Macs have long dominated the realm of creatives, and musicians are no exception. This weeks great Mac setup comes to us from Vassilis T., a DJ in Thessaloniki, Greece. As you’d expect, the workstation is used to produce music, and the hardware shown includes:

• iMac 27″ (mid-2011) with 8GB RAM
• Pair of Stanton T62 turntables with Traktor Scratch Timecode Vinyls
• Hercules DJ Console MK2 mixer
• Apple Wireless Keyboard
• Apple Magic Mouse
• Logitech Z523 Speakers

The software running on the iMac is Traktor Scratch Pro.

It’s always fun to see the wide variety of things people do with their Macs and Apple gear.

If you have an interesting Mac setup you want featured, send us a good picture or two, a list of hardware shown, and a brief description of what the gear is used for to osxdailycom@gmail.com

Other than the Maps issues, the App Store in iOS 6 is probably the next most talked about change of the latest iOS system software. Though it’s undoubtedly a better user experience in a lot of ways, one area that really suffers is speed, and a lot of users are experiencing very sluggish behavior in the App Store whether it’s lag while trying to navigate around apps, browse the Top Charts, or just review and download from their purchase history. Most frustratingly, the App Store slowness can even impact the newest iOS devices, including the iPhone 5 and iPad 3rd gen.

Some people are blaming HTML5 and the heavy eyecandy and animations, but strangely, the sluggishness seems to come and go at random, and we think we’ve finally discovered the reason. Here’s how to fix it:

• Open Settings, tap on “Privacy”, then tap on “Location Services”
• Scroll to the bottom of the screen to find and tap on “System Services”
• Look for “Genius for Apps” and flip the switch to OFF

For iOS 6 devices that have experienced the slow App Store problems, that “Genius for Apps” setting almost always has a grey or purple icon next to it, indicating that it’s been using location services recently. Turning this feature OFF seems to end the random speed issues of the App Store completely, presumably because the Genius feature is no longer doing whatever it does in the background while you navigate and use the store.

With App Genius off, double-tap the Home button, then tap and hold on the App Store icon to quit it. Relaunch App Store, and everything should be much faster again.

The Panorama camera is one of the better features of the iPhone Camera app, it makes taking incredible high-quality panoramic pictures ridiculously easy without adding any additional apps to your iPhone.

The amazing photography feature is built directly into iOS now and works on all modern iPhone devices as part of the Camera app.

If you’re unfamiliar with the iPhone panorama camera feature or you just haven’t used it yet, this walkthrough will show you how to use it, as well as offer some tips on getting good panorama images.

Read more »

The Help menu in Mac OS X is an often underutilized feature that can quickly resolve a lot of questions about apps and the OS itself, making it an excellent resource to query any time you’re trying to find out about a particular feature, troubleshooting an issue, or you just want to learn more about the app in use.

To get the most out of an apps Help menu in OS X, memorize the keyboard shortcut to instantly access the Help Search function in every Mac app:

Read more »

Didn’t get turn-by-turn voice navigation on your iPhone when you updated to iOS 6? Maybe you’re just not thrilled with Apple Maps? Get Scout right now while it’s free, it offers excellent voice navigated turn-by-turn directions on all iOS devices running iOS 4 or later, including the older iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS that were left out of Apple’s offering.

Scout uses TomTom and Telenav GPS to offer visual directions on the latest maps, so accuracy should be a nonissue. You’ll also find the standard features expected in navigation, mapping, and GPS apps, like real time traffic updates, favorites, commute estimates, weather, voice commands, and more. Not only is the app briefly available for free, but so is a full year of Scout Plus service.

• Get Scout Telenav from the App Store (free for a limited time)

Scout really is a great app in general, so whether your iPhone was left out of voice navigation or you just want a backup offering to iOS 6 Maps on your brand new iPhone 5, grab it for free while you can.

Ignoring specific software updates is a bit different now in modern versions of OS X now that updates are handled by the Mac App Store. From OS X El Capitan, Yosemite, Mavericks, Mountain Lion and onward, if you don’t want to install an update you will need to hide it from being visible within the Updates tab of the App Store itself. This differs from using the old ignore approach offered before the App Store began handling all updates available to the Mac operating system. Ultimately the new ignoring updates option is quite easy to use however, so you won’t find it difficult to either hide or later unhide any given update available to OS X this way.

Read more »

Some iPhone 5 users are experiencing a variety of issues with wifi on the device, almost always revolving around inconsistently slow wireless connections. If you’re having this problem, you’re not alone, and the good news is you can almost certainly get an immediate improvement by setting manual DNS on the device.

