A prototype MacBook Pro 15″ with a built-in 3G cellular modem has shown up for sale on eBay. Other than a 3G antenna and SIM card slot, the 2007 model is mostly an ordinary MacBook Pro with a Core 2 Duo chip, although there’s some additional soldering and the motherboard is red which is typical of Apple prototypes, according to MacRumors, who found the prototype.

As you can see in the picture, the antenna sticks out the top of the MacBook Pro’s lid, which isn’t the most glamorous solution, and considering Apple’s obsession with design this is probably one of several reasons the prototype never saw mass production. It’s also fascinating that despite the 3G modem not working, curious buyers are bidding the four year old MacBook Pro well beyond its resale value.

By far the most interesting part of this prototype is that it demonstrates how serious Apple was (is?) about including native cellular connectivity in Macs, even four years ago. The question for today is if a built-in 3G or 4G modem really matters anymore. Personal Hotspot in iOS 4.3 and up allows Mac users to share an iPhones internet connection, so having yet another cellular data plan for a Mac seems somewhat unnecessary.

All that said, Apple has recently solicited feedback from MacBook Air owners about 3G connectivity and usage, and has also patented antenna designs that show a 3G enabled Mac laptop, suggesting that Macs with their very own data plans may still be coming to market sometime in the future.

Want to learn a new programming language? Python is one of the hippest languages in use these days, but why pay for books and coursework when you can do this all on your own, for free, on your Mac? You can do exactly that with some free online resources to learn Python, including a free book called Dive Into Python 3.

Let’s discuss various Python 3 resources so if you’re interested in learning this powerful programming language you can get started.

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How’s this for a workstation? This telecommuting MacBook Air 11″ features a one-of-a-kind BMW laptop stand and charging station (get it, the motorcycle?), officially earning this submission an award for the ‘nicest MacBook Air Stand’. Try not to miss the view of Monument Valley either, what an awesomely unconventional Mac setup!

Thanks for sending this in Ulrich!

Sure, the MacBook Air 2011 can’t drive dual displays through Thunderbolt, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have two or even three external displays powered by the ultra portable if you get creative. The focus is on the MacBook Air here, but you can apply all of these solutions to any other Mac too.
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Since the launch of Mac OS X Lion, all keyboards on new Mac products have replaced F4 with a ‘LaunchPad’ button instead of the old Dashboard button. If you have pre-Lion Mac, you can remap that F4 Dashboard button to open LaunchPad instead though, here’s how:
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It’s time to customize the appearance of Mac OS X 10.7 again. We recently showed you how to change Dashboards wallpaper image from that Lego-like pattern to anything else, and then we showed you how to change Launchpads folder background pattern to your choice. Next up is Mission Control’s background image, say goodbye to Linen and hello to whatever wallpaper you want to see.

Pick a New Mission Control Background Image and Convert it to PNG
First up, you need to pick a PNG file you want to set as the new Mission Control background. I’m mildly obsessed with iClouds t-shirt background but for the purpose of this walkthrough I’ll use a more obvious change of some coral reef. The image file must be a PNG and it must be named “defaultdesktop.png”, Preview makes it easy to convert or export any image as a PNG:

• Select the File menu and navigate to “Export”
• Choose “PNG” as the filetype and save the image name as “defaultdesktop.png”

Note: you can choose a repeating pattern image or a large wallpaper, if you choose a large wallpaper make sure it at least matches your screen resolution or it can look awful.

Got your image saved? Great. Now we can proceed to customization.
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Future versions of Mac OS X and iOS may be even more gesture based, as a new Apple patent shows off a variety of complex multi-touch gestures to perform various system tasks. A few of the patented gestures and behaviors and their potential functions include:

• Digging a hole – presumably to move, copy, or save files and windows
• Opening a trap door or window – possibly to open new windows or applications?
• Shredding – presumably to close or minimize a window or delete a document
• Pouring – combining gestures with physically moving a device, this could be a new gesture based method of transferring files from one device to another
• File aging – icons show gradual deterioration as they get older (aliases in Mac OS X already do this)
• Shake to arrange icons – self explanatory, instead of selecting “Arrange files” from a menu you could just shake the device

Typically Apple patents don’t indicate much more than Apple’s wildly creative side, but with how prominent gestures are in Mac OS X Lion and iOS 5, this particular patent shows a lot more real-world potential than usual. The other noteworthy side of the patent is the obvious touch-screen interface to something that looks more like Mac OS X than iOS, but you can read into that how you want. I should point out that some of the above potential explanations are my own guesses as to the gestures functionality, but you are encouraged to read the patent, look at the drawings, and arrive at your own conclusions.

