There are a few ways to retrieve a file or folders full path from Mac OS X, and we’ll cover the two easiest methods here, and also a third option that utilizes a Service to instantly copy any path to the clipboard. First, we’ll use the Get Info panel to pull any items complete path, and then we’ll use another trick that utilizes an under appreciated feature of the Terminal to retrieve any directory or files path. The optional Automator Service provides yet another option to copy file and folder paths, which is then quickly accessible through the right-click menu from the OS X Finder.

Just to clarify, we are looking to copy the path to a file or folder to the clipboard so that it can be pasted elsewhere. This is different from showing the path, which can be made visible in any Finder window through an optional window bar or even in the title bar using a defaults trick.

Let’s get to copying complete paths so that you can use them elsewhere.

Copy a File / Directory Path from the OS X Get Info Window

Perhaps the easiest and most user friendly method, you can easily retrieve any file or folders path from the Get Info window by doing the following:

• Select the file or folder in the OS X Finder, then hit Command+i to summon Get Info
• Click and drag alongside “Where” to select the path, then hit Command+C to copy the full path to the clipboard

Get Info can also be accessed by the control-click and right-click menus. For most use cases and for occasional complete path access, the Get Info trick is simple, fast, efficient, and should fit the bill for most people.

Print Path through the Mac Terminal

Dragging and dropping anything into the OS X Terminal outputs the full path to that item.

• Launch Terminal then drag and drop any item from the Finder into the Terminal window to instantly print the full path
• Select and highlight the path to copy it to the clipboard as usual

This trick is great if you are looking to use the path in the Terminal, otherwise it may not be as easy as the Get Info tip because it requires opening another app.

Create a “Copy Path” Service for the Right-Click Menu

If you find yourself frequently needing to copy and paste file and folder paths, creating an Automator Service will make your life easier because the service then becomes accessible from the OS X Right-Click contextual menu, accessible from anywhere in the Finder. This is an excellent trick from CNet and is very easy to set up yourself:

• Launch Automator and create a new “Service”
• Use the search function to look for “Copy to Clipboard” and drag that into the rightside panel of the Service
• Set ‘Service recieves selected’ to “files or folders” and ‘in’ to “Finder” as shown in the screen shot below
• Save the Service with a name like “Copy Path”

Now go anywhere in the Finder, select anything in the filesystem be it a directory or a file, then right-click to reveal the “Copy Path” service item as created.

Choosing that option will instantly copy the chosen items path to the clipboard, which you can then paste elsewhere.

What is a path anyway?

For the unfamiliar, you can think of an items path as it’s address in the file system, pointing to exactly where it resides on the computer. For example, a file named “Testfile.txt” that resides on your user account desktop would have a complete path that would resemble something like this:

/Users/USERNAME/Desktop/Testfile.txt

For items in the user directories, you can user a tilde to shorthand the path like so:

~/Desktop/Testfile.txt

That shorthand does not work with system files, or for accessing other user files, thus a complete path would be needed. All of the methods we’re sharing will access and copy the complete path, not the short hand, even if the file or directory in question is in the user folders.

A new update to Apple TV brings streaming access to several popular TV services and networks, including HBO GO, ESPN, Sky News, Qello, and CrunchyRoll. Versioned as 5.3, the update requires a second or third generation Apple TV, and can be downloaded through iTunes or by using the direct firmware links included in this article.

While many will be excited about these new content additions, there is currently no way to pay for direct access to some of the individual streaming providers. Instead, you must have a separate TV or network package through a participating provider in order to watch several of the streams, including HBO and ESPN. Sky News is free, while CrunchyRoll and Qello can have subscriptions managed directly through the Apple TV at a fixed cost. More details on each of these services is provided below.

HBO GO provides access to all HBO programming, including full seasons of shows, documentaries, and movies, and requires a subscription through a TV provider.

WatchESPN will be a welcome addition for sports fans, which provides access to live sports and shows on ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3, ESPNU, though it does require an account with one of the following participating network providers