The highly anticipated jailbreak for iPhone 4S and iPad 2 running iOS 5.0.1 is coming as soon as next week, according to a recent tweet from the hacker pod2g, who is working on the project. The comment suggested a hurdle for the iPhone 4S and iPad 2’s A5 processor has been overcome, and stated that “With some luck we could expect a release in a week.”
@Pod2g is the same developer who uncovered the untethered jailbreak for iOS 5.0.1 that was released in a variety of popular jailbreak tools, including redsn0w, PwnageTool, and Corona. The upcoming jailbreak for the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 is also expected to be untethered, meaning the device will be able to reboot freely without the assistance of a software boot tethered to a computer.
This will be the first jailbreak available for the iPhone 4S, and the first jailbreak for iPad 2 running iOS 5.
If you have a third party SSD you probably noticed that Mac OS X Lion probably doesn’t support TRIM on the drive. While OS X Lion supports TRIM for all Apple SSD’s, many third party SSD’s are left without trim in OS X 10.7, OS X 10.8, OS X 10.9, and OS X 10.10.
The Dock disappears whenever an app is put into Mac OS X full screen mode, but that doesn’t mean you can’t access the Dock if you need it. To show the Dock in a full screen app, swipe twice at the bottom of the screen, the first swipe won’t show anything but the second swipe will draw the Dock upwards as usual.
Regardless of Dock auto-hide settings this will activate the same way so long as the user is in full-screen mode for any given app. This is the only way to reveal the Dock under such circumstances, and the feature is defaulted this way because it reduces screen clutter and maximizes the on-display room for the given app. On a huge display like an iMac that may not seem to meaningful, but on smaller screened Macs like the MacBook Air, this makes a lot of sense and is very useful.
This feature is exclusive to versions of OS X that have full screen app mode, which was introduced in OS X 10.7 and continues in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, and presumably into the future.
Screen zoom is a useful feature of Mac OS X that zooms into the screen where ever the cursor is located, making it easier to see parts of the screen, examine pixels, read small fonts, and perform other functions with greater visual clarity. The zoom feature was enabled by default in some earlier versions of Mac OS X whenever the control key was held down, but in modern versions of Mac OS X, the screen zoom feature has been turned off by default, and is now a feature of Accessibility settings.
Mac users who have Windows running in Boot Camp will appreciate this utility which grants complete keyboard access equivalency to Apple keyboards in Windows. The appropriately named “Apple Wireless Keyboard Helper” is a nice free Windows tool that restores many of the Windows-specific functions and keys that are seemingly lost when using an Apple keyboard, including the Delete key, Print Screen, CTRL+ALT+DEL, volume adjustment, function toggle, and more.
FreeSpaceTab is a free utility that lets you manage hard disks and mounted volumes directly from the Mac OS X menu bar.
With an attractive and simple GUI, you can pull the menu down to see all mounted drives and partitions, arranged by volume type (local drives, disk images, network volumes, etc) as well as free space available on each volume. Drives can ejected on a per disk basis, or mass ejected if you want to unmount everything. Also nice, the menubar icon itself can be set to display available disk space on the default boot volume, allowing for an quick way to see available drive capacity.
These menubar apps are especially useful if you hide the Mac OS X desktop to reduce clutter, because they give you information and functionality that you’d otherwise need to access the desktop or a Finder window for.
FreeSpaceTab is a better solution than the recently discussed a hidden eject menu that can be enabled in Mac OS X, containing additional functionality as well as the ability to eject disks. All in all a worthwhile app to download, check it out.
If you’ve maintained old iPhone baseband in order to utilize carrier unlocks, you’ll be pleased to know that you can now upgrade to iOS 5.0.1 and jailbreak untethered the iPhone while preserving the unlockable baseband. The procedure is done by using the newest version of PwnageTool 5.0.1, and if you’re familiar with past versions of pwnage then you should be right at home, but nonetheless we will walk through the entire process.
Assuming you meet all those requirements and you understand the risks, continue on. Read carefully or else you can accidentally update your baseband and lose your unlock.
Jailbreak iPhone with iOS 5.0.1 while Preserving Baseband Unlock
Launch PwnageTool 5.0.1 and select your iPhone model, then click the next arrow
Click “Yes” when asked if you want to save the custom IPSW file to the desktop, and click yes/no depending on your activation
Let PwnageTool build the custom IPSW, enter the administrator password when asked
Now connect the iPhone to the computer and place it into DFU mode: Hold power button for 3 seconds, continue holding Power button and also hold the Home button for 10 seconds, release Power button but continue to hold Home button for another 15 seconds
When DFU is confirmed, quit out of PwnageTool and launch iTunes
Hold the Option key and click on “Restore” and select the custom firmware created by PwnageTool, located on the desktop
iTunes will now restore the iPhone to the custom iOS 5.0.1 build, simultaneously jailbreaking the phone and also preserving the unlockable baseband
The unlocked iPhone should now be good to use on another carrier. If you have trouble activating, use the original activated SIM card briefly to pass through activation, or run the newest version of redsn0w on top.
