If you’ve been following the Carrier IQ brouhaha and ensuing fallout, you might be interested to know that it’s very easy to disable the Carrier IQ service, logging, and reporting on iPhone or any other iOS device:

• Tap on “Settings”
• Go to “General” and tap on “About”
• Tap on “Diagnostics and Usage”
• Tap on “Don’t Send”

If this was already disabled for battery saving purposes or whatever other reason, you should have nothing to worry about, if not, then this should prevent Carrier IQ from sending any data over to Apple.

For some background here, Carrier IQ is network diagnostic software that some cellular carriers have been installing on smartphones and tablets. Going beyond just gathering network diagnostics, Carrier IQ was found on some Android phones to be gathering personal and private information, including phone call logs, text message content, and even encrypted web searches, or, put simply, it’s a substantial invasion of personal privacy. Later, renowned iOS hacker chpwn found references to Carrier IQ in some versions of iOS, but it isn’t nearly as nefarious as what was discovered on Android, doesn’t track nearly as much personal information, and thankfully, it’s much easier to disable.

Keep in mind that Apple also told WSJ’s AllThingsD that they stopped supporting the feature in iOS 5 for most of their products, saying the following:

“We stopped supporting CarrierIQ with iOS 5 in most of our products and will remove it completely in a future software update. With any diagnostic data sent to Apple, customers must actively opt-in to share this information, and if they do, the data is sent in an anonymous and encrypted form and does not include any personal information. We never recorded keystrokes, messages or any other personal information for diagnostic data and have no plans to ever do so.”

We should expect an update to iOS in the near future to address this on any remaining devices.

Command line users who wish to add an additional layer of security to their keyboarding within Terminal app can find a helpful privacy feature built into the Mac client. Whether aiming for generally increasing security, if using a public Mac, or are simply concerned about things like keyloggers or any other potentially unauthorized access to your keystrokes and character entries, you can enable this feature in the Mac OS X Terminal app to secure keyboard entry and any command line input into the terminal.

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Mission Control in Mac OS X groups together thumbnail previews of windows from the same app. By hovering the mouse cursor over a cluster of these thumbnails and scrolling up on a multitouch trackpad or Magic Mouse (or scrolling up the mouse wheel with other mice), you can cause the cluster to expand, showing more detail in those behind the main window. Give it a try now—it’s pretty useful.

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This short clip of Steve Jobs sharing his thoughts on life is well worth watching. Taken from a 1995 interview when Jobs was still working at NeXT, he reflects on some important lessons and simple facts about life and the world around us. Here’s a great inspirational quote:

“Everything around you that you call life, was made up by people who were no smarter than you”

It’s just under 2 minutes long, don’t miss it.

(via TheNextWeb)

The Holiday season is here, and what better way to bring the Holiday Apple cheer to your home than some iPhone and iPad ornaments hanging on your tree. Sure, you can buy some of these from an Etsy store that MacTrast found, but realistically you can make iOrnaments yourself just by printing out high quality press images for the iPhone and iPad. You can find examples from Google Images or get press packs directly from Apple:

• iPad press photos
• iPhone press photos

Print them out, grab a pair of scissors, some glue and some cardboard, and make your Christmas tree the envy of the neighborhood.

Mac users may have noticed that the longstanding “Save As” function has disappeared as of OS X Lion, and’Save As’ is something that many Mac users have become accustomed to using over the years. The default choices replacing “Save As” are two different features, Duplicate and Export, neither of which work quite the same, and neither of which are attached to a keyboard shortcut.

If you want to get your “Save As” function back on the Mac again, we will show you how to create your own keyboard shortcut to mimmic the old behavior of “Save As” so that when you hit Command+Shift+S, a Save (Export or Save As) dialog box will appear, allowing you to do the exact same Save As function that existed before.

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This is a neat little hack that lets you activate any stack within the Mac Dock by hovering over it and making the scroll gesture on a multitouch trackpad or Magic Mouse, or by rolling the scroll wheel on a mouse.

