The Bzip archive format is generally more effective at compressing than zip and gzip, and while the default Archive Utility or the excellent all-purpose Unarchiver tool will handle unarchiving bzip2 files with ease, you will have to venture to the command line if you want to create a bzip archive in Mac OS X.

Creating a BZ2 Archive:
bzip2 -z filetocompress

The output of this command is the compressed file, it does not create a compressed copy of the file. To clarify with the example above, you’d see a file named “filetocompress.bz2” within the working directory and the original “filetocompress” would be missing.

Remember that bzip2 does not bundle files, it just compresses them. If you want to add a group of files to a bzip archive you’d want to use tar beforehand. Some versions of tar even support creating bz2 archives natively with the -j flag, but that doesn’t appear to be implemented in Mac OS X.

Of course you can also decompress bz2 archives from the command line with either the bzip2 or bunzip2 commands:

bzip2 -d file.bz2

Or bunzip2:

bunzip2 archivefile.bz2

Or just double-click the bz2 file in the Finder.

So you just grabbed some great looking wallpapers for iOS, but how do you set those images as the background on an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch? It’s a very quick and simple process on any iOS device once you learn how.

Assuming you have already saved an image from the web or email, which is done by tapping and holding the image, here is how to set that saved picture as the wallpaper:

1. Tap “Photos” and tap on the picture you want to set as the wallpaper
2. Tap the arrow icon in the corner and choose “Use as Wallpaper”



3. Use gestures to size and place the wallpaper as you want it to display on the screen
4. Now select either “Set Lock Screen” or “Set Home Screen” or “Set Both” if you want the image to be set as the background for both



5. Close out of Photos to see the new background

You can also make these changes through the Settings app by tapping on “Brightness & Wallpaper” and choosing from either the default options from Apple or anything in the camera roll, but all in all the Photos app is easier to flip through pictures with and ultimately is less daunting for less technical folks.

This is a surprisingly common question for people who are new to the iPad in particular, I’ve had to show this to numerous friends who are otherwise very geeky individuals. If you already knew this, great, if not, now you do.

Thanks for the question and tip idea Gary!

Have you ever needed to move an entire Outlook contact list to an iPhone without using iTunes to sync the device to a computer, and without deleting the contacts already stored on the iPhone?

No problem, here’s a simple two stage process on how to migrate all contacts from a Windows PC with just about any version of Outlook.

This guide is focused on transferring Outlook contacts from Windows PC to iPhone but it will also work with an iPad or iPod touch too.

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A series of pictures have surfaced that claim to show parts of the next iPhone in both black and white colors (iPhone 5, iPhone 6, call it what you want). The most notable images are of the rear shell of the alleged next-gen iPhone, where the Apple  logo and “iPhone” tag are printed, and show what looks like an all new aluminum unibody construction. The device also appears to have sufficient room to accommodate the larger 4″ display that has been heavily rumored.

The images were obtained and published by 9to5mac apparently from supply chain sources, though the machine cut lines shown inside the shell could indicate these are prototype pieces and may not precisely resemble the final shipping device.

Other notable features shown in the photos are a smaller power adapter port at the bottom of the device, redesigned speaker grills, and the headphone jack appears to have been moved to the bottom of the device.

The redesigned enclosure and 4″ screen fit nicely within our recent list of likely rumors about iPhone 5, other expected features include 4G LTE support, a faster processor with more RAM, iOS 6, and a better camera.

The next iPhone is assumed to debut in the fall of this year, sometime in the September or October timeframe.

You can continue to create local backups of iOS devices even if you rely primarily on iCloud backing up iPhone and iPad and for storing those iOS backups. This is a really useful technique if an iPhone, iPad, or iPod ran out of iCloud storage space and you don’t want to deal with managing it manually at the moment, or you’re just temporarily without internet access and want to make a quick backup to the computer. This works for switching a backup location to a local computer on a Mac or Windows PC.

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Have you ever noticed that some very high resolution images are downsampled when viewed on the iPad 3 in Safari? With certain image file types, high resolution pictures that are larger than 1700×1400 or so will be shrunk down and not display at any greater resolution within Safari, not even sizing up to the native retina 2048×2048 resolution. So what are you supposed to do if you want to view the high resolution images? This is a great question that was asked in our comments regarding saving retina wallpapers to the iPad, and the good news is that the downsampling basically stops at Safari.