Fixing Slow iPhone 5 Wi-Fi With Manual DNS Settings

For the impatient, you can immediately try Google’s DNS services (8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4), but for the best results you’ll want to follow the full process to find the fastest DNS servers:

• Download NameBench on your Mac or PC and run it to discover the fastest DNS servers for your location, the test will take a few minutes
• Take the best result and grab your iPhone 5
• Open Settings, tap on “Wi-Fi”, and tap the blue arrow alongside the connected Wi-Fi network
• Tap next to “DNS” to manually adjust the DNS entry (Didn’t run NameBench? Try 8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4)

Leave Settings and try running Speed Test again, browse the web, or doing anything online with the iPhone 5 using the same wi-fi connection. Everything should be leaps and bounds faster.

Interestingly enough, we’ve been here before, and using custom DNS entries directly on the iPhone has fixed slow wi-fi issues in the past. With the same solution working again, it suggests it’s a compatibility issue with how the iPhone is interacting with certain routers. This would explain why not everyone experiences the problem, and why the same iPhone has issues on some networks but not others.

For iPhone 5 owners that have not experienced the wi-fi issue, basically it’s a lot slower with intermittent connectivity.

Give it a try, let us know how it works for you.

One of the many subtle changes to iOS Mail app in modern versions is how marking emails works in the Mail app. The latest versions of Mail for iPhone and iPad now tuck the Mark as Unread option into a flag menu, which resides in the toolbar of an active email message.

This replaced what used to be a very obvious “Mark as Unread” option sitting atop each open email in prior releases of the iOS Mail app. The new feature is really quite nice once you get the hang of it, so here is how to mark emails as unread with the flag menu in iOS Mail:

Read more »

Time Machine backups can be encrypted right from your Mac. This means the backed up data is extremely safe from prying eyes and the very unlikely event of a cracking attempt, and it also means you’ll need a password to access the encrypted backups yourself.

Enabling encrypted backups in Time Machine for Mac OS X can be done in two ways, either during setup of Time Machine, or turned on at a later date if you decide you want to encrypt other backups. We’ll cover both.
Read more »

Have you ever wished you had x-ray vision so you could peer right through the enclosure of your iPhone 5 to see the fancy hardware insides? Now you can pretend you’re Superman with the help of a snazzy transparent wallpaper pack from iFixIt, which shows you precisely what the internals of an iPhone 5 look like as if the icons and UI were just hovering over raw hardware.

You’ll notice over half of the inside of the iPhone is devoted to the battery, and the rest is chips, circuit boards, a heat shield over the processor, ribbon cables, and all the other good stuff you find if you crack open any iOS device.

• Grab the internal iPhone 5 hardware shots from iFixIt

If you don’t have an iPhone 5 yet, iFixIt has done this in the past with wallpapers for iMacs, iPads, and other iPhones too, each of which should strike your geek fancy.

Siri now lets you launch applications by just speaking a simple command to the iPhone, iPod, or iPad. This is a great feature for a variety of obvious reasons, and using it is simple:

• Hold down the Home button to summon Siri, then say “Open [App Name]” or “Launch [App Name]”

Sometimes you can just say the app name as well, but that doesn’t always work. Nonetheless, with the “Launch” or “Open” prefix, apps will immediately launch and become the forefront app. You can even launch apps from the lock screen with Siri, though if you use a passcode you’ll have to enter it before the apps open.

The only real requirement here is that your device has iOS 6 installed and it’s compatible with Siri support, which means iPad 3, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, and iPod touch 5th gen, and obviously devices launched thereafter.

Read more »

Guided Access, or what we to call “Kid Mode”, is a fantastic addition to iOS that lets you lock an iPhone or iPad into a single app. Well, great when it works as it’s intended, but it appears there’s a pretty frustrating bug that makes the feature work a little too well once it’s enabled in iOS 6 with some apps: triple-clicking the Home button doesn’t summon anything and you’re stuck in an app! This leaves you unable to leave Guided Access mode, but here’s a workaround to get out of it until the bug is resolved:

• Hold the Home and Power button together for 15 seconds until a reboot is forced on the iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch
• With the device rebooted, go back to Settings > Accessibility > Guided Access > and turn OFF as necessary

Because just about everything is disabled when the feature is on, even Force Quit won’t work. Yes that means you’ll have to reboot to escape from Guided Access in certain apps for the time being.

The stuck app bug doesn’t appear to impact any native Apple apps, but it does affect many popular third party apps. Expect a resolution soon that doesn’t involve rebooting with iOS 6.0.1 or a similar incremental update.

Facebook can now be integrated directly into Mac OS X, letting you easily post stuff to Facebook from just about anywhere on the Mac.

To setup Facebook integration in OS X, all you need is OS X 10.8.2 or later (full support is in Mountain Lion, Mavericks, Yosemite, etc) and a minute or so to get it configured. Once Facebook is setup in OS X, you’ll be able to post status updates from Notification Center, post directly to Facebook from Share Sheets, find your Facebook friends in Contacts, and even see a list of all Facebook notifications right in Notification Center. Sound good? OK great, here is how to set that up.

