Apple has started to air a new Christmas themed TV ad for the iPhone 4S and Siri featuring none other than Santa Claus. The commercial is the most entertaining iPhone 4S ad yet and features Santa asking Siri for directions, what kind of weather to expect at various locations around the country, requesting an email from Mrs Claus, and finally asking about his schedule, which Siri responds is filled with 3.7 billion appointments.

The ad has the same background music as past iPhone 4S commercials, which actually sounds a bit like Christmas music at this point. It’s also worth pointing out that the ad doesn’t even mention either the iPhone 4S or Siri by name, it just shows an Apple logo at the end.

You can watch the video below, or just wait for it to show on TV.

The recently aired BBC documentary Steve Jobs: Billion Dollar Hippy may have a dumb name, but the show itself is worth a watch for anyone interested in the subject matter. About an hour long, it features classic footage of Steve Jobs, in addition to interviews with a variety of Apple execs and industry leaders, including Steve Wozniak, John Sculley, Andy Hertzfeld, Tim Berners-Lee, Avie Tevanian, and many more names that will be familiar if you follow Apple history or have read the Steve Jobs biography.

The video looks to have been posted to YouTube unofficially, so watch it while you can.

A helpful command line tool called hdiutil is included in Mac OS X that allows disk image files (.dmg extension) to be mounted directly from the Terminal, without the need of using the GUI. Using hdiutil for such a task is helpful for scripting or remote connections through SSH.

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This reader submitted Mac setup features a dual use Mac Mini and a MacBook Pro, as well as a bunch of great iOS gear. The Mac Mini connects to a TV to function as a digital hub for the household, alternating between the 32″ TV shown in the picture and a 55″ HDTV in another room, where it serves up video, pictures, and other media.

The hardware shown includes:

• Mac Mini 2010 8GB RAM, 320GB HD
• Samsung 32″ LCD TV/Monitor
• MacBook Pro 13″ late 2011, 8GB RAM, 500 GB HD
• iPhone 4 16 GB (Verizon)
• iPod Touch 4 32GB
• iPad 2 White 16GB
• Apple Wireless Keyboard
• Apple Magic Trackpad
• Seagate 2 TB External HD (via AEBS)
• Not shown: Apple Airport Extreme Base Station, Apple Airport Express (extender)

The background image shown on both Macs is the planned new Apple “Spaceship” campus set to be built in Cupertino, California.

If you want to setup a Mac Mini media center yourself, we’ve covered two guides in the past: a simple walkthrough for a basic media center and a full featured media center with remote torrent capabilities.

Thanks for sending this in P! You can submit your own Apple gear setup shots to: osxdailycom@gmail.com

The recently released iPhone 4S specific build of iOS 5.0.1 resolves an ongoing SIM card issue that was effecting some users. The issue would cause some iPhone 4S’s to not recognize a SIM card, with the iPhone reporting a “No SIM Card Installed” or “Invalid SIM” error message, in addition to the phone not connecting to a cellular network.

To resolve the error, users have two choices:

• Backup and restore the iPhone through iTunes, then restore the iPhone from the last backup – easiest approach and recommended by Apple
• Download 9A406 directly and reinstall manually using the IPSW – more advanced

This makes the latest iOS 5.0.1 update a welcome change for iPhone 4S users who frequently encountered the problem, and this also answers the question as to what exactly the iPhone 4S specifc 9A406 build of iOS 5.0.1 aimed to accomplish. Thanks to MacRumors for discovering this.

Want to compare hard disk performance or see just how big of a speed difference that SSD upgrade had? Grab the free Disk Speed Test tool from the Mac App Store, it’s a quick and simple way to measure drive performance. The app works by creating large blocks of temporary data that are written to the drive and then read, allowing for a consistent benchmark across multiple Macs or disks. The UI is easy to understand and there’s no frills, just launch the app and the test starts.

• Download Disk Speed Test free from the Mac App Store

It’s not exactly scientific, but it’ll give you a good idea of performance changes with upgrades or different disks, just note the read and write speeds both before and after an upgrade, or have your friends run it on their Mac to test speeds across drives.

