Thunderbolt equipped Macs are able to boot from external Thunderbolt drives. This means that you could run a full Mac OS X, Windows, or Linux installation from an external drive connected to a Mac with Thunderbolt connectivity, and because of Thunderbolts speed, it would be extremely fast. How fast? Theoretically, Mac OS X running on an external Thunderbolt drive should be just as fast as booting from an internal drive, but using an external SSD would actually be faster than an internal spinning hard drive.

This also opens the door for further OS X dual booting options, multiple OS booting, and general ultra-fast expansion on hardware that is otherwise limited with internal expansion options. Currently, Thunderbolt comes on the MacBook Pro and iMac, but it is expected to gain further traction with inclusion on upcoming MacBook Air, Mac Mini, and Mac Pro hardware refreshes.

Bootability has been confirmed by Anandtech, who verified that external Thunderbolt drives are bootable when researching the massive Pegasus 12TB RAID setup, shown above attached to a MacBook Pro.

This was found via MacRumors, they also mention that Thunderbolt supports Target Disk Mode, an option that was otherwise limited to Firewire equipped Macs.

Update: Demonstrating the speed of Thunderbolt vs FireWire and USB 2.0 is this recent benchmark chart from MacWorld that shows off an external Thunderbolt drives incredible speeds:

Those read and write speeds are as fast if not faster than many internal SSD’s!

If you have a lengthy amount of text to read or review that you don’t have time to actually read, another alternative is to convert that text into an audio track. This is kind of like making an audiobook out of any text block, and it can be as long or as short as you need it to be. Of course it sounds complex to convert text into audio files, but it’s not at all, Mac OS X makes it extremely simple. In a few moments, you’ll have a fresh MP3 audio file from the origin document, added to iTunes that you can then sync to an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Sounds awesome right?

It is, here’s how to use text to speech on the Mac to speak selected text and save that spoken audio as an audio file, and it works it in all versions of Mac OS X.

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Interested in learning how to use the all-new Final Cut Pro X? Don’t miss this free video learning tutorial set from IzzyVideo.

There are no signups or strings attached (other than owning Final Cut Pro X of course), just set aside some time and start learning.

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With Mac Preview you can quickly create a new image file from your clipboard contents. On it’s own that might not be too enthralling, but this feature extends beyond Preview, meaning any image that you have copied from anywhere using Command+C will work as the source image to create a new image file. This includes images copied from all web browsers, other Mac apps, and even files in the Mac OS X Finder.

If you use the clipboard and copy/paste with images often, you’ll surely find this feature useful. It’s easy to use, here is how it works.

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Using Mac OS X Text to Speech tools, we can convert any .RTF or .TXT file into a spoken audio file which can then be transferred to your iPod or iPhone for later listening.

Update: There is an easier way to do a text to audio file conversion using the OS X Services menu, the resulting spoken audio track goes directly into iTunes, you may want to try that first if you do not prefer the command line approach we cover here.

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Swiffy is a new experimental tool from Google that easily converts SWF Flash files to HTML5, making Flash-only content accessible to hardware like the iPhone and iPad in just a few seconds. This should be a really useful utility for designers and it’s well worth a bookmark if you work with HTML5 and Flash content for the web or elsewhere.

Google explains how Swiffy works:

A SWF file is converted in two phases: the Swiffy compiler (which you can use on this website) processes the SWF file and generates a JSON file. A client-side JavaScript runtime loads that JSON file and renders it using HTML, SVG and CSS.

Swiffy conversion works best if you export Flash animations as Flash 5 files, and the output currently only works in Webkit browsers (Safari and Chrome, for example). The results are fairly impressive and Google included a small gallery showcasing a few examples including a converted ad unit and two simple games. I’d be really interested to see how this performs with more complex SWF files, I’m sure we’ll find that out soon enough.

Check out Google Labs: Swiffy

The release of Swiffy from Google is kind of interesting and shows that HTML5 really is the future of web animation, and regardless of Google’s reasons this is a welcome utility for Mac and Apple users. It’s no secret that Flash is a pretty miserable experience on the Mac, which is exactly why Steve Jobs gave a big ‘no’ to including it on the iPad and iPhone. It’s also why we generally recommend using things like ClickToFlash, Click-to-Play, and to some extent even selectively using ad blockers, it just makes for a better web experience on the Mac, at least until HTML5 has finally pushed Flash the way of the dinosaurs.

