Apple appears to be dropping the AirPort branding in favor of the universally accepted Wi-Fi moniker, at least in Mac OS X Lion. The subtle change was noted in the latest Lion builds by MacRumors, and is noticeable in the Airport, errrr, Wi-Fi menu drop down.

Simple Name Change or a Sign of New Products?
A possible side effect of the name change could impact the AirPort Express, AirPort Extreme, Airport Base Stations, and even the Time Capsule, who all rely on ‘AirPort’ as part of their branding. Are these going to be simply renamed to Wi-Fi Express and Wi-Fi Extreme? That doesn’t sound too Apple-like, so I doubt it, however there are some rumors that suggest the entire AirPort and Time Capsule product line is going to get a major refresh soon. Variations on the rumor include some sort of syncing with iCloud for backups, and others say the new devices may even include A5 processors and to run iOS, similar to an Apple TV. If this is true, that minor name change in Lion may be an indicator of some new products in Apple’s pipeline.

Name Change to Alleviate Confusion or Is Everyone Overthinking This?
On the other hand, MacGasm speculates the name change could be aimed simply at distinguishing LAN and WAN usage:

Curiously, Apple’s introduced AirDrop with Lion. This could be another tell. Until now, Apple’s use of air in their products that directly connected to the internet, wirelessly in some way. That changed with AirDrop, the new Lion technology is only available on local networks, and is not available over WAN, at least as it is at this point. Apple could be making the move to rid the confusion of AirDevices being WAN related AirPlay is also a local area network device. Is Apple in the process of distinguishing between the LAN and WAN with Air and iCloud?

It’s also entirely possible that everyone is reading too much into this, and that Apple is just making things easier for new Mac users with Lion. Most Windows PC people associate an 802.11 wireless network with “Wi-Fi” rather than Apple’s branded “AirPort”, so renaming it Wi-Fi in the connection menu could be another move to accommodate the hoards of switchers and newcomers to the Mac platform.

Are 3D images the future of tablets? I’m not so sure, but this video claims to show off a 3D capable first gen iPad. Now before anyone gets too excited here, this is a third party modified iPad that includes a 3D capable screen, this is not a true prototype from Apple.

The host of the video seems to suggest Apple is working towards 3D imagery on their screens, but I find it hard to believe that Apple would require a user to wear some goggles to get 3D. Maybe they’d take the approach of the Nintendo 3DS, or maybe they’d lean towards the illusionary effect of that i3D demo app, or maybe they’ll never go 3D at all.

This comes from 9to5mac, who suggests the entire thing could even be a publicity stunt to drum up attention for either the video producer or the product maker.

You can watch what’s going on behind the scenes during a Mac OS X system installation by accessing the Logs window after the installer has begun. From Logs, use the pulldown menu to select “Show All Logs” to see a live stream of all activity pertaining to the OS X installation and/or upgrade process.

“Show Errors Only” is what you’ll want to watch if you’re only concerned about things going wrong, while “Show Errors and Progress” shows errors and installation milestones.

Outside of troubleshooting, this is an interesting feature to access for those curious about what’s actually happening during a system install. It’s also slightly more exciting than just staring at a progress bar.

Update: this feature might be limited to Mac OS X Lion.

Update 2: apparently this feature has been around for a while, at least since Snow Leopard, thanks readers!

Thanks for the tip AJ

Apple is now selling carrier unlocked iPhone 4 GSM models in the USA, making it the first time the devices have been legitimately offered through the primary market in the country. An unlocked iPhone can be used on any other GSM network, in the USA or otherwise, assuming you have an active micro-SIM card for that network.

How Much Do the Unlocked iPhones Cost?

Unlocked iPhones don’t come cheap in the USA or anywhere else for that matter. The price is the same for both black or white models, the cost differentiation relates to storage capacity:

• Unlocked iPhone 4 16GB – $649
• Unlocked iPhone 4 32GB – $749

If you’re wondering why the prices are high, Apple answers:

Carriers typically subsidize the purchase price of the phone when purchased with a service contract. By purchasing your iPhone unlocked, you are not committing to a service contract up front, so you can use any micro-SIM card from a supported GSM carrier, including your current one.

