If you’re looking for a solution to triple boot Mac OS X with Linux and Windows without using Boot Camp, you can do this using a third party boot menu called rEFIt (get it? re-EFI-it? rEFIt?? Alrighty then). rEFIt works very well and, upon boot, you’ll discover a nice menu like the above screenshot on each system start where you can select the operating system of your choice to boot into.

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The iPad looks like it might be getting the black keyboard as a default setting in iOS 4.2, the change was noted first on the iPad Business Integration section of Apple.com but has since made the rounds of the web as more and more people notice the change.

I think it looks great, hopefully it’ll come as a customizable GUI option for all iOS devices in the upcoming iOS 4.2 update. iOS 4.2 is released for iPad in November, but the beta is available to download for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad now if you’re a registered iOS developer.

If you need to convert a .docx file to .doc, don’t pay for one of the many conversion sites or utilities out there. Your Mac has the ability to handle the file conversion entirely on it’s own already built in, and it’s completely free, no downloads or third party software is required.

To convert the Microsoft Word DOCX file into a standard Word DOC file format, we’re going to be using the textutil command line tool. The Terminal is generally considered advanced, but this is easy enough that almost anyone should be able to do it, just follow along:
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You can now pre-order The Boxee Box on Amazon, which instantly turns your TV into a full featured media center. Pre-ordering on Amazon comes at 13% discount from the $229 retail price, at $199.99.

According to Boxee, those who pre-order on Amazon will receive the Boxee Box before it goes on sale elsewhere later in the year.

Boxee Box hardware features

Manufactured by D-Link, The Boxee Box is considered by many to be a more full-featured and open option to the Apple TV, Boxee hardware features:

• Full 1080p playback
• HDMI out
• 2 USB 2.0 ports
• SD card slot
• Ethernet and 802.11n wireless
• Digital audio & Surround Sound support
• Intel Atom processor
• Includes HDMI cable and remote with full QWERTY keyboard
• Attractive and easy to use Boxee TV interface

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The upcoming iPhone 5 will aim to use the latest 4G service in addition to the existing 3G network, according to a report on CNet. The same analyst reports that Qualcomm is expected to be the CMDA chip supplier for the long-rumored Verizon iPhone that may be announced at the same time.

AT&T and Verizon have been busy upgrading their network infrastructure in support of 4G over the last year, and the new iPhone is looking to take advantage of the increased bandwidth. 4G is actually just the marketing name for what is known as LTE, or Long Term Evolution, in the telecommunications world.

Not much is known about iPhone 5 due to Apple’s notorious shroud of secrecy around new products. Earlier reports from DigiTimes suggest the new iPhone will have a metal enclosure and feature an integrated antenna, which aims to resolve the reception problems in addition to the sometimes fragile glass backing of the current iPhone 4. With the news of 4G network compatible iPhone, there is also some speculation that FaceTime calls will be allowed over the cellular network rather than just WiFi.

iPhone 5 Release Date

In the past Apple has announced a new iPhone early in the year (January or February) and then the device is formerly released and shipped later the same year in June. We can only assume this general timetable will hold true for the iPhone 4G/iPhone 5, whatever it be called.

VLC is finally out for the iPad (iPhone and iPod touch too), this is great news for iOS devices because using the app you’ll be able to watch most video file types directly on the iPad without converting it first. In the past you’ve had to convert video to iPad and iPhone compatible formats which can take a while depending on the size of the file, but VLC makes that no longer necessary.

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AppleJack is a really handy troubleshooting utility for Mac that works even if you can’t load the Mac OS X GUI. Running in Single User Mode, it’s a simple menu-based tool to run a series of tests and repairs on the Mac OS. With AppleJack you can easily:

* Repair Disk
* Repair Disk Permissions
* Validate System Preference files
* Clear Caches
* Clear Swap Files

These are common Mac troubleshooting techniques, and really make AppleJack a handy utility in any Mac users toolkit. To use AppleJack, all you need to do is restart your Mac in Single User Mode by holding down Command+S during system start, then type applejack at the prompt. You’ll then be brought to the same menu you see in the screenshot above, where you can perform the necessary actions to get your Mac back in good health.

AppleJack is open source and free to download, highly recommended.

