iTunes allows users to rate songs on a 1 star to 5 star basis, song rating data can then be used for a variety of purposes, either for your own reference or for creating custom play lists that only include songs rated over a certain star value. But what if a song is somewhere in the middle of the rating scale, not quite worthy of 4 stars but not a 3 star song either? For more precise personal ratings, enable the half-star rating option in iTunes.

Launch the Terminal, found within the /Applications/Utilities/ directory, and enter the following defaults write command:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes allow-half-stars -bool TRUE

Quit and relaunch iTunes for changes to take effect. To give something a half star, click and slide the star rating scale until the 1/2 value shows.

To remove the half-star rating option use the following defaults command and then relaunch iTunes again:

defaults delete com.apple.iTunes allow-half-stars

Removing the half stars moves the song rating to the star below it, so a 3 1/2 star song would turn into a 3 star song, and so on.

As expected, you can now unlock an iPhone that is out of contract with AT&T. The process is very straight forward and simple assuming you meet the basic requirements.

Requirements:

• iPhone not in contract with AT&T, either having completed a contract or purchased without contract
• AT&T account in good standing
• iPhone IMEI number

If you meet those requirements, proceed:
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The recent outbreak of the Flashback trojan (Apple released an update and fix, get it!) has brought a lot of attention to potential viruses and trojans hitting the Mac platform. Most of what you’ll read is overblown fear mongering hype, and practically all Mac malware has come through third party utilities and applications. What that means for the average user is that it’s very easy to completely prevent infections and attacks from occurring in the first place, especially when combined with some general security tips.

Without further ado, here are eight simple ways to secure a Mac to help prevent viruses, trojans, and malware from effecting you:

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How’d you like to drive three external displays from a single MacBook Pro? That’s exactly what this weeks Mac setup is doing with the help of an external video card. Coming to us from journalist and blogger Pierra D, here is the hardware pictured:

• MacBook Pro 17″ (2009) – 8GB RAM and dual 256 GB SSD
• Apple Cinema Display 27″ (center)
• Apple Cinema Display 22″ (left)
• Apple Cinema Display 20″ (right)
• Additional external displays driven by ViDock External GPU with a GeForce GT 120
• iPhone 4
• iPod shuffle
• Magic Mouse
• Bluetooth Keyboard
• Wacom Intuos 4M

Anyone can install dual hard drives on a MacBook Pro by removing the built-in Super Drive and using a replacement bay to hold a hard disk or SSD instead. These are offered through a variety of companies and are a good solution for individuals who don’t use the DVD drive on a portable Mac, some replacement bays even include a caddy for the SuperDrive to turn it into an external device instead.

I hope external video cards become more common and more powerful, other than allowing for fully powered external displays like shown here, they offer some serious promise for dramatically enhanced gaming even from Macs with weaker video cards like the MacBook Air.

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. We get tons of submissions so we can’t post them all.

Annoyed by those persistent wi-fi network popups that show up on the iPhone or iPad screen every time a wireless network is in range? You can disable the wi-fi joining alerts completely by preventing the iPhone from searching for unknown networks. This works on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch the same way, and it has no effect on the regular cellular internet connection or joined and accepted wireless networks, instead it simply stops the nagging popups when a new network is visible when one isn’t actively connected.

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iPhone owners who are out of contract with AT&T will be able to unlock their devices starting April 8. An unlock means the SIM card slot becomes usable outside of the AT&T network, allowing for an individual to swap SIM cards and gain service on another compatible carrier, like T-Mobile.

This exciting news comes from America OnLine Engadget, who provides the following official statement from AT&T:

Beginning Sunday, April 8, we will offer qualifying customers the ability to unlock their AT&T iPhones. The only requirements are that a customer’s account must be in good standing, their device cannot be associated with a current and active term commitment on an AT&T customer account, and they need to have fulfilled their contract term, upgraded under one of our upgrade policies or paid an early termination fee.

There are no instructions provided on how to unlock the iPhone, presumably a user will have to contact AT&T directly to walk through the unlock process with a representative. Typically this requires the IMEI number of the iPhone in question, which can be easily found on the iPhone itself or through iTunes. The phone number for AT&T wireless is 1-800-331-0500, and repeatedly pressing 0 is the easiest way to speak with a human being.

Given the pent up demand for unlocked iPhones there will likely be a surge of interest in unlocking contract-free devices. Unlocking is extremely beneficial to users who travel abroad. Purchasing a local pay-go SIM card is significantly cheaper than roaming through AT&T’s overpriced international rates, and also makes an iPhone more useful in areas where AT&T coverage is limited or does not exist.

