If you need more storage capacity, these two top-rated Western Digital drives on sale from Amazon are great deals, they both have giant capacities of 3TB and 2TB respectively.

• 3 TB Western Digital WD Elements USB 2.0 External Hard Drive for $119.99
• 2 TB Western Digital WD Elements USB 2.0 External Hard Drive for $79.99

Free shipping is included from Amazon as usual.

These drives make for perfect Time Capsule expansions or Time Machine backups for any Mac, but are also great places to store your external media, iTunes library, and external iOS backups for anyone with constrained disk space like SSD users and MacBook Air owners.

Do you hate the way iCal looks in Mac OS X Lion? The leather interface of iCal looks like it’s right out of an iPad has definitely caused a split with users, people either love the way it looks or hate it with a passion. For the sake of this article, we’re going to assume you’re not a fan of the leather UI,

Replacing iCal’s Leather User Interface with Aluminum

To ditch the leather, you are going to replace the leather image files with aluminum versions:

• Download the iCal aluminum replacement files by clicking here and unzip them, place this directory in an easy to access location like your desktop
• Navigate to /Applications/ and find iCal
• Important: Make a copy of iCal by selecting the app and hitting Command+D to create “iCal Copy.app” – this is important because it allows you to revert the changes
• Right-click on the original iCal.app and select “Show Package Contents”
• Open “Contents” and then open “Resources”
• Drag all of the previously downloaded iCal aluminum UI replacement files into iCal’s “Resources” folder, replacing the contents (click ‘Apply to All’ and then select “Replace”)
• Launch iCal and enjoy your aluminum interface

I have tested this and it works flawlessly. Just remember to backup the original iCal app (it’s only 42mb) in case you ever want to change back to good old cowhide. Keep in mind that future iCal updates will probably overwrite your changes too.
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iOS 5 beta 4 was just released but the iPhone Dev Team works fast, already jailbreaking the latest beta. This continues to be a tethered jailbreak for all hardware, which includes the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4, iPod touch 3rd and 4th gen, and iPad 1. iPad 2 remains unsupported.

The jailbreak works like any other past version of redsn0w, and you’ll need to update to the iOS 5 beta IPSW through iTunes and not OTA.

Download Redsn0w 0.9.8b4

There are Mac OS X and Windows versions available:

• Download now (Mac)
• Download now (Windows)

Much like the other recent redsn0w releases, these iOS 5 beta jailbreaks are intended for use by Cydia developers and are not considered stable enough for wider use yet.

On the left is a MacBook Pro 15″ Core 2 Duo with an SSD, the center rotated Dell 22″ screen, and on the right is a Core i7 iMac 27″ decked out with 12GB of RAM. Maybe it’s could just Exposé but it looks like the menubar is still sideways on that vertically oriented Dell, doesn’t it? Nice Mac setup, regardless!

via Flickr

Apple has released iOS 5 beta 4 and is available for developers to download through the iOS Dev Center. The build comes in as 9A5274d and like the iOS 5 betas supports iPad, iPad 2, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4, and iPod touch 3rd and 4th gen.

Developers can grab the release on Dev Center, alongside iTunes 10.5 beta 4, and XCode 4.2 beta 4. As usual, the new iTunes beta is required to update to iOS 5 beta 4.

iOS 5 includes a ton of new and exciting features for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users, but won’t be released for public usage until Fall of this year.

Update: iOS 5 beta 4 can be received as an OTA (Over The Air) update from devices that are currently running iOS 5 beta 3. To access the OTA update, tap on Settings > General > Software Update

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion both hide the ~/Library directory by default, the reason likely being to prevent accidental deletion of critical files that are needed for apps to run. Since most Mac users don’t ever need to go into the Library folder, this isn’t terribly shocking, but for those of us who do require accessing our Library directories it can be a bit shocking to discover the directory is no longer instantly visible as it once was.

