In the never-ending quest to make version numbers irrelevant, Firefox 8 has been released. Technically it’s not supposed to be out until tomorrow, but as with past Firefox releases, the download was pushed early to the Mozilla public FTP servers and is widely available for anyone to pick up for each supported platform (Mac, Windows, Linux).

Features of Firefox 8 include Twitter search integration, improved HTML5 support, better extension/plugin security, and some tab improvements that I couldn’t identify. When you first launch Firefox 8 you’ll encounter the new add-on manager, which checks to make sure you installed the add-ons and not a third party. You’ll also notice that the default Firefox page seems to think it’s a beta version, but when you check the version number it’s 8.0. Firefox 8 feels a bit faster too, particularly when loading from cache.

Download Firefox 8 Now

Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux versions are available, these are direct download links:

• Download Now (Mac OS X)
• Download Now (Windows)
• Download Now (Linux)

Mac OS X Lion users may be disappointed to discover that true Full Screen support is still absent in this release. You can enter into their own baked version of full screen mode with Command+Shift+F, but there is no full screen button in the upper right corner until you’re already in, and the overall approach Firefox takes feels sloppy compared to Safari, Chrome, or any other OS X Lion apps handling of full screen mode. This leaves Firefox as the only remaining popular Mac browser that hasn’t adopted full Lion feature support, but I’m sure it’ll come eventually.

Exciting news for those who like to jailbreak the iPhone and iPad, a Dev Team member has discovered a bug that will allow for an untethered iOS 5 jailbreak. No time estimate has been given by @pod2g, but he cautioned on Twitter not to expect a release soon, although he is actively working on the jailbreak.

There is a jailbreak for iOS 5 available right now but it is limited to a tethered experience. You can read about the difference between tethered and untethered jailbreaks but the simple answer is that an untethered jailbreak is always preferential because it does not require the iOS device to be connected to a computer during boot. This means you can reboot an iPhone or iPad on the go and have full access to all applications, whereas a tether won’t without the assisted boot procedure.

There is a so-called “semi-tether” jailbreak available for iOS 5 right now, and while it’s better than nothing it’s still fairly limited in that it requires a tethered boot for full device and app usage.

Safari has a hidden “Debug” menu that offers some additional features for debugging the browser, including stress and load tests, sampling, javascript error logging, the ability to intentionally crash a page, and more. Intended for Safari developers, the Debug menu is different from the Developer menu, which is geared more at web developers, although there are a few options in the Debug menu that general web developers would find useful as well, notably advanced cache choices and CSS animation controls. If this sounds confusing, just enable both of them and poke around and you’ll quickly see the differences.

Here’s how to enable the hidden Debug menu in Safari for Mac OS X with the assistance of a defaults command string in the terminal.

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We’ve published a variety of fixes for wireless connections dropping in Lion, and even a keepalive script that helps many users maintain a connection in some of the stubborn cases, but some Mac OS X Lion users continue to have problems with their internet connection failing. After diagnosing another MacBook with wireless stability problems post-Lion, I found a solution that hasn’t failed yet and doesn’t require any of the other tips.

Before proceeding, make sure you have done the following:

• Be sure you are running the latest version of Mac OS X ( get 10.7.2+)
• Apply all available system and software updates available to your Mac from  Apple menu > Software Update
• Reset the WiFi Router

After you’re positive you’re on the newest version of OS X and have all software updates applied to the Mac in question, proceed with the solution:

Add a New Network Location & Renew DHCP Lease

• Launch “System Preferences” from the  Apple menu
• Select the “Network” panel
• Click on the “Location” pull down menu and choose “Edit Locations…”
• Click on the + plus icon to add a new network location, give it a unique name, and click “Done”
• Back at the Network panel with the newly created location selected, click on “Advanced” in the bottom right corner
• Click on the “TCP/IP” tab
• Click on “Renew DHCP Lease” and wait for the numbers on the left to repopulate, then click “OK”

You should now have a stable wireless connection under Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2.

