Does your Mac feel like it takes forever to boot up when you turn it on? Does your Mac seemingly take forever to reboot? If your Mac is feeling sluggish when booting or starting up Mac OS X it’s probably a result of a few things.

This walkthrough will address how to speed up reboot and startup times by focusing on specific issues on a Mac, including tackling a bloated login item list, too many windows being restored, a super slow external drive that takes forever to be accessed, or even just the general hard disk speed. The good news is that most of these are very quick to fix, so follow along and you’ll be starting up a Mac quicker in no time at all.

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Are you feeling the pinch of the limited storage capacity on an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch? It happens to the best of us, even with large capacity iOS devices it is easy to run out of available storage!

If you are running low on storage space, check out these tricks to greatly ease any potential storage squeeze you may be experiencing with your iOS gear.

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Mac OS X has fairly good memory management but it’s not perfect, and sometimes RAM can be held unnecessarily in the “inactive” state despite the contents no longer being needed. If you’ve been participating in memory heavy activities or you just need to free up some available RAM you can actually force Mac OS X to clear out inactive memory.

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The Diablo 3 Open Beta was a lot of fun and certainly got everyone excited for the May 15 public release, but now that the Diablo III Beta client can’t be used any more it’s time to uninstall the app from your Mac. This will free up at least 5GB of disk space. Follow the manual uninstall instructions below, or use something like AppCleaner to automate the deletion process:

• Navigate to /Applications/ and move the “Diablo III Beta” folder to the Trash
• Navigate to ~/Library/Preferences/ and delete “com.blizzard.diablo3.plist”
• Go to ~/Library/Caches/ and remove the entire “com.blizzard.diablo3” folder
• Open the ~/Downloads/ folder and remove the original installer “Diablo III Beta Setup.app” and the accompanying archive “Diablo-III-Beta-enUS-Setup.zip”

Now empty the Trash to remove Diablo 3 Beta from your Mac completely, freeing up quite a bit of disk space. If you want to find more wasted space on a Mac, check out our guide to using OmniDiskSweeper.

These instructions are the same for the original Diablo 3 Beta client as well if you were lucky enough to be a part of that.

Right alongside the new SAM iPhone unlock method is an updated version of Redsn0w which helps users preserve their unlock. Dubbed Redsn0w 0.9.10b8, the updated release does not include any new jailbreaks and is only useful for individuals looking to save an iPhone unlock achieved through the Subscriber Artificial Module spoof method.

Download Redsn0w 0.9.10b8

• Download Now (Mac OS X)
• Download Now (Windows)

Saving the SAM Unlock

Using the new version of redsn0w to save an unlock for the future is done in a few simple steps:

1. Open Redsn0w 0.9.10b8 and click on “Extras” and click on “Even more”
2. Connect the unlocked iPhone and click “Backup”
3. Click “OK” at the popup menu to save the zip file to the redsn0w directory

Don’t lose the zip file if you want to keep the unlock, future versions of Redsn0w will likely use it to preserve unlocks.

A new unlock method has been discovered that works on every iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, and iPhone 3GS running iOS 5, iOS 5.0.1, and even iOS 5.1, the only requirement is the iPhone must be jailbroken already. If you’re already jailbroke go ahead, otherwise here are guides to jailbreak iOS 5.1 and another guide for the iPhone 4S with iOS 5.0.1.

• Assuming your iPhone is jailbroken and ready to go…
• Open Cydia and add the repo “repo.bingner.com” and then search for “SAM” by sbingner and install it
• Tap on the orange SAMPrefs icon that looks like a SIM card to launch the app
• Tap “Utilities” and select “De-Activate iPhone”, tap “OK” when the deactivation notification pops up
• Now tap “Method” and tap on “By Country and Carrier”
• Tap “Country” and select the country the iPhone is locked to
• Tap “Carrier” and choose the origin carrier the iPhone is locked to
• Tap “More Information” and tap the IMSI number found under “SAM Details”
• Tap on “Spoof Real SIM to SAM”
• Tap back to the primary SAM setting screen, and paste the IMSI number into IMSI
• Connect the iPhone to the computer and launch iTunes, letting iTunes reactive the iPhone
• Disconnect the iPhone from the computer and quit iTunes, then tap on “SAMPrefs” again and flip the “Enabled” switch so that SAM is disabled
• Relaunch iTunes and connect the iPhone to the computer yet again, ignore the “failed to activate” message and quit and relaunch iTunes again
• Wait a minute or two and the iPhone should get a signal from the new carrier, it’s now unlocked and activated

