If you get easily distracted by things sitting around in the background on your Mac, HazeOver might be for you. It’s a free utility that casts a shadow on all inactive windows. In other words, any window that isn’t in the foreground will be “hazed over.”

With HazeOver open, windows actually phase in and out of the shadow, so it’s a neat visual effect even if you aren’t using it to minimize distraction, and perhaps you just want some additional eye candy on your Mac.

Oh and if you use multiple monitors on your Mac, it will only cast shadows on your primary display, but the developer is working to fix that bug.

You can download HazeOver for free from the developers site.

This is a pretty cool app with a variety of uses and utility. Maybe you want to reduce distractions, or highlight the foremost window, or maybe you want another alternative to the Single Application Mode feature that doesn’t completely hide background apps and windows. Give it a try, it’s pretty cool!

Apple has started to air the first iPad 2 commercial, it’s a bit different than their past TV ads but it’s still undeniably Apple. The commercial declares “This is what we believe; technology alone is not enough” it then goes on to describe the iPad 2 a bit, but it’s real message is that while the iPad 2 is amazing, it’s the people using it that make it so special.

The commercial kind of reminds me of the recap video that was played at the iPad 2 launch event, which was much less about the iPad and more about how people are using the device and how it has changed their lives. It’s a good message and I like the videos, certainly more than the recent iPhone 4 commercials.

Apple certainly hasn’t needed to advertise the iPad 2, it still sells out at every new shipment and finding one is a challenge. If you’re still looking (hey me too!) you have to check iPad 2 stock in your region by calling resellers. They all seem to sell out soon after getting a shipment, so moving fast is essential.

In a somewhat hidden feature of iTunes, you can display a music spectrum analyzer in place of the iTunes song info. All you need to do is click on the little play icon in the song info area, it’s highlighted below with an arrow pointing to it:

This has probably been around for a while but I just stumbled upon it accidentally. I had never thought to click on that button, I long assumed it was a play and pause song icon.

Mac OS X Lion Developer Preview 2 has a new version of the default Mt Fuji wallpaper. The new picture shows some clouds in the foreground and the mountain itself has a bit less snow on it, creating less of a contrast. As usual for Apple’s default desktops, it’s absolutely beautiful, and it makes a great desktop background.

Click the image above or here to download the full version, it’s a rather large 3200×2000 pixels.

Here they are alongside each other, the new Fuji Mountain default is on the left, and the old Lion Fuji wallpaper from the first Developer Preview is on the right:

Apparently the Lion Space wallpaper from Versions is also different in the new Developer Preview as well, we’ll see if we can track it down.

Thanks for sending this in S.E.!

If you’ve been a Mac user for a while, you’ll remember the Apple Extended Keyboards. They were very responsive and made a wonderfully crisp clicking sound as you typed. If you’re still in love with the old ADB powered Apple Extended Keyboard I don’t blame you, and you can reignite that old flame by using that very keyboard on an iPad or iPad 2. Here’s what you’ll need to do this:
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Here a MacBook Pro and MacBook are both connected to external displays. That flip clock screen saver seems to be turning up all over Mac setups lately.

Picture from flickr

Apple turns 35 years old today! The company was created on April 1, 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, it was based out of Steve Jobs parents garage, and their first product was the Apple I encased in wood that you can see above. Yea, that’s not an April fools joke, the first Apple computer was made out of wood.

