Filed under: How-tos

I love my iPad 3G, almost unnecessarily so. I use it as my primary computer for a multitude of tasks. The only thing that I dislike about my iPad is that I have to pay AT&T even more money to use their data network, even though I'm already paying for it with my new iPhone 4.

We have covered in the past how to manage your 3G data with your iPad using the Apple/AT&T-sanctioned methods built in to the device itself. Today, we want to show you how you can swap Micro-SIMs to make use of your iPhone's unlimited data plan with your iPad.

Note: This is not an officially sanctioned technique and you do this at your own risk! If AT&T comes down on your SIM-swapping antics with the force of a truckload of anvils... you are on your own, brother.

That said, let's proceed.

Last year, we showed you how to check for the 3.0 firmware release via the terminal command line. As we move into the new year, TUAW reader Mike K writes in, saying "Being compulsive, is the terminal command to check for 3.0 the same as for 4.0? I'd love to know..."

Hey Mike, yes the terminal command is more or less the same as last year, but we have a slight improvement for you, so your system will speak to you when the new firmware goes live.

#! /bin/csh
curl -s -L http://phobos.apple.com/version | grep -i Restore | grep -i iPhone | grep -i 4.0
if ($? == 1) then
echo "Nothing yet..."
else
say "FOUR POINT OH FIRMWARE IS NOW AVAILABLE"
endif
sleep 30

Save this script into a new file (e.g. "checkingscript") and chmod it to 755 so it will be executable. (The line that starts with "curl" and ends with "4.0" is a single line -- so make sure you don't split it in two. Also make sure you put a carriage return at the end of the "sleep 30" line.) Then run the script from the command line using a repeat command, e.g. repeat 5000 ./checkingscript. The built-in "sleep" command ensures that it will wait 30 seconds between attempts. If you are not using csh or tcsh, just type csh at the command line before issuing the repeat command.

The script works by checking for iPhone restore firmware that has 4.0 in the name. When it finds this, the curl command will return a success (exit status 0 versus a failed exit status of 1) and your system will speak to you using the OS X "say" command.

You will need to select your firmware using the iPhone or iPod touch model. They are:

• iPhone 3G: iPhone 1,2
• iPhone 3GS: iPhone 2,1
• iPod touch 2G: iPod 2,1
• iPod touch 3G: iPod 3,1

These are embedded into the name, so a firmware restore named iPhone2,1_4.0_9B291_Restore.ipsw (I just made that name up) would be a 3GS restore file for 4.0.

To download, copy the full phobos.apple.com URL and paste it into Safari's download window or use any other favorite method to retrieve the firmware. Then hold the Option key and click Update in iTunes. Navigate to the firmware (the ipsw file), select it, and 4.0's good to go. Of course, you can also download directly through iTunes as soon as the update is available.

In general, Mac hardware is very reliable. Like any complex gizmo, a Mac will have its quirks, but only rarely do those quirks turn into a full-on, machine-killing meltdown. When that does happen, as it recently happened to my wife's MacBook, there's a few things you can do to keep the death of your Mac from becoming more of an ordeal than it has to be.

Before your Mac dies:

Back up your data. Your Mac is humming along nicely now, and if you've never had a computer die on you before, you might think it'll go on crunching binary bits forever. Unfortunately, it won't -- eventually, something on the Mac is going to fail. And when it does, it'll take all your music, documents, games, videos, and family photos down with it... unless you have those things backed up in another location. At a bare minimum you should be using Time Machine to back up your entire Mac to an external hard drive. Considering that Apple bundles this simple-to-use backup software in OS X, and considering how cheap even terabyte-capacity external hard drives have become, there's really no excuse for not backing up your data. Having all of your data backed up to another drive makes a dead Mac an inconvenience rather than a full-blown catastrophe. There are other third-party tools you can use, like CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper, but if you're looking for a solution that doesn't require an additional download (or much conscious thought to implement), Time Machine is the probably simplest backup tool available.

More suggestions, both pre- and post-death, after the link below.

Some can't wait to get their hands on the device, while others could care less. The device, the Apple iPad, is set to launch on Saturday, April 3, 2010. Earlier today, TUAW unearthed a hidden feature on the iPad (via an envelope slipped under the door of our headquarters in Roswell, NM) that may even force many iPad naysayers to consider purchasing it.

We've discoverd a way to dual-boot into Mac OS X and the iPad's operating system (which is a modified iPhone OS). And here, we'll show you how to execute this unpublished hack.

