For those that follow along with all the jailbreak stuff and rely on third party Cydia tweaks, the iPhone Dev Team has released redsn0w 0.9.8b7 which is aimed at making the existing iOS 4.3.5 jailbreak easier, but also adding support for jailbreaking iOS 5 beta 6 and beta 7.

What’s the advantage to using redsn0w 0.9.8b7? For 4.3.5 users, you can now perform a tethered jailbreak simply by pointing at the iOS 4.3.5 IPSW rather than 4.3.4. Other than that, the incremental release is primarily aimed at iOS and Cydia devs who are looking to update their apps and tweaks for the latest iOS 5 beta, and the latest beta 7 users still need to point at beta 6 IPSW.

If you’re already jailbroken there isn’t any reason to use this version of redsn0w over past versions.

Download Redsn0w 0.9.8b7

• Download now for Mac
• Download now for Windows

As usual with redsn0w, you need the appropriate iOS IPSW file for your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch – either iOS 4.3.5 or iOS 5 beta, and then just follow the simple in-app instructions.

Not much else has changed with the new release, and the jailbreak is tethered, meaning you need to connect the iOS device to a computer and boot the hardware with the assistance of the application.

The Terminal in modern versions of Mac OS X enforces a new monospacing character width standard, which in laymen terms means you no longer have to use monospace fonts in the Terminal. That means you can now use any font you want, even Comic Sans like the screenshot shows down below (hooray?).

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Newsweek’s The Daily Beast published an interesting infographic on Steve Jobs and his supposed playbook for managing the creative process at Apple.

The “10 Commandments of Steve” according to Daily Beast are as follows:

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The iPhone camera HDR mode takes great pictures, there’s no doubt about that. What might not be so great for some iPhone users is that when you have HDR mode enabled, the iPhone will store two versions of all photos you take into Camera Roll in Photos app, which at 5+ megapixels a pop can quickly consume an iPhones available storage. For some situations, the two photos look so similar that they just look like duplicates, whereas other times either the HDR version or the non-HDR version looks better. Being able to compare the two versions of the photos side by side is undeniably helpful, but if you’re concerned about storage you may want to change this setting so that two pictures aren’t created from a single photo shot with iPhone camera.

The solution is to stop iPhone from saving both the normal and HDR exposures, which instead opts the iPhone to only save the enhanced HDR version to the Photos app Camera Roll. Here’s how to do this in all versions of iOS:

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When a new Finder window is opened on the Mac desktop, the user defaults to seeing the new “All My Files” folder, rather than the users home directory. This is a change that arrived with the latest versions of OS X (began in Lion, but continues on through Mavericks), and while it can be useful for those who don’t manage their files, it’s not for everyone. Fortunately, you can change the setting back to the original Mac behavior of opening directly to the users Home Folder.
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Apple has started airing a new iPad 2 commercial focused on learning and education, titled “Learn”, which is appropriate given the fall back-to-school season. The text of the ad is:

Are you curious about new ideas? Do you want to learn a new language? Or just a new word? Maybe you want to know more about anatomy? Or astronomy? You could master something new. Or uncover a hidden talent. There’s never been a better time, to learn.

As usual, the commercial focuses on the user and what you can do with an iPad, which has proven to be a successful advertising format for Apple time and time again.

Are you an AT&T customer? Want 1000 free rollover minutes? Of course you do, all you need to do is send a new text saying “YES” to 11113020. Wait a minute or so, and you’ll get the confirmation:

“Thank you for responding to our free 1000 bonus Rollover Minute offer. You will receive a confirmation message upon validation of this mobile account.”

I sent an SMS and verified this works although it’s not clear when the minutes will be credited to accounts. AT&T has run similar promotions in the past exclusively for iPhone customers, but this one looks like it’s open to all AT&T customers in general, regardless of your phone.

I already have a gazillion rollover minutes but who doesn’t like free stuff? Heads up to iDB for the discovery.

Pushing ever closer to a GM and the final release date in the near future, iOS 5 beta 7 has just been seeded to developers. The newest iOS 5 beta can be downloaded as IPSW from the iOS Dev Center, or more easily, as an Over-the-Air (OTA) update, which can be accessed from iOS 5 beta 6 to download via tapping onto Settings > General > Software Update.

