Apple has released two notable iPhone 4S commercials that feature popular celebrities using Siri. The first TV ad shows Samuel L Jackson planning a special evening with his wife thanks to the help of Siri, and the second commercial shows Zooey Deschanel using Siri to manage a lazy rainy day. Both commercials can be viewed embedded below.

Samuel L Jackson “Date Night” iPhone ad:

Zooey Deschanel “Rainy Day” iPhone 4S ad:

Everyone gets emails filled with links, but what do you do when an incoming message includes a potentially dubious URL that you aren’t quite so sure about? Rather than crossing your fingers and blindly clicking the link to open in the default web browser, try this tip out to get a preview of the URL directly in the Mail app of Mac OS X.

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The Apple ][ is celebrating it’s 35th birthday.

Originally demoed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak at a computer fair on April 16 and 17, 1977, the Apple II was the machine that put Apple on the map and then went on to catapult the personal computer revolution.

What better way to celebrate one of the original PC’s monumental birthdays than to use an Apple II simulator in Mac OS X?

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Whether you’re feeling the pinch as hard drive space runs low or you’re just wondering where all your disk space went, it’s easy to find large files in Mac OS X by using the built-in search tools. You don’t need to use any third party tools here, instead you’ll rely on search operators and the excellent Spotlight locating functionality that is a core feature of all Macs.

If you’ve never used these specific features of the Mac search function before, you’ll find it’s simple to do, just follow these steps to locate files and items based on their size.
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Macs have pretty amazing battery life to begin with, but following a few simple tips will help you to get the absolute best battery performance out of a MacBook, MacBook Air, or MacBook Pro.

The primary goal here is to reduce overall power consumption on the Mac laptop and we’ll cover a few different techniques to do this. For casual Mac users simply reducing screen brightness is typically more than adequate to get great battery life, so the tips below are intended for true road warriors who demand the absolute best battery life possible out of their portable Macs.

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Looking for some nice mellow wallpapers to add to your Mac, iPhone, or iPad? The DizzyUp collection features three beautifully subtle wallpapers in a wide variety of common screen resolutions and has also been updated to support the 3rd gen iPad retina 2048×2048 display. The wood paneling is my personal favorite of the group, but if you’re into minimalist wallpapers you won’t want to miss the other two dark & light wallpapers either, which feature unobtrusive gradients over a some gentle patterns.

• Grab each wallpaper from DizzyUp.co.uk

(BTW the light desktop background image looks great with a retro-fied Classic style Mac OS X desktop)

Heads up to 512pixels for the reminder these exist, and for pointing out the iPad retina update.

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Forwarding text messages from one sender to another is made very simple on the iPhone. The process is the same whether it’s a text, SMS, MMS, or even an iMessage:

1. From the Messages app, open the text message you want to forward
2. Tap the “Edit” button in the upper right corner
3. Tap the message you want to forward so that it shows a red checkbox next to it
4. Tap on the “Forward” button in the lower right corner
5. Enter the recipient in the new message screen and send as usual

The forwarded message sends to the recipient as any other message would, and an SMS or MMS can be forwarded as a mass text message as well. Group texting is useful for reducing text message fees with some providers and it’s also a great way to annoy your entire iPhone address book.

And yes, text messages can be forwarded from an iPhone to iPad, iPod touch, or Mac running Messages, and vice versa, though sending to a device other than an iPhone obviously won’t register as an SMS.

Tired of all the OS X default screen savers? Breathe a ton of new retro life into your screen saver collection with the XScreenSaver pack for Mac. The free bundle includes over 200 old school screen saver classics, including an Apple II emulator, Flying Toasters, The Matrix, Blue Screen of Death, Missile Command, Phosphor BBS emulator, Rubiks cube, bouncing cow, and tons of other once-upon-a-time-was-fancy and hilarious screen savers from computing days of yesteryear.

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Apple has released a standalone removal tool that targets Flashback malware infections. The separate utility is recommended for Mac users who do not have Java installed on their OS X Lion machine, but it’s functionality is identical to that performed by the most recent Java update to remove Flashback.

If your Mac does not have Java or you did not install the most recent Java for OS X updates, running this tool is a good idea. Here is what to do:

1. Download the tool directly from Apple
2. Mount the DMG file and launch FlashbackMalwareRemover.pkg
3. Click Continue, click “Install” and enter the administrative password

Everything beyond that is automated, if the Mac is infected it will be automatically repaired.

Users should always keep system software up to date as part of a general maintenance routine. Despite the recent media overhyping of Flashback, Mac OS X remains a very secure platform. If you are concerned about potential attacks, our recent guide on securing Mac OS X from potential trojans and malware may be helpful to you.

