned as Mac OS X 10.8, and includes over 200 new features, many of which are borrowed from iOS, including iMessage, Notification Center, Share Sheets, Game Center, Notes, Reminders, Dictation, and significantly enhanced iCloud integration.

Apple previously stated that OS X Mountain Lion would be released this July at a price of $19.99. Anyone who meets the system requirements will be able to update to Mac OS X 10.8 from Lion or even from Snow Leopard.

Today only, Amazon Deal of the Day is offering some amazing discounts on ultra-fast SSD drives. The Kingston SSDNow V+200 drives offer whopping 535MB/sec read and 480MB/sec write speeds, giving huge performance boosts to just about any computer they’re installed in. If you’ve been looking to upgrade a Macs hard drive to an SSD, it’s hard to find a better deal than these at 65% off:

• Kingston SSDNow V+200 120GB SSD – $79.99 with free shipping (67% discount)
• Kingston SSDNow V+200 240GB SSD – 169.99 with free shipping (65% discount)

Be sure the drive fits your Mac before buying. Most reasonably modern Macs will accept 2.5″ drives without issue, and replacing hard drives on most MacBook, Mac Mini, and MacBook Pro’s is fairly easy, though you’ll want to be at least somewhat technically inclined and comfortable working on the inside of a computer to do it yourself. iMac will also take the drive, but it’s a bit harder to get into. iFixit has a variety of great walkthroughs to facilitate the process if needed.

Apple recently simplified the way Xcode is installed, bundling everything into a single /Applications/Xcode.app/ directory and removing the /Developer directory that used to exist. There are some advantages to this approach, but one of the annoyances is that you now have to launch the iPhone or iPad simulator by opening Xcode first. Well, that’s not entirely true, you can actually still directly launch iOS Simulator without opening Xcode first by creating an alias.

Note that modern versions of Xcode and OS X call the iOS Simulator simply “Simulator”, where you go will depend on which version of OS X the Mac is running.

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If you don’t have Keynote installed on a Mac but you need to view a keynote presentation slides or a keynote file, don’t fret – you can view them all directly in Preview, the bundled image app in Mac OS X.

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With so many rumors of a smaller iPad mini floating around, it’s sounding increasingly possible that Apple may indeed make such a device. Assumed to have a 7.85″ vertical display, it would be about 2″ smaller than the current iPad, so how would that feel and what would it look like?

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Did you know those white Apple earphones that come bundled with an iPhone can double as a remote shutter button for the iPhone camera?

With the additional length of the earbud cable, you can end up taking better group pictures, better selfies, and even better low-light photos because it can dramatically reduce camera shake. There are all sorts of fun uses for taking pictures from iPhone or iPad with the earbuds.

Give it a try yourself, this tutorial will show you how it works.

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