Remember the Hackintosh? Mostly consisting of modified netbooks running Mac OS X, the movement became fairly popular until Apple stepped in with the iPad and then MacBook Air to effectively redirect everyones attention back to official Apple hardware. But the hackintosh community isn’t dead – far from it – in fact you can still build a really powerful hackintosh for just about $600. If you want to build your own unofficial Mac, here’s what you’ll get:

$600 Hackintosh Build Hardware Specs

• Core i3 3.06GHz
• 4GB RAM
• 1TB 7200 RPM hard drive
• nVidia GeForce GT240 with 512MB VRAM
• DVD burner

Not a bad machine at all, especially when you consider the current Mac Mini costs $699 and is stuck on a boring old Core 2 Duo CPU with 2GB of RAM and a 320GB drive.

Lifehacker borrowed the infamous TonyMacX86 walkthroughs and updated it slightly into a single page of easy to follow instructions, they even included a video (embedded below) showing exactly what to do in the BIOS which makes it even simpler.

Oddly enough the guide was published just weeks before Mac OS X Lion arrives, so you’ll probably have to tweak a few things in the near future if you want to run Lion on the machine. Nonetheless, TonyMacX86 is usually on top of all this stuff pretty quick, so you can almost certainly bet that Lion will run on the machines.

If you’re going to be building a PC in the near future anyway, why not build one that is Hackintosh compatible? Add it onto your list of geeky Apple things to do this next weekend.

Check out LifeHacker’s easy to follow guide and make one yourself
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Finally, a rare picture of an elusive iPad prototype surfaces, with none other than the man Steve Jobs himself is holding it!

Is this the iPad 10? iPad 12? iPad 3000??? Four simultaneous homescreens guarantee all your multitasking needs will be handled with ease, and the luxurious duct tape center gives it a futuristic appearance that is unrivaled by any iPad competitors. With all the rumors about future iPads, did anyone predict the duct tape? This changes everything! Microsoft and RIM are now expected to announce their own tablets modeled entirely in duct tape, but is it too late to compete?

OK enough sarcasm, so this is totally stupid and obviously I’m just poking at the rumor mill that we all get caught up in, but I had to post it. It kind of reminds me of that dumb iBoard and iMat picture from last year.

Not sure where this came from, but we found it on Twitter via @iDannyOcean

The recently released Mac OS X 10.6.8 Software Update has quietly added native TRIM support to Macs equipped with SSD drives. TRIM insures that your SSD drive will be functioning at optimal speed and extends the life of the solid state disk, making this a must-have update for any Mac user using solid state storage.

Enabling native TRIM support on your Mac’s SSD drive is just a matter of installing the Mac OS X 10.6.8 software update and then rebooting your machine. Installing the OS X 10.6.8 update eliminates the need for the assorted third party hacks that surfaced to hack TRIM to work, so it may be a wise idea to disable those tools before installing the official update.

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion also includes TRIM support natively, and is due for a public release sometime this July.

Update: We can confirm that TRIM is enabled on Apple provided SSD’s with 10.6.8 installed, but some third party SSD’s continue to not support TRIM despite the update. Lion may address this, or you can continue to use the third party TRIM Enabler tool.

In another move suggesting that iOS 5 is aimed to kill jailbreaking, the infamous iPhone Dev Team is reporting that new versions of iOS 5 prevent future iOS versions to be downgraded. To clarify, users will continue to be able to downgrade from iOS 5 back to iOS 4 and other pre-5 firmware using older versions of iTunes, but something like a theoretical iOS 5.1 release would not be able to downgrade back to iOS 5 firmware.

The explanation for this will make sense to those familiar with how a jailbreak works, but will probably sound like gibberish to anyone just loosely aware of the process:

Starting with the iOS5 beta, the role of the “APTicket” is changing — it’s being used much like the “BBTicket” has always been used. The LLB and iBoot stages of the boot sequence are being refined to depend on the authenticity of the APTicket, which is uniquely generated at each and every restore (in other words, it doesn’t depend merely on your ECID and firmware version…it changes every time you restore, based partly on a random number). This APTicket authentication will happen at every boot, not just at restore time. Because only Apple has the crypto keys to properly sign the per-restore APTicket, replayed APTickets are useless.

This will only affect restores starting at iOS5 and onward, and Apple will be able to flip that switch off and on at will (by opening or closing the APTicket signing window for that firmware, like they do for the BBTicket)

You can read the technical “Blob Monster” details at the Dev Team blog. They do mention there may be possible ways to ‘combat’ this change, but due to the beta status of iOS 5 they’re not releasing much more information.

