Apple is working quickly to release iOS 5.0.1 to the general public, with the second beta version available to developers in just two days. The update aims to resolve some of the complaints about iOS 5 battery life and bring several other fixes and features to the latest release, including a security fix for iPad 2 and bringing multitasking gestures to iPad 1.
The build comes as 9A404 and is available for iPad, iPad 2, iPod touch 3rd and 4th gen, and iPhone 3GS, 4, and 4S.
Like using Safari in Lion‘s full-screen mode? You can resize the viewing pane of a full-screened Safari window by dragging the cursor to the far left or right edges, grabbing, and pulling in. This lets you reduce the white space and width of browser windows while still retaining the full screen view.
This is a helpful little trick for web developers with a full window open on one screen while coding in another, or if you want to hide those obnoxious background take-over ads that are popular on gaming websites and IMDB, amongst others.
For those running a Hackintosh (a PC built to unofficially run Mac OS X) who haven’t upgraded to or installed Mac OS X Lion yet, your excuses to delay the 10.7 update are dwindling. The newly released Unibeast tool from the ever-resourceful TonyMacX86 makes the entire process easier than ever. The requirements for using Unibeast are simple:
Mac OS X Lion Installer (download from the App Store) or an OS X Lion USB drive – Tip: from a Mac running 10.7 Lion, you can re-download OS X Lion from the App Store without having to buy it again by simply holding down the option key when clicking on the “Purchases” tab.
The walkthrough covers setup of the installer drive to BIOS adjustments and post-install fixes with MultiBeast to enable ethernet, sound, GPU, everything. If you’ve made an OS X Lion USB installer drive before you can use that for the drive requirement and you’ll find some of the walkthrough familiar, but even without any such experience it’s easy to follow.
One of my longstanding peeves with Mac OS X is the lack of a pull-down calendar in the menubars default Date & Time settings. If you click on the time, instead of seeing something useful like a calendar or more date/time details, you just have options to set an analog clock or open Preferences. I’ll stop complaining, because now a little app called Day-O solves that problem. Day-O offers an attractive and functional replacement to OS X’s Date & Time, plus it’s free to download.
If you’re trying to update iOS to the latest version on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch and you get an error in iTunes saying:
The iOS Device “Device Name” could not be updated. This device isn’t eligible for the requested build.
You’re most likely encountering one the following problems: either you are using an old version of iTunes, you are using an incorrect version of the firmware for your device, or you have gs.apple.com re-routed or blocked in your hosts file.
Many users are thrilled about the new iOS Notification Center and easily dismissed alerts, but some still prefer the old style of pop-up dialog notifications.
You can enable the old pop-up alert style again, but you have to do it on a per-application basis with iOS 5:
Tap onto “Settings” and go to “Notifications”
Tap on an application that you want to have the old alert style
Under “Alert Style” select “Alerts” rather than the default, ‘Banner’
In the same settings screen, you can also choose to show or not show items at the Lock Screen and Notification Center.
You can sync files across iCloud-equipped Macs by using an unofficial feature tied to a little known folder hidden in OS X. We’ll walk you through exactly how to get this set up, allowing you to sync files and folders across Macs seamlessly, but first make sure you meet some basic system requirements.
After you’ve sure you have the latest version of OS X installed and iCloud configured to use the same account on all Macs you want to sync between, you can proceed. This is a great little trick that was first noticed by a reader submitted tip to a sister publication of MacWorld, but oddly they didn’t bother to test the tip to make sure it works. Nonetheless we and others did test it and can confirm it syncs files and folders perfectly.
Share & Sync Files Using iCloud Between Macs
Complete the following steps on all Macs you intend to sync files with:
Open “System Preferences” on all Macs from the Apple menu
Click on “iCloud” and be sure the checkbox next to “Documents & Data” is checked
Go to the Mac OS X Desktop and enter into ~/Library/ either by holding Option and clicking on the “Go” menu or using another method to access user library
Locate the folder named “Mobile Documents” and right-click on it, choosing “Make Alias”
Copy the alias of that folder to the OS X Desktop
Test iCloud syncing by dragging a file into that directory
Wait a few seconds, and check the same directory on the other Mac, you should see the files.
Officially Unsupported
Keep in mind this is currently an unsupported feature of iCloud and Mac OS X, so you shouldn’t rely on this 100% to sync files reliably. You’ll want to keep a copy of files elsewhere and then copy them into that folder so you can prevent any potential data loss. It does work, but until it’s officially supported you should be wary of depending on the feature.