Fun facts about the Apple I:

• Apple I was first demoed in April of 1976 at the Homebrew Computer Club in Palo Alto, California
• It went on sale in July of 1976 for $666.66, the unusual price was chosen by Steve Wozniak because he liked repeating numbers
• CPU clocked in at 1 Mhz
• RAM was 4 KB, but was upgradeable to 8 KB or even 16 KB via expansion cards
• Apple I is now considered a collectors item, one of the computers recently sold for a whopping $213,600 at a London auction

Here’s one of the original advertisements for the Apple I:
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It’s April Fools today, which means the world is full of pranksters and the internet is largely useless and filled with outrageous stuff. We’ll do our part but try to still be useful (sort of), so with this in mind here are some Mac pranks that are fun to pull on April Fools, or any day:

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You’ve seen the iPad 2 show off a childs fridge art, now the iPad is acting as a $500 grocery list, stuck magnetically on a refrigerator. Amazing use of this piece of technology. What’s next in the realm of innovation? Is there any other amazingly great things you can do with an iPad and it’s magnetic smart cover?

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No this is not an April Fools joke. Select Apple customers are being sent email invitations to sign up to be testers for Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. No developer account is required, but you’ll have full access to the current developer releases of Lion.

Free access to Mac OS X Lion sounds almost to good to be true, so what does Apple want in return? Other than your confidentiality, they want users to actively participate in the program by using Lion on a regular basis, providing feedback, and filing bug and crash reports when they occur. Obviously the goal is to expand the end-user testing beyond just Mac developers.

Fittingly, the program is called AppleSeed, and if you were lucky enough to get an invite, you just login, sign your confidentiality agreement, and then you can go about downloading Mac OS X Lion Developer Preview 2. If you’re going to sign up, you might want to consider installing Mac OS X Lion on a separate partition so you can maintain your existing Snow Leopard installation.

If you didn’t get an invite from Apple, there’s currently no way to opt into the program, but you can always sign up to be a Mac developer and download Lion through there.

The future of iOS is quietly shaping up behind the scenes at Apple, and we’ll probably get a good look at iOS 5 during WWDC 2011, but until then it’s mostly a guessing game. That is, until someone digs up some patents that show potential features in a currently unreleased product. Case in point, PatentlyApple has discovered a patent that describes Spaces (virtual desktops) in use on a “Multifunction Device” that looks a lot like an iPad.

iPad… or Touchscreen Mac?
While the patent drawing does look like an iPad, I think it’s just as possible that the multifunction device could be any touchscreen display, even for a currently unreleased touchscreen Mac. I say this because the behavior described in the patent is similar to how Spaces works in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, where you sweep between Spaces by using the trackpad. It’s also reminiscent to the multitouch gestures you can enable for iPad by using developer tools with iOS 4.3. Those gesture similarities could even hint at further merging and sharing of features between future versions of iOS and Mac OS X.

Last year, multiple patents showed up for things like a MacBook tablet, MacBook Touch, and even an iMac Touch that runs both iOS and Mac OS X.

You can see more details of the patent at PatentlyApple. Remember, not all Apple patents see the light of day as a feature or a product, but they can give us great insight into what Apple is working on.

Booting a Mac with Verbose Mode can be a helpful troubleshooting trick for some obscure situations where users are trying to determine what is going wrong with a Mac during the system boot process. Just as it sounds, verbose mode is verbose, meaning it lists everything going on behind the scenes, and you’ll watch as items and extensions are loaded into the kernel and Mac OS X proceeds with the boot process.

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Apple has released Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Developer Preview 2. The new build comes as 11A419 and presumably contains mostly bug fixes and feature refinements to an otherwise stable developer preview.

Download Mac OS X Lion Preview 2
Registered developers can access the download either through Software Update in Mac OS X Lion, through the Mac App Store, or as a standalone download through the Mac developer center.

If you skipped the first Developer Preview release and you want to try Developer Preview 2, you can dual boot and install Lion alongside 10.6 without formatting your drive. Note that you’ll want the standalone download if you choose this option.

Public Release Coming Soon
Apple announced last fall that Mac OS X Lion is scheduled for a summer release date, with WWDC 2011 looking as the most likely time for a launch. Recent rumors suggest it could even be sooner.

