With the release of iOS 4 continuing on through iOS 6, a new multitasking ability was brought to iOS and the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

Basically, multitasking means you can run multiple applications at the same time, which is a standard feature of modern desktop operating systems, and that feature is now ubiquitous in the mobile world as well.

On the other side, running multiple applications at the same time on any device means you may want to quit those applications that are now running in the background, say if you aren’t using them any longer, or if you want to free up some system resources for something else (technically, iOS is supposed to be smart enough to do that on it’s own, but nothing is perfect)…

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If you’ve seen the new iPod Nano commercial featuring the newly released touch screen iPod Nano, you’ve heard the new song playing in the background. Apple commercials have a certain power to them, they typically propel a song into popularity rather quickly and people start asking what song is playing in the latest Apple commercial.

What song is playing in the new iPod Nano commercial?

The song is called “Short skirt, long jacket” by Cake.

You can listen to the full song below via YouTube:
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Those of us waiting for the iOS 4.1 release don’t have too long to go, Apple is set to make the iPhone and iPod touch OS update available for download next week on Wednesday, September 8. Apple didn’t announce an official date, but their UK iPhone site has publicly marked the availability date as just a few days away.

The software update is hotly anticipated, not only for its additional features but for some significant bug fixes including the proximity sensor issue on iPhone 4, and apparently iOS 4.1 improves the speed and performance of the iPhone 3G, which makes it a necessary download for any owner of a 3G running slow iOS 4.0.

The iOS 4.1 download is actually available now for developers, and while other iPhone and iPod touch owners have just a tad longer to go, the iPad will not be included in the update. Instead, iOS 4.2 for iPad will be released in November.

Update: The iOS 4.1 update has been released, you can download iOS 4.1 now through iTunes!

Apple took the functionality to buy a ringtone out of iTunes 10 for some reason, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have custom ringtones. You can make your own free iPhone ringtones directly within iTunes 10, iTunes 11, and iTunes 12 this is the best way to go since you don’t have to get any additional software or pay for a service to create the files. Don’t download or pay for one of the iPhone ringtone maker apps, just launch iTunes and follow this guide, it’s easy to do and totally free.
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Before the iPad and before iBook’s were the digital iBookstore, the iBook was the predecessor to the MacBook. I had a few of the white iBooks and they were good machines. I always just resell my old Mac’s when I upgrade, but it’s kind of nice to see the older models still in use.

[ via Flickr ]

Update: iOS 4.1 fixes iPhone 3G slow speed for the most part, I highly recommend installing this update.

Apple announced iOS 4.1 to a big hooray from iPhone 3G owners, since the iOS 4.1 update supposedly fixes the speed problems on the 3G. But how does the iPhone 3G actually run with iOS 4.1? I like real world tests, and this video from LifeHacker demonstrates the speed of the 3G with iOS 4.1.

iOS 4.1 + iPhone 3G performance

If you own an iPhone 3G and you are running iOS 4, you’ve certainly suffered from the performance and speed issues. To say that iOS 4 runs slow on iPhone 3G is an understatement, it runs terribly slow almost to the point of being unusable.

The big question is about iOS 4.1 speed… here’s the video: Read more »

Along with new iTunes 10 download came a number of interface changes, ranging from a new icon, vertical window control bars, album art displays, and the greyscale conversion of the sidebar icons. If you preferred the colorful sidebar icons of iTunes 9 and prior, you can swap out a rsrc file within iTunes 10 and be done with the plain greys icons once and for all.

Change iTunes 10 sidebar icons to color

Changing the iTunes 10 sidebar icons back to color from grey is pretty easy:

• Quit iTunes
• Right-click on the iTunes 10 app icon within your /Applications folder, click on ‘Show Package Contents’
• Open up the ‘Resources’ folder and location the file ‘iTunes.rsrc’ and save a backup of this somewhere, or rename it to iTunes-backup.rsrc
• Download the color icons iTunes.rsrc file and drop it into the Resources folder
• Close the folders and relaunch iTunes 10
• Enjoy the color icons again!

The color iTunes.rsrc file is courtesy of a MacRumors forum user who modified and hosted the iTunes files on his own site.

If you’re not thrilled with the new interface, you can combine this tip with a few others to replace the iTunes 10 icon back to iTunes 9 and also change iTunes 10 control buttons to horizontal a la iTunes 9. Suddenly your iTunes will look like it did before, but still have all the great features of iTunes 10.

If you have an older MacBook or MacBook Pro and you envy your friends with newer models and their fancy inertial scrolling, envy no more. InertialScroll is a simple freeware utility that allows you to enable inertia scrolling on older Mac laptops, the only requirement is that they have multitouch trackpads (this covers at least 2009 and some 2008 models).

