It’s easy to find yourself in a sea of open web browser windows, but with Safari there’s a great feature that lets you merge windows into tabs.
We’ll take that nice little merge-windows-to-tabs feature a step further and turn it into a keyboard shortcut, letting you instantly convert an ocean of windows into a single Safari window with just a keystroke of your choosing on the Mac.
You can sometimes fix an unresponsive Home button by force quitting apps, but that doesn’t always work. If your iOS devices home button is completely broken then you can use an accessibility feature called Assistive Touch to enable a virtual home button instead, this lets you use an iPhone, iPad, or iPod even if the button is physically incapable of being pressed due to damage or whatever else.
Here is how to turn the Assistive Touch feature on, allowing you to use an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch that has as nonworking Home button: Read more »
Do you have a music playlist on an iPod, iPhone, or iPad that you want to move to iTunes on your computer? It’s fairly easy:
Connect the iPod, iPhone to the computer and launch iTunes
Under the “Devices” menu locate the playlist you want to copy to the computer and right-click on the playlist name, then select “Export”
Name the playlist and select “XML” as the filetype format and save the file to somewhere easy to find, like the desktop
Pull down the “File” menu, go to “Library” and now select “Import Playlist”, choosing the XML playlist file you exported in the previous step
The playlist from the iOS device is now in iTunes on the computer, find it under the Playlists menu. You will obviously need to have the music featured in the playlist within iTunes in order for the playlist to work, if you don’t have the music because you switched computers you will need to transfer the music from the iOS device to the computer first.
This is a great solution if you’ve lost playlists from iTunes and the standard recovery process didn’t work, or if you’ve just spent a lot of time customizing playlists directly on an iOS device and you now want to enjoy them on the computer.
The recently released Chrome browser for iOS is pretty good, and even if it’s not replacing Safari as your primary web browser on an iPhone or iPad quite yet, you may still find this bookmarklet handy which lets you instantly send the currently active web page from Safari into Chrome:
From the iOS device, launch Safari and copy the following line javascript code:
Bookmark this webpage (or any other) by tapping the Arrow and selecting “Add Bookmark”
Open Safari Bookmarks and tap “Edit” and then tap to edit the newly created bookmark
Rename it to “Send to Chrome” and hit the ‘x’ alongside the URL, then tap and hold to paste in the javascript code copied above
Test it out by opening the bookmarks bar and selecting “Send to Chrome”
Safari switches and Google Chrome launches with a new browser tab containing the URL you activated the bookmarklet from. If you have any issues with this not working, check how the quotations are handled when editing the bookmarklet in iOS Safari. You may need to replace each ” with %22 instead, which would look like this:
Both variations worked fine in our testing, so go with what works for you. This is a great tweak for web developers and designers who need to perform browser compatibility tests on as many different browsers as possible.
The iTunes track list has a fairly small default font size, it works fine on displays with lower resolutions but if you’re using a higher resolution screen the text of song and artist names can be annoyingly small. Fortunately it’s easy to change and make larger:
Open Preferences from the iTunes menu
Under “General” look for “List Text” and select “Large” (or Small) from the pull-down menu
Click “OK” for changes to take effect
Other than preventing you from squinting at the small text, it’s also genuinely useful for social gatherings if you want to give people an easier time to adjust playlists and music. Increase the font size and throw iTunes in full screen mode and enjoy your BBQ.
Want to know what apps are using your location on iPhone or iPad? This can be useful information for many reasons, including potentially saving some battery life on your iOS Device.
You may already know this, but you can tell if Location Services are being used on an iPhone or iPad because a little purple arrow icon appears in the corner of the status bar in iOS, at the top of the screen. If you’ve never paid attention to this before, it matters because when Location Services are being used it can drain your battery much faster than usual, this is because the app determining your location is constantly using network activity and GPS to pinpoint your coordinates and, usually, report it back to the apps servers.