What are the Advantages to an Unlocked iPhone?

There are several answers to this, but the primary reasons to own a factory unlocked iPhone are:

• No Carrier Contract – you pay full price for the phone, but the iPhone is not bound to a carrier contract, meaning you can start and stop service at will without any penalties
• Move from Carrier to Carrier – want to use T-Mobile? No problem. AT&T have better reception? Switch. There’s no hassle, no fees, nothing that voids the warranty, just plug in a new carriers SIM card and go
• International Travel – the same carrier transportation mentioned above applies to international travel, forget about roaming charges and instead grab a local SIM card

All you need is an active compatible micro-SIM card from a GSM carrier and the phone will use that network.

Why Now? AT&T & T-Mobile Merger or Another Jailbreak Killer?
Carrier unlocked phones are somewhat of an anomaly in the United States, but they are ubiquitous elsewhere in the world. It’s not clear why Apple is choosing to sell the unlocked devices at this point, but there is some speculation that this move is intended as preparation for the AT&T and T-Mobile USA merger. Others are suggesting this is intended as another blow to the jailbreaking scene, since carrier unlocks are a popular reason for users to jailbreak their iPhones.

Nice find by MacRumors!

This is mostly a reminder, but Mac OS X Lion does not include support for PowerPC applications ran through Rosetta. This is important for users who continue to rely on old PPC apps, and this could sway some users decision on whether or not to upgrade to Lion come the public release next month.

Admittedly, the Rosetta-dependent group is probably fairly small in comparison to the wider Mac OS X user base. Rosetta apps are at least 5 years old, which is when Apple made the hardware switch from PPC to Intel CPU’s.

Outside of this and the lack of 32-bit Core Duo/Solo, the Lion system requirements are surprisingly lightweight and forgiving.

This reminder comes via MacRumors, and they quote MacWorld saying that if you still need Rosetta support you might want to try just dual booting Lion and Snow Leopard.

Broadly, you have a couple of options. One is to create a dual-boot Mac — one that can boot from two volumes. One volume contains Lion and another runs an older version of the Mac OS. When you need to spend some quality Rosetta time, you boot into the older OS. And yes, this is a pain.

That’s one solution, but it sounds like a hassle to me. Lion looks like a great upgrade, so personally I think I’d just ditch the Rosetta apps.

Alright so you’ve had your fun playing around with the iOS 5 beta, but you’re tired of dealing with the quirkiness and bugs related to a beta OS. Now, contrary to popular belief, you can downgrade back to iOS 4.3.3 without much effort. Unlike downgrading from other iOS versions, Apple still signs iOS 4.3.3, so you don’t need to do anything funky. For the purpose of this walkthrough, we’ll assume you’re using an iPhone.

First a few quick notes and warnings. You probably noticed when installing iOS 5 beta the warning from Apple:
“Devices updated to iOS 5 beta can not be restored to earlier versions of iOS. Devices will be able to upgrade to future beta releases and the final iOS 5 software.”

In other words, Apple says iOS 5 beta is a one way street. Apple probably issues that warning for good reason, and it’s probably wise to take their advice and not attempt downgrading for whatever unspecified reason they give. While this should have no effect on your iPhone UDID assuming you activated it with a dev license, nobody knows for sure until the next beta comes out. Be sure you have a backup of your iOS device, and as alway, we are not responsible for you screwing up your hardware so proceed at your own risk.

So you’re comfortable ignoring Apple’s advice and all those warnings and want back to 4.3.3… here’s what to do:

How to Downgrade iOS 5 Beta to iOS 4.3.3

There are actually a few methods to downgrade back down to 4.3.3 from iOS 5, but we’ll cover the easiest way. For the purpose of this walkthrough we’ll reference iOS 5 beta 1 and iTunes 10.5 beta so be sure you have that handy before getting started.