The New York Times recently put up their paywall, blocking users from reading over a certain number of articles a month. Their pricing scheme is sort of a mess but I can understand charging for quality content. That’s not really the point though, their paywall implementation makes it difficult for paying users to share content with nonpaying users. For instance, if you’re a paying iPad customer and you send an instant message to your friend with an article, and they already hit their monthly allowance, well, tough, they can’t read the article… or can they?

Beyond the Paywall: Reading New York Times Articles for Free

Using the magic of Google we can read New York Times articles for free. It takes about two seconds, here are the steps:

• Find the title of the article you want to read (Google is smart, you don’t need the exact title)
• Open google.com and type in the general title followed by ‘nytimes.com’ and search

The top result is pretty much guaranteed to be the article you’re looking for. Let’s use an example; someone wants to read the full NYT book review of “Physics of the Future” and we know the book is written by Michale Kaku, so my Google query to skirt the NYT paywall is this: “physics of future kaku nytimes.com” the key is here to include ‘nytimes.com’ at the end of the search time. Let Google do their magic and low and behold:

The first result is the Times book review we wanted to read. Great huh?

Even Faster: Paste the NYTimes.com URL into Google
If you’re sharing an exact URL with someone who hit their article limit, have them paste that directly into Google too. Then they just need to click on “I’m Feeling Lucky” and they’ll get pushed right beyond the paywall.
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Believe it or not, lines are still forming for iPad 2. Nearly anytime a store gets a shipment, they sell out within an hour or two (if you’re still looking, check iPad 2 stock at stores in your area) . Amazingly enough, this is going on around the world, as demand is far exceeding supply. What does this mean for sales numbers? Is Apple selling more or less than expected?

How many iPad 2’s has Apple sold?
At this point, it’s a guessing game. So far we’re left to analyst opinions, with some upwardly revising their sales forecasts. Charlie Wolf of Needham and Co (via AppleInsider) says that “the launch of the iPad 2 so far exceeded our expectations that it was evident our 2011 and 2012 shipment forecasts were dramatically low.” In Wolf’s case, he predicts that Apple will sell 30 million iPad 2’s this year, which is 10 million higher than they originally expected. With availability as constrained as it is, 30 million iPads a year doesn’t sound that outrageous to me, it might even be higher.

Apple Q2 FY11 Conference Call may have the answer
Apple has remained silent, but with constant sell outs and lines forming around the world, it isn’t much of a stretch to assume sales have been through the roof. The soonest we may hear some numbers from Apple could come on their Q2 FY11 conference call this April 20. The call starts at 2:00pm PST and you can listen live on Apple.com’s investors page.

Want to use a rotated display on a MacBook? You can do exactly that, and the same way that you rotate screen orientation on a display connected to a Mac can be done with the built-in display of a MacBook, MacBook Pro, or MacBook Air (pictured).

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Are you bored with the Mt Fuji and Space wallpapers from Lion?

Try out this 8-bit rendition of the default Mac OS X Snow Leopard Aurora wallpaper.

OK so it’s probably not quite 8-bit in terms of colors, but the pixelation brings back that retro feeling.

Combine it with PixelSafari and you’ll be wishing you had antialiasing again in no time.

You can grab the full sized 2560×1600 version from SimpleDesktops, believe it or not, it actually looks pretty nice as a desktop background. Try it yourself, it has a beautiful retro feel to it.

This was found on Twitter via @MacGasm.

Gotta love a good wallpaper! Pixels and all!

Just a few hours ago we found out the dates of WWDC 2011, and now the event is already sold out. Wow, think there’s much interest in this or what?

Despite being a developers conference, it’s safe to assume that a fair amount of tickets went to journalists, bloggers, and Apple fans as well. There’s no word yet on how many tickets the event included, or if the WWDC Student Scholarships are going to be affected by the sell out. We’ll keep you posted.

Update: Naturally, WWDC 2011 ticket scalpers are already trying to profit off of the sold out conference:

I wonder how many total tickets went to speculators and scalpers? If the iPad 2 is any indicator, there’s going to be a fair share of them out there.