Syncing with GoodReader & iOS
Testing was also done by MacStories, who discovered a variation of the trick can be used to sync things between Macs and an iPhone or iPad with the iOS app GoodReader. If that interests you, check it out.
DropBox Competitor?
This whole thing was initially noticed after Yahoo/Business Insider found it and went on to assume that Apple might be prepping a competitor to DropBox. This is a possibility, and Apple did attempt unsuccessfully to buy DropBox years ago, but more likely this is just a feature of iCloud that hasn’t found it’s way into an official feature list yet, for whatever reason.
The Develop menu of Safari adds a variety of additional features to the web browser on the Mac, including the inspector and error consoles, javascript debugging tools, the ability to disable various page elements, enable the ‘Do Not Track’ feature, use WebGL acceleration, and it offers a simple way to change the browsers user agent.
The Developer menu in Safari for Mac OS and Mac OS X is disabled by default, but it can be quickly turned on through the apps settings to reveal the additional developer-centric features of the web browser. Read more »
Apple has acknowledged battery draining issues with iOS 5 and has since released a beta version of iOS 5.0.1 to developers, indicating a public release is due soon. The update aims to fix iOS 5 battery problems without modifications of settings, bring multitasking gestures to iPad 1 without the third party tweak, and resolve several other bugs and issues that shipped with iOS 5.
Some battery life issues with the iPhone 4S and iOS 5 were confirmed directly by Apple in a short statement to The Loop, saying:
“A small number of customers have reported lower than expected battery life on iOS 5 devices. We have found a few bugs that are affecting battery life and we will release a software update to address those in a few weeks.”
This was quickly confirmed by developers indirectly, with the release of the iOS 5.0.1 beta update. The primary fixes in the developer build 9A402 are:
– Fixes bugs affecting battery life
– Adds Multitasking Gestures for original iPad
– Resolves bugs with Documents in the Cloud
– Improves voice recognition for Australian users using dictation
– Contains security improvements
The beta release is available for all models of iPad and iPad 2, iPhone 4 CDMA & GSM, iPhone 4S, iPhone 3GS, and iPod touch 3rd and 4th generations.
If you are not a developer, try some of these tips to regain battery life until the 5.0.1 update becomes publicly available.
The locate command is very useful if you’re looking to track down every instance of a file, filetype, app, extension, things hidden deep in system folders, or just about anything else that Spotlight can’t manage. It’s extraordinarily useful for troubleshooting and even more mundane tasks like completely uninstalling Mac apps.
In order to use locate, you need to build the locate database, which also enables a few other helpful commands including whatis, find, and the manual keyword search ‘man -k’. OS X 10.7 is better at building this for you, but if you don’t have locate enabled yet all that is required is typing this command into the Terminal:
Please be aware that the database can take some time to generate; once
the database has been created, this message will no longer appear.
How long it takes to generate the database varies, but the larger your hard disk the longer it’ll be. You can watch the progress indirectly through Activity Monitor, where the “find” process will be running at around 15-30% CPU use until the locate database is generated.
Alternatively you can also run the following command and build the database:
sudo /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb
As with many terminal commands, locate accepts wildcards and regular expressions, helping you narrow down advanced searches. For example, you could find every possible file with a .jpg extension by using:
locate *.jpg
Some jpg files will inevitably have an uppercase extension though, and you can tell locate to ignore case sensitivity with -i:
locate -i *.jpg
There are plenty of other options you can work with, refer to ‘man locate’ for more info.
Google has released an official native Gmail app for iOS that runs beautifully on the iPhone and iPad. The app is free and has all the features you’d expect in a mail client, including notifications, threaded messages, Gmails priority inbox feature, inbox search, easy photo uploading, and a great split screen view for the iPad. The official feature list:
With the Gmail app, you can:
● Receive notification badges for new messages
● Read your mail with threaded conversations
● Organize your mail by archiving, labeling, starring, deleting, and reporting spam
● Keep track of important messages with priority inbox
● Auto-complete contact names as you type
● Send and receive attachments
● Search through all your mail
Gmail for iOS is a free download and worth checking out if you’re a heavy Gmail user and wanting an alternative to Apple’s default Mail app.
The release of the Gmail app also demonstrates that Apple is easing up on some of the restrictions regarding apps that share functionality that already exist on the iPhone. This could possibly lead to an increase in other native mail clients being accepted into the App Store, such as Sparrow.
If you want to quickly get a notification off your screen in iOS 5, all you need to do is swipe left across the notification and it’ll be pushed off screen.