1. Put your iPhone into DFU Mode: turn the iPhone off, hold down the Power and Home buttons concurrently for 10 seconds then release the power button, continue holding Home button until iTunes tells you an iPhone in recovery mode has been detected – when you get that message and the iPhone screen is black, you know you’re in DFU mode
2. Remove any host file modifications that you may have made in the past (like when fixing iTunes error 3194, etc) – if you haven’t made any changes to your hosts file related to Apple’s servers, don’t worry about this
3. Within iTunes, click on “Restore” from the summary tab – now you have two options, you can either attempt to restore from backup which has limited success, or just restore directly to iOS 4.3.3 IPSW

Let iTunes do its magic and you should be back to 4.3.3 without issue. You can also do this through Xcode, but this method is by far the easiest. Yes, it does work with iPhones who used the Voice Over bug to skip iOS 5 UDID activation.

Alternatively, use TinyUmbrella
If the above method doesn’t work, you can always try downgrading with the help of TinyUmbrella, but you’ll still need iTunes 10.5 beta. You can grab TinyUmbrella (direct download links: Mac or Windows). The TinyUmbrella method is basically the same as above, but you can force TinyUmbrella to handle the hosts change for you by doing the following option within the app:

• Launch TinyUmbrella and go to the “Advanced” tab
• Uncheck “Set Hosts to Cydia on Exit” – this allows you to use Apple’s servers and is the same as manually removing any Cydia hosts from your hosts file

After that’s done, you can restore the iPhone as usual through iTunes 10.5 beta.

Think you have a secure iPhone password? Check this list, you might be using one of the freakishly common passcodes out there, and if so, it’s time to change it. These were compiled by an iOS developer who anonymously captured the passwords through his app:

• 1234
• 0000
• 2580
• 1111
• 5555
• 5683
• 0852
• 2222
• 1212
• 1998

If you find yours on this list, you should do yourself a favor and change it. Make your code unique enough that it’s more secure, just don’t make it so confusing that you forget it and have to reset the passcode – resetting means you’ll lose all the data on your iPhone.

Another good security idea; Set your iPhone to erase all data on 10 failed password attempts. What are the odds you’re going to enter your incorrect password 10 times in a row? Slim, even if you’re extremely inebriated.

The common password list comes from an iOS developer who anonymously captured 204,508 passwords through the app called BigBrother Camera Security. The developer describes the problem of using one of the 4 digit codes from the above list:

Formulaic passwords are never a good idea, yet 15% of all passcode sets were represented by only 10 different passcodes (out of a possible 10,000). The implication? A thief (or just a prankster) could safely try 10 different passcodes on your iPhone without initiating the data wipe. With a 15% success rate, about 1 in 7 iPhones would easily unlock–even more if the intruder knows the users’ years of birth, relationship status, etc.

Are you one of the 1/7 iPhones? I’ll admit, I used 0000 for a long time as my password. Not because I thought it was secure, but because it was a small barrier to prevent random gazers from creeping around my iPhone, yet easy enough that I could quickly bypass it.

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If you want iTunes to take up the absolute least amount of screen space, yet still be able to control music and volume, use the iTunes Micro Player (Yea I just named it that, I don’t know what the official name is).

First minimize iTunes so that it’s in the standard mini-player mode, but then drag the resize bar and push it into the player controls to shrink it even further.

I just discovered this accidentally so I’m not sure if it’s a new feature to iTunes 10 or not, but it’s the smallest the iTunes player can get. Even smaller than the iTunes album art mini player

Mac OS X Lion includes an interesting ability to boot directly into the Safari web browser. Access to this feature is currently limited to those with Lion DP4 and the iCloud beta software installed, in addition to having the “Find My Mac” function enabled, but it is expected to be available to all users by the time Lion ships in July.

Safari-only mode is suggested to have several purposes:

• 1) As a security feature for anti-theft purposes, since a user without an account password can boot only into Safari, they won’t have access to your files, but getting online and using Safari will cause the Mac to broadcast it’s location thanks to the new “Find My Mac” utility.
• 2) As a recovery aid, since a user who is locked out of their Mac will still be able to perform essential tasks like checking their email, plus use Safari to do something like search Apple’s Discussion Boards for assistance, or make an appointment with the Genius bar.
• 3) As a sandboxed web kiosk, MacRumors suggests that Safari-only mode will offer “a nice sandboxed mode so Lion can easily act as a secure and anonymous web kiosk.”

