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.

How does the iPhone 4S’s new cameras 1080p video recording stack up to a pro-level $2300 Canon 5d MKII digital camera? Surprisingly well, as is demonstrated by this video from Robino Films. Both cameras shot footage at the same time and side-by-side, with the scenes in perfect sync so that video can be paused and examined more closely.

The settings for both cameras are as follows:

iPhone 4S

– AE.AF locked. That’s all you have!

Canon 5D MKII

– Canon 50mm 1.4
– ISO 160 ~ 640 (varied per shot to match the iPhone)
– F 7~22 (varied per shot to match the iPhone)
– Shutter 1/60th
– Auto WB
– Standard Picture Style
– 1080p 30

Check out the full video in 1080p on Vimeo, the iPhone 4S’s camera is quite impressive.

Thanks for sending this in Matthew

Disappointed that Mac OS X 10.8 users aren’t showing up in your web logs? Spoof your own visits! In the spirit of pranking and Halloween, here’s how you can mimic a Mac OS X 10.8 user agent yourself:

• Launch the Terminal
• Enter the following command, replacing “http://url.com” no the end with the web address you want to give the user agent to:

curl -A "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_8) AppleWebKit/535.6.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.2 Safari/535.6.2" http://url.com

You won’t see anything returned from the command line, but if you look in your web logs, you’ll see an appearance of a 10.8 user agent.

This is based on a past tip on changing user agents for web development purposes. If you don’t like the command line, you can also do limited user agent changes in Safari’s Developer menu or by using third party plugins for Chrome and Firefox.

Spoofing the OS X 10.8 User Agent through Safari
An easier command line-free way of doing this is through Safari’s Develop menu, pull down to User Agent and choose “Other” then paste in this:

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_8) AppleWebKit/535.6.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.2 Safari/535.6.2

Thanks to @polislix for the reminder and WP for the screenshot

Not surprisingly, Mac OS X 10.8 development is well under way, and some Apple employees are using the OS on a regular enough basis for them to show up in analytics logs across the Apple web. Our own OS X 10.8 usage graph is shown above, which shows a clear uptick in everyday use of the development OS over the past few months. Narrowing down for IP and location, the majority of visits are coming from Apple in Cupertino, California, with the remainder popping up around the San Francisco Bay Area.

We first noticed a blip for the next version of Mac OS X back in July before the launch of OS X Lion. Since then, visits have picked up to a steady level, suggesting that internal builds of OS X 10.8 are stable enough for developers and engineers to be using on a daily basis. More evidence is shown in the logs of MacRumors, who first published their findings yesterday:

Next is 9to5mac, who posted theirs today:

While it is relatively easy to spoof a browser user agent, the number of entries, network location, and IP all point to these being legitimate. It’s also worth noting that OS X 10.7 was first noticed by similar log entries, long before the official preview of Lion by Apple.

Practically nothing is known about Mac OS X 10.8, but speculation assumes that more features from iOS will make their way into the next version of Mac OS, in addition to having more deeply integrated iCloud support.

If you’ve downloaded Adobe Acrobat on the Mac you’ve probably discovered that it takes over Preview as the default PDF viewer in Mac OS X, which is annoying because Acrobat is slow to load and a fairly bloated application. Given that Preview comes bundled with Mac OS X, is extremely fast, and quite efficient at viewing not only PDF’s but tons of other file types, there’s little need to use Acrobat Reader as a way to view PDF files. Accordingly, we’re to demonstrate how to change the default PDF viewer back to Preview on the Mac.

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If you have a newer MacBook Air you should pay attention. Some of the MacBook Airs are shipping with Samsung displays, and some are shipping with LG displays, both are quality displays, but the LG’s default color profile is lighter and a bit flat. Most users probably won’t notice this, but if you sit a MacBook Air with a Samsung display next to one with the LG display, you can see the difference. This is easily remedied by using a custom color profile that has better gamma. This post will walk you through how to check which manufacturers panel you have, and also show you how to add a custom color profile that makes the LG display just as gorgeous as the Samsung.

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Apple has started to air three new iPhone 4S TV commercials. The first, titled “Siri, Snow Today”, is similar to the last Siri iPhone 4S commercial and features people asking Siri a variety of questions and getting responses.

