Keeping software up to date is one of the top maintenance tips for Macs, but sometimes those Software Update notifications can be just plain annoying. Whether you’re just trying to focus on work, or the update that’s bugging you is irrelevant to your needs, here is every possible way you can stop software updating from haranguing you, broken into temporary and permanent solutions.

Temporary: Swipe to Ignore the Notification Temporarily

Very much a temporary solution, you can swipe right on the Notification banner to ignore it for a few more hours. If you have an update waiting for you in the App Store, you will have to do this at least once or twice a day. This is the best approach for when you’re trying to work and you don’t have time to install a software update when it bugs you, but you want to be reminded again to install it later the same day.

Temporary: Disable Notification Center for the Day

Option+Clicking on the Notification Icon button will turn it grey, disabling Notifications for the day. You can also temporarily turn off Notifications by swiping down from the Notification Center and flipping the switch to OFF. Notifications will resume again the next day as usual. This is best for when you want to not see the Notification reminder for a full day. The primary downside to this approach is that it temporarily disables all notifications, not just Software Update.

Semi-Permanent: Hide a Specific Software Update

If you’re getting pestered about a Software Update you don’t need, have no use for, or just don’t want to install, you can also choose to selectively hide that update in the App Store. This is a half-permanent solution because that update will never bug you again, but the update will always be available to you should you want it sometime down the road. Doing this is easy:

• Open the Mac App Store, and choose the “Updates” tab
• Right-Click on the update you want to hide, and choose “Hide Update”

Should it be needed, you can reveal the hidden updates again by pulling down the “Store” menu and choosing “Show All Software Updates”.

Semi-Permanent: Turn Off Automatic Software Update Check

This is not recommended, mostly because keeping software up to date is an important means of maintaining a Mac. Nonetheless, if you’re completely fed up with Software Update pestering you, you can always disable the automatic checking feature. This leaves you to manually check for updates yourself, something which is easy to do, but also easy to forget.

• Go to System Preferences from the  Apple menu, then choose “Software Update”
• Uncheck the box for “Automatically Check for Updates”

If you choose this approach, remember to manually look for updates once a week or so either by opening the App Store or using the Terminal.

A decent compromise for this is to instead turn off automatic downloads.

Permanent: Install the Update

Installing updates is really the best way to handle them, if you can spare a few minutes this is always the best approach. Consider the Software Update notifications as a good opportunity to stretch your legs, grab a cup of coffee, make a phone call or two, or just take a break from whatever you’re doing. Keeping everything updated to the latest version insures maximum compatibility, stability, security, and is just good practice.

Most of us geekier folks instantly know if our iPhones are CDMA or GSM models, but not everyone pays as much attention to the largely insignificant technical details of their phones. Not to worry, it’s extremely easy to find out if an iPhone is GSM or CDMA, all you need to do is look at the model number of the device.

To find out if the phone is CDMA or GSM, flip the iPhone over and look at the back. Locate the string number alongside “Model” as highlighted in this image, and then and compare it against the list below:

Read more »

If you’re new to Emoji, you’ll be forgiven for not knowing just what some of these icons and characters are supposed to mean. Many are common sense, while others are a bit of a mystery, but there’s an easy way to find out what a specific Emoji character means just by looking at the icon in the Special Character selector of Mac OS X.

Read more »

If you’ve ever had to track down a particular plist file for an app you know how frustrating the process can be. Though preference files are usually named in a logical manner, that’s not always the case, and regardless the prefix of com.(developer).(application) is not always the easiest to navigate through. One method is to just use the Finder search function to look for an apps name, but since not all apps follow the logical protocol, it doesn’t always work. Another very useful method uses the Finder’s “Date Modified” sorting option to track down plist files quickly instead. Here is how it works:

• From the Finder, hit Command+Shift+G to bring up Go To Folder and enter ~/Library/Preferences/
• Change the display to sort by list, then click the “Date Modified” option to sort the plist files by when they change
• Now open the app whose plist file you want to track down, and then open that apps Preferences and check and uncheck an option or two while watching the ~/Library/Preferences/ folder change on the fly, that apps preference file should jump to the top quickly

The modified plist files will float to the top fairly quickly, though of you have hidden files shown, you’ll see temporary plist files show up first, ignore those and just focus on the normal .plist documents as they appear. Sometimes it takes a second or two for the change to register in the Preferences folder, that delay is normal, and is demonstrated in the video below with the plist files that are set when modifying Finder Preferences, and the plist file that changes for Recent Items:

Most Mac users will never need to dig around in the preferences file, but keep this tip in mind if you find yourself trying to fix a problematic app, when sometimes resolving problems is as simple as just trashing a plist file. This really handy troubleshooting trick comes from MacOSXHints.