Just as prior updates, Apple recommends you use the “Erase all Contents and Settings” under Settings > General > Reset in order to install the latest beta.

The brief note attached to the OTA update says simply “This beta version of iOS 5 contains bug fixes and improvements.” and refers to the release notes on the iOS Developer Center.

Update: In addition to a new iOS 5 beta, iTunes 10.5 beta 7 and Xcode 4.2 beta 7 were also released.

If you’re one of the many Mac users who uses multiple Macs, say an iMac at home or work, and a MacBook on the go, you should get DropboxAppSync.

This free utility syncs your ~/Library/Application Support/ folder across multiple Macs via the free Dropbox service, allowing you to have the exact same app setups, like preferences, plugins, bookmarks, game files, cache, etc, on all of your Macs, regardless of where you are, as long as you have internet access.

To use DropboxAppSync, you need:

• Have a Dropbox account (2GB is free)
• Download DropboxAppSync (direct download or visit the devs homepage) on all Macs you want to havesync

Setup is very simple. Once you have Dropbox configured, quit your open applications, and then just launch DropboxAppSync on the first Mac that you want to be the primary /Application Support/ folder to be synced.

Approve the following message, which informs you that ~/Library/Application Support/ is about to head over to DropBox (via a symbolic link):

This utility will relocate your Application’s support folder to Dropbox. This may be unsupported by the developer! A backup copy of your application’s data will be saved to your desktop just in case…

This utility will save your data to:
Dropbox/Application Support/ApplicationName

If this utility finds your Application data on Dropbox already, it will simply link to the data on Dropbox instead of copying the data over. However, a backup copy will still be saved to your desktop.

Then you run DropboxAppSync on the other Macs, and the app is smart enough to already detect the app data exists so it will simply link to it, syncing your Macs apps.

The developer reminds us that not all apps may support being synced like this, but from user testing there haven’t been many reported issues.

The 2GB free Dropbox account should be adequate for this service with the vast majority of Macs and Mac apps – unless you have Steam games installed like TF2, which store all of their application data in your /Application Support/ folder and causes it to take up a lot of space. For example, without Steam my Application Support folder is about 700MB and I have tons of apps installed, but with Steam it’s well over 25GB. In that case, you’d want to pay for a larger Dropbox account, or just exclude Steam apps from being synced, but it would be an easy way to have all your game data the same on all your Macs rather than manually moving the Steam folder yourself.

Syncing app data across multiple Macs is something that iCloud should do, and hopefully it will in future versions, but in the meantime this is a great free solution.

The middle of the Amazon Rainforest is probably the last place you’d expect to see a brand new MacBook Air, but that’s exactly what Chief Almir of the Surui people is using in his fight to protect the Amazon. The internet, a partnership with Google, and Apple’s flagship ultraportable MacBook Air, have enabled the chief to track the tribes territory and report illegal logging of their homelands:

His partnership with Google, which began in 2007, has enabled the tribe to create an online “cultural map” of the Surui with stories from the tribe’s elders that are uploaded onto YouTube, as well as a geographical map of their territory created with GPS — equipped smartphones from Google. In 2009, Google employees taught the Surui to use cell phones to record illegal logging on their land. Tribal members can now take photos and videos that are geo-tagged and immediately upload the images to Google Earth. Law-enforcement officials can no longer claim ignorance of the problem when evidence of the deforestation is publicly available online.

You can see a great video below showing more Mac use in the jungle, and the full photo, which was taken by Ivan Kashinsky and used in the story on FastCompany about some of the most creative people in business for 2011.

I find this interesting and impressive for a number of reasons, but focusing on the Apple aspect, it’s remarkable in and of itself that a MacBook Air has ended up in the depths of the Amazon jungle, let alone in the midst of the immense tropical heat, moisture, and humidity, and has become a tribes computer of choice.

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If there’s only one keyboard shortcut you should remember in Mac OS X it’s this: Go To Folder. We refer to this keyboard command so frequently here on OSXDaily that we just sort of assume everyone knows it, but it’s so useful and powerful that it’s worth making an individual post about it.

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I would be convinced this was an April Fools joke out of Redmond were it not August, but no, it’s the new Windows 8 Explorer default interface.

