iOS popularized the pull-to-refresh gesture, where pulling down and releasing on browser and app windows causes them to refresh their contents. With the help of a browser extension, we can bring the same pull to refresh feature to Mac OS X 10.7 in either the Chrome or Safari web browsers:

• Extension for Chrome
• Extension for Safari – requires an Apple Safari Dev certificate

Installation is just a matter of clicking on the appropriate browser extension and opening a new browser window, which it will then be active in. The pull to refresh extension works best with trackpads and a two-fingered pull down, you will see a small black message box appear in the browser window indicating the refresh will occur if the pull is released.

You can add this to the list of things to make Mac OS X more like iOS, but I’d wager that future versions of browsers will probably include this feature, which some Mac apps already support.
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You can quickly sleep the display of a Mac or immediately start a screen saver by setting up Hot Corners, which are activated just by sliding your cursor into the specified corners of the screen. This is a great way to quickly hide what’s on the display, but also as a way to initiate a screen saver or lock screen, which will then require a password to use the Mac again.

It only takes a moment to configure this, though the settings for Hot Corners has been moved in new versions of Mac OS X to become part of Mission Control. Here’s what you’ll want to do to get this working:

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Fitting news as the Northern Hemisphere approaches winter and ski season, it has been discovered that Apple internally identifies iOS versions with code names based on ski resorts. The current list of iOS versions and their mountain code names is printed below, courtesy of AppleInsider:

• 1.0: Alpine
• 1.1: Little Bear
• 2.0: Big Bear
• 2.1: Sugarbowl
• 2.2: Timberline
• 3.0: Kirkwood
• 3.1: Northstar
• 3.2: Wildcat
• 4.0: Apex
• 4.1: Baker
• 4.2: Jasper
• 4.3: Durango
• 5.0: Telluride
• 5.1: Hoodoo

There doesn’t appear to be any relation between the popularity of the mountain and the significance of the iOS version, with even some little known ski resorts appearing on the list. Maybe Scott Forstall and the iOS development team are just big fans of snow sports?

Naming iOS versions after mountain resorts is in contrast to Apple’s desktop Mac OS X being code named and marketed with the names of large wild cats, starting with Mac OS X Cheetah (10.0), Puma (10.1), Jaguar (10.2), Panther (10.3), Tiger (10.4), Leopard (10.5), Snow Leopard (10.6), and most recently, Lion (10.7).

Want to quickly find and select your boot disk amidst a variety of other internal and external drives that are sitting on the desktop? Just hit Command+Shift+↑ (Command + Shift + Up Arrow) to immediately choose the startup drive on the Mac OS X desktop from anywhere in the Finder.

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Finder on the Mac can show the path to the currently browsed folder (that is, something like Lion->Users->John->Music->MP3 collection). Just click View->Show Path Bar. However, there’s a slight problem—the path is listed from the root of the hard disk up to the current directory. I

f all you ever do is browse your home directory, then this information isn’t much use and the display can get bunched up very quickly.
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In 1991, astronauts took a Macintosh Portable aboard Space Shuttle mission STS-43, and amongst other things, it became the first computer to send an email in space. A slightly less historical aspect is this fairly entertaining video clip from that mission, demonstrating the Macintosh Portable’s disk ejection system, which works perhaps a little too well in zero gravity.

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Firebug is an extremely popular web development tool that allows a user to inspect and modify page elements in real time, be it HTML, CSS, or JavaScript. It’s most known for being a plugin for the Firefox browser, but thanks to Firebug Lite and a little bookmarklet hack, you can run Firebug Lite directly in Safari on iOS.

Using Firebug in iOS is easy, here’s how, as discovered by Martin Kool:

• Bookmark a web page from Safari in iOS and rename the bookmark to “Firebug”
• Tap the text region below twice and “Select All” then choose “Copy”
• Now edit the Firebug bookmark you made, and remove the URL, replacing it with the javascript you just copied
• Tap on “Done” and then hit the bookmarklet to activate Firebug Lite on the iPad

If you’re having troubles with the code from pastebin, head over to Martin Kool’s tumblr for another way to capture the bookmarklet. For screen real estate purposes, Firebug will look best on the iPad, but it works on the iPhone and iPod touch with Safari too.

You probably won’t be getting tons of serious web development done with this, but it’s a great trick and definitely usable enough to make minor changes and quick adjustments to web elements while using iOS.

Apple has posted the second beta of Mac OS X 10.7.3 for developers, available now from the Mac Dev Center. The focus is on Spotlight, Safari, iCloud Document Storage (does not seem like the hidden iCloud file sync feature is coming anytime soon), Address Book, iCal, and Mail, and no known issues exist with the current build, according to MacRumors.

The first developer beta of OS X 10.7.3 was pushed out on November 15, and Mac OS X 10.7.2 was released about a month prior to that through Software Update. It’s unknown when the final build of 10.7.3 will be released to the public, but we’ll keep you updated.

NOTE: New instructions are available to change the login screen background image within OS X Mavericks. Please refer to those if you are looking to customize the login wallpaper in the latest versions of OS X.

Here’s how to change the wallpaper that lies behind the standard login screen on OS X Lion & Mountain Lion (although not the login background you see if you have FileVault enabled, which cannot be altered). As such, this tweak is not for the fainthearted because it involves editing system files and will therefore affect all users of the system. Previous tips here at OSXDaily have explained how to change the login screen background in prior versions of OS X, but OS X Lion and OS X Mountain Lion changed everything (again).

For OS X Lion & Mountain Lion, the file we need to replace is called NSTexturedFullScreenBackgroundColor.png and is located at:
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Tired of having to approve the Trash being emptied in Mac OS X? You can disable the Empty Trash warning message dialog window in two ways on the Mac, either on a per-trash emptying basis, or by completely turning off the dialog.

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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.