Distraction-free writing apps are becoming increasingly popular and the appeal is easy to see, if you just want to write, why do you need to be surrounded by a gazillion buttons and toolbars? These apps are fairly simple and there’s a slew of choices, many charge unreasonably high prices on the app store, but that’s why FocusWriter is so great – it’s a quality distraction-free writing app and it’s completely free (and open source).

The appearance is highly customizable so you can set whatever font and background works best for you, do this by dropping from the “Settings” menu and selecting “Themes”. Outside of the eyecandy, there are also a variety of genuinely useful writing features, and it’ll keep track of word count, page count, paragraph count, character count, as well as the ability to set writing goals either by time or by words written. You see all these details by hovering over the bottom of the FocusWriter screen (see screenshot below), so they’re not always visible or in your way. Really the worst thing about FocusWriter is it’s ugly icon, but if that’s your only complaint about an app then you’ve got it pretty good.

Download FocusWriter for free

The app is cross-platform compatible, so you can run it in Mac OS X, Windows, or Linux.

Sidenote: For those that are interested, the top screenshot is using a slightly modified version of the wood floors wallpaper (JPG) that I also use as my custom Dashboard background image. The bottom two images are default themes.

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Want to hide some files in plain sight on a Mac? This walkthrough will detail how you can make an invisible folder on the Mac that features some unique properties; the invisible folder will be invisible to the eye when browsing in Finder, but the folder will not be invisible to the click. Instead, you’ll use a secret click in a specific location to access the invisible folder.

Sounds neat, right? It is, this is a really great trick that I first learned many years ago to obfuscate files in plain view, and it still works great in modern Mac OS releases too. It’s a multi-step process, here’s how it works:

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The iWork suite under Mac OS X 10.7 includes a rather peculiar default option that backs up every files prior version that you are working on, as a separate file in the same folder. Instead of the backups only being accessible from Versions, this spills out into the Finder, where a file called “Document.pages” will also have a “Backup of Document.pages” file stored in the same directory. This quickly turns into a giant cluttered mess for students or anyone else who works with a lot of Pages files, since essentially a duplicate of each one is stored in the same folder.

Here’s how to turn off these backups and stop them showing up in the Finder, this is the same for Pages and anything else in the iWork Suite:

• From Pages, pull down the Pages menu and select “Preferences”
• Choose the General tab and look next to “Saving” for “Back up previous version when saving” – uncheck this box

This will stop storing the backup files in the Finder, but unfortunately this also seems to disable the Versions feature for the app too, so keep that in mind before you turn this off and get used to hitting Command+S often again. Automatic backups and versioning are undoubtedly a useful feature, but this is rather bizarre and fairly un-Applelike to clutter folders with excess files, so maybe it’s just an oversight or a bug.

If you’ve visited the Sharing Preference panel in the newer versions of Mac OS X you may have noticed there is no longer the direct option to enable an FTP server to share files and folders. Well, at least there isn’t an obvious option, but the FTP and SFTP server function does still exist, the two have just been split into different functionalities, with the new versions of OS X preferring SFTP rather than FTP. Regardless of what you want to use, setting up a server for either of them is extremely simple, and we’ll walk through how to start either an FTP or SFTP server in OS X.

Each of these FTP/SFTP server tricks work in all new versions of OS X, be it OS X Yosemite 10.10.x, Mavericks 10.9, Mountain Lion 10.8, or 10.7 Lion.
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An alleged iPhone 4S packaging label adds adds further confusion to the iPhone 5‘s existence and possible launch next week, and could indicate that Apple will only be releasing an incremental hardware update to the existing iPhone 4, rather than an all new redesign.

The label, shown above, was discovered by 9to5mac after being posted to an unspecified Chinese forum. Though initially discounted, one of their most reliable sources said the model number on the label made sense:

The model number from the label is MD239 (a 16GB unit), while the model number for the “better” (likely 32GB unit) is MD234. According to Mr. X, this sequence is sensible, but could just be a coincidence. If legitimate, the next-generation iPhone will be marketed as the iPhone 4S

9to5Mac goes further and says the next generation iPhone is in Apple’s inventory systems now, although they point out that the ‘iPhone 4S’ name shouldn’t be considered confirmed.

This is the second piece of recent evidence to suggest the iPhone 4S exists, at least in name, the first showing up last week in the form of a ‘4S’ labeled Otterbox case.

Outside of case designs, analyst reports, and a variety of imaginative 3rd party mockups, there has been no evidence that a redesigned iPhone 5 exists, although Apple is notoriously secretive with unreleased products.

VIM is a powerful command line text editor that is wildly popular with developers and system administrators that is accessible by typing ‘vim’ in the terminal. For those that haven’t used it before, it has a relatively steep learning curve, and the interface can be confusing until you figure out how it works and start memorizing some of the commands. That’s what this interactive VIM tutorial aims to do, help you learn the basics of VIM so you can start using the text editor with some confidence.