First, reset your iPad. You can do this by holding down the iPad's power and home button at the same time. Like the iPhone, the iPad boots up to an Apple logo. Pay attention here, because it's the most important part. Right when you see the logo appear, switch on the "screen rotation lock" button. This button, situated just above the volume button, deactivates the iPad's accelerometer.

Now, the following should appear on your iPad's screen. That's right, it's Konami's Contra. Konami has recently announced that it will be bringing over some of its classics to the iPad. And the first of these classics is Contra.

At the Contra start screen, press this sequence of buttons on the on-screen controller: up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, select, start. If successful, you'll hear the Mac OS X startup chime, and the iPad's screen will then go into diagnostic boot and display the following binary values before booting into Mac OS X.

01000001 01110000 01110010 01101001 01101100 00100000 01000110 01101111 01101111 01101100 01110011

Unless you don't listen to a whole lot of music, chances are pretty good that your iTunes music library is larger than what will fit on your iPhone. As an example, my music library is over 39 GB, but my iPhone 3G only has a 16 GB capacity -- and I have to fit apps, pictures, videos, and data into that small space, too.

One way of solving this dilemma is by using iTunes's powerful smart playlists to filter your library into a size that's a little more iPhone-friendly. The following smart playlists are examples from my own setup, but the smart playlist system is flexible enough that you can do almost anything with it to filter your songs. Naturally, these tips will work just as well for any of Apple's smaller capacity players, like iPod nanos or lower-capacity iPod touches and iPads; I've focused on the iPhone only because that's what I own.

I've rated almost every song in my library, and those with 4 or 5 stars end up in a playlist called "Top Rated," or in the language of smart playlists, "Rating is greater than three stars." This represents music that I want to listen to more often, and it ensures that songs I don't like don't end up playing when I shuffle songs in iTunes. It also guarantees that only music I actually want to listen to makes it onto my iPhone.

After many years together, my Linksys WRT54G and I have parted ways. In its place, I'm now using an 802.11g-based Apple AirPort Express with AirTunes that was passed along to me. Besides not wanting to fork out the extra beans (c'mon, who here isn't saving up money for an iPad) for a shiny new 802.11n Airport Express, the devices living in my current wireless ecosystem are more g-leaning. That, and I don't really need the speed of 802.11n or the ethernet cable connection afforded to me by the WRT54G.

Or so I thought.

Last week, the fine Facebook folk let us know (via the Facebook Help Center) that you can now sign in to Facebook's chat service using iChat. Of course, the free Adium client has directly supported Facebook chat since version 1.3 (released in 2008), but this step opens up a much wider range of clients for the service.

Facebook's chat service is powered by the Jabber/XMPP open source chat protocol. Many networks (such as Google Chat) rely on Jabber, and for this reason chat clients like iChat and Adium allow for the setup of a generic Jabber account to facilitate the widespread use of Jabber.

The process is simple. First, create a new generic Jabber account pointed at Facebook's Jabber server. The username to use is your Facebook username (which you can find on the Account Settings page) and the password is the same as your Facebook login password. Next, point the server to "chat.facebook.com," configure the port to 5222 and un-check the box for "Use SSL."

After it's all said and done, you should be able to communicate with your Facebook friends using iChat without being logged in to Facebook with a browser.

[via Cult of Mac & 9to5Mac]

There are, roughly, several billion kinds of microphones and headsets, all of which can theoretically be used on your Macintosh to let you voice chat over iChat or Skype. The problem is that a fair percentage of them fail to work exactly right, just out of the box.

Fortunately, there are several tricks that can help you analyze why your audio chats aren't working quite right. Here's a quick run-down of the steps you should take.

Start in System Preferences. The Sound preferences pane lets you select devices for your sound input and output. And, importantly, it lets you test your input device and adjust its volume. After attaching your mic to your Macintosh, use this pane to set-up and test.

We here at the TUAW headquarters rely pretty heavily on our iPhones when we're away from our desks. This is especially true for the lucky ones on the floor at Macworld 2010. Sometimes however, our little pocket computers go haywire and refuse to respond to our commands.

To force quit an unresponsive app all you have to do is press and hold the Sleep/Wake button until you see the red slider. Normally, this is what you would do to power down your iPhone or iPod touch. In this case however, when the slider appears, release the sleep/wake button and then press and hold the Home button. If it works correctly, your iPhone will forcefully quit the unresponsive app and return you to your home screen.

I have found this especially useful on the rare occasion that Mail begins to choke on my multi-thousand message inbox. Sometimes this simple kick in the pants is all that is needed and is a lot quicker than a hard reboot followed by the waiting required during boot up.