Do the same trick while hovering the mouse cursor over an app icon in the Dock, and App Exposé will activate. You will see open program windows for that particular app and—with compatible apps—the app’s document history. This is similar to the App Exposé option within the More Gestures section of the Trackpad entry within System Preferences.
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If you already signed up for a few of the 10 free online Computer Science classes from Stanford University, get ready to pack your self-learning schedule even further, because three professors from Stanford University and University of California Berkeley are teaming to offer a new free online course on Computer Security, starting in February 2012.

The class is a budding hackers dream, aiming to teach you how to design secure systems and write secure code. Specific topics covered include:

• How to find vulnerabilities
• Limiting the impact of security vulnerabilities
• Memory safety vulnerabilities
• Vulnerability detection
• Sandboxing & isolation
• Web security
• Network security
• Malware detection and defense
• Mobile platform security

Even the homework and labs sound fun, you’re basically finding exploits and then patching them yourself:

Course homework and labs will teach students how to find vulnerabilities and how to fix them. The labs are designed to help students practice the principles of secure system design.

Prerequisites include concepts of computer science and operating systems, and at least some programming knowledge of C and C++.

• Computer Security – Classes start February 2012, sign up now, everything is free

Check out the video below to see a brief overview of the course, and for a brief introduction with the professors who will lead the class:

If computer security isn’t your thing, don’t forget to check out their other free online course offerings, each class starts early next year.

Safari 5.1.2 has been released, and if it sounds like just another minor update to put off, it’s not, it improves overall stability and resolves some of the annoying memory management issues that existed in the prior versions of the browser. Also fixed is the flashing page issue, and a problem with displaying PDF’s within web pages.

You can update through Software Update or download Safari 5.1.2 directly from Apple.

Installing Safari 5.1.2 requires a reboot, and is available for Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2 and Snow Leopard 10.6.8.

Need to adjust Mac Mail app so that it sends new email compositions as plain text? This can be a popular change for some email situations, and it’s easy to make the adjustment to plain text emails in Mail for Mac.

Email defaults to wanting to send as rich text, meaning bold text, highlighting, fonts, italics, and the usual formatting options that correspond with page layout and fancier looking mail messages. But when you’re sending a lot of emails across platforms, say from Mac OS Mail app to Windows Outlook, for example, it can be a good idea to use the ‘Plain Text’ format for all email correspondence. This can help to avoid any font or formatting irregularities and size oddities when sending emails between platforms that may interpret the mail text formats differently, a situation that can be particularly obvious when sending from modern operating systems to more outdated versions (like Mac OS to Windows XP). Fortunately, you can adjust the Mail app in Mac OS to default to send emails as plain text, eliminating any potential issues.

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A wide variety of websites and online services are region restricted to the USA: Hulu, Netflix, Pandora, annual credit reports, some banks, the list is significant. Region restrictions are generally something you don’t notice until you need to access a website from outside the USA, and then they’re a huge pain. We’ll show you how to get around region restrictions securely by using a SOCKS proxy and SSH tunnel.

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The smartphone discussion is typically focused around iPhone and Android, but Microsoft is still cooking up it’s own unique smartphone OS: Windows Phone 7. Now thanks to an HTML5 demo, the curious can try out a basic Windows Phone 7.5 experience directly on your iPhone.

Open up Safari and throw in the following URL:

• http://aka.ms/wpdemo

If you haven’t used a Windows Phone before, the first thing you’ll notice is the similarity to the upcoming Windows 8 OS, which Microsoft says is the future of their desktop and tablet efforts (and probably smartphones too). Lots of tiles, swiping around, it’s fast and fluid and an enjoyable enough GUI. Perhaps best of all for, it’s original, as opposed to the shameless borrowing everyone else seems to have done with iOS.

Is this demo going to swing you away from an iPhone? Doubt it, but it’s always fun to see what the competition is cooking. (via Gizmodo)

Flick down with two fingers on a trackpad or Magic Mouse in Mac OS X and you’ll experience inertial scrolling, where after your finger has stopped moving the page continues to scroll in the intended direction until it slowly stops. This fluid and natural scrolling experience comes from the iOS world, and while it works quite well on the desktop, it’s not for everyone.

