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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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.
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.
If your Mac menu bar is starting to resemble an icon farm, remember that you can remove items from the menu bar by holding down the Command key and dragging items out of the menu. The icon will disappear into a puff of dust, the same way an icon from the Dock or sidebar disappear.
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Kext files are kernel extensions for Mac OS X, typically these are device drivers for hardware like the graphics card, wireless card, printers, etc. Most Mac users have no need to directly interact with .kext files, but for those who do, installing them can be annoying. Sure you can install .kext files manually by digging around in /System/Library/Extensions/ and performing a bunch of permissions voodoo, but there’s an easier way.
Kext Drop is a free tool that makes installing kernel extensions as simple as dragging and dropping them into the application window or Dock icon. Then all you need to do is click “Install”, and all the permissions changes are handled for you, it doesn’t get much more simple than this.
Yup you read that title correctly. This is kind of stupid and might be fake, but it’s entertaining anyway. MacGasm found the above video of a kid pestering maybe his brother, who finally has enough and slaps him silly using the iPad itself. Or maybe they’re testing out FaceTime?
The Apple Support Profile page provides an excellent dashboard to check technical support history, status, and warranty information for all registered Apple products under ownership. Assuming you have used the same Apple ID (email address) for all purchases and registrations, you’ll find every Apple item you’ve bought and registered here, including Macs old and new, iPads, iPods, iPhones, and more.
After logging in with an Apple ID, click on any item to get more information about it, including:
Remember, to take full advantage of the Apple Support Profile, be sure to always use the same Apple ID when registering new products.
This is an extremely useful site for tech support, troubleshooting, and general ownership purposes, be sure to bookmark it. Nice tip from @MacGeekPro.
Want to shuffle around some windows in the background without bringing them into the foreground? Hold down the Command key, and then click on a windows titlebar, the window can now be moved and dragged around in the background without bringing it to the foreground. This should work in all versions of Mac OS X.
This is a great little trick to clear the view for other apps or the desktop. Try it out yourself or see the brief video below for a demonstration of how it works.
Thanks to Josh F. for sending in the tip
If you want to insure full Mac compatibility of a new external hard drive or flash disk, you’ll want to format the drive to the Mac OS Extended filesystem. This is particularly necessary for purchases of generic PC drives, which almost always come preformatted to be Windows compatible rather than for Mac OS X.
Yes, connecting an external hard drive or USB flash key to a Mac will generally read and work fine as is because the Mac can easily read other filesystem formats, including Windows MSDOS, FAT, FAT32, ExFat, and NTFS formats, but unless you intend on using the drive between a Windows and Mac machine, formatting it to be entirely Mac compatible filesystem is highly recommended, and necessary for Time Machine and to make disks bootable.
If you have never formatted a drive before on the Mac, don’t worry, it’s super easy and we’ll walk you through the entire process.
