Tye Campbell wrote to us with the following question: “Do you guys know how to take apart an iPhone? Specifically the 3G model, I can’t find any way to get to the display and I’d like to do my own screen replacement since mine is cracked but I have another one available to me from a water-damaged iPhone. I’m pretty patient and don’t mind learning, but I don’t even know where to begin, any tips or starting points?”

Good question! I had to take apart an iPhone 3GS recently to replace the back case, I used the guides offered by iFixIt, they are comprehensive and really walk you through accessing various parts of the iPhone including the display. The key is to have the right tools at your disposal before disassembly, otherwise you can end up in a really frustrating situation. Also be sure to track each individual iPhone part and where it comes from inside the device so that when you reassemble it you won’t have any extra pieces laying around! These guides will help you with selecting the right tools and staying organized during the iPhone repair, follow it carefully and you should have no problems. If you’re wondering how to take apart an iPhone, I would go this route:

iFixIt: iPhone 3G Guide

iFixIt: iPhone 3GS Guide

iFixIt: iPhone 1st Gen Guide

Many Mac users are fond of the Mac startup sound that chimes on system boot, but there are definitely times when booting that you’d rather just be quiet, say a library or coffee shop. Thus, we’re going to show you how to mute that boot up sound on any Mac, MacBook model (Pro, Air), iMac, or Mac Pro, we’ll offer a temporary solution, and a few different permanent solutions to mute the sound as well.

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Using the command line tool ‘opensnoop’ you can track any Mac applications (or system process) usage of the file system. This is a very handy tool for administrators and troubleshooting! The simplest way to use it is as follows:
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There are times when a user will need to to manually set an IP address in Mac OS X to one which will be compatible with a joined network, either wi-fi or ethernet.

Here will cover how to change a Mac IP address to a manual setting, and also how to pick an IP address which will not be conflicting with another machine on the same network.

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I just came across a really useful QuickLook plugin called SuspiciousPackage that lets you inspect those .pkg package installer files that so many Mac apps and downloads come in. Using this plugin, you can determine if an admin password is required, how many install scripts are in the package file, where the installation locations of files is going to be, and if a restart is required.

Installation is simple and like any other QuickLook plugin. Download the SuspiciousPackage QuickLook plugin and drop it into ~/Library/QuickLook/ and you’ll be good to go (restart the Finder if necessary).

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You can change the Mac OS X login screen background picture using a few different methods. We have covered this tip before but it was based around a few Terminal commands that might not be easy to follow for the average Mac user without command line experience. With that in mind, here are ways to change the Mac login wallpaper:
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You can convert many different image file formats in Mac OS X for free using the included Preview application, there’s no need to download additional tools or do anything overly complex.

As of any somewhat modern version of Mac OS X, the Mac Preview app supports the following file types and will convert between any of them: GIF, ICNS, JPEG, JPG, JPEG-2000, Microsoft BMP, Microsoft Icon, OpenEXR, PDF, Photoshop (PSD), PICT, PNG, SGI, TGA, TIFF. Some of those image formats will be hidden from your default view when saving, requiring the usage of the “Option” key when saving to reveal them. In any event, converting from one image type to another is simple.

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Need a therapy session? Your Mac has you covered. Yes, you read that right. You can use your Mac as a psychotherapist from the Terminal, thanks to emacs the text editor. Say what? If you’re confused don’t be, it’s an easter egg that has long existed and it’s easy to access.

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Mac OS X Server is infinitely better equipped, more stable, and just generally more pleasant than any of Windows offerings (yes I am biased, but it’s true), if you’re needing a server I highly recommend checking out Apple’s offering. Instead of shelling out the $499 for a copy though, you can get a free evaluation copy! If you’re a large corporation, small business, nonprofit organization, government agency, or educational institution, you can get a free and fully functional evaluation copy of Mac OS X Server directly from Apple. I just found out about this and I think it’s a pretty great thing for Apple to do, so if you qualify for a copy, check it out and you will be impressed.

Apple: Snow Leopard Server Evaluation

If you’re ever wondering how long your Mac has been turned on and running for, you can discover exactly how long the computer has been on since last boot with two different methods available in OS X.

Let’s learn a bit more about discovering how long a Mac has been left turned on for, and also, theoretically at least, how long you could leave a Mac turned on for.

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You can delete specific pages from a PDF file with the built-in Mac Preview app, available in all versions of OS X. This is really useful for paring down large PDF documents if you only need a few select pages, and learning how to delete specific pages from PDF files is bound to make any student or researchers life easier when emailing or printing documents.

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Locker is a very simple Dashboard widget that does something Mac OS X should have included by default, it instantly locks your Mac desktop.

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You may already know that you can use a keystroke to make a Stickies Note from Safari app in Mac OS X, but did you know that same keystroke works in many more apps on the Mac?

Yes, it turns out you can instantly create a Stickies note from almost anywhere and any application in Mac OS X by highlighting the text or image, and hitting the Command+Shift+Y keys concurrently.

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iTunes 9 is great and has a lot of improvements, but changing the background color in Grid view from the nice easy-on-the-eyes dark to the bright retina torching white is not on my happy list. Now they made this different recently but Manish is still am not thrilled. Thankfully French designer Damien Erambert has come up with an easily installable hack to change the grid mode colors in iTunes 9 back to an attractive dark color scheme.

Developer home
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Update: Since iTunes 9.0.2 you can change this without a hack. See comments below.

Are you constantly checking your favorite RSS feeds? Me too, I am pretty much addicted to my favorite sites. Thankfully, RSS Menu makes it really easy to keep on top of all the latest posts coming out of our online world, by sitting in my menu bar and notifying me if there are any new posts. It works just like the Google Notifier or Facebook Notifier and has a nice little RSS icon that lights up to let you know there are new posts to be read. RSS is dead? I think not.

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If you know a phrase that is contained within a document, but can’t remember the document file name, try searching for the phrase that you know appears within the document. Make this phrase search even more precise by putting the phrase itself within quotation marks, for example “all rights reserved” will find all files that contain that exact phrase only.

I love icons and customizing my Mac desktop, so I decided to share with you all my personal bookmark list of free mac icons. These are the sites I visit when I want to change my Mac appearance and all the icons that define the OS X desktop and dock. Of course if you’re on the other end of the spectrum and you hate icons you can hide all desktop icons in Mac OS X, but that’s not the purpose of this article. You are here for great icons, so if you too are an icon geek, look no further.

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Mac’s have a very distinct startup sound that chimes whenever they boot, this is fine for most people but if you’re in a quiet office or library it can be very obnoxious to have the loud startup sound announcing to the world that you are on a Mac. Thankfully there’s a nice little utility that’s easy to install and works just like any other Preference Pane on your Mac. Aptly named StartupSound lets you adjust the volume of your Mac’s startup sound, and of course to stop it chiming and mute it entirely.
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