Getting specific information about iTunes & iOS App Store downloads is notoriously difficult, very few developers are candid enough to share download counts and the majority of developers guard download data for competitive reasons. If you’re curious how well a specific app in the iOS iTunes Store is selling, try using this quick and dirty formula to get a rough estimate of sales numbers:

Number of Ratings * 30 = Sales Estimate

This unscientific formula comes from the developer of River of News, a Google Reader app for iPad, who confirms the formula is reasonably accurate:

I found several sources independently say that about 1 in 30 buyers of a paid app will rate it in the store. I now have two apps in the store and that ratio has held up remarkably well.

I ran the formula on Angry Birds, and came up with six trillion quadrillion gazillion infinitiy downloads, which sounds about accurate. So the next time you start pouring money into iPhone app development, take a look at some of the apps out there and run the formula, it’s not perfect but it’s better than nothing.

Update: fixed the link to the developer site.

I like legos, I like Air Hockey, and I like iPads. It had to be posted.

This reminds me a bit of the Steve Jobs & Storm Troopers shot, but I’m not sure if there’s any relation. I also don’t know if that’s a real Air Hockey app for iPad, but it would be fun if it was a multiplayer game.

This picture came to us from Flickr, thanks for the submission Mark!

Update: it turns out there’s a large Flickr gallery of Lego Mac & Apple shots, take a look if you’re a dork like me.

If you don’t want your MacBook Pro to wake from sleep when you open the lid of the machine, all you need to do is launch the Terminal and type the following command:

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If you want to create a new partition, modify a partition table, or remove an existing partition from any hard disk drive in Mac OS X, you won’t need to use anything fancy other than the bundled Disk Utility app that comes with all versions of Mac OS X. Disk Utility has all the tools on hand necessary for modifying partition tables of any Mac drive, and it’s easy to use after a little guidance.

Before going any further, be sure to have a full backup of your hard drive and all important data and documents before adjusting partitions in any way. This is to insure file recovery is simple just in case something goes wrong with the partitioning process, the simplest way to do this is to start a quick manual backup through Time Machine and letting it complete. Once you have an adequate backup made of the Mac, proceed with this walkthrough to learn how to add a new partition, modify and resize existing partitions, and how to remove them too.

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Apparently the Royal Wedding is a big deal, with an expected viewing audience of up to 2.4 billion people (yes, billion) watching the ceremony. If you’re one of these 2.4 billion people, you’ll be happy to find out you can watch the whole thing live directly from your iPhone or iPad thanks to YouTube streaming and a nice little iOS mod.

Click this link on your iPhone or iPad to watch the livestream

If you don’t open the link in Safari it won’t work. When we got this tip a few days ago I ignored it thinking it was too niche to mention, but after hearing some friends and family rant about the wedding and how they wouldn’t be able to watch it for various reasons, I figured hey, someone might find this useful. If that’s you, great, if it’s not, that’s great too.

Thanks to Robert for the submission!

If you’re in IT, or just fixing Grandmas Mac, it’s not too uncommon to get a machine where you don’t have the admin users password. If you find yourself in this situation, you can easily change the Admin password, or any other users, simply by booting into Mac OS X‘s command line Single User Mode. I consider this to be essential knowledge for troubleshooting Macs.

Change an Admin Password in Mac OS X Single User Mode

This is a multistep process but it’s easy to follow:

• First you need to enter Single User Mode. Reboot the Mac and hold down Command+S at boot to enter into the command line.
• You’ll see a note where Mac OS X tells you that you need to run two commands in order to make filesystem changes, this is necessary so let’s handle that first
• The first command checks the Mac OS X filesystem for errors and fixes them, it can take a few minutes to run:

fsck -fy

• The next command mounts the root Mac OS X drive as writable, allowing you to make changes to the filesystem:

mount -uw /

• After the filesystem is mounted, you can reset any users password using the following command:

passwd username

• You’ll need to enter the new password twice to reset and confirm the changes

Note that a password will not be visibly typed when using the ‘passwd’ command, it looks as if nothing is being entered at all. That is standard practice in the command line world.

