If you’re troubleshooting a Mac machine with some particularly odd issues that routine measures don’t seem to be resolving, it can be helpful to list what kernel extensions are activated, particularly third party kexts loaded in OS X.

Determining what kernel extensions are loaded and running in Mac OS X is rather easy, and using grep you can then easily list all third party kexts. You can also use the same command to list native kernel extensions as well. To accomplish this, you’ll use the kextstat command and pipe the output to grep, using the command line. This works the same in all versions of Mac OS X.

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If you have an older model iPhone 4 with an older iOS release, you can now use FaceTime video chat over 3G cell network, breaking you free from your WiFi shackles. There’s a catch though, it’s not free, and it requires jailbreaking.

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JailbreakMe is an extremely easy method to jailbreak your iPhone or iPod running iPhone OS 3.1.2 or higher, yes this includes iOS 4 on an iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and iPod touch.

JailbreakMe is entirely browser based and probably the easiest method around to jailbreak any compatible iOS device, if you still aren’t convinced here are the steps:

How to easily Jailbreak an iPhone with JailbreakMe

• First you should backup your iPhone with iTunes just in case something doesn’t work
• Open Safari on your iPhone and go to JailbreakMe.com
• At the JailbreakMe screen (like screenshot), run your finger on the ‘slide to jailbreak’ slider to start the jailbreak process
• The jailbreak will now be downloaded to your iPhone and run itself, so don’t do anything and just let it run
• Wait for the “Cydia has been added to your home screen.” pop up message, this tells you the jailbreak is complete



• Reboot your iPhone by turning it on and off

Amazingly enough, that’s it. The JailbreakMe process requires no downloads or USB tethering to a computer, it is entirely contained within the Safari browser and works very well. This is quite impressive and without a doubt the most simple and easiest jailbreak around to date.

Remember, a jailbreak is not a carrier unlock. The iPhone 4 carrier unlock is expected to be released soon, so have patience if you’re looking to bring your iPhone over to another network.
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If you have added any third party system preference panels to the Mac, you can easily remove them if you no longer have a need for that system preference panel.

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You can use any iPhone, iPhone 3G, or iPhone 3GS as a pay-as-you-go phone through AT&T’s GoPhone program. AT&T doesn’t officially support using GoPhone with iPhone but that doesn’t mean you can’t do it, and it’s actually much easier than you might expect. You will be able to make calls and use prepaid data, and the best part about this… it does NOT require a Jailbreak!
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I use Synergy to share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple Mac’s and PC’s. Recently I added a new machine to the setup and was frustrated to discover that the Synergy client on the new machine just refused to connect to the server, without any attempts I would immediately get the following error message:

WARNING: failed to connect to server: Timed Out

Everything is configured properly in regards to settings on all clients and the server, so what’d I do to fix this error?

Change the host connect-to name from the hostname to the machines IP address, and instantly Synergy connected and everything worked as usual.

I don’t really know why the “Timed Out” message was appearing when it obviously wasn’t even attempting a connection, but nonetheless switching the client to connect to the host IP works fine. This occurred using Synergy clients and servers running 1.3.1. If you’re running into a time out error with Synergy, check your logs and try this fix out.

You can check your Synergyd error messages by opening the synergyd.log log file either manually in Console, Terminal, or through SynergyKM.

In my experience, Synergy is the best cross-platform compatible solution to share a keyboard and mouse. If you’re only using Mac OS you can also share a keyboard across multiple Mac’s using Teleport which is sometimes easier to setup, but I’m still partial to SynergyKM for Mac.

You know you’re an Apple addict when you start measuring time by the iPhone release cycles. I found this comic pretty funny, it looks like something out of a newspaper but I am unsure of it’s original source. Thanks to Daniel for sending this in!

Scrolling with momentum is a feature that is included with some MacBook Pro trackpads (and MacBooks thanks to a recent software update from Apple). The behavior is very much like the iPad or iPhone, when you are scrolling through anything you can give the trackpad a swipe and the speed of your gesture will determine the length of the scroll. I like this feature and keep it enabled on my MacBook Pro, but some people are bothered by it.

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Apple is working on a “revolutionary” new Mac OS X 10.7 feature, according to a new job posting on Apple.com:

We are looking for a senior software engineer to help us create a revolutionary new feature in the very foundations of Mac OS X. We have something truly revolutionary and really exciting in progress and it is going to require your most creative and focused efforts ever.

The posting was originally discovered by AppleInsider and since then speculation has swarmed about what the feature is. Based on evidence within the posting itself and some other recent Apple news, it looks to be related to cloud computing.

Mac OS X 10.7 + Cloud Computing = Mac OS X Clouded Leopard?