Fortunately, this is easy to reverse and if you wish you can switch the behavior and instead show Library all the time with a quick terminal command. This tutorial will detail four different ways to access the User Library folder in Mac OS X from Mt Lion and beyond.

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Updating to Mac OS X Lion for the vast majority of users is a painless experience and everything works great. But for others there can be trouble, there are various user reports in our comments and around the web on Apple’s Support forums and elsewhere, that suggest that wireless networking in OS X Lion is a bit more sensitive than Snow Leopard. This could be an issue that only occurs on some wireless cards, or some routers, or some combination of the two, but nonetheless we’ve found a few workarounds and fixes to resolve this annoyance.

Some of these tips are borrowed from our Mac wireless problems troubleshooting guide, which is an excellent resource with many more solutions and fixes if the following tips don’t work for you.

Basic WiFi Troubleshooting

First try out these tips, they’re basic but work in some cases:

• Turn wireless on & off – the first thing you should try, this alone fixes many cases of dropping wireless connections
• Reboot the Mac – this is the classic Windows troubleshooting tip, but if you haven’t rebooted since the first Lion boot, this can clear up some troubles too
• Reset the Router – just unplug the router for about 15 seconds and reconnect the power supply to cycle most routers, assuming it’s an issue with the router and how Lion is corresponding with it, this will fix the problem

More Advanced WiFi Troubleshooting Tips

Still dropping? The next set of tips pertain to the Network preferences, accessed through System Preferences > “Network”

Set a manual IP address with DHCP – if all else fails, use “DHCP with manual IP address” in Network > Advanced > TCP/IP settings. Pick an IP that is in range of the router, but out of range of conflict. For whatever reason, this has worked for years to resolve Mac OS X wireless problems with some routers
• Move Wi-Fi to the top of the Service Order list – This is an old tip that simply prioritizes WiFi as the primary method that your Mac should connect to the internet, and it seems to help maintain connections
• Move the primary router to the top of “Preferred Networks” list – this is accessed from the “Advanced” menu in Network settings. There is some speculation that if you are in range of multiple routers, the connection will juggle between the two causing WiFi to drop. Drag your primary router to the top of this list.
• Delete existing WiFi connections and re-add them – this is done by clicking on the ‘minus’ icon in the Network settings lower left corner, then just click on “+” and add a new WI-Fi connection
• Add an extra DNS entry – it’s not clear why this works, but many users report success with just adding an additional DNS address to the list. 8.8.8.8 is Google’s public DNS and is reliable
• Add a New Network Location – from the Network control panel, do the following:

• Pull down the ‘Location’ menu and navigate down to ‘Edit Locations’
• Click the + sign to add a new network Location
• Give it a name, click OK
• Select the “Network Name” (wireless router) and click Apply

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I love Mac OS X Lion like the rest of us, but I found this Joy of Tech comic strip hilarious, it touches on everything from natural scrolling, the lack of PPC support, new scrollbars, downloading from the App Store, and more.

On a more serious note, if you plan on upgrading to Lion soon, don’t miss our recommended upgrade steps walkthrough.

Maximizer is a free utility that brings Full Screen app mode to all Cocoa apps running in Mac OS X Lion 10.7, even if they don’t technically support the feature yet.

Lion is needed, as is the following to get this working:

• Download SIMBL – SIMBL stands for “SIMple Bundle Loader” and basically allows app and OS modifications to be made in the form of plugins, which is exactly what Maximizer is
• Get Maximizer from chpwm.com – Uncompress the zip file and drop the .bundle in ~/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins

You will then need to relaunch any open apps for the plugin to load, but be aware that Full Screen won’t work in some apps as anticipated, if at all.

Is this necessary? That depends on who much you like Full Screen. Quite a few apps don’t support true full screen yet, ranging from Firefox and Chrome to even apps that ship with Lion like the App Store, TextEdit, Address Book, iWeb, Disk Utility, iChat, and many more. Admittedly, some of these apps don’t make much sense to be full screen, but some would be good and just haven’t been optimized for Lion yet. This should hold you over until then.

