Want to compare hard disk performance or see just how big of a speed difference that SSD upgrade had? Grab the free Disk Speed Test tool from the Mac App Store, it’s a quick and simple way to measure drive performance. The app works by creating large blocks of temporary data that are written to the drive and then read, allowing for a consistent benchmark across multiple Macs or disks. The UI is easy to understand and there’s no frills, just launch the app and the test starts.

• Download Disk Speed Test free from the Mac App Store

It’s not exactly scientific, but it’ll give you a good idea of performance changes with upgrades or different disks, just note the read and write speeds both before and after an upgrade, or have your friends run it on their Mac to test speeds across drives.

For example, a MacBook Air might write to an SSD at around 180mb/sec and read at 220mb/sec, whereas a standard 5400 RPM drive in a MacBook Pro may only write at 45mb/sec and read at 60mb/sec. Many third party SSD’s perform even better than the MacBook Air, and these kind of numbers really drive home the day-to-day performance boost you’ll see with an SSD upgrade. If you’re in the market for one, check out the deals on SSD drives at Amazon and get yourself an early Christmas present.

We’re suckers for new wallpapers around here, and iOS 5.1 includes four new gorgeous background pictures sized at 1024×1024 for the iPad. Extracted from the iOS 5.1 beta releases, 9to5mac found and resized the images to fit the iPhone 640×960 display as well.

Grab them in a bundle from Mediafire or via the 9to5 links below:

iPad (1, 2, 3, 4)

iPhone (1, 2, 3, 4)

Many share similarities to those found in OS X Lion, the beach image looks like it’s probably from the same photo shoot as the one included on the Mac.

If your iPhone Wi-Fi connection seems inexplicably slow, particularly when having moved from one wireless network to another, try manually setting custom DNS servers. This speeds up the response time and your wireless connectivity in general.

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Just like you can add spacers between app icons in the OS X Dock (the left side), we can also add these same spacers to the right-side of the Dock, where the Applications, Documents, Downloads, and Trash icons live.

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Apple is said to be working on a smaller iPad with a 7.85″ display, according to a new report from Digitimes. Citing sources in the supply chain, the “iPad Mini” is suggested to debut late in 2012, not alongside the expected iPad 3 release earlier in the year.

Digitimes sources suggest that Apple decided to produce the smaller iPad to handle increasing competition in the tablet marketplace, specifically from the Kindle Fire:

However, in order to cope with increasing market competition including the 7-inch Kindle Fire from Amazon and the launch of large-size smartphones from handset vendors, Apple has been persuaded into the development of 7.85-inch iPads, the sources indicated.

Getting more specific, the display panels for the device are said to be supplied by LG and AU Optronics, and that production will begin at the end of the second quarter of next year.

This isn’t the first time a report of an iPad with a smaller 7.85-inch display has surfaced. Last month, an analyst report also suggested that a smaller iPad would be released sometime in 2012, in addition to the iPad 3 with a retina display.

iOS apps are downloaded as bundles with a .ipa file extensions, but they are stored in different places than your default iOS backups location. If you want to access iPhone and iPad apps manually, here’s where to find them for both Mac OS X Lion, Snow Leopard, and Windows 7:

The easiest way to access these directories is by hitting Command+Shift+G and using Go To Folder, note the path is different depending on the OS:

• Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Mobile Applications/
• Mac OS X 10.6: ~/Music/iTunes/Mobile Applications/
• Windows 7: C:\Users\Username\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Mobile Applications\

As long as you’ve downloaded and bought the apps from the same Apple ID and all hardware has been authorized with iTunes, you can move the .ipa bundles from one machine to another, place them in the appropriate folder, and they will continue to sync with the approved iOS hardware. (You won’t want to do this with a new Mac though, you need to authorize it first within iTunes.)

Most of the IPA files are pretty small, but if an apps file size seems too small, it’s probably because it was paused in the middle of a download from iTunes. That doesn’t mean you don’t own the app, it just means you have to download it again if you want to use and sync it. Generally the app sizes are reasonable enough and you wouldn’t need to move this directory to another drive, but for unique scenarios, go for the same methodology of moving iOS backups to another drive and using symbolic links to keep everything working as intended.

