We recently showed you how to delete iTunes and uninstall iTunes from Mac OS X, which is typically done for the purposes of downgrading iTunes to a previous version. If you’ve done this and you are now encountering an error about “iTunes Library.itl” not being readable due to it’s creation by a newer version of iTunes, this tutorial will show the fix which is nice and easy.

And yes, this should work to remedy other reasons why “iTunes Library.itl Cannot Be Read” errors occur regarding differing versions of iTunes on a Mac, whether for downgrading, concurrent versions in use, or otherwise.
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If you spend time customizing the desktop icon placement, it can be pretty annoying to discover that after each restart of Mac OS X, the icons seem to take on a mind of their own and rearrange themselves, usually changing their position so that they are all aligned to the far right of the Mac desktop.

The reason for the automatic icon arrangement is simple: Sorting. Here’s how to turn this off:

• Click on the Mac desktop – you must select the desktop and not a folder
• Click on the “View” menu and pull down to “Sort By” and select “None”

This removes any sorting or arranging of the icons, which are easy to enable either by accident due to the keyboard shortcuts or because you just forgot that you turned sorting on a long time ago.

Thanks to @jakestanfield for the tip idea via Twitter. Jake provided the following image which shows off the frustration with sorting arrangements perfectly:

You can also change the icon sorting behavior in the “View Options” menu, by hitting Command+J from the desktop. You’ll still want to select “None” as the desktop behavior if you don’t want icons to be realigned on their own.

We recently wrote about the dscl utility and how it allows a Mac OS X Lion user to change a password without knowing the existing password. The lack of required admin authentication has since been widely reported as a bug, and a small Security Update will likely be issued by Apple sometime in the near future. Nonetheless, if you’re paranoid about someone getting ahold of your Mac and changing the user password without authorization, you can manually change the permissions of the dscl utility yourself, forcing it to require administrative privileges in order to be run.

• Launch Terminal (located at /Applications/Utilities/)
• Type the following command and hit return:

sudo chmod 100 /usr/bin/dscl

• You will be asked for the current administrative password to confirm the permissions change, enter it and hit return

This is a simple permissions fix that likely mimics what an official security update will do. Using sudo chmod 100 states that only the owner (root) is able to execute the dscl command, which effectively prevents other non-admin users from accessing the directory services utility without using the sudo command, and thus the administrator password.

There may be some unintended consequences of changing those permissions, but it’s unlikely to effect most users. If you do encounter some problems you can always change the permissions back, which look to be set as 755 by default.

A big thanks to “Tjb” who left this tip in the comments!

Update: Jim T left the following recommendation in the comments, suggesting another chmod command to change the permissions:

Instead, do this:

sudo chmod go-x /usr/bin/dscl

That will -only- remove the execute permission on group and other, leaving the other permissions (read & write, and root’s full permissions) completely as was before the change. To reverse, do:

sudo chmod go+x /usr/bin/dscl

Only touch the stuff you need to touch!

His reasoning is that chmod 100 is too restrictive in that it changes the command to execute only, where as before the root user could read, write, and execute.

The iPhone 5 will be announced on Tuesday, October 4, at an event led by Apple CEO Tim Cook. This apparent confirmation of a launch date comes from the usually very reliable AllThingsD, a branch of the Wall Street Journal, who has long been saying that the iPhone 5 will be unveiled sometime in October.

While the announcement will come in the first week of October, unless Apple’s plans change, the actual availability of the highly anticipated iPhone 5 will be another week or two later:

While Apple could certainly change its plans anytime, sources said that the Oct. 4 date has been selected by the company to showcase the iPhone 5. Sources added that the plan is now to make the new device available for purchase within a few weeks after the announcement.

There is no word on pre-orders, but “within a few weeks” would correspond with the October 15th availability date that France Telecom CEO recently spilled.

AllThingsD also suggests that while Tim Cook will lead the event, other Apple executives will likely make appearances to discuss specifics about the device and other products being announced. One could safely assume that the October 4th event will also be the iOS 5 public release, in addition to iCloud’s official launch and a first look at whatever the revised iPod lineup will be.