The downside to the SAM unlock method is that it requires a jailbreak, that means if you lose your the jailbreak you lose the unlock. If you don’t want to jailbreak or you can’t for some reason, you can officially unlock an iPhone from AT&T by phone or through AT&T via web chat instead. It can take several weeks for the unlock request to process with AT&T and the iPhone must be out of contract, but it doesn’t require any funky software mods and is much easier than the aforementioned SAM method.

Great find by Singularity and @musclenerd.

Have a fraying iPhone or iPod USB sync cable? Welcome to the frayed cable club. Now, you have a few choices if you’re floating the boat of cable frays: try to get Apple to replace it for free at about a 40% success rate, shell out $29.99 for an official cable, jury rig a hideous repair by slapping on some electrical or duct tape, or roll the dice with $1 and get a brand new knock-off replacement.

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You can format a hard drive or USB flash disk specifically so that it will be compatible with both Mac OS X and Windows PC computers.

Though this excellent cross-platform compatible ability is unknown to many users, it’s not a complex process, and if you frequently use both a Mac and Windows PC you will find this particularly useful because any data, media, or files stored on the the drive will always be accessible from any operating system. It only takes a few minutes to start and it’s extremely easy, and we’ll walk you through the entire process of formatting drives for Mac and PC compatibility in a few simple steps.

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The pinch to zoom gesture is one of those features borrowed from iOS that has since come to the Mac OS X platform. It’s a natural fit for iOS and even in some places within Mac OS X, but it’s also much easier to accidentally activate on the Mac when doing something simple like browsing the web. All it takes is an extra finger or thumb on the trackpad and the zoom is accidentally enabled, which can have a strange effect of causing a Safari window to lock up with all text and images in a frozen blurred state, or at best you’ll wind up looking at some overview of your active tabs and windows in Safari, which is still frequently activated accidentally. This can be very annoying, and several people I know have interpreted this inadvertent zoom activation as the Safari browser freezing, or as some bad plugin, and it can be frustrating enough that some will want to disable the pinch gestures in Safari entirely.

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For those dual booting between OS X Mountain Lion and OS X Lion, or any other two versions of OS X for that matter, there comes a time when you inevitably want to remove one of the operating systems. For this walkthrough we’ll assume the boot partition you want to delete is one of the developer previews of OS X Mountain Lion but it could be any other OS X boot volume as well.

It would be a wise idea to backup your Mac before proceeding, you will be editing the partition map of the drive and there is always a possibility something could go wrong.

From OS X Lion:

1. Open Disk Utility and select the primary hard drive
2. Click on “Partition”
3. Select the “Mountain Lion” partition and click the [-] button to delete the partition



4. Confirm the partition removal and quit Disk Utility
5. Reboot Mac OS X and hold down the Option key during boot, select “Recovery” from the boot menu
6. Open Disk Utility and select the hard drive, again selecting the “Partition” tab
7. Click and drag the partition resizer all the way to the bottom, then click “Apply” and “Partition” to confirm resizing (*see below if you get a “Partition Failed” error)



8. Reboot Mac OS X as usual

* If you encounter a “Partition Failed” error resolve it by running fsck from single user mode:

• Hold Command+S at startup and type “fsck -fy”
• Reboot OS X as usual, then launch Disk Utility to resize the partition

When Mac OS X reboots the partition space that used to be allocated to OS X Mountain Lion will now be allocated back to the primary operating system, OS X Lion.