Changing Admin Password in OS X Lion, Mountain Lion, and later

For users with OS X 10.7.3 and later, including OS X 10.8+ Mountain Lion, there may need to be an additional step to load open directory. If you have issues with the above approach, try the following command sequence with newer versions of Mac OS X. Note the primary difference is using ‘launchctl’ between mounting the drive and changing the password:

#1 fsck -fy
#2 mount -uw /
#3 launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.opendirectoryd.plist
#4 passwd username

The password should now change as expected, where you can then reboot and use the admin user account as expected. Rebooting is possible through the command line by by typing:

reboot

Or by using the standard manual restart methods of keyboard shortcuts, shutdown, or holding down the power button. On the next boot the changed admin password will be usable as anticipated.

Don’t know the admin username? No problem
If you’re fixing someones machine and you don’t know the username to reset, just look in /Users with:

ls /Users/

Here you’ll see at least three items, .localized, Shared, and a username. The username is what you’ll want to change with the passwd command.

After the password is reset and confirmed, you can exit out of Single User Mode by typing exit or reboot. The Mac will now boot as usual and you’ll have access to the machine with the new password.

This is an easier and faster method than the approach taken for resetting lost passwords or using the Mac OS X boot DVD, because it’s changing an existing root users password rather than creating a new admin user account. Both work fine though, so you can use whatever method you’d like.

You can use the same approach to navigate around a sleep/wake lock screen, although you’ll obviously have to reboot the Mac meaning you will miss whatever is currently on the users desktop.

Are these pictures of the next-gen iPhone 5? Images have surfaced on Chinese website MIC Gadget that show what appears to be a white iPhone with a larger screen. The side-by-side image above shows a traditional iPhone 4 display on the left, and on the right is a mystery iPhone display piece with a larger screen area, which could be iPhone 5 (or a fake, of course).

MICGadget says the following about the images, but doesn’t specify where they came from:

Man, we don’t know if this is real, but at least we can see that it has a larger display and edge-to-edge glass. Maybe it’s a mockup, but we are sure that it’s not an iPhone 4.

The similarities with iPhone 4 are obvious, which corresponds with recent rumors that iPhone 5 will share the design of iPhone 4 and feature mostly internal hardware upgrades.

Another image shows the device apparently turned on:
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The DVD may not be dead yet after all. It looks like Mac OS X 10.7 Lion may be offered on traditional DVD installation disks in addition to the more modern and fancy App Store download distribution and USB installer keys.

The possible leak comes from a German Amazon page for the upcoming release of Mac OS X Lion, where mediatype is clearly specified as DVD-ROM (screenshot below):

It’s entirely possible that this placeholder is inaccurate or even a mistake, but Amazon does have a history of accidentally leaking release dates and software upgrades on their various worldwide online stores.

I should also point out that the idea of a USB key installation method is speculation based on the new MacBook Air Mac OS X install drive, and the distribution from the App Store is also speculated based upon the digital delivery of the Mac OS X Lion Developer Previews through the Mac App Store. It’s entirely possible that neither of these installation methods will appear and that we will only see a DVD installer, but with the MacBook Air and Mac Mini Server’s lacking DVD drives, those devices must be served with some form of installation method for Lion.

We’re almost certain to find out what exact installation methods we’ll get for Lion at WWDC 2011, which is just a few months away.

Are you stuck with a Windows PC at work? Maybe you just prefer the look of Mac OS X to Windows? If you’re bored of the Mac OS X 10.6 theme for Windows, spice things up with an all new Mac OS X 10.7 Lion theme for Windows 7! The theme pack is pretty detailed and it brings the illusion of having Mac OS X Lion running on a Windows PC, complete with the new Lion wallpapers and all.

You can grab the skin and theme pack from DeviantArt

Look for the download link on the right side of the DA page. Obviously you’ll need Windows 7 to use this, but you’ll also have to download a couple programs for Windows that allow you to further customize your desktop. These include Reshacker, Universal Theme Patcher, Moveex, JPGtoBMP, leftsider, RocketDock, UberIcon, VirtuaWin, and YzShadow. Don’t worry, there’s links to download all of these on the themes DeviantArt page.