The next commercial is titled “iCloud” and shows an iPhone 4S automatically syncing and uploading documents, changes, music, and pictures to an iPad, MacBook Air, and iMac through the iCloud service:
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Mona Simpson, an author and the biological sister of Steve Jobs, wrote a wonderful eulogy to Steve that was delivered on October 16th at a private memorial service.

I want to tell you a few things I learned from Steve, during three distinct periods, over the 27 years I knew him. They’re not periods of years, but of states of being. His full life. His illness. His dying.

The eulogy is moving and a must read, in it, Steve’s final words are revealed for the first time. No spoilers, just read the article on the New York Times:

Mona Simpson: A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs

Siri, the intelligent virtual assistant that is currently exclusive to iPhone 4S, has been effectively ported to iPhone 4 and iPod touch. More importantly, it actually works this time around and there are two videos demonstrating the two devices taking voice commands and Siri reporting back.

In a discussion between the iOS developer Troughton-Smith, who completed the port, and 9to5mac, who first published it, is a warning that files from an iPhone 4S are required, in addition to a jailbreak:

… It does require files from an iPhone 4S which aren’t ours to distribute, and it also requires a validation token from the iPhone 4S that has to be pulled live from a jailbroken iPhone 4S, and it’s about a 20-step process right now.

This suggests the mod will be limited to individuals who own an iPhone 4S in addition to other compatible hardware, making them responsible for copying their own Siri files over. Regardless, that is likely against Apple’s EULA with iOS and Siri, but the importance of the port functioning is the proof that Siri does work on older iOS hardware, although some devices run into complications. On the iPhone 4, Siri appears to be working fine and with the same fluidity as that seen on the iPhone 4S, but apparently the iPod touch’s microphone isn’t as sharp as the iPhone models, forcing the user to speak slower and louder for Siri to pick up voice commands. The latter example could also impact the iPad 2, which has seen the port too, and this could be why Apple did not release Siri to other hardware with iOS 5.

Here are the videos showing Siri working on an iPhone 4 alongside an iPhone 4S:

And a video of Siri working on the iPod touch 4th gen:
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Bored with Launchpads background? You can make some changes to it in Mac OS X Lion by changing the background images default blur effect to three other options: unblurred (shown above), black and white blur, or black and white unblurred (both shown below):

• Open Launchpad
• Hit Command+B to cycle through the background image effects

Update: In OS X 10.7.3, you need to use Command+Control+Option+B to achieve the same effect

Hitting Command+B once should just remove the blur from the background image, which makes Launchpad more closely resemble the iOS springboard. You can use the keystroke a few more times to switch into black and white or to go back to the default blur.

Other than changing the actual wallpaper, you can’t change Launchpad specific wallpaper, although you can change Launchpads folder background image to something other than the linen default.

Here’s a few other screenshots showing the black and white effect variations:
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Here’s another nice background picture, by request, it’s the blue sky star field wallpaper that was shown in a recent screenshot of Mission Control. This one isn’t part of a pack, but it does include the base PSD file so you can make your own variations of the blue night sky if you are up for it.

You can download it here from DeviantArt

This wallpaper comes at 2560×1600 and was created by the same artist who put together the nice six pack of aurora backgrounds.

If you have trouble locating the download link on DeviantArt, it’s highlighted in an image below.
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Another great reader submitted Mac setup here: this one is a decked out Mac Mini Server Quad i7 with 8GB RAM and dual 7200 RPM 500GB hard drives, connected to dual monitors, and to the right is an iPad 2 64GB model. Rounding out the desk is an iPod touch, iPod nano, MacBook Air superdrive, Beats Pro headphones, and an Apple wireless keyboard and trackpad.

Sweet Mac setup Jaime, thanks for sending this in! You can send in your own Apple setup shots to: osxdailycom@gmail.com

Below is a picture of all the Apple gears boxes too:
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The first generation iPad got iOS 5, but it didn’t officially get multitasking gestures or display mirroring. Not a huge deal, because a user on ModMyi figured out how to enable these two features and has released a modified version of redsn0w so that it unlocks these abilities, without a jailbreak. It’s pretty easy to use, so if you want to enable these features here’s how to use the tool and make your first-gen iPad feel a bit more modern.

