Apple has renamed iPhone OS to iOS, which is appropriate considering the operating system runs on more devices than just the iPhone. iOS 4 encompasses the iPhone, iPad, the iPod Touch, and there are rumors that it will run on future versions of the Apple TV. With over 100 new features in iOS 4, it’s an exciting free software update.

iOS 4 for iPhone and iPod Touch Available Now

The iOS 4 software update for iPhone and iPod Touch is available now for download. Launch iTunes and plug in your device to see the download and update option.

iOS 4 Availability and Release Dates:

Availability and release dates depend on the device. iPad users will be waiting longer for iOS 4 update than those who own other devices.

• iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 3G users can get the download for free now! iPhone OS 4 was made available on June 21st
• iPod Touch 2nd and 3rd generation users can get iOS 4 now, it was released June 21st
• iOS 4 for iPad is due out sometime in the Fall of 2010, there has not been a definitive date set for release

It is likely that iOS 4 on iPad has a delayed release because it will include features that are iPad specific, thus taking longer for Apple to develop.

Prominent features of iOS 4:

* Multitasking – run multiple applications at the same time
* Folders – organize apps into folders
* Improved Mail – multiple mail accounts in a single inbox, open attachments in 3rd party apps
* iBooks – browse, buy, and read eBooks
* Create iPod playlists – create playlists directly on your iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad
* 5x Digital Zoom – the same digital zoom technology that’s included in digital cameras
* Tap to Focus Video – video will refocus to whatever you tap on screen, cool!
* Faces & Places in Photos – view photos based on where they were taken and who is in them
* Home Screen Wallpaper – change the background picture on your devices home screen (this feature is already on the iPad)
* Gift Apps – send apps as gifts to others
* Spell Checking – built-in spell checker for Mail, Notes, and other apps that access the function
* Wireless Keyboard Support – use a wireless keyboard on the iPhone (you can use a wireless bluetooth keyboard with the iPad right now)

iOS 4 compatibility:

iOS 4 will work with iPad, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and iPhone 3G, and newer iPod Touch 2nd and 3rd generation units, but the feature set degrades on older devices. For example, iPhone 3G can not use multitasking or change the background picture, and neither can the 2nd generation iPod Touch. It’s strongly speculated that the performance of iOS 4 will be best on iPhone 4 and iPad.

Have you ever wanted to know how you can check to see if your AT&T account is eligible for an iPhone upgrade? You can instantly check your AT&T iPhone upgrade eligibility by dialing a simple short code on your phone.

This is super easy, here is how you can check your iPhone upgrade eligibility with AT&T:
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Did you know that you can use a MacBook 13″ MagSafe power adapter on the 13″ MacBook Pro? Or a MBP 15″ adapter on the 13″ models? And the 11″ MacBook Air adapter with a 13″ MacBook Pro, and so forth? In most cases you can interchange power adapters, this also means the older white MagSafe adapters work just fine on the new 2010 MacBook Pro 13″ model, and vice versa. In other words, if you just upgraded to a new MacBook, don’t toss the old MagSafe adapters!

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Single Application Mode is an interesting feature of MacOS and Mac OS X that is often misunderstood, we’ll discuss what the feature is, how it works, and how to enable it on your Mac running nearly any version of Mac OS still in use, whether that’s macOS 12, 11, 10.6, 10.7, 10.8, or newer.

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You may not know it, but OS X’s Mail.app has the ability to utilize plugins. Installing a plugin is not an overly difficult task. After the first install, the subsequent plugins become easier to get running. A lot of the plugins you download claim that installation is as easy as double clicking on the .mailbundle file, but my experience shows that it just wasn’t that simple! Thankfully, the work-around is simple and straightforward.

Install a .mailbundle file
The first step is to navigate to your Home folder (command-shift-h) in the Finder. Open the Library folder and then open the Mail folder. Look for a “Bundles” folder. If it doesn’t exist, you should create it (command-shift-n). Now place a .mailbundle file in the directory. For an example, I suggest using letterbox. Letterbox will allow you to view your mail in a three column view.

Enable the use of mailbundles
After you have everything in place, we need to tell Mail to look for and use .mailbundle files. Open the Terminal and type the following command:
defaults write com.apple.mail EnableBundles 1
If you were using letterbox, the next time you fire up the Mail application you should see your inbox presented to you using three columns. Very cool.

Here’s an amusing comic breaking down web browsers. Thanks to Joseph B. for the submission.

Is this pretty accurate? Out of all the browsers I think Firefox is really too slow to be usable anymore, and I find myself in Safari and Chrome almost exclusively now. I haven’t touched Opera in ages, and the description as a tiny smart car cracks me up… but the dead horse for Internet Explorer for Mac is absolutely hilarious to me and takes the cake!

MacBook Pro’s are great machines, the only thing that makes them better is when you add an external display, and what better external monitor to drive than a 30″ Apple Cinema?

[ from Flickr ]

Updated: 2/13/2012 – You have by now seen that Apple sells an official iPad dock that includes a handy keyboard. If you read this site you have likely also seen that you can attach the Apple Bluetooth Keyboard to your iPad as well. Believe it or not there is a third option if you would like to use your Apple USB Keyboard in conjunction with your Apple iPad; using a wired USB keyboard. The method is a minor “hack” of sorts, but it does work as evidence shown in the video below. The hack involves obtaining the power necessary for the keyboard to operate from a powered usb hub. You can find a powered USB hub at all major (and minor) electronic stores, including Amazon.

