Using a Terminal command, you can turn any screensaver into your background wallpaper on the Mac. In the screenshot above I have the iTunes Album Art screensaver running as the Mac OS X desktop, but you can choose any screensaver you want. Here’s how to do this:

• Launch System Preferences
• Click on Desktop & Screen Saver and choose the screensaver you want to set as the background
• Open Terminal (located in /Applications/Utilities/) and paste in the following command:

/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine -background

Hit the Return key to execute the command string, this will start the screen saver in the background immediately.

As long as this command is running, the screen saver will be active. If you close the Terminal window, the screen saver will end and your Macs wallpaper will return to whatever you had previously.

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This awesome Mac setup from features a 27″ iMac, Apple Cinema Display, a MacBook Pro, and on the far right a Wacom Cintik 21″ tablet screen that lets you draw directly on the display. I guess that tablet is about as close as you can get to a touchscreen Mac at the moment.

Picture from Flickr.

The excellent media center software XBMC has finally come to Apple TV 2, but beyond being a great media center, if you’re wondering why else you should care I’ll sum it up in one word: 1080p. Yes, using XBMC, you can unleash 1080p video playback on the $99 Apple TV2… the playback suffers from occasional choppiness on uncompressed bluray video, but hey it’s the first release, and could make the ATV2 the cheapest 1080p video playback device on the market.

You’ll need the following to get started:

• Apple TV 2 (Amazon link) running iOS 4.1, iOS 4.2.1, or later
• Seas0npass to jailbreak the Apple TV 2 (Instructions to jailbreak are below)
• A micro-USB cable (this is used for the jailbreak and tethered boot)
• The IP address of your AppleTV

We’ll now walk through the process of both jailbreaking the AppleTV2 and installing XBMC:
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There are several steps to password protect a Mac, we’ll cover the essentials so that if someone is to turn on your Mac, wake it from a screensaver, or wake from sleep, they will be required to enter a password in order to use the computer.

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The first Verizon iPhone commercial has been released. The commercial is intriguing and features several clocks ticking before the message “To our millions of customers, who never stopped believing this day would come… Thank you” before finally flashing the Apple iPhone 4 logo, the Verizon swoosh, and the release date of February 10th.

It might not have the excitement of some of the other Apple commercials but I like it overall.

Two new patents have surfaced that may provide a look into the future of Mac input devices.

The first is for a Magic Mouse that has an integrated touch screen, which could adjust to display things like virtual buttons, keys, menus, text, and video. The patent application shows a diagram of the Magic Mouse displaying a virtual numeric keypad, but when you consider the Magic Mouse is nearly the size of an iPhone or iPod touch, the possibilities are wide open.

The second patent shows a Virtual Keyboard that includes a haptic feedback system, which would give a user the perception that the virtual keyboard is a regular keyboard by providing a vibratory response to touch. As PatentlyApple notes, a virtual keyboard has the potential to morph into another input device entirely, such as a game pad or musical keyboard.

Apple is clearly interested in further developing touch input across the Mac product line. Previous patents have shown a touch screen MacBook, a convertible touchscreen iMac that runs both iOS and Mac OS X, and a convertible MacBook tablet that may function in a similar manner as the aforementioned iMac.

Both of the new patents were discovered by PatentlyApple, you can read more about the Magic Mouse and the Virtual Keyboard over there.

You can check your entire print history in Mac OS X by accessing the browser based CUPS utility. This is a very helpful tool for managing printing as well as tracking down origins of printed items, and it works on all versions of Mac with all printers.

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iOS 4.3 Beta 2 has just been made available for download as build 8F5153d. Just as the previous release of the iOS 4.3 beta, this release supports iPad, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and iPod touch 3G and 4G. Older iPhone 3G and iPod touch 2G models are left behind and not supported for the update.

On the developer download site, Apple reminds users that once a device has been updated to iOS 4.3 beta, the OS can not be restored to a previous iOS version, but they will be able to upgrade to future versions of the beta and the final version of iOS 4.3.

You can download iOS 4.3 beta 2 right now if you’re a developer from the iOS Dev Center

Welcome to the future, where your iPhone merges with your wallet…. kind of. You can now buy anything at Starbucks with your iPhone (or iPod touch), thanks to the Starbucks Card Mobile app. The app works by linking to a Starbucks gift card account, and when the app is launched it displays a barcode that can be scanned by the barista, making for a quick transaction.

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AirView is a great new app that lets you stream any AirPlay video from one iOS device to another, or even stream from iTunes to an iOS device. AirView does this by accessing the AirPlay feature in iOS 4.2 to essentially turn any iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad into an AirPlay receiver. This lets you send video to just about anywhere as long as the devices are on the same wireless network.

So, do you want to stream a video from your iPhone to your friends iPod touch? No problem. Want to stream a video from iTunes on your Mac or PC to your iPad so you can watch it in another room? No problem. This feature is cool enough that you’d expect Apple to release it as part of an upcoming iOS version… we hope.

AirView is a free download via the iTunes Store, it works with the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad as long as they are running iOS 4.2 or later.

