Mac OS X has a secondary Cut and Paste function that provides the ability to cut and paste additional information without overwriting existing clipboard contents.
This alternative clipboard is completely separate from the normal clipboard accessible with Command+C and Command+V, and instead you’ll use different keystrokes to access the secondary cut and paste feature and accomplish the task.
To get the most out of an iPhone you’ll obviously want to have internet access, but for those who live in regions where wi-fi access is ubiquitous, you can potentially save some money on a monthly cell phone bill by not having a data plan.
No, I don’t mean only turning off data on the phone, I mean having a simple voice and SMS plan without any data plan at all. These voice and text plans are quickly disappearing, but they can result in a low bill of around $25 per month with plenty of talk time and text messages. To accomplish this, you’ll need a few things.
Requirements:
Unlocked iPhone – the iPhone must be GSM unlocked, either from a software unlock or an original hardware unlocked device. Apple sells the iPhone 4S unlocked for $649 and up
A simple cell phone plan and it’s SIM card without data – usually from an older “dumbphone” or a cheap pay-go phone
Depending on how old the data-free plan is, you may need to trim down the SIM card so that it fits into the iPhone 4 and 4S micro-SIM slot. This wouldn’t be necessary for iPhone 2G, 3G, or 3GS though.
Setting Up iPhone With No Data Plan
If you have those two things, setting up the data-free iPhone is easy:
First turn off data by launching Settings, tap “General”, tap “Network”, flip the “Cellular Data” switch to OFF
Now insert the old data free SIM card into the iPhone and wait a minute or so to get service
The first step is important because it prevents the iPhone from attempting to use data, which can inadvertently sign you up for a data plan with some carriers. AT&T has been known to detect and automatically add data plans to smartphones, whereas T-Mobile is reportedly less likely to do so. After the old SIM card is inserted you should quickly get service and be able to make and receive phone calls and text messages.
For using an iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S with T-Mobile, you may want to follow our T-Mobile iPhone 4S set up guide to configure MMS, but skip the ‘Cellular Data Network’ section.
Of course, the unlocked iPhone aspect is fairly expensive and can quickly make this whole idea cost prohibitive. If you’re looking for more ideas to lower the monthly iPhone bill though, the next cheapest option – and it includes data – is to set up a prepaid iPhone, which the iPhone is unofficially capable of supporting on a pay-go basis with AT&T, or if you have an unlocked device this can work with T-Mobile too.
Thanks to Anthony F for the tip and information about AT&T.
Sending contacts from an iPhone is very easy, and all data about the contact, from name, phone number, picture, email, URL, etc, can be exported as an inclusive vCard bundle and sent to someone else by email or text message.
While we’ll focus on sending contacts between iPhones, these vCards are also usable by other smartphones, iOS devices, Macs, Windows, Windows Phone, Android, and even Blackberry phones, because the exported VCF format is pretty much universally accepted across all platforms as an address book standard.
It’s pretty hard to get excited about a USB cable, but the Dexim Visible Smart chargers are ridiculously cool in a super geeky way.
You need to watch the video below to see the effect, but basically the cable glows while it is charging or syncing to “visibly show the electrical current flowing through the cable.” The lights actually change speed based on the battery capacity of the iPhone, iPod, or iPad, with the animated lights moving quicker the lower the battery charge is, and finally stopping motion once the battery is charged.
Using Mac OS X’s powerful built-in media encoding tools, large AIFF audio files can be quickly and easily converted to compressed high quality M4A audio, ready for use on in iTunes or an iPod, iPhone, or elsewhere.
It’s easy to lose track of all the defaults commands used to perform tweaks to Mac OS X, but with the help of the history command it’s easy to list every defaults write and accompanying defaults delete commands ever used on a Mac. Launch the Terminal to get started.
See All Defaults Commands Executed
To see all defaults commands, including defaults write, defaults read, defaults delete, and even those requiring sudo:
To see only defaults write commands, including those requiring sudo:
history |grep "defaults write"
The results will look the same as above, but without showing any defaults read or defaults delete commands.