If you want to access this feature in Lion now, you’ll need to install iCloud beta, and then from any user lock screen you will be see a “Restart in Safari” option appear. Without the latest Lion dev preview, iCloud, and Find My Mac enabled, the feature is not yet accessible.

This was discovered by a MacRumors user, which is also the source of the screen capture.

This is a fun Mac-centric video to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Maxon, the creators of Cinema 4D. The entire video was rendered in Cinema 4D and it shows a little ball bouncing around and causing a ruckus on the Mac OS X desktop, bouncing around windows, knocking over apps, it’s pretty creative.

Many owners of the oldest 32-bit Intel Macs were discouraged when they found that Mac OS X Lion’s system requirements demanded a 64-bit Core 2 Duo processor or newer. These users were discouraged, but not deterred, because some have managed to get the latest Lion developer build running on older Core Duo Macs… sort of.

First some background. In earlier developer previews, running OS X Lion on a Core Duo Mac was just a matter of deleting a plist file and then it would magically boot. Simple enough. That changed in later dev previews, and in Dev Preview 4 things get a bit trickier. Now onto the current state of affairs…

The Bad News
This isn’t really a usable solution yet, because Finder.app doesn’t run (it’s a 64 bit application, therefore won’t run on 32 bit hardware) and launchd consumes too many system resources.

The Good and/or Optimistic News
Lion DP4 is booting on these 32-bit Macs! This means that after the public release in July we will almost certainly see a modified Lion kernel and Finder that runs as expected on the oldest Intel Macs. This is much less of a stretch than some of the other crazy Mac OS X installations out there (remember all those Hackintosh machines running on Atom, Pentium 4’s, AMD CPU’s and other unsupported hardware?).

OK so enough blabbering, let’s go over the process that works right now to boot Lion on ye old Intel Macs.

Read more »

This awesome Mac setup comes from one of our readers, Rob Abraham. From the left to the right we have: 2GHz Dual-Core Hackintosh with 4GB RAM and 2TB of disk space hooked up to two displays, iPhone 4, MacBook Pro 13″ with 8GB RAM and a 500GB hybrid drive connected to the 24″ LCD to the right reading OSXDaily (woohoo!), and a MacBook Air 13″ with a 128GB SSD. Don’t miss the wireless keyboard, magic trackpad, or Starbucks iced coffee to keep the human side of things cruising along either.

But that’s not all, to the left of this Mac heavy desk there’s another Mac Pro connected to a 37″ TV and two additional 22″ monitors that display network status and latency from their datacenter (image below):

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Want to create a new Terminal window from a tab on the Mac? It can be done, but how it works may depend on what Mac OS system software version you are using and therefore what version of the Terminal app is in play.

In Mac OS X, the Terminal app reacts differently than Safari and other apps that use tabs. When you want to drag a tab into a new window in Safari or Firefox, you just drag it outside of the tab bar and it becomes a new window, it’s simple and intuitive. I agree, but Terminal app doesn’t behave like this on some versions of Mac OS X, you can drag your tabs all you want and they’ll slide around but won’t break away from the tab bar. But you can still make a new tab turn into a new window, here’s how.

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It may be possible for developers to create custom widgets to contain within the iOS 5 notification center, assuming Apple allows it. This was demonstrated by a very simple proof of concept that is shown above. 9to5mac quotes @chronic, the jailbreak developer, describing how this is accomplished:

all a developer needs to do is create a “custom view interface” and “compile it is a bulletinboard plugin.” Bulletinboard is Apple’s internal codename for the iOS 5 Notification Center.

Allowing third party developers to create widgets for the iOS 5 Notification Center would certainly be a nice addition. In the current iOS 5 beta, the only two widgets are weather and a stock ticker which you can see in the screen capture below, but there is certainly interest in having more.

