We’ve all had the experience of one of our favorite app getting updated and the new version being worse than the previous version. Maybe it’s more intrusive ads, maybe it’s a terribly annoying feature, whatever it is, a poor app update can easily ruin your app experience. The easiest way to avoid this potential letdown is to save a copy of iOS apps, allowing you to downgrade them if you discover the new version is worse. This is much easier to do than you may think, we’ll cover the process of saving a local backup of the app and also how to downgrade to the prior version if you dislike the newest iteration.

Note that if you backup exclusively through iCloud you won’t have this option because the apps will not be stored locally. You can always backup locally in addition to iCloud to prevent that being an issue.

Save iOS Apps & Easy Version Downgrading

This process is best done manually before you update an app.

Saving & Backing Up Individual iOS Apps

1. Navigate to the iOS app location, this can be done by right-clicking the app in iTunes and choosing “Show in Finder” or by manually going to the local iOS app location at ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Mobile Applications/ and finding the app
2. Copy the app file to another location to serve as the backup, the iOS app files have a .ipa extension

If you feel like it, you could backup that entire directory to another location, though that’s usually unnecessary.

Sidenote for Windows users: the directory you are looking for is: C:\Users\Username\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Mobile Applications\

With the app backed up, you can now safely update to the newest version directly on the iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. If you decide the new version is awful, downgrading is very simple.

Downgrading to Previous Version of an iOS App

1. On the iOS device, delete the app you wish to downgrade
2. On the computer, quit iTunes
3. Again navigate to the local iOS app location at ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Mobile Applications/
4. Remove the newest version of the app .ipa file from that directory
5. Copy the previously saved version of the app to the /Mobile Applications/ directory
6. Relaunch iTunes
7. Resync the iPhone, iPad, or iPod, and the older app version will restore to the device to complete the downgrade

In some situations the older versions of apps won’t be compatible with the newest version of iOS, you’ll know this is the case because the app won’t launch when you attempt to open it on the iPhone/iPad, or you will get a message stating a new version is available and asking to upgrade.

Finally, if you use something like Time Machine, you can always dig through the Time Machine backups to access older versions of apps if you’re in a pinch, but it’s generally easiest to just keep a specific backup of an app if you prefer a past version.

The next generation iPhone will feature a 4″ display, according to two separate reports from Reuters and Wall Street Journal.

The dual reports appear to confirm long existing speculation that Apple would increase the size of the new iPhone screens from the current 3.5″ display to a larger 4″ display. Larger displays are increasingly common in the smartphone world, and both Reuters and WSJ cite competition from Android phones as part of the motivation to increase the screen size.

Other details are scant and the source of the information is the routinely vague “people familiar with the situation”, but WSJ and Reuters have a history of providing accurate Apple rumors and leaks in the past.

Assuming existing iPhone 5 rumors pan out, the next-gen phone could potentially include the following features:

• 4″ Display at similar screen resolution to existing iPhone models
• 4G LTE connectivity
• A5X CPU borrowed from the iPad 3
• 10 megapixel or higher camera
• All new redesigned enclosure
• Ships with iOS 6

The next iPhone is expected to launch later this year, likely around September or October.

Automatic termination is a feature of OS X Lion and OS X Mountain Lion that comes from the realm of iOS, the idea is that after an app is unused for a period of time and becomes inactive, it will automatically terminate to free up resources for other tasks. With the help of the new auto-save feature, the user should theoretically never notice any of this going on and they can continue on with their work as usual when they need to, letting Mac OS X manage processes and resources for them without quitting apps or manual interaction through Activity Monitor.

For the vast majority of users this is a good thing and most are probably completely unaware of the features existence, but not everyone is thrilled with the prospect of dormant applications being quit without their command and some find it really annoying. If you fall into the second category and want to turn off automatic app termination in OS X, here is how to do it. Don’t worry, we’ll also show you how to turn it back on.