NASA’s Image of the Day is a frequently reliable source of stunning imagery that can double as amazing wallpaper, and this image showing global aerosols is no different. Basically it shows all the stuff floating about in Earths atmosphere, though the coloring may be slightly different than what you’d expect: dust is shown in red, sea salts are in blue, smoke is shown as green, and sulfate particles from volcanoes and fossil fuels are shown in white.

The full sized image is available here at a max size of 3000×1500 pixels, or click the thumbnail below, making it perfect for whatever high-res desktop screens and iOS devices you have.

Not a fan of this one? Check out some more great wallpaper collections we’ve featured around here before, you’re sure to find something you like.

If you have an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, you probably know by now that double-clicking and triple-clicking the Home button is required to perform some actions in iOS, like bringing up lock screen music controls, showing the multitasking bar, inverting the screen, enabling zoom, summoning Assistive Touch, or even turning on Guided Access to lock iOS into a single app.

The default speed required for clicking the Home button on iPhone and iPad can be problematic for some individuals though, as it requires a fairly speedy double or triple tap to work.

Thankfully, with iOS we can now easily make changes to the required click speed required to activate the Home button on any iPhone or iPad.

Read more »

Trash is one of those overlooked aspects of Mac OS X that you probably don’t think much about, most of us just drag a file into it, empty the Trash to delete a document and free up disk space, and that’s about it. That’s fine, but there are also a handful of genuinely useful keyboard shortcuts that pertain to Trash on the Mac, and if you spend any time in the Mac file system they’re worth learning.

These keystrokes must have something in Finder selected in order to work, whether that’s a single file, a folder, or a whole group of documents. We’ll cover 4 handy keyboard shortcuts for the Mac Trash, and also review some other handy Trash tips…

Read more »

If you use a lot of tabs while browsing the web, you’ll appreciate a subtle change to Safari for iPad that came along with iOS 6.

You can now have up to 24 concurrent browser tabs open, a huge increase from the 8 tab limit in prior versions of iOS.

While that 8 tab limit still remains for Safari on iPod touch and iPhone, the larger screen on the iPad allows for the tremendous improvement for those of us who hoard web browser tabs like there’s no tomorrow.

Safari on iPad will show up to 10 tabs across the top if the device is in landscape mode, and to access the other tabs you just have to tap on the >> arrow button on the furthest right tab. That will pull down a menu to access your other tabs.

Selecting a site from the pulldown list will swap it in place of the currently active tab, it does not close it.

This is separate from iCloud tabs, which are accessed by from the little cloud icon in Safari toolbar. Speaking of iCloud tabs, because they are accessible from the iPhone and iPod touch, you can use them as a way to sort of get around the 8 tab limit, by accessing tabs stored on other iPhones, iPads, Macs, or whatever else has the same iCloud account.

Remember, this applies to iOS 6 only. Earlier versions of iOS had greater limitations, and later iOS versions have much more generous limits on Safari tab use.

We really like Siri and it’s undoubtedly useful, but unfortunately not all devices can run Siri, and sometimes Siri is just plain slow or doesn’t work. If you’re looking for an excellent Siri alternative that will run on everything, yes even iPhone 4 & iPhone 3GS, look no further than the latest versions of Google Search for iOS. Not only is Google Voice Search able to answer many of the same inquiries as Siri, it often does it faster and more accurately, since your voice question is translated immediately on the fly.

• Google Voice Search for iOS is free from the App Store

Here are some of the type of questions you can ask Google Voice Search, and get excellent answers for:

• What is the weather in (location)
• Give me directions from (location) to (destination)
• What time is it in (location)
• What is (amount of currency) in (another currency)
• What is the (stock index, stock symbol) today
• Show me (place, store) in (destination)

Try asking other questions, anything Google Voice Search can’t answer directly will be searched for very quickly via the web, much like Siri.