The 2011 Mac Mini is blowing away early benchmarks, in some cases doubling their predecessors and even outperforming the impressive MacBook Air 2011 benchmarks. Not bad for a tiny Mac are they? Unsurprisingly, the Mac Mini Core i7 model is the most impressive, with a whopping 9573 GeekBench score, but the Core i5 is no slouch at 6395.

The above chart compares the new 2011 Mini GeekBench scores vs 2010, 2009, and even the 2005 mini, courtesy of MacMiniColo, but these are not rogue results, as a quick search on GeekBench‘s website shows us several more 2011 Mac Mini killing it in the benchmarks:

With the 2011 Mac Mini performing so well, it looks like the hardest decision many prospective buyers will have to make is exactly which model they want to fly with, but the Quad-Core i7 Server model is a certified screamer. We’ll update as we get more benchmark results and hopefully we can see some real-world tests soon too.

This will be the funniest thing you will read all day. An apparent excerpt from Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN quotes an epic exchange between Steve Jobs and the ESPN president:

The story goes that ESPN president George Bodenheimer attended the first Disney board meeting in Orlando, Florida, just after the company had bought Pixar, the innovative animation factory, and spotted Apple CEO Steve Jobs in a hallway. It seemed like a good time to introduce himself. “I am George Bodenheimer,” he said to Jobs. “I run ESPN.” Jobs just looked at him and said nothing other than “Your phone is the dumbest fucking idea I have ever heard,” then turned and walked away.

Steve is a champion who is not afraid of speaking his mind.

What an awesome find from Gruber of DaringFireball, who points out that the “dumbest” phone in question is this ESPN branded Samsung flip-phone from 2006, shown here:
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One of the great unsung features of Lion is the personal use license which allows you to download OS X Lion once and then install it on all of your authorized personal Macs. This makes the $29.99 purchase an even better deal than it would be already, because one single purchase lets you upgrade all of your household computers.

There are several approaches to installing OS X Lion on all of your own Macs, these include:

• Copying the OS X Lion installer to other Macs – this is the primary focus of this article by using the following methods

• Copying the Lion installer with an external drive or DVD
• Transferring the Lion installer over a network

Several of these we have already covered before and you are welcome to check those out, but for the purpose of this article we are going to discuss transferring the OS X Lion installer to the other Macs. This allows for easy upgrades of all your Macs and prevents you from having to re-download the app or create any installation drives.
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You might have heard that Mac OS X Lion ditches Front Row, the easily accessible media player that was activated by hitting Command+Escape on a keyboard or by pressing play on an Apple Remote. If you like Front Row and are disappointed in Lion leaving it behind, you can easily get it working again just by copying a couple files over from the prior OS version.

Manually Enabling Front Row for OS X Lion

This will require access to a Mac OS X 10.6 installation. The following Front Row files from OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard must be moved into the exact same locations in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion:
/System/Library/CoreServices/Front Row.app
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/BackRow.framework
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/iPhotoAccess.framework
/System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.RemoteUI.plist
/Applications/Front Row.app

If you have Snow Leopard installed and laying around, you can preserve and move these files yourself quickly with Finder or by using cp, just be sure to place them in the exact same locations. This is very easy if you have a dual 10.6 and 10.7 boot config going, but if not don’t worry there’s a simple alternative.

Get Front Row Working in Mac OS X Lion with an Installer

Alternatively to moving the files yourself, you can use use a free package installer that contains the 10.6 Front Row files and places them automatically into the appropriate locations in Lion. This is easier.

Download the free package installer by MacHatter.

The MacHatter package does all the work for you and has been confirmed to work. If you click on “Custom Install” you can double check that the Front Row files exist:
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Did you buy a new Mac between June 6, 2011 and July 20, 2011? If so, don’t grab Lion from the App Store quite yet because you qualify for a free download of Mac OS X Lion, directly from Apple. All you need to do is visit Apple’s Up-To-Date page to claim your copy, just be sure you have your Macs Serial Number, date of purchase, and place & location of purchase ready.