Disable Automatic Termination in Mac OS X
Launch Terminal and enter the following defaults write command:

defaults write -g NSDisableAutomaticTermination -bool yes

Relaunch apps that use auto-termination for changes to take effect.

Re-Enable Automatic App Termination in Mac OS X
You can always reenable the default behavior of OS X and turn auto termination back on:

defaults delete NSDisableAutomaticTermination

Or by reversing “yes” to “no” and running the original command again:

defaults write -g NSDisableAutomaticTermination -bool no

Again, relaunch apps for the changes to take effect and to have auto-terminate enabled again.

This is something that Mac OS X and iOS handles fairly well, and if you’ve never been annoyed by the feature it’s recommended to leave it enabled and let OS X manage tasks itself.

Thanks to qwerty for finding the tip in a StackExchange thread.

Anytime an iOS device is connected to a computer it will sync and backup the device, and though the syncing process can be annoying sometimes, the backup process should be considered crucial so that you always have a way to restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod should anything go wrong.

With that said, there are a few limited situations where some users may want to disable the iTunes & iOS backup process completely, which is different than stopping iTunes from automatically syncing because it continues to allow for device syncing but minus the backing up aspect.

We’ll show you how to turn off backups, but we want to warn everyone this is not a good idea unless you know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, leaving this option best for select jailbreakers or just for demonstration purposes.

Disable iTunes Backups for iOS Devices

• Quit out of iTunes and launch the Terminal, then enter the following defaults write command:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes DeviceBackupsDisabled -bool YES

• Relaunch iTunes, connecting iOS devices will sync but without a backup copying over

With backups disabled nothing will be added to the local directory or iCloud, and anything already there can be deleted through iTunes or manually. Remember, disabling this feature removes the ability to restore an iOS device should you need to, which for 99.9% of people is a bad thing.

Re-Enable iTunes & iOS Backups

• Quit iTunes again and launch Terminal, entering the following defaults command:

defaults delete com.apple.iTunes DeviceBackupsDisabled

• Relaunch iTunes and connect an iOS device to confirm backups are working again

The instructions above are intended for Mac OS X, but Windows users can disable the device backups by launching iTunes with a flag attached to it, this can be executed from the Run menu or by right-clicking iTunes:

"%ProgramFiles%\iTunes\iTunes.exe" /setPrefInt DeviceBackupsDisabled 1

To reenable backups with windows, change the 1 to a 0 and run iTunes exe again.

Thanks to Jeremy for the tips.

By using a custom URL inside of an anchor tag, you can place a link on any website that will initiate a new iMessage conversation. Anyone clicking the link will then launch the Messages app in iOS or iMessages in Mac OS X to begin a new conversation with the specified Apple ID. Even if you have limited knowledge of HTML the link structure is easy to use:

Mac OS X: imessage://your@appleid.com

<a href="imessage://your@appleid.com">Send iMessage to a Mac</a>

iOS: sms://your@appleid.com

<a href="sms://your@appleid.com">Send iMessage to iOS</a>

Replace “your@appleid.com” with your own Apple ID that is configured to use with iMessage. Note that the iOS link uses “sms” as the identifier, meaning some users may send you an actual text message rather than iMessage if they are not set up to use Apple’s messaging protocol.

Because iOS and OS X use different URL schemes, you’ll need to use two different links by default. This could have advantages, if you only wanted people from iOS to reach you for example, but if you don’t like that idea there’s a nice workaround to the dual links by using the short PHP script offered by Beuagil.es. This script will detect the user agent and determine which link to use based on that, effectively combining the two iMessage links into one intelligent link:

<a href="<?php
$useragent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
if(preg_match('/Macintosh/',$useragent)) $os = 'imessage';
elseif(preg_match('/iPhone/',$useragent)) $os = 'sms';
else $os = 'sms';
echo $os;
?>:your@appleid.com">Send an iMessage</a>

Obviously you’ll need a PHP capable website for the above script to work, otherwise you’ll have to use the HTML snippets offered at the top of the post.

