Listening to music in iTunes can be improved significantly by taking a moment to make three quick adjustments to preferences. Enabling these options takes a few seconds and will be valid for both Mac OS X and Windows:

• Open iTunes preferences from the iTunes menu
• Choose the “Playback” tab and check the box to enable “Crossfade Songs”, “Sound Enhancer”, and “Sound Check”

The names are fairly description but if you’re wondering what each option does a quick run through is below:

Crossfade Songs makes each song slowly fade into the next song, eliminating any gaps between song playback and providing for a nice continuous stream of music.

Sound Enhancer makes automatic adjustments to bass and treble that can have a really nice effect, particularly for those of us with cheaper computer speakers and not something like AudioEngines. Take the time to carefully adjust this based on speakers in use for best results.

Sound Check will adjust song playback so each song is played at the same volume level, a hugely important feature for anyone who has ripped older CD’s that have a tendency to play softer than newer albums downloaded from iTunes or elsewhere. This can also be done further on a per-song basis if need be.

For best results, spend a few minutes listening to music, listen for the differences with Sound Enhancer, and adjust the sliders accordingly. The Crossfade slider is set at a pretty good setting by default, but it can also be fun to go the full 12 seconds if your music collection is similar enough to not sound out of place blending each song into one another. It’s also worthwhile to adjust the iTunes equalizer to settings that are fairly neutral across all songs.

The first beta of OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.3 has been released to registered Mac developers. OS X 10.8.3 beta 1 is identified as build 12D32 and focuses on AirPlay, AirPort (wireless), Game Center, and graphics drivers, though it’s not yet clear if the intention is for bug fixing, feature enhancements, or a bit of both.

Installing the release must be done through a new OS X Software Update Seed Configuration Utility, which is a separate download available to developers. The release notes indicate several known bugs with the first beta build.

Those registered with the Mac Developer program can download the 10.8.3 beta and the required Seed Configuration Utility directly from Apple’s Developer Center. Everyone else will have to wait until a public release is available sometime in the future.

Those interested can read more about this beta release on MacRumors.

Don’t want to unlock your iPhone and launch the Calculator app? Bummed that iPad doesn’t even have a default Calculator? No big deal, because Siri can function as a regular old calculator, and it has the obvious added bonus of being handsfree. To have Siri calculate equations for you, just feed Siri numbers and thanks to the Wolfram Alpha backend Siri will quickly spit out the answer, complete with a number line.

The simplest forms of Siri calculation can be used as follows:

• Number + number
• Number / number
• Number X number
• Number – number

Try it out by saying the equation aloud to Siri just as it reads. You’ll find the results vary a bit based on the equation given:

Addition and subtraction, Siri will return an easy to follow number line showing movements to the sum.

Multiplication of large numbers, Siri returns the answer in addition to a number line that shows any potential exponents.

Division, Siri provides the answer, reduces the fraction, gives the number as a decimal, and even shows a mixed fraction.

You can string a variety of numbers together and make fairly complex equations, which Siri typically gets right. You’ll notice on some particularly complicated equations that Siri won’t necessarily obey the proper order of operations, so you may want to avoid using Siri as a calculator for complex algebra and calculus homework.

We covered a similarly themed tip recently discussing how Siri can function as a tip calculator, but with how useful the general calculation functions are it’s well worth mentioning the wider potential uses here.

This tip comes to us from Jason R. who uses Siri to add up receipts for expense reports, thanks for the idea J!

Though most Mac users will likely prefer to use Preview to batch resize images because of the ease of use, advanced users often like to go with the command line for repetitive tasks. We’ve discussed sips before as a way to resize, rotate, and flip images, but if sips is combined with wildcards it can also function as a quick way to batch resize a group of photos.
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This weeks Mac setup comes to us from Alex A., a student in Australia who has a wide variety of hardware that combines Mac OS X, iOS, and even Windows 8. Hardware shown includes the following:

• Mac Mini – 1.42 GHz PowerPC G4 running OS X Leopard
• BenQ 21.5″ LED Monitor
• Toshiba Portege m930 slider convertible running Windows 8 Pro
• iPad 2 16GB Wi-Fi + 3G White with Red Leather Smart Cover
• iPod Nano 6th generation with HEX Vision metal watch band
• Apple Keyboard
• Apple Magic Trackpad
• Apple Magic Mouse
• AirPort Express
• Bose MIE2 earphones
• Apple EarPods
• Buffalo 1TB External HDD
• Logitech Speakers

You’ll be forgiven if you initially mistake the Toshiba hybrid running Fliqlo for the iPad, but the iPad is covered under the red smart cover on the right side of the desk. It looks like there’s an LED light strip behind the desk too, which is a great way of bringing some nice ambient lighting to any desk arrangement.

