You can now select any number of files from the Mac OS X desktop or a folder and create a new folder containing those selected items.
This is a wildly useful Finder trick for file management and organization, since you can quickly group a collection of files by selecting however many you want to within Finder, then quickly create a folder containing only those selected files or folders.
Making new directories of chosen files is super easy on the Mac, we’ll show you three different methods to create new folders containing selected files (or folders) within Finder on Mac OS. Read more »
It’s unclear why, but the Mac App Store is running a lot slower in OS X Lion for some users, including myself. By slow I mean you’ll encounter nearly constant beachballs as you click from app to app, with the absolute worst offender being the main category sections.
I’m assuming there is an underlying bug or issue with the App Store backend, so a true fix will probably come from Apple to resolve this, but in the meantime I’ve found a couple troubleshooting tips that help to varying extents: deleting caches, and changing a security setting.
Delete Mac App Store Caches
I’ve had some success with deleting the caches, but over time things slow down again. Try this first because it’s the safest method.
Quit the Mac App Store
From the Mac desktop, hit Command+Shift+G and enter:
~/Library/Caches/com.apple.appstore/
Delete everything in this folder
Relaunch the Mac App Store
Turn Off Certificate Revocation List in Keychain Access
Warning: this is more of a workaround than a fix, and it creates a potential security risk by disabling the systems revocation list, use at your own risk and read all steps before proceeding:
Quit the Mac App Store
Launch Keychain Access (use Spotlight or look in Applications > Utilities)
From the Keychain Access menu, select “Preferences” and then click on the “Certificates” tab
Change “Certificate Revocation List (CRL)” to “Off”
Quit Keychain Access
Relaunch the Mac App Store
Things should be a lot faster now, but because of the security risk it’s recommended to then go back and change the setting after you have relaunched the Mac App Store. There are mixed reports on if the fix actually sticks around with this method, but for security reasons it is highly recommended:
Keep the Mac App Store is still open
Open Keychain Access again, get back to the “Certificates” tab
Set “Certificate Revocation List (CRL)” back to “Best Attempt”
Quit Keychain Access
This second tip comes from MacStories, which I came across when reading @Viticci’s review of the new Core i5 MacBook Air. He also complained of the slowness of the App Store within Lion, and he’s not in the USA which shows this isn’t just a local server issue either. Read more »
A Mac Pro with two extra NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 video cards and 16GB of RAM is driving these three displays, making one heck of a Mac setup. The left screen is hosting a Windows 7 virtual machine in Parallels full time, while everything else is all Mac OS X. Also pictured: an iPad 1 and iPad 2, iPhone 4, Magic Trackpad and wireless keyboard, and assorted other hardware.
If you’ve found yourself stuck in Chromes full screen mode, you’re not alone. Chrome has it’s benefits, like syncing and the native omnibar, but unfortunately Chrome does not play well with Full Screen Mode under Mac OS X Lion – at all. You are free to click the full screen button to get in, but trying to escape from it can be a fruitless endeavor, with the menubar inconsistently appearing or not appearing at all.
If you’re stuck in full screen, hit Command+Shift+F to escape. This is the only guaranteed way to escape, although you can try, often fruitlessly, to poke around in the area of the menu bar hoping it will appear so you can access the exit function from the View menu (see screenshot).
The word is that Chrome will get native true full screen support soon, but until then you can try using Maximizer which works across all apps. And just be sure to remember that keyboard shortcut, it’ll save you a headache or two.
Update: The latest Chrome Canary build includes Full Screen support for OS X Lion, although it behaves slightly differently than normal full screen mode.
Apple has released iOS 5 beta 5, the latest build is 9A5288d and the same hardware is supported as prior iOS 5 betas, including iPad 2, iPad, iPhone 4 GSM & CDMA, iPhone 3GS, and iPod touch 3rd and 4th gen.
