Parallels is pretty great software that lets you easily run Windows apps on Mac OS X. The latest version was just announced and is faster than ever with full 64-bit support, it retails for $79.99 which isn’t a bad price but why pay more when you don’t have to? I like a good deal, so here’s how to get the newest version, Parallels 6, for $20 (well, actually $19.99). This will work until September 30 when the rebate is no longer offered.

• Find and buy Parallels 5 for Mac on Amazon for $39.99
• Fill out the $20 rebate form from the developer (the rebate code comes with Parallels 5)
• Save your Amazon receipt, then register and activate Parallels at https://www.parallels.com/account/
• When Parallels 6 is released (September 14), go back to https://www.parallels.com/account/ to access your free upgrade to Parallels 6

That’s all there is to it! This deal works by taking advantage of the Parallels Tech Guarantee, which states that if you buy a qualifying purchase of Parallels 5 after the eligible dates (August 15, 2010), you will get a free upgrade to version 6 when it is released:

Buy a qualifying Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac product from an authorized reseller or from www.parallels.com starting August 15th, 2010 and you will be eligible upgrade to Parallels Desktop 6 for Mac at no additional cost when it becomes available on September 14.
Save your Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac dated sales receipt, register your product and activation key at https://www.parallels.com/account/ and keep your activation key in a safe place. Bookmark this page and come back once Parallels Desktop 6 for Mac has been released in your language.

Great software at a great price, can’t beat that.

Update: This deal is still active, you have until November 30th, 2010 to buy Parallels 5 and then get a free upgrade to Parallels 6. This is a great deal!

Here’s the date range from Parallels:

Customers who bought a retail box or download version of Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac or Parallels Desktop Switch to Mac Edition from an authorized reseller between August 15th, 2010 and November 30th, 2010 need to proactively claim their upgrade directly with Parallels

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is finally available in full HD beauty for the iPad and it looks awesome. The game features full 1024×768 HD resolution graphics with higher polygon counts, better models, and improved lighting and graphic effects to take advantage of the iPad hardware, or to put it another way: it looks way better on the iPad than it does on any other portable gaming device. Check out the video below.
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Special characters can be accessed easily in Mac OS X through a special floating window called the “Character Viewer”. From within this characters menu, you’ll find a list of various dingbats, arrows, parenthesis, foreign currency symbols, pictographs, bullets and stars, math symbols, letterlike symbols, Emoji, and latin characters, plus a helpful “Recently Used” option which gathers a list of the most frequently accessed special symbols.

This quick tutorial will show you how to access all special characters available to a Mac by using the special Symbol and Character Viewer tool.

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If you’re old enough to remember the “My Buddy” doll commercials from the 1980’s, you should be highly amused by this iPad game ad.

It’s for an iPad app called Steve Young Football, the commercial doesn’t give you much of an idea of what the game is about but that’s sort of besides the point because it’s amusing enough on it’s own. It’s a great spoof on the My Buddy commercials and also has some hilarious lyrics.

Other than having a funny commercial, the object of Steve Young Football is to defend a football galaxy against wild pigs tornados, crazy fans, and assorted other madness. It actually looks like an entertaining game, but the commercial definitely takes the cake for entertainment. If this doesn’t sell an iPad game, I don’t know what will.

There was a lot of speculation and hope that iOS 4.1 would help fix the dreadfully slow speed of iOS 4 on iPhone 3G. Well, it did. Having installed iOS 4.1 on an older iPhone 3G I can confirm that speed is significantly improved over iOS 4.0 and performance is noticeably better.

If you have a slow iPhone 3G running iOS 4, do yourself a favor and upgrade to iOS 4.1! You can download iOS 4.1 now and is highly recommended. To really get the most out of your older phone, combine the software update with disabling Spotlight and clearing out unused/old apps. This combination really does the most to boost performance of the 3G.

While iOS 4.1 is much faster than iOS 4.0, performance is still not as fast as iOS 3.1.3. If you still have an older OS version installed on your iPhone 3G and don’t want folders then I would say don’t bother upgrading at all, there simply aren’t that many essential features in iOS 4 that the 3G can really take advantage of anyway.

You can test your iPhone signal strength and antenna reception easily again, it requires the iOS 4.1 update or later, but will work on any iPhone 3G, 3GS, 4, 4S, or later. Here’s how:

• Activate the antenna strength test by dialing the following: *3001#12345#*
• Hit Call

You’ll then see the signal bars be replaced with a number, the more negative the number, the worse the reception (-107 is worse than -80 for example). If you tap the numbers you can switch back and forth to the reception numbers and signal bars. You can exit out of this Field Test mode by just hitting the home button at any time.

The dialed number is actually the same field test that worked on the original iPhone 2G, but the ability was lost between several iPhone OS updates.

The whole iPhone 4 antenna fiasco is mostly a nonissue these days, but it’s still interesting to see the iPhones reception. Whether it’s right or wrong, I chalk a lot of the signal weakness up to AT&T’s network more than the iPhone itself, but this is largely due to the fact that my friends with unlocked iPhones on other networks have significantly better reception in many places.

If you want to make a copy or migrate an iPhone address book into Gmail or Google Voice, you can do so rather easily with a two-step process using a Mac or iCloud. First, you’ll export the address book information, then you’ll open Gmail and import the address book.

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Did you know that you can immediately open any directory from within the Open & Save dialog windows found throughout Mac OS X? Say you want to open a file contained in a folder which is buried deep in the file system and you know the path, or that you want to save a file to a deep file hierarchy, that’s exactly what this is for. Or maybe you just want to quickly save to anywhere in OS X, you can point to any folder on the Mac practically instantly by using the Go To Folder trick within the Open and Save boxes of apps in Mac OS X. Just use the same keystroke combination to access the Go To Folder feature within the Finder.

