One of the many understated features in Mac OS X is the ability to natively convert audio to m4a directly in the OS X Finder – without any additional downloads or add-ons. Yes, an MPEG audio encoder is built directly into Mac OS X since versions 10.7 and 10.8, 10.9, 10.10 (and beyond of course), meaning you can convert audio directly on your desktop without using any other apps, and without buying anything else, because the encoder is free and bundled in Mac OS.

The OS X audio encoder is confirmed to support AIFF, AIFC, Sd2f, CAFF, and WAV files, but other formats are likely supported for m4a conversion as well. It also happens to be very fast and produce high quality audio output, so let’s dive in and start converting some audio.

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If you don’t use Safari’s new Reading List feature in Mac OS X Lion, you probably don’t want that little eyeglass icon cluttering up your bookmarks bar. It’s easy to hide though, here’s how:

• Go to the Safari menu and open Preferences
• Click on the “Bookmarks” tab and uncheck “Include Reading List”

If you don’t use the Bookmarks Bar at all, you can always just hide that too by selecting “Hide Bookmarks Bar” from the View menu. This makes a much more minimalist web browsing experience out of Safari, but all of your bookmarks are still accessible via the Command+Number shortcuts and the Bookmarks menu.

Having more RAM is one of the cheapest Mac upgrades you can get for a performance boost, and with prices this low there’s little excuse to not have 8GB if your Mac supports it. Here are two great deals on RAM upgrades for some of the most recent Macs.

This 8GB 1333MHz kit will fit most 2011 Intel Core i series iMac, MacBook Pro, and Mac Mini:

• Corsair 8 GB DDR3 1333MHz Memory Kit is $43.99 after a $10 mail-in rebate, with free shipping from Amazon

The 8GB 1066MHz upgrade fits most 2010 and 2009 models of iMac, MacBook Pro, and Mac Mini:

• Corsair 8 GB DDR3 1066MHz Memory is $59.99 with free shipping from Amazon

Double-check your necessary RAM type before purchasing, you can do that quickly by going to “About This Mac” and looking at the “Memory” section, it will tell you the type you are looking for:

I reviewed an 8GB RAM upgrade last year for a 2010 MacBook Pro and I would highly recommend it for the price, at that time it cost $120 so paying half of that is quite a steal. It’s pretty easy to determine if a RAM upgrade would help you, but I think most users would benefit.

A 27″ iMac always makes for a great desktop. This one is a Core i5 with an SSD, and an external HP 23″ display is attached to extend the screen real estate even further.

I am so accustomed to using a Mac with an additional screen that it would be almost impossible to have a workstation without one, plus they always make for awesome looking Mac setups. If you’re not using an additional display, you’re missing out on a major productivity boost.

This image comes from Flickr

The Mac now has the highly desirable “Cut and Paste” file feature throughout the Mac OS X desktop and Finder, allowing users to truly cut and paste to move the selected documents or folders to a new location, rather than just making a copy of them. In this sense, the cut & paste ability behaves much like the Windows explorer counterpart, and it represents a fast and efficient way to move and relocate files from one location to another location, without using the standard drag & drop approach that has been standard on the Mac since the origins of the OS.

Using the cut and paste file feature can be seem a little tricky at first, but it’s really not complicated. All you need to do is learn to differentiate the keystrokes that make the action happen. Let’s cover exactly how to cut and paste to move files and folders around on the Mac.

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Is this what the iPhone 5 will look like? We were sent a tip with a few images of what claim to be iPhone 5 mockups from a Chinese accessory producer, here’s the interesting part though: both pictures look like completely different phones. That could be related to the whole dual release iPhone 4S & iPhone 5 thing, or there could just be different hardware schematics flying around for accessory manufacturers to use, who knows.

The first image, shown above, is the most compelling, here’s why:

• It shows an edge-to-edge display that is clearly larger than iPhone 4, just like the first WSJ rumors suggested
• The camera and flash (or another camera?) appear on opposite edges of the back panel, again like old rumors
• The design appears to be made out of aluminum, and both ends taper down, similar to the new MacBook Air design
• It looks thinner and lighter, which is widely expected

Now for some aspects that don’t make much sense about this first picture; the weird port on the lower back of the case is completely unlike Apple but it’s shown in the mockup (note it’s not shown in the actual protective film hovering above it though, suggesting its just a mockup error), such a slim design would be hard to fit a headphone jack, charging port, and speakers into, and there have been no prior rumors that suggest both the top and bottom will be slimmer.

Now for the other supposed “iPhone 5”, which to me looks like some cross between the 9to5Mac’s spyshot, a few mockups, and the iPhone 3GS or iPhone 2G:
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One of the more exciting features of the new MacBook Pro 15″ and 17″ and iMac series is that you can use dual external displays by daisy chaining them via the Thunderbolt port. Unfortunately, this ability is lost on the 2011 MacBook Air, due to the weaker Intel HD 3000 graphics chip and a stripped down Thunderbolt controller.

This was noticed by Anandtech, who points out the lightweight Thunderbolt chip, called Eagle Ridge, only supports a single DisplayPort channel compared to the dual channels in the larger Light Ridge chip:

Eagle Ridge is available in two form factors (normal and SFF) and is effectively half of a Light Ridge chip. That means you only get two Thunderbolt channels and one DP output. Apple used the small form factor version of Eagle Ridge in its new MacBook Air to cut cost and save on motherboard real estate.

While this may affect some purchasing decisions and direct a few users to the MacBook Pro line instead, not all is lost. The 27″ Thunderbolt Display with it’s whopping 2560×1440 resolution is a giant on it’s own and should be more than adequate to meet the needs of most users looking for external displays with their MacBook Air. Plus, Apple is openly advertising the Thunderbolt display as a docking station of sorts for the MacBook Air, since it brings FireWire, three additional USB ports, Ethernet, and a FaceTime HD camera.