Who doesn’t love free software? MacScan is a full service anti-spyware detection tool for Mac OS X and for a short time is available entirely for free, so you need to jump on this one quick. For a limited time only (just today: 9/20) you can download this anti-spyware tool for FREE.

Get the free anti-spyware tool for your Mac:

• Go to the MacScan download site for the 5.2mb installer
• Launch the app and when prompted, click on “Purchase MacScan”
• In the ‘Coupon Code’ section on the right hand side, enter in “PIRATE” to bring the cost to $0 (make sure the currency is set in US Dollars)
• Continue through the checkout to get your MacScan serial number
• Download, install, and register by midnight PST today 9/20!

After you get your serial number you just need to register it with MacScan by selecting ‘Register MacScan’ from the menu, this will unlock all the features.
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If you frequently access a file server from a Mac it’s pretty helpful to map the network drive to your desktop. There’s two ways to do this, one method is just mapped for one time use and will reset after a reboot, and another method is a more permanent route that allows the mapped network drive to always appear and mount on your desktop after system reboots and user logins. We will cover how to do set up both, so that if you just want to temporarily connect to a network share, or always connect to a network drive, you’ll be able to do either in OS X.

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Here’s something you might not know. Your Mac will periodically send out anonymized data to Apple with location specific information, the intended use is for providing location based services to it’s customers with Apple products.

But in Mac OS X Snow Leopard you can turn this off and disable the location feature.

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Solitaire is one of those great card games that has passed countless hours over the course of it’s existence. Eventually it involved from just a card game to a computer card game, and it became a staple of the Windows gaming environment. But now you’re on a Mac, what do you do for your solitaire fix? Get a great free Solitaire app, of course!

McSolitaire is great, it automatically saves and resumes games, offer tons of customization and theming options, and best of all is totally free to download, which puts it right as my #1 Mac Solitaire client. There are some other pretty junky solitiare apps for Mac out there but this one is the best that I’ve used by far. The screenshots don’t really do it justice, thanks to the theming it’s about as attractive as a solitaire app can get.

You can grab the free Solitaire client over at PCV Soft, the developer also has a free Solitaire app for iPhone and iPad too which are equally as feature rich and fun to play. Enjoy!
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This is a rather strange error message which you may see in Mac OS X, you’ll get the notification “Another device on the network is using your computer’s IP address” and then you’ll lose internet access with the dialog box telling you to try connecting again later. No thanks, we need internet access now! So what causes this and how do we fix it on a Mac in OS X?

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The Internet Explorer 9 beta is out now for testing, and a reader sent in this picture which is sure to disappoint Mac users all over: Internet Explorer 9 is not available to download for Mac, its for Windows Vista and 7 only. OK so sarcasm aside, I hear it’s actually pretty decent (for IE at least), and so what do you do if you want it on your Mac?

How to run Internet Explorer 9 on a Mac

Let’s discuss how you can get Internet Explorer 9 on your Mac, there’s three main options:

• Internet Explorer virtual machines for Mac OS X – these are completely free and run IE 7, IE 8, and IE9 under a virtualized instance of Windows
• Virtualization through VMWare, VirtualBox, or Parallels
• Bootcamp to have a full fledged Windows install beside Mac OS X
• WineBottler or something similar

The first approach is to use virtualization software, and then you can run IE in addition to just about anything else through a fully functioning Windows VM. The upside to this is that it’s generally very stable and assuming your Mac is reasonably powerful the virtual machine usually performs quite well, certainly well enough to run IE and core Windows apps. The downside to this approach is that you need to buy a Windows license so that you can install it in the VM.

Bootcamp is another option but then you’ll have to reboot between Mac OS X and Windows, and this isn’t really acceptable for quick testing in my view, plus you still have to buy Windows. This is without a doubt the best performing option though, since there is no virtualization or hack required, it just turns your Mac into a Windows PC.

If you don’t want to bother with bootcamp or a virtual machine, you can actually run Internet Explorer on the Mac using a third party tool called WineBottler, and while this works for IE6, IE7, and IE8, as of yet IE9 is not supported with this method. This is the method that I usually choose to just run IE for quick tests, but it can be prone to crashes and it’s also the slowest of the three options.

As far as I know, most Mac users generally need IE only for dreaded compatibility testing that web developers always have to endure, and this is why having a VM or WineBottled installation is legitimately helpful. The Windows version is available at Microsoft, if you need it for that purpose or any other.