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The iPhone Dev Team is warning that those with a jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch should stay away from the recently available iOS 4.1 update:

Today you’ll likely start seeing iTunes innocently offer you a new version of iOS…version 4.1. Don’t accept it…it’s a trap!

The “It’s a trap!” message might be a bit dramatic, but basically they are saying that if you download the update you may lose the ability to jailbreak your iOS device again due to the iPhone baseband update that is included:

…There’s currently no known way to revert your baseband — if you update your baseband you’ll lose the ultrasn0w unlock, possible forever.

Please stay away from this 4.1 release until a safe jailbreak procedure (which also preserves ultrasn0w) is developed and released.

If you have a jailbroken iPhone, avoid iOS 4.1 for now. This isn’t a really big deal considering how fast the iPhone Dev Team works, the chances of them having a new jailbreak available shortly is pretty high.

Update: The Dev Team has announced that 4.1 is susceptible to jailbreak after all thanks to a boot ROM exploit. More to come.

It’s official: iOS 4.1 is available to download now via iTunes, but if you’re having problems you can also use these direct download links from Apple:
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As expected, the iOS 4.1 release date is today so fire up iTunes, since everyone can now download iOS 4.1. The update comes in around 300mb and brings a number of new features to iOS including Game Center, Ping Support, various bug improvements (including improving the speed of iPhone 3G and resolving proximity issues).

Download and Update to iOS 4.1 Now

The update procedure is the same as always:

• Plug your iPhone or iPod touch into your computer
• Launch iTunes
• Click on your iPhone then on “Update”
• Let the iOS 4.1 update download and install

Your iPhone or iPod touch will then reboot and you’ll be running the latest version of iOS.

Developers have had access to iOS 4.1 since September 1, but the iPhone and iPod touch operating system update is only now widely available to the rest of the world. The availability of the update couldn’t have come soon enough for iPhone 3G owners, who have been suffering under the miserable performance of iOS 4 on their older and less powerful iPhones.

Mac OS X includes Samba support by default, which allows for communication between OS X and Windows PC hardware. SMB is what enables simple Mac to Windows file sharing, but you can also go further and utilize the command line of OS X or Linux to remotely monitor, start, and stop services running on Windows machines – right from the terminal.

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You can switch the functionality of the iTunes store arrows so that if they are clicked they will take you to the iTunes library instead.

Launch the Terminal and use the following command:
defaults write com.apple.iTunes invertStoreLinks -bool YES
You can reverse this and go back to the iTunes Store links with:
defaults write com.apple.iTunes invertStoreLinks -bool NO

Note that this does not take you to the location of your iTunes library in the Finder, it just pulls up the iTunes Library in a sidebar within iTunes (see screenshot) as a column browser alongside the playlist. You can also choose to just disable the iTunes store arrow buttons completely, if you just find them a nuisance.

This is a great trick left by one of our commenters, thanks for the tip Gary!

Yes, you read that right, 120,000,000 iOS devices have been sold to date. This is the figure that Apple publicly released at their recent music event, and here’s the specific device breakdown of the sales:

• iPhones sold: 67.6 million – 56% of iOS devices sold
• iPads sold: 7.2 million – 6% of iOS devices sold
• iPod touch sold: 45.2 million – 38% of iOS devices sold

The iPod touch is capturing nearly half of the iOS device market, this is absolutely amazing and it’s fair to say that it’s been a huge hit even before the release of the new iPod touch with FaceTime video calling, upgraded hardware, and the beautiful retina display. The success of the iPad is pretty amazing too, representing a sizable portion of iOS sales even though it’s only been available for a few months now. And of course there’s the iPhone, the success of which doesn’t really surprise me whatsoever, it’s the best mobile device available and just happens to be a great cell phone as well.
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You may have noticed that when you select a song in iTunes a little arrow will appear next to the song name, the artist, album, genre, and every other sort category. If you happen to click on that little arrow, you’ll be directed to the iTunes Store for that album or artist. I’m really not a big fan of these arrows, I never use them and I think the store link is kind of annoying since the button can be accidentally clicked.

Disable the iTunes store arrow buttons within iTunes

Launch the Terminal and enter the following command:
defaults write com.apple.iTunes show-store-arrow-links -bool FALSE
You can always reenable the store arrow links by using:
defaults write com.apple.iTunes show-store-arrow-links -bool TRUE
After either command you will need to quit and reopen iTunes for changes to take effect.

This is just one of many iTunes mods we’ve covered recently. You can also get color icons back in the iTunes 10 sidebar, change the iTunes 10 icon back to iTunes 9, or my favorite which is getting horizontal window control buttons back in iTunes 10. Happy customizing!

Ever since Apple introduced the App Store, there’s been a gold rush of sorts to the iPhone & iOS platform. With the release of the iPod touch and iPad, interest in the devices has only grown, but unfortunately so have development costs. So what is it going to cost you to get that app developed for the iPhone? It depends on a number of factors, so here are some numbers on hourly and project rates to give you an idea. It’s generally not cheap, but there are some solutions for affordable app development.

FYI, I’m going to refer to the iPhone here but obviously this pertains to the iPad and iPod touch just the same, it’s all the iOS platform.
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iTunes 10 has a cool feature where you can use album art as a HUD mini-player on your desktop, it looks pretty great and reminds me of the iPod music player on the iPod touch and iPhone where it’s centered around the album art, being totally barebones except for when you hover over and click the album art.
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Need to change the hostname of a Mac? For most people if you want to change your Mac computer name you just do it through the Sharing system preference, it’s quick and very easy. For those of us that are more geekishly inclined, we like to do things through the Terminal.

This tutorial will show how to change your Mac hostname with the command line and make the setting change permanent (well, permanent until you change it again):

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