You can download iOS 5 beta 5 in one of two ways:
OTA delta update directly on your iOS device – this is the easiest way to get the update and also has the smallest bandwidth footprint. You can access Over-the-Air updates from iOS 5 beta 4 devices by tapping on Settings > General > Software Update
Download the device specific IPSW files from Apple’s iOS Dev Center
The OTA updates are by far the easiest, plus they allow you use one of the new and exciting features of iOS 5 in the process. If you’re not a developer, you’ll have to wait until the official iOS 5 release this fall.
In addition to iOS5 beta 5, a new version of Xcode 4.2 has been released for devs, as well as iTunes 10.5 beta 5 and a new version of iOS for Apple TV2.
In Apple’s quest to simplify the Mac user experience, they hid the windows status bar in Mac OS X starting with Lion and continuing through with Mountain Lion, Mavericks, OS X Yosemite, El Capitan, and Sierra. Obviously that change is here for good, and while this definitely makes for a cleaner appearance when looking at folders on the Mac, if you actually like to know how much disk space you have available at a quick glance, it’s kind of annoying.
Fortunately, if you want to see those status details of any Finder windows, including the disk space and file counts of an active folder or directory, you can change the status bar visibility and make the available space indicator visible again. This is extremely easy and just a quick toggle adjustment away.
We get a lot of silly submissions but this one from Reddit takes the weekly cake for it’s creative modification to the iPhone AC Adapter plugs. If you want to do this yourself, grab a couple of wiggly eyes and get sticking.
Apple has begun to crack down on registered iOS developers who are selling UDID activation slots for iOS 5 betas to other users, in some cases sending email warnings to devs, but also deactivating other developer accounts completely. Apple is even flagging some individual UDID’s and making the devices unusable, forcing users to downgrade from iOS 5, in an effort to prevent non-developers from using the beta software.
This information comes from AppleInsider who cites a third party Kathrikk who apparently has second hand experience:
Many of my developer friends have reported that Apple has sent an email warning which said that they have identified the developer to be selling his slots for some users to get early preview of iOS.
And Apple has started closing the developer accounts for selling the slots and also, have flagged the UDIDs associated with that dev account, thus making the iOS 5 device unusable.
A little background information may be helpful to understand what is going on here. In order to run iOS 5 beta, you must have a devices UDID registered with Apple through their developer network. An iPhone or iPad UDID is a unique identification number that functions like a devices serial number, this number is then put onto a whitelist of sorts that allows a specified UDID to download and run the iOS beta software. Some developers have been selling these UDID activations to non-developers so that others could run iOS 5 betas, which is likely a violation of their iOS Developer Agreement.
The reason for all of this? Economics. In terms of costs, a UDID activation obtained through these grey-market methods may cost $10, whereas an officially sanctioned iOS Developer license costs $99 per year directly through Apple. Some developers may have been selling these slots to help recoup the costs of an iOS membership, whereas others were clearly just profiteering on the access to iOS 5 betas. AppleInsider notes a large market in UDID resellers, with one operation allegedly activating over 15,000 UDID’s, which at $10 a pop is a whole lot of cash. We here at OSXDaily actually had to set “UDID” as an automatic spam flag in our comments due to a massive influx of spammers trying to redirect anyone to these grey market sales sites.
Remember, the primary purpose of these transactions are for non-developers to run iOS 5 beta software, which, by the very nature of a beta, is not intended for usage outside of the registered iOS developer network. This is why Apple is cracking down, until iOS 5 is ready for release this fall, they don’t want unauthorized users muddying bug reports, clogging the Genius Bar and Apple Support, or leaving nonsensical complaints on the App Store from clearly illegitimate iOS 5 beta users who aren’t developers.
Update 2: Both TUAW and 9to5mac are raising suspicions about the claim that individual non-developers are being targeted, although 9to5mac does report that one individual who was selling UDID slots confirmed his account was removed. As we and some of our commenters have pointed out, it’s more likely that the other non-developers are simply misinterpreting the scheduled expiration of iOS 5 betas.
If you’re bored with the standard black text on a white background of Terminal, you can really spice up the command line interface by adding a custom background picture. One of our commenters recently asked how to do this, so here we’ll walk through the process. This was written for OS X 10.7 but it’s basically the same in 10.6 and prior, minus the full screen abilities.
