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.

Apple has released iOS 5.1 beta 2 to developers with a continued focus on bug fixes. A notable added feature however is the ability to delete photos from Photo Stream directly on the iOS device, as opposed to the current method of removing pictures from iCloud.

The build comes as 9B5127c and runs on the same hardware as the prior release: iPad, iPad 2, iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and iPod touch 3rd and 4th generations. Registered developers can grab the 800MB firmware updates directly from Apple’s iOS Developer Center, the update must be applied separately as no OTA option is available.

Alongside beta 2 of iOS 5.1 comes XCode 4.3 Developer Preview 2, and a new build of Apple TV 2 firmware that is intended for testing with iOS 5.1 beta devices.

If you’re interested in reading the release notes of iOS 5.1 beta 2, — has posted them.

Whether you are disabling Spotlight or just wanting to reduce menubar icon clutter, it’s possible to hide the Spotlight icon. Here’s the best part though; if you just want to hide the Spotlight menu, you can do so without disabling the search abilities from functioning in the Finder or with other apps that rely on the Spotlight metadata, meaning the icon will disappear but you’ll still have the awesome search functions available elsewhere. We’ll show you how to hide the Spotlight menu bar icon from appearing in Mac OS X from versions 10.7, 10.8, 10.9, and beyond. It only takes a minute or so, and though it uses Terminal and the command line, it’s not tricky of complicated as long as you follow the instructions.

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“All My Files” is the all-inclusive folder in Mac OS X that includes, well, all of your files. It’s basically a smart folder that lists every user owned or created file, and by default it’s sorted by the files kind: Images, PDF’s, Documents, Music, Movies, Developer, and so on.

You’re not limited to sorting by filetype kind though, and by using the All My Files pulldown menu, you can choose to sort by name, last date opened, date added, date modified, date created, application the files were created in, size, and by label, or to have no sorting at all.
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Apple has aired several iPhone 4S commercials, a few focus on Siri, while others center on iCloud or the new camera.

Each iPhone 4s ad shares the same background music, but you might be wondering, what’s the catchy tunes name?
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We’ve inadvertently skipped a few weeks posting Mac setups, but we’re back again with another reader submitted desk. Stefan sent in this shot of his wonderfully simple Mac setup, the gear includes the aluminum MacBook unibody model (released before Apple turned it into the MacBook Pro 13″), as well as the following:

• iPhone 3Gs
• Magic Mouse
• Bamboo Wacom
• G-Drive mini

For those interested, the wallpaper can be downloaded here from Stefans site.

Send in your own Apple and Mac desk setups to osxdailycom@gmail.com

Looking for a couple new iOS games to play this weekend? EAGames is offering up two popular iPad games for free today, Flight Control HD and Mirrors Edge. The games couldn’t be more different, Flight Control is an air traffic control simulator and Mirrors Edge is an action side scroller, but they’re both a ton of fun and well worth downloading.

Flight Control for iPhone and iPod touch is also available for free as a separate download, so we’ll include that too. The games usualy sell for $4.99 and $9.99 so download them today while you can get them for free:

• Flight Control HD – (iPad only) – App Store
• Flight Control – (iPhone & iPod touch) – App Store
• Mirrors Edge – (iPad only) – App Store

Videos of gameplay below:
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Completely disabling and reenabling Spotlight in Mac OS X Lion, OS X Mountain Lion, and OS X Mavericks can be done with the help of the Terminal. The following command unloads the Spotlight mds agent from launchd, thereby preventing the daemon from running or indexing any drives entirely.

Open up the Terminal (found in /Applications/Utilities/) and enter the following commands based on the need to either disable or reenable Spotlight indexing. This will effect indexing on all drives connected to the Mac.
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Apple has started to air a new iTunes TV ad featuring The Beatles. The commercial is called “Covers” and transitions through The Beatles catalog that is available on iTunes, with the classic Beatles song “Magical Mystery Tour” playing in the background of the commercial.

This feels very much like an Apple ad, although it’s obviously targeting a slightly different demographic than the new “Share the Fun” iPod touch commercial does.

The ads release coincides with the iBookstore version of The Beatles Yellow Submarine, a free illustrated book from the iBookstore.

Looking to get an iPad 2 for the holidays? By far the cheapest place to buy one right now is directly through Apple’s very own online refurb store, where prices are discounted up to $100.

If you’re thinking that refurbished gear is sketchy, think again, because Apple’s refurbished iPads all come with the exact same 1-year warranty of a brand new iPad, plus all refurbs include a brand new battery and outer shell, guaranteeing the device will look and feel brand new. At these discounts and with the same Apple warranty, these prices are hard to beat.

Models are available in both black and white:

• iPad 2 16GB Wi-Fi: $419
• iPad 2 32GB Wi-Fi: $499
• iPad 2 64GB Wi-Fi: $599
• iPad 2 16GB 3G: $549
• iPad 2 32GB 3G: $629
• iPad 2 64GB 3G: $729

Check them out on store.apple.com

Availability of the 3G models is dependent on the carrier you want, with the 64GB AT&T models currently being sold out. These will probably sell out quick, so move fast if you want to get one.

An untethered iOS 5 jailbreak looks to be released soon, as indicated by a video released by the Chronic Dev Team showing off an iPod touch running such a jailbreak. Posted to Twitter by developer @pod2g, the video shown below clearly demonstrates an iOS 5 device rebooting and working normally while maintaining the jailbroken state, proving the untethered status.

The upcoming release is said to work on both iOS 5 and iOS 5.0.1, and while the video shows an iPod touch, it is unclear if the untether will work on iPad 2 and iPhone 4S. Presumably those devices will be tested at a later time when the jailbreak has been refined. No release date has been set, but typically these teaser videos show up not long before public availability of a new jailbreak.

Current jailbreaks for iOS 5 and iOS 5.0.1 are tethered, meaning they must be connected to a computer and booted with the assistance of a helper application. This is more of a nuisance than anything else, because if a device runs out of battery on the road you must be around a computer to have it working again.

Although you can set scrollbars to always display in windows, there is no option to show the actual scrollbar arrows anymore in Mac OS X. A simple workaround to get used to this is to start using the keyboards up and down arrow keys instead:
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