The biggest hint in the job posting is the favoring of candidates who have experience developing with “internet technologies and services” and more tellingly “participated in or lead the architecture of large web scale systems” with HTTP protocol experience. This naturally leads to the assumption that Mac OS X 10.7 will indeed have Cloud features built into the foundation of the operating system. HTTP and XHTML5 are core elements in the Open Cloud Computing Interface (OCCI) spec and are integral parts in most existing cloud computing services and platforms. When you combine this knowledge with recent news that Apple is building a massive 500,000 square foot data center, there is little room left to wonder what Apple is up to.

Of course the question remains on how exactly cloud computing will be integrated with future versions of Mac OS X, iOS, and even iTunes, so let the speculation run wild! I’ll go first. Assuming this all pans out, the name Mac OS X 10.7 Clouded Leopard would certainly be fittingly appropriate and along the existing feline naming conventions as the first iteration of Mac OS X to directly integrate cloud computing features.

Here’s the entire job posting:

Are you looking to help create something totally new? Something that has never been done before and will truly amaze everyone? Are you excited by the prospect that what you helped create would be used every day by millions of Apple customers? Then come and work on with the Mac OS X software engineering team to help build a new and revolutionary feature for Mac OS X.

We are looking for a senior software engineer to help us create a revolutionary new feature in the very foundations of Mac OS X. We have something truly revolutionary and really exciting in progress and it is going to require your most creative and focused efforts ever.

An ideal candidate will have a degree in Computer Science (or equivalent), five years of professional experience developing C / C++ / Objective-C libraries or frameworks for use on end user systems, experience with developing for Internet technologies and services, and a passion for doing “really hard” things that have never been done before.

An exceptional candidate will also have up close and personal experience with the HTTP protocol as well as other protocols layered atop it, have participated in or lead the architecture of large web scale systems, have shipped multiple “platforms” for use by millions of users.

Additional Desired Skills and Experience:
– Mac OS X platform development experience
– Knowledge of Objective-C
– UNIX development experience
– BS in Computer Science or equivalent; 5+ years experience

You can see the job posting or even apply for it yourself at jobs.apple.com.

President Barack Obama uses a MacBook Pro 15″ with antiglare screen, and it looks like the entire White House staff uses Macs too.

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Excellent news for iPhone 3G owners who have been plagued by the iOS 4 update, an Apple spokeswoman told the Wall Street Journal that they are investigating various complaints about iOS 4 running slow on iPhone 3G.

Rumors continue to circulate that iOS 4.1 causes the iPhone 3G to run faster, but this has not shown true in our experience. If you are looking to retain the functionality of your iPhone 3G, we still recommend you do not upgrade to iOS 4 until Apple has worked out the kinks. While boasting some nice new features, the operating system update renders the 3G phone practically unusable at times, with immense slowdowns for everything from launching applications to just typing text messages and emails.

If you already installed the latest update, there’s a few tips to speed up iPhone 3G with iOS 4 but they are hardly a permanent solution and you’ll still have a slower OS than prior versions. Either an update from Apple is needed or any easy path to downgrade to 3.1.3, until then the 3G is really suffering.

Long ago in a time far far away, OK really it was just prior to Mac OS X, there used to be a Trash icon on the Desktop. Yup, earlier versions of Mac OS didn’t have a Dock at all, and the Trash was just another item on the desktop, sitting in the bottom right corner.

For the nostalgic, you can easily replicate this functionality by using the command line to create a symbolic link of the actual functioning Trash to a folder named Trash on your desktop. That may sound complex but it’s really not, you can do it with a single line entered into the Terminal application.

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Starcraft 2 is out and it’s pretty much eating all my free time at the moment. I’m still in the process of tweaking my graphics settings for optimum performance, and the easiest way to benchmark Starcraft 2 performance on machines is to check the FPS (frames per second). Here’s how to do that on both a Mac and Windows SC2 install:

Check Starcraft 2 FPS on Mac

To check the frame rate on a Mac, while you are in a game hit: Control+Option+F

Show Starcraft 2 FPS on Windows

Checking FPS in Windows is basically the same key command, in SC2 hit: Control+Alt+F

On either operating system, once you hit the command to display frame rate, the FPS counter will show in the upper left corner and look like so:

If you’re wondering how well SC2 will run on your machine, check out the Starcraft 2 system requirements for Mac. Later I will post some preliminary findings on how well the game runs on a few different Mac setups.

If you’re a fan of Blizzard and real time strategy games and you haven’t gotten this one yet, you can order Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty on Amazon.com and get free shipping. I love RTS games, and I can say it’s definitely worth it.

Apple has launched their official Safari Extensions Gallery, at this time it features 100 extensions out of the roughly 300 out in the wild. All of the extensions on Apple’s gallery have been digitally signed and sandboxed so you don’t have to worry about security problems like some of the Firefox extensions have had in the past. You will need to have Safari 5 to be able to use the extension feature.

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You can find out what the manufacturer, model number, and type of LCD panel you have in any of your Macs, including the iMac, MacBook Air, MacBook, or any model MacBook Pro by using a fairly complex looking terminal command.

