iTunes Home Sharing is a great feature that lets you share your iTunes 10.2.1 library wirelessly with anyone on your local network. This means you can share any Mac or PC’s media library with any iOS 4.3 compatible iPhone, iPod, iPad, or Apple TV, in addition to any other Macs and PC on your network.

We’ll walk you through setting up iTunes home sharing, and then how to access these shared libraries from any compatible iOS hardware, in addition to other Mac’s and PC’s.

Read more »

Some of us who have downloaded iOS 4.3 and updated their iPhones and iPads have run into a strange syncing error that vaguely states “The required file cannot be found.” If this has happened to you, you’re not alone, and thankfully there’s a fix of sorts.

Fix “required file cannot be found” iOS 4.3 syncing error

Important: Make a backup of your iOS device photos before proceeding! The best way to do this is to copy them images to your Mac/PC. If you aren’t sure how to do this, follow our guide to transfer photos from iPhone to a computer, it’s the same for iPad and iPod touch.

Now that you’re photos are all backed up, connect your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad to your computer, and do the following:
Read more »

Some older iPad models have a physical button to use as an orientation lock or mute switch. It might seem mundane, but one of the most appreciated features of iOS for iPad users is the ability to enable the iPad orientation lock switch instead of having it function as a mute switch in iOS on iPad, as that customization can really help some users.

iPad users can now choose to have the side switch function as a rotation lock again, this secures the iPad display in either portrait or landscape mode with the flick of a switch.

Here’s how to get this functionality on all versions of iOS with an iPad that has a physical switch:

Read more »

Apple has released iOS 4.3, the update includes support for iPhone 4 GSM, iPhone 3GS, iPad, iPad 2, and iPod touch 3G and 4G, and Apple TV 2. iOS 4.3 brings AirPlay improvements, improved Safari performance, iTunes Home Sharing, the addition of the iPad orientation lock switch, and Personal WiFi hotspot for iPhone 4.

Download iOS 4.3

You can download and install iOS 4.3 by checking for updates within iTunes.

Alternatively, you can download iOS 4.3 IPSW directly from Apple:

• iPhone 4 (GSM)
• iPhone 4 (CDMA) – not yet released
• iPhone 3GS
• iPad 1
• iPod touch 3G
• iPod touch 4G
• Apple TV 2

iOS 4.3 IPSW is also available for the upcoming iPad 2:

• iPad 2,1
• iPad 2,2
• iPad 2,3

If you are having trouble downloading the ISPW files, right-click and “Save As” or use a different browser.

The Verizon iPhone 4 CDMA model is expected to receive the 4.3 update later, although no timeline has been announced from Apple. Older iOS hardware such as iPhone 3 and iPod touch 2G and 3G models will not be supported by iOS 4.3 and are ineligible for the software update.

Anytime you flip between Spaces in Mac OS X there’s a fancy animation, this is nice and all but it makes switching Spaces slower than it needs to be. You can disable the animation which speeds up Spaces transition a bit.

Disable Spaces Animation
Launch Terminal and type:

defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-swoosh-animation-off -bool YES

Then you’ll need to kill the Dock for changes to take effect:

killall Dock

Re-enable Spaces Animation
If you want to re-enable the Spaces animations, just change YES to NO:

defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-swoosh-animation-off -bool NO

Kill the Dock again for the change to take effect.

You can also speed up the Spaces transitions by adjusting the time it takes to drag windows between desktops.

If you aren’t familiar, Spaces is the virtual desktop manager in Mac OS X, allowing you to maintain several different desktops that are easy to flip between.

Thanks to Rick for sending in this tip!

The vast majority of Mac users won’t need to manually tweak launchd and launchctl, but there are times when you uninstall or stop using an app in Mac OS X and a service agent continues to needlessly load in launchd. This is annoying, but these rogue agents are easy to remove via the command line, so launch Terminal and away we go. Additionally, there are situations where advanced users may want to tweak agents loaded into launchd for whatever reason. In any case, we’ll detail how to list items in launchd, how to remove them from launchd in OS X, and also how to re-load agents into launchd on the Mac.
Read more »

Did you know that iTunes has a wealth of free language learning courses? There are tons of language lessons offered for free, just find a language you want to learn or brush up on, subscribe to the podcast, and start practicing. I have selected 15 popular languages below, but there are many more available through iTunes.

15+ Free Language Lessons from iTunes

Some are updated more often than others. They’re all free, and each one is an iTunes link:

• Arabic
• Brazilian Portuguese
• English
• French
• German
• Indonesian
• Italian
• Japanese
• Korean
• Mandarin Chinese
• Russian
• Spanish
• Thai
• Tagalog (Filipino)
• Vietnamese

Not finding what you want here? Do you want more podcasts for a specific language? There’s an abundance of lessons available on iTunes, check them out here.