Read more »

The iPad, iPod touch, and iPhone make excellent toys and learning tools for kids, but if you’ve seen a youngin’ with an iOS device you know it’s only a matter of time before the inquisitive mind of a child escapes the current application and ends up elsewhere. That inevitable sequence can be stopped in its tracks thanks to Guided Access, a great new feature brought to iOS in 6.0 that basically functions as “Kid Mode”, whereby any iOS device can be locked into an application with the hardware buttons disabled. This is one of those must-have features for teachers and parents, and using it is easy.

Enabling “Kid Mode” in iOS with Guided Access

As mentioned already, you will need iOS 6 or later to have this feature.

• Open “Settings” and tap on “General”
• Navigate to “Accessibility” and under the Learning section tap on “Guided Access”
• Flip the switch to ON, then tap “Set Passcode” to set a password you’ll use to escape out of Guided Access mode
• Choose whether or not to Enable Screen Sleep, turning it ON will help sustain battery life when the iPad, iPod, or iPhone is left inactive

Now that Guided Access is configured, you can use it to lock the iOS device into any app you want.

Using Guided Access to Lock Into an App

• Launch any app as usual, then triple-click the Home button to summon the Accessibility menu
• Tap “Guided Access” from the menu
• Set the Guided Access rules and swipe areas on the thumbnailed screen to disable certain areas of the screen, choose whether touch input is on or off, and whether motion works
• Tap “Next” to enter Guided Access mode

The iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch is now effectively locked into the current application, and pressing the Home button will no longer leave the app. Sooner or later you’ll surely want to escape out of this mode though, but only those with the passcode set earlier can do so.

Escaping Guided Access in iOS

• Triple-click the Home button and enter the passcode chosen during setup of Guided Access to unlock the device

You’ll now be back to the usual behavior of iOS.

If you’d like to turn off Guided Access completely, just go back to Settings > Accessibility > Guided Access > and flip the setting to OFF. You’ll need to enter the passcode again to do so.

Though the Mac doesn’t have the same features to lock into an app by default, there are some simple tips to make Macs more kid-friendly too.

One of the many subtle additions in the iOS 6 update is the new ability to go into Full Screen Mode with Safari on iPhone and iPod touch. With just a tap you can boost the viewable size of web pages while you’re in landscape (horizontal) orientation, making the most of web browsing on the smaller screens:

• Open any website in Safari on iPhone or iPod touch, and tilt the device into landscape orientation
• Tap the little opposite arrow icons in the lower right corner to enter into full screen view

The area visible on web pages is increased dramatically, making reading and browsing on the smaller screened iPhone and iPod much more pleasant. To escape out of full screen mode in Safari, either re-orientate the device vertical (portrait) or just tap the arrow buttons again in the corner to go back to the normal Safari view.

Read more »

“Save As” is back in OS X Mountain Lion and Mavericks, but many users have complained of how it modifies the original file in addition to the newly saved file, thereby defeating the purpose of how many people use Save As. If this bothers you, you’ll be pleased to discover that from OS X 10.8.2 onward, there is now an easy option to toggle that prevents Save As from altering the original file when it’s called.

Read more »

OS X Mountain Lion may have removed the native ability to subscribe to RSS feeds from Safari in addition to the feed reader in Mail, but that doesn’t mean your RSS feed reading habits are toast on the Mac. Quite on the contrary, there’s a fantastic free RSS reader available to OS X users called NetNewsWire, and not only is it the best free feed reader for the platform, it may be the best RSS reader for Mac in general.

• Download NetNewsWire free here

To subscribe to a new feed, just click the big (+) Subscribe button in the top left corner and place in a web address – you don’t even need to directly link to RSS feeds, give it a short name, and click Subscribe again. Naturally, adding https://osxdaily.com should be your first subscription…

NetNewsWire is surprisingly full featured, customizable, and it will even sync with subscriptions stored in your Google Reader account. With OS X Lion onward, you’ll get full screen support as well. There’s even a handy “Send to Instapaper” functionality so you can save feed items to read later on an iPad or iPhone, though it would be nice if adding stories to Pocket was also an option. All in all it’s a fantastic free app and well worth downloading.

We’ve received a fair amount of questions about RSS readers since the release of OS X Mountain Lion, and hopefully NetNewsWire will help to alleviate some of those questions. The app works with OS X 10.6, 10.7, and 10.8 onward. Finally, don’t forget that Safari users can also get a third party extension that adds back the RSS subscription button, making it easy to subscribe to websites feeds right from the browser again.

If you have run out of iCloud storage for backups of either your Mac or iOS stuff, you can now easily manage existing backups and data for all devices right on your Mac from OS X.

Read more »