On some fresh OS X installations, you’ll find the user name or login appears in the upper right corner of the menu bar, even if there is only one user account on the Mac. This is actually a feature called Fast User Switching, and the name likely appears in the menu bar due to the Guest Login ability (which can be disabled separately).

Nonetheless, not all users want their user name or full name appearing in the corner of the Mac OS X menu bar. If you’re looking hide it, here is how to remove the name:
Read more »

Ever wondered how to make a zip file in Mac OS X? We recently demonstrated how to password protect zip archives, but in the comments a reader asked a more simple yet completely valid question: “what about just making a standard zip file?”

Well, making a zip archive on a Mac is easy, and with the compression tools built directly into Mac OS X there is no need to download additional software or add-ons to quickly create zips and compress either a single file, a group of files, or an entire folder. If you’re unfamiliar with creating zips on the Mac, here is exactly how to do it, and quickly.

Read more »

iOS 5.1 beta 3 has been released to developers today, the latest build is 9B5141a and is available as a fairly small over-the-air delta update to those currently running iOS 5.1 beta 2. As past iOS 5.1 betas have shown, compatibility is with iPad 2, iPad, iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and iPod touch 3rd and 4th generations. Registered iOS developers should be able to get the latest build through the Apple Dev Center as well.

Not many new features are known, but reports indicate iOS 5.1 beta 3 gives iPhone 4S the ability to disable 3G and manually switch to the slower Edge network, something that currently isn’t possible on the 4S running iOS 5.0.1. While Edge is much slower, it’s better at conserving battery life and has a larger coverage area, particularly in rural locations.

The first beta of iOS 5.1 was made available on November 28, 2011, and the second beta on December 12, presumably the long holiday break contributed to the nearly four weeks between the release of the 2nd and 3rd betas, but either way we’re inching closer and closer to a public release soon.

The root user is a special user account with high level system-wide access privileges intended for system administration, monitoring, and in depth troubleshooting purposes. By default, root user is disabled in Mac OS X for security purposes, but if you need to enable superuser, this guide will show you how to do so in OS X Yosemite (10.10.X) OS X Lion (10.7), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8+), and OS X Mavericks (10.9+).
Read more »

iPhone is truly the device that changed everything, it reinvented the phone and what we expect of a handheld device, it forever changed Apple, and it has since defined the entire mobile industry.

All of that started 5 years ago today, on January 9, when Steve Jobs took the stage at MacWorld 2007 to unveil the very first iPhone, saying “I have been looking forward to this for two and a half years. Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone.” and the rest, as they say, is history.

For a quick recap, the original iPhone had an aluminum back, glass multitouch screen, included a 2mp camera, ran at 412MHz, had 128MB of RAM, and was available in 4GB and 8GB, with a 16 GB options appearing later as the 4GB became discontinued. The devices main setback was the limitation to AT&T’s slow EDGE network, but regardless it was by far the most impressive and advanced phone on the market and sold out quickly, leaving smartphone competitors scrambling. iOS at the time was fairly basic and called iPhone OS, made from a heavily stripped down version of Mac OS X. Apps were limited to what Apple installed on the iPhone, which were things like Safari, iPod, Mail, Calendar, Photos, Stocks, Weather, Calculator, etc, and third party apps with the developer SDK didn’t come until a year later in early 2008.

Below are videos of Steve Jobs unveiling the very first iPhone, if you haven’t seen these and you are interested in Apple history, they are well worth watching:
Read more »

Don’t want to see the red badge notifications appear on iOS app icons anymore when an alert or notification has arrived for that app? You may have noticed that some apps display red notification badges on their app icons on iPhone and iPad, and though they’re certainly useful for many apps, if you’re not a fan of these visual alert indicators, then you can disable these badge notifications and stop them from appearing on any app icons. Once turned off, they will no longer be visible on the icons at all, whether the apps are sitting in the iPhone or iPad’s Dock or just stored on the home screen.

For reference, iOS refers to these as “Badge App Icons” and they must be turned off on a per application basis, so here is how to do exactly that:

Read more »

If you buy an iPhone 4S off-contract from Apple, the phone comes unlocked. This means the iPhone can be used on any compatible GSM carrier as long as you have that networks micro-SIM card, and the device is activated on that network. This guide will show you how to activate the iPhone 4S for use on other networks.

Read more »

The iPhone has the ability to play custom text message and iMessage alert sound effects, these custom text tones apply to all incoming messages. You can choose from many Apple provided text tones that are included with all iPhones, or, since this feature can choose any ringtone file to be set as a custom SMS sound, you can even use your own custom alert sounds if you want your messages to play any specific tone or sound effect.

Not only can you set custom text message tones for all of your incoming alerts, but you can also set custom text alert sounds on a per contact basis, so you’ll know who is texting you based on the alert sound alone. Both of these are great features that provide a great way to customize your iPhone experience, so let’s learn how to set message sound effects.

Read more »

Recently we posted a Mac museum collection that featured an iMac using wallpaper that made it appear like you could see right through to the logic board. It turns out these images are from iFixIt, the company that likes to tear down Apple hardware.

In the process of documenting their teardowns, iFixIt also has taken high resolution images that work great for wallpapers, giving the illusion that there is no screen on the device, and instead making it look as if icons and windows are floating directly atop circuitry. It’s a cool effect, and they have a variety of freely available native resolution wallpapers in this style for the iMac, iPad, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and even the Apple external Thunderbolt display.