See Only Defaults Delete Commands
To see which defaults write commands have been reverted, grep for ‘delete’ rather than ‘write’:
history |grep "defaults delete"
See Defaults Commands Related to Specific App
By changing the text within grep to an application or process name, we can see which defaults commands were used only for that specific application. For example, to see only defaults commands that impacted the Finder:
history |grep "defaults write com.apple.finder"
Most apps are easy to find this way, and the default applications in OS X almost always follow the ‘com.apple.appname’ convention.
We touched on this concept before in a past post about the history command, but focusing on defaults commands is useful enough to deserve individual recognition.
Firefox 10 has been released and is available to download for Mac, Windows, and Linux users. The new version isn’t too different from version 9, but includes bug fixes, better extension management, an auto-hiding forward button, improvements to CSS3 capabilities, and antialiasing support for WebGL, as well as some other additions that the average user probably won’t notice. The release notes are posted below for those interested, otherwise just download and enjoy.
Unfortunately, the browser is still lacking the now standardized OS X Lion full-screen button, and the 10.0 release didn’t include any new Mac-specific features. All in all, for a 10.0 release it’s kind of boring, but you can make it more attractive by giving it a Google Chrome style Omnibar with this add-on for Firefox that merges the search and URL bars into one.
Apple has released an all new version of AirPort Utility for OS X Lion with a redesigned user interface. The revised appearance makes it simpler to use, with the first screen showing a graphical overview of the network and all connected devices.
Interestingly, the new Mac version looks practically identical to the current iOS version, as shown in screen shots posted on MacStories. The left side of the image below shows the iOS version and the right side shows the new AirPort Utility app on a Mac:
AirPort Utility is an app that lets users easily manage and set up Wi-Fi networks using Apple’s AirPort base station, AirPort Express, AirPort Extreme, and Time Capsule. If you use a third party router or wireless backup service, the AirPort Utility app will not be of use to you, however.
You can download AirPort Utility 6 through Software Update, or get it directly from Apple. Corresponding firmware updates for Time Capsule and AirPort were also pushed out today, those will only appear in Software Update if you are actively using those devices.
Need to quickly encrypt a file from the command line? With OpenSSL, you can encrypt and decrypt files very easily.
For the purpose of this walkthrough, we’ll use des3 encryption, which in simple terms means a complex encryption algorithm is applied three times to each data block, making it difficult to crack through brute force methods. While we’re focusing on Mac OS X here, these commands will work anywhere that OpenSSL is installed, including older versions of OS X and Linux.
If you haven’t set up iCloud and Find My iPhone yet, now is a good time to do so. Follow our guide below on how to get this configured on an iPad, iPhone, iPod, and a Mac, then read on for a story about how a police officer used the application to locate an iPhone thief and return the device to it’s rightful owner.
Pacifist is a powerful Mac OS X utility that gives you full access to package and installer files and their contents, without running the installer itself. Using Pacifist, you can open installers and disk images, find out what is in them, discover what is going to be installed and where, and best of all, extract individual apps, files, and folders directly out of them.
We’ve been made aware of some ongoing issues with apps crashing constantly on iPads running iOS, and all iPads are potentially impacted with Safari being particularly sensitive and seemingly crashing anytime javascript or a video loads and sometimes with just general web browsing. At worst, Safari won’t even launch and crashes immediately, and often the application instability goes beyond Safari and impacts nearly all applications as well. First we’ll focus on resolving the Safari crashes, but if you’re having issues with multiple apps crashing you may want to jump down and go straight for a clean reinstallation of a new version of iOS.
