If you’re new to the Mac or Apple platforms, learning the menu keyboard symbols that appear in the menus and on some keyboard keys, can be a little daunting. Nonetheless it’s not too complex, and knowing what the Apple keyboard symbols mean and what keys they stand for to access the function is essential for accessing various shortcuts throughout Mac OS X and iOS. Not only do the Mac menus use the symbol short form as seen in the screenshot, but many websites will refer to the symbol rather than the text printed on the keys (⌥ instead of Option, for instance).

With this in mind, here are the Mac menu symbols, and Apple keyboard symbols as translated to the keys they represent:

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Want to run Windows 3.1 on your iPhone? I sure don’t, but hey just the fact that you can pull it off is neat right?
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Can’t find your iPhone? We’ve all been there, it gets misplaced or falls between the couch cushions. But hey, no problem, if you don’t have Find My iPhone enabled (which you should), you can just try dialing it instead to make it ring.

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This is one of the more creative and amusing iPhone decals I have seen. Called “Default UI”, the decal applies to the backside of your iPhone and replicates the default iOS GUI, home button, and camera. The end result being you’ll look like an idiot who is holding their iPhone backwards and talking into the back of the device. This is definitely creatively funny.

You can buy the decal on Etsy for $10 and shipping is a flat $5 from Hong Kong to anywhere.

Thanks to Jared for sending this in!

Do you rely on your iPhone or iPod touch to wake up in the morning? Unless you want to wake up an hour late this coming Monday morning, listen up.

The iPhone Daylight Savings Time Alarm Clock Bug

You may have heard of the iPhone DST bug by now, but if you haven’t here’s the gist of it: your iPhone alarm clock will be an hour late this coming Monday, November 8th, due to a bug in the alarm clock application.

Basically the alarm clock app doesn’t recognize the DST time change, and will alert an hour later than scheduled. The bug has already affected iPhone owners in Europe and Australia, and now iPhone users in the USA will wake up an hour later than usual if they don’t take the precautions necessary.

Temporary Fix iPhone DST Alarm Clock Bug

Create a new, one time only alarm alert, specifically for Monday morning.

Believe it or not, that’s the fix that Apple has suggested. Apparently the bug only affects repeating alarms, so creating a new one-time only alarm for Monday morning is enough to resolve the issue for that day. After Monday, you can go back to using a repeat alarm as usual.

Permanent Fix in iOS 4.2

Of note is the upcoming iOS 4.2 release resolves the bug completely, but the update has not been made available to the public yet. Rumor is that Apple is waiting for more iOS 4.2 compatible apps to be accepted into the App Store before releasing the update to the public, although developers can download iOS 4.2 GM now. Earlier in the year Apple specified an iOS 4.2 release date of November, and the update is still expected to arrive later in the month.

This iMac sits at a desk overlooking a pretty amazing view of what must be the San Francisco Bay. With all that sunlight pouring in you might need to use sunglasses just sitting at the desk! I think this easily takes the prize for ‘best view’ in our Mac Setups, with the telecommuting MacBook Pro a close second.
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If you like to jailbreak and unlock your iPhone, you’ll want to backup your existing SHSH blobs before you install a new version of iOS. With the release of iOS 4.2 just around the corner, it’s a good idea to do this now if you intend on unlocking your device in the future.
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Installing more RAM in your Mac is one of the best ways to boost system performance. What’s better than just a RAM upgrade? A great deal on a RAM upgrade!

For a limited time, Buy.com has an 8GB memory upgrade for only $119.95 including free shipping, this is the cheapest price I’ve seen on an 8GB RAM upgrade yet.

Kingston Apple 8GB Kit (2x4GB) for $119.95 with free shipping at Buy.com

Update: The Buy.com deal expired, but Amazon has the same Kingston Apple 8GB Kit for sale for about $130, which is also a great deal.

The upgrade should work for any Mac that allows 8GB of RAM and accepts the following type: PC3-8500 DDR3 1066 MHz SDRAM. This would include the new Mac Mini, iMac, MacBook, and MacBook Pro 13″, 15″, and 17″ models.

For price comparison, Apple offers 8GB upgrades for the MacBook Pro at $400. The next cheapest price was on Amazon at $135, and Crucial.com offers 8GB upgrades for $167.99, which makes the $119.95 price from Buy.com a truly great deal.

If you’re not sure, find out how to tell if your Mac needs a RAM upgrade. Most Mac users see a speed increase from adding additional memory.

Sometimes novelty apps are fun, and this one is no exception. Called keySpazz, it makes your MacBook Pro keyboard backlights respond to typing and touch, so the keys light up when you are typing. Is there a purpose? No, not really, but it’s kind of entertaining. Check out the video above for a demonstration on how it works.

I wish the MacBook Pro keyboard backlights were able to be activated on an individual basis, that would make this app extra cool in a Michael Jackson Billie Jean kind of way.

If you’re interested, check out keySpazz.

keySpazz is brought to you by the same developer that made the iTunes plugin that allows your MacBook Pro keyboard lights to dance to music, which is another fun Mac novelty to play around with.

How about a couple of Mac-wielding DJ’s wearing Storm Trooper helmets, presumably rocking out a crowd of fellow awesomeness to some awesome music? OK, I don’t know if this is was a halloween thing or what, but this is probably what you would see if Daft Punk were Star Wars fans and Mac users, and hey, maybe they are?

I have no idea where this picture originated, but thanks to AJ for sending it in to our group inbox. A very cool picture indeed! If you have any additional details about the image, just send us an email or post in the comments, we’d love to know where this is from or have some more details.

