Microsoft released Windows 8 Consumer Preview today, a pre-release version of their next generation operating system. Windows 8 incorporates the touch-centric Metro interface while still maintaining access to the standard Windows file system and desktop, effectively merging their tablet UI and desktop UI into a single operating system. This is obviously a different approach than Apple took while keeping separate iOS and OS X, but nonetheless Microsoft is bent on this strategy to compete with Apple’s offerings and the wildly successful iPad.

To be fair, Windows 8 is actually a pretty decent OS with some innovative ideas, and with the freely available Consumer Preview anyone can download an ISO and install it themselves to give it a whirl. If you’re curious what’s been cooking in Redmond Washington, running Windows 8 yourself is the best way to find out. Dust off that PC and run it natively, or you can try installing it on a Mac with Boot Camp or run it within VirtualBox or VMWare. Here are the general system requirements before getting started:

Windows 8 System Requirements

• 1 GHz CPU or faster
• 1GB of RAM or higher
• 16GB hard disk space
• DirectX 9 GPU or better
• Internet access
• Touch-screen to support multitouch features

If you have hardware that meets the requirements (you probably do), download an ISO and start installing, the links below point directly to Microsoft servers.

Download Windows 8 Consumer Preview ISO

The product key for both versions is: DNJXJ-7XBW8-2378T-X22TX-BKG7J

• Windows 8 CP 64-bit – 3.3GB – Download Now
• Windows 8 CP 32-bit – 2.5GB – Download Now

Don’t want to bother with downloading and installing a beta OS that you may not spend much time on? Check out the two videos below to see Windows 8 in action instead.

Read Receipts show the sender of a message that a message has been delivered these are enabled by default in iMessages for iOS, but they are disabled by default in Message for Mac. If you’re interested in having the read receipts sent along with each message received on your Mac, you can toggle a setting to do so.
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A long hidden airport command line utility buried deep in Mac OS X can be used to scan for and find available wireless networks. This powerful tool is very helpful for network admins and systems administrators, but it’s handy for the average user to help discover nearby wi-fi routers as well.

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It’s official: Apple will be unveiling the next iPad on March 7 in San Francisco at 10:00 AM PST. The confirmation of the previously rumored date came in the form of press invites sent out this morning, with an image showing what looks to be a high definition iPad screen and the words “We have something you really have to see. And touch.”

Since the invitation was sent out, Bloomberg has chimed in to confirm that iPad 3 will feature the much expected high-resolution display which is “capable of greater resolution than the current iPad, with more pixels on its screen than some high- definition televisions… the pixels are small enough to make the images look like printed material,” a quad core CPU and greater graphics processing capabilities, and be compatible with significantly faster 4G LTE wireless networks, noting that iPad will receive LTE support prior to the iPhone because of it’s larger battery capacity. The latter hinting that iPhone 5 will feature 4G LTE too.

Additionally, MacRumors posted some photos of a digital caliper measuring the thickness of what claims to be the rear shell of an iPad 3. The shell itself looks identical to the iPad 2 rear aluminium enclosure, but it measures in at 9.5mm, or about 0.8mm thicker than the current iPad 2. For some comparison to a tangible object, the iPhone 4 is also 9.5mm thick.

There is no information on iPad 3 availability after the initial launch, but typically Apple releases new iOS products within a week or two after announcement. Considering the immense interest in a retina screened quad core iPad, we can only hope that pre-orders will offered through Apple’s Online Store, otherwise expect long lines, daily sell outs, and weeks to months before the supply catches up to demand.

If you’re suffering from email overload, sometimes the easiest thing to do is just mark everything as read and start over again. While there is no select all or mark all as read option in iOS, you can mark multiple emails as read on the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch as long as you select them manually with a tap. Here’s what you’ll need to do:

• Open Mail app and tap on “Edit” in the upper right corner
• Tap each email you want to mark as read so that a red checkbox appears on the left alongside the message
• Tap on the “Mark” button in the lower right corner
• Tap “Mark as Read”

The “Mark” buttons label will change to include the number of emails selected so you can be sure of how many messages will be marked as read.

As shown in the screenshots, you can also use bulk message selection within Mail search, making it easy to find and mark messages from a single sender or of a theme as read.

A MAC address is a unique identifier that is assigned to each physical network interface on a computer. Different than a computers IP address, MAC addresses are frequently used for network access control and to monitor network connectivity, and they can be spoofed for virtualization needs or to circumvent some network limitations. If you need to access yours, here’s how to find one from the friendly GUI and the command line.

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We recently covered 12 keyboard shortcuts to help navigate around and manipulate text in Mac OS X, and now we’ll show you a handful of similar tricks for use at the command line. These shortcuts can be used just about anywhere in the Terminal, including the bash prompt.
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Have you ever noticed that Mail app registers a message as “read” after it has been clicked? The automatic “mark as read” feature makes it easy to quickly skim through a bunch of emails, but Mail doesn’t offer much control over the the delay for when messages are marked read.