Even those with no intention on using an iPhone abroad or with a competing cellular network should unlock their iPhone if given the chance. Individuals who bought an iPhone out of contract can also request the unlock, though their devices should already be unlocked by default.

Google Chrome automatically updates itself in the background when a new version is out, this takes responsibility out of user hands and makes it simple to keep up to date with the latest version of the Chrome app for Mac.

Generally you should leave automatic update enabled for Chrome, if not for its ease than for the security benefits of having the freshest Chrome browser version pushed to your Mac automatically, but if you want to disable the sizable automatic updates to reduce Personal Hotspot data use or something similar you can do so with a defaults write command.

This tutorial will show you how to disable Google Software Update and Google automatic updates on the Mac, and also show you how to modify and re-enable the Google automatic update feature if you change your mind.

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Want to use the iPad or iPod touch as a phone? You can do that. With Skype or Google Voice you can turn your standard wi-fi iPad into a VOIP phone, and you’ll be able to make and receive phone calls and text messages directly from the iPad or iPod. These apps are free to download and even free to make calls between other users of the services, but if you want to make outside phone calls or send text messages to real phones you’ll need to pay for some cheap credits.

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You can drag and drop files directly from Spotlight to elsewhere in the Mac OS X Finder. This allows Spotlight search to function as a sort of basic file manager, not quite like the Finder, but at least for quickly locating and moving a document of any type on the Mac to another location, or even to open that searched file within an app.

This is a pretty handy trick to learn and master, especially when you have files tucked all over a file system as many of us Mac users do, and it offers a very fast way to open files into a Mac app, or to move files around, right from a Spotlight window.

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You’re probably familiar with making your own zip files if you’ve ever needed to transfer a group of files or if you’re managing your own backups outside of Time Machine. Using the GUI zip tools are easy and user friendly, but if you want some more advanced options with better compression you can turn to the command line to make a tar and gzip archive. The syntax will be the same in Mac OS X as it is in Linux.

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The iPad is a great device to read on, and if your digital library is feeling a little bare then you’ve come to the right place. We’ve found some of the best places to get free ebooks, ready to be downloaded and opened with iBooks on your shiny new iPad (or iPhone, iPod, Kindle, Nook, or Android, for that matter).

Free Ebook Downloads

• Project Gutenberg Top 100 – Full of classics, if you’re only going to visit one source for free ebooks, Gutenberg should be it. They have over 38,000 free ebooks available, and their top 100 list is basically a mirror of the Western Canon of literature. Grab titles from the popular lists, and then search category or by your favorite author to load up on a nearly infinite amount of reading. Audiobooks are offered in some cases too.
• Gutenberg Bookshelf by Category – Looking for books on a specific topic? This is the place to go. Sorted by alphabetical category.
• Gutenberg Harvard Classics – A 51 volume anthology of world literature classics, this collection was created in 1909 to provide the core elements of a liberal arts education by reading just 15 minutes a day. Free is slightly cheaper than a Harvard education.

Gutenberg is probably the best source online, but other sites offer free ebooks too:

• ManyBooks – Plenty of classics and a wide variety of formats
• FreeKindleBooks – All in .mobi format, intended for Kindle
• ePUbBooks – Free .epub ebooks, plenty of classics though most are also on Gutenberg
• FeedBooks – Free books from the public domain, varying quality
• SneeKidsBooks – A handful of childrens picture books like the Three Bears and Little Bo-peep

If you download the books onto a Mac or PC, emailing them to an iPad or iPhone is generally the easiest way to transfer them over quickly without syncing. From there they can be directly imported into iBooks or the Kindle app.

Know any other quality sources for free ebooks? Chime in the comments.

Update: Apple has released a Java software update that includes automatic detection and Flashback removal ability. Go to “Software Update” from the  Apple menu to download that update and automatically remove the trojan if you happen to have it on your Mac.

Trojans and viruses are generally something Mac users don’t have to worry about, but there’s a lot of hubub about the so-called Flashback trojan that has apparently infected a several hundred thousand Macs worldwide. The trojan takes advantage of a vulnerability in an older version of Java that allows it to download malware which then “modifies targeted webpages displayed in the web browser.” As we mentioned yesterday on Twitter, the vulnerability has already been patched by Apple and if you haven’t downloaded the latest version of Java for OS X yet you should do so now. Go to Software Update and install the Java for OS X Lion 2012-001 or Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 7, depending on your version of Mac OS. That will prevent future infections from occurring, but you’ll also want to review if a Mac is infected.