Have a nice Mac setup you want featured? Send us a good picture or two, a short description of the hardware, and what you use it for over to osxdailycom@gmail.com

The days after Thanksgiving are always great for bargain hunters and today is no exception. As usual, Amazon has loads of great deals right now on everything under the sun, and we gathered a few particularly good deals from there and elsewhere in a short set of lists below.

iPhone 5 Deals

By far the best deal on iPhone 5 is for refurbished AT&T GSM models at a whopping $100 discount. That means you can get an iPhone 5 16GB model for just $99 with a standard two-year contract, and 32GB models for $199. The refurbs are available at AT&T’s online store and come in all sizes and colors with free shipping.

• 16GB Black – $99
• 16GB White – $99

See all other iPhone deals at AT&T, all refurb iPhone 5’s are $100 off, refurb iPhone 4S is available for $1 with a contract, and there are even great deals on Android and Windows smartphones if that’s what you’re in the market for.

Refurbished Apple gear is high quality and we recommend them highly for the great discounts complete with a standard warranty. Sure, the refurbed iPhone models may ship with a little scratch or ding, but at a 50% discount I’m guessing most people won’t mind.

Mac Deals

There are quite a few good Mac deals out there today. If you’re near an Apple Store or shop online through Apple you can get about $100 off any Mac model. Best Buy also has good deals in stores, but some of the best deals are coming from Amazon with 16% to 20% off some of the newest MacBooks including the Air, Retina 13″ Pro, and

• MacBook Air 13″ base model for $1012
• MacBook Air 11″ base model for $895
• Retina MacBook Pro 13″ for $1515 (retina!)
• MacBook Pro 13″ for $964 (not retina)
• See all deals on MacBooks at Amazon

iPad & iPod Deals

Apple and Best Buy seem to have the best deals out there on iPads and iPod touch.

Apple Store – deals are valid from online store and in stores

• $41 off iPad with Retina display at Apple Store (online and local)
• $31 off iPad 2 at Apple Store (online and local)
• $31 off iPod touch at Apple Store

If you were hoping to find a discount on the iPad Mini, you’ll be disappointed to find out it’s just not happening right now. It’s not just Apple though, no retailers are marking down the Mini, and even the popular competing 7″ tablets from Google and Amazon aren’t discounted either.

Best Buy – deals are valid in store and sometimes online:

• iPad with retina display at $439 and up
• iPad 2 at $369 and up
• iPod touch from $268

Note that some BestBuy items need to be picked up at a store to get the best prices.

Misc Deals

Hard drives, SSD’s, cloud backups for your computers, here are a few other great deals around the web right now:

• Seagate 3 TB USB 3.0 Desktop External Hard Drive – $99.99
• SanDisk Extreme SSD 120 GB SATA 2.5″ – $84.99
• Samsung B550 Series S23B550V 23″ LED Display for $180
• Crashplan online cloud backups – 92% off but slowly going up throughout the day, great cloud alternative to Time Machine

More great deals will likely surface as the weekend progresses, we’ll post anything else worthwhile.

Surely everyone with an iOS device knows that Maps can be zoomed out by using a two-finger pinch gesture, and zoomed in by using a two-finger spread gesture, and repeating either gesture will continue to zoom the screen in or out as desired.

While the gestures are pretty quick, you can zoom in or out much faster by just using screen taps:

• Zoom out by using a two-finger single tap on the active Maps screen
• Zoom in by using a one finger double tap on the active map

The result of the taps are an immediate jump to a lower or higher zoom level, similar to what you’d experience on a desktop when clicking on the zoom in/out button in Google Maps on the web. Because of how Apple Maps handles location detail by zoom levels, don’t be surprised if you end up using these taps constantly, and remember that the detail level can be improved quite a bit by making a simple change to the Maps font size.