People are doing all sorts of cool things with iPads, but this must be one of the more interesting projects I’ve seen. Using videos playing on an iPad and stop-frame photography, Dentsu London moved the device around in dark environments to create 3-dimensional words and animations.

Instead of trying to explain it any further, you should just watch the video below: Read more »

I really like computer setups where beyond the monitor is a window, and this MacBook setup is lucky enough to be surrounded by large windows looking out into some tropical foliage.

[ via Flickr ]

Update: The iPhone text tone can be changed to anything after iOS 5.

Tired of hearing the same text message alert tone on your iPhone despite who the incoming SMS arrives from? Would you like to set a custom SMS tone to individual contacts? In either case you’ll be excited to learn you can do both of these with the newer iPhone iOS updates.

To set a custom text tone for a specific contact:

• Go into the contact and tap on ‘Edit’
• Look underneath ringtone you’ll see “text tone”, tap on that
• Select the new sound to play for that users sms tone, it can be adjusted from the default tri-tone to other alert tones

I use custom ringtones all the time for contacts so being able to set a custom text tone is a great feature. There is no word yet on whether or not you’ll be able to create your own custom text tones like you can with custom made ringtones, but if I had to guess I’d say they are probably going to be playing the same .m4r filetype suggesting the creation of unique tones is a possibility.

This requires iOS 4 or later to change the text tone, and iOS 5 or later supports setting the text tone to custom tones.

Analysts at Morgan Stanley have concluded that the iPad is now consuming 25% of PC laptop sales, and that sales of PC laptops have been steadily declining since the release of the iPad. The iPad is also slightly eating into Apple’s own laptop and iPod touch marketshare, as buyers are satisfied enough with the iPad to not see the need to purchase additional hardware.

Here are some of the more interesting iPad sales statistics from Morgan Stanley:

• iPad has cannibalized 25% of PC notebook sales since April 2010, causing a net loss in August notebook sales YoY
• 44% of iPad buyers view the device as a notebook/laptop replacement
• 41% of iPad buyers would not buy an iPod touch as a result of their iPad purchase
• 27% say they would not buy a desktop PC as a result of the iPad
• It is now expected that 50 million tablets (iPad included) will sell in 2011

The following chart, found by AppleInsider, offers pretty compelling evidence of the iPad effect on PC laptop sales:

This is fresh off the news that Best Buy has found the iPad to reduce some PC notebook sales by as much as 50%, an incredible feat of sales but unsurprising considering the strong demand for the iPad.

A new iPad is expected to be released soon that will feature a FaceTime compatible camera, larger memory, and other feature improvements. Rumors suggest the device may be announced at the same time iOS 4.2 for iPad becomes available in November in order to catch the holiday shopping season, while others look at a January 2011 timeframe.

Update: Apple has confirmed that the White iPhone 4 will be released in Spring 2011.

The claim below regarding ship date was proven to be false information, but is maintained for posterity:

Just as the black iPhone 4 is becoming more steadily available, a supposed email exchange between Steve Jobs and a high schooler has provided a rough release date for the long awaited White iPhone 4 model. According to the unconfirmed exchange, the white iPhone 4 will ship near Christmas of this year.

Here’s the email thread:

Hello Steve, My name is Nathan, I’m a high school student from San Bernardino. I also happen to be one of your biggest fan and a total Apple fanboy and proud to be.
I’ve been saving up money to buy the new iphone 4. I want the white one but Apple said it won’t be available until later this year. I know you must be asked this question hundreds of times a day but do you think we can expect to get the white iphone for xmas?
I hope you can answer. Thank you Steve.

To which Steve Jobs replies:

Christmas is later this year.

The biggest issue with the supposed email exchanges between Steve Jobs and, well, everyone, is that they are practically impossible to verify. This latest exchange was reported by the iPhone-centric iDB who points out that it’s always a possibility it’s a fake exchange.

Releasing the White iPhone 4 near Christmas would certainly provide for a white christmas for the Apple fans that have been holding out until the white model is available.

Update: Well as we mentioned, it’s always a possibility that these emails are fake, and iPhoneDownloadBlog.com came forward today stating that the email exchange was in fact a fake.

The White iPhone 4 is expected to ship in Spring 2011.