A new addition to Safari 5.1 in Mac OS X 10.7 is that web pages auto-refresh if they are left inactive for a period of time. The feature can seem unnecessary and even annoying, but there’s no clear preference option to disable reloading of pages. Thankfully, Stormcloud (via DaringFireball) shows us how to stop this pesky behavior in Safari 5.1. Here’s the play-by-play to disable it:

• Quit Safari, then launch the Terminal (located in /Applications/Utilities/) and enter the following command

defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeInternalDebugMenu 1

• Relaunch Safari and you’ll see a “Debug” menu appear on the far right, alongside “Help” (yes, this is different from the Develop menu)
• Pull down the new Debug menu and scroll down a ways until you see “Use Multi-process Windows” and select it so that it’s unchecked
• Open a new Safari window and if you see an [SP] next to the web pages title, you’re now in single process mode, which prevents the automatic refreshing of webpages

If you’re wondering why changing some setting called “multi-process windows” effects automatic reloading of web pages, Stormcloud provides a good description of what this feature is and how it works:

So what is a “multi-process window” anyway?

One of the new features in Safari 5.1 is a major new version of the underlying engine — WebKit2. Under WebKit2’s new process architecture, Safari consists of two separate processes — the “UI process” (the Safari application itself, including the address bar, toolbar, bookmarks bar, menus, etc.), and the “web process” (an independent process that loads and displays actual web pages).
Apart from other goals, the purpose of this is to provide some measure of crash protection. While it does prevent the entire Safari application from crashing (at least as far as I’ve seen), it doesn’t protect you from losing anything you’ve typed into text fields in web pages. All web content is handled by a single web process, so if any page malfunctions and causes the web process to crash, all open tabs will be reloaded, and anything you had typed into any of those pages will be lost. Furthermore, any downloads that were in progress will also be halted; you might be able to resume some downloads, but many will have to be started over. This can be very frustrating when downloading large files.

For that reason, the benefits of the new multi-process architecture are somewhat dubious, at least until Apple manages to address the issue of spontaneously reloading tabs (assuming it’s even possible to prevent this behavior without redesigning the overall architecture of WebKit again).

Basically, it’s a well intentioned feature, but it’s also causing some user headaches. In some cases it causes Safari to take up far more memory than it should, and it can even cause app slow downs. Presumably all of this will be fixed in a software update though.

The big caveat about running Safari 5.1 in single-process mode: many plugins and extensions don’t work, most notably (and annoyingly) ad blockers, ClickToFlash, and 1password. You’ll have to decide if that trade-off is worth it, or you can always just use Chrome or Firefox too.

A fair amount of users are reporting that upgrading Mac OS X has caused their Macs to run hotter in general and their fans to constantly engage, creating excessive and unusual fan noise. For users who have just performed an upgrade from 10.6, 10.7, or 10.8, this is usually because of Spotlight and the mdworker & mds process combination, which irons itself out over the course of an hour or so.
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Apple’s customer satisfaction is at a new all time high, topping it’s own previous record but also continuing their dominating lead in the overall PC industry. The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) polled over 70,000 consumers and gave Apple a score of 88 out of 100 possible points, saying:

“In the eight years that Apple has led the PC industry in customer satisfaction, its stock price has increased by 2,300%. Apple’s winning combination of innovation and product diversification—including spinning off technologies into entirely new directions—has kept the company consistently at the leading edge.”

Perhaps this is one of the reasons that Apple is worth more than just about everything.

This news comes via ZDNet, who proposes that the reason for the remarkably high scores is simply a combination of reliable products, plus outstanding customer service and support, two things that Apple is routinely known for.

We all know it’s pretty annoying to reading text that is ALL IN UPPERCASE CAPS, but fortunately with the help of text transformation tools, we can instantly convert that obnoxious uppercase text into lowercase caps (or vice versa, if you really want to…).

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There are a few ways to reset a password in Mac OS X 10.7 but both of those methods require reboots. This approach is different, it lets you change the password of the user currently logged into Mac OS X Lion, without knowing the user password, and without a reboot:

• Launch the Terminal, located in /Applications/Utilities/
• Type ‘whoami’ at the command line to get the current users precise login name, which will look something like this:

$ whoami
Will

• Type the following command, replacing ‘username’ at the end with the exact current users login name that you retrieved from whoami:

dscl localhost -passwd /Search/Users/username

• Enter the new password once, hit return, and confirm the new password again hitting return

The password is now changed.

No authentication is required, you simply enter the new password and confirm the changed password. This is much easier than the manual reset methods and it doesn’t require a reboot or any manipulation of user data in Mac OS X.

Remember that like anything else in the command line, capitalization matters, so if the username is reported back as “Will” that would be different than “will” – be sure to use the proper caps for the password to be changed.

