OS X Mountain Lion has been released by Apple. The major update to Mac OS provides over 200 new features, including iMessage support, Reminders, Notification Center, Notes, Game Center, extensive iCloud integration, and much more.

The upgrade costs $19.99 but is available for free to Mac users who bought a Mac within the past month.

• Get Mountain Lion from the Mac App Store Now

Apple’s generous licensing terms allow you to install a single purchase of Mountain Lion on all of your personal Macs. If you don’t want to re-download OS X 10.8 each time on each computer, you can make a Mountain Lion boot installer from any USB drive or DVD.

Be sure to back up each Mac before installing, follow our simple guide on things to do before upgrading if you haven’t done so yet.

Update: Mountain Lion is now available!

No more rumors or speculation, Apple CEO Tim Cook has confirmed that OS X Mountain Lion will launch July 25:

“We’re thrilled with record sales of 17 million iPads in the June quarter,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We’ve also just updated the entire MacBook line, will release Mountain Lion tomorrow and will be launching iOS 6 this Fall. We are also really looking forward to the amazing new products we’ve got in the pipeline.”

That quote comes directly from Apple’s PR library ahead of the Q3 2012 earnings call this afternoon, and also serves to reiterate the release date of iOS 6 later this year, while also teasing for whatever “amazing new products” (new iPhone? iPad mini?) Cook is referring to.

As we mentioned earlier in our recap of things to do before installing Mountain Lion, you’ll want to back up your Mac before installing OS X 10.8 on your Mac.

The release of OS X Mountain Lion is just around the corner (it’s official: July 25), but before jumping into the latest major Mac system update, you’ll want to do a few things. We’ve broken it down to a few simple essentials that are easy to follow:
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Open Wi-Fi networks are everywhere, if you’re stationed in an area with tons of them you’ll probably want to prioritize your own network to be the top wireless network to join so you don’t accidentally end up on someone elses unsecured network. Prioritizing is also a good idea if you use Personal Hotspot in public so you don’t end up on an open public access point.

The simplest way to prevent a Mac from joining one network over another is to set priority, giving your preferred wifi routers precedent over the others.

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The iPad screen defaults to automatically dim itself and then turn itself off to black after a fairly short amount of time of inactivity. That’s great for preserving battery life of iOS devices, but if you’re like me you keep an iPad or iPhone alongside you full time while working as a control panel for Pandora, podcasts, and email, and having the screen lock after a few minutes of inactivity is annoying.

Fortunately you can adjust the amount of time it takes for the display of iPad to dim and lock itself.

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Apple is airing a new iPhone 4S commercial titled “Busy Day” that features director Martin Scorsese in a conversation with the voice assistant Siri while riding around in the back of a taxicab.

A transcript of the dialog between Scorsese and Siri is as follows, courtesy of MacRumors:

Scorsese: What’s my day look like?

Siri: Another busy day today.

Scorsese: Are you serious?

Siri: Yes, I’m not allowed to be frivolous.

Scorsese: Ah, OK. Move my 4 o’clock today to tomorrow. Change my 11AM to 2.

Siri: OK, Marty. I scheduled it for today.

Scorsese: Is that Rick? Where’s Rick?

Siri: Here’s Rick.

Scorsese: Oh, no that’s not Rick. Now, how’s the traffic headed downtown?

Siri: Here’s the traffic.

Scorsese: Oh, it’s terrible, terrible. Driver, driver, cut across. Cut across. We’ll never make it downtown this way. I like you Siri, you’re going places.

Siri: I’ll try to remember that.

This is the fourth iPhone 4S ad to feature a major celebrity, and the 3rd recent Apple commercial to be aired in general. Last month a new ad for the iPad started airing alongside a spot for the Retina MacBook Pro.

Though Mac OS X now includes built-in encoding tools to perform conversions of video to audio, you can also extract an audio track from a movie by using QuickTime Player. The great thing about ripping an audio track from a video this way is that mo downloads are necessary, and there is no enabling any buried features, it’s a simple Export setting in QuickTime and you’ll wind up with the audio track as an .m4a file.

