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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If you want to play around with Android 4 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) but don’t have an Android phone or tablet, you can download the official Android SDK, or better yet, grab a preconfigured virtual machine that will run ICS in VirtualBox. Other than providing an interesting look at the primary competitor to iOS, virtual machines are useful for compatibility testing, and developers and designers should find some value in adding an Android VM alongside their Windows & Internet Explorer VM’s, giving this some practical use beyond the novelty factor.

Here’s how to run Android 4 ICS in VirtualBox:
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Remember that retro iOS ’86 concept theme for iPhone that popped up recently? We were hoping it would become an iOS theme, and it has. To use the iOS 86 theme you’ll need to jailbreak your iPhone or iPod touch running iOS 5.0.1, here is how to do that with absinthe for iPhone 4S, or use redsn0w for jailbreaking other iOS 5 devices.

After you have jailbroken, do the following:

1. Launch Cydia and add the source repo: http://repo.ithemes.it
2. Search Cydia for “iOS 86” and install it
3. Search Cydia for “Winterboard” and download that
4. Launch Winterboard to find and activate iOS ’86 theme (complete the look with a white wallpaper)

I haven’t had the time to test this quite yet, but apparently the theme doesn’t change other UI elements or any icons outside of the iOS 5 native set, so if an app isn’t bundled with iOS don’t expect a nice retro black and white icon. Nonetheless, this is a great first start and it’s pretty cool for those of us who were impressed with the original concept.
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If you found the recent New York Times pieces on the making of Apple products to be interesting and “Mr Daisey and the Apple Factory” to be enlightening, you’ll probably enjoy this ABC Nightline report on Foxconn.

ABC’s Nightline was given exclusive access to a Foxconn factory in China that assembles Apple products, providing a fascinating look at how Apple gear is made. You’ll see iPhones, iPads, and MacBook Pro’s being put together manually by workers as there’s virtually no robots or automation, nearly all of the devices are assembled by hand. This means it takes a while to produce each Apple product, and a single iPad takes nearly a week to complete.

It’s not exactly a groundbreaking documentary, but if you are an Apple fan and user of Apple products, it’s worth watching. The show is about 15 minutes long and has been embedded below or you can watch it on ABCNews.com.

If you didn’t buy an unlocked iPhone 4S from Apple to begin with, the phone is probably locked to its default carrier. In the USA, that is AT&T, and that means if you want to use it on another network either home or abroad it’ll need to be unlocked first.

Currently there are no software unlocks for iPhone 4S, but now a hardware unlock is available for the phone through GEVEY. The new GEVEY SIM works with iOS 5.0 and iOS 5.0.1, and iPhone 4S basebands 1.0.11, 1.013, 1.0.14. No jailbreaks are required, just the new GEVEY SIM which works as an interposer and unlocks the iPhone 4S with its original sim card. Afterwards, you can pop in a third party SIM and use the iPhone 4S on T-Mobile or any other compatible network. The video below will demonstrate how it works.

Gevey SIM costs $55 and will ship soon. That might seem fairly expensive until you realize there are no other options except buying an unlocked iPhone 4S which starts at $650.

We recently covered how to resolve an issue when Mac OS X doesn’t remember a wireless network, password protected or not, and since then several readers have notified us of another separate issue: Mac OS X won’t remember a wireless network password. The networks are remembered, but each time the network is found the password is forgotten and has to be reentered. This annoyance is fairly easy to resolve, as shown below.

Using Keychain First Aid

1. Hit Command+Spacebar to bring up Spotlight, launch “Keychain Access”
2. Pull down the “Keychain Access” menu and select “Keychain First Aid”
3. Enter the password accompanying the given user name



4. Check “Repair” and click on “Start”

Sometimes repairing the keychain can be enough to resolve issues with passwords being remembered by OS X, but if not carry on with a solution that definitely works below:

Remove Wireless Networks from Keychain

1. Hit Command+Spacebar for Spotlight and search for “Keychain Access”, launch the app
2. Using Keychain Access search box in the upper right corner, search for “Airport network password”



3. Locate and select the name of the problematic router, if there are multiple entries for a single router select them all
4. Right-click on the router name and choose “Delete RouterName”



5. Authenticate the removal, then close out of Keychain Access
6. Reboot the Mac and re-join the wireless network

Mac OS X should now remember the wifi password without incident.

If you’re having broader problems with Mac OS X Wi-Fi where it doesn’t work at all or doesn’t work after waking from sleep, try the above methods in combination with removing the network and renewing the DHCP lease.

If you’re still out of luck, don’t miss our guide on fixing wi-fi problems in OS X Lion.