Farmville for iPhone is now available as a free download on the iTunes Store. Farmville is considered the most popular game on the web, and one of the most popular games in the world, with an estimated 70 million monthly users.

The basis of the game is that you have a virtual farm that you plow, plant, and harvest farm goods, and those that play the game say it is very addictive. Bringing Farmville as an app to the iPhone will certainly serve this addiction, I have several friends who are absolutely thrilled with the fact they can now literally play the game constantly since it’ll be in their pockets and not just on Facebook.

Of course you’ll be able to run Farmville on your iPod touch or even iPad if you just can’t get enough of the game. The fact that it’s on the iPhone is pretty significant though because prior web based versions ran in Flash which made it impossible to bring to the iPhone platform.

You can get Farmville on the iPhone through the iTunes Store [iTunes Store link] if you’re interested, or just launch your iPhone/iPod touch and head into the App Store, where you’ll find it.

Need to use DFU mode with an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch? Maybe you need to restore from firmware or troubleshoot an iOS device from DFU? We’ll explain how to enter and exit DFU mode on any iPhone model with a clickable Home button, what DFU mode is, why you may want to use it, and of course, how to use it. Do note that using DFU mode requires iTunes, a USB cable, and a computer, as well as the iOS device in question.

What is iPhone DFU mode?

DFU mode is a state that you can put your iPhone into where it can interface with iTunes, but does not load the iPhone operating system or boot loader (this is what really differs DFU mode from the more simple recovery mode). DFU stands for Device Firmware Update.

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If you don’t mind the degradation that come with reducing an audio files bit rate, you can potentially save quite a bit of disk space on an iPhone/iPod/iPad by selecting an option the next time you sync the device in iTunes. Here’s what you’re looking to do:

• In the Summary tab just look near the bottom of iTunes to see: “Convert higher bit rate songs to 128kbps AAC”
• Select the checkbox
• The next time you sync your iPhone/iPod, the songs that are rated higher than 128kbps will be converted down

Depending on the quality of the speakers, many people can’t tell the difference with 128kbps audio vs higher bit rates. If you have a great car stereo or a good iPhone speaker dock, don’t be surprised if you can hear some very slight noise. The best way I can describe the difference in sound quality is that the songs play less crisp, but it’s pretty hard to notice on earbuds, cheaper headphones, and most stereo systems.

The amount of space you will save obviously depends on how much music you have and the audio files original bit rate. If you have a large library of high quality songs, it wouldn’t be unusual to save over 1GB of disk space if not more just by reducing the bit rate.

Counter-Strike Source (CSS) was released today for Mac users via the Steam client. Dubbed as the “Worlds #1 Online Action Game”, Counter-Strike features highly competitive multiplayer and team-play shoot-em-up action. Fire up the Steam app and you can download Counter Strike right now for $6.80, which is 66% off it’s standard $20 price tag.

The newer your computer the better CSS will run, but official system requirements to run Counter Strike on your Mac are as follows: OS X version Leopard 10.5.8, Snow Leopard 10.6.3, 1GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8 or higher, or ATI X1600 or higher, Mouse, Keyboard, Internet Connection.

You can see more screenshots and get more information about Counter Strike for Mac at the Steam Store.

iPhone 4 hasn’t been out long but there are already some complaints and problems regarding it’s reception. The above video shows the iPhone 4 reception degrade while held in a users hand in a pretty typical manner. The cause, apparently, is when the iPhone is held in such a way that a persons hand touches both sides of the case (aka, the antenna), causing the signal bars to drop, unable to make calls, and the phones overall reception goes out the door.

Update: there is an iPhone reception fix recommendation from Apple: hold the phone without crossing the antennas, or use a case.

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You can opt out of Apple’s new iAd location and data tracking service, which will use gathered data on you to serve targeted ads through Apple’s new iAds platform.

To opt out of iAd cookies, visit http://oo.apple.com from the device you wish to opt out with.

Note that you must be running the latest iOS 4 or you will get an error, since iAds requires iOS 4 to run. You will need to view that website directly from your iPhone, iPod, or iPad, and access the site individually per device if you want to opt each out of the service.

Without the iAds location and data tracking cookies, you will just be served generic and less targeted ads.

Personally, I don’t mind location relevant ads as long as they don’t pass on personal data, and I have even found some location based ads to be helpful in the past, so I am not opting out of the iAds cookies at this point.

With any installation of Mac OS X comes Emacs (Extensible, customizable, self-documenting real-time display editor – yes that’s what EMACS stands for, now you know!) and with Emacs, some easter eggs that let you play some good old 70’s games directly at the command line.

Yes really, there are retro video games embedded in your text editor! Here is how you can play them.