The app is very simple to use, you just enable the feature through the app in your menubar, and you can disable it the same way. You can check out InertialScroll here.

(For those that do have newer MacBook models and don’t like the feature, you can disable inertia scrolling rather easily too.)

If you’ve ever created an icon for an app in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, you may have noticed that the colors are represented slightly differently, and sometimes a bit washed out or saturated after you save them. Apparently this is because of Snow Leopard’s color management and how it handles colorspaces.

Have no fear, there is a solution! The folks at Panic Software (creators of my favorite FTP client, Transmit) have a solution to accurately save icons in Snow Leopard, and it goes something like this:

• Within PhotoShop click on “Edit” and go down to “Convert to Profile
• Select “Generic RGB Profile”
• Now “Save for Web” and make a Generic RGB PNG of the icon (be sure to uncheck “Convert to sRGB”)
• Drag the new color-corrected PNG file into Icon Composer, and save

Now your icon should render colors exactly as intended with the proper Generic RGB profile applied to it.

Head on over to the Panic Blog for a full walkthrough with screenshots.

I’m liking iTunes 10 but I can’t say I’m a fan of the vertical control buttons, which some are calling ‘traffic lights’ since well, it resembles traffic lights. Sure it saves space but it breaks away from the standardized UI convention. Thankfully we can change back to the classic horizontal buttons without much effort.

If you want to get the classic horizontal close/minimize/maximize buttons back in iTunes 10, type the following into the Terminal and relaunch the iTunes app:
defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -1 If this gives you trouble try this command for the same effect: defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -boolean YES

If you want to reverse the changes back to the newer iTunes 10 style vertical buttons, use this:
defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -0 or defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -boolean NO

Again you just need to quit and reopen iTunes 10 for the changes to take effect.

A big thanks to Paster who provided this tip in the comments on how to change the iTunes 10 icon back to the iTunes 9 icon style.

If you haven’t downloaded iTunes 10 yet, it’s a worthwhile upgrade and the Ping social music system is fun to play around with.

The official Twitter client for iPad is now available to download, and it’s pretty impressive. Centered around consumption, it features panes that allow for easy viewing of photos, news stories, tweets, and even a built-in media player that allows you to watch videos directly in the app either within a floating window or fullscreen. It’s still sort of shocking to me that the screenshot above is a Twitter client, certainly doesn’t look like what you imagine when you think of Twitter does it?

Naturally the iPad client supports touch gestures and interestingly enough, they made the iPad Twitter client not require a login initially, meaning you can start consuming without signing up for anything.

This is a pretty interesting direction for Twitter to go, the iPad client is now more full featured than their website… what’s that tell you? You can download the iPad version directly from iTunes, it’s free.

I think it’s safe to say that this is the best Twitter client for iPad at this point. Perhaps not for its simplicity, since it’s a pretty complex client, but for raw consumption of media and link sharing in the Twitter world it’s pretty amazing. If you have an iPad, don’t miss it.

It seems like it was just moments ago that iTunes 10 became available to download, but already there are some complaints about the new blue button icon. 6ix Passions points out that it looks awkward in their Dock and offers a simple solution; revert back to the old iTunes 9 icon. Here’s how to get the old iTunes icon back:

• Go into your Applications folder, select iTunes.
• Right click on the file and select Show Package Contents.
• Go under the Resources folder and make a copy of iTunes.icns on your desktop (for backup purposes).
• Replace it with the old iTunes.icns file from the previous iTunes version (9 and below).
• Start or restart iTunes.

Now you’ll have the old iTunes 9 style icon back, featuring its music note layered on top of a CD. Perhaps it’s just that people don’t like change, or maybe they’re still attached to their CD’s, who knows.

Update on 11/24/2011: A newer iPod touch commercial featuring a song by GROUPLOVE has just been released as well.

Apple has released a new iPod touch that has all the great features of the iPhone 4 (minus cell), and along with any new iPod release comes a new commercial. The newest iPod touch commercial is called “All kinds of fun” and it shows the iPod touch shooting video, in FaceTime calls, and using other cool new features on the device. Of course there’s a catchy song playing in the background, and that song is about to get really popular per the Apple Commercial Effect.

What’s the name of the song playing in the new iPod touch commercial?

The song is called “Come Home” by the artist Chappo, and it’s off of the ‘Plastique Universe EP’. You can listen to the full song below.