If you own an iPhone that is not part of a contract with AT&T, you can now officially unlock the device for use on other networks. We’ve discussed this before and our previous guide on unlocking the iPhone through AT&T focused on calling a special direct line, but now we’ll show you how to unlock an iPhone entirely through the web with the help of AT&T’s online technical support chat. This method is extremely quick, there are no wait times, and it’s easier for international users or for those without access to an active phone line.

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Need to quickly return to the top of an app, web page, or document, on your iPhone or iPad? This trick is for you!

The next time you have scrolled far down on a web page in Safari, at the bottom of a Contacts list, deep down in Mail, or just buried down the screen of any other iOS app, you can use a neat tap trick to instantly return to the very top and scroll to the beginning again, without having to swipe a bunch.

This is an extremely handy navigation tip that works great on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. It’s easy to use, but it’s certainly hidden and not obvious, so if you’re unfamiliar with this scroll-to-top trick don’t be surprised.

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It’s rare to find a Mac user that doesn’t have other Apple gear, and this Mac setup from Steve B is no exception. The setup includes a little bit of everything:

• 21″ iMac (late 2011)
• 13″ MacBook Pro (late 2011)
• iPad (3rd gen)
• iPhone 4
• iPod touch (1st gen)
• iPod Touch (latest gen)
• iPod Shuffle (1st gen)
• iPod Shuffle (latest gen)
• Magic Mouse
• Wireless Keyboard
• Apple TV (2nd gen)
• AirPort Extreme

Like Mac pron? Who doesn’t! Check out more Mac setups, and don’t forget to submit your own Apple gear shots to osxdailycom@gmail.com, please take a decent picture, include a list of hardware shown, and include a brief mention of what you use the gear for.

Many iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch users are annoyed with a constant message asking to “Verify iCloud Password: iCloud Backup requires that you verify your password.”, the popup dialog shows up randomly but most often when unlocking a device after periods of inactivity.

Clicking OK and entering the password makes it go away for the time being, but it generally comes right back after another period of inactivity.

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Don’t like the dark user interface and color scheme of the Photoshop CS6 beta? You can easily change it by cycling through four different theme choices, ranging from the default darkest grey, dark grey, medium grey, and light gray.

Hit Shift+Function+F2 to lighten the Photoshop UI or Shift+Function+F1 to darken the interface elements. If you’re averse to keyboard commands, you can find the interface options within Photoshop Preferences as well.

This tip comes to us from the unofficial Photoshopsupport.com, thanks for sending it in Max!

Most Macs have multi-touch capabilities these days, allowing for gestures to perform common tasks that would otherwise require keyboard shortcuts or additional clicking about. To use the gestures, you’ll obviously need a Mac with multitouch capabilities, that means either a newish laptop with a trackpad, Magic Trackpad, or Magic Mouse.

Some gestures require modern versions of macOS, whether that’s Catalina, Sierra, OS X Lion, Mountain Lion, Mavericks, or later to use, and some gestures may have to be enabled manually in the System Preferences > Trackpad control panel.

Without further ado, here’s a bunch of helpful gestures for Mac OS X and commonly used Mac apps…

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Are you a gamer? Toss your plans out the window for the next few days because Diablo 3 is free to play all weekend long. Dubbed an “open beta”, the free weekend is intended to help Blizzard load test the Diablo III game servers before the official public release on May 15. You’ll be able to play the game from today (April 20) at noon until Monday, April 23 at 10AM PST, with complete access to all five character classes up to level 13.

Playing Diablo 3 Open Beta is completely free for both Mac OS X and Windows users, here’s what you need to get started:

• Battle.net account (free to sign up)
• Create a BattleTag
• Download the game client and install it before April 23 (free)
• Hardware that meets the Diablo III system requirements for Mac or PC

Whether you’re a fan of the Diablo series or just Blizzard games in general, this is a great chance to get an early look at the game. Likewise, it’s also a good opportunity to see if you like Diablo 3 before shelling out for the full paid version when it comes out next month.

Don’t freak out if you or someone you know accidentally deleted an app from an iPhone or iPad, because they can be easily redownloaded and restored at anytime through either of these simple processes.

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