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Adobe has released the first real version of Photoshop for the iPad, called Photoshop Touch. The app is impressively featured and includes much of what you’d expect from Photoshop, including full layer support, all the standard color adjustments tools, a wide variety of filters, and many of the standard selection tools and brushes that make Photoshop so fun and powerful to use.

Photoshop Touch also has some interesting features that rely on internet access, including a built in Google image search feature that makes it easy to find images to edit, and of course there’s social sharing functionality so you can show everyone else your creations. To accelerate any potential learning curve with the new interface and touch controls, Adobe included several tutorials and sample galleries with Photoshop Touch too.

• Adobe Photoshop Touch is $9.99 on the App Store

Photoshop Touch requires at least an iPad 2 or newer and iOS 5 or later to use. Check out more screenshots and a video of Photoshop Touch in action, embedded below.

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Apple started airing a new iPhone 4S commercial on Sunday night that emphasizes iCloud. The ad shows iCloud automatically syncing calendars, photos, apps, contacts, music, and books, between an iPhone 4S and a variety of other Apple devices, including an iPad, iMac, and MacBook Air. The commercial ends with the text “Automatic. Everywhere. iCloud.” and the iPhone 4S monicker.

It’d be easy to mistake the TV ad for an Apple product other than the iPhone 4S, and that very well may be the point in that it demonstrates how well Apple products work with each other, particularly with iCloud.

If you haven’t set up iCloud yet, you should, the free service is genuinely useful and mostly seamless.

Although everyone should always password protect a Mac to prevent unauthorized use, not everyone does. Sometimes people share general logins, be it with a roommate, sibling, spouse or whoever else. Now, if you have ever wondered if someone was using your computer while you were away, there’s actually a pretty easy method to find out in Mac OS X.
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Wondering if a particular contact or person is using iMessage? You can find that out rather easily from an iPhone, iPad, or Mac.

iMessage is a great addition to iOS and Mac OS X that lets you send unlimited text messages, pictures, videos, documents, and even files, between other iMessage users. Though you probably know at least a few people who are using iMessages, chances are good that more of your contacts have set it up and you just didn’t know about it yet. The good news is that iMessage users are easy to find, and as long as they have it configured properly on their iPhone, iPad, iPod, or Mac, you’ll be able to find who is using the service and who can receive things sent through the iMessage protocol.

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This classic Mac desk setup comes to us from Richard, who has a range of Apple gear to get work done. Shown in the picture is:

• Macbook Air 13″ resting on a mStand by Rain Design
• Samsung 24″ LED display attached to the MacBook Air
• iPad 2 sitting on an elago P2 Stand
• External 1TB Seagate drive
• Apple Wireless keyboard and Magic Trackpad connected by a MagicWand from 12South
• Sennheiser PX 100-II headphones

Rounding out the hardware but not shown is an iPhone 4S too. Great Mac setup Richard, thanks for sending it in!

Send in pictures of your own Apple & Mac setups to osxdailycom@gmail.com – include brief details on the hardware and what you use it for.

Miss a phone call? Rather than tapping through to the recent call log and finding the last caller, you can immediately return a missed call by swiping to the right on the phone icon alongside the callers name, directly from the iPhone lock screen.

You’ll need iOS 5 or later and Notifications Center must be configured to include phone alerts to do this. The feature should be enabled by default, but if it’s not and you want to turn it on, tap to Settings > Notifications > Phone and make sure Notification Center is turned ON and alert style is set to “Alerts” or “Banners”.

Thanks for the tip Laurence

We recently covered the classic method of adding colors to the command line by editing .bash_profile, but it turns out that Terminal in OS X Lion and OS X Mountain Lion both support custom ANSI colors, giving the ability to easily change the ansi color scheme through external theme files. One such color scheme is the popular TextMate theme IR_Black which has been converted over to Terminal, it’s easy to read subdued pastels aren’t nearly as garish against a dark background and makes for a great looking command line.
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Need to quickly transfer contacts to an iPhone without using iTunes or connecting the iPhone to a computer? The easiest way to do this is by emailing a vCard file containing all the contacts to the phone, these .vcf files can be exported from many other phones, another iPhone, Address Book, Google and Gmail, Yahoo, and just about anywhere else you’d store contact information.
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Work with text often? You can navigate, select, and manipulate text faster than ever before by remembering these twelve keyboard shortcuts.

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It’s easy to lose track of drafts in iOS’s Mail app, particularly if you write many emails from an iPhone or iPad. Typically when you close a draft, the draft gets placed into the Drafts folder, which has to be accessed by tapping back out of the Mail Inbox and into Drafts folder. Those extra steps often make it easier to just compile a new mail message instead of retrieving a past draft, right?

Not quite! There’s actually a super fast way to access the last saved email drafts quickly from Mail app of iOS. Here’s how this works:

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