You can also use similar URLs to initiate FaceTime calls from the web.

While you can immediately access a dictionary definition by three-finger tapping on a single word in Mac OS X or double-tapping in iOS, the Mac also provides another instant dictionary option: Spotlight.

Yup, the good old Spotlight desktop file search also doubles as a full fledged dictionary access point, this is perfect for when you quickly want the definition of a word that is either in your head or just not written on the screen to access from the tap method. To use the Spotlight dictionary:

1. Hit Command+Spacebar to bring up Spotlight
2. Type the word you want to define and it will show up in the Spotlight search results labeled as “Look Up”
3. Hover over the word to see a Quick Look window including the definition

If you click on the word or hit the Return key you will launch the Dictionary app with the definition, though that isn’t necessary as the hover option is very fast.

This isn’t just a Lion and Mountain Lion feature though, it even works in Mac OS X Snow Leopard though the nicer Quick Look hover option doesn’t exist and instead you’ll see an older style popup.

Apple will release a new thinner MacBook Pro next month at the annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), according to a report from Bloomberg.

With a thinner design, the new MacBook Pro is expected to feature “high-definition screens like those on the iPhone and iPad” commonly referred to as a Retina display, and also include SSD storage which will extend battery life and increase performance. The new laptops are said to run on Intels newest Ivy Bridge processors, though precise clock speeds are currently unknown, and there is no word on bundled graphics card capabilities.

Earlier today, 9to5mac had reported on some information they had received regarding the new MacBook Pro model, and the Bloomberg report seems to confirm much of it. 9to5mac suggested the new MacBook Pro won’t have a tapered enclosure like the MacBook Air, and instead would resemble a thinner version of the square unibody enclosure that already exists but without a SuperDrive.

Rumors of retina Macs have swirled for quite some time, and evidence has been piling up since early OS X Lion developer previews were released. HIDPI mode is currently buried in OS X and can be enabled manually, though there is no official Apple screen capable of utilizing the high resolution.

WWDC 2012 is scheduled to run from June 11 to June 15. Other than an all new MacBook Pro, the event is expected to reveal iOS 6 beta for the first time, in addition to providing a GM build of OS X Mountain Lion, the latter of which is set to be released this summer.

Saving pictures from websites or emails on to the iPad or iPhone is very easy once you learn how. This may be a bit of a beginners tip, but after fielding the question multiple times from relatives and even seeing it popup in comments on wallpaper posts, there are clearly a fair amount of people who aren’t aware of how simple the process is.

Saving Images from the Web with Safari

1. From Safari, navigate to the website with an image you want to save
2. Tap and hold on the image until the pop-up selection menu appears, then tap “Save Image”
3. Find the saved image within Photos app

Saving photos from Mail is basically the same, but has the added bonus of allowing you to save a group of pictures that were sent via email as attachments.

Save Images from Mail Attachments on the iPad or iPhone

1. From Mail app, open the email containing the images
2. Tap and hold on an image and select “Save Image” from the pop-up menu, or if there are multiple images and you want to save them all, tap “Save # Images”
3. Exit out of Mail and launch Photos app to find the saved images

Once the pictures have been saved to Photos you can perform basic photo editing on them using the built-in tools, which allow for things like rotate, red eye reduction, and cropping.

Be aware that having pictures stored locally will count against the free iCloud backup capacity and will be listed under “Camera Roll”, unless specified otherwise in iCloud backup settings.

Many Mac users have an external hard disk for Time Machine backups or other media storage purposes, and if you leave it connected to the Mac all the time you’ve probably noticed an annoying side effect: the drive will spin down when it’s not in use, only to be spun up again unnecessarily at random during unrelated operations.