And really, when we consider the heaviest MacBook Air is 2.9lbs and the benchmark performance is through the roof, can we really complain much?

One of OS X’s many great new features are all the new high quality multi-lingual voices (here is how to add them yourself). If you went on a voice adding spree like I did, you may quickly realize that all these new voices take up a fair amount of disk space, each weighing in around 400 MB. On a large enough hard drive that isn’t too big of a deal, but I’m on a MacBook Air with 64 GB so 10 voices taking up 4.3 GB of space matters to me.

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Not to pour anymore fuel on the Windows vs Mac fire, but this wifi setup guide from McDonalds is an excellent illustration to show how the same task is handled on each operating system.

On the left, you’ll see two lengthy Windows XP and Windows Vista walkthroughs with a multiple of clicking, configuring, properties, tabs, and a general maze to navigate, just to get wireless connectivity working. Meanwhile on the right side is Mac OS X, with the only instructions being to select the network from the menubar.

This was spotted at a McDonalds in Australia (via TwitPic), and it shows one of just many reasons why I’ll always recommend Macs, over and over again.

Want to toss out the windows in your current application session, preventing them from reopening again via the Resume feature in OS X?

This is pretty easy you just have to remember to do it, to discard windows as you quit an app in Mac OS X just do the following:

Hold down the Option key while going to Quit and you will see the option to “Quit and Discard Windows”.

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If you’ve spent much time using OS X Lion’s new LaunchPad feature you’ve probably noticed that outside of stuffing things into new folders you can’t really hide apps. If you enter the ‘jiggle‘ mode and try to remove an app from LaunchPad, it actually uninstalls the app, which makes it very easy to uninstall things but not so easy to customize your LaunchPad experience.

But now there’s LaunchControl, a free utility that allows you to hide any app from appearing in LaunchPad without uninstalling the app from Lion.

Download LaunchControl from developer ChaosSpace.de

LaunchControl is a tiny download and extremely easy to use, it displays a list of all the apps contained within your LaunchPad and you just uncheck the ones you don’t want to see anymore.
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OS X has a nice new feature to login and lock screens that allow you to display a message underneath the login panel. This is visible to everyone who can see the Mac screen, and it makes for a great place to put either a bit of generic personalization message, or better yet, a lost & found message with some contact and ownership details.

We’ll show you exactly how to set this up on any Mac, it only takes a minute:
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The Mac has an autocorrect feature that can range from excellent to annoying, and it works by attempting to automatically correct typos and misspellings of words as they appear, which are instantly compared to an extensive dictionary and replaced on the fly. It can be a great feature but it’s not perfect, and how you feel about auto-corrections really depends on what you’re trying to type, how often you make typos, and what your individual experience is with the corrections themselves, much of which can depend on typing habits themselves.

If you find yourself on the annoyed end of things with macOS Mojave, MacOS High Sierra, MacOS Sierra, OS X El Capitan, Lion, Mountain Lion, Mavericks, and OS X Yosemite new auto correct feature, you will be pleased to discover all of autocorrect can be disabled quickly.

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In the market for a brand new ultralight Core i5 MacBook Air? Amazon is selling the 2011 base model 11.6″ model at a 5% discount, bringing the price down to $949.99 with free shipping included.

MacBook Air MC968LL/A 11.6-Inch Laptop (NEWEST VERSION) – $949.99 from Amazon

Specs of the base 11.6″ model include: 1.6GHz Dual Core Core i5 Processor, 2GB RAM, 64GB SSD, Intel HD 3000 graphics, backlit keyboard, Mac OS X Lion preinstalled

The 2011 MacBook Air benchmarks show just how fast these ultra portable Macs are, with the 2011 series coming in 2x faster than the 2010 models they replaced.

Mac OS X Lion brought a few changes to the Dashboard, one being that it’s contained within it’s own Space by default, and the other noticeable UI difference is the new Lego lookalike background wallpaper that looks a little, well, Lego-like. That background image is easy to change, so pick an image you’d rather see and let’s get started.

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Outside of watching the little progress bar on the downloading apps icon in LaunchPad or the Dock, there isn’t much of an outward display of how downloads are progressing from the App Store in OS X. Instead, more specific information about download progress and download speed is contained within the Mac App Store app itself, though it may not be completely obvious upon first glance. Here’s how you can check the transfer details in the Mac App Store:
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If you have used Mail for a long time, you have probably noticed the new Mail animations for replying and sending, where the message seems to slide off the screen. Like all the other new animations, this is a polarizing addition and some people hate it. Turning off the general new window animations in OS X doesn’t change Mails animations though, because they are separately controlled by another defaults write command.
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For the die-hard jailbreakers out there, you can jailbreak the newly released iOS 4.3.5 using the same redsn0w 0.9.8b3 version that worked for 4.3.4.

As before, the big caveat here is that it’s a tethered jailbreak, meaning it must be reconnected to a computer anytime you want to reboot the iOS device or if it runs out of battery.

This is what you’ll need:

• Download Redsnow (Mac)
• Download Redsnow (Windows)
• iOS 4.3.4 IPSW files
• iOS 4.3.5 IPSW files

You need to download both versions of the iOS firmware for your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch (iPad 2 is not supported), and you’ll want to point redsn0w at the older 4.3.4 firmware. The rest of the procedure is the same as always, just follow the onscreen instructions to put the iOS device into DFU mode, then boot tethered, and you’ll be jailbroken as expected.

Personally, I don’t like tethered jailbreaks, but for many users they don’t mind the tethered boot process since it is fairly rare that an iPhone ever turns off, and this is for you.