There are a handful of workarounds for saving images without being downsampled, use what works for you:

1. Tap and hold the image to save it to Photos app as high resolution, despite being downsampled in Safari
2. Save the image to iPhoto
3. When publishing images, use PNG or progressive JPG
4. Email images to the iPad

This is a well documented quirk in Safari on the retina iPad, it could be a bug or just a way to make the web browsing experience more fluid given current limitations of hardware. Who knows, but it’s easy to get around for now.

We’re big fans of attractive wallpapers around here, and this time around we have 9 6 more gorgeous high resolution images to beautify your desktop background. All images are very high res, ranging from 2500×1400 up to 5000×4000 pixels, so regardless of the screen resolution of your Mac, iPhone, iPad, you will find each of them to fit and look great.

From surreal nebula pictures from NASA, satellite shots of sand dunes on Mars, open roads in the American west, a nice subtle wood pattern, or various beach scenes in the South Pacific, we’ve got a wide range for all tastes. Click each image below for the full sized version. Enjoy!

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With Desktop switching keyboard shortcuts set, you can instantly move windows between different desktops without going through Mission Control of Mac OS X at all.

The only requirement is to configure the control keys for switching desktops on the Mac, and you must have multiple desktops or else you won’t have anything to switch the windows between.

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The Unarchiver is a one stop shop for extracting and uncompressing virtually any archive file that you’ll come across on a Mac. Easily managing the usual archive formats of zip, sit, gzip, bin, tar, hqx, it’ll also easily tear through less common archive types including rar files, 7z, bzip2, cab, sea, exe, rpm, cpgz, and many other obscure compression formats that OS X’s built-in Archive Utility can’t handle.

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We’ve shown you how to disable the internal display of a Mac laptop running OS X Lion or later with sleep or with the help of a command line trick, those are the recommended approaches but not everyone has gotten them to work on their Macs. An alternate and peculiar option left in our comments shows us how to turn off an internal MacBook Pro screen by using a magnet. Yes, like a refrigerator magnet. The result is basically the opposite of clamshell mode, where the MacBook is left open but the internal display is disabled, allowing an external display to become the only screen. Generally speaking you should exhaust all other possible methods of turning off the internal screen before resulting to rubbing magnets on a computer, but this is an interesting enough hardwarehack to mention.

Before we relay the instructions, here’s a valid warning: magnets can cause damage to electronic components and hard disks, it’s generally not a good idea to use magnets around computer hardware of any sort. We don’t recommend this method and are relaying instructions for informational purposes only so proceed at your own risk. If you screw something up we are not responsible.

OK with the risk? Then you’ll need an external keyboard and mouse attached for this to work.

1. Find a small flat refrigerator magnet, the type that frequently comes in junk mail and with pizza orders- do not use a strong magnet for this task
2. Connect an external display to the MacBook
3. Carefully slide the magnet around the outside rim of the MacBook to find the sleep inducing spot, you’ll know you have found it because the MacBook immediately goes to sleep
4. After sleep, press a key on the external keyboard to wake the Mac up
5. The external display should now be active as the primary screen while the internal display stays off, allowing you to use the Mac only with the secondary display

This presumably works the same way as the sleep method, though quite a few commenters on Apple’s Discussion Boards claim the traditional sleep approach doesn’t work for them and, believe it or not, many are swearing by this magnet technique.

Thanks to Richard for the interesting tip left in our comments.

Despite it’s tiny size, the MacBook Air 11″ is more than capable of serving as a primary workstation, and this weeks Mac setup continues to prove that point. Hardware shown includes:

• Macbook Air 11″ (2011), 4GB RAM, 256GB SSD
• iPad 2 Wi-Fi 64GB
• iPhone 4S
• Blue Snowball USB Microphone
• Mophie Powerstand iPad stand

The iPad is running Air Display to function as an auxiliary screen to the MacBook Air, in this case for managing Aperture adjustments. Other hardware not shown is an Airport Express, 2TB NAS drive, Apple TV, and a 500GB Time Machine backup.

One of the great things about these portable-centric setups is everything could be packed up and taken elsewhere with minimal effort and carrying weight, in most cases an iPad and a MacBook Air adds up to less weight than a MacBook Pro, not bad for a dual screen and dual OS setup.

Great Mac setup Thomas S, thanks for sending it in!

