I came across this quote which I think summarizes quite well why the iPhone is such a great device:

“If there’s a single feature that elevates the iPhone from the rest of the pack, it’s the way that it urges and enables me to maximize the amount of time I spend thinking and doing and creating, each and every day. I’ve got ten minutes while I wait for a burger to arrive, three minutes at the post office while as a clerk explains the concept of a “forever stamp” to the unenlightened, six minutes waiting in the subway…it all adds up. I leave the house with my iPhone in my pocket, and I come home with new photos, new drawings, a few tiny things written, many pages of books read, and a better sense of the news of the day.

I accomplished (okay, “accomplished”) all of that in crumbs of time that otherwise would have gone to waste. I don’t get that sort of effect from other phones…”

I couldn’t agree more. What other device can you carry around in your pocket and do so much with so easily? The iPad is too big for a pocket, the iPod Touch isn’t connected enough, and any other cell phone doesn’t even come close. This is why the iPhone is so great.

[ Quote from Ihnatko via Marco ]

I’ve always been a fan of the Mac Mini, a powerful machine in truly tiny form factor. Here’s a particularly awesome Mac Mini setup, with dual displays being powered using both the Mini-DVI to DVI adapter and a Mini DisplayPort to DVI Adapter ports. I didn’t know you could drive dual monitors on a Mac Mini using that method, but here’s proof that you can!

[ via Flickr ]

The Google Chrome browser is an excellent choice, because not only is it fast and powerful, but it sandboxes Flash to prevent the plugin from going totally nuts, and it offers tons of customization options.

If you’re an avid Chrome user, you likely would appreciate using Chrome in full screen mode, and fortunately, you can do just that.

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I’m kind of annoyed when I click a web link and it happens to be an iTunes Store link… iTunes then opens and it takes me out of my browser. I searched around for an easy solution and came across a method that reliably stops iTunes from launching when an iTunes App Store or Music Store link is clicked from a web browser.

If you don’t want iTunes links opening the application from the web, you are not alone, so we have published a nice how-to guide on preventing iTunes from launching every time you click on any iTunes web link.
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Code completion is one of the more useful features when you’re developing since it allows you to write code faster. While Code completion should be activated by default in newer versions of Xcode, it’s easy to enable and use if it isn’t. You can also improve the usability of Xcode’s code completion with a great third party plugin, skip to the bottom of the article for that.

Enable code completion in Xcode

* Within Xcode, go to Preferences
* Click on the “Code Sense” icon
* Look for the “Code Completion” section and select ‘Immediate’ from the “Automatically Suggest” drop down menu
* Click “OK”

Using Code completion in Xcode

Once enabled, Xcode will now offer code completion based on what you have typed and offer suggestions for completing the syntax.
* You accept the code suggestion by pressing the Tab key or Return
* You can see a full list of completion suggestions by hitting the Escape key

It’s interesting to note that Apple says Code completion is disabled by default, but in newer versions of Xcode it seems to be enabled by default instead.

Improve Xcode code completion with Auto Assistant plugin

Code completion isn’t perfect in Xcode, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t solutions from third parties. A very helpful Xcode plugin for developers is called Xcode Auto Assistant, and it offers the ability to popup the completion list automatically, all the time, when a character it recognizes is entered. The behavior then becomes closer to how things like Coda, BBedit, Espresso, etc handle code completion. The plugin is a lot more consistent than what Apple offers by default, although I wouldn’t be surprised if this is changed soon with an update to Xcode. Until Apple adjusts the behavior, you can download the plugin from Google Code here.

After you download the Auto Assistant plugin, you’ll need to drop the plugin into the following directory:
~/Library/Application Support/Developer/Shared/Xcode/Plug-ins If /Plug-ins/ does not exist, just create the directory. Relaunch Xcode and the plugin is installed and works immediately.

The networksetup utility allows you to join any available network, whether or not it is a router connected through Ethernet, a wi-fi router that is or is not broadcasting an SSID, and whether or not it has any password encryption required.

Since most networking is done with wireless communications these days, we’ll focus on joining to wi-fi through the command line of OS X with networksetup utility.
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Who would have guessed that by adding a little bit of velcro to your iPad it would become so versatile? The video is a bit goofy, but I have to admit using some velcro to mount an iPad onto your car dash or wall is a brilliantly cheap and easy way to get your iPad anywhere. Of course the downside is that your iPad will have velcro stuck to the back of it when it’s removed.

If you want to do this yourself, you can buy velcro strips on Amazon for around $9.

The popular first-person shooter/action game Half-Life 2 is now available for Mac OS X. At the moment it costs $6.99, which is 30% off the regular $10 price. The expansions of Half-Life 2: Episodes One and Two are also available to download for $5.99 each.