You can add blank spacers to the Mac OS Dock as a way of customizing the appearance a bit. This is accomplished by issuing a defaults write command in the Terminal. Each spacer is about the same width as an icon would be, except nothing takes the place of the space, it simply separates other Dock icons from one another.

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Apple has publicly announced the white iPhone 4 release date will be Spring of this year, but if recent Best Buy inventory is to be believed, we may be seeing the elusive white iPhone 4 sooner.

The image above comes from MacRumors, which shows an alleged Best Buy inventory screen displaying the White iPhone 4 16GB and 32GB models with an availability date of 2/27/2011.

There is no word on whether the white iPhone 4 will be available to both Verizon and AT&T networks.

I recently published a guide on how to disable the Apple Remote Control, and one of our readers wrote in with a good prank that demonstrates why you’d want to turn off the remote or at least pair one to your specific Mac:

Want to know why you should turn off the Apple Remote? Try this: grab an Apple Remote Control and head to a place with a lot of Macs in a single room, like a school library, coffee shop, etc. Now aim the Apple remote in the direction of the Macs and start pressing buttons. Since most users never disable the remote, you can basically hijack their computer as Mac OS X will begin to launch Front Row. Just keep hitting play and you’ll end up activating their iTunes media, start playing songs, videos, etc, all from the remote. People end up dumbfounded as their computer suddenly has a life of it’s own. The only defense against this prank? Pair or turn off the remote.

I tried this out with my MacBook Pro next to a few others, and without pairing the remote this does work exactly as suggested, all machines will launch Front Row in unison, which can then play your iTunes media library. If you repeatedly hit “play” you’ll access whatever movie is at the top of their Movies playlist or directory. This is definitely an amusing prank albeit a very annoying one if you’re on the receiving end of it.

Another one of our readers mentions that in his IT group they disable the feature because “anything that can launch programs without strict user approval needs to be turned off”, suggesting the remote could be a potential security risk.

So now that we’ve had our fun, unless you use the remote for a Mac media center (in which case you should pair it), you might want to disable the thing.

Any time that you are away from your computer, it’s a good idea to lock the screen. This provides a level of privacy and security to the Mac that is very easy to use and implement and it should be considered a must-use trick, particularly for anyone working in public spaces, offices, schools, or anywhere else that there is potential of an outside party accessing the computer. The fastest way to lock the screen of any Mac OS X computer is to use a simple keyboard shortcut.

We’ll walk through exactly how to set up the lock screen feature and show you the keystrokes to use to instantly lock the Mac, thereby requiring a password to be entered before the machine can be used again.

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If you’ve ever wondered what your spending habits and expenses on the iTunes App Store have been, check out this free app from iOS developer WetFish. Appropriately named App Store Expense Monitor keeps a tab on all your iTunes App Store downloads and purchases and gathers them in an easy to sort app, the expenses can then be exported as either a CSV file or XML file for use elsewhere.

The only flaw I’ve found is that it doesn’t accurately capture all app purchases, in particular if you got an app during a special promotion either at discount or free. The reason for this likely being that the Mac OS X app gathers iPhone purchase data from your iTunes folder rather than your iTunes account. For my iTunes purchases, it labeled some free apps as purchased, and some purchased apps as free, but I also have gone through several different Mac OS X installations with this iPhone so I’m not terribly surprised that not all of the data is accurate since it’s pulling the information from the local iTunes directory. App Store Expense Monitor does let you edit the price data manually though, so if you want to correct the information it’s easy to do.

Despite it’s few flaws, the app is still useful, so if you need a way to track your App Store purchases, the App Store Expense Monitor gets the job done. You can grab it for free from WetFish Software.

Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs is going on medical leave for an undetermined amount of time. Here is the email that Steve sent to his fellow Apple employees regarding the matter:

Team,

At my request, the board of directors has granted me a medical leave of absence so I can focus on my health. I will continue as CEO and be involved in major strategic decisions for the company.

I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for all of Apple’s day to day operations. I have great confidence that Tim and the rest of the executive management team will do a terrific job executing the exciting plans we have in place for 2011.

I love Apple so much and hope to be back as soon as I can. In the meantime, my family and I would deeply appreciate respect for our privacy.

Steve

It should be noted that Steve Jobs took a similar medical leave in January of 2009 before returning to Apple roughly 6 months later.

Get well soon Steve!

FaceTime is the video chat protocol available to Mac users in OS X as well as iOS for iPhone and iPad, and it works great to beam images from one camera to another device over the internet. One lesser known feature that is hidden from the general usage of the Mac FaceTime app however is the ability to set FaceTime to automatically accept FaceTime calls from a specific contact, which is what we’re going to cover here.

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When an update is available for any Mac app that has been installed through the Mac App Store, you will notice the App Store icon in Mac OS X gets a numerical badge on it, indicating the number of software updates available. Additionally, you will notice the the App Store entry within the  Apple menu will show an “Updates” note alongside it.

If the App Store is indicating there are updates available, that means it’s time to install those software updates on the Mac. This is an easy process, but if you’re new to the Mac it may be unfamiliar to you.

Let’s walk through how to update apps installed onto the Mac via the App Store.

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