Typically we try to just post workstations for Mac setups, but Rejean H sent in pictures of what amounts to a giant collection of Macs built up over the years, and we just had to post it.
Ranging from some of the first Macs to be released, to the Macintosh Portable, Mac Classic, 20th Anniversary Mac, Power Mac 7200, 9500, Performas, eMac, G4 Cube, clamshell iBook, to modern aluminum iMacs and a new MacBook Air, this is a room full of one huge collection of Apple gear.
Spotlight is a wonderful feature of Mac OS X that lets you quickly find literally anything on a Mac by search, that includes files, apps, folders, emails, you name it, and Spotlight will find it, but sometimes you don’t want everything to be indexed. Whether that’s an external backup drive, a scratch disk, a directory of temporary items, or just a private folder with files you don’t want easily found through the search function, you’ll find that excluding drives, files, and directories from Spotlight is actually very easy.
This is a classic picture of a young Steve Jobs giving the finger to an IBM sign in 1983, it has been circulating again after all these years thanks to Macintosh co-creator Andy Hertzfeld who posted the high res copy to Google+.
Here’s the text that was posted by Hertzfeld along with the amusing image of a young Mr Jobs, explaining the story behind the photo of Steve Jobs giving IBM the middle finger:
“In memoriam for Steve Jobs as 2011 draws to a close, here’s one more rare photo that illustrates his rebellious spirit. In December 1983, a few weeks before the Mac launch, we made a quick trip to New York City to meet with Newsweek, who was considering doing a cover story on the Mac. The photo was taken spontaneously as we walked around Manhattan by Jean Pigozzi, a wild French jet setter who was hanging out with us at the time. Somehow I ended up with a copy of it. My editor begged me to include it in my book, but I was too timid to ask for permission, especially since IBM was still making CPUs for Apple at the time.“
The picture demonstrates the competitive nature of Mr Jobs and early Apple, and although the image has been around a while this is the first higher resolution copy to surface.
In the early days of Apple, IBM was largely considered the companies biggest competitor and enemy of sorts, as is demonstrated in the Ghostbusters spoof and of course the classic 1984 Superbowl commercial that launched the first Mac.
This is obviously a fun part of Apple history, or any fan of the retro computing era. Though looking back now several decades later, Apple is the behemoth, with a market cap significantly larger than IBM.
If you’ve been holding off on the Apple TV 2 4.4.4 update for an untethered jailbreak, you can now update the device without worry. A new version of Seas0npass has been released to to untether the Apple TV’s unique iOS 4.4.4 build, the tool remains extremely easy to use and supports most of the 3rd party plugins, including last.fm, XBMC, RSS feeds, and more.
Download Seas0nPass Untethered Jailbreak for Apple TV 4.4.4
As you may have guessed, the latest version of Seasonpass uses the same untether from the newest redsn0w iOS 5.0.1 jailbreaks.
Despite many similarities, Apple continues to not label the Apple TV 2 build as iOS 5 for the device, and continues to release builds as version 4. Apple TV OS v 4.4 brought a variety of new features to the device, but most notable are AirPlay mirroring (fun with the iPhone) and the addition of several live video feeds and trailers, along with bug fixes.
Using Seas0nPass to Jailbreak Apple TV 4.4.4 Untethered
Before proceeding, update the Apple TV 2 to the latest 4.4.4 build, update iTunes, and download the appropriate Seas0npass version from above. You’ll also need the aluminum Apple TV remote and a microUSB cable to connect the Apple TV to the computer to perform the jailbreak.
Launch Seas0npass and click the “Create IPSW” button
Allow the custom IPSW to build and then connect the Apple TV to the computer via the USB cable, leaving the power cable disconnected
Wait for the front light on the Apple TV to flash rapidly, then point the AppleTV remote at the device, following the onscreen instructions to place the ATV into DFU mode (hold both the MENU and PLAY/PAUSE buttons for 7 seconds)
iTunes will now launch and begin restoring the Apple TV 2 to the custom jailbroken IPSW, the restore will be confirmed and the ATV2 is now jailbroken
Verify the Apple TV 2 is jailbroken by looking for the red “FC” logo in the lower right corner of the screen, shown in the screenshot below
Enjoy the newly jailbroken Apple TV 2, it’s untethered meaning you don’t have to connect it to a computer to boot or do anything funky. If you run into any troubles, check out the support pages of Firecore, the makers of the Seas0npass app.
ClipMenu is an awesome free clipboard history manager for Mac OS X that keeps track of nearly anything copied into the clipboard, ranging from plain and rich text, URLs, images, even files.
Have you noticed when you try and move an application out of the /Applications folder in modern versions of Mac OS X, you will end up creating an alias of the app instead?
What if you want to move an application out of the Applications folder of MacOS, and put the app somewhere else?