This weeks Mac setup is loaded with great Apple gear and comes to us from husband and wife Cesare and Monica. Hardware from left to right is:

• iPad 1
• iPhone 4 64GB
• iMac 20″ (early 2008) 4GB RAM 200GB HD
• iPad 3rd gen 64GB
• iPhone 4S 64GB
• MacBook Pro 17″ (mid 2007) 8GB RAM 500GB HD
• 1988 Apple HQ Mug
• MacBook Pro 15″ 8GB RAM 256GB SSD with external display

The printer is a Hewlett-Packard OfficeJet 6500 WiFi model (related, you can force other printers to be AirPrint compatible), and not pictured is a MacBook Air 11″ used for travel.

Want your Mac setup featured? Send pictures of Apple & Mac setups to osxdailycom@gmail.com and include some brief hardware details and what you use it for.

Want to share a single keyboard and mouse between multiple Macs? How about using a keyboard and mouse attached to your Mac to control an additional PC running Windows or Linux, and even being able to share copy and paste data between the different operating systems? You can do that with the help of a great free tool called Synergy, and setting it up is easier than you might think.
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Modern versions of Mac OS X allow videos and movie files to be previewed and played directly in the Spotlight search results menu.

This works with any supported movie or video file type that can be played in QuickTime. To try this out for yourself:

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Apple was busy dreaming about the future of communications 29 years ago, long before the days of the iPhone, touch screens, cell phones, and even cordless phones.

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Apple has released a new Java security update that automatically removes the most frequently occurring variations of the Flashback trojan malware. The software update is recommended for all Mac users to install, even if they have previously checked their systems for infection.

To get the update and remove any malware that is potentially on a Mac, simply download the “Java for OS X 2012-003” update from Software Update found within the  Apple menu. There is no manual checking or removal required, simply installing the update from Apple resolves any potential infection for you.

The new Java update also disables automatic execution of Java applets, providing further security against potential threats down the road. Release notes are as follows:

This Java security update removes the most common variants of the Flashback malware.

This update also configures the Java web plug-in to disable the automatic execution of Java applets. Users may re-enable automatic execution of Java applets using the Java Preferences application. If the Java web plug-in detects that no applets have been run for an extended period of time it will again disable Java applets.

This update is recommended for all Mac users with Java installed.

For details about this update see: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5242

All Mac users should install the update as soon as possible. For extra protection, don’t miss our recent post on some simple tips to secure Mac OS X from viruses, malware, and trojans.

Designers and developers will appreciate the newly released retina iPad GUI elements template available now as a free PSD download from Teehan+Lax. Based on iOS 5.1 and the new iPad’s retina UI elements, these PSD files are an excellent resource for quickly mocking up iPad apps, workflows, and general iOS concepts.

You’ll need Adobe Photoshop to properly use the PSD file and it’s intensive layering, but the excellent Photoshop CS6 beta is still free to download and use until the final release comes out later in the year.

• Download the PSD template free from Teehan+Lax

We’ve posted a lot of these UI element and iOS and OS X design templates here before because they’re so useful for both developers and designers. If you missed some of those past posts, varoius PSD templates are available for OS X Lion elements, non-retina iOS UI, iPhone & iOS 5 UI, and even retina iOS icon templates.

The “Other” capacity in iTunes is supposed to estimate the size of system software, contacts, Messages data, and things that are not listed elsewhere in the labeled capacities list of storage on an iOS device. Sometimes other data will become mislabeled or misappropriated to the “Other” category, and suddenly it’s reported as being much larger than it actually is on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod.
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A users .bash_history file keeps a running tab of command line history, logging every command that has been entered into the bash prompt. These command history files make it very easy to find and recall past commands that may have been forgotten, and they’re also extremely useful for system administration. We will cover how to change the stored length of these files, how to disable it, and also how to quickly check a users bash history.

Changing Bash History Length

To increase the history length of a users command history, add the following line to .bash_profile:

HISTFILESIZE=2500

The example above will increase the history size to 2500 commands, that can be changed to any other number as deemed appropriate.

Disable Bash History

Setting the HISTFILESIZE number to 0 within .bash_profile will disable bash command history completely:

HISTFILESIZE=0

Having the history file disabled does not effect command recall, but it does prevent a super user from easily seeing the commands entered into another users shell.

Checking Bash History

There’s a few quick ways to see command history, to see your own type:

history

You can also export that command history to a file with the -w flag:

history -w pastbash.txt

To see another users command history, use cat with their .bash_history file instead:

cat /Users/USERNAME/.bash_history

Remember that if USERNAME has set their history file size to zero, nothing will be shown.

Practical Applications for Mac Users
Two of the most common applications for a Mac user is to keep track of defaults entries that have been entered into the Terminal and to quickly find past commands. Query command history and you won’t have to guess what that obscure command was that you entered four months ago that started with a ‘s’.

Assuming you have file extensions shown in the OS X Finder, attempting to change a file extension causes a warning dialog with a confirmation box to appear. The warning text says “Are you sure you want to change the extension from (this) to (that)?” then giving you two choices; keep the current file extension, or use the new extension.

That dialog box can be annoying if you know what you’re doing and you have a compelling reason to change extensions, which is often the case for advanced Mac users, so let’s turn it off using one of two methods in OS X; with the Finder Prefs panel, or the command line and defaults write.

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