Obviously the first thing to do is to find a picture you like, if you plan on using Lion’s full screen Terminal (which looks great) I would suggest using a high resolution image. For the sake of this walkthrough, I’ll use the iCloud.com beta wallpaper because it’s subtle and makes a nice background image, but you’re free to get crazy and use sharks like I did in the screenshot above.
One of the best things about Google Chrome’s user interface is the combined URL and search bar, where a single input bar serves both purposes, but is smart enough to know the difference between a search query and a URL. Safari doesn’t have this feature, but Omnibar fills that gap.
Safari Omnibar combines Safari’s URL bar and search bar into a single searchable input, stripping away the extra search box and simplifying the browsers interface.
Install Omnibar for Safari
Safari Omnibar works with Safari 5 and 5.1 for Mac OS X 10.6 and OS X 10.7. It’s a SIMBL plugin, but the installer also includes SIMBL.
You can download Omnibar here, it’s free and open source. All you need to do is quit Safari, run the pkg installer, and Omnibar will work upon next launch, with the search bar hiding on it’s own.
Unsurprisingly, AT&T is continuing to actively pursue users who partake in unofficial tethering methods by means of a jailbreak. This isn’t really news though, we mentioned that AT&T was cracking down on unofficial tethering back in March, but nonetheless those who are still using apps like MyWi are continuing to get notifications from AT&T.
Earlier in the year, we wrote:
Customers are being notified that their service plans need updating to subscribe to a tethering plan, and that they will be automatically subscribed to a DataPro 4GB package that costs $45 per month if they continue to tether. In the email, AT&T also notes that if customers discontinue the use of tethering, no changes will be made to their plan.
This continues to to be true, but the efforts by AT&T only really effect jailbreakers who use apps like MyWi or PDANet and who still have the grandfathered unlimited data plans. Many users have been expressing frustration in our comments and elsewhere about AT&T’s decision to ditch unlimited data and to charge for tethering. Supposedly there are ways to prevent AT&T from detecting your tethering use, but ultimately it seems like a losing battle, so you should probably get used to paying for the service if you use it. Read more »
The word is that these Lion USB installer drives will officially cost $69, but some users are eligible to receive the USB drive for free – although we don’t yet know the criteria for receiving a Lion installer key at no charge.
This news and confidential screenshot of AppleCare’s internal system come from 9to5mac. You’ll notice in the image that the AppleCare crafted USB flash drives contain “Lion recovery media” which we presume is Apple Care slang for “Lion re-installer”. There is also a note that the usage of the USB drives “depends on how the customer purchased Lion and what computer they are using” suggesting that not all Macs will be to boot from the drives.
We’ll update with more information as it comes in.
Update: One of the commenters on 9to5mac contacted Apple and was told these USB installers are currently only available in Apple Stores, but will soon be available for individual purchase online from Apple.com
You may know already that iOS has the same underlying unix architecture as Mac OS X, and because of this you can SSH into an iPhone or iPad just like you would connect to any other Mac or unix based machine.
As it turns out for us nerdier users, this ability is disabled without a jailbreak, so in order to SSH into your iOS device you will need to jailbreak first. How to do this varies on what version of iOS your hardware is using, but you can find our jailbreak info here depending on your specific iOS version and device model of iPhone or iPad.
To clarify, this is a guide on how to setup the ability to SSH into your iPhone or iPad from another machine, if you are just looking for an SSH client for the iPhone or iPad, Prompt on the iOS App Store is by far the best, and costs $15 or so.
If you hold down many keys in Mac OS X, particularly vowels but also letters like j and n, a little popup menu appears showing an accented character selection window. This is a fairly new change to OS X behavior, replacing the long existing default of a repeating key press instead, where if you hold down a key the letter will repeat endlessly until you let goooooooooooo with repeating letters of that which is held down.
If you want to turn off the character accent selector and re-enable key repetition with extended keypresses, you can easily do so through a defaults write command.