If you’re unfamiliar with the command line, just copy and paste the line below into the “Terminal” app in OS X, then hit the return key. Don’t worry if this looks confusing, it kind of is, but what is reported back is easily readable.
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If your iPhone 3G is running really slow after installing iOS 4, you’re not alone. While iOS 4 is a great OS for newer iPhone models, it makes my older iPhone 3G slow down to a crawl, with everything delayed and stuttering to catch up to touch. At times it’s practically unusable. So what can you do to speed it up?

Update: The first thing you should do is grab the iOS 4.1 download since it resolves some of the speed problems. After you install iOS 4.1, combine the update with the following tips to regain your iPhone 3G speed:

Disable Spotlight on iPhone 3G

If iOS 4 has your iPhone 3G crawling, disable Spotlight search:

• Tap on “Settings”
• Tap on “General”
• Navigate to and select “Home Button”
• Scroll down to “Spotlight Search”
• Disable everything by tapping the check box next to each item
• Exit settings

You can leave some of the Spotlight search items enabled but I find that the best speed improvement comes from disabling everything.

I don’t even use Spotlight on my iPhone so I’m not missing this feature at all, but it does seem to improve the speed of the iPhone 3G in common tasks like flipping between screens, scrolling through text messages and emails, and even launching some apps.

Bottom line: if you don’t use Spotlight in iOS, disable it!

Hard reset iPhone 3G

Hard resetting your iPhone can speed it up for a while. Here’s how to do it:

• Press and hold the Home button and the Sleep/Wake button at the same time, hold both for about 5 seconds
• Ignore the typical ‘Slide to power off message’ and continue holding both buttons until the iPhone shuts itself off
• When your iPhone 3G resets itself you can stop holding the buttons, it takes about 10 seconds to hard reset the iPhone
• Let iOS boot as usual, your phone should be temporarily sped up

This works because it clears your iPhone’s memory completely, but this is less of a permanent solution than disabling Spotlight since caches and memory will inevitably be full again.

Restore factory settings and do not restore from backup

I don’t like this solution much because you lose your backups, but it does seem to help iOS 4 run a bit better on the iPhone 3G. Basically you’re just doing a clean iOS 4 install on the iPhone, but then you are left with an empty phone. You can obviously easily resync your music but you’ll lose all your iPhone text message backups, contacts, apps, and pretty much anything else that made it your phone.

Downgrade from iOS 4 to iOS 3.1.3

If you’re totally fed up with iPhone 3G and iOS 4, you can always just downgrade to the prior OS version, but it’s not a particularly fun process and you obviously lose out on all the iOS 4 features.

Thoughts on iPhone 3G and iOS 4

I know I would have been annoyed if Apple had left out the iPhone 3G from being able to upgrade to iOS 4, but I feel like the performance is just terrible. It’s no wonder they left out multitasking and background pictures, but even without those features it just doesn’t run well on the older and slower hardware of the 3G. There are some rumors (ie: wishful thinking) swirling that when iOS 4 for iPad is released and the iOS 4 versions are bridged in iOS 4.1 (or whatever the version ends up being), that the performance will improve on iPhone 3G. I’m not counting on that and here’s why: the iOS 4.1 beta is already available for download and people have put it on their iPhone 3G to practically no avail. Perhaps future versions will change and we just don’t know that yet, but for now I am not a fan of iOS4 my older iPhone 3G.

Update: the final release of iOS 4.1 make the iPhone 3G run a lot better than iOS 4, but iPhone OS 3.1.3 is still faster. It’s up to you whether or not the iOS 4 features are worth the performance hit.

Oh, and if you have an iPhone 3G, do yourself a favor and do not upgrade to iOS 4! Folders and editing playlists are not worth the huge slowdown!

RTS fans around the world are having a party today; Starcraft 2 is out for both Mac and Windows, and you can download the game now directly from Blizzard or pick it up from various retailers. The game costs $60 regardless of whether you get the digital distribution/download or if you opt for the physical box.

For a completely digital release, you can get the game directly from Battlenet and Blizzard:
Download & Buy Starcraft 2 from Blizzard

If you’d like to have a physical box, install DVD, and manual, you can get the game with free shipping from Amazon:
Buy Starcraft 2 on Amazon.com

Be sure to check the Starcraft 2 system requirements for Mac before getting the game.

Is it just me or do some of the scenes in Starcraft 2 look like they’re right out of Avatar?

Modern versions of Mac OS have a feature for MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and MacBook that will report to you the condition of your battery, as shown through the battery menubar item. Usually charging messages are shown there, but there are two other messages you may see in that menu, and they are “Replace Now” and “Service Battery”.

Read on to learn about the Service Battery message, what it means for MacBook computers and Mac laptops, and what you can do about it. Sometimes you can even fix the issue yourself!

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