This tip is undeniably useful for a wide variety of situations pertaining to system administration, troubleshooting, and theft recovery, but could also post a potential security risk. Regarding the security risk, it’s realistic to assume that if someone has a computer in their possession, little is safe unless the drive itself is encrypted.

This trick was included in a broader and more mischievous tip that we’ll stay away from, nonetheless thanks to Daniel for sending this in!

Update: Additional reports and comments are suggesting this is a bug in OS X Lion, if so we could expect a Security Update to Mac OS 10.7 in the near future that would remove the ability to run dscl without administrative authentication. We’ll keep you posted.

Whether you just use OS X’s Mail.app on a Mac, or an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, the Address Book in Mac OS X stores a lot of vital information that you don’t want to lose. If you’re going to be making any changes to how you sync this data, adjustments to where and how it’s stored, or just want to move it to another Mac, here’s how to back up the address book and all data inside so that you won’t lose anyones contact information, avatar icons, and any other details you have about those stored in your address book.

This will cover backing up the address book in OS X using the export feature and a manual file back up.

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A new version of the redsn0w jailbreak tool has been released by the iPhone Dev Team, mostly as a feature enhancement update. Versioned as 0.9.9b1, the release includes a variety of new features, including:

• Automatic device and firmware detection via DFU mode
• Grabs some IPSW versions from Apple
• Caches custom and beta IPSW’s locally
• Easier tethered boot with preferences saved
• “Pwned DFU” option to quickly enter into DFU mode without the button sequence
• Various SHSH blob features pertaining to custom IPSW versions and storage on Cydia servers

Note that redsn0w 0.99b1 does not jailbreak any new iOS versions, nor does it provide an untether for existing jailbreaks that are still tethered. It will continue to jailbreak iOS 4.3.5, and for developers with access, the iOS 5 beta builds, on supported iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch models.

Download Redsn0w 0.9.9b1

As usual, versions are available for both Mac OS X and Windows users, and include the same feature set:

• Download Now (Mac)
• Download Now (Windows)

For those waiting for a new untether to come out, prepare to wait at least until iOS 5 has been made public.

Apple stock surpassed $400 a share again last Friday, bringing their market cap to $371.30 billion. That $371,300,000,000 is worth more than each of the following things:

• All 32 Eurozone Banks
• The Entire Economy of Singapore
• All of the Illegal Drugs in the World
• Total U.S. Corporate Income Tax for 2011
• The GDP of Denmark
• The Great Wall of China (priced at $0.52 a brick)
• The Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter, Stephen King, and Twilight Franchises – combined, plus another $300 billion
• All of the Farm Land in Iowa & South Dakota, at $4200 per acre
• The Total Endowments of the USA’s 13 Richest Universities and University Systems
• 45 days of global oil consumption
• The Cost of America’s Obesity Epidemic
• Every home in Detroit and Tampa combined
• The big three drug makers; Novartis, Sanofi-Aventis, and Pfizer, combined
• Every home in Atlanta
• 10 times the total paid in federal child support in the U.S. last year
• The five largest ETFs (exchange-traded funds)
• 10 years of Silver Production
• The GDP of Israel, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon – combined

This interesting (and ongoing) list comes from a tumblr blog that is appropriately titled ThingsAppleIsWorthMoreThan, well worth a follow just for the amusement factor alone.

If you accidentally deleted a voicemail on an iPhone, you can usually retrieve these messages by looking through a somewhat unknown “Deleted Messages” list that is part of the Phone app in iOS. Though this feature is little known, it’s quite easy to use, and if you’re hoping to find old or deleted voicemails on the iPhone this is the first place you should look.

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This reader submitted minimalist Mac setup comes from Danny B, it’s a MacBook Pro 17″ turned into desktop workstation thanks to the connected Apple 24″ Cinema Display, wireless keyboard, and Magic Mouse.

Thanks for sending this in Danny!

You can submit your own Mac setup to us at osxdailycom@gmail.com, we’re receiving a ton of reader submitted setups, so if you haven’t seen yours appear yet just be patient.

Google’s Chrome browser has been updated to support two native OS X Lion features; full screen support and overlay scrollbars. These features have been available in the unstable developer channels but now they’re finally released in the stable build, meaning you no longer need to use the Maximizer add-on to get full screen in Chrome, and you shouldn’t get stuck in Chromes own full-screen mode any longer.