Ever wonder what the deal is with some of the crazy Apple rumors? Refer to this handy Apple Rumor Publishing Guide from JoyOfTech. This is a hilarious flowchart that is frequently dead-on regarding the often silly and sometimes just outright fictitious Apple rumor mill.

My personal favorite part of the chart is the first line:

“Did you receive an Apple rumor? -> No -> Make one up and send it to yourself!”

This cracks me up because everyone knows it’s true. Sure, there are a few legitimate sources out there, but there are plenty more that just make things up to get attention.

And yes I’m posting this knowing full well that we publish rumors ourselves, although we try to focus on solid sources and patents as a basis for citation. And no, someones imagination should not be called a “source” to justify the fabrication of a rumor.

Heads up to MacGasm for finding this.

Want to change the crontab editor on the Mac? You can do that! We’ll show you how to use a different crontab editor on a selective per-edit basis, and also how to change the default crontab text editor. You can use vi, emacs, nano, or whatever else you’d like. Most hardcore command line users and unix geeks love vi, but I personally prefer nano, so that will be what is demonstrated here.

If you want to change your default crontab editor to nano, here’s how to do this via the command line in Mac OS X (and linux too but we’re focusing on Mac here obviously).

Read more »

The CDMA iPhone 4 has been unlocked in the USA, allowing you to use the iPhone as a pay-as-you-go phone on Cricket Wireless. Comments from the YouTube video (embedded below) suggest that Cricket stores are performing the service for $125 and that the iPhone 4 will then work on Cricket or MetroPCS networks as a pay-as-you-go phone.

What’s required? You’ll have to get your hands on an off-contract Verizon iPhone 4 (or pay the termination fee), and then you’ll need to jailbreak the iPhone 4 and take it over to Cricket wireless for some custom MMS update. The process seems similar to what China Telecom figured out with their own unlocked CMDA iPhone.

Pay-as-you-go iPhones work, but not officially supported… yet
Remember, no iPhone has been officially released as a pay as you go phone, but we have showed you how to get an iPhone 4 setup as a pay-go AT&T phone and you can also setup a prepaid iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G too. Both of these work without jailbreaking if you stay with AT&T’s Pay Go plans.

An official prepaid iPhone may be in the works though, as hinted by Apple’s COO Tim Cook, but it’s unclear whether such a device would be intended for the US market.

Read more »

Update 9/14/2011: Installing Mac OS X Lion within a virtual machine is made significantly easier with VMWare Fusion 4. All you need to do is:

• Go to the File menu and select “New”
• Locate the “Install Mac OS X Lion.app” (here’s how to redownload Lion from the App Store) in your /Applications/ folder and drag that into the “New Virtual Machine Assistant” window
• Choose Continue and select your settings, and boot the VM

Installation of Lion is extremely fast, and you are then able to boot and use your virtual OS X 10.7 install.

The older method is repeated below for posterity sake:

If you want to run Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Developer Preview but you don’t want to bother setting up another partition or upgrading your existing Mac OS X 10.6 installation, you can go with a third option: running Lion in a virtual machine with VMWare.

This is really only recommended for more technically inclined Mac OS X users. If you’re serious about Lion development, remember that virtual machines have their limitations, and you should probably just setup a dedicated partition to run the developer preview directly. Having a dedicated partition will ultimately perform better and the installation process is a lot easier than setting this up to run in VMware. Anyway, if you want to try out Lion in a VM, here’s what you’ll need:

Requirements to Install & Run Mac OS X 10.7 Lion in VMWare:

• Mac OS X 10.7 Developer Preview – developers can download this from Apple
• VMware Fusion for Mac OS X – here’s the free 30 day trial version
• Patience – there’s some setup required here, so if you’re lazy this isn’t for you
• Optional/Recommended: plenty of RAM

Regarding the RAM requirement, VMware and virtual machines in general perform best with a lot of RAM, if you plan on using them often on your Mac it’s highly recommended to upgrade to 8GB. With how cheap RAM is these days, I consider it an essential upgrade for power users. If you’re curious, you can read my review of 8GB RAM upgrade for a MacBook Pro where I detail the advantages of having a bunch of memory.

The Walkthrough:

Update: ObviousLogic.com seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth, here’s the walkthrough repeated below via Google Cache:

Everything ready? Then check out the great walkthrough from ObviousLogic: Installing Lion in VMware, it’s broken down into 12 steps that are easy to follow.