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Time Machine in Mac OS X Lion initiates a sometimes useful, sometimes not feature: local backups. Called snapshots, this seems to be kicked off when your primary Mac is a laptop and the Time Machine backup is an external drive, so OS X Lion compensates for the potentially unavailable external disk by keeping an additional backup locally on the Macs primary hard drive. This has its obvious advantages, since you can restore to past Time Machine backups right away from anywhere, but if you’re trying to conserve disk space this can be a real pain.

Note: Time Machine local backups are only stored if you have Time Machine enabled in general.

Disable Time Machine Local Backup Storage

Here’s how to turn off local backups:

• Launch Terminal from /Applications/Utilities
• Enter the following command:

sudo tmutil disablelocal

• Enter the admin password when requested to disable local backups

Re-Enable Local Time Machine Backups

Of course this tip would only be half useful if we didn’t show you how to turn this back on. The steps are the same as above, except with the following command entered into the Terminal instead:
sudo tmutil enablelocal

Remember, if you disable this feature you will not have local backups anymore, so if something goes wrong you will be out of luck. It’s important to have regular backups of your data, and so if you’re going to disable this be sure to still use Time Machine, perhaps even initiating a manual backup before you disconnect the drive, in order to preserve a recent copy of your data.

If you’re anxious to compare the new Kindle Fire tablet to the iPad 2, or even the Nook Color, than this handy chart from The Verge makes it nice and easy.

What obviously stands out here is that the iPad 2 dominates every conceivable spec in the chart, minus the higher price point of course. For that reason (and others), I’m not sure if this is a fair comparison but people will be wanting to compare the devices anyway. The iPad 2 clearly has many more features, a larger screen, significantly more powerful CPU & GPU, but is also priced at at least 2.5x the Kindle tablet, and if anything this comparison does a great job of illustrating that the iPad is really in it’s own league.

Amazon has announced the Kindle Fire, the companies first true entry into the tablet market, and what is seen by many as the first real iPad competitor. Backed by Amazon’s massive content library of movies, TV, songs, magazines, books, and apps, the Kindle fire is priced at $199 and is set to be released to US markets on November 15, 2011. Orders are said to be shipping out on a first-come first-serve basis, and you can pre-order the device now through Amazon.com.

Now lets get to the interesting stuff:

Kindle Fire Tech Specs

Most of the anticipated specs are true and some of the technical details are even better than the original rumors, like a dual-core CPU, not to mention the lower price point:

• 7″ multi-touch color IPS display
• 1024×600 pixel resolution at 169 ppi
• Dual-Core CPU
• 512MB RAM
• Wi-Fi – 802.11b/g/n
• 8GB internal storage
• Unlimited cloud storage of Amazon content
• 8 hour battery life
• USB 2.0 micro port
• Top mounted speakers and audio jack
• Runs highly modified Android 2.3 OS
• Tied to Amazon account for immediate setup, no tethering to PC / Mac required
• Amazon Silk cloud-accelerated web browser
• Free month of Amazon prime with purchase
• 1 year warranty
• 7.5″ x 4.7″ x 0.45″
• 14.6 ounces (weighs slightly less than a pound at 0.9lbs or 414 grams)

Noticeably absent from the tech specs are: no camera, no microphone, no 3G access, no GPS, but for the very low price of $199 the lack of certain features isn’t too surprising.

You can read more about the Kindle Fire on Amazon.com

Alongside the Kindle Fire tablet, Amazon also released a variety of new Kindle readers, including the new Kindle Touch, which has a 6″ e-Ink multi-touch display and is also offered in a 3G version. Amazon’s e-readers are not really viewed as competitors to the iPad, whereas the Kindle Fire tablet clearly is, and it will be interesting to see if the device puts any dents in Apple’s longstanding tablet market domination.

Amazon Kindle Fire’s first TV commercial is below, quoting Voltaire:
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Want to check the download speed of something you’re getting from iTunes or the iOS App Store? No sweat, you can check not only the progress of the download, but also see the transfer speed of what is being downloaded from iTunes.

• From the sidebar of iTunes, click on Store, then go to “Downloads”
• This shows a list of whatever items are currently downloading, now all you need to do is click on the progress bar to show the transfer rate

Super simple, right? This offers an easy way to determine how fast any iOS good or media file is downloading to your Mac from within iTunes. Keep in mind that this may not be reflective of your overall bandwidth or internet connection speed, because latency with Apple servers also impacts the speed of transfers.

This works similar for the Mac App Store as well if you want to check how your OS X app downloads are going too.

Firefox 7 is now available to download for all supported platforms, the new release has an emphasis on improved memory management and speed, and it does provide a noticeable difference in snappiness when loading pages or browsing the web.