If this theme pack doesn’t satisfy you, just get a Mac. You know you want one anyway.

You can quickly retrieve any Macs serial number via the command line by using the ioreg or system_profiler command and grep for the serial string. Getting the serial number from the command line like this can be helpful for troubleshooting, Single User Mode, remote management with SSH, or for many other reasons, though most users should opt to find the Macs serial number this way from the  Apple menu or from System Profiler, the Terminal app method is valid for advanced users and for many other reasons.

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Wondering how fast the iPad 2 is compared to an iPad in real world tests? This video of side-by-side speed tests shows typical iPad usage, things like booting, launching various apps, and shutting down. You’ll see the iPad 2 excels in most areas but lags, oddly, in shutting down. If you don’t want to watch the video, here are the raw numbers and the tests:

iPad 2 vs iPad Real World Speed Tests

• Booting: 25.3 vs 28.6
• Launching Infinity Blade: 10.6 vs 26
• Launching Google Earth: 17 vs 20.3
• Launch Garage Band: 3 vs 6
• Launching Angry Birds: 8 vs 10.5
• Shutting Down: 26 vs 12

Obviously this test is nonscientific and there’s nothing too groundbreaking here, but it’s interesting to watch anyway. Sure there are improvements in general speed and functionality, but I think we have yet to really see apps that really take advantage of the improved iPad 2 hardware specs.

Thanks for sending this in Davis!

Several applications in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion include unusually high resolution icons, providing another hint that Apple may be laying the groundwork to support retina displays on the Mac platform. The icons measure in at 1024×1024, which are double the current maximum Mac OS X icon resolution of 512×512.

The doubling of pixels and resolutions is significant, as doubling existing resolutions was how Apple handled bringing retina displays to the iPhone 4, and as we saw in some of the possible resolutions for retina Macs, it’s what makes most sense for developers and designers to accommodate.

The high res icons were noticed by Brazil’s MacMagazine (via MacRumors), and apply at least to the App Store, AirDrop, and LaunchPad icons under the Lion Developer Preview.

This discovery is after one of our readers noted that Lion’s large 3200×2000 resolution wallpaper may suggest a retina Mac future. If huge icons and default background images weren’t enough, MacRumors pointed out several months ago that so-called “HiDPI display modes” are making an appearance in Lion:

Taking cues from iOS, Apple has reportedly built in support for what it calls “HiDPI display modes”. These HiDPI modes allow developers to supply 2x-enlarged images to support double-high resolution displays. Like the iPhone 4’s Retina Display, this means that user interface elements will remain the same size, but everything will be twice the resolution and therefore twice as detailed.

While evidence continues to suggest that Apple is planning for a higher resolution future across their hardware lineup, costs to produce ultra-high resolution displays are likely still prohibitive. In other words, don’t expect displays with these resolutions anytime soon, if ever.

PwnageTool 4.3.2 has been released, the app lets you jailbreak iOS 4.3.2 untethered using custom built firmware, custom firwmare is necessary for users with preserved baseband and unlockers who use ultrasn0w. Speaking of ultrasn0w, if you are going to use the new PwnageTool, be sure to get ultrasn0w 1.2.2 as well since it is updated to support old baseband on iOS 4.3.2.

Supported iOS 4.3.2 devices include: iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad 1, iPod Touch 3G and iPod Touch 4G.

Download PwnageTool 4.3.2

PwnageTool is for Mac OS X only, currently you must download via torrent:

• Download Torrent

If you are just looking for a jailbreak, you may want to use redsn0w since it is easier.

The most common way to access a network share is through the Finder, using the Connect to Server function. But there’s a faster way for quick server connection access: you can summon the Mac OS X server connection window from any app by right-clicking on the Finder icon in the Dock and selecting “Connect to Server.”