Until then, just enjoy the picture for it’s sheer cool factor, well, cool if you’re a geek who likes Star Wars and Macs and general geekiness…. like me anyway… Yes, this is quite lightheated compared to our usual fair, but we like to switch it up from time to time with the ‘fun’ category. So if you hate fun, well, ignore the fun category. That’s ok, no hard feelings.

Update: We have heard this is an image from a band of electronic DJ’s called LAZERDISK, taken at some show in LA, but we haven’t confirmed that yet. Sounds plausible, and we all know that many DJ’s use Macs as their primary setups.

Wondering what to do about a dead pixel or stuck pixel on an Apple device? Apple’s internal policy on dead and stuck pixels has been revealed. Titled “Acceptable numbers of pixel anomalies”, the internal document explains Apple’s policy on what they call pixel anomalies and how they handle repairs or replacements.

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Apple has now opened the doors for Mac OS X developers to submit their apps to be included in the upcoming Mac App Store. Scheduled to be released within the next three months, the Mac App Store was announced as part of the Mac OS X 10.7 feature set, but Apple quickly revealed it would also be available to existing Mac OS X 10.6 users.

Anyone can develop software for the Mac through Xcode, but if you want to distribute your software through the Mac App Store, you will need to join the Mac Developer Program from Apple. Much like the iOS Developer Program, the Mac Developer Program costs $99 per year.

Sometimes the hardest thing about writing is remaining focused, which is increasingly difficult in the digital world of mass distractions. Social media, alerts, notifications, there’s constant noise blasting our direction and ready to distract you.

Using distraction free writing software can really help eliminate the interruptions that exist elsewhere on your computer, and the open source FocusWriter fits this bill nicely for Mac users, but it’s also available for Windows and LInux too.

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If you’ve been dying to watch Flash video on your iPhone, you’ll be pleased to hear about the release of Skyfire. Skyfire is an alternate web browser for the iPhone that allows you to watch Flash videos on the device, it does so by converting the Flash to HTML5 on the fly. When the Flash video is ready to watch, you tap on the play video icon at the bottom of Skyfire to load the video as HTML5. This obviously isn’t full Flash support, but it’s about as close as the iPhone will probably get without jailbreaking the device.

Skyfire Web Browser is intended for the iPhone and iPod touch, but also works on the iPad. It costs $2.99 and you can get Skyfire Web Browser from the iTunes Store.

The description on the App Store says that the $2.99 download is a ‘Special Early Adopter Price’ which would suggest it’s bound to cost more in the future. I have yet to try the app myself but it’s getting good reviews on the App Store, as well as from the New York Times and Engadget.

Update: Skyfire was temporarily removed from the App Store by the developer, they released the following statement explaining why:

Skyfire for iPhone has been received with unbelievable enthusiasm. Despite our best attempts and predictions, the demand far exceeds our initial projections.

The user experience was performing well for the first few hours, but as the surge continued, the peak load on our servers and bandwidth caused the video experience to degrade.

Thus we are effectively ‘sold out’ and will temporarily not accept new purchases from the App Store. We are working really hard to increase capacity and will be accepting new purchases from the App Store as soon as we can support it.

We are very grateful for the demand. Within 5 hours, Skyfire for iPhone became the top grossing app, the third highest paid app overall and the top application in the Utilities category. Wow!

Please bear with us as we bring our capacity in line with the incredible demand – stay tuned.

Thanks, Robert.

It sounds like the app will be available again once they figure out their bandwidth situation.

You may know that iPhone users can opt to turn off Caller Id on their iPhone to always make blocked calls from that number and phone, this means when your calls will show up as “blocked” to the recipients phone all the time. But you may not want to block every call all the time, and instead you might just want to temporarily block an iPhone call that you’re making.

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Apple is now allowing customers who purchased an AppleCare Protection Plan to transfer the warranty to a new device without having to cancel the current plan or buy a new one, according to a report from BGR. This information comes from a leaked internal document in the form of a screenshot (shown above), which specifies the change in policy.

The transfer applies to purchases made within 30 days, specifically:

The product originally covered by the agreement must have been purchased within the past 30 days, and the new product must be of the kind that can be covered by that agreement.

For example, if you just bought an iPhone 3GS with an AppleCare Protection Plan and upgraded to an iPhone 4 within the month, you can transfer your plan to the new hardware. It looks like the transfer option expands to all AppleCare Protection Plans, including the iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Apple Displays, and one can assume the iMac, Mac Mini, Mac Pro, MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro. Although the leaked snapshot does not specifically show all of the Apple hardware, it refers to “all other APP agreements.” This report and screenshot appeared on BGR, who says the move will simplify the buying process for customers. If you were wondering, the AppleCare Protection Plan has always been transferable to new hardware owners.

AppleCare Protection Plans are highly recommended and serve as an extended warranty, you can save up to 26% off of AppleCare Protection Plans by buying from Amazon.com.

The iTunes Visualizer is a neat feature of iTunes that’s been around forever, more recent incarnations of the app have brought a more attractive visualizer which is a bit more fun to play around with. In fact, there’s some hidden commands that you can access while in iTunes Visualizer that modify the appearance of what’s displayed on screen.

These work on both Mac and Windows versions of iTunes, so play some music and explore the effects.

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There’s a new iPad commercial out again, and Apple showers the device in superlatives: iPad is cinematic, elementary, academic, full-size, presenting, bought, sold, fantasy, electric.

The latest TV advertisement features the same finger snapping Chilly Gonzales piano song from iPad commercials airing earlier in the year, except at the end there’s an electric guitar playing the same chords.

The latest iPad commercial joins the MacBook Air, iPhone, iPod touch, and iPod nano commercials that are also seen on the airwaves with some regularity.

Previously, Apple used the same song for a similar themed commercial for iPad 1, as part of an ongoing television advertising campaign for the tablet.