iTunes Smart Playlists are a widely underused feature in iTunes, which is a shame because it’s a powerful way to create custom playlists based on a variety of parameters, including artists, genres, dates, ratings, play counts, and more.

I’m often guilty of only listening to whatever is newest in my iTunes playlist since I’m usually pulling music from various new music blogs. But what about all the music that I was listening to a few months ago? Sure you can select shuffle, but why not take it a step further… create a smart playlist! Go to the File menu and down to “New Smart Playlist” and set your parameters and off you go.

I got the idea for this a while ago after reading a nice article on The Apple Blog which walks us through the process of creating a smart playlist based on music age and skip count, allowing you to build a music playlist based on what you used to listen to and liked. Definitely a nice way to rediscover your older, and still enjoyable music.

The countdown to the Starcraft 2 release date closes in, July 27 is less than a week away and it’ll be available for Mac and PC users. This is really exciting for RTS fans like myself, and I’m especially happy that Blizzard is going for a concurrent release for both Windows and Mac OS platforms. Be sure that you meet the Starcraft 2 system requirements for Mac so that you can enjoy the game, they’re pretty reasonable so most people who bought a Mac over the last couple of years should have no problem running the game.

You can pre-order Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty on Amazon for $60.

Apple is on fire, with record third quarter revenue of $15.7 billion. How does this translate into actual hardware sales? Here’s a breakdown:

• 3.47 million Macs sold, a new sales record and an increase of 33% year over year
• 8.4 million iPhones sold, 61% growth year over year
• 9.41 million iPods sold, a 8% decline year over year
• 3.27 million iPads sold since launch this year

That’s a lot of hardware. Other interesting facts pertain to the near relentless demand of new products, which has caused iPhone 4 availability to be constrained tightly as demand is still through the roof nearly a month after launch. Apple’s COO Tim Cook had the following to say about iPhone 4:

“Let me be very clear on this: We are selling every unit we can make… Demand for iPhone 4 is absolutely stunning.”

This is stating the obvious for anyone actually trying to buy iPhone 4, stores continue to sell out of the device the moment they’re in stock. It’s not just the iPhone that is dealing with tight supply lines though, the iPad is also struggling to find equilibrium as Apple continues to sell every model it makes. Very impressive.

You can see the full report on Apple’s third quarter results press release.

Letting Time Machine run on a routine backup schedule is important for all Macs, but there also times where you’ll want to initiate a backup yourself, like before installing system updates or major Mac OS X upgrades. If you find yourself needing to initiate a manual Time Machine backup, you’ll be happy to know it is very easy to initiate. Let’s get to it.

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These are the Mac system requirements for running Starcraft 2:

Minimum Starcraft 2 System Requirements for Mac

These are the baseline specs that you’ll need to run the game, if you are near the lower end of the settings here you probably won’t have great performance.

• Mac OS X 10.5.8, 10.6.2 or newer
• Intel Processor
• NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT or ATI Radeon X1600 or better
• 12 GB available disk space
• 1 GB RAM (2 GB highly recommended)
• DVD drive
• Broadband Internet connection
• 1024X768 minimum screen display resolution

Recommended Starcraft 2 System Requirements for Mac

In addition to the system specs above like available disk space and an internet connection, to run Starcraft 2 the best on your Mac these are the recommended specifications:

• Intel Core 2 Duo processor
• 4 GB system RAM
• NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT or ATI Radeon HD 4670 or better

Obviously the better and newer your Mac, the better Starcraft II will perform on it.

You can order Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty on Amazon.com.
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Want to quickly end a phone call on iPhone 4? No problem, just press this self-installed End Call button decal! OK I doubt this would work, and in fact it would probably prevent the bars and calls from dropping, but it’s amusing nonetheless.

We just got this picture in our inbox, the sender didn’t provide a source but the picture is definitely funny. It looks like it’s supposed to be a parody of something available on the Apple site and I highly doubt it’s actually for sale (of course, knowing the internet it will probably become available for sale soon).

Personally I find the iPhone 4 antenna hooplah to be overblown media hype, but some of the jokes and iPhone 4 humor floating around is just hilarious.

Update: the decal is the work of talented designer Aaron Draczynski, thank you to those who tracked this down.

One of the subtle features to iOS that I find myself using really often is the ability to compress photos sent from the iPhone, typically by email. If you’ve ever emailed a picture from an iPhone you’ve probably seen the compression screen, it looks something like this:

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Have you ever tried to run a command line tool to discover that you don’t have the necessary privileges to use it? Or perhaps the command itself actually requires root access to run at all? You’ll typically experience this with a ‘permission denied’ type of error message in terminal. Rather then type out the entire command string again, or hit the up arrow and move the cursor over to precede the command with sudo, you can use an awesome trick which re-runs the last executed command with sudo privileges. Best of all, this great re-run last command as root trick works in MacOS / Mac OS X and Linux.

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The iPad has a beautiful screen, there’s no doubt about it. What’s not so beautiful is the glare that you get with a glass screen, and while some users can deal with the glare indoors in most situations, when working with an iPad outdoors it’s pretty difficult to maneuver in such a way that the glare isn’t distracting. Sure, you can clean the iPad screen and crank up the brightness on the screen and that helps a bit (but to the detriment of battery life), but I went looking for a better solution in the form of a screen cover that will reduce glare and also help get rid of the finger prints.