System requirements for running Half Life 2 on your Mac are pretty similar to other Steam games:
* Mac OS X 10.5.8 or 10.6.3 or later
* 1GB of RAM
* NVidia GeForce 8, ATI X1600, or better
* Mouse, keyboard, internet connection

You can check out Half-Life 2 at the Steam store and download it from the Steam client. If you’re a fan of the Half-Life 2 series and Team Fortress 2, it’s worth getting the Orange Box set which includes the expansions and Portal, although TF2 isn’t released for the Mac yet (Steam says “Coming soon”).

You can instantly open anything in fullscreen Quick Look mode by selecting the item and then hitting the Command+Option+Y keys. If you select multiple files and enter into fullscreen mode, it’s easy to navigate between them by using the arrow keys. You can then exit full screen mode by hitting the escape key.

As a few commenters pointed out, you can also just hit Option+Spacebar to get the same effect.

Whether you’re an active or aspiring iPhone or iPad developer, you’ll really appreciate these nice PSD files from design agency Teehan+Lax. They contain well organized layered images of essential GUI elements of the iPhone OS, sized accordingly to the iPad and iPhone (depending on which PSD file you get, of course). Using these documents with Photoshop you can just open one of the PSD’s and arrange elements around to make a quick GUI mockup for your app idea. There’s also an Adobe Illustrator sketch file for iPhone elements if Photoshop isn’t your thing.

I’d highly recommend downloading all three of these files, they really help to quickly create layouts and mockups for iPhone and iPad app GUI’s. The SDK’s Interface Builder app may be foreign to you or your GUI designer, but these files will be a lot closer to the typical Adobe comfort zone.

Download iPad GUI PSD now

Download iPhone GUI PSD now

Download iPhone Sketch Elements AI now

And if you’re a iPhone OS developer, don’t forget to check out Apple’s official Human Interface Guidelines and Teehan+Lax’s blog either.

MagicPrefs is an amazing free utility for Mac that dramatically improves the functionality of your multi-touch Magic Mouse. Other than allowing for increased control over the touch sensitivity and tracking speed, you get practically full access to the multi-touch capabilities of the device.

With MagicPrefs you can bind various gestures, swipes, pinches, and taps to different functions.
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iTunes can adjust the volume levels of your music for you, so that each song is closer to one another in volume output. This is a great feature, and it has always peeved me that some songs will play louder than others, and a playlist can quickly go from one moderately loud song to one that is either extremely quiet, or over-amped and crackly sounding.

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Cyberduck is a great free FTP client for Mac OS X, but on my portable Mac’s 13″ screen the Growl popup notifications really drive me crazy as they appear on each server connection and transfer completion. Oddly enough, if you look around in the Cyberduck preferences, you won’t find an option to disable the Growl notifications, and this has to be done through the command line instead.

To disable the popup Growl notifications in Cyberduck, type the following command:

defaults write ch.sudo.cyberduck growl.enable false

You can reverse this and get the Growl popup notifications back by typing:

defaults write ch.sudo.cyberduck growl.enable true

Continue to enjoy Cyberduck, with or without Growl notifications!

Update: As several readers pointed out, you can also just disable Growl notifications within the System Preferences on a per app basis.

Dateline is a nice little utility that places a transparent linear calendar on your Mac desktop. It’s pretty customizable so if you want the dates to be horizontal or vertical, or the text color or their background colors to be different it’s just an easy couple of tweaks away. Perhaps the best part about Dateline though is that it integrates with iCal, so double-clicking on a date will launch iCal and show you your calendar for that day. It’s free, it’s lightweight, and it requires Mac OS X 10.5 or newer.

Dateline developer home
Download now

A reader sent us in these goofy comic exchanges between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, they have no basis in reality obviously but they’re pretty funny. Here’s three of my favorites:

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The ambient light sensor on the newer Unibody MacBook Pro (all models: 13″, 15″, 17″) is located directly next to the iSight camera at the top of the display. You can verify the location by holding your hand over the area to the left of the iSight camera and watch as your screen dims and the keyboard lights brighten.

The location of the ambient light sensor on the pre-unibody older MacBook Pro’s (all models: 15″ and 17″) is located inside the grills of the speakers near the keyboard. Again you can verify this by holding your hands over the speaker grills and watch as the screen backlighting adjusts based on the change in the ambient lighting.

If you’d like, you can stop the MacBook Pro screen from dimming by adjusting various System Preferences.

From the vintage speakers to the beautiful iMac, something about this setup just speaks to me. I don’t know of any other computer hardware that actually accents a room into something more beautiful, rather than just “oh, there’s a computer” – or maybe I just love Macs?

[ via Flickr ]

Want to save a document or web page as a PDF file, but you don’t own Adobe Acrobat? No problem, you can print documents, webpages, or nearly anything as a PDF, this means it creates a PDF file directly in Mac OS X using a built-in feature, without the need for any additional software or apps. In fact, this trick works with almost any Mac app, and basically if you can print a document or file through the normal “Print” functions, then that means you can also turn that into a PDF document through this method.

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