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iOS 5.1 beta 1 continues to spill the beans for Apple product ID’s, with the latest find being a direct reference to Apple’s next-generation iPhone, referenced as “iPhone 5,1”, and two unreleased iPad’s, referenced as “iPad3,2” and “iPad3,3”.

iPhone5,1 would technically be the sixth generation iPhone, which may indicate iPhone 6 is the proper name for the device. Of course, nothing but speculation is known about the iPhone 5 (6?), but references appearing in current iOS 5.1 beta builds suggest there are working prototypes that are running iOS 5.1 right now in Cupertino. Most rumors suggest the next generation iPhone will have a 4″ screen, a thinner aluminum enclosure, and likely an A6 CPU, and a release time frame could be somewhere between summer and fall of 2012.

The iPhone 5,1 reference was first discovered by @Filippobiga on Twitter – you can follow us there too – who also pointed out the references to two unreleased iPad 3 models, also shown in the screenshot as iPad 3,2 and iPad 3,3. Presumably, those are for the upcoming iPad model that is expected to debut sometime in early 2012 with a retina display.

The recently released iOS 5.1 beta 1 has already uncovered a few hints about potential upcoming products from Apple. First, the Sprint iPad 2 reference, then an iPhone 5 reference, and now a codename reference to an unreleased Apple TV unit dubbed “J33” has been found.

Other than the reference to the devices codename there is no additional information on the unreleased Apple TV device. It’s possible the device will simply be a revamped existing Apple TV model that includes an A5 CPU and the ability to export 1080p video, which 9to5mac suggests could be the case, and there is also a vague possibility it could be the rumored “real” Apple television.

Currently, the Apple TV is a set-top box that costs $99, allowing users to stream iTunes and video content directly to their TV. After the passing of the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs, there have been numerous rumors regarding a real Apple television set, said to debut sometime in 2012 or 2013. Dubbed “iTV”, the television is said to run iOS and feature Siri as the TV’s remote control, with heavy reliance on iCloud services.

Apple has seeded iOS 5.1 beta 1 to developers, the build is 9B5117b and runs on iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad, iPad 2, and iPod touch 3rd and 4th gen. For those in the iOS developer program, you can download the iOS 5.1 beta right now directly from Apple’s dev center as IPSW files. Alongside the iOS 5.1 beta came a new build of Xcode 4.3, which is also required for developing anything for iOS 5.1.

The 5.1 beta notes include many mentions of bugs, you can read the full release notes on 9to5mac if you’re interested. They also uncovered references to an unreleased iPad 2 model in the beta, which they presume is for the Sprint network.

Have an Android phone or tablet that you want to transfer files and movies to and from your Mac with? Maybe you got a new Kindle Fire that is freshly rooted, and you’re looking to move some of your own movies and pictures to it? No sweat, there are some really easy ways to do this, one of which is Google’s free Android File Transfer app, which is compatible with almost every Android smartphone or tablet out there.
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Skyrim is one of those games that is so massive with so many individual elements that it could take forever to try and cover everything. Included all over the game is a massive collections of books that fill in elements of lore, backstory, information on quests and characters, you name it, but who has time to read all of that while you’re playing a game?

Now you can read your Skyrim books outside of gameplay, because some guy discovered the all the in-game books are stored as plaintext format, which have been translated into easy to download ePub and Mobi formats, ready to be viewed on the iPad, iPhone, Mac, Kindle, Nook, or whatever other reader you might use. If you want to view the .mobi on a Mac or iPad, you’ll need to download the free Kindle app from the App Store.

• Books of Skyrim – MOBI format
• Books of Skyrim – EPUB format

Whether you’re playing Skyrim on a Mac in bootcamp or just sitting on the couch with an Xbox 360 controller, this should be a welcome addition to the nerdfest.

Heads up to CultofMac for the find.