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If you want to prevent someone from deleting apps on an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPhone, all you need to do is flick a Restrictions setting in iOS:

1. Open “Settings” and tap on “General”
2. Go to “Restrictions” and enter your pin code, locate “Deleting Apps” and switch to OFF
3. Exit out of Settings

You can confirm apps are no longer able to be deleted by tapping and holding on an apps icon to make them jiggle, where you’ll discover the (x) is now missing.

This is one of those must-have restrictions along with disabling in-app purchases if you’re letting little kids use an iPad or iPhone because it’ll stop them from accidentally deleting anything, but it’s also helpful for iOS devices that get public usage, or if you’re brave enough to let your dog or cat play games on the thing.

While you’re in the Restrictions menu it can also be a good idea to prevent the installation of new apps.

The next iPhone will feature a smaller dock connector and the headphone jack will be relocated to the bottom of the device, according to a new report from Reuters. This appears to confirm what is shown in the alleged pictures of iPhone 5 that were leaked to 9to5mac a few months ago.

Changing the dock connector is a potentially significant move because it may render previous chargers and accessories useless without an adapter. In a similar fashion, Apple recently changed the MagSafe adapters on new MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models, and though it’s unlikely Macs will share their power adapter with future iOS devices it is always possible that MagSafe technology will come to the iPhone connector.

iPhone 5 is expected to launch sometime this fall alongside iOS 6, and feature a redesigned enclosure, larger 4″ display, and various other rumored improvements.

Sleep can be invoked instantly on any Mac through the command line by running the pmset command or a very simple AppleScript run in Mac OS X. This can be useful for many reasons, whether scripting, system administration, remote management with SSH, or perhaps you just live in the command line.

We’ll show you two ways how you can initiate sleep on any Mac by using the command line.

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Though you can add anything to Spotlights Privacy list to prevent indexing of that folder or file, the obvious problem with that approach is the file or folder is shown within the Spotlight control panel in Mac OS X, making it easy for someone else to find the excluded items.

Another way to hide a file from Spotlight is to drop it in the user Library directory. This makes it invisible to the vast majority of people, and it also prevents the file from being indexed by Spotlight despite not being directly excluded. This works because Spotlight does not index the user Library directory which is typically just filled with preference and cache files.

• Get access to the Library folder in OS X, using Command+Shift+G to ~/Library/ is my preferred method
• Drag & drop a file or folder in the users Library directory
• Optional: add a layer of obfuscation by creating a boring sounding directory in ~/Library/, such as “Webkit Data”, and store the file or folders to hide in there

You can immediately confirm the file or folders contents are hidden from Spotlight by hitting Command+Space and entering the files name, it will no longer be found.

Just remember that if you keep the Library folder visible then your hidden file or folder may be easily found by prying eyes, though the nonsensical folder name may deter that. You can always follow one of the many other methods we’ve covered to hide things in OS X, ranging from hiding files with chflags, by placing a period in front of the folder name, and using visually invisible folders. Ultimately the safest approach is to password protect an encrypted disk image and store private documents and data there.

Though you can usually fix stuck app downloads by double-tapping the stuck icon, that doesn’t work with things downloaded from iTunes like podcasts, music, audio books, and video. If you find yourself forever waiting for a stuck media download from iTunes, the solution is very simple:

1. Launch iTunes and then tap on “Downloads”
2. Find the stuck download, swipe right on the item and delete it
3. Redownload as necessary

The file should download again without a problem.

This usually seems to happen when restoring an iOS device, regardless of whether the restore is from backups or a device is configured as new.

This helpful tip comes to us in the comments from Dave Brown, thanks a bunch to Dave and everyone who pointed out how effective this is.

Have a favorite website that you read on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch and perhaps you’d like to have faster access to it? You’re probably reading it this very minute, right? Of course you are, but rather than launching Safari first and then going to a web page, you can add this website or any other as a homescreen bookmark, making it instantly accessible from iOS with just a tap.

Setting up quick access to websites with a homescreen icon bookmark is super easy, this makes the website accessible right from the home screen just like an app would be, simply tapping the icon launches the webpage.