Apple has rolled out two minor iOS updates, the first is for the second generation Apple TV and the second for the iPhone 4S. For Apple TV 2, the new build (9A406a) updates system software to 4.4.4, but it’s unclear exactly what the changes are, indicating this is likely a bug fix update. For iPhone 4S, it’s simply a new build (9A406) of iOS 5.0.1, and also doesn’t appear to offer any significant changes.

You can get the updates directly through either devices software update, although the iPhone 4S update doesn’t appear unless you haven’t updated to 5.0.1 yet anyway, indicating it’s not a crucial update for all users. If you prefer to use IPSW manually, these are the direct download links from Apple:

• Apple TV 2 4.4.4 9A406a IPSW (direct download link)
• iPhone 4S iOS 5.0.1 9A406 (direct download link)

There is some speculation that the iPhone 4S update may relate to international releases of the device, which is occurring tomorrow in a variety of new countries, including Russia, Brazil, Chile, Thailand, Malaysia, Taiwan, Philippines, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel, and Vietnam.

If you use the multi-desktop Spaces feature of Mission Control often, you’ll probably like a hidden gesture in Mac OS X that lets you immediately jump back to the most recently used Space with just a four-fingered tap on the trackpad (or Magic Mouse). Here’s how to enable the gesture with a defaults write command.
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Can’t decide which wallpaper to use as your desktop background? Me neither. Fortunately there’s a setting in Mac OS X that causes the desktop picture to change itself automatically at a user selected time interval, ranging from every 5 seconds to once a day or upon system wake.

Essentially this means your wallpaper will change itself on a set schedule, so you’ll never be stuck with the same image. You can use this to rotate through wallpaper pictures, or if you get creative, to make some pretty interesting desktop background effects, like changing colors, or going from a black and white picture to a colorized version, and so forth.

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Apple is rumored to be working towards releasing retina display equipped MacBook Pro’s in the second quarter of 2012, according to a new report from the Taiwanese trade publication Digitimes. Citing upstream component sources, the displays are said to be 2880×1800 pixels and become yet another competitive advantage for Apple’s portable lineup:

While the prevailing MacBook models have displays with resolutions ranging from 1680 by 1050 to 1280 by 800, the ultra-high resolution for the new MacBook Pro will further differentiate Apple’s products from other brands, commented the sources.

Earlier in the fall, Digitimes also suggested that a MacBook Air 15″ model would be released next year, but there is no indication that it would carry the same 2880 x 1800 pixel display.

Hints of Macs with retina displays have existed for a while now. Earlier in the year, we pointed out that wallpapers in Mac OS X Lion are 3200×2000 resolution, greater than any currently shipping Apple hardware. Additionally, many icons in OS X Lion are 1024×1024 pixels, double what they were in previous Mac OS X releases.

Finally, persistent iPad 3 rumors suggest the device will feature a retina display. One could guess that for Apple to release a retina equipped iPad, there would also have to be Macs with equal or greater screen resolutions available to adequately develop retina iPad apps on.

Did you know you can launch a file directly into its default app, right from a Quick Look preview on Mac?

And you can open the files from Quick Look preview into other compatible Mac apps too.

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The next time you’re trying to tell someone how to update apps from the Mac App Store, why bother with a walkthrough when you can just send them a URL? Yup, you can send someone directly to the Mac App Store’s “Updates” portion just by using a link instead. This is a great trick for troubleshooting and for helping people to update their apps, and it works like any other link structure.

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Nobody wants their gifts to arrive after the holidays have passed, and to alleviate that potential Apple has posted a list of holiday shipping times and deadlines. In order to get Apple items shipped free to your door by Christmas Eve (December 24), you’ll need to stop procrastinating:

• iPad: December 19th
• iPod: December 19th
• iPhone 4S: Passed, Dec 5th – visit an Apple Store!
• iPhone 4 and 3GS: December 19th
• Mac, customized: December 14th
• Mac, stock: December 19th
• Mac, popular configuration: December 19th
• Apple TV: December 19th

If you don’t mind paying for next-day shipping, the deadlines move up to December 21st.