• Find them all on iFixit.com’s blog or check out some more images below

If you don’t care about showing the exact hardware for your device, they all make great wallpapers in general. My favorites have to be the iPad and iMac, although the Thunderbolt chip is nice too:

Read more »

Creating a password protected zip file is easy in Mac OS X and does not require any add-ons or downloads. Instead, use the zip utility that is bundled with all Macs.

This offers a simple way to protect a zip archive file from unwanted viewing access, as when a user attempts to decompress the contents of the zip archive, the correct password must be entered in order for the archive to extract.

Read more »

Like any longtime Apple fan, I’m a sucker for retro Apple gear, and this great reader submitted Mac setup jumps across over three decades of Apple hardware, showing the evolution of all-in-one hardware from the late 1980’s to today.

• Macintosh SE/30 from 1989
• iMac 233MHz from 1999
• iMac 24″ from 2008
• iPhone 4 from 2010
• iPad 2 from 2011

By the way, isn’t it awesome that the Mac SE/30 still works?

In some ways, this setup mirrors a few of Apple’s most significant Mac announcements, with the SE/30 being the first compact Mac to ship with a 1.44MB floppy drive standard, to the original iMac which was the first Mac (or PC) to ditch the floppy altogether, and the modern aluminum iMac which helped spread the aluminum unibody across the product line. Of course, the iPhone 4 and iPad 2’s influence is a bit more obvious and reach far beyond Apple, but they still changed the Mac platform with features ranging from multitouch gestures to the simplified UI experience of OS X Lion and Launchpad.

This is a great Mac setup, thanks for sending it in Robin!

Check out more Mac setups

Need to hide a folder or two on a Mac? A while back we showed you how to make invisible folders and to even how to make hidden folders in Mac OS X, but now we’re going to demonstrate how to turn an existing folder into a hidden folder.
Read more »

Ever since the 5th major release of iOS, an awesome built-in dictionary feature is easily accessible from Safari, iBooks, and most other apps that you’ll be using on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. This means the next time that you (or someone else) see a word anywhere on an iPhone or iPad that you want to define, you don’t need to don’t bother downloading or launching a separate dictionary app. Because you can quickly access word definitions directly from iOS, and the definition will surface in a quick access panel that makes it easy to read the definition and then get quickly back to reading the original text.

Using this trick is incredibly simple and once you get the hang of it you’ll probably be bringing it up often as you read on your iPhone or iPad.
Read more »

An iPad 3 with “a full HD display” will arrive in March, according to a new report from Digitimes, who cites industry sources in Taiwan. According to Digitimes, Apple will launch the iPad 3 in the coming months of 2012, with it’s primary new feature being the retina display:

The iPad 3 will come with a QXGA (1,536×2,048 pixels) display and longer battery life although its other hardware specifications may not be so amazing as expected, said the sources.

Digitimes also mentions that the existing iPad 2 will likely see a price drop $100 to about $399 in order to better compete with other tablet offerings:

Apple will take the advantage of the iPad 3 launch to slash the price of its iPad 2 to US$399, the sources claimed.

Much of this is in line with the rumors from last November regarding the iPad 3, although Digitimes then goes off the deep-end and suggests that an “iPad 4” will be released in October of 2012, an unlikely scenario.

The picture you’re looking at is of an iPad 2 floating high enough into space to see the curvature of the Earth, far above the Nevada desert. Guess what is going to happen next?
Read more »

Launchpad is the iOS-like application launcher that came to Mac OS X with the release of 10.7 Lion. It’s a nice addition, but Launchpad can also be difficult and inconsistent to delete apps from. Third party utilities like Launchpad-Control will help to manage Launchpad for you, but if you’re a DIY kind of individual, you want to know how to manually delete apps and icons from Launchpad, both on a per app basis but also a fell swoop method that will delete all apps from the launcher.
Read more »

Need to know when you bought an app from the Mac App Store? Knowing purchase dates of apps can be helpful for accounting and year end tax purposes, plus a variety of other reasons, and here are two quick ways to get that information.

Get a List of All Apps and Purchase Dates from the Mac App Store

Launch the Mac App Store and click on “Purchases” tab, you’ll find that apps are automatically sorted by purchase date, showing the most recently bought apps at the top. Shown is the original date the app was bought through the App Store, even if the the download progress was stopped.

If an app is missing from that list and you are certain you bought it with the same Apple ID, check the hidden purchases list.

Get the Purchase Date of a Single App from the Mac OS X Finder

Go to the /Applications folder, select an app bought from the Mac App Store, then hit the spacebar to enter into Quick Look. You’ll see the purchase date shown near the bottom:

Sometimes the Quick Look version will show the downloaded date rather than the purchase date, despite labeling it as purchase date. This typically happens when an app has been transferred between multiple Macs, and the Quick Look method is being used on the Mac that downloaded the app at the latest date. If you find this inaccurate, just use the Mac App Store method above.

Hat tip to FinerThings for the Quick Look trick.

Did you know you can turn your Mac into a wireless access point by using Internet Sharing? Internet Sharing works for nearly all versions of Mac OS X, from 10.6, to OS X 10.7 Lion, 10.8 Mountain Lion, OS X Mavericks, and beyond, and with internet sharing enabled, your internet connected Mac will broadcast a wifi signal that can be used by another Mac, PC, iPad, iPhone, or whatever else you need to get online from.

Though it may sound like an advanced feature, internet sharing is actually really easy to set up on a Mac, and if you follow along you’ll have it working in no time at all, effectively turning a Mac into a wireless router.

Read more »