Tired of the linen background image of folders in Launchpad? You can easily change it to anything you want with this simple walkthrough. If you recall our post on changing the Dashboard wallpaper, you’ll find this trick is very similar. Obviously this is OS X Lion only.
First off, you have to use a PNG file, so find one that you want as the new Launchpad folder background image. For the sake of this tutorial I’m going to use the t-shirt background pattern from iCloud beta which I converted to a PNG file myself with Preview (File > Export > PNG). Name your exported PNG file “ecsb_background_tile.png” and then…
From the Mac OS X desktop, hit Command+Shift+G to enter “Go To Folder” and enter the following location:
Find the file named ecsb_background_tile.png and rename it to ecsb_background_tile-backup.png or drag it to your desktop – this is important because it allows you to revert your changes and get back to the linen default
Now drag your own exported PNG image “ecsb_background_tile.png” into the Dock.app Resources directory, you will be asked to authenticate the change because this is a system file
Next you relaunch the Dock by killing it, so open Terminal and type the following:
killall Dock
Open Launchpad and a folder, and enjoy your new background image
Another example of how this could look shows an aluminum background image: Read more »
Yes, Mac OS X Lion is obviously very iOS-like, and now we’re hearing again that Mac OS X and iOS will begin merging late next year into a single unified OS. This is speculation according to Jeffries & Co analyst Peter Misek, who also suggests the parts of the Mac lineup will be moved away from Intel CPU’s after the introduction of a quad-core A6 CPU.
The speculative report suggests the big changes will start at the end of 2012, and the first Mac to move to an ARM A6 CPU would be the MacBook Air, followed several years later by the MacBook Pro and iMac lineup. Here’s the meat of the post on Barrons:
“We believe Apple is looking to merge iOS (iPhones/iPads) with OS X (Macs) into a single platform for apps and cloud services starting in 2012-13.” Specifically, Misek sees the Macbook Air gaining Apple’s next processor, the “A6,” as he calls it, in the second half of 2012, or some time in 2013, following the debut of the chip in the “iPad 3” in the first quarter of 2012, and in the “iPhone 5” next summer.
Misek thinks MacBook “Pro” models and Mac desktops will stick with the current software and Intel processors in order to maximize 64-bit application compatibility, but that they, too, will switch over to an iOS platform by 2016.
Misek suggests the motivation behind the OS X and iOS merger is for better gross margins and licensing deals, where purchased media content will work on any device and be available via iCloud – although apparently nobody told the analyst this ability already exists now with iTunes.
This really isn’t terribly surprising speculation, and we’ve heard talk of Apple ditching Intel CPU’s before. Also, both iOS and Mac OS X are built upon the same underlying architecture anyway, so merging the two in name wouldn’t be a particularly shocking event. Apple does seem to be easing Mac users into an eventual transition with the introduction of things like Launchpad, fullscreen apps, and other iOS-like features embedded into OS X Lion. Read more »
The scrollbars in new versions of Mac OS X are hidden until activated by use, that is, by scrolling, making them invisible by default. This is the new default behavior that works very well if you primarily use a trackpad with your Mac. I use an external mouse with my Mac quite often though, and I find the hidden scrollbars to be annoying when I do. That’s my reason for bringing them back, but other people just like to see when content is available that needs to be scrolled to access.
This quick tip will make users who wish to constantly see available scrolling portions happy, by displaying the scroll bars all the time in Mac OS X.
It’s unclear why, but the Mac App Store is running a lot slower in 
In Apple’s quest to simplify the Mac user experience, they hid the windows status bar in Mac OS X starting with Lion and continuing through with Mountain Lion, Mavericks, OS X Yosemite, El Capitan, and Sierra. Obviously that change is here for good, and while this definitely makes for a cleaner appearance when looking at folders on the Mac, if you actually like to know how much disk space you have available at a quick glance, it’s kind of annoying. 
and get sticking.
Apple has begun to crack down on registered iOS developers who are selling UDID activation slots for 
Unsurprisingly, AT&T is continuing to actively pursue users who partake in unofficial tethering methods by means of a jailbreak. This isn’t really news though, we mentioned that 
Yes, 