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iPhone 4 reviews are out, and you probably won’t be surprised to hear they’re overwhelming positive. Here’s a few highlights including glowing words and some amazing pictures from our favorite reviews via Engadget, Walt Mossberg, and The New York Times.
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Backing up an iPhone is important because it allows you to recover all of your personal data, apps, and stuff, if you ever need to restore the iPhone, upgrade it, or replace it with a new phone, all of which is done by restoring from the backups that are made. By default your iPhone will automatically sync and create a backup itself, and this can be done one of two ways. The first backup method is handled by iTunes each time your iPhone is connected to your computer through USB. Otherwise, newer iPhones will automatically back up through iCloud if that feature has been enabled, and those iCloud backups happen anytime the device has been plugged into a power source and is on wi-fi.

While the automatic backups are extremely useful and you should always use at least one of them, be it iTunes or iCloud, you can also initiate an instant backup of an iPhone manually. These self-started backups can be made from either iTunes or iCloud very easily, here is how to do either.
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One of the more interesting little known Dock modifications on the Mac is the ability to make hidden app icons appear as translucent and muted in the Dock to indicate their hidden status. If you look carefully at the screenshots of the Mac Dock in this article you’ll see the effect, as some of the icons are shown as translucent, and that is because they are hidden apps. It’s a subtle change, and this hidden optional setting can be enabled in Mac OS X by using the command line.

This tutorial will show you how you can make hidden apps show in the Dock as translucent icons to indicate their hidden status.

Enabling translucent icons of hidden apps is a great feature for Mac users who hide apps to clear off their desktop, as it makes it very easy to identify what apps are hidden and which aren’t, just by looking at the icons to see if they are transparent or not. If you hide apps with any regularity you will probably want to turn this on yourself, it only takes a moment.

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When you launch a new Terminal window or tab in Mac OS X (and most linux distributions) you’ll be greeted with a little message, either some “last login” details, or maybe even a message from the admin from /etc/motd. The last login details are default in a new Mac OS X terminal session, whereas the Message Of The Day is from a custom adjustment set by the sysadmin or yourself.

If you’d like to change or remove that “Last Login” message, you can do so rather easily by turning to the command line and creating a modifier file. This will override whatever the login message is in Terminal app, effectively disabling it for the user account where it’s put in place.

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There are several reasons why backups can take forever on an iPhone, so here are a few tips you can try that should increase the speed of your iPhone backups and restores. Yes, these tips work on Mac OS and Windows, and for iPod Touch too.

Fix slow iPhone backups by deleting photos

If you have a large camera roll on your iPhone, you might be really slowing down your iPhone backups. This is because the iPhone backup process will copy all your pictures regardless of whether or not there have been any changes made to them. The solution? Regularly backup your iPhone photo’s and then delete the originals from the iPhone.

• Launch iPhoto (or Image Capture or whatever app you use to backup photos)
• Copy ALL images from your iPhone to your computer
• Ensure that you have backed up all your iPhone photos to the computer
• Delete ALL of the originals from the iPhone / iPod Touch
• Proceed to backup as usual through iTunes

Your backups should now go much faster. It is no coincidence that this tip is recommended by Apple Support, because it works.

I’ll be the first to admit that I was skeptical of this solution until I tried it myself; I had 1,728 photos saved in my iPhone camera roll. After I backed them all up into iPhoto and deleted all the originals from the phone, my iPhone backups speed improved dramatically – I went from a painfully slow four hour backup process to a more reasonable 45 minutes with this tip alone.

Delete old and unused apps from your iPhone

If you aren’t using an old app anymore, delete it, there’s not much reason to keep it around on your iPhone anymore. Deleting these ancient apps can help to speed up your iPhone backups too, since there is less data to transfer at each backup or restore.

Remove unused media from the iPhone

Old apps aren’t the only thing that can slow down backups, so can media. We already discussed deleting photos from your iPhone and the big improvement that makes in backup speed, but deleting other media can help too. If you find yourself never listening to some ancient albums, or watching those old TV shows you copied over 8 months ago, just go ahead and delete them from the iPhone. Deleting video files seems to be particularly effective.

Regularly backup your iPhone

Allowing too much time to pass between backups can really increase the amount of time necessary to backup your iPhone. Try to keep regular backups of your iPhone, just get in a habit of making one full backup once or twice a month. I have noticed a direct correlation between the length of time a backup takes to complete and how often I perform full backups: the longer time that passes between backups the slower the backup will be.

I’m trying to install iPhone OS 4 and the backup and install is really slow, help!

Many users are reporting very slow backup and install processes for updating their iPhone and iPod touch to iPhone OS 4. If you are experiencing this problem, I would highly recommend letting the backup and install run during a time you will not be using the phone for several hours, ideally overnight. Just start the iPhone OS 4.0 install and backup process and let it run while you sleep, you will wake up to the new OS4 being installed and you will have made a recent backup, which will speed up future backups and installations as well.

My iPhone backups are still extremely slow, help!