Two new and distinctly different iPhones may be released this September, according to a new analyst report. Yes two iPhones, both an iPhone 5 and a lower cost iPhone 4S, are now expected to be launched this fall, presumably alongside iOS 5.

If this is true, the two new iPhone models might spec out something like this:

iPhone 4S: lower end model aimed at prepaid and emerging markets

• Priced around $349 or lower (past reports suggest as low as $200)
• Unlocked
• No-contract required
• Pre-paid voice and data plans
• Hardware based on existing iPhone 4

iPhone 5: upper end model with contract subsidy, powerful CPU, and the latest features

• Dual-core A5 CPU borrowed from iPad 2
• Potentially larger 4″ screen
• 8MP camera

The dual-iPhone report comes from Deutsche Bank by way of Fortune & CNN, with a substantial caveat being the analyst “does not cite any sources or claim any inside knowledge for his two-iPhone theory.” Sources or not, Apple’s own COO Tim Cook has publicly stated they are interested in the prepaid market, and many other news agencies have long reported on a cheaper iPhone going into production.

If this is true, it may go a long way to explain the dual set of rumors that have long floated around which have confused just about everyone, one centered around the all-new iPhone 5 which is said to be full of a bunch of new features, and another focused on the iPhone 4S which is said to be a marginal upgrade based on the existing iPhone 4.

This news comes not long after Bloomberg seemed to clarify that an iPhone 5 was scheduled for September. Where there’s smoke there’s fire, a new iPhone (or two) is definitely coming.

Note: the attached picture is an artists rendering of the iPhone 5 based on rumors.

iDB, the same guys who brought us the iOS 5 wireless syncing video, are now showing off another hot feature in iOS 5: restoring iOS backups directly from iCloud.

The video shows how smooth the process is.

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Looking for some geeky stuff to do this weekend with your Apple gear? Here’s a slew of ideas that are sure to keep anyone busy, whether it’s a DIY project, learning from WWDC 2011, getting your Mac ready for Lion, or just gaming away into the wee hours of the morning, boredom be gone!
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For those of us who didn’t make it to WWDC 2011, Apple has released full videos of all the WWDC sessions. There’s a lot to learn here, with over 100 sessions covering both Mac OS X and iOS, and each is presented by Apple engineers.

Head over to the Dev Center to get the videos on iTunes.

The videos are available in both HD and SD formats, and they are accessible to anyone with an Apple developer account – not just the paid $99 iOS and Mac dev accounts – so if you want to watch them all it takes is a brief free registration to get access.

If you want a guaranteed to be great Mac setup, get a MacBook Pro and add an Apple Cinema Display. This particular desk has a MacBook Pro 15″ with a matte display (vs glossy) connected to the always beautiful 27″ Apple Cinema Display.

I don’t know for sure but I think this may be a workstation at the Tumblr offices in NYC, if so that’s a pretty swanky office. Found via Flickr.

One of the most hotly anticipated features of iOS 5 is wireless syncing, and the video above from iDB shows exactly how it works in iOS 5 beta 2.

If you’re a developer you can access this feature right now in iOS 5 beta 2 but it also needs to be enabled in iTunes 10.5b2, everyone else will have to wait until Fall.

Just moments after the freshly released iOS 5 beta 2 was available, it has been jailbroken using Redsn0w 0.9.8b1. This is the same version of redsn0w that worked to jailbreak the first beta of iOS 5 and therefore doesn’t require any additional downloads, but it does include the same caveats as before.

In order to work, make sure you point redsn0w at the iOS 5 beta 1 IPSW file when asked, and then you can go about the jailbreak as usual. Redsn0w 0.9.8b1 continues to be a tethered jailbreak, but will work for iPod touch 3G, iPod touch 4G, iPad 1, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 GSM, iPhone 4 CDMA.

This has been confirmed by MuscleNerd of Dev Team fame, who reminds everyone that this redsn0w release is intended for jailbreak developer use only.

iOS 5 beta 2 has been released to download, the new build is 9A5248d, supports wireless syncing, and likely includes a hoard of bug fixes and improvements. The second iOS 5 beta supports the same hardware as before, running on iPad 2 WiFi GSM & CDMA, iPad, iPhone 4 CDMA & GSM, iPhone 3GS, and iPod touch 3G & 4G. Backup your hardware and get downloading.

You can download directly from iOS Dev Center

As usual, this release is intended for developers and you’ll need a dev login to access the IPSW files. If you’re just experimenting, remember you can always downgrade from iOS 5 beta back to iOS 4.3.3 if you decide you don’t like it.

For non-developers, iOS 5 will be released in the fall.