Another day another version of redsn0w is released… Redsn0w 0.9.10b3 includes a bug fix that caused some apps to not be able to run after the jailbreak was completed. I didn’t run into any problems on an iPhone 4, but if you did encounter any issues with apps crashing with the prior redsn0w jailbreak then you can go ahead and use the latest version to resolve them.
To fix an existing jailbroken device, all you need to do is run the newest 0.9.10b3 version over your existing jailbreak, just be sure to uncheck the “Install Cydia” option.
Nothing else is different about this release, it continues to be an untethered jailbreak for iOS 5.0.1 on iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPod touch 3rd & 4th gen, and iPad 1. If you’re not sure what to do, read our guide to jailbreak iOS 5.0.1 untethered using Redsn0w.
Need to use a scientific calculator on the iPhone? Instead of downloading a new app, just do the following ot instantly transform your iPhone into a complete scientific calculator:
Wi-Fi Diagnostics is an incredibly useful utility to troubleshoot and optimize any wireless network and the signal strength of computers that are connecting to it. This utility first came bundled in Mac OS X Lion and works with all wireless routers and not only the Apple branded ones, meaning you can improve the performance of just about any wifi network by using it and making some adjustments along the way. It’s easy to use and we’ll walk you through the process of getting the best wireless signal using the app, but first we have to uncover the tool itself.
The Wi-Fi Diagnostics app is buried within Mac OS X 10.7 & OS X 10.8, here’s how to access it:
From the OS X desktop, hit Command+Shift+G and enter the following path:
/System/Library/CoreServices/
Sort alphabetically and find “Wi-Fi Diagnostics”, if you plan to use the app even somewhat frequently it’s recommended to drag Wi-Fi Diagnostics into Launchpad for easy access
With Wi-Fi Diagnostics now in the easier to access Launchpad… open Wi-Fi Diagnostics.app, then:
For OS X Lion users, check the radiobox next to “Monitor wireless performance” then click on the “Continue” button
For OS X Mountain Lion (and later) users, pull down the “View” menu and choose “Performance”, or just hit Command+5
Why Apple changed the process between OS X 10.7 and 10.8 is a mystery, but the feature remains in the newest versions of Mac OS X regardless. Anyhow…
Now is when the fun begins. The chart you see is a live wireless signal strength and noise meter, you want the yellow signal strength bar to be as high as possible. Pay attention to the green line of noise as well, you want that to be as low as possible in relation to the yellow line of signal strength.
If the signal strength is high and noise is low, you’re already good and you don’t need to change much. For most of us, signal will be lower than we want it to be, depending on where the wireless router is stored in relation to our computer gear.
Here are some tips to try out and to improve signal strength, keep an eye on the signal as you make adjustments:
Tweak the physical antennas on the wireless router and aim them in different directions
Move the wireless router away from walls, fireplaces, etc – even just a foot or two of space can make a big difference
Move the wifi router away from TV’s, microwaves, refrigerators, and other electronics that may interfere with signal
Relocate the Mac in relation to the router, this is obviously easiest with a MacBook Air or Pro
Consider changing Wi-Fi network channels if there are many matching channels from nearby routers
Once you have arrived at a reasonable compromise to how your hardware is physically configured and the resulting signal strength, enjoy your newly optmized wifi network.
Some important things to remember here: not all internet connections are capable of transferring data at optimum wireless speeds, so you may not notice much of a difference in internet connectivity speed if any at all with these adjustments. This basically means that a weaker wireless signal may be more than adequate to transfer data at your ISP’s maximum bandwidth. Regardless, you’ll want the noise level to be as low as possible, since large amounts of wifi network noise can result in lost packets, reduced speeds, quirky behavior, random wireless connection dropping, and a variety of other problems.
If a wireless network is configured well and you continue to have problems with connectivity, check out some of our past articles on resolving such issues:
Using Wi-Fi Diagnostics I discovered my wireless signal to be much weaker when keeping the wifi router out of sight behind an LCD TV, simply moving the router away from the TV a few feet dramatically boosted signal strength. Run the app yourself and see what kind of performance boost you can get by adjusting your own wifi network.
The highly anticipated jailbreak for iPhone 4S and iPad 2 running iOS 5.0.1 is coming as soon as next week, according to a recent tweet from the hacker pod2g, who is working on the project. The comment suggested a hurdle for the iPhone 4S and iPad 2’s A5 processor has been overcome, and stated that “With some luck we could expect a release in a week.”
FreeSpaceTab is a free utility that lets you manage hard disks and mounted volumes directly from the Mac OS X menu bar. 
Spotlight is a wonderful feature of Mac OS X that lets you quickly find literally anything on a Mac by search, that includes files, apps, folders, emails, you name it, and Spotlight will find it, but sometimes you don’t want everything to be indexed. Whether that’s an external backup drive, a scratch disk, a directory of temporary items, or just a private folder with files you don’t want easily found through the search function, you’ll find that excluding drives, files, and directories from Spotlight is actually very easy.
If you’ve been holding off on the 
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