For many Apple items, you can also try third party retailers like Amazon or Best Buy, and you can always visit a physical Apple Store if you’re down to the wire or really want to get someone the extremely popular iPhone 4S.

Helpful find by Macgasm for those of us who haven’t even started shopping for gifts yet.

Preview is an often underused Mac OS X app that can handle a lot of file and image conversion tasks without the need for downloading any third party tools. Preview also happens to be the default PDF viewer in Mac OS X, and as such it can be used to easily convert any PDF file to a JPG, while still preserving the appearance and structure of the PDF.

Assuming you haven’t installed Adobe Acrobat Reader, Preview will be the default PDF viewer in Mac OS X. If it’s not, open the file in Preview anyway.

• Launch Preview from the /Applications/ folder and open the PDF that needs to be converted
• Pull down the “File” menu and select “Export” (if you mapped Export to the “Save As” shortcut just hit Command+Shift+S)
• From the ‘Export As’ window, click the contextual menu next to “Format” and choose “JPEG”
• Adjust the quality or resolution if necessary, and then hit “Save”

That’s all there is to it, the new JPG will be in the same directory as the PDF it came from unless you specified otherwise.

Thanks for the tip idea Shawnie

Mac OS X and many default apps have a built-in ability to quickly search the web.

To quickly search the web, just highlight any text in the Finder, Preview, or TextEdit, and then hit Command+Shift+L to launch Safari with a Google search for the highlighted text selection.

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By using AirPlay and the video mirroring feature, you can broadcast live images / video from your iPhone’s camera directly to an Apple TV on the same network.

To do this, you’ll need iOS 5 or later, an Apple TV, and the AirPlay compatible iPhone 4S or iPad 2 with a camera. All hardware must be on the same wireless network as well. With those requirements met, here’s how to set up the live camera broadcast:

On the Apple TV:

• Go to Settings > AirPlay > turn Airplay ON

From the iPhone 4S or iPad 2:

• Double click the home button and swipe to the right, then tap on the AirPlay button
• Select the Apple TV and enable Mirroring
• Now click the Home button again and tap on the Camera app to start the live feed

Assuming you did this all correctly, the Apple TV will export whatever the iPhone camera sees live, thanks to the video mirroring feature.

This fun little trick was found on TUAW, who suggests you can use the camera mirroring feature to look at your ear or nose… LOL.

Whatever use you find for this one, have fun!

Apple has released iTunes 10.5.2 for Mac OS X and Windows, the update includes several bug fixes and improvements, most notably for the iTunes Match service. The description of the update is brief, but if you’re an iTunes Match subscriber and you’ve run into any problems, you should probably get the update sooner than later.

iTunes 10.5.2 includes several improvements for iTunes Match and fixes an audio distortion problem when playing or importing certain CDs.

You can download the update from Software Update, through iTunes, or directly from Apple.

Apple’s iOS developer team appears to have gone on the offensive in an attempt to throw off the Apple rumor mill with a hilarious new approach; including references to fake product numbers in the latest developer build of iOS 5.2 beta 2. Examples include references to such far-flung and imaginative hardware as the iPhone 11, iPod 11, iPad 10, Apple TV 9, and a large number of other nonsensical product entries which can be seen in the screenshot below.

The reason for doing so is simple enough, iOS beta builds have been the source of some recent product rumors, when references to iPhone 5 and iPad 3 in addition to a new Apple TV were recently uncovered in the past iOS 5.1 beta build. Someone on Apple’s internal iOS developer team probably took notice of the Apple rumor mills interest in the findings, and decided to make the waters murkier by placing every conceivable product number on every manner of iOS device in the latest developer build.

Whether or not this is really a joke or if these are serving as some sort of legitimate placeholders for products that are just years in the distance is unknown, but we like to think it’s the former and that Apple’s iOS developer team is a fun bunch with a good sense of humor (we know they like skiing at least).

The amusing screenshot was first posted by 9to5 writer Mark Gurman, who found the list in iOS 5.1b2’s USBDeviceConfiguration.plist file.