Installing Mac OS X Lion in VMware

Shhh! Don’t tell anyone.

Overview

Yay! The developer version of OS X Lion is out in the wild!!! Not going to say where I got it from, but I have it and I want to play with it!

But… Being ill-gotten and a pre-beta release, I really don’t want to install it on a hard drive and boot my iMac off of it. Who knows what crazy things could happen? Would suck if something was wrong with the file system (or a virus installed) and it wiped all attached drives!!! So, since I already use VMware Fusion for my OpenBSD web server, why not run Lion in a virtual machine!?

Issue 1. Only server versions of Mac OS X can be run in a virtual machine. Well there’s an easy way around that. Seems the system only checks for the existence of a single file, which can be created to appease the VM Gods.

Issue 2. Lion’s installation and boot process is a lot different and the VM doesn’t know what to make of it – booting from a disk image makes the VM cower into a corner and cry for help. Or just get outright hostile and tell you, “Not here, Jack!” But, as it turns out, there’s a way around that as well. Not as easy as the first obstacle, but possible nonetheless.

Step 1: Create a blank disk image.

Using Disk Utility, create and mount a new image with the following settings,

Name: MyInstaller
Size: 5 GB
Format: Mac OS X Extended
Encryption: none
Partitions: Single partition – Apple Partition Map
Image Format: DVD/CD master
You can name it whatever you want, but be sure to modify the steps below accordingly.

Step 2: Mount the Lion installer image.

The image I obtained mounts as ‘Mac OS X Install ESD’. If yours mounts as something different, then you will need to make any necessary changes to reflect that in the following steps.

Step 3: Mount the Base System image.

The Lion installer image contains a bunch of hidden files, to get to them you’ll need to run the Terminal application. One of these hidden files is BaseSystem.dmg which is used to boot the system.

$ cd “/Volumes/Mac OS X Install ESD”
$ open BaseSystem.dmg

The volume will mount as ‘Mac OS X Base System’

Step 4: Copy the base system.

The entire contents of the base system needs to be copied to your installer image. The ‘Restore’ feature in Disk Utility works great for this. Once that is finished, you can eject the BaseSystem image, it is no longer needed.

Please note, if you chose to “Erase destination”, your installer image will now have the same name as the source, ‘Mac OS X Base System’. I rename mine back to ‘MyInstaller’.

Step 5: Setup the ‘kernelcache’ file.

First the file needs to be copied from the Lion installer image to your installer image, then the boot configuration file updated to specify the location of the file.

$ cp “/Volumes/Mac OS X Install ESD/kernelcache” /Volumes/MyInstaller/kernelcache

$ cd /Volumes/MyInstaller/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/
$ sudo vi com.apple.Boot.plist

Make sure the boot file contains at least the following key/value to specify the location of the kernelcache file,

Kernel Cache
\kernelcache

Step 6: Copy the installation Packages.

Before the packages can be copied from the Lion installer image, there’s a file on your installer image that needs to be deleted.

$ sudo rm /Volumes/MyInstaller/System/Installation/Packages

$ sudo cp -R “/Volumes/Mac OS X Install ESD/Packages” /Volumes/MyInstaller/System/Installation/Packages

The copy (cp) command will take a few minutes; it’s copying a few gigabytes of data, so be patient.

Step 7: Flag the system as a server installation.

Again, in order to boot an OS X volume in VMware, it needs to be a server. The system checks for the existence of a file in a specific location; you can imitate a server installation simply by creating that file.

$ cd /Volumes/MyInstaller/System/Library/CoreServices
$ sudo touch ServerVersion.plist

That’s it for the installation disk. Both installer images can be ejected.

Step 8: Create a virtual machine.

This shouldn’t be anything new to you, but I’ll go through each step anyway.

Open VMware Fusion and select “New…” from the File menu.
Click the “Continue without disc” button.
Select “Create a custom virtual machine” and then Continue.
Select ‘Operating System: Apple Mac OS X’ and ‘Version: Mac OS X Server 10.6 64-bit’, then click Continue.
Click the “Customize Settings” button, then name and save the new virtual machine.
Choose “CDs & DVDs” from Settings, then click “Use disc image” and select your installer image.
Choose “Hard disks” from Settings, deselect “Split into 2 GB files” for the pre-created hard drive and click “Apply”. *
Feel free to make any other changes to the settings with one caveat, you must use a SCSI hard disk; IDE drives are not recognized by the installer after it boots. Also, if the hard disk is going to be used as a boot disk, it cannot be split into separate 2 GB files, so make sure to deselect that option when the HD is created.

Step 9: Replace the VMs NVRAM.