For example, a MacBook Air might write to an SSD at around 180mb/sec and read at 220mb/sec, whereas a standard 5400 RPM drive in a MacBook Pro may only write at 45mb/sec and read at 60mb/sec. Many third party SSD’s perform even better than the MacBook Air, and these kind of numbers really drive home the day-to-day performance boost you’ll see with an SSD upgrade. If you’re in the market for one, check out the deals on SSD drives at Amazon and get yourself an early Christmas present.

We’re suckers for new wallpapers around here, and iOS 5.1 includes four new gorgeous background pictures sized at 1024×1024 for the iPad. Extracted from the iOS 5.1 beta releases, 9to5mac found and resized the images to fit the iPhone 640×960 display as well.

Grab them in a bundle from Mediafire or via the 9to5 links below:

iPad (1, 2, 3, 4)

iPhone (1, 2, 3, 4)

Many share similarities to those found in OS X Lion, the beach image looks like it’s probably from the same photo shoot as the one included on the Mac.

If your iPhone Wi-Fi connection seems inexplicably slow, particularly when having moved from one wireless network to another, try manually setting custom DNS servers. This speeds up the response time and your wireless connectivity in general.

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Just like you can add spacers between app icons in the OS X Dock (the left side), we can also add these same spacers to the right-side of the Dock, where the Applications, Documents, Downloads, and Trash icons live.

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Apple is said to be working on a smaller iPad with a 7.85″ display, according to a new report from Digitimes. Citing sources in the supply chain, the “iPad Mini” is suggested to debut late in 2012, not alongside the expected iPad 3 release earlier in the year.

Digitimes sources suggest that Apple decided to produce the smaller iPad to handle increasing competition in the tablet marketplace, specifically from the Kindle Fire:

However, in order to cope with increasing market competition including the 7-inch Kindle Fire from Amazon and the launch of large-size smartphones from handset vendors, Apple has been persuaded into the development of 7.85-inch iPads, the sources indicated.

Getting more specific, the display panels for the device are said to be supplied by LG and AU Optronics, and that production will begin at the end of the second quarter of next year.

This isn’t the first time a report of an iPad with a smaller 7.85-inch display has surfaced. Last month, an analyst report also suggested that a smaller iPad would be released sometime in 2012, in addition to the iPad 3 with a retina display.

iOS apps are downloaded as bundles with a .ipa file extensions, but they are stored in different places than your default iOS backups location. If you want to access iPhone and iPad apps manually, here’s where to find them for both Mac OS X Lion, Snow Leopard, and Windows 7:

The easiest way to access these directories is by hitting Command+Shift+G and using Go To Folder, note the path is different depending on the OS:

• Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Mobile Applications/
• Mac OS X 10.6: ~/Music/iTunes/Mobile Applications/
• Windows 7: C:\Users\Username\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Mobile Applications\

As long as you’ve downloaded and bought the apps from the same Apple ID and all hardware has been authorized with iTunes, you can move the .ipa bundles from one machine to another, place them in the appropriate folder, and they will continue to sync with the approved iOS hardware. (You won’t want to do this with a new Mac though, you need to authorize it first within iTunes.)

Most of the IPA files are pretty small, but if an apps file size seems too small, it’s probably because it was paused in the middle of a download from iTunes. That doesn’t mean you don’t own the app, it just means you have to download it again if you want to use and sync it. Generally the app sizes are reasonable enough and you wouldn’t need to move this directory to another drive, but for unique scenarios, go for the same methodology of moving iOS backups to another drive and using symbolic links to keep everything working as intended.

Apple has rolled out two minor iOS updates, the first is for the second generation Apple TV and the second for the iPhone 4S. For Apple TV 2, the new build (9A406a) updates system software to 4.4.4, but it’s unclear exactly what the changes are, indicating this is likely a bug fix update. For iPhone 4S, it’s simply a new build (9A406) of iOS 5.0.1, and also doesn’t appear to offer any significant changes.