While Apple is busy reducing clutter and creating minimalist interfaces, streamlining OS X and iOS, Microsoft is busy moving in the opposite direction. Believe it or not, these pictures show what, somehow, Microsoft has determined is the future of the user interface and file system; adding even more buttons, icons, actions, tabs, and whatever else they could stuff onto the already cluttered Windows Explorer interface.

Microsoft is proudly displaying this new UI to the world on a MSDN blog post titled “Improvements to Windows Explorer” (seriously).

Everything imaginable is jammed into your brand new ultra-cluttered window toolbar, and you thought Microsoft Office had a mess of an interface? I suppose once you get below the disastrous ‘home tab’ eating the top half of the window, it just looks like Windows 7:
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iPhoto is a great picture management app, but you may still occasionally want to access the original picture files for a variety of purposes, either to import them into another app or for backup purposes. This is easily done in Mac OS X, but what exactly you are looking for depends on which version of iPhoto you are using. Whether you’re using the latest iPhoto or an earlier version, we’ll show you exactly how to access your raw photos out of the iPhoto app, stored locally on your Mac.

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If opening up Activity Monitor is confusing or intimidating to you, or you just find it hard to track down that errant Chrome Worker process, try sorting the list by “All Processes, Hierarchically”.

Sorting by hierarchy breaks the processes down into apps and their child processes, grouping together things like all of the “Google Chrome Renderer” processes under Google Chrome, “Safari Web Content” under Safari, Terminal tasks and shells under Terminal, etc. This makes it very easy to kill process groups all at once, and also allows for easy parent and group sampling and management.

The other advantage is that you can now expand and collapse groups of child processes to clean up the process list, which I find to be much more organized and logical. Give it a try.

The default OS X Lion galaxy wallpaper is gorgeous, but there’s something fun about this pixelated version of it that makes it a joy on a desktop too.

This is quite literally the default Lion wallpaper for Mac OS X Lion but it’s run through a pixel tool so that it is very pixelated, looking a bit 8 bit yet still modern. It looks great as a wallpaper on any Mac (or Windows too).

Click the image above or the link below for a full sized version of the background.

Click here to download the full version (2560×1600)

There’s a similar 8-bit Aurora image from Mac OS X Snow Leopard too if you’re on a pixel craze.

Thanks for sending this in Reg

The first beta version of iTunes Match has been released for developers to subscribe to. The service stores an entire music library within iCloud and allows you to stream or download your music from anywhere, including iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, a Mac, or even Windows PC. This is done without uploading files, instead iTunes Match scans your library and matches it within the iCloud service, even providing the music at a higher bit rate in the process.

To use iTunes Match beta, developers need the latest version of iOS 5 beta and iTunes 10.5 beta 6.1. Despite being a beta release, iTunes Match service costs $24.99 per year, but dev users will receive an additional 3 months of free service in addition to their 12 month plan. The cloud storage capacity of an iTunes Match library is separate from whats included in the iCloud plans, which makes the price even more competitive.

Those who aren’t developers will have to wait for iCloud and iTunes Match to be released alongside iOS 5 this fall.

You can watch two video walkthroughs below of iTunes Match beta in action:
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You’ll soon be able to run Linux on a select few iOS devices via a jailbreak hack. The port is being worked on by German iOS developer Patrick Wildt, and while it’s not entirely clear when Linux for iOS will be released, he is expected to unveil it publicly at MyGreatFest, a jailbreaking convention that is being held on September 17th.

Supported hardware is said to include the original iPad, iPhone 4, and iPod touch 4th generation, but the iPad 2 with it’s A5 CPU is currently left out due to complications with the hardware.

Pretty geeky but cool find from iDownload Blog.

An upcoming release of Mac OS X 10.6.9 may bring iCloud support to Mac users who haven’t made the jump to Lion and remain on Snow Leopard, at least that’s what a screen shot provided to MacRumors suggests. Sent in by a developer, the screenshot of the .Mac/MobileMe preference pane includes the text:

“iCloud requires a computer running Mac OS X Snow Leopard v10.6.9 or later for Contacts, Calendars, and Bookmarks.”

The extent of iCloud support in Mac OS X 10.6 remains to be seen, but from the latter part of that text it suggests it will be limited to basic syncing relevant to iOS devices rather than the full iCloud feature set.

iCloud is expected to be released this fall alongside iOS 5, and the pricing plans range from a free 5GB package to $100 a year for 55GB of cloud storage.