Are you an existing Verizon customer and looking to get an iPhone? If so, don’t miss the Verizon Contact Transfer app that is freely available on the iTunes App Store, it will pull your contacts from your old phone via Verizon’s Backup Assistant service and transfer them onto your new VZ iPhone. The app looks extremely easy to use, just backup your old phone to their cloud, then put your phone number into the Contact Transfer app to pull all contacts phone numbers and email addresses to your new iPhone.

Transferring contact information from an old phone to a new one can be a huge inconvenience, so it’s nice to see that Verizon has an easy service to handle this for you. Considering the pre-order sellouts and pent up demand and for the Verizon iPhone, I imagine this app will get a ton of use.

You can download VZ Contact Transfer from the App Store (direct link).

If you’re looking for some good deals to upgrade your MacBook Pro, Buy.com is offering two killer upgrades at great prices:

First up is the Kingston 128GB SSD V Series 2.5″ Hard Drive upgrade for $139.95 after a $75 mail in rebate. It’s actually part of a “notebook bundle” meaning it comes with an external drive caddy and USB cable to turn your existing 2.5″ internal hard drive into a portable external drive.

• Kingston 128GB SSDNow V Series SATA II 2.5″ Solid State Drive, Notebook Bundle for $139.95 after rebate and includes free shipping

If you get the 128GB SSD drive, don’t forget the $75 mail in rebate (PDF). The SSD rebate offer and price are valid until 2/14/2011.

Next up is a Kingston Apple 8GB 1066MHz DDR3 RAM Upgrade, you’ll want to double-check that your machine handles the upgrade but it should be compatible with most new MacBook Pro’s, iMac, Mac Mini, and MacBook models.

• Kingston Apple 8GB Kit (2 X 4GB Modules) 1066MHz DDR3 SODimm for $79.95 includes free shipping

I used the same Kingston 8GB Ram Upgrade for my MacBook Pro and I’m thrilled with the results. If you’re a power user I would highly recommend 8GB of RAM, but it’s easy to check if your Mac needs a memory upgrade.

Is the iPhone 5 scheduled to be released on June 5, 2011? The wonderfully named “AppleBitch” discovered an unspecified “Corporate Meeting” on the Moscone West convention center schedule from June 5 to June 9, and notes that this vague terminology is often used to describe Apple venues. Additionally, the early summer dates are typical for Apple’s WWDC events.

So what does an event on a calendar have to do with iPhone 5? Well it’s conjecture, but WWDC is usually when Apple announces their new iPhone in addition to major updates to iOS. If these dates are in fact for WWDC, it’s quite possible we’ll see the new iPhone announced around then. WWDC 2011 may even include Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, which is scheduled for a “Summer 2011” release date according to Apple’s preview of Lion last October.
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The Mac App Store now has an order and buy confirmation, which should prevent many accidental purchases from occurring.

This is a nice addition and undoubtedly helps to eliminate refund requests, and maybe it’ll even make some people think twice before inadvertently buying an app twice.

I imagine it’s only a matter of time before someone is able to disable the order confirmation via a defaults write command, if not becoming it’s own preference option entirely. Hat tip to MacStories for noticing this one.

If your iPhone or iPod has been acting strangely or not working, it’s worth checking the “Liquid Contact Indicator” locations as shown in the image above from Apple, this may give you a hint of what’s wrong with your hardware.

If the sensors shown in the pictures are red, you may have water damage. I say may because the sensors can be tripped occasionally by high humidity or even just a small rain drop, so it’s possible the sensor is red but you don’t have any damage. On the other hand, if you definitely dropped iPhone into water or it sustained substantial liquid contact that you’re aware of, you’re going to really need to take some immediate action to try and preserve the phone, drying it out for as long as possible so that none of the internal components have retained moisture.

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Apple is planning to eliminate traditional retail box software in their stores in favor of digital distribution through the Mac App Store, according to a report from MacRumors. Apparently they heard the rumor from someone, and then cite Apple’s new “Personal Setup for Mac” walkthrough service as further evidence of the move.

Installing software through the Mac App Store is certainly more convenient than using a physical installation DVD, but there are some issues with this method. As MacGasm points out, several major software companies have yet to board the Mac App Store train, some may never jump ship, most notably Adobe and Microsoft with their high priced productivity suites. The solution to this might be in the form of USB based software installers, like the reinstallation drive that comes with the 2010 MacBook Air, which would be a welcome change.

Perhaps we’ll see this change in place by the launch of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion?

The first Verizon iPhone 4 jailbreak has been made available to download as an update to GreenPois0n RC5. The update comes as RC5.4 with the major change being support for jailbreaking the Verizon iPhone 4 running iOS 4.2.6.

Download GreenPois0n RC5.4 to Jailbreak Verizon iPhone 4

Currently RC5.4 is available for Mac and Windows users:

• Download Now (Mirror 2) (Mac)
• Download Now (Mirror 2) (Windows)

As pod2g notes, GreenPois0n RC5.4 should be considered as ‘early adopter’ software, so there may be some bugs to work out still. Our guide on how to jailbreak with GreenPois0n RC5 works the same for RC5.4 and will jailbreak any iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and AppleTV2.