You can get the updates directly through either devices software update, although the iPhone 4S update doesn’t appear unless you haven’t updated to 5.0.1 yet anyway, indicating it’s not a crucial update for all users. If you prefer to use IPSW manually, these are the direct download links from Apple:

• Apple TV 2 4.4.4 9A406a IPSW (direct download link)
• iPhone 4S iOS 5.0.1 9A406 (direct download link)

There is some speculation that the iPhone 4S update may relate to international releases of the device, which is occurring tomorrow in a variety of new countries, including Russia, Brazil, Chile, Thailand, Malaysia, Taiwan, Philippines, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel, and Vietnam.

If you use the multi-desktop Spaces feature of Mission Control often, you’ll probably like a hidden gesture in Mac OS X that lets you immediately jump back to the most recently used Space with just a four-fingered tap on the trackpad (or Magic Mouse). Here’s how to enable the gesture with a defaults write command.
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Can’t decide which wallpaper to use as your desktop background? Me neither. Fortunately there’s a setting in Mac OS X that causes the desktop picture to change itself automatically at a user selected time interval, ranging from every 5 seconds to once a day or upon system wake.

Essentially this means your wallpaper will change itself on a set schedule, so you’ll never be stuck with the same image. You can use this to rotate through wallpaper pictures, or if you get creative, to make some pretty interesting desktop background effects, like changing colors, or going from a black and white picture to a colorized version, and so forth.

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Apple is rumored to be working towards releasing retina display equipped MacBook Pro’s in the second quarter of 2012, according to a new report from the Taiwanese trade publication Digitimes. Citing upstream component sources, the displays are said to be 2880×1800 pixels and become yet another competitive advantage for Apple’s portable lineup:

While the prevailing MacBook models have displays with resolutions ranging from 1680 by 1050 to 1280 by 800, the ultra-high resolution for the new MacBook Pro will further differentiate Apple’s products from other brands, commented the sources.

Earlier in the fall, Digitimes also suggested that a MacBook Air 15″ model would be released next year, but there is no indication that it would carry the same 2880 x 1800 pixel display.

Hints of Macs with retina displays have existed for a while now. Earlier in the year, we pointed out that wallpapers in Mac OS X Lion are 3200×2000 resolution, greater than any currently shipping Apple hardware. Additionally, many icons in OS X Lion are 1024×1024 pixels, double what they were in previous Mac OS X releases.

Finally, persistent iPad 3 rumors suggest the device will feature a retina display. One could guess that for Apple to release a retina equipped iPad, there would also have to be Macs with equal or greater screen resolutions available to adequately develop retina iPad apps on.

Did you know you can launch a file directly into its default app, right from a Quick Look preview on Mac?

And you can open the files from Quick Look preview into other compatible Mac apps too.

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The next time you’re trying to tell someone how to update apps from the Mac App Store, why bother with a walkthrough when you can just send them a URL? Yup, you can send someone directly to the Mac App Store’s “Updates” portion just by using a link instead. This is a great trick for troubleshooting and for helping people to update their apps, and it works like any other link structure.

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Nobody wants their gifts to arrive after the holidays have passed, and to alleviate that potential Apple has posted a list of holiday shipping times and deadlines. In order to get Apple items shipped free to your door by Christmas Eve (December 24), you’ll need to stop procrastinating:

• iPad: December 19th
• iPod: December 19th
• iPhone 4S: Passed, Dec 5th – visit an Apple Store!
• iPhone 4 and 3GS: December 19th
• Mac, customized: December 14th
• Mac, stock: December 19th
• Mac, popular configuration: December 19th
• Apple TV: December 19th

If you don’t mind paying for next-day shipping, the deadlines move up to December 21st.

For many Apple items, you can also try third party retailers like Amazon or Best Buy, and you can always visit a physical Apple Store if you’re down to the wire or really want to get someone the extremely popular iPhone 4S.

Helpful find by Macgasm for those of us who haven’t even started shopping for gifts yet.