More images from the patent are below, or you can read a great breakdown of the patent at PatentlyApple.com
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Is Apple going to announce iPhone 5 on September 7? According to Kodiwarisan, Apple will be hosting a media event on Wednesday, September 7, where new iPods and presumably the upcoming iPhone 5 will be announced.

MacRumors followed up on Kodiwarisans date and confirmed it as meaningful, and reminds us that past September events were also earlier in the month:

Apple has traditionally held their Fall media events in the first part of September with the past three events taking place on September 1st, 2010, September 9th, 2009, and September 9th, 2008. Last year’s event introduced new iPod touch, iPod nano and iPod shuffle models. This year’s event, however, has been widely expected to also incorporate the rumored iPhone 5 announcement. We confirmed with Kodawarisan that the date was not the product of guesswork, but came from a source in the know.

The date may have come from schedules at traditional Apple media event locations, like the Moscone Center or the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

There are a few things that should be pointed out. First, an announcement doesn’t mean a launch, and this is important because the the only time Apple has publicly given to hint at an iOS 5 release date has been a vague “Fall 2011” date. It’s practically guaranteed that new iOS hardware won’t ship without iOS 5preinstalled. In other words, products may be announced, but not actually ship until weeks or even a month later. That would seem to correspond with an October availability for the next-gen iPhone, as AllThingsD/WSJ published earlier in the month.

The iPhone 5 is clearly the hot product that everyone is waiting for, but other fall product rumors have suggested the possibility of a retina iPad, a discontinuing of the iPod touch in favor of a cheap pay-go iPhone, and an updated Apple TV. We’ll find out in just a few weeks.

Update: Jim “The Beard” Dalrymple seems to debunk this one, citing his own sources.

Think Full Screen app mode wastes an external displays screen real estate in Mac OS X Lion? Think again. Despite various reports to the contrary, and even early experience with the Developer Preview, some Full Screen apps in Mac OS X Lion work just fine with multiple monitor Mac setups. In fact, the secondary display can hold toolbars, panels, windows, and other app data directly over the linen covered screen, without incident.
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Aside from the keyboard shortcuts, Grab, and other screen shot apps, you can also take screenshots of your Mac OS X desktop directly from the Terminal with the ‘screencapture’ command.

Here is a detailed overview of this utility and how to use it, which allows capturing screenshots from the command line with ease.

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If you use multiple Desktops (aka Spaces aka Virtual Desktops) in OS X Lion’s Mission Control, you can set apps to specific Desktops, all Desktops, or no specific Desktop at all.

• Right-click on the apps icon in the Dock
• Navigate to Options, and then from the “Assign To” sub-menu select one of the three choices:
• All Desktops – the app will appear on all Desktops, without causing a switch
• This Desktop – Desktop-specific, this will cause Desktops to switch when the app is selected
• None – the default setting

The main difference with the choices is how apps interact within Mission Control, and whether or not they will automatically cause a Desktop switch based on their selection or not.

Check out more Mac OS X 10.7 tips while you’re at it.

Want to get the most out of Mac OS X native Full Screen app mode? Assign a keyboard shortcut to toggle Full Screen mode with a simple keystroke. This will work to flip in and out of full screen mode of Mac OS in any app that supports the feature, and it only takes a minute or so to setup.

Modern versions of MacOS and Mac OS X already have this, but prior versions of Mac OS X can choose whichever keyboard shortcut you’d like to perform the function, just be sure to pick one that doesn’t conflict with anything else.

The tutorial here will demonstrate the keyboard shortcut for toggling in and out of full screen mode on MacOS and Mac OS X, as well as show you how to setup a keystroke for this capability in earlier versions of Mac system software.