For most users the wifi stability issue was resolved with installing the latest OS X Lion updates, but in some cases is seems that old network connection profiles brought the problem forward for to the newest OS update. You may have to enter the wireless network password again before you can connect to the router, if you don’t know that be sure to find it out from someone who does before troubleshooting with this tip.

Did this work for you? Let us know in the comments.

Once you have iCloud set up, it becomes easier than ever to keep recent backups of your iPhone and iPad. With iCloud backup enabled, remember that the backup starts automatically any time the device is connected to a power source, and the synced computer is turned on and connected to the same wifi network. These automatic backups are great, but if you want to be absolutely certain you have the most recent backup stored in iCloud before you do something like an iOS restore, software update, or even a jailbreak, you’ll probably want to do a manual backup first.

Manual backups are also highly recommended to use on a regular basis if you don’t use the automatic backup feature, because otherwise you won’t have a backup of your device stored anywhere.

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We’ve received quite a few questions about the iPhone’s clock and if it will update automatically for Daylight Savings Time, the answer is: Yes, the iPhone automatically changes time to be correct with your time zone. So does the iPad, iPod touch, and Mac OS X. You do not need to change the time manually, it will “fall back” on it’s own.

Most of the questions about daylight savings relate to past problems and bugs with iOS that caused improper clock adjustments for both the Spring and Fall time changes. The most recent bug occurred with the iPhone earlier in the year, when the clock went the wrong way or didn’t change at all. This was after the year prior had a different issue, where the alarm clock went off an hour later than it was set, and that carried further several days until the clock was manually reset.

These issues were resolved with past iOS updates and will not impact iOS 5 users, and there were no reports of issues with time changing in the UK last week. If you’re paranoid you can always set another alarm clock just to be safe, but it’s probably not necessary.
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WinAmp, the longstanding Windows music player, has come to the Mac OS X platform and brings a few great features for Android users, most notably iTunes music syncing and library sharing, and Wi-Fi syncing. This means you can take any existing iTunes playlist and sync it directly to an Android device without having to jump through any other hoops.

The app is technically in beta but works well enough to use, with a very light memory and CPU footprint and an attractive enough user interface. If you’re an Android user that owns a Mac (or PC I suppose), this may be the best way to get your iTunes music library onto your Android phone.

You can download for free it from WinAmp.com

Other than serving as an easy way to sync iTunes to Android, it also makes for a decent desktop music player if you’re averse to iTunes for whatever reason.
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The iPhone and GPS-equipped iPad include a “Places” feature in the Photos app which allow you to see pictures based on geographical location. This works to show your own photos by location, and also photos that have been shared with you that you saved to your own Photos app Camera Roll.

Here is how to access these geolocation tagged pictures and the location photo browser from the iOS homescreen:

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PBS/NOVA and WGBH Boston have posted a full 50 minute unedited interview with Steve Jobs from the TV miniseries “Machine That Changed The World”. The clip is from 1990 and demonstrates Steve Jobs’ remarkable visionary thinking, covering a wide variety of topics and technologies well before they became parts of our daily lives (keep in mind the internet was practically nonexistent to the general public then).

Watch An Interview With Steve Jobs on PBS. See more from NOVA.

If you’re having troubles watching the video on PBS, 9to5mac borrowed the WGBH version and uploaded it to YouTube as well.

The TV miniseries aired in 1991 and offered an insiders look at the history of computers and the surrounding industry. The episode of Machine That Changed the World show featuring clips of the Jobs interview, in addition to interviews with Steve Wozniak, Mike Markkula, and a variety of other Silicon Valley veterans, is embedded below:
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This reader submitted Mac setup comes from sound designer and musician Richard D, who may have one of the coolest seasonal offices I’ve seen. Ignoring the great view of the woods for a minute, the Apple gear is a MacBook Pro 15″ running Logic Studio alongside an iPad 2, in addition to a Magic Mouse and some other hardware.