We haven’t heard of or seen a single case of the Flashback infection on a Mac, but for the sake of optimal security we’re going to cover how to quickly check if a Mac is afflicted by Flashback trojan:

• Launch Terminal (found in /Applications/Utilities/) and enter the following commands:

defaults read /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info LSEnvironment

• If you see a message like “The domain/default pair of (/Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info, LSEnvironment) does not exist” than so far so good, no infection, proceed to the next defaults write command to confirm further:

defaults read ~/.MacOSX/environment DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES

• If you see a message similar to “The domain/default pair of (/Users/joe/.MacOSX/environment, DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES) does not exist” then the Mac is NOT infected.

What if you see something different in the Terminal? If the defaults read commands show actual values rather than the “does not exist” response, you may have the trojan, though this does seem to be extraordinarily rare. In the event you run into a Mac with the problem follow the guide on f-secure to remove the Flashback trojan, it’s just a matter of copying and pasting a few commands into the Terminal.

All in all this is nothing to freak out about, but it does serve as another reminder as to why it’s important to update system software as part of a general maintenance routine. If you want to take some extra security precautions and preventative measures, don’t miss our article on simple tips to prevent Mac virus infections, malware, and trojans.

Archives can be deleted automatically after expansion with the help of a hidden preference panel in Mac OS X. This little known ability is an option in Archive Utility, which is the engine and settings controls to the Mac decompression agent that launches anytime you open a zip, sit, tgz, or other archive file formats in OS X.

Here’s how to find Archive Utility, which is hidden by default, and use it to enable the automatic
delete after expansion setting:

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Skip the traffic filled bank trip across town, you can deposit checks directly from an iPhone. A variety of major US banks now offer the iPhone check depositing service, including Chase, Fidelity, US Bank, PayPal, and Charles Schwab, amongst others. I recently used the service through Chase Mobile, where it worked well enough to quickly become my preferred method of depositing checks.

If you have a Chase account:

• Download the free Chase Mobile app from iTunes and launch it on your phone
• Login to your account through the Chase Mobile app
• Tap Deposit then the “Quick Deposit” button to get started
• Choose the account to deposit the check into, enter the amount on the check, then just take a picture of the front and back of the check itself

It’s really that simple, the first time using the app takes about 3 minutes from start to finish but once it’s configured it’s even quicker to use again.

The deposit will show up in the account immediately but it will be labeled as pending until it’s ready, and that brings us to the only real downside to depositing checks this way: it takes a few days for the check to clear. Just how long the wait time is seems to vary by the checks issuing bank, but it can take anywhere from a day to five days depending on a variety of factors. In my test, I deposited a check and had access to the funds in three days, but your experience may differ. For this reason, if you need immediate access to cash it’s probably best to visit the physical bank location, but if you don’t mind waiting a day or two, it’s incredibly convenient and beats a traffic filled trek across town any day.

If you don’t have Chase, mobile deposit apps for Charles Schwab, US Bank, Fidelity, Citi, and PayPal are free for iPhone and Android users, and Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and others are said to be offering the service soon too. Hopefully more banks and credit unions are to follow, it’s a great feature that will likely start to sway users to open accounts at one institution over another.

Need to refresh the App Store or iTunes Store from a computer? To quickly refresh the App Store on Mac OS X, just hit Command+R at any screen in the iTunes, iOS App Store, or Mac App Store, and the page will reload with whatever new data awaits, whether it’s a revised Top Charts listing or just to see the latest Featured apps.

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I carry my iPad around naked, that means no cases, no covers, no stands, just the iPad. But what if you’re on the go and quickly need an iPad stand? I was recently in this situation and discovered several different methods to concoct quick and dirty iPad stands for free using common items.

If you’re ever in a dire need of a quick and dirty iPad stand, that’s what we’re here to help you with. So I picked the four best choices based on the likelihood of encountering the required materials for the instant DIY iPad stand, you won’t win any design awards here, but if you’re in a pinch you should find one that works for you.

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If you spend a lot of time switching between web browsers for development or for whatever other reason, you’ll find Switch useful.

Switch is a handy free menu bar utility that transfers all browser tabs and windows between web browsers in Mac OS X.

Whether you use Safari, Chrome, or Firefox, you can easily send whatever the active windows are to a different browser and back again just by pulling down the menu and selecting “Transfer to” that app.

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You’ve probably noticed there isn’t an attachment button floating around when composing a new email message in iOS Mail app, so how do you attach pictures to emails on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch? It’s easy, and there’s actually two simple ways to attach images to your emails though you may not find them to be obvious right away, but we’ll cover both ways on how to do it.

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