You may be able to pre-order iPhone 5 as soon as September 30, with the actual launch still occurring in early October, according to a new report from 9to5mac.

Noting that the precise launch and pre-order dates could likely change again, 9to5mac says:

We are reasonably confident, though, that as of today, Apple is planning to unleash their next iPhone on October 7th and offer pre-orders starting on September 29th or 30th.

Pre-orders for the next iPhone would be a welcome change from Apple’s most recent iOS device launch, the iPad 2, which consistently sold out and was nearly impossible to get your hands on for several months. The demand for past iPhone and iPad product launches practically guarantees that iPhone 5 will sell out immediately as well, making pre-orders even more important.

iPhone 5 is expected to have a dual core A5 CPU, an 8MP camera, possibly a redesigned case resembling the MacRumors mockup above, and there is some recent evidence pointing to 4G LTE capabilities. Stay tuned for more.

Making yesterdays 4G iPhone carrier test plist find much more interesting, Engadget was notified by an anonymous source that some major Apple Stores are getting in-store 4G LTE equipment installed by none other than iPhone carrier AT&T:

4G LTE equipment was recently installed in a major Apple store — by AT&T, according to our source. Making things somewhat more interesting is the equipment itself, one piece of which supports only the 700MHz and AWS bands — both of which AT&T plans to use for its LTE network if the T-Mobile acquisition goes through.

The reason for AT&T to install such equipment is unclear, but this obviously has set off a new wave of 4G LTE equipped iPhone 5 rumors and speculation. Engadget also comments that Apple Stores appear to be on a hiring spree:

We’re also told that the Apple Store in question, and all those in the region, are now trying to increase staffing on the sales floor by about 30 percent, which is apparently not related to the usual hiring in the lead up to the holidays (that will apparently still happen later).

4G LTE equipment from AT&T, additional sales floor staffing… nobody knows for sure what is going on here and you should probably consider the LTE talk a rumor at best, but the iPhone 5 is said to launch in October.

Update: The image of the alleged 4G equipment has been removed by request.

Apple and Starbucks have partnered up to offer free weekly iPhone app downloads to patrons of Starbucks stores. The free apps come in the form of a promo code printed on cards available at the register, those promo codes can be redeemed on the iOS App store.

The first free app offered through the new “App Pick of the Week” program is Shazaam Encore, a $5.99 iOS app that lets you determine what song is playing by listening to the music and identifying the song name.

Offering free apps in the “Pick of the Week” program looks to be an expansion of the existing free weekly iTunes song offered by Apple and Starbucks, which are also available via redemption code cards. The free app program was first discovered by CNET, who points out that Apple and Starbucks have had a partnership since 2007 for offering free music downloads.

Earlier in the year, Starbucks also released an iPhone app that lets you make coffee purchases through an iPhone, in addition to tracking customer rewards and purchase history.

Don’t want to make an OS X Lion USB install drive yourself? Apple has you covered, and now the official Apple OS X Lion Thumb Drive is available for purchase through the Apple Store for $69. The main advantage to using a USB installer is that it allows you to install Lion without an internet connection.

You can get the official USB thumb drive on Apple.com

The official Apple offering comes at a bit of a price premium, and even Apple reminds you that “OS X Lion is also available for a lower price as a digital download from the Mac App Store.” so they certainly aren’t trying to upsell anyone. Jump below to see how to create your own drive and save some cash.

Note that Apple’s Lion USB thumb drive is different than the Lion Recovery Disk created by the assistant tool, and it will allow you to install Lion without an internet connection rather than just boot into recovery mode for the internet restore.

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Firefox 6 has been officially released and is available for Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows users to download. The update is supposedly 20% faster and supports new HTML5 and CSS3 elements, in addition to having a variety of changes aimed at web developers. Somewhat disappointingly, version 6 for Mac OS X oddly doesn’t yet support native Full Screen mode in OS X Lion. Nonetheless, if you like to keep on top of the latest browsers or you’re a web developer, it’s a worthwhile download.