It’s worth mentioning that these one-finger and two-finger taps for zooming in and out are pretty much universal across apps in iOS, and you’ll get just as much use out of them in Mail, Safari, and your other favorite iPad and iPhone apps as you do in the Maps app.

Thanks to @methi1999 for the tip, are you following us on Twitter yet?

Alright Apple fans, if you’re running late on the Thanksgiving cooking and haven’t made an Apple pie yet, you should probably toss whatever idea you had out the window and take the extra time to make this super geeky and cool Apple logo apple pie.

The Mac Mini Apple pie is basically your standard delicious apple pie baked in a rounded square tray that just happens to be shaped like a Mac Mini, topped off with a very well designed Apple logo. Cut the  logo with whatever you want, but the guys that came up with this recipe went all out and used a laser to cut the Apple logo, which is why it looks as perfect as it does.

• Check out the full recipe and more pictures at EvilMadScientist

Happy Thanksgiving to all of our readers!

Thanks for sending this in Aaron

The quickest way to add a file extension to a group of files that don’t currently have one is by using the command line in Mac OS X. In the example below, we’ll add a “.txt” extension to all files in a single directory, but subbing .txt in the command string will add a different extension instead. Before beginning, it’s a good idea to do the following:

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AT&T appears to be rolling out FaceTime over cellular connections to more iPhone users on their network. MacRumors was first to discover the quiet change in AT&T policy, and the potentially eligible devices include iPhone 5, iPhone 4S, iPad 3, and iPad 4, with at least a 3G HSPA+ (AT&T’s so-called 4G) connection. Typically, FaceTime over cellular requires LTE on AT&T’s network, but some users have reported they are finding the feature working on their devices even without LTE service.

Devices with cellular FaceTime enabled seem to be completely random at the moment, though you can attempt the following procedure to see if your iOS device has it working on AT&T’s network:

• Reboot the iPhone or iPad
• Open Settings, go to FaceTime, and scroll down to see if “Use Cellular Data” is enabled

If “Use Cellular Data” is OFF, try flipping it to ON. Devices with the feature allowed will let the feature be enabled without a blue popup warning that the data plan is not compatible. If it doesn’t work, you’ll see the blue popup message and a message to contact AT&T.

None of our iPhones have the feature enabled (yet) in testing, but many around the web and in MacRumors Forums have reported success. If this is a gradual rollout, it may be worth trying again periodically over the next few days and weeks.

Even if you’re not interested in the video chatting aspect, FaceTime has a variety of other uses, including using the feature as a home security camera.

Now that Mac Mini, iMac, MacBook Air, and Retina MacBook Pro have moved away from carrying internal SuperDrives, owners of these newer Macs will possibly get more usage out of the Remote Disc feature than ever before. For those unfamiliar, Remote Disc does pretty much what it sounds like, allowing one Mac to share and access another Macs DVD/CD drive as if it was their own. Effectively, Remote Disc lets Macs without disc drives use another disc drive, whether to install software from DVD’s, import CD’s into iTunes, rip DVD’s, and even burn CD’s and DVD’s. It’s a great feature.

Remote Disc is easy and seamless, and works across a wide range of Mac OS X versions. For example, a brand new MacBook Air or Retina MacBook Pro running the latest version of macOS High Sierra, Sierra, OS X El Capitan, Yosemite, Mavericks, Mountain Lion can access the SuperDrive of a much older Mac running Snow Leopard, as we will demonstrate in the walkthrough outlined below.

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Apple has started running two new commercials for iPhone 5, titled “Orchestra” and “Turkey”, both have been embedded below.

“Orchestra” focuses on the noise canceling microphone located at the rear of the iPhone 5, and uses an orchestra playing the background music to demonstrate the effect. The narration by Jeff Daniels says the following:

Excuse me maestro!? Bring it down please! Better.
That’s what happens to background noise when you’re making a call on this.
This microphone here, picks up the sounds around you and helps turn them down.
So when the world gets noisy, calls sound better.

“Turkey” is obviously more holiday themed, showing off shared Photo Streams of pictures taken with an iPhone 5 during a Thanksgiving dinner. Turkey is also narrated by Jeff Daniels:

Well it’s that time of year again. You know, picture taking season?
And with Photo Stream, you can share all the photos you want.
With just the people you want. It’s as easy as pie.
Mmmmm pie.

Judging by the topic, the latter commercial will likely have a shorter run schedule, and it shouldn’t be long before we see the always popular Christmas-themed Apple ads again.

Owners of 2012 model year Macs have a minor update available for OS X Mountain Lion. Labeled “OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.2 Supplemental Update 2.0”, the small system update resolves issues with Keychain that were specific to Macs released this year. No other issues are mentioned, and the update is unavailable to other Mac users. This Supplemental Update is not be confused with the general OS X 10.8.2 update released a few months prior, which was available for all Macs.

If your Mac is eligible for the update, you will find it available as a notification from Software Update shortly. You can also download it immediately from the Mac App Store, or get it directly from Apple.

You’ve plugged an iPhone into a computer, and nothing happens. You look in iTunes, and the iPhone, iPod, or iPad isn’t there. Great, now what? What in the heck is going on?

Don’t worry, there are usually a few simple solutions that will resolve the problem and et your computer to detect the iPhone or iPad again, so try these tricks first in any whatever order works best for you.

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The iOS Spotlight Search feature defaults to showing Contacts from a devices address book as the top search results, which may be helpful, but that same feature already exists when searching through Contacts anyway. What if you want to show matching apps first instead? Or maybe you want to list emails or messages as the first search results? No sweat, you can customize what appears first in iOS Search really easy.

To get the most out of Spotlight in iOS, you may want to take the time to change the search priority of results so that what you are most likely to look for appears on top. This is a great way to make the search feature in iOS more suitable to your needs, depending on how you use your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

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Breaking out the Calculator app can be too time consuming, and while there’s no shortage of tip calculator apps for the iPhone, why download another app if you don’t need to? The next time you’re at a restaurant and want to quickly calculate an appropriate tip according to the bill, all you have to do is ask Siri.

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Black Friday is approaching and that means Apple will be offering some decent deals with rare discounts across their product lines. There’s a high likelihood that Apple’s sales this year will be exactly the same as they were last year (and the year before, for that matter), with the following discounts on popular items:

• iPad – $41-$61 off
• iPad Mini – $31 off?*
• iPod Touch – $21 to $41 off
• iPod Nano – $11 off
• MacBook Air – $101 off
• MacBook Pro – $101 off
• iMac – $101 off

* One big question on everyones mind is if Apple will discount the iPad Mini, and by how much. Because it’s priced similarly to the iPod touch, it will likely receive similar discounts, and there’s a chance it will temporarily dip to the $299 price tag we all wish it had to begin with. This is purely speculation, so don’t be surprised if the Mini ends up with a smaller discount.

Because Apple hardware is rarely discounted, Black Friday represents an excellent time to buy a new iPad, iPod, or Mac, whether it’s for yourself or as a very generous gift to someone else. On the other hand, you’ll often find bigger discounts from some other retailers, including Amazon, Best Buy, and even Target or Walmart, so as usual it pays to shop around for the best deals.

Heads up to MacRumors for first noticing the teaser at Apple AUS.

The MacLegion Holiday 2012 Bundle is a whopper of a deal for anyone looking to add a collection of great apps to their Mac repertoire. The bundle includes the following $540 worth of apps for just $49.99:

• TechTool Pro ($99.99) – Ultimate disk maintenance and hardware diagnostic tool
• Freeway Pro ($229.00) – Easy and powerful web design software
• Djay ($19.99) – Fun DJ app that ties into your iTunes library
• Capo ($49.99) – Learn how to play the music in your iTunes library
• Fantastical ($19.99) – Popular intelligent calendar app with location awareness
• RipIt ($24.95) – Rip DVD movies to your Mac quickly
• iRip ($19.95) – Transfer songs, videos, photos, etc from iPhone/iPod back to your Mac
• Beamer ($15.00) – Stream any movie file to Apple TV using AirPlay any movie format
• Copy Paste Pro ($30.00) – Powerful clipboard manager utility
• Code Collector Pro ($19.99) – Organize code snippets for quick reference
• BONUS: Alarm Clock Pro ($19.95) – Excellent alarm clock app – first 5,000 purchases only

Each app is the latest version and comes with full support from the developer.

You can read more about each app and check out the full bundle at MacLegion