That drive spin up time is waking the disk from its sleep state which can lead to some pretty serious system dragging even on the fastest Macs, and as a result you’ll often encounter a lengthy beachball cursor that slows down a Mac as you wait for the external drive to arise from sleep. There are a couple possible remedies for this problem, read on to understand the pros and cons of both choices.

Option 1) Stop Hard Disks from Sleeping

By checking this option the external (and internal) hard disks will not spin down to sleep while not in use, this will completely prevent the drive waking lag time and beachballs, however it can also reduce the lifespan of traditional spinning hard disks. For that reason it’s best to use this option sparingly unless you don’t mind the possibility of a shorter drive life for both the internal and external hard drives. If you leave your computer turned on all the time rather than sleeping or shutting down, this is probably not the best option to use.

Option 2) Unmounting Hard Disks When Not in Use

Another solution is to simply unmount the external hard disks when they’re not in use, this will also prevent them from spinning up at random or when a open/save dialog box appears. The downside to this approach is you’ll have to manually mount the drive when you do want to use it, and Time Machine backups will not take place when the drive is unmounted.

Unmounting Disks
You can unmount a hard disk without physically detaching it by either:

1. Dragging the external disk to the Trash
2. Or, using Disk Utility to unmount the drive

Remounting the Hard Disks
If you choose this option, you can remount the drives again using the Disk Utility app to regain file system access. Remounting is just a matter of doing the following:

1. Launch Disk Utility and select the unmounted drive from the left side, unmounted drives will be grey
2. Click the blue “Mount” button in the toolbar to remount the drive
3. Exit Disk Utility

You can also physically disconnect external disks which has an added benefit of providing for a faster boot time, but that’s a pain and really isn’t a valid fix.

None of the solutions outlined above are particularly ideal and hopefully a revision of Mac OS X will change the behavior of how external hard drives are accessed so they are only spun up specifically when they are selected or used. I have encountered several individuals who mistakenly think this drive accessing behavior is their brand new Mac somehow being slow, which tells me this is a problem that should be addressed in a better fashion.

If you’ve found a better way to handle this speed problem, chime in with your thoughts or solutions in the comments.

iTunes carrier testing mode allows you to manually load signed .ipcc carrier files onto an iPhone or cellular iPad, these .ipcc files contain various carrier settings pertaining to voice mail, MMS and SMS, Personal Hotspot, APN settings, and other network-specific preferences. If you’ve used an iPhone on T-Mobile or even as a prepaid phone you may have experience with these files, but other than making network configuration easy they can also be used to forcibly enable features that are otherwise disabled by default, like Personal Hotspot on certain international iPad 4G devices. We’ll cover how to enable carrier testing mode, how to find ipcc files, and then how to use those IPCC files with either an iPhone or iPad with a cellular connection.

Enabling Carrier Testing Mode in iTunes

The process to enable carrier testing is a bit different for Mac OS X and Windows.

Mac OS X:

1. Quit out of iTunes
2. Launch Terminal from /Applications/Utilities/
3. Enter the following command at the prompt and then hit return:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes carrier-testing -bool YES

4. Relaunch iTunes

Windows:
If you happen to use an iOS device with Windows, iTunes carrier testing mode is enabled by launching iTunes as an exe with a flag attached to it:

%ProgramFiles%\iTunes\iTunes.exe" /setPrefInt carrier-testing 1

Finding & Downloading .ipcc Files
All signed ipcc carrier settings files are stored in an xml file on apple.com, you can access that gigantic list here:

http://iphonediags.apple.com/version.xml

Find the carrier file you want to use and then copy the URL and paste it into your browser address bar to download it directly from Apple. Save that file somewhere that it is easy to find for using with iTunes.