Google Search on iPhone is definitely impressive, the only real downside to Google Search is that it’s not tied into iOS, meaning it can’t launch apps, set reminders, and do anything that’s related to other tasks or apps on the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. In that sense, it’s less feature-rich than Siri, but that’s no fault of Google’s and it’s more to do with how iOS sandboxes apps for security reasons. Nonetheless, there is no better Siri alternative out there, and it’s completely free. Even if you like Siri a lot, Google’s voice search is still worth checking out because of it’s speed alone, and it’s a good backup solution to have when Siri sometimes inexplicably becomes unresponsive.

Google Voice Search also has the distinct advantage of supporting a much wider range of hardware, and it runs on any iOS device with 4.3 or later, providing support for older model iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch that didn’t get Siri support. Like Siri, the device will need internet access in order to work, so don’t expect to use it without cell data or wi-fi.

Apple has released another beta build of iOS 6.1 to registered developers. The second beta arrives less than two weeks after the first beta, and is labeled build 10B5105c. A beta update to Xcode and Apple TV are also available.

Registered iOS Developer can download the revised firmware from Apple’s Dev Center. As with the first 6.1 beta, compatible devices include iPad 2, iPad 3, iPad 4, iPad mini, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 5, and iPod touch 4th and 5th gen.

Similar to the first 6.1 release, the second beta seems to have very minor changes; it fixes a bug that existed in Panorama mode, has a new default Passbook page, and has some minor UI sprite refinements. You can see a couple of screenshots and read a bit more at 9to5mac.

As we first mentioned on Twitter, Apple has started to run two new iPad Mini commercials. Both ads are themed similarly to the iPad Mini Piano commercial, showing the Mini alongside the standard sized iPad and performing a variety of tasks. Both videos have been embedded below for easy viewing.

The first commercial is titled “Photos”, and it shows the iPad Mini and iPad flipping through iPhoto pictures together, with the classic Bobby Darin and Johnny Mercer song “Two of a Kind” playing in the background.

The second commercial is titled “Books” and shows an iPad and iPad Mini going through a variety of classic books within the iBooks application.

Both commercials started airing during NFL football games on Sunday, and were later shown again during 60 Minutes and other primetime television spots.

Mac running out of disk space? Maybe you don’t have room for installing a new app, backing up a device, copying some files, or much of anything? If you’re running low on disk space or have ever received that dreaded “disk full” message when using a Mac, you know it can be pretty frustrating to try and free up storage space quickly so you can get back to work. But it’s actually not too hard, and there are a few quick and easy tips to quickly free up space on a Mac so you can get back to work in no time, and begone with the “Your startup disk is almost full. You need to make more space available on your startup disk by deleting files.” error.

Here are five quick tips to free up space on a hard drive with Mac OS X…
Read more »

This weeks Mac setup comes to us from Mike L., a Masters student in International Relations who uses his Apple gear for coursework, research, photo and video editing, and some fun too. Hardware shown includes:

• MacBook Pro 15″ with Retina display – 2.6GHz Core i7, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD
• Iiyama 22″ Full HD LCD Display
• iPad 2 16GB
• Apple Wireless Keyboard
• Apple Wireless Mouse
• XBox 360
• 1TB Western Digital MyPassport external hard drive
• Logitech speakers

The addition of the secondary display has boosted productivity, and it also provides for a great way to enjoy some downtime as it serves double-duty as a display for the Xbox.

Want your Mac setup featured here? Send in a good picture or two of your Mac setup, a list of hardware, and what you use the Apple gear for to osxdailycom@gmail.com – We’re a little backlogged on the Mac setup posts, but keep them coming!

You can easily skip ahead and rewind in large blocks while listening to podcasts on the iPhone. This is a helpful feature of the Podcasts app in iOS for many reasons, perhaps you missed a section and want to rewind and hear it again, or maybe you want to skip ahead through an uninteresting segment.

I use this podcast skipping trick frequently to listen to a sequence again, and to jump ahead through bumper music, commercials, or boring segments, and it works with just a tap in the podcasts app for iPhone.