The default NVRAM will boot up previous OS X systems, but it will not boot up a Lion volume. I have a VM that I initially used as a Snow Leopard system. Booting into that system seems to have set the NVRAM so that it will know how to boot a Lion volume. Here is the NVRAM file from that VM. You can download it and use it in your VM.

nvram.zip

Download and uncompress the nvram file.
Locate your VM within the Finder, right click and select “Show Package Contents”.
Delete the current nvram file if one exists.
Copy the downloaded nvram file into the folder and rename it to match the name of your VM; mine is named, “Mac OS X 10.7”, so the nvram file would be renamed to “Mac OS X 10.7.nvram”
Now you should be able to run the VM and it will boot up to being the installation process.

Step 10: Installing Lion.

After the installation disk boots up, the first thing you should do is run Disk Utility and format the hard drive. All the norms apply; GUID partition map, Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) format, etc. When done, Quit to return to the installer.

Continue with the installation.

When the installation is complete, it will attempt to reboot the VM using the freshly installed OS on the hard disk. It won’t boot, because it’s not a server installation.

Step 11: Forcing the VM to boot from the CD.

VMware will not let you change the startup disk in the VMs settings, so you’ll have to force a change while the VM is running.

Start the VM. As soon as you see the vmware splash screen, hit the escape key. This will bring you to a boot menu, select “Boot Manager”

This will then bring you to another menu where you choose which device to boot from. With “Mac OS X” selected, you can look at the ‘Device Path’ info on the right side of the screen to see the path to the default OS X boot device (this should be the hard disk). You can then move through the list to determine which device would be the CD to boot from. (The Pci or Scsi numbers will be different.) If you choose the wrong device the first time, you can just restart the VM and choose another until you get it right.

Step 12: Flag the new system as a server installation.

After the VM boots from the install disk again, run the Terminal from the Utilities menu.

I labeled my HD, “OS X Lion HD” when I initialized it, so I would enter the following to ‘touch’ the system,

# touch “/Volumes/OS X Lion HD/System/Library/CoreServices/ServerVersion.plist”

Now you can quit the Terminal, choose Startup Disk from the Utilities menu and restart from the hard disk.

Read more »

You can click and drag any URL in Twitter for Mac to another application, this is particularly helpful if you want to open a URL in a different browser rather than the default web browser set system-wide in OS X.

Read more »

Want to turn an iPhone 4 into a pay go phone? David chimed in on our past prepaid iPhone article to describe how he got his iPhone 4 setup with a pay-go plan by transferring sim cards with AT&T. This method works to get pay-go calling and data use!

How to setup an iPhone 4 as a Pay-Go phone

Note: this applies to the AT&T iPhone 4 model only:

• Be sure you have an existing pre-paid phone with an existing pay-go sim card
• Get an iPhone 4 off contract with a micro sim (FYI: you can buy iPhone 4 without contract directly from AT&T or Apple, but it’s expensive)
• Call AT&T at 1-800-331-0500 and say “Customer Service” to talk to a service representative
• Request assistance in transferring your old pay-go plan to a new sim card
• Provide the old pay-go sim card ICCID number and the new micro sim ICCID (from the new iPhone 4 About Screen or iTunes)
• Provide your iPhone IMEI number, printed on the microsim caddy or from the iPhone About screen
• AT&T will recognize from the IMEI and ICCID that this is an iPhone 4, they will say that while they can do the transfer you will not be able to use the internet (read on for enabling data). Agree to this, and get the pay-go line transferred to your new micro sim
• Now connect the iPhone 4 to iTunes to activate the phone, once activated you will be able to make phone calls on a pay-go basis

You may need to restart the iPhone once to get calls to work, but activation is usually immediate after speaking with AT&T customer service.

Now that you have the pay-go calling part taken care of, you can get data working too by installing a custom APN.

Note: Some users say this requires a jailbreak and others have been able to get it working without one, here’s how to jailbreak iOS 4.2.1 with Greenpois0n RC if you require a jailbreak.

How to Enable Data & Internet on a Pay-Go iPhone 4

Again, this applies to the AT&T (GSM) iPhone 4:

• Jailbreak the newly activated iPhone 4
• Connect your iPhone 4 to a WiFi network so that you can access the web
• From the iPhone 4, open Safari and visit http://unlockit.co.nz and tap “Continue”
• Choose “Custom APN” and select AT&T as your carrier
• Tap on “Create Profile” to download and install the new custom APN

Once you get a “Profile Installed” message, your custom APN profile will be working. Now restart the iPhone 4 and try using your data plan, it should work perfectly. You may want to temporarily disable WiFi on the iPhone to be sure that your are using the data network and not WiFi while you test this.