Head over to Apple’s Up To Date page to claim your free copy

Any Macs bought July 20 won’t need to do this because they’ll come with Lion preinstalled. If you bought a Mac before June 6, well, you’ll just have to buy Lion from the App Store like the rest of us, it’s $29.99 and includes a very generous personal license that will allow you to install Lion on all of your personal machines.

Don’t miss the rest of our Mac OS X Lion coverage and tips.

The first benchmarks for the MacBook Air 2011 refresh (released alongside Lion) are rolling in, and they show that the Intel Core i5 processor in both the 13″ and 11″ variation are screamers. How fast? Well, just check out the Geekbench scores, which for both models are at least double the speed of the 2010 Core 2 Duo’s they replaced. In fact, the new MacBook Air’s are so fast that the speed of the new 1.7GHz Core i5 13″ model is faster than the 2010 MacBook Pro 17″ that was a 2.6GHz Core i7, as ElectricPig says:

To put these benchmarks into perspective, the 2010 17-inch 2.67 GHz Core i7 MacBook Pro scored 5423. For [$999] the 11-inch MacBook Air offers a benchmark on par with last year’s [$2499] 17-inch MacBook Pro.

Undoubtedly some of the speed increase is due to the ultrafast SSD, but it also shows the new Intel Core i5 contained within the 2011 MBA refresh is a screamer.
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First a quick note: if you’re a developer who is running the Lion GM build 11A511 there is technically no need to install the Lion Final, both builds are 11A511 and identical. That said…

If you are running the Mac OS X Lion GM build and you want to buy and install the Final release of Lion through the Mac App Store, you’ve probably noticed that you’ll get an error message in the App Store. The solution? Simple, you just need to hold Option and click on the Install button to be able to install the final release over GM. You can also do this through the “Purchases” tab in the Mac App Store, just hold down Option to enable the “Install” button.

This is also a way for those who inappropriately downloaded Lion GM to ‘come clean’ and pay Apple for the final release. It’s only $29.99, and if you haven’t bought it yet, you really should.

Again, there isn’t much reason for developers to do this, but it’s a good tip anyway from The Loop.

Update: Some users are reporting sporadic issues with this, here is a clarification from our comments:

To clarify for everyone:

Hold option/alt when clicking the App Store icon.

Keep option/alt held down, and navigate to OS X Lion in the App Store.

Keeping alt/option held, you will see OS X Lion is now available for purchase, instead of being marked as ‘installed’.

Click it!

Basically, hold option during App Store launch and during each click through to “Purchases” and then to “Install”

Unless you live under a rock, you probably know that OS X Lion is available to download on the Mac App Store. We’ve been covering Lion for a while now (check out all of our posts on OS X Lion for a ton of tips and relevant information) and we think it’s awesome, but if you’re the type to want reviews before diving in yourself, here’s a handful of the best out there:

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The final version of Xcode 4.1 has been released as a free download to everyone via the Mac App Store. Mostly for developers, Xcode is the Mac OS X-only development environment for creating OS X and iOS apps, but the package also includes various useful command line tools, and even an iOS hardware simulator, making it a worthwhile download for power users as well as developers.

Before you get the latest version of Xcode though, you will need to download Mac OS X Lion and complete that installation.

Get XCode 4.1 free from the Mac App Store

Here are the key changes for XCode 4.1 with Lion support, via the App Store page:

What’s new in Xcode 4.1 for OS X Lion
– Includes SDKs for OS X Lion and iOS 4.3
– Interface Builder support for Auto Layout and new Aqua controls such as NSPopover
– Full screen support in workspace, project, and organizer windows
– Project modernization to identify and resolve out of date build settings
– Behaviors can be customized and assigned to unique key bindings
– Source control enhancements to pushing, pulling, and management of remote servers
– Assistant editor support for display of generated assembly and preprocessed output
– Additional bug fixes and stability improvements

Prior to this release, Xcode cost $4.99 to download.