To get the update, go the Chrome menu and pull down to “About Google Chrome” and then select “Update Now”, or if you don’t actively use Chrome you can download it from Google directly.

AirDrop is the extremely easy local peer-to-peer file transfer tool that is built into OS X 10.7 and 10.8 and beyond, it allows you to easily send and receive files wirelessly over a network just by dragging and dropping. It’s a great addition to Lion, but it’s not supported on all Macs (some 2008 model MacBook, MacBook Pros, some Mac Pro’s and Mini’s, etc), and most Hackintosh setups also can’t access it… and you can’t use it over Ethernet… until now.

You can enable AirDrop with Ethernet and enable AirDrop Wi-Fi support on technically unsupported Macs running OS X 10.7 Lion, Mountain Lion, or later by using a simple defaults write command in the Terminal. It’s a fairly easy procedure, and we’ll walk you through it.

Enable AirDrop Over Ethernet & Wi-Fi for Old Unsupported Macs

• Launch Terminal, found in /Applications/Utilities/
• Paste in the following defaults command:

defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser BrowseAllInterfaces 1

• Hit Return, then on a new line in the Terminal type the following command to relaunch the Finder:

killall Finder

• Exit out of Terminal if you want, and launch any Finder window to discover the AirDrop icon

You can also reboot the Mac for changes to take effect.

What’s really interesting is that this enables AirDrop over both Wi-Fi and wired Ethernet connections, which basically means any machine running Lion or later can use it whether or not it has a wireless card. As long as it’s connected to the same network you will be able to see the Mac in the AirDrop list of another Mac running 10.7, 10.8, or 10.9. This trick also works to enable AirDrop on many Hackintosh Macs for those who built their own…

Keep in mind that you will need at least one other Mac in the same region in order to use AirDrop. If you’re totally new to the feature, check out our quick guide that covers how to quickly and easily share files with the AirDrop protocol, it’s really one of the fastest ways to share files between Macs and is well worth using.

If you ever want to disable this for some reason, you can just use the following defaults command instead:

defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser BrowseAllInterfaces 0

Same as before, you will need to relaunch Finder for the changes to take effect and have AirDrop disabled again.

With how easy this is to enable, it makes you wonder why it was left off of some older Mac models to begin with, and why it’s not enabled for Ethernet connections either.

This tip comes from a user submission to MacWorld, and attached is a note that you may need to use this command on all Macs that intend to interact with the unsupported Mac, although that doesn’t seem to be the case on all machines.

Don’t forget that you can also change the AirDrop sound effect too.

Just in time for some weekend fun, you can download the wildly popular physics-puzzle-shooter game Portal for free from Steam until September 20.

Download Portal from Steam by going here and clicking the big green “Install Game” button

Portal runs in both Mac OS X and Windows, and once it’s in your Steam account you can download it on other machines if you want.

Here’s the interesting part: the game is offered as a free download until September 20, 2011 as part of the “Learning with Portals” program, where some schools are using the popular video game to help teach physics and critical thinking skills. How cool is that? This blurb from their website explains further:

Today, innovative educators are finding ways to incorporate Portal™ and Portal 2 into their classrooms—helping teach physics and critical-thinking skills. It’s eye-opening to see how video games can be used in amazing and unexpected ways to help educate our next generation.

One of the biggest challenges in teaching science, technology, engineering, and math is capturing the students’ imaginations long enough for them to see all of the possibilities that lie ahead.

Using interactive tools like the Portal series to draw them in makes physics, math, logic, spatial reasoning, probability, and problem-solving interesting, cool, and fun which gets us one step closer to our goal—engaged, thoughtful kids!

If you’re skeptical, Valve put together a video which shows exactly how it’s being used by one 7th grade classroom:

Pretty cool huh?

Check it out yourself, the system requirements are relatively basic and it should run on most recent Macs:

• OS X version Leopard 10.5.8, Snow Leopard 10.6.3, or higher
• 1GB RAM or more
• NVIDIA GeForce 8 or higher, ATI X1600 or higher, or Intel HD 3000 or higher
• Mouse, Keyboard, Internet Connection

While we’re on the topic of free gaming, if you’re looking for a multiplayer experience, don’t forget that Team Fortress 2 is also a free download from Steam too.

If you want to quickly style your folders or Launchpad with Emoji, you can access the Special Characters panel directly from the Finder in Mac OS X and then drag or enter those special characters or emojis into the folder or file names.

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