You can follow our GreenPois0n updates as they become available.

Angry Birds for Mac is a ton of fun, but you probably already know that. Here are some keyboard shortcuts for the Mac OS X version of the game:

Keyboard Shortcuts for Angry Birds on Mac OS X

Some of these you can use anytime and others must require you to be in a current game:

• Command+F – Windowed mode, or toggle between full screen and windowed mode
• Scrollwheel / Two-fingered swipe – Zoom in with a swipe forward and zoom out with a swipe back, same affect with a scroll wheel
• R – Restart the current level and zoom into the target pigs structures
• S – Mute and unmute the game sounds
• P – Pause
• Escape – Toggle the sidebar menu
• Type “open” on levels with a locked treasure chest to open them

These are what I have for now but I’ll update the list if more are available. Apparently there is a cheat mode involved with the “C” key, but I wasn’t able to get it working myself.

If you haven’t played Angry Birds yet you are missing out on some highly addictive gameplay. You can get it from the Mac App Store (Direct Link) or from the iTunes App Store for iOS hardware.

Thanks to Josef for sending in the shortcut list!

GreenPois0n RC5 allows you to easily jailbreak an iPad running iOS 4.2.1, the main advantage to GreenPois0n is that it provides a completely untethered jailbreak solution that can be initiated from both Mac OS X and Windows.

This guide will walk you through the process of jailbreaking an iPad with iOS 4.2.1 software.
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If you purchase an app from the iTunes App Store, as long as you use the same iTunes account again, all subsequent downloads of that app are free. This means that if you bought an iOS app for an iPod touch, but you just got a new iPhone, iPad, or Mac you do not need to buy the same app again.

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Did you know that your Mac has a built-in FTP & FTPS client? You don’t need to download any additional software or apps to connect to FTP sites from Mac OS X, instead you can connect to remote servers directly from your desktop by using an excellent and little known feature. If you’ve never used the Mac FTP tools before, you will find them incredibly simple and quite familiar, because the connection utilities and server browsing are much like navigating through the normal Mac desktop. Let’s get started.

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Late last year Apple said the white iPhone 4 was coming in “Spring 2011” but it looks like the launch of the White iPhone 4 is just around the corner.
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If you’re trying to remember an exact command you executed via the Terminal but can’t quite come up with it, you can query your command line history to discover old commands that have been run or executed in the past.

This trick to find and retrieve prior commands executed in the command line works on Mac OS, Mac OS X, as well as linux and other unix operating systems too. Anything with a standard history command can use this trick to retrieve prior commands, making it an invaluable tool for systems administrators and command line users.

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Need to silence an iPhone phone call and hush the ringing quickly? If you’re getting an incoming call and you want to quickly silence the iPhone, just hit either of the volume buttons to instantly silence the ringer.

Pressing a volume button during an incoming phone call will immediately mute the iPhone and stop the ringer from sounding any alert or vibration, but it does not send the call to voicemail so the caller won’t have any idea that you aren’t listening to the phone ring.

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GreenPois0n RC5 3 has been released for Mac OS X, this is the third update to RC5 for Mac that provides an untethered jailbreak for iOS 4.2.1. RC5 3 includes several significant bug fixes in addition to native Mac OS X 10.6 and 10.5 support.

Download GreenPois0n RC5 3 for Mac

These are direct download links:

• Download Now

Windows users can download GreenPois0n RC5 from here.

GreenPois0n RC5 works with all iPhone models, in addition to iPad, iPod touch, and Apple TV2. If interested, you can learn how to jailbreak iOS 4.2.1 untethered using GreenPois0n RC5 with our walkthrough.

GreenPois0n RC5 for Windows has been released which allows users to perform an untethered jailbreak on iOS 4.2.1 devices. This release works to jailbreak all iPhone, iPod touch, iPad models, as well as Apple TV2.

Download GreenPois0n RC5 for Windows

These are direct download links:

• Download Now (Mirror 2)

If you need assistance, you can follow our guide on how to jailbreak iOS 4.2.1 untethered with GreenPois0n RC5.

An updated version of GreenPois0n RC5 3 for Mac users has also been released.

Update: GreenPois0n RC5 3 for Mac includes built-in 10.6 and 10.5 support. This release eliminates the need for the hack below.

GreenPois0n RC5 2 is out for Mac but it requires Mac OS X 10.6 in order to run, right? Wrong! Thanks to this hack from cmdshift we can get GreenPois0n RC5 running in Mac OS X 10.5.8, so those on older Mac OS X versions will be able to jailbreak iOS 4.2.1 using GreenPois0n RC5 too.
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If you like older Apple equipment, you’ll love this picture sent in via Flickr. From Apple II’s to Bondi Blue iMacs, this collection of retro Mac hardware definitely has some bragging rights.

If you don’t have the hardware, you can still get a blast from the past by doing things like running Mac OS System 7 under Mac OS X or even running Newton OS on an iPad.