If you’re tired of looking over a man (manual) page within the Terminal, you can use a nifty command sequence to launch any specified man page into the Preview app of Mac OS X. This is done by piping the standard man output into the open command and Preview.

Launching the man Page into Preview

The exact syntax to use for this purpose is as follows:

man -t [COMMAND GOES HERE] | open -f -a /Applications/Preview.app

For example, this is using the trick to open the manual page for ‘ipconfig’ into Preview:

man -t ipconfig | open -f -a /Applications/Preview.app

You can do this with any page, just replace ‘ipconfig’ with any other command or known man page you’d like to read within Preview and it’ll work the same.

And yes, this is opening the manual page in Preview.app, the image editing and viewer app bundled with every version of Mac OS X… that may sound confusing and a bit weird to send a command line man document into an image editing app, but this is where things get particularly cool… you can export it as a PDF!

Essentially what you’re doing here is converting the manual page from a terminal text file into a PDF document.

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You can install and run Android OS on the iPhone, thanks to a tool called iPhoDroid. I’m not sure why you’d want to do this, but it’s fun to know that you can.

Grab the iPhoDroid download on the developers site or Google Code, the tool runs on both Windows and Mac OS X and is about a 50mb download.

Personally I like iOS so I’m not about to run Android on my iPhone, but if you feel like giving this a go, then have at it and report back the results. If running it on your phone is too big a jump, you can always run Android in a virtual machine that’s preconfigured too.

You already know that you can take screenshots from the command line on Mac OS X, and now using a simple tool called webkit2png you can quickly take a screenshot of any webpage from the command line too.

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Feeling nostalgic for a horrible crash-prone user experience and ugly GUI? How about putting the Windows 95 boot screen as your iPad background? It won’t make your iPad run Windows 95 (thankfully), but it sure looks dreadful enough.

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You can disable the new iTunes Ping sidebar from appearing in iTunes 10.0.1 by using the following command within the Terminal:

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iTunes 10.0.1 is a minor update that replaced the iTunes store arrows with a Ping pull-down menu button instead. I think it clutters the iTunes interface a bit so here’s how to remove this feature.

Launch the Terminal and type or paste the following:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes hide-ping-dropdown -bool TRUE

Then quit and relaunch iTunes for the changes to take effect, as seen in the screenshot:

You can get the Ping pull-down menu buttons back by typing:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes hide-ping-dropdown -bool FALSE
And then relaunching iTunes again.

You can also disable the iTunes Ping sidebar if you want to further clean up the iTunes interface.

Disable iTunes Ping buttons in Windows

By request, here’s how to disable the Ping button in Windows. First, quit iTunes, then:

• From the Start menu go to the ‘Run’ command
• Enter the following in exactly:

"C:\Program Files\iTunes\iTunes.exe" /setPrefInt hide-ping-dropdown 1

• iTunes will now execute running that command and the Ping button will be turned off

Want to buy Starcraft 2 for cheaper than retail? Thanks to Amazon, you can pickup SC2 for $49.99, which is a 17% discount from the $59.99 retail price offered by Blizzard. Not a bad deal for a sweet game with tons of replay value, and as far as I know this is the cheapest deal to get Starcraft 2 yet.

Starcraft 2 comes on a multi-platform compatible DVD so you can install it on a Mac or Windows PC. So what are you waiting for?

Head over to Amazon and grab Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty for cheaper than retail, plus it includes free shipping.

Branching out a bit from the Mac Setups, here is a great iPad setup!

The iPad rests comfortably in a dock and is connected wirelessly to a bluetooth keyboard, surrounded by a glass of red wine and an iPhone.
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Want to mount an iPad in your car? You can install an iPad onto your dashboard for easy access, this is a great idea that will surely improve the time you spend in traffic. I’ll cover two solutions here, one is a car mount kit that is probably the best solution on the do-it-yourself market, and the other is a cheap no-frills hack that gets the job done on a tight budget.
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Apple now allows iPhone ringtone creation apps to be sold on the App Store, in a somewhat strange turn around from their previous policy. The reason I say this is strange is because you can make ringtones with iTunes 10 for free without any additional software, and you can also buy ringtones on iTunes for $0.69, so allowing ringtone apps is sure to cut into their own business of selling them.

The ringtone maker app market has already proven to be popular, with several of the apps now climbing the ranks of the App Store top paid apps, as AppleInsider notes. I suppose the convenience of being able to create a ringtone directly on the iPhone is nice, but I think I’ll stick to making them free within iTunes (Garageband works too).