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You may have known that you can navigate around music, skip songs, go backward to prior songs, pause, and mute music, all from the iTunes Dock icon, but did you know that the iTunes dock item in OS X also includes a list of the ten most recently played songs?

To access the recent songs playlist, just right-click on the iTunes icon as it sits in the Dock, and you’ll see a “Play Recent” list with the song names that you can then select from. Choose one to start playing it immediately.

The Dock icons of OS X reveal a lot of tricks if you use the control/right click on them, so it’s worth trying it out with other apps too and you’ll likely discover some other tricks and interactions. iTunes alone is full of actions from the Dock Icon, you can even rate songs from the same menu, set shuffling, and more.

The Nintendo 64 was another great console that had many great games, and you can relive many of the gaming experiences of the N64 by getting an emulator for Mac OS X.

The N64 Emulator I use in Mac OS X is called SixtyForce, it opens and plays N64 ROM’s quite well and allows you to run the games at full screen or in windowed mode, customize your controls to use either a keyboard or USB gamepad, and more. Sound good, and you’re a fan of Nintendo 64? Then check it out yourself.

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So you saw the latest iPhone 4 commercial and fell in love with FaceTime. You bring your iPhone 4 home, and you attempt to make a FaceTime connection with a friend… but nothing happens. What’s going on? It’s probably the wireless networks firewall settings.

I was recently speaking with an Apple employee and they told me that most of the problems people are having with FaceTime connectivity have nothing to do with the device itself, but instead it’s almost exclusively an issue with the network it’s being used on.

If you’re having problems connecting to FaceTime on a WiFi network, be sure the following ports are forwarded (or open) on the firewall: 53, 80, 443, 4080, 5223, and 16393-16472 (UDP).

Apple has dealt with enough of the port forwarding issues to release a support article on the topic, which is where the aforementioned port numbers are from. FaceTime isn’t alone here though, this is actually a really common problem with computer based video chat services like Skype and iChat too, and having the ports straightened out almost always solves the issue.

A friend of mine just got a free HP Mini 1000 from his job and was bored stiff with Windows XP, he couldn’t really think of a use for the netbook so I suggested installing Mac OS X on it. The little machine is an excellent candidate for a hackintosh, and the setup is just a matter of patience and following some good instructions like the one at MyMacNetbook: Guide to Snow Leopard on a HP Mini 1000. A few hours later and he’s running Snow Leopard on a tiny Hackintosh Netbook!

Have you ever put your Mac to sleep, only to find it awake seemingly on it’s own when you return to the machine? I’ve run into this mystery of a randomly waking Mac a few times, and with a few terminal commands you can help track down what caused your Mac to wake from sleep. So if you’re wondering why your Mac is waking from sleep, read on to learn how you can help determine the cause.

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I really can’t emphasize it enough: you should get an external monitor, the increase in workflow and productivity is dramatic. Not to mention a desk looks great with two screens, like this aluminum iMac with the external LG display. Something about a good Mac setup just inspires creativity, what other computer does that? I don’t think any.

[ via Flickr ]

Update: The iPhone stand on the left is the Thermaltake Aluminum iPhone Holder

If you need to convert FLAC to MP3 in Mac OS X for free, the best way to do so is using a utility called All2MP3*. It’s super easy to use with drag & drop conversion tools and total simplicity, just grab the app and follow along with this tutorial and you’ll have converted your FLAC files in no time at all.

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If you have young kids there’s a couple things you can do to make your Mac even more friendly and easy to use for them. The focus should be on simplifying the user experience by reducing anything that’s confusing or distracting. Here are my favorite tricks for making the Mac experience extra friendly for young children:

Tips for Making a Mac Kid Friendly

• Create a New User Account for the child, make sure it is not an Administrator, then login to that user account
• Disable things like Spaces and Expose
• Shrink/Hide the Dock
• Disable ‘Recent Items’
• Increase the icon size and font text size of Finder items
• Choose a simple Desktop Picture
• Install kid-friendly and fun applications for the child to use
• Setup Parental Controls through the System Preferences > Parental Controls panel to do things like: determine what applications they can use, set time limits on computer usage, set bed-times, create logs for websites visited, limit email and iChat conversations to only allowed users, limit access to certain websites, and more.

Another great solution… let them use an iPad! Kids love an iPad or even an iPhone but the iPad in particular is great with little kids. There isn’t much room to mess about and you can put them into a good app or game and they will be entertained for hours on end. I find the iPad to be a great kid-friendly device and it’s really just a highly simplified Mac in terms of appearance so it works quite well for them.

Want to open a PDF file and save it to your iPhone or iPad so that you can read it later? The best way to do that is by downloading the PDF file into the Books app, which runs on the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

You’ll need Books (once called iBooks) installed to do this, which most people should have already, and at that point you can easily save any PDF and then access it later.

If you’re unfamiliar with the process, here is what you’ll need to do:

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