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Some users are experiencing problems trying to download iTunes 10, and there’s even a few rumors circulating that iTunes 10 will not be available to download yet – these are not true, iTunes 10 is available to download now. If you encounter problems with downloading iTunes 10 from Apple’s iTunes site, you can try one of these direct download links from Apple:

iTunes 10 Direct Download links

These direct download links have been verified to work as of 7:20PM PST, the files are on Apple’s servers and are not rehosted or mirrored elsewhere yet.

iTunes 10 for Mac OS X – Download now

iTunes 10 for Windows 64-bit – Download now

iTunes 10 for Windows 32-bit – Download now

Announced at the September 1 media event, iOS 4.1 for iPhone and iPod Touch is now available to download from Apple. The iOS 4.1 software update is listed under your iTunes updates for iPhone and iPod touch. Developers can also access the download through the iPhone developer page.

Version 4.1 of iOS includes several important bug fixes as well as a couple new features:

• Proximity sensor issue fixed for iPhone 4 owners
• Bluetooth problems fixed
• iOS 4 slowness problems with iPhone 3G fixed – this is a big one for iPhone 3G owners
• HDR photo features
• HD video upload over WiFi
• TV show rentals
• Game Center

Download iOS 4.1

Everyone can download iOS 4.1 now, most people will get a manual notification telling them the update is available. If you don’t get the notification, here’s how to initiate the software update:

• Launch iTunes with your iPhone / iPod touch attached
• Click on your iPhone then click ‘Check for Update’
• Select to Download & Install the iOS 4.1 update

You can also choose to just download the update and install it later. Presumably you will need iTunes 10 to download and install the iOS 4.1 update since it features new features that are attached to iTunes 10, mainly Ping.

Developers have had early access to download the iOS 4.1 from the iPhone Developer home page for about a week before public release.

iOS 4.1 for iPad?

iOS 4.1 will not be released for iPad, but iOS 4.2 will be available on the iPad in November which will bring all the iOS 4 software features to iPad.

Update: iOS 4.2 is now available for iPad! You can download iOS 4.2 for iPad directly from iTunes.

Apple had announced that iOS 4.2 for the iPad would be available in November when it is also released for iPhone and iPod touch. This is in line with previous rumors suggesting iOS 4.2 would unify all the versions of iOS across the i-device product lineup. This also fits into Apple saying that iOS 4 for iPad would be available in the fall.

iOS 4.2 features for iPad

iOS 4.2 will bring all the existing features of iOS 4.1 to the iPad plus new features that are exclusive to iOS 4.2:

• Multitasking
• Folders
• AirPlay wireless music, movie, and photo streaming
• Printing support over wireless networks
• Game Center for multiplayer and social gaming
• Unified and improved Mail inbox
• Search text within Safari
• Enhanced enterprise support
• Accessibility enhancements
• Keyboard and dictionary enhancements

Of course the most anticipated features are multitasking and folders, but some of the other additions look to be great as well. Airplay looks promising, which will allow you to stream music and video to and from the iPad over WiFi, and Print center, will allow you to wirelessly print and manage documents from the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. The total new features and improvements count over 100, which will make the iPad function almost as if it’s a new device.

The exact release date isn’t known but November isn’t too far off, we’ll let you know when you can download the update. You can read more about the upcoming iOS 4.2 update for iPad at Apple.com

iTunes 10 has been announced and will be available to download starting today via Software Update. Featuring a fancy new icon that finally ditches the CD, iTunes 10 also has a more attractive album management system and a built in social network.

iTunes 10 Ping

Perhaps the most interesting feature of iTunes 10 is Ping, the new social music discovery network from Apple. Built directly into the iTunes app, Ping allows iTunes users to follow artists and other users, get concert listings, discuss music, share your music preferences, and more. With 160 million existing iTunes users and the ability to access Ping on your Mac, PC, iPhone, and iPod Touch, Ping is looking to quickly dominate the social music scene. Ping’s feed looks a lot like Facebook and I’d expect a way to cross-publish between the two shortly. Ping will only be accessible via iTunes 10.

iTunes 10 download

To get the newest version of iTunes 10, go to either Apples iTunes download website or load up Software Update from the Apple menu, it will appear as an available download.

Apple’s iTunes download website is here, you do not need to enter your email address, you can just click on ‘Download Now’ and the download will start.

Update: Some people are reporting problems downloading iTunes 10 or that they can’t download iTunes 10. If you are having troubles downloading iTunes 10, refresh the iTunes download page and try clearing your cache. I can confirm that it is available for download.

Did you know that you can use Quick Look to zoom in on items within Expose? This is an awesome trick sent in by one of our readers:

“While in Exposé in Snow Leopard, press the space bar while mousing over a window. You’ll get an actual-size preview of the window. You can read all of the text, view the progress of an installation, track a download, and more from a quick glance without ever actually switching applications.”

Try it out yourself: enter into Expose and then hover over a window and hit the spacebar to enlarge it as a full sized preview. This is really cool and very useful. Enjoy!

Thanks to David H for sending this in!