If you’ve tried all these methods and your iPhone backups are still extremely slow (and by extremely slow I mean well over a few hours, I’ve heard reports of up to 9 hours… yikes!) then you can try the last resort: Restore your iPhone to it’s original factory settings. Remember that by doing this without a backup you will LOSE ALL DATA ON YOUR IPHONE including all media, music, apps, phone numbers, notes, everything, so be absolutely certain that you don’t mind restoring to factory default settings without a backup. This almost always resolves the slow backup problem, but if you don’t have anything to restore to then you will have a completely blank iPhone with nothing on it. There are some suggestions that restoring the iPhone is necessary when there has been a filesystem corruption, which can lead to extremely slow backup speeds and other strange behavior. Again, you will lose all your iPhone data so this is a last resort.

Alright iPhone developers, no more beta versions; version 4 of the iPhone/iPad SDK has been released on Apple’s Developer Center. The iPhone 4 SDK has been available in various iterations to those who are registered iPhone developers, but now anyone with an Apple dev login can download the Xcode & iPhone SDK 4 package for free. iPhone 4 SDK includes over 1500 new API’s for developers to tap into and create amazing experiences for touch devices that run iOS 4. Other highlights of iPhone 4 SDK include:

• Multitasking – seven new multitasking services to allow apps to perform tasks in the background while other apps run
• iAd – embed full-screen interactive ads directly within your applications, so users never have to leave the app
• Game Center – developer preview of the GameKit API’s that will allow for multiplayer gameplay on Apple’s new social gaming network
• Video Playback & Capture – full control over playback and capturing of videos and audio
• Calendar Access – apps will now be able to create and edit events within the Calendar app
• SMS within Apps – you can now embed the ability to compose and SMS messages within an app, just like Mail
• Quick Look – just like Mac OS X Quick Look, apps can quickly see previews of documents with Quick Look API
• Map Kit Improvements – developers can now draw overlays directly onto maps
• Full Photo & Media Library Access – apps now can directly access user photo and video

You can head on over to the iPhone Developer Downloads page on Apple.com to get version 4 of iPhone SDK, or read more about iPhone 4 SDK on Apple’s What’s New page.
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Multitasking, folders, wallpapers, and more, oh my! The wait is over, version 4.0 of iOS is available as a free download for compatible iPhone and iPod Touch devices. For those who recently bought iPhone 4, the new OS will come pre-installed when it ships later this week.

Download iPhone OS 4.0

You can download iPhone OS 4 directly from iTunes. To install the update, all you need to do is connect your iPhone or iPod Touch to your computer with iTunes open. iTunes will notify you when OS 4.0 is available and you will be able to download the software and update your device. Remember that prior to installing iOS 4 on your iPhone / iPod you will need to have downloaded and installed iTunes 9.2 as a prerequisite.

If iTunes does not notify you automatically of the iPhone OS 4 update being available, just click on the ‘Update’ button under the ‘Summary’ tab after you have selected your iPhone within iTunes, this will start the update and download process as well.

It’s always a good idea to backup your iPhone before installing any updates.

If you’re having problems, advanced users can also download iPhone IPSW directly from Apple. This is not recommended for novice computer users.

iPhone OS 4.0 Compatibility

iPhone OS 4 (more accurately, iOS 4) is compatible with iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 3G, and the 2nd and 3rd generation of iPod Touch devices. The feature set degrades on older devices, and the ability to multitask and change background pictures will not function on iPod Touch 2nd Gen or iPhone 3G, the original iPhone 2G doesn’t get the update at all.

The updated iOS 4 for iPad has the same feature set but will be made available in the fall. If you are interested, you can read more about the popular iOS 4 features.

As you’ll soon be able to tell, I am annoyed with Adobe Update Manager, and thankfully I found a way to disable it completely. In case you didn’t know, Adobe Update Manager starts itself automatically on system launch and takes over your Mac while it sorts out whatever it does that I don’t want it to do, it’s the very definition of annoying.

Unfortunately, Adobe doesn’t make this easy for the novice user, but bear with me and follow the steps exactly and you’ll disable the Adobe update manager from launching on it’s own.
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You can immediately launch any file into its associated application from Quick Look preview mode by holding down the command key and then pressing the down arrow key, so if you’re looking at a PSD file it will launch in Photoshop, a JPG into Preview, MP3 into iTunes, etc, directly from Quick Look!

Thank you Greg for the handy tip!

Ok this post is really evolving so bare with us here. We originally posted a picture of the iPad in a Mac Plus and that was fun, but then a few readers wrote in with additional pictures and a video of an iPad in a Mac Classic, and finally a full on guide on how to create this great iPad case yourself.

Here’s a screenshot of the guide:

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Three 15″ Mac laptops: Unibody MacBook Pro, MacBook Pro, and a PowerBook G4. Pretty cool setup, although if it was me I’d probably sell off two of the machines and just get a nice external display on the newest unibody MBP.

[ via Flickr ]