Want your Apple gear setup featured on OSXDaily? Send a good picture with a list of hardware and a brief description of what you use it for to osxdailycom@gmail.com

Setting up passwordless SSH logins is a great way to speed up connections to regularly accessed remote Macs and unix boxes. Because not all versions of Mac OS X include the ssh-copy-id command, you may have to use cat or scp to copy over your ssh key. This is how to set everything up, it only takes a minute or so.

First, on the local machine you will want to generate a secure SSH key:

ssh-keygen

Walk through the key generator and set a password, the key file by default goes into ~/.ssh/id_rsa

Next, you need to copy the generated key to the remote server you want to setup passwordless logins with, this is easily done with the following command string but you can use ssh-copy-id or scp if you’d prefer:

cat ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub | ssh user@remotehost 'cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys'

(Remember to replace “user@remotehost” with the appropriate username and remote IP address or domain of the server)

This command takes the generated SSH key from the local machine, connects to the remote host via SSH, and then uses cat to append the key file to the remote users authorized key list. Because this connects with SSH to the remote machine you will need to enter the regular ssh login password to use this command.

Finally, confirm that you can now login to the remote SSH server without a password:

ssh user@remotehost.com

Assuming initial setup went as intended, you will connect to the remote machine without having to log in. You can shorten the connection steps even further by creating an alias in bash_profile so that you are only required to type a short command to immediately connect to the specified remote server.

There are some obvious potential security risks with using ssh without a password, the best way to mitigate that is to lock down the client machine with lock screens for screen savers and sleep, using a lock screen keyboard shortcut when you leave a workstation unattended, and setting appropriate login passwords, and enable FileVault disk encryption, all of which you should be utilizing anyway. You can even go a step further and enable a firmware password.

The newly released Absinthe 2.0 jailbreak app may be one of the easiest to use jailbreaking tools of all time. If you’re interested in exploring the jailbreak world or running third party tweaks on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, here is how to jailbreak any such device that is running iOS 5.1.1, yes that includes the new iPad 3 and iPhone 4S.

If you are already jailbroken on iOS 5.1.1 but stuck with a tether, just launch Cydia and search for “Rocky Racoon” to untether your existing device. You do not need to run Absinthe. For everyone else, here is how to jailbreak iOS 5.1.1 untethered:

1. Connect your iOS device to the computer via USB and do a quick manual local backup by right-clicking on the device name in iTunes and choosing “Back Up”. You will need this in the odd event something goes wrong.
2. Download Absinthe 2.0 and launch the Absinthe utility
3. Click on the Jailbreak button and let Absinthe perform its magic, this may take a minute or two
4. Absinthe will inform you when the jailbreak is finished, when done look for the Cydia icon on the iOS home screen
5. Launch Cydia and enjoy

That’s about it. Because Absinthe 2 is untethered, you are free to reboot at any time without being attached to a computer. If you want to undo the jailbreak at any point you can restore from the iTunes backup you made and be back to normal.

The much anticipated Absinthe 2.0 jailbreak has been released by the JailbreakDreamTeam. The utility allows for an untethered jailbreak of iOS 5.1.1 on virtually all idevices, including iPad, iPad 2, iPad 3, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, and iPod touch 3rd and 4th gen.

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iPhone rumor season is in full bloom and there’s a lot of crazy speculation going on out there. We’ve weeded through all the iPhone 5 rumors and picked nine that are most likely to be true, though it’s important to remember that until Apple officially announces something it’s all speculation:

1. 4″ Display – A larger screened iPhone has been rumored for a long time, but now Reuters, WSJ, and Bloomberg have all piled in with reports that appear to confirm the 4″ display is a reality.
2. Redesigned Case – To accommodate a larger screen the iPhone enclosure is bound to get a redesign. Nobody knows what it will look like or if it will be made of glass, aluminum, liquid metal, or a combination of all three, but with longstanding rumors that Steve Jobs worked on the design before he passed away, you can rest assured it will be beautiful.
3. 4G LTE – True mobile broadband is bound for the iPhone according to a handful of rumors, and with the 3rd gen iPad receiving the 4G treatment it’s a pretty safe bet the iPhone will follow suit.
4. 10 Megapixel Camera – The smartphone is killing the point-and-shoot camera market, and the next iPhone is probably going to include a camera so good that it will drive a final nail into the consumer digital camera coffin. Why 10MP? The iPhone 4S has an 8MP camera, so it’s a logical step.
5. A5X CPU & Quad Core Graphics – It’s very likely Apple will borrow the iPad 3 A5X CPU with it’s quad-core GPU and jam all of its power right into the next iPhone. Apple regularly shares core hardware components between iOS devices, so this isn’t particularly outlandish.
6. 1GB RAM – If they borrow the A5X from the iPad 3, it’s very likely the next iPhone will have 1GB of RAM like the iPad too. Apple generally finds specs meaningless, but geeks love this stuff, and 1GB of RAM means faster apps, improved multitasking, and an all-around boost.
7. iOS 6 – Not much is known about iOS 6, but everyone is expecting a big preview at WWDC in just a few weeks. Rumored features include all new Maps app with advanced abilities like turn-by-turn directions, further iCloud integration, third party widgets for Notification Center, third party Siri support, and much more.
8. “The new iPhone” – Taking another page from the book of iPad, the next iPhone probably won’t be called iPhone 5 at all, it’ll be named simply “The new iPhone”. People will still call it the wrong name anyway though.
9. September or October Release Date – The release timeline for new iPhones appears to have shifted from earlier in the year to fall, assuming the next iPhone is released on the same schedule as iPhone 4S was that is. Expect a launch and release sometime in September or October of this year.

Those are looking like the most likely features and specs of the next iPhone, but there are also a few other vague possibilities. There is really nothing to support these rumors except analyst claims or web conjecture, so we’ll file these safely under “wishful thinking” while we all cross our fingers hoping they end up true.

• 32GB Base Model – My iPhone fills up much faster than my iPad, it stores tons of photos and tons of music, and frankly 16GB is just too small to be standard anymore. 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB storage options would be fantastic.
• Magsafe Dock Connector – MagSafe power adapters are one of the greatest little Apple inventions, it would be a huge improvement to bring to the iPhone and iOS lineup, so let’s hope it happens
• T-Mobile – Plenty of T-Mobile customers are using unlocked devices on their network anyway, so hopefully Apple and TMO USA can finally work out a deal to bring the iPhone to their network.
• China Mobile – The largest cellular carrier in the world with 655 million subscribers, China Mobile has a paying customer base that is two times the entire population of the USA. If Apple wants to continue it’s explosive growth in China, landing a deal with CHL is vital, and this could be the year, and the device, to finally do it.

What do you think the next iPhone will have? What should it have? Let us know your thoughts and speculate away.

It’s a good idea to check the hard drive health of a Mac as part of a periodic maintenance routine. Doing this is extremely easy with Disk Utility, and we’ll cover exactly how to verify hard disks, how to repair them, and what to do if you encounter any issues or errors in the process. This works for all hard drives, whether it’s an internal drive, an external drive, or a boot disk, though the process is slightly different for boot drives. Let’s begin.
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What do you get when you combine two Apple fans on wedding day? A wedding picture featuring husband and wife using their MacBook Pro’s, of course.

We typically post interesting Mac setups on Saturdays, but Gabor P sent in this cute picture of he and his wife using their Macs on that special day, and we had to put it up.

For those wondering, the Macs are:

• Wife: MacBook Pro 13″ Mid 2010 , 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo , 4GB RAM , 320GB HDD
• Husband: MacBook Pro 13″ Early 2011 , 2.3GHz i5 , 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, 750GB HDD

Congratulations to you both!

If you want to use an iPhone or iPad during a plane flight, you’re supposed to turn Airplane mode on to disable the built-in wireless communication aspects of the device. Airplane mode disables cellular and 3G/4g connectivity, GPS, wi-fi, and Bluetooth capabilities, but how are you supposed to use inflight wi-fi service if everything is turned off? The solution is to enable Airplane mode as usual, but then manually turn on Wi-Fi or Bluetooth separately on the iOS device:

• Launch Settings and flip “Airplane Mode” to “ON”
• Tap on “Wi-Fi” and flip the switch to “ON”, join the wireless network as usual
• For Bluetooth use, within Settings tap on “General” and then tap “Bluetooth” to enable separately

Either choice will not reenable the cellular modem or connection, typically keeping you within the realm of acceptable behavior for most flights. You’ll probably want to check with the specific airline before doing this, but chances are if they offer inflight wireless service then it’s acceptable behavior.

Outside of flying, using Airplane mode but turning on wi-fi is an easy way to temporarily turn an iPhone into an iPod touch, letting you use wifi networks but avoid any potentially expensive voice or data roaming charges.