If you see that purple location services arrow pop up and you have no idea what app is using your location, then this trick is for you because it will allow you to quickly see what app(s) are actively using your location on the iPhone or iPad. With that information, you can then take action to disable the app from using location, if desired anyway, and this can potentially lead to an improvement in battery life.
This weeks Mac setup is a bit different and that’s exactly what makes it so great. Kevin B. and his wife frequently travel with an RV and, naturally, their Apple gear goes with them. Their current destination? The Ponderosa Campground outside of Antonito, Colorado, where the steep canyon walls prevent any cell reception, yet the campground provides wi-fi. A riverside Mac setup with high speed internet? Sounds great to us!
We’re officially envious Kevin, thanks a bunch for sending these in!
Have a Mac setup you want featured? Whether it’s a standard workstation or a unique setup, take a good picture or two, give us a description of the hardware and what you use it for, and send them over to us at osxdailycom@gmail.com Read more »
If you have a new MacBook Air or MacBook Pro and the colors seem a bit dull and washed out compared to your previous Mac, you probably aren’t imagining things. Like most other hardware companies, Apple sources display panels from a variety of screen manufacturers, and though all the displays are of very high quality some show colors and contrasts a bit different than others. If your black levels seem more grey and colors aren’t really popping out, you just need to calibrate your display to resolve the dull color and low contrast issue, it’s easy to do and just takes a few minutes.
Calibrating the Display to Correct Dull Colors & Contrasts
This works on any Mac and with any version of Mac OS X:
Launch System Preferences from the Apple menu and choose “Displays”
Click the “Color” tab and then click the “Calibrate” button
Check the “Expert Mode” box at the bottom of the screen and click continue
Read the directions carefully and walk through the 7 step process of calibrating the display, save the profile and it will automatically be selected as the default
The difference in color representation and contrast should be significant after display calibration, you can immediately check the difference by clicking between the default “Color LCD” and the newly created calibration profile. Black and white levels should be more accurate, contrasts should be better, and colors should be more vibrant and accurate.
This isn’t a permanent change, and at any time you can recalibrate the display if you want to, and you can also return to the default color profile just by selecting “Color LCD” in the profile list.
Topmost image is a simulated representation on the difference between a calibrated and uncalibrated display, because calibration effects how screens display colors it is impossible to capture in a screen shot.
Looking for some beautiful ultra-high resolution wallpapers to dress up your snazzy new MacBook Pro’s retina display? You’re in the right place, here are nine great images that come in at least 2880×1800 resolution, perfect for the humungous pixel density of the retina Mac. Of course, being such a high resolution means these wallpapers will work great as desktop backgrounds on just about every other Mac or iOS device too.
With how prevalent HTML5 is these days it seems unnecessary for the YouTube app to launch every time you tap a YouTube video link on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.
If you’d rather watch the movie directly in Safari, here is how to stop the YouTube app from launching in iOS.
The popular Chrome web browser is now available as a free download for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. The alternative iOS browser has many features borrowed from the desktop version, but three in particular make Chrome a very nice alternative to Safari:
Incognito mode is separate from standard browsing and can be opened as a new tab (vs enabling manually in Safari)
Unlimited tabs (vs the 9 limit in Safari)
Browsing and bookmark syncing between mobile and desktop versions (coming to Safari with iOS 6 & OS X Mountain Lion)
There are a few other nice features too, like being able to request a full desktop version of a site if you have been served the mobile version, and the ability to search by voice by tapping the little microphone logo in the URL bar.
Performance is pretty good but Chrome is not yet as quick as Safari when loading javascript, so if you frequently visit sites that use ajax, ads, and web 2.0 style content, you’ll probably notice the performance hit. That’s not to say that Chrome for iOS is slow, it’s just currently slower than Safari.
Also frustrating, but to no fault of Chrome, is that users can’t change their default web browser in iOS from Safari, meaning if someone has emailed you a link that you want to open in Chrome you will have manually open it and paste in the URL. That’s a nuisance, but with the amount of web browsers being made available to iOS it’s probably only a matter of time before things like default email and web browser apps can be changed in iOS Settings.