You can either update Firefox 6 directly through the “About” menu, or download directly from the links below:

Download Firefox 6

These direct links are from ftp.mozilla.org:

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

If it seems like Firefox 4 and Firefox 5 was just released, you’re pretty much right, and the rapidly increasing version numbers seem to be in some release war with Google Chrome’s browser, which is somewhere around 13 by now. Safari is currently at version 5.1 and doesn’t seem to be participating in the release race.

Finally, the Firefox 6 build was first found available on the Mozilla FTP servers a few days ago, but today marks the official release day, thus the post.

Update: Developers can read more about the changes important to them on Mozilla.org.

Don’t use Dashboard often or maybe you don’t like Dashboard much in Mac OS X? It’s a great feature but it’s often underutilized, and if changing Dashboards background wallpaper wasn’t sufficient enough for you to start using it again, you can always return Dashboard behavior to the standard transparent hovering state that existed prior to OS X 10.7 (and 10.8 or 10.9 for that matter). This overlay ability makes the feature a lot more useful to many users since it’s quickly accessed and comes and goes on the screen when needed.

The end result of this change pulls Dashboard widgets out of their own dedicated Space in Mission Control, and instead shows widgets directly over the desktop and applications, just like it did in earlier versions of Mac OS X.

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Setting and changing file type associations – that is, the application that launches by default when a file icon is double-clicked or otherwise opened – is extraordinarily simple in Mac OS X.

All you need to do is follow a few quick steps, starting off in the OS X Finder:
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Apple has reportedly provided various carriers with 4G LTE capable iPhones to test on their networks, although it’s unlikely the 4G device being tested is the same iPhone 5 that is expected to debut in October.

Evidence of the LTE iPhone came in the form of a plist file that has a reference to “Connected mode LTE Intra-frequency Measurement”. That property list file was provided to BGR from an unspecified carrier, and you can find more screenshots of the vague XML document on their site.

Interest in the high speed LTE network is obvious and the technology will undoubtedly come to the iPhone when Apple determines it an appropriate fit for their hardware, that is most likely to occur after there has been widespread carrier deployment of 4G. LTE networks allows speeds that are at least 7x faster than traditional 3G connections, providing a true mobile broadband experience for the consumer. One could hope that along with 4G capable iPhones there would be revised data plans from the carriers, since mobile broadband would be negligibly useful under some of the currently strict data plan limitations.

FlashToHTML5 is a great Safari extension that will attempt to load all YouTube Flash videos as HTML5 at the highest possible resolution, helping you to maintain a Flash-free Mac OS X installation and thus giving portable Macs more battery life by reducing CPU usage.

FlashToHTML5 plugin is a free download from the developers site

The extension serves the same purpose as the manual HTML5 experimental setting in YouTubes preferences, but if you don’t have a YouTube login then you can’t force HTML5 video anyway.

If you do have to use Flash for other reasons, it’s highly recommended to install a ClickToFlash plugin for Safari or enabling the included click-to-load Flash feature in Chrome, both offer the same benefits that prevent CPU hogging Flash video from automatically loading in the browser.

Nice find this morning from 9to5mac.

Mac OS X has rearranged the “Don’t Save” keyboard shortcut that shows up in the save dialog windows, moving from the longstanding Command+D to Command+Delete instead. Presumably this was done because Command+Delete (backspace) makes more sense and it’s harder to make a mistake, but some habits die hard. This change was first introduced in Lion, but it persists with other versions of OS X too.
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Navigating elements on web pages with the Tab key is a useful feature in most web browsers, but since the release of Mac OS X Lion the new default behavior in Safari seems to limit what the tab key selects on a page. Here’s how to enable tab key navigation across all actionable elements on a webpage:

• From the Safari menu pull down and select “Preferences”
• Click on the “Advanced” icon and check the box next to “Press tab to highlight each item on a webpage”

Note the sub-text points out that if you press Option+Tab then you will select only the text input boxes and menu items, which is the default behavior of Safari and Chromes tab key navigation.

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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