Warning: This is for iPad 1 only. The gestures and mirroring already exist on iPad 2 making this unnecessary. Backup your iPad beforehand just in case something goes wrong, and proceed at your own risk.

• Download the modified version of redsn0w that carries the tweaked payload
• Download for Mac
• Download for Windows
• Connect the iPad to the computer
• Turn off the iPad
• Launch redsn0w and select “jailbreak” (no it won’t actually jailbreak if you follow the rest of the instructions)
• Follow the onscreen instructions to put the iPad into DFU mode
• Uncheck “Install Cydia” – this stops the jailbreak nut enables the multitasking and mirroring
• Check “Enable Multitask Gestures”
• Click “Next” and let the process complete and the iPad reboot
• When the iPad restarts, go to “Settings” and tap on “General” to find “Multitasking Gestures” and be sure that is set to ON

Once it’s turned on, the easiest way to verify is by pinching with four fingers to see if you return to your home screen.

The Multitasking Gestures
Using four or five fingers you can…

• Pinch to the Home Screen (much like OS X Lion pinches to Launchpad)
• Swipe up to show the multitasking bar of running apps
• Swipe left or right between open applications

Display Mirroring
Display Mirroring only works with HDMI cables and not AirPlay

For those interested in the technical details of this, here’s the source code (via ModMyi user dB) for the modification:

Thanks for sending this in Daniel

You can easily re-open closed web browser windows in Safari for iOS on the iPad. This works in all iPad models with iOS, and it’s really easy to do at any time in Safari browser on the device:

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An official jailbreak for iPhone 4S and iPad 2 running iOS 5 is coming sooner than later, as evidenced by iPhone Dev Team member MuscleNerd posting several screenshots of the works in progress. In fact, they jailbreak has already been achieved, but there are unspecified “hurdles left” before the jailbreak will see a public release.

There are currently no time estimates, but typically these teaser screenshots and videos start to appear soon before a first beta jailbreak becomes available. The iPhone 4S and iPad 2 have been noticeably absent from the current iOS 5 jailbreak, both devices share much of the same internal hardware including the A5 CPU, and has posed a challenge to jail break. It’s unclear whether this will be a tethered or untethered jailbreak.

MuscleNerd also posted the following video to YouTube, showing the jailbreak off on an iPad 2 running iOS 5:
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Private Eye is a free real-time network monitor app for Mac OS X that is extremely easy to use. Upon launching the app, you’ll start to see all open network connections by application and process, and you can then filter connections by app, monitor all open connections, or watch only incoming or outgoing transfer.

Connections are reported by application, the time of the connection, and arguably the most useful, the IP address that is being connected to by the app, making it easy to see socket and routing data, letting you know exactly what app is communicating with what server or IP address, for both local and broader internet networks.

If you have any interest in networking, privacy, security, or you just want to keep an eye on what apps are connecting to the internet and to where, you should download this app, but it’s also an amazingly useful tool for troubleshooting network problems and figuring out what is using the network.

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We’ve covered a handful of tips to increase battery life in iOS 5 and even for the new iPhone 4S, but nonetheless the complaints about battery drain are still piling up. The culprit for the 4S is almost always Location Services, and all you need to do is disable a few things:

• Tap on “Settings” and go to “Location Services”
• Selectively disable Location Services for services you don’t use, like Reminders, before proceeding
• Next, tap to “System Services” and switch the following to OFF:
1. Compass Calibration
2. Diagnostics & Usage
3. Setting Time Zone
• Close out of Settings

The Reminders feature combined with Siri is great and obviously helpful, but it seems to constantly query the location of the iPhone, presumably to try and determine where the thing is and if a reminder should be triggered. Turn it off if you’re concerned about battery life.

The other part is ‘System Services’, which the items highlighted in the screenshot below seem to be the biggest offenders hat constantly ping location (with the exception of iAds, which took an unlucky spot). Many reports indicate that disabling just “Setting Time Zones” alone will save considerable battery life.

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Pixelmator for Mac has long been a killer photo editing app. But I’ll cut straight to the point, Pixelmator is the single best Photoshop alternative for the Mac platform at it’s price point, and at just $29.99 (App Store link) it’s much more affordable for the average joe than Adobe Photoshops whopping $500 tag.

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