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.

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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.
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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.

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.

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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.

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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.

• Check your own Apple Support Profile – Apple.com

After logging in with an Apple ID, click on any item to get more information about it, including:

• Serial numbers and model numbers for all Apple products
• Coverage details
• Registration status
• Phone tech support eligibility
• General warranty coverage information (same as this)
• AppleCare warranty extension eligibility
• Past cases and repairs history
• Status of support cases and repairs

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

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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.

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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.

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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.