Computerworld has released their full archival footage of a 1995 interview conducted with Steve Jobs for a historical project. The video is about 75 minutes long and covers a wide variety of topics, from his childhood in the Silicon Valley, to the early years of Apple, NeXT, Pixar, thoughts on the internet, startups and entrepreneurship, and even more on Apple (remember, this was two years prior to his return in 1997).
Some of the interview echoes a bit of his biography, but even if you’re reading or have already read the book, it’s worth watching for fans of Steve.
Users who rely on Spaces within Mission Control to manage multiple virtual desktops in Mac OS X will be happy to know that these desktops (Spaces, as Apple calls them in Mac OS) are completely adjustable.
This means you can rearrange or move your desktop spaces as necessary, and as your needs change, and it’s incredibly simple to do: Read more »
Just like Microsoft released a video for their sci-fi inspired imaginative future, Blackberry has jumped in with their own futuristic concept video, complete with plenty of touch screens and even touchable holograms.
I think these are fun to watch just to see what companies are imagining, but the main difference between Apple and Microsoft or Blackberry is that Apple is actively shipping things that lead us to believe this stuff is actually possible. The iPad, iPod touch, and iPhone feel like the future now, and they’re tangible. The other interesting thing to point out is that some features in the Blackberry video, like remote data wipe, are already in iOS 5, whereas it’s just a concept for RIM at the moment (as far as I know, I have no exposure to the Playbook).
The video comes via DaringFireball, who suggests that both Blackberry and Microsoft would be better served creating real products that can be used now, rather than fictional movies.
Anyway, enjoy the video, for conceptual reasons if nothing else:
A future version of Mac OS X may bring iOS favorites Siri, iMessage, and AirPlay to Apple’s Mac lineup. Assuming the features are released, it’s unclear whether they will come as an update to Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, a purchase through the Mac App Store, or as part of Mac OS X 10.8.
iMessage & AirPlay for OS X?
Rumors of iMessage coming to Mac OS X started earlier in the year when code snippets were found that suggested iChat may get iMessage integration. 9to5mac has since heard that AirPlay and iMessage for the Mac are currently in development for OS X Lion.
Sources familiar with the future of Mac OS X say that AirPlay Mirroring and an iMessage application are currently in development. Although neither project may see the light of day, they are definitely on the table for release in future versions of OS X Lion.
AirPlay would allow a Mac user to wirelessly mirror their Mac display to an Apple TV, and video streaming would be integrated with QuickTime. 9to5mac indicates there is a possibility that iMessage will be released as a standalone product, rather than being integrated directly with the existing instant message client iChat. If standalone apps are released, it wouldn’t be surprising to have iMessage and AirPlay be downloads from the Mac App Store much like FaceTime was before it became bundled with the OS X 10.7 release.
Siri for Mac?
Bringing iMessage and AirPlay to the current version of OS X is similar to what Kevin Rose mentioned recently about Siri, who stated a rumor that the AI agent would be released for OS X Lion next year.
Separately, we’ve also heard an unverified claim that Siri could replace the existing Speech Recognition module and have ties into Spotlight for a future version of Mac OS X. Siri would offer a significant improvement in voice recognition, dictation, and a new way to search on the Mac platform.
Not Anytime Soon
While all of these claims are in the realm of obvious speculation, some features shouldn’t be expected to appear anytime soon. In all probability, Siri won’t be coming to any other hardware, be it iOS or Mac based, until the next generation iPhone is released. The reason may simply come down to marketing, with Siri being a prominent feature of commercials for the iPhone 4S, it’s unlikely that Apple would dilute a key marketing component of the 4S by spreading the technology around to other hardware.
(Siri & iMessage graphics on this page are mockups)
Side note: even without iMessage, you can send SMS through iChat right now just by using AIM or Google Chat and messaging a phone number prefixed with a +, although standard SMS rates apply for the recipient.
With iOS 5 you can hide many of the Apple default apps and their icons from appearing on the home screen of an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. This includes YouTube and iTunes, but also the essentials like Safari and Mail if you are opting to use third party or web apps in their place.
Tap onto “Settings”
Touch on “General” and then “Restrictions”
Slide apps you want to hide to “OFF”
I’ve never used the YouTube app so I quickly disabled it, this is much better than just stuffing it into a folder with other default apps you don’t use.
You’ll also find some core iOS features you can disable in this menu, including things like Ping, iTunes, and the ability to install apps completely, all of which are helpful to disable for public use iPads or even just for childproofing an iPod touch.
Update: A more limited version of this function appeared in earlier versions of iOS, and as others have noted in the comments it doesn’t work with all default apps.
, but even if you’re reading or have already read the book, it’s worth watching for fans of Steve. 