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FileVault 2 is the all new disk encryption method that comes with Lion, and it’s more secure than ever, using XTS-AES 128 encryption on your entire disk, as opposed to just the user directory as in past versions. The other huge change that came with FileVault 2 is the significant performance boost, where using full disk encryption barely makes a dent on system performance.

Just how fast is FileVault 2? See for yourself with these benchmark charts on a variety of SSD and traditional hard drive configurations.
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A recent addition to Mac OS X and modern versions of Xcode development tools is a utility called Network Link Conditioner, a highly customizable tool that lets you simulate a variety of common internet connectivity speeds.

The utility is aimed at Mac and iOS developers so they can test their apps response times on a variety of network conditions, but it’s also extremely useful for IT admins, network administrators, and web developers. Basically anyone who needs to simulate any specific internet connection speed can benefit from the utility, and it’s a free download available from Apple.

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Ever wish you could access an applications menubar immediately, from anywhere? MenuPop fulfills this desire, activating an apps menu from anywhere with the click of a hot key or mouse cursor, by creating a contextual menu out of the main menu. This means you can access the Apple  menu, File, Edit, everything, instantly from a quick shortcut.

MenuPop is a great tool especially for Mac users with multiple displays, because once you set the primary display, the menubar sticks on that screen only. It’s also very handy if you spend a lot of time in OS X Lion’s full screen apps. Less moving the cursor means more productivity, and plus it’s free to download, so why not give it a try?

Download MenuPop from the Mac App Store – free August 9 only, otherwise $4.99

The app works fine in nearly all applications in Mac OS X 10.6 and OS X 10.7, and you can adjust the font size of the popup menu to accomodate your preferences. It’s fairly customizable, so be sure to check out the preferences to get a feel for the apps abilities.

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Apple’s market capitalization reached $341.5 billion today in trading, becoming the worlds largest and most valuable company. Apples new position in the top spot just barely edges out oil giant Exxon Mobil’s $341.4 billion, and is more of a function of the skittish behavior on Wall Street than any particular news today since both stocks are down quite a ways from their 52-week highs. Nonetheless, this is quite an amazing feat for a company that was just $7.68 a share a decade ago and on the verge of bankruptcy.

If you really want shareholder envy, check out what your net worth would be if you had invested in Apple stock rather than buying Apple equipment.

Just look at Apple’s 10 year chart when compared to cash-cow Exxon:
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A fair amount of MacBook Pro 2010 (and some 2011) users are reporting stability issues with their NVIDIA 330M equipped Macs and Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, with problems including kernel panics, random system crashes, blank or black screens, inability to wake from sleep, external displays not working, and assorted other headaches.

The Macs most affected by this seem to be the MacBook Pro 15″ and 17″ with Core i5 and Core i7 CPU’s and the switchable Intel HD 3000 and NVIDIA 330M GPU, with the majority of problems triggered once the NVIDIA GPU is activated. An attempted workaround has been to use gfxCardStatus to force Mac OS X to always use the Intel 3000 GPU, but that is not considered a consistently reliable solution.

The issues have been annoying enough for some users to downgrade back to 10.6 Snow Leopard until an official fix comes from Apple, but before you do that, try out this fix sent in by one of our readers.
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The iPhone Dev Team has released Redsn0w 0.9.8b5 to jailbreak iOS 5 beta 5, the jailbreak is intended only for developers who want to assure their Cydia apps work fine in the newest iOS beta, and neither iOS 5 beta or this version of redsn0w are intended for widespread consumption. Supported hardware includes iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPod touch 3rd and 4th gen, and iPad 1.

Download Redsn0w 0.9.8b5

These are direct download links:

• Download redsn0w 0.98b5 (Mac OS X)
• Download redsn0w 0.98b5 (Windows)

Point redsn0w directly at the beta 5 IPSW file and proceed with everything else as usual.

Understand the difference between a tethered vs untethered jailbreak, but in short you will need to connect your iOS hardware to a computer upon every reboot of the device. There are also various reports of quirkiness when attempting to SSH into the iOS device, iBooks and other apps may crash, some Cydia apps cause Springboard to refresh, and there is other behavior that is characteristic of an unfinished beta release, further emphasizing this is not yet ready for widespread adoption.