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Everyone loves the iPad and everyone loves the MacBook Air 11.6″, making this a perfect Mac setup for the ultraportable road warrior. Another impressive fact; these two devices have a combined weight that is still less than the MacBook Pro 13″ model, if that’s not impressive I don’t know what is.

You could take this setup a step further and get DisplayPad for the iPad (App Store link), for $3 the app lets you turn an iPad into an external display for any Mac, as long as there’s WiFi around.

If Macs get a retina display, what would the resolutions be? 3200×2000 like the default Lion wallpaper suggests? There is no definitive answer, but the above chart shows what may be the best guesses yet.

The resolutions are based on a simple idea from a great post on The Elaborated (via DaringFireball), double the existing screen resolutions, just like Apple did when they introduced the retina iPhone 4 and doubled the iPhone 3GS. Why double? The problem with a Mac (or any) retina display is that it would cause all UI elements to shrink dramatically, making everything tiny and causing a pain for developers to adapt. The solution is to take the same approach Apple chose with the iPhone 4, which as you may recall went over practically seamlessly in terms of apps and UI elements in iOS. Why wouldn’t they take the exact same approach to the Mac?

What gives further support to the doubling of existing resolutions is that TheElaborated’s hypothesized retina iPad display in the above chart is identical to what an analyst claims about iPad 3 resolution: 2048×1536. And the MacBook Pro 15″ resolution of 1650×1080? It doubles to 3300×1620, which is remarkably close to the 3200×2000 resolution of the Lion Fuji mountain wallpaper that started this whole string of retina Mac speculation.

There are some other clues too, such as the infinitely scalable Helvetica font appearing in Final Cut X as John Siracusa noticed, plus there’s a (rumored) presence of stronger resolution independent elements in Mac OS X Lion. Clues and speculation or not, doesn’t it make sense to bring retina to the Mac eventually? I think when costs allow for Apple to produce ultra high resolution Mac displays, they will come, and they’ll look amazing.

The opensnoop utility is an amazing tool for tracking down specifics like what files specific applications are accessing, but you can also use opensnoop to monitor all filesystem access in Mac OS X. To do this, run the utility with no flags attached:

sudo opensnoop

You’ll be asked for your root password, and then you’ll immediately be presented with a firehose of data showing everything that is going on within Mac OS X.

Wondering what all this information you’re seeing is? The colorized guide below shows you what you’ll be most interested in following: Purple is the Process ID, Blue is the Process Name, and Red is the File Path:

Generally, the most useful information to follow is the process name and path to the file the given process is accessing. You’ll find a correspondence to what processes are shown in opensnoop with what is in the activity monitor / task manager.

You can also follow a specific file and discover what is accessing it with:

sudo opensnoop -f /path/to/file

Or you can track anything that relates to a specific file or app by using grep. For instance, I want to follow everything having to do with Terminal app or files related to it:

sudo opensnoop | grep Terminal

We’ve showed you this before, but you can also track specific applications with either their process id, or app name:

sudo opensnoop -n Terminal

Unless you’re troubleshooting very vague problems or you just want to see what’s going on behind the scenes of Mac OS X via the command line, it’s a good idea to use opensnoop with some specifics so you’re not inundated with information.

I use Google Calendar for a myriad of reasons but since it picks up dates easily from Gmail it’s especially useful for me. Yet, somehow I never thought to sync it with iCal. If you use Google Calendar, why not sync it to your Mac? Setting this up is very simple:

• Launch iCal
• Open iCal Preferences from the iCal menu
• Click the Accounts button
• Click on the + icon in the lower left corner of the window to add an account
• Enter your Google credentials and click on Create

You can keep the import settings on Automatic, although setting to Google seems to speed up the first time the calendars are synced. iCal will contact Google for you and grab all the information, there’s nothing else to do.

Now you can add events from iCal and the Mail app on your Mac, or Gmail and Google Calendar from anywhere else, and you’ll always have the same date and event information regardless of where or what you’re checking your calendar from. Don’t forget that you can add Google Calendar support to your iPhone or iPad too.