This right here is a tiny horse, alongside a customer, in an Apple Store. Yes, I did a double-take too.

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An underused feature of Mac OS X is the ability to use any Finder window as an application launcher. This is actually a feature of the Toolbar, which is usually thought to just hold things like the back and forward buttons, list and icon views, etc. But in fact, that same toolbar can launch apps too, and they can be whatever apps you want.

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Office 2011 for Mac is scheduled to be released at the end of October according to Microsoft, but ZDNet claims that the official release date will be October 26.

This expected ship date date came from Amazon sales page for Office 2011, but now the date is no longer shown. which is now confirmed as October 26.

Microsoft has publicly announced the ‘end of October’ release for Office 2011, which is expected to come in a few flavors at different price points.

We just got a rather amusing email along the lines of: “Hey I tried to share a story on Facebook but your site is broken!” but with more swear words and other nonsense thrown in there for good measure.

Facebook is down, it’s not us. Blame them.

But this is a good reason to discuss what to do when a site goes down, and even ways to view websites when they’re down.

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Contrary to rumors, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg suggested that Verizon will not be getting the iPhone in the immediate future. Speaking to an investors conference, the CEO emphasized they’d like to sell the device and hopes that Apple comes aboard their network:

“We would love to carry it when we get there, but we have to earn it,” Seidenberg said.

Perhaps more interesting is the follow-up remark:

“I think 4G will accelerate the process, and any other decisions Apple makes would be fine with us,” he added. “Hopefully, at some point Apple will get with the program.”

Does this mean that Apple may be waiting for Verizon to complete the 4G rollout before offering the iPhone on their network? If this is the case, the Verizon iPhone likely won’t exist until later in 2011 if not 2012, when the 4G network is large enough to have near nationwide coverage. It’s also possible that the iPhone will never come to Verizon, but that seems less likely.

Earlier reports from analysts suggested that the iPhone 5 will use 4G as it’s data network, in addition to being offered on Verizon and AT&T concurrently. The recent comments from the Verizon CEO could be interpreted to corroborate that claim, however there is no concrete information available on a Verizon iPhone, or any new iPhone for that matter.

Did you know that Apple offers free video tutorials for using the iPad? They’re incredibly easy to follow and well worth watching if you’re new to the iPad or just know someone who is.

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PixelStick is a great utility for designers who want to quickly measure distances and angles on their screen. Just launch the app and start dragging the endpoints to adjust measurements and get the pixel dimensions.

This is an awesome tool, and it’s free to download.

You can grab PixelStick for free from the developer, Pixelated Software.

If you want to use an iPhone on T-Mobile in the USA and you don’t want to wait for it to be released (if ever), you’ll need to jailbreak and unlock the iPhone and use T-Mobile specific carrier settings. Here is a walkthrough that should work for iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 (which you can buy without contract):

You’re basically looking at a 3-step process: getting a SIM card, jailbreaking and unlocking the phone, then adjusting the settings. That’s it.

• Acquire and use a T-Mobile SIM card – you’ll need the newer 39.01a type. Note for iPhone 4 users: you will need to trim the SIM card down to fit into the iPhone 4 micro-sim slot
• Jailbreak the iPhone – easy iPhone jailbreak is web based and makes for quick work for pre-iOS 4.01, otherwise use PwnageTool, greenpois0n, and limera1n which work for iOS 4 and 4.1
• unlock the iPhone by installing and running through Ultrasn0w via the Cydia app

Now it’s time to update the iPhone configuration to T-Mobile specific carrier settings:

• Tap on “Settings” then “General” then to “Network” and “Cellular Data Network”
• Enter in the following T-Mobile specific settings under Cellular Data, MMS, and Internet Tethering:
• APN: internet2.voicestream.com (use wap.voicestream.com or epc.tmobile.com if the first fails)
• MMSC: 216.155.174.84/servlets/mms
• MMS Proxy: 216.155.165.50:8080
• Leave all other fields blank
• Exit Settings

Now you’ll want to restart the iPhone, upon reboot the iPhone should find the T-Mobile network and everything should work as planned. Make a phone call, send an SMS, and access the data network to be sure everything is working.

Note about iOS updates and firmware: you may need to downgrade to another iPhone OS version before using certain jailbreaks. If necessary, you can download iPhone firmware that pertains to the version you would like to use instead, and then use PwnageTool to select that ipsw file. If the firmware has already been updated to your standard iOS 4.1 installation, you may be temporarily out of luck until iOS 4.2 is released. You can check what version you have by navigating to Settings > General > About > Version