Loading .ipcc Files onto an iPad or iPhone with iTunes

Now that carrier mode is enabled, you can load carrier files onto the iOS device. In either OS X or Windows:

1. Connect the iOS device to the computer
2. Launch iTunes and hold the Option key while clicking on “Check for Update” to load an .ipcc file
3. Select the .ipcc file to sync the .ipcc to the iOS device
4. Disconnect the iOS device and reboot it for changes to take effect

We were sent this tip as a method to forcibly enable the Personal Hotspot wi-fi router on Australian 3rd gen iPads, which apparently ship with the feature disabled by default. The solution to that problem is apparently just a matter of loading an ipcc file and rebooting the iPad. Thanks to Jeremy for the tip info!

If you find yourself adjusting things in System Preferences often enough, it’s helpful to create a universal keyboard shortcut to quickly launch into the control panels. Here is how to do that in Mac OS X:

1. Open System Preferences and click on the “Keyboard” panel
2. Click “Keyboard Shortcuts” and select “Application Shortcuts” from the list
3. Click the [+] plus button and choose “All Applications” from the pulldown menu, then alongside ‘Menu Title’ enter “System Preferences…”, and then click into “Keyboard Shortcut” to set your hotkey. For this walkthrough I chose Control+Command+, as the hotkey
4. Click “Add” and close out of System Preferences
5. Hit Control+Command+, or whatever your shortcut was set as to instantly launch System Preferences from anywhere

It’s important to select a keyboard shortcut that won’t interfere with other actions or apps, as far as I can tell nothing else reserves Control+Command+Comma and so it works perfectly for this purpose. Once set, you’ll notice the keyboard shortcut is now attached to the System Preferences item within the  Apple menu.

Without setting anything extra, you can also launch directly into select System Preference panels by using Option and the various function keys like Audio and Brightness.

This helpful tip comes by way of one of our readers, Esaruoho.

For those of us in the northern hemisphere, summer is fast approaching and that can often mean extreme heat which pushes the temperature limits beyond what any computer is intended to operate in. In fact, Apple species ambient operating temperatures for most Macs as between 50° and 95° fahrenheit, this means that anything above 95° goes beyond the conditions the Mac was specified to function within.

Does that mean you can’t use your computer in intense heat? Most likely not, it just means you have to find ways to help keep it cool. With that in mind, here are some tips to keep a portable Mac cool when faced with blazing temperatures, they should be applicable to any MacBook, MacBook Pro, or MacBook Air. Some of these solutions come by way of OSXDaily reader Niladri Haldar, who regularly uses his MacBook Pro in summer temperatures over 100° without incident.

1. Avoid using a Mac on a bed or fabric surface – Anything soft doesn’t allow for sufficient heat dispersion and can even block the air ventilation on many portable Macs, try to always use a Mac on a hard surface of wood, metal, or glass
2. Use a Laptop Stand – anything that raises a Mac away from a base surface allows for heat to radiate out and for air to flow around it, cooling the hardware. I use a Griffin Elevator Stand and on hot summer days it can mean the difference between having the fans blasting or not having them on at all
3. Raise the Rear of a MacBook – No laptop stand? Make do with what you have, and try placing the rear of the Mac elevated by a hardcover book or something similar. It’s not as effective as a laptop stand, but this promotes airflow and can make a significant difference in keeping hardware cool.
4. Place a Mac at the edge of a table or desk – No stand and no book to raise the computer with? Try hovering the rear end of a MacBook over the edge of a desk or surface to increase air flow where Macs blow out their heat
5. Use a Fan – Yes, a standard room fan. This may sound silly but if you’re in an environment without Air Conditioning and the mercury is rising, pointing a fan onto a Mac will blow cool air onto it and help disperse heat. If you’re using a Mac in temperatures over 90°, this is one of the best things you can do to not only keep yourself cool but also your computer.
6. Keep Away from the Sun – Again this may seem like common sense, but using a computer in direct sunlight places an unnecessary burden on the fans. Even on reasonably mild sunny days the sun can cause fans to go into overdrive, it’s best to avoid direct sunlight completely.
7. Frozen Peas to the Rescue – This might sound crazily stupid, but during a heatwave last summer I pulled a bag of frozen peas out of the freezer and placed my then toasty MacBook Pro on top of it so I could play Starcraft 2 despite the 100° ambient temperature. The result was practically no fan usage. You’ll want to be very cautious to avoid condensation from the frozen bag though, so setting a thin layer of hard plastic or something similar between the frozen veges and Mac is a good idea
8. Consider a Cooling Pad – Some third party laptop stands have built-in fans that blow directly onto the underside of a computer, these can be very effective