The benefits are best seen if you keep Firefox open for a long time (who ever closes their web browser anyway?), use a lot of tabs, and view pages with a lot of images or text, and in my usage I can confirm it feels more responsive and has a lower memory footprint in OS X. The Mozilla dev team suggests that version 7 will use as much as 50% less memory, but I haven’t seen that dramatic of a difference. If you use Firefox for any browsing purposes or rely on it for plugins like Firebug, it’s well worth downloading.

You can grab Firefox 7 directly from Mozilla.org here

As usual, Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux are available concurrently. If you have plugins installed, expect a few to nag about compatibility, but they all worked for me anyway.

Apple has confirmed the expected October 4th iPhone media event by sending out invites to a small group of press. The image above, sent to AllThingsD, ThisIsMyNext, SlashGear, and LoopInsight shows the invite to a 10:00AM PST event on their Cupertino campus, which only says “Let’s talk iPhone.”

There is increasing evidence that the release date of iPhone 5 will be a week after the event on Friday, October 14th, despite nobody knowing what the iPhone 5 will look like, or whether Apple will only release an “iPhone 4S” hardware update. Stay tuned.

OS X Lion’s Restore function is what causes app windows to re-open after you’ve relaunched an app, and people seem to either love it or hate it. Sure you can turn it off completely, but that’s a bit overkill if you only don’t want certain apps to restore their windows, and still want resume to work in others.

That is exactly what RestoreMeNot allows you to do; control which apps use window restore, and which don’t. This is easily done through RestoreMeNot’s preference panel list, where anything added to it will disable the feature when you relaunch the app.

Download RestoreMeNot now (direct link) or visit the dev site

Apps like this are probably the best solution to use if you’re not comfortable with using defaults write commands to disable Resume on a per application basis, and you don’t want to disable the feature completely via System Preferences.

Quick note: If you get a message telling you to launch an app first, that’s because it relies on the saved state folders existing. This is much in the same way of manually blocking restore works when you lock down the individual saved state directories, but of course if they don’t exist, they can’t be locked.

[ via @viticci ]

Two vastly different analyst reports do a great job of indicating the immense confusion surrounding the next-gen iPhone launch, which is due next week on October 4th. While some analysts are continuing to predict an all new redesigned iPhone 5 released alongside a low-end iPhone 4S, other reports suggest only one new iPhone is going to be pushed out by Apple this year, and that it’s just an incremental hardware update to the iPhone 4.

iPhone 5 is Aluminum Unibody, iPhone 4S is iPod touch Replacement

The first report from Deutsch Bank, as relayed to AppleInsider, suggests that iPhone 5 is expected to be a “completely redesigned handset” featuring “an aluminum unibody construction to replace the current glass back of the iPhone 4” and that it will have a slightly larger screen.

Additionally, Deutsche Banks Chris Whitmore suspects that the so called iPhone 4S is basically an iPod touch replacement, providing a cheaper high margin device that Apple can aim at emerging markets.

The anticipated iPhone 4S is viewed as essentially an 8GB iPod touch with an added cellular antenna

The idea of two phones released simultaneously, one of which will replace the iPod touch, is an appealing theory, but there are other reports that indicate that’s not what is happening.

iPhone 5 Looks Like iPhone 4, No iPhone 4S

Meanwhile, an apparent confirmation from the frequently reliable All Things Digital branch of the Wall Street Journal suggests that a dramatically redesigned iPhone is not going to be released this year. Furthermore, they seem to agree with the idea that Apple is not going to release two different iPhone models at all, throwing water on the dual iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 theories.

Citing a report that circulated last week from yet another analyst, AllThingsD seems to confirm two main points about iPhone 5: that Apple will release only one new iPhone this year, and that the device will look practically identical to the existing iPhone 4:

[According to Wedge Partners analyst Brian Blair] Apple’s fifth-generation iPhone will be an incremental update to the current iPhone 4, not a major redesign.

This is followed by specific quotes from analyst Brian Blair that seem to discredit the dual-release iPhone 4S & 5 rumors:

“We don’t expect a second, dramatically different iPhone to accompany this as we don’t think Apple needs to have 3 models in the market to address the high end, mid-tier and low end since the iPhone 4 (with memory lowered to 8 GB) will drop to $99 and effectively attack those markets.”

“Why would Apple bump up only the processor specs of the iPhone 4 in addition to a newly designed iPhone 5 if the goal is to sell it into the pre-paid market at a lower cost,” Blair asks. “A 4S would simply cost more and a 4S itself wouldn’t create a mid-tier market unless it was priced at $99 and the iPhone 4 went to $49 with the new iPhone at $199. We see this scenario as unlikely.”

AllThingsD John Paczkowski responds to this simply with “Agreed”.