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Ever wondered what the Mac setup of a tech companies CEO would look like? If you guessed it’d be a series of awesome Apple hardware complete with an amazing view of New York City, you’d be right. Hardware shown in the picture includes:

• iPad 3
• iMac 27″ (2011) top of the line
• 2x Thunderbolt 27″ Apple displays
• Retina MacBook Pro
• iPhone 4S

The view is from Jersey City looking across the water into the financial district of Manhattan, where you can see One World Trade Center (Freedom Tower) being constructed. Not too shabby huh?

I’m not sure if they wanted some anonymity so we won’t mention the company name yet, but thanks to Carlos and Robb for sending us this awesome Mac setup!

Want your Mac setup shown on OSXDaily? Send us a good picture or two with a list of hardware and a brief description of what the Apple gear is used for to osxdailycom@gmail.com

Having a bunch of Terminal tabs named “bash” “bash” and “bash” isn’t too useful or descriptive. Instead, you can rename each tab individually to something more specific by using the Terminal inspector.

Before doing so, keep in mind that tabs default to rename themselves automatically based on the currently running process, thus if the terminal tab is running ‘top’ it will rename itself as ‘top’ and so forth. Choosing to rename the tab this way prepends the process name within the tab name.
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InstaWP is a new free service that lets you create high resolution wallpaper collages compiled from Instagram photos. You don’t even need to have an Instagram account to use the service, just feed the InstaWP panel a username, category, or tag, set a few parameters, and it will automatically generate a wallpaper consisting of the Instagram feed you gave it.

Available resolutions support most common desktop sizes and smartphone screens, including iPhone 4 and even the retina iPad 3 display.

• Check out Insta-WP and start creating wallpapers

A particularly neat effect can be had by creating a handful of different wallpapers and throwing them into a single folder, then use the automatic wallpaper changing feature in Mac OS X to rotate between the collections.

For the artsy, you could just download all your Instagram pictures and make one yourself with Photoshop or Pixelmator, but that’s a whole lot more work.

If you like this you’d probably like the Instagram screensaver Screenstagram too.

(Topmost collage is built from Instagram user @fosterhunting, bottom collage is @blam)

If you bought a new Mac recently, you won’t have to shell out $20 to download OS X Mountain Lion when it’s released this month because it’s free for you. Instead, you can visit the “Up-to-Date” website from Apple, enter some identifying information to verify the purchase, and you’ll be rewarded with a fresh download of OS X 10.8 right from the Mac App Store.

Requirements are simple: if you bought a Mac from June 11, 2012 onward, you’re eligible for the free upgrade as long as you request it within 30 days of Mountain Lions release, or the purchase date of the Mac. Eligible Mac purchases can be from Apple or Apple Authorized Resellers.

• Visit Apple’s Up-to-Date website for more information on the free update

The important thing to remember is that you’ll have 30 days to get the free update, so if you take advantage of Amazons discounts on the 2012 MacBook Air & Pro models then you’ll want to put this on your calendar and be ready to pounce.

OS X Mountain Lion will be released this month, with most signs pointing to next week.

Want to quickly hide a file from prying eyes? Just like you can hide folders, you can hide individual files too. Here is how to do this using the command line tool chflags.

Launch Terminal from /Applications/Utilities/ and use the following command syntax:

chflags nohidden /path/to/hide/file.txt

If you know the path to the file just type it yourself. If you don’t, follow the drag & drop method to automatically type the entire path within the Terminal, just be sure to drop it in after the initial command, and then hit the return key:

chflags hidden [DRAG FILE HERE]

If you’re confused at all watch the quick video below that demonstrates the command being used with drag and drop:

Note these files will be hidden to everyone unless if hidden files are shown in the Finder.

At any point you can unhide the file with the following chflags command:

chflags nohidden /path/to/hide/file.txt

chflags should be familiar to anyone who has used it to show the Library folder in OS X Lion or Mountain Lion. This is trouble-free alternative approach to the setfiles method, which requires Xcode Developer Tools to be installed to use. You can also throw a period in front of a file or folder name to hide it from the Finder in OS X.