Finally, a quick word of advice: if you’re in extreme heat and you don’t have any method to cool down your Mac, do yourself a favor and don’t use it at all until you get out of the crazy weather. Heat is one of the most detrimental forces to anything electronic and overheating can lead directly to reduced lifespan of hardware, diminished battery capacity, and other problems. It’s always better to be safe than sorry.

Do you have any special tips you use to keep a Mac cool during intense heat? Let us know in the comments.

Most Apple fans own several iProducts since it’s so easy to go from a Mac to an iPad to an iPhone, but Fabiano F. has a setup that goes beyond Apple gear and branches into other mobile platforms, including Palm, Android, and even a Kindle. Hardware shown from left to right is:

• iPhone 4S
• Palm Treo 650
• iMac 21″ with an Apple wireless keyboard and Magic Mouse
• Galaxy Tab 2
• iPad 2
• Kindle
• MacBook Air 11″

This is a great Mac setup on a clean glass desk which matches Apple gear so well. It may be an unpopular opinion, but the home screen of the Android tablet is kind of nice with the weather widgets and other customizations, test Android 4 yourself within the constraints of a virtual machine and you’ll see some of the obvious pros and cons to a widgetized home screen. Maybe widgets will come to iOS some day, beyond Notification Center?

Check out past Mac setups, and send in your own setup shots to osxdailycom@gmail.com, include a list of hardware and a brief description of what you use it for.

If you have a group of pictures that are orientated incorrectly that you need rotated, you can do that in Mac OS X without any third party apps with the help of the bundled Preview app.

1. From the OS X Finder, select the collection of images you wish to rotate and hit Command+O to open them all into Preview
2. In Preview, click an image thumbnail in the sidebar and then hit Command+A to “Select All”
3. Now hit Command+R to rotate the picture 90 degrees clockwise once, hit Command+R again to continue rotating until you find the desired orientation of the pictures. Notice while this is happening that all thumbnail images are rotating.
4. Hit Command+S to save the changes to image orientation

This assumes your default image editor is set to Preview. If not, launch Preview separately and then drag the group of images into Preview to perform the same task.

Preview is a fairly powerful app that is often underutilized for batch photo processing tasks, I use it frequently to batch resize images for wallpaper posts and other purposes, it’s quick, lightweight, and much less demanding on resources than Photoshop for such tasks.

Along the lines of vocally announcing task completion within the command line, you can also have Mac OS X speak the output of any executed command.

This is really easy, all you need to do is pipe the output of any command directly to “say” like so:

uptime | say

In that example, this will speak the output of uptime using the default OS X text-to-speech voice, though you can change the voice to anything else with the -v flag:

uname -a | say -V Samantha

Taking this a step further, it is possible to export the spoken command output to an audio file. Here’s a pointless example of saving the spoken output of the openssl manual page as an m4a file:

man openssl | say -v Samantha -o "talkopenssltome.m4a"

If you want to get ridiculous, you can use one of the singing voices to, well, sing the output of a command. And who doesn’t want an audio file of of the robotic Cellos voice or the awfully perky Good News singing the output of a manual page? Put it on your iPod for the drive home.

man openssl | say -v Cellos -o "serenadingmanpages.m4a"

If you don’t like the bundled voices you can always add new voices to OS X for free through Speech preference panel.

Get creative, because the ultimate utility of this is entirely up to you.

Thanks to Greg P for pointing this out in the comments