In terms of hardware specs, other than the “[possibility of] a larger screen”, the report echos what has long been expected by the rumor mill: A5 CPU borrowed from the iPad 2, 1GB RAM, 8MP camera, and a ‘worldphone’ baseband that brings GSM and CDMA compatibility onto a single chip.

iPhone 5 Specific iOS 5 Features a Big Selling Point?

Finally, Mark Gurman of 9to5mac provides information about an next-gen-iPhone-only iOS 5 feature called “Assistant” that will be “the new device’s biggest selling point”, which lets you speak commands to the iPhone through an intelligent voice command system. 9to5mac has a detailed summary of the Assistant feature that is well worth a read, and their report also reaffirms the aforementioned hardware specs from other rumors.

The most glaringly obvious aspect to all these reports is that nobody knows exactly what’s coming out of Cupertino next week from Apple. About the only thing anyone can agree on is the devices availability, where a mid-month release date looks like October 14, if for no other reason that it being in the middle of the month, with iOS 5 coming slightly earlier.

Reverse scrolling, better known as ‘natural scrolling’ for OS X Lion users, is when the content on screen follows your finger movements, just like iOS. This is activated by default for vertical scrolling, but what about horizontal?

Oddly enough, scrolling left and right maintains the old style scrolling behavior, moving the content away from your fingers instead, but with a free utility called Scroll Reverser we can change this.

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Have you ever wanted to get a look at the contents of a package file on the Mac, but without installing it? You can do that with the help of an excellent command line. This continues on with our series of inspecting the contents of app installers, and in this case we’ll demonstrate how to extract package files and sort through their contents without actually installing them onto Mac OS X.

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A new report says that Apple is blacking out selected vacation days during the second week of October, strongly indicating that iOS 5, iCloud, and iPhone 5 are expected to be released that week. Specifically, AppleInsider learned that Apple “has in some locations blacked out vacation time for employees from October 9th through 12th and October 14th through 15th“.

More Evidence for an iPhone 5 Release on October 14 or 15
The October 15th date is particularly relevant because several weeks ago, French Telecom CEO Stephane Richard stated that the iPhone 5 would be “out October 15th”. Due to timezone differences, if the EU and US had corresponding release schedules, October 14 could also be the release date in the USA, which may explain why those dates are blacked out from the employees vacation calendar.

Building Evidence for an iOS 5 Release on October 10
Breaking down the blacked out dates of October 9th to 12th, AppleInsider cites three additional pieces of evidence that strongly suggest iOS 5 and iCloud will be made available on those dates:

• AppleCare is expecting an increase in iOS related call volume on Monday, October 10th
• Apple’s past release history shows an iOS update released several days prior to a new hardware launch
• A corresponding Twitter developer event with specific focus on iOS 5 is scheduled between Oct 10 and Oct 12

Similarly, a tipster with a fairly accurate track record, including the specific OS X Lion release date, suggested to OSXDaily via Twitter that Monday October 10th would be a date that some new Apple product or software will become publicly available. Separately, OSXDaily has learned that Apple has been ramping up hiring in their Austin, Texas call center over the past month to prepare for an increase in iCloud and iOS related inquiries.

Apple has only said that iOS 5 would be released in the “Fall” of this year. While all of these specific dates remain officially unconfirmed and speculative, it’s widely accepted that the iPhone 5 will be announced on October 4th at an event led by CEO Tim Cook on Apple’s home campus, One Infinite Loop.

Apple intends to host the October 4th media event on their own campus in Cupertino, California, according to a new report from WSJ’s AllThingsD. The event is expected to be headlined by the iPhone 5 (or iPhone 4S), in addition to introducing the next iPod touch, iOS 5, iCloud, and Mac OS X 10.7.2 update.

This is a break from Apple’s tradition of hosting a larger event at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center. Although AllThingsD isn’t sure as to why the events location is different, they propose a few theories:

Perhaps the release date was too much of a moving target to risk booking a large space like Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), which has hosted a number of big product unveils in the past. Perhaps, the company felt a more intimate venue was best for newly installed CEO Tim Cook’s first media event. Perhaps YBCA was simply already booked. Whatever the reason, the world will get it’s first look at the next iPhone at Apple’s Town Hall Auditorium in early October.

The other side to not booking the YBCA is that it has kept the event date hidden from the public, something that was relatively easy to guess due to the public accessibility of the Yerba Buena Centers event calendar. If it wasn’t for AllThingsD’s sources inside Apple, the October 4th launch date would still be unknown.

Few details on any new hardware have surfaced, and there is an ongoing debate as to whether a true iPhone 5 will be revealed or if the iPhone 4S will be the next-gen iPhone. While there is plenty of speculation in the tech world as to the specifics of the next phone, it’s important to remember that Apple goes to incredible lengths to keep products secret, as demonstrated by the immense security precautions surrounding the iPad when it was in testing prior to public launch.