Read more »

If you need to change a computers MAC address (the unique ID attached to a physical network interface), but aren’t comfortable with the command line approaches that we’ve discussed before, an excellent free preference panel called LinkLiar makes it easy. Not only does LinkLiar make changing MAC addresses remarkably simple for any network interface on the Mac, it also randomly generates new ones, insuring a conflict-free MAC address in the end.

• Get LinkLiar free from GitHub

Download LinkLiar from GitHub, then most users will need to right-click the .prefpane and choose “Open” to get around the GateKeeper security warning. System Preferences will automatically open and give you the option to install it for the current user or all users on the Mac.

Once in LinkLiar, click an available network interface, and either enter an address on your own, or turn the wheel to generate random new addresses on the fly. Click “Apply” and enter the admin password to make the changes.

LinkLiar is without a doubt the easiest way to change MAC addresses in OS X, the only complaint with LinkLiar is there is no ‘revert back to default’ option, so you’ll probably want to find and make note of an interfaces default MAC address before making any changes to it.

If you want to restrict app usage for a particular user on a Mac, there is no easier option than Parental Controls. This is a great solution for parents setting up a limited-access account for a kid, for public usage Macs, Macs in the enterprise, or even just for a restricted Guest account for when someone else is using a computer.

If you haven’t done so yet, you’ll want to have created a separate user account for the user to restrict app access to, that can be done through the “Users & Groups” panel in System Preferences.

• Launch System Preferences from the  Apple menu and choose “Parental Controls”
• Click the unlock icon in the corner to unlock access to Parental Controls
• Choose the username from the left side to restrict app access to, then click “Enable Parental Controls”
• Under the “Apps” tab, check the box for “Limit Applications”, then go through the list of apps and check only the apps you want that user to be able to open and use

When finished, close out of Parental Controls, though you may want to check the box for “Use Simple Finder” as well to even further limit options available to the designated user account.

Upon the next login for the that user, the apps that were not selected will not be accessible. This is an excellent trick when kid-proofing a Mac, or for any other situation where app usage should be limited for certain users. It can even be used as a way to force self control upon yourself, where you could create a separate “work” and “play” user account, each with apps that are only appropriate for the tasks you should be performing with each account.

An additional layer of restriction is possible by creating apps of certain web sites, then restricting general access to the web or web browsers completely. This would allow the account user to access a website like Wikipedia only, but not the general web.

This tip was inspired by a question on the OSXDaily Facebook page, thanks to Yash and Ed!

To compare and list the different contents of two directories without the extra output you get through commands like diff, you can use the comm command instead. To get started, launch Terminal and type the following command, adjusting the directory paths as appropriate:

comm -3 <(ls -1 folder1) <(ls -1 folder2)

The output listed will be the files that are different in each folder, with files unique to folder1 aligning left, and files unique to folder 2 aligning right.

For example, to compare the contents of a folder called “Pictures” and a folder named “OldPictures”, both stored in the user downloads directory, the syntax would be the following:

comm -3 <(ls -1 ~/Downloads/Pictures) <(ls -1 ~/Downloads/OldPictures)

Output may look like the following:

$ comm -3 <(ls -1 ~/Downloads/Pictures) <(ls -1 ~/Downloads/OldPictures)
Folder-1-File.PNG
Folder-2-File copy.PNG
    photo 1 copy.PNG
    photo 3.PNG

Note the indentation, which shows you which files are unique to each folder. In the above example, the file “photo 1 copy.PNG” and “photo 3.png” are aligned right, therefore they are unique to the OldPictures directory, and Folder-1-File.PNG and Folder-2-File copy.PNG are unique to the original Pictures folder.

This works great in Mac OS X, but it’s a generic unix command so you should find it usable in linux and other variants as well. If you do run into any compatibility issues, or find this command to be unnecessarily complex, try using diff to perform the same function.

Great trick found by @climagic on Twitter, @osxdaily is on there too!

The iPhone’s excellent panorama mode allows for easy vertical panoramic shots as well.

Shooting panorama mode in vertical orientation is perfect for taking pictures of tall trees, waterfalls, buildings, or anything else that is taller than the standard range provides.

This guide will show you how to switch Panorama mode into vertical mode, to snap images of tall objects or scenery.

Read more »