Adam Lashinsky, the author of the newly released book “Inside Apple: How America’s Most Admired – and Secretive – Company Really Works”, recently appeared on an episode of InDay Speaker Series to discuss his work. The interview is about 50 minutes long and covers the corporate culture of Apple, how some internal processes work, and their legendary secrecy. If you’re interested in the business side of Apple, it’s worth watching the video below:
If you have a new computer, you’re going to want to authorize it with iTunes and an Apple ID. Authorizing iTunes does quite a bit, it lets you sync apps, books, music, movies, and other content from the iTunes Store, re-download past apps from the App Store, it enables Home Sharing with iTunes, and also allows for some iCloud specific features like Automatic Downloads. In other words it’s basically essential, and it’s very easy to do, make sure you have have an active Apple ID before continuing.
If you do not authorize a computer with iTunes you will not be able to access content you have paid for or downloaded through iTunes on a Mac, or Windows iTunes. This includes everything from apps to music to movies. So, let’s authorize that computer with iTunes so you can gain access to your stuff.
The iPhone 4S might not be offered officially for T-Mobile use, but if you buy an unlocked device and set it up properly, you can use the iPhone 4S and Siri on the T-Mobile network without incident. In fact, over a million iPhones are already on the T-Mobile network, and the company is going to actively support unlocked iPhone devices on their USA network due to immense demand. If you want to use an iPhone 4S on T-Mobile, here is everything necessary to do that.
Requirements:
Unlocked iPhone 4S bought from an Apple Store without a contract, intended for AT&T use
A computer with iTunes
Wi-Fi with internet access
The original AT&T micro-SIM that came with the iPhone 4S
An activate T-Mobile Micro-SIM card
Assuming the requirements are met, read on to get started. Read more »
The Mac uses a ‘secondary click’ in lieu of a right-click, this is largely because Macs have long kept things simple by keeping a single mouse button – or even no buttons at all on the mouse or trackpad. While the two finger tap mimics the right-click action on Mac and is very intuitive for most of longtime users, newcomers to the Mac world don’t always remember it, or it may too difficult to replicate consistently.
If you’re switching someone to the Mac from the PC world, enabling a literal right-click can be really helpful in many occasions, but there are other options too, including keeping the default two-finger tap behavior for a secondary click, using the left corner (for lefties), or disabling the click completely and instead relying on the keyboard to perform a secondary click. This article will walk through making these customizations to the Mac secondary click experience.
The MacBook Air is widely considered to be one of the best Macs ever made. It’s incredibly portable, but also powerful enough to serve as a workstation, and setups like this one sent in by Stephen V really show off the flexibility of the ultraportable Apple laptop. Combined with a Thunderbolt display, the MacBook Air can be docked and expanded into an impressive desktop machine while still retaining it’s quick grab-and-go attribute that makes it so popular with anyone on the move. Here’s what Stephen’s desk setup consists of:
Other Apple hardware not shown in the picture includes an iPhone 4S, first gen Apple TV, Airport Express, and Airport Extreme base station. Thanks for sending in your great setup Stephen!
If you want to stop OS X Lion’s Resume feature from reopening past windows, you can selectively stop Resume during an app launch by holding down the Shift key. This causes the app to launch with a clean slate and preventing any previously opened windows or documents from restoring, but it doesn’t disable the feature completely.
If you’re opening apps from the Finder you’ll know this was successful because the app launch animation is briefly shown in slow motion, although launching from Dock and Launchpad do not show any indicator and the app will just open as usual without any restoration of past files or windows. Holding Shift does not appear to work when launching apps from Spotlight however. If you find yourself doing this continuously with just an application or two, rather than go nuclear and disable everything you can choose to turn off Resume on a per application basis by using defaults write commands.
On the opposite end of this idea, you can also discard windows on exit by holding down the Option key when quitting any app, preventing that apps current windows from returning when relaunched.
To get the most out of an iPhone you’ll obviously want to have internet access, but for those who live in regions where wi-fi access is ubiquitous, you can potentially save some money on a monthly cell phone bill by not having a data plan. 
are ridiculously cool in a super geeky way. 
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for MacBook Air