When the weather accommodates, who wouldn’t want to work outside? Technically this is only halfway outdoors because it’s on a covered porch, but that makes it even more usable because it reduces potential screen glare. Not quite a boat or a motorcycle in the desert, but it’s probably a lot more functional than both of those.

Great Mac setup, thanks for sending this in Richard! You can send in your own setups to osxdailycom@gmail.com

Google Chrome has a built-in Task Manager tool that lets you kill individual tabs, windows, plugins, and even extensions. This is extraordinarily helpful if you encounter a page that gets tied up, beach balls, or can’t be closed due to any number of errors. For those of us who live centered around the web, this is a must-know tip:
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Apple is working quickly to release iOS 5.0.1 to the general public, with the second beta version available to developers in just two days. The update aims to resolve some of the complaints about iOS 5 battery life and bring several other fixes and features to the latest release, including a security fix for iPad 2 and bringing multitasking gestures to iPad 1.

The build comes as 9A404 and is available for iPad, iPad 2, iPod touch 3rd and 4th gen, and iPhone 3GS, 4, and 4S.

If you are not a developer but are encountering issues with inconsistent battery life, try some of these general battery tips or these focused specifically on the iPhone 4S.

An astronaut walks into the Apple Store… it sounds like the start of a bad joke, but that’s what we’re seeing here.

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Like using Safari in Lion‘s full-screen mode? You can resize the viewing pane of a full-screened Safari window by dragging the cursor to the far left or right edges, grabbing, and pulling in. This lets you reduce the white space and width of browser windows while still retaining the full screen view.

This is a helpful little trick for web developers with a full window open on one screen while coding in another, or if you want to hide those obnoxious background take-over ads that are popular on gaming websites and IMDB, amongst others.

Thanks for sending in the tip Ashley!

For those running a Hackintosh (a PC built to unofficially run Mac OS X) who haven’t upgraded to or installed Mac OS X Lion yet, your excuses to delay the 10.7 update are dwindling. The newly released Unibeast tool from the ever-resourceful TonyMacX86 makes the entire process easier than ever. The requirements for using Unibeast are simple:

• 8GB+ USB drive
• Mac OS X Lion Installer (download from the App Store) or an OS X Lion USB drive – Tip: from a Mac running 10.7 Lion, you can re-download OS X Lion from the App Store without having to buy it again by simply holding down the option key when clicking on the “Purchases” tab.
• Compatible Hackintosh PC hardware build

Follow the full Unibeast installation guide on TonyMacX86

The walkthrough covers setup of the installer drive to BIOS adjustments and post-install fixes with MultiBeast to enable ethernet, sound, GPU, everything. If you’ve made an OS X Lion USB installer drive before you can use that for the drive requirement and you’ll find some of the walkthrough familiar, but even without any such experience it’s easy to follow.

One of my longstanding peeves with Mac OS X is the lack of a pull-down calendar in the menubars default Date & Time settings. If you click on the time, instead of seeing something useful like a calendar or more date/time details, you just have options to set an analog clock or open Preferences. I’ll stop complaining, because now a little app called Day-O solves that problem. Day-O offers an attractive and functional replacement to OS X’s Date & Time, plus it’s free to download.

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If you’re trying to update iOS to the latest version on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch and you get an error in iTunes saying:

The iOS Device “Device Name” could not be updated. This device isn’t eligible for the requested build.

You’re most likely encountering one the following problems: either you are using an old version of iTunes, you are using an incorrect version of the firmware for your device, or you have gs.apple.com re-routed or blocked in your hosts file.

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Many users are thrilled about the new iOS Notification Center and easily dismissed alerts, but some still prefer the old style of pop-up dialog notifications.

You can enable the old pop-up alert style again, but you have to do it on a per-application basis with iOS 5:

• Tap onto “Settings” and go to “Notifications”
• Tap on an application that you want to have the old alert style
• Under “Alert Style” select “Alerts” rather than the default, ‘Banner’

In the same settings screen, you can also choose to show or not show items at the Lock Screen and Notification Center.