Don’t have an iPhone 4? No problem, setup an iPhone 3G or 3GS as a pre-paid iPhone, it’s even easier since you can just swap sim cards directly!

Thanks for the iPhone 4 instructions, David!

If you have a Mac with an SSD or otherwise limited disk space (like the MacBook Air 11″ with a 64GB drive), you might consider moving your iPhone backup folder to another drive to save some of that precious SSD space.

Before proceeding you might want to determine if this is necessary for you. Do this by checking the size of the iTunes “Backup” folder that we reference below, just click on it and select “Get Info” to calculate it’s size. In my case, the Backup folder is 6GB, so with the small MacBook Air SSD I could immediately save 10% of disk space by relocating the backup elsewhere. With this in mind, here’s how to move the often large iTunes backup to an external drive.
Read more »

Here a MacBook Pro 15″ is connected to a 24″ Apple Cinema Display, with an iPad, iPhone 4, and iPhone 3G in there to round out the Apple lineup. If you’re not using dual displays with your Mac laptop, you’re missing out on a nice productivity boost and I’d highly recommend picking one up.

This Mac setup comes from Flickr.

A few weeks ago my microwave broke, which you might think has nothing to do with clocks but I actually never use the microwave for anything except to check the time. With the giant clock aka microwave broken, I set about to find some clock screen savers for Mac OS X so my unused Mac could tell me the time. The first one I came across is the retro styled flip clock screen saver Fliqlo, which I really like but it doesn’t count seconds, so I searched around some more and came across “Today” which you can see in the screenshot above.
Read more »

It was recently discovered that Mac OS X Lion will have SSD TRIM support, but OS X users with SSD devices may not have to wait until 10.7 is released this summer to get TRIM support.

AppleInsider has discovered that newly released MacBook Pro 2011 updates are shipping with a unique build of Mac OS X 10.6.6 Snow Leopard that includes native TRIM support for SSD drives. Thus far the custom 10.6.6 build 10J3210 has only been reported to appear on the latest MacBook Pro models, while existing OS X 10.6.6 installations remain at build 10J567.

This information strongly suggests that Apple may release a software update to Mac OS X 10.6 that includes the native TRIM function, this would be a welcome update for Mac users with solid state drives. It is possible that TRIM could arrive with Mac OS X 10.6.7, but this is only speculation.

Update: Ethan submitted the following screenshot corroborating that SSD TRIM support is included in new versions of 10.6.6:

This is from the new MacBook Pro 13″ Core i7 2.7GHz model.

News that iOS 4.3 will bring the WiFi Personal Hotspot feature to AT&T iPhone 4’s is welcome, but I’m going to reiterate my opinion from the past regarding the Personal Hotspot usage fee. If you missed it, it goes like this: what you’re really paying for is convenience and ease of use.

Jailbreaking & MyWi vs AT&T’s Personal Hotspot

Here’s how this breaks down:

• Jailbreaking & MyWi: Slightly more technical to enable, requires jailbreaking the iPhone, one time $20 MyWi purchase, works on iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 with any version of iOS.
• AT&T Personal Hotspot: Convenient & easily enabled, costs $20 every month in addition to your standard data plan charges, works only on iPhone 4 with iOS 4.3.

Just like with Verizon, paying for AT&T’s Hotspot use over the course of the year will rack up $240 in additional charges. If you jailbreak and use MyWi, you pay $20 once for the app and then you just use your existing data plan.

Who should pay the AT&T Personal Hotspot fee? And who should jailbreak?
As I’ve said before, paying AT&T (or Verizon) the personal hotspot usage fee is for those who want ease and convenience. There’s practically no setup involved, it’s just signing up for the hotspot plan and then selecting the option on the iPhone 4 to enable the feature, it’s as easy as it gets. For anyone that is less technical or who doesn’t mind paying for simplicity, forking over the cash to AT&T or Verizon is the way to go.

And then there’s people like me. If you’re technically inclined and familiar with jailbreaking, just buy MyWi and create your own iPhone wireless hotspot (it works on older iPhones too, while Personal Hotspot is limited to iPhone 4 only). The other nice thing about MyWi is that it offers a free 3 day trial, so you can jailbreak your phone and then test out the wireless hotspot functionality without any obligation to buy anything. If you hate it or it doesn’t work for you, reverse the jailbreak and just go with the monthly plan option.

PS: Jailbreaking is legal
Finally, a reminder that jailbreaking is not illegal. No Apple doesn’t like jailbreaks, and you’ll want to undo the jailbreak by restoring your iPhone before you take it in for Apple service, but it’s perfectly legal.