Requirements
USB Powered Hub
iPad Camera Attachment (this is where you will get a USB input from)
Apple USB keyboard

Using a USB Keyboard with an iPad

Getting a USB keyboard to work with an iPad is surprisingly easy:
1) Plug the Camera Connector into the iPad.
2) Connect a USB cable into your powered hub and the iPad Camera Connector
3) Plug the USB Keyboard into your Hub

It really is that simple if you meet the hardware requirements, and soon your typing experience on the iPad will be greatly improved without having to buy the iPad keyboard dock to just have yet another keyboard laying around when it’s not in use.

If you have any troubles, see the video below for a walkthrough:

Happy iPading!

Earlier today apple unveiled its HTML 5 showcase. The showcase covers Video, Typography, Gallery, Transitions, Audio, 360 views and Virtual Reality examples. This marks a continued campaign against the current provider of most of these types of content, Adobe’s Flash. If you haven’t read Steve Jobs’ open letter to the community on the topic of Flash, check it out. It makes some interesting points.

Personally, it is my opinion that Flash is a dying commodity and that open standards are always going to prevail over closed technologies when it comes to the web. So it’s time to give a quick run down of HTML 5. I also threw in a good deal of opinion, as after all, this is a blog. Read on for more.

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So you just downloaded the awesome Xcode code completion plugin (or any other) and you need to get it working… easy. You can install any Xcode plugin by dropping the .pbplugin file into the following directory:

~/Library/Application Support/Developer/Shared/Xcode/Plug-ins
If you haven’t used plugins yet, the Plug-ins directory does not exist. In this case, all you need to do is create the directory. After you have dropped the plugin file into the folder, relaunch Xcode and the plugin will be loaded automatically. Uninstalling a plugin is just a matter of removing it from the Plug-ins folder.

The Mac OS X Application Switcher is a handy way to quickly cycle through open applications, but did you know you can quickly quit programs you aren’t using with the Application Switcher as well?

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One the gripes I’ve had with the Apple “App” store is that it can be hard to search such a large index of applications to find what you’re looking for. Looks like it’s Google to the rescue as they seem to be adding (it’s still not perfect!) the ability to search the iPhone/iPad store as well as the Android store. Great news for both platforms. Not only does this addition benefit the consumer, this will make life easier for developers as well. Now there is a bit of method to the madness and the chances are higher of connecting developers and consumers together in app purchasing harmony!

Google is rolling out a feature that allows you to change the background picture of Google.com to a user defined image. Here’s how to customize your Google.com landing page background image.

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Whether you are a new Apple developer or an experienced Cocoa engineer with roots in NeXTStep, you will understand the need to back up your hard work. Integrating Xcode with subversion not only allows you to back up your code, but it also enables you to keep a history of changes that you can revert back to or compare your code against. This is called version control. This article assumes that you already have your own subversion repository that you have read and write access to. If you want to setup a subversion server of your own, I suggest consulting the almighty google for a wide range of articles on how to accomplish this task. Read on for screenshots, details and lots of fun.
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As the release of iPhone OS 4 nears I thought it would be an opportune time to talk about why I’m personally excited for iPhone OS 4. As an amateur (up and coming!) developer and an avid user of the platform, I am more than ready for the unveiling of the latest incarnation of iPhone/iPad platform. Unfortunately iPad users will have to wait until this Fall before they can leverage a lot of the enhancements. It sounds like the wait will be well worth it!

Update: iPhone OS 4 has been announced, and it’s called iOS 4.

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Want to use an external Bluetooth keyboard with the iPad? You don’t have to use Apple’s official iPad keyboards, instead if you already own a Bluetooth keyboard the chances are good that it will be compatible with the iPad. If you’re looking to do a lot of typing on the iPad then it’s hard to beat a real external keyboard, as the touchscreen is generally just slower and less accurate for many iPad users. To get a Bluetooth keyboard connected to iPad, all you need to do is pair the device to the iPad and adjust a few iOS settings, we’ll walk through exactly how to do just that.

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Every once in a while you’ll come across a video that has audio syncing problems. Sometimes it’s minor where the sound track and dialogue is off by a few milliseconds and it’s barely noticeable, other times it can be off by as much as a few seconds and this makes watching the video almost impossible. Rather than ditch the video, you simply need to fix the audio track so that it syncs with the video track, and that’s what we’re going to cover here.

We’re going to use VLC to easily re-sync audio tracks to a video, by either offsetting the audio forwards or backwards. It sounds more crazy than it is, and it’s actually really easy to do with VLC on Mac, Windows, and Linux, here’s how….

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You can quickly compare any two images side-by-side by using Mac OS X’s QuickLook feature.

* Select the two pictures within the Finder that you want to see side-by-side
* Hit the Spacebar to enter into QuickLook mode
* Click on “Index Sheet” at the bottom of the Quick Look window (it’s the icon with four tiled windows)
* The Escape key exits side-by-side view, and hitting Spacebar again or clicking away from the window exits QuickLook mode

Assuming you have the screen resolution to support it, there’s no reason you can’t compare four or even twenty images side-by-side with this method. This is a really handy tip for photographers and graphic artists.

[ via Abstrukt ]