I love home theater. I love it so much that I have a real one in my house with a nine foot 2:35:1 screen and enough clean sound to be IMAX's little brother. Now Gary Katz has taken the opposite approach and built an absolutely gorgeous Liliputian theater out of a shoebox, some rubber cement, laser printed graphics and a very sharp knife. Take a look at the hand in the picture above and you'll be able to see the scale. Open the doors and you'll see a quite realistic-looking theater. And what powers the magic? An iPhone of course, which is cleverly slipped into a slot at the back of the shoebox. This little jewel box of a theater is a work of art in itself and the attention to detail is remarkable.

I can easily see an audience of green army soldier toys happily watching Toy Story. I think they'd like it much more than Ratatouille.

Read on to see the theater in action and then check out the inevitable 'making of' documentary.

[via iPhone Savior]

By default, movies and TV shows in the iPod portion of the iPhone and iPod touch play in landscape view. The biggest change with respect to video orientation came about with iPhone OS 2.0, which provided the option for landscape-right viewing (that is, with the volume and silent/vibrate buttons facing up). While most videos could, and should, be viewed in landscape, there are times that call for a portrait perspective -- for example, when placing your iPhone into a dock, which is what I do when working out.

Getting your iPhone to play a movie or TV show in portrait mode requires a simple change in the video's tag, from TV Show or Movie to Podcast. Simply right-click on the file and select "get info "(or you could use the Command-I shortcut). Then, in the "Media Kind" section within the "Options" tab of the video, select Podcast. Now, the videos will show up in both the Podcasts and Videos section of the iPod portion on your iPhone.

Obviously, this isn't something you'd want to do with every movie or TV show in your library. So, to revert the file back to its old self, you'd want to follow the same process and change the video back to a TV show or movie.

One gem in Mac OS X that sometimes gets glanced over is the Services menu. Lots of readers may not know yet that Snow Leopard brought with it the ability to create your own customized service in Automator -- in other words, you can get additional selections on a contextual menu when right-clicking within a certain context, say a file within a Finder window. To create a customized service, all you have to do is launch Automator and select "Services" from the "Choose a template for your workflow" window, and then insert your own service from there.

Here are five customized services for you to install on your own Mac.

A friend's MacBook had slowed down to a snail's pace. Despite looking everywhere for the issue, streamlining everything I could, and yelling at it, it failed to accelerate to usable speed. So I recommended we start from scratch and build it back up with only the things she was using, free of all the other downloads and aborted installs of various software she never used or cared about. It also housed a prior system, and a PC migration from a few years back. All told, the computer was a bloated, duplicated whale of files and applications for what was essentially a light-load writer's computer.

So I backed up the essential parts of her system using Time Machine: documents (including her novel and decades of prior writing, published and unpublished), ten years of family photographs, a 41GB iTunes library, among other things, and then....backed it up again elsewhere, outside of Time Machine.

And again.

And just for good measure, once more time, to yet another drive. I wasn't going to be the (ex-)friend who lost her novel.

What I wanted to do was do the ol' "erase and install" that prior system software discs allowed you to do. But clicking around Snow Leopard left no obvious method for this. But instead of booting Snow Leopard while inside of Mac OS X, if you just directly reboot the computer off the disc itself (holding down the "c" button after the system chime, letting go when you see the Apple logo) you get a few more options. Once you've gone into the installer program, you'll see "Utilities" at the top, and if you select Disc Utility, you can see your hard drive. If you click on "erase" (like I did, with one hand over my eyes) you can wipe the drive clean with various security options, and then you can do a fresh install of Snow Leopard on your computer on a pristine hard drive.

Once you've done that, you can either transfer your files back in directly, or use the installer program's built-in migration utility to restore any or all files from Time Machine.

And now? The world awaits the Next Great American Novel, untragically unlost by yours truly.

I've previously demonstrated how to use LaTeXiT to create and display complex math formulas and other symbols, and thank you readers for the additional recommendations!

While providing a means to display almost every imaginable existing symbol or character, a LaTeX-based solution may prove too complex and unnecessary for some. For the less "mathletic," Mac OS X's built-in character viewer is one of the easier ways to display characters of all sorts.

To enable the character viewer, open Mac OS X's System Preferences and select the "Language & Text" icon. Once there, click on the "Input Sources" tab and place a checkmark next to the "Keyboard & Character Viewer" box and "Show input menu in menu bar" box. The Keyboard & Character Viewer is now accessible on your menu bar.

Now, displaying special characters on your document, email, or whatever it is you're working on is just a drag and drop away.