What if you could have an RSS or Twitter feed in Notification Center? What if the world of Mac Dashboard widgets was transferable to iOS devices? I think many of them would be more useful and better suited in iOS than Mac OS X really, so let’s hope it happens.

One things for sure though, if Apple doesn’t allow third party widgets, you can bet the jailbreak scene will handle it. Considering a jailbreak for iOS 5b1 is already out, it might not be long before this happens. You can poke around in the source code of the sample widget on GitHub to get a look at how this works.

You can watch Notification Center in action and more in these videos of iOS 5 features.

All iOS devices come with a Unique Device Identifier number, known as a UDID. The UDID is kind of like a serial number for that device, except that it’s even longer at 40 characters. By far the most simple way to retrieve your iPhone, iPad, or iPod‘s identifier number is through iTunes itself.

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Redsn0w 0.9.8b1 was just released to jailbreak iOS 5 beta 1 on the following hardware: iPod touch 3G, iPod touch 4G, iPad 1, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 GSM, iPhone 4 CDMA. This jailbreak is tethered, meaning you will need to connect it to your computer on each reboot.

Important notes about this version of Redsn0w:

• Redsn0w 0.9.8b1 does not “hacktivate” iOS 5 beta 1, thus you are still required to have a registered UDID from Apple to use iOS 5 b1
• Unlockers and anyone with preserved unlockable baseband need to stay away from this and iOS 5 beta, you will lose your unlockable baseband if you update
• This version of redsn0w is intended for jailbreak developers only, the Dev Team reminds us that there are many broken components in the jailbroken iOS 5 beta so this is purely an experimental release intended for devs of Cydia apps to test compatibility on the new iOS – this is not for wide consumption

If you are comfortable with all of these limitations, proceed.

Download Redsn0w 0.9.8b1

This version of redsn0w is available for Mac and Windows users:

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

The iPhone Dev Team suggests this version of redsn0w will continue to work to jailbreak upcoming iOS 5 betas assuming you save your b1 IPSW and point it at that file when jailbreaking, so they recommend preserving your 5b1 IPSW files for future use.

If you’re brave and don’t mind losing some essential features of your phone, you can install iOS 5 beta on an iPhone without a dev account or UDID activation by utilizing a bug in Voice Over, but this is not a recommended method, and there is no word on compatibility with this version of redsn0w.

Another day, another nice wallpaper from Mac OS X Lion. This one comes from the background of the Mission Control app in the latest Lion Developer Preview 4, it’s not quite as flashy as the galaxy wallpaper but it’s a nice subtle grey shaded linen pattern and it’s a lot more subdued than some of the other Lion wallpapers.

Click for the full sized 2560×1440 image

Here’s what it looks like behind everything else in Mission Control, the Exposé & Spaces replacement:

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If you buy a Mac from now until the release date of Lion in July, you qualify for a free upgrade to Mac OS X 10.7 directly from Apple. This is thanks to Apple’s Up-To-Date program, which gives users 30 days from the purchase of their new Mac to request the free update.

The free upgrade expands to Macs bought through Apple and their resellers, meaning you can take advantage of discounts offered through online stores like Amazon. The announcement was largely lost in the midst of other WWDC excitement, but was included in Apple’s press release regarding Lion:

The Mac OS X Lion Up-To-Date upgrade is available at no additional charge via the Mac App Store to all customers who purchased a qualifying new Mac system from Apple or an Apple Authorized Reseller on or after June 6, 2011. Users must request their Up-To-Date upgrade within 30 days of purchase of their Mac computer. Customers who purchase a qualifying Mac between June 6, 2011 and the date when Lion is available in the Mac App Store will have 30 days from Lion’s official release date to make a request.

Technically the offer expands back to June 6, the official announcement. Outside of the Up-To-Date program, Lion costs $29.99 through the Mac App Store.

Apple also released a nice video intro to Lion that is worth a view.

Update: For those wondering, you will request the free Lion update directly from Apple. With past up-to-date promotions, you entered the Macs serial number into an online form to verify eligibility. This will almost certainly work the same, and you will most likely get a promo code to redeem through the Mac App Store.