If you use Chrome as your desktop browser already and you own an iPad or iPhone, it’s certainly worth checking out. Read more »
Learning to type well on the touchscreen keyboards in iOS that we all use on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch can take some time. To speed that process up and improve touch typing, here are a handful of great tips to make typing on iOS virtual keys much easier and faster. Some of these you’ll probably know and perhaps already use, and some you probably won’t, but all are very worthwhile to learn and master.
If you’ve ever wanted to run Android apps on your Mac, a new virtualization tool called BlueStacks makes it easier than ever before. The extremely simple to install solution includes 17 popular Android apps that can be run independently and without the need for running Android ICS in a virtual machine, removing the often clunky virtualized Android OS experience and instead launching directly into the apps.
The default installation is heavy on the games but includes other popular titles too. You’ll get Air Control Lite, Alchemy, Basketball Shot, Drag Racing, Elastic World, Facebook, Glow Hockey, Guns’n Glory, Paper Toss, Pulse news reader, Robo Defense, Seesmic, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Zebra Paint, all conveniently located in an “Android Apps” folder in the OS X Dock. Because they run as independent apps, you’ll also find them in LaunchPad.
Performance is very good and there are no noticeable issues or speed problems, and some of the games actually seem to run better in Mac OS X under the virtual layer than they do on some older Android phones – not surprising considering the desktop hardware is beefier.
This is a great free solution for anyone wanting to run Android apps on their Mac, and if you’ve been curious about the world of Android apps but didn’t want to get a smartphone, deal with virtualization, or buy the new Nexus 7, there is no easier way to check them out.
A large collection of high resolution Apple hardware icons is bundled right in Mac OS X, including great icons for nearly all vaguely recent Mac models, iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Apple TV, iMac, Mac Mini, Mac Pro, and much more, going all the way back to the G4 series. Many of these icons are what you find when using network sharing with a computer they match, but they also make for an excellent way to dress up your matching Mac by replacing the generic Macintosh HD icon or anything else.
Google has jumped into the hardware game with their new Nexus 7 tablet, aimed squarely at competing with the iPad, Microsofts Surface, and Kindle Fire. The tablet is very competitively priced starting at $199 for the 8GB version and the 16GB version coming in at $249, and features some fairly solid tech specs:
7″ display at 1280×800 resolution
Quad-core Tegra 3 processor at some amount of MHz
1GB RAM
8GB or 16GB storage
1.2MP front-facing camera
NFC, GPS, Accelerometer, Gyroscope
Micro-USB connector
Wi-Fi & Bluetooth connectivity
Up to 8 hour battery life
0.75lbs
Runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean
Taking a cue from Apple’s unified iPad and iPhone UI, Android 4.1 has a tweaked user interface to more closely resemble the Android smartphone experience. This sould be a positive change if you’ve ever used an existing Android tablet or Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and found it to be a foreign experience, particularly for those who own Android phones.
Google hasn’t announced an official release date, but pre-orders are possible now and the tablet is said to ship soon.
Having no hands-on experience with the tablet, it’s hard to form much of an opinion on it, though I must say the 3/4lbs weight and the price point is very compelling especially when compared to other $199 tablets and even the iPod touch. What do you think, will the Google Nexus 7 be a hit? Will it inspire Apple to release a 7″ tablet?
iOS for iPad includes a nice feature that lets you triple-click the Home button to toggle ‘White on Black’ screen mode. If you haven’t used White on Black before it essentially inverts the screen, which makes reading at night or in low light conditions less harsh on the eyes.
Triple-click the Home button to try it yourself, the default option summons the “Ask” menu shown in the screenshot up top, but you can change the settings to make a triple-click instantly toggle between black on white or normal:
Open “Settings” and tap on “General”
Scroll down to and tap on “Accessibility” and then “Triple-click Home”
Select “Toggle White on Black” to make the triple click automatically invert the display
If you haven’t seen it before, this is what it looks like. Images don’t look that great, but text is much easier to read at night:
We’ve discussed some pretty flatteringattributes of the new MacBook Air lately, but here’s one that’s less than pleasant: a sizable amount of users are reporting the machine will completely freeze up seemingly out of nowhere, requiring a hard reset. Though not every new MacBook Air owner is experiencing the freezing issue, those who have seem to all being running the Chrome web browser when the system freeze occurs.
This has anecdotally been confirmed by Gizmodo and their staff writers, and they also cite several Apple Discussion Board threads and MacRumors forum posts on the matter. With a reasonable amount of evidence pointing to a software bug in an existing version of Chrome, the solution for the time being is simple enough, try using the latest Chrome Canary build, Safari, or Firefox, each of which seem to resolve the issue for the time being. Google typically releases new stable versions of Chrome with some regularity so an update probably isn’t too far off and hopefully it will resolve the freezes and crashes once and for all.
Update 6/28/2012: Google has confirmed that an existing version of Chrome is causing conflicts and crashes with the Intel HD 4000 GPU on the new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro:
We have identified a leak of graphics resources in the Chrome browser related to the drawing of plugins on Mac OS X. Work is proceeding to find and fix the root cause of the leak.
The resource leak is causing a kernel panic on Mac hardware containing the Intel HD 4000 graphics chip (e.g. the new Macbook Airs). Radar bug number 11762608 has been filed with Apple regarding the kernel panics, since it should not be possible for an application to trigger such behavior.
While the root cause of the leak is being fixed, we are temporarily disabling some of Chrome’s GPU acceleration features on the affected hardware via an auto-updated release that went out this afternoon (Thursday June 28). We anticipate further fixes in the coming days which will re-enable many or all of these features on this hardware.
If you have a new MacBook Pro or MacBook Air and use Chrome, update it now to receive the temporary fix.
Apple advertises the MacBook Air (mid-2012) battery as lasting “up to 7 hours”, but we’re pleased to report that Apple’s marketing is understating that number by as much as an hour and a half. In our (admittedly unscientific) tests based on real-world use case scenarios, the battery life on the new MacBook Air is simply phenomenal, and we were able to get 8:25 out of the 13″ model while doing tasks that could be considered typical of an average computer user. Here are various reported samplings from the 2012 MacBook Air 13″:
8:25 – screen at 40% brightness, keyboard backlighting on 50% brightness, light web browsing with Safari (no Flash plug-in installed), and text-based work in TextWrangler and Pages
6:45 – screen at 70% brightness, otherwise same as above
5:33 – screen at 80% brightness, keyboard backlighting on full brightness, heavy app usage
4:15 – screen at 100% brightness, keyboard backlighting on full brightness, heavy app usage with tons of apps open including Chrome (with Flash) open with about 25 browser tabs, image editing in Pixelmator, using 6GB of RAM, while driving an external 22″ display
3:40 – screen at 80% brightness, reasonable app usage, heavy wi-fi usage downloading 16GB sustained at 1.2mb/sec
Having a computer last over 8 hours while actually doing work is simply phenomenal, if your daily activities are mostly web or text centric – be it research, writing, web browsing, or even development – you’d do quite well in the battery department with the 2012 MacBook Air models. There is no performance sacrifice either, these are still the fastest MacBook Air models ever made.
The lowest end number deserves some notice too however, and what seems to impact battery life the most is not the brightness of the screen, but rather sustained heavy wireless internet usage. Downloading a large file over wi-fi plunged the expected battery life dramatically, even with screen brightness reduced. This is something we weren’t able to replicate as dramatically on 2010 and 2011 models, but we have experienced it on two different new models (one base model, another upgraded with 8GB RAM). As far as we can tell the wi-fi hardware is the same as the 2011 models, so this is an interesting discrepancy that is not fully understood.
In all, battery life on the new MacBook Air is as good as it gets on an ultra-portable laptop and represents a nice improvement over the previous generations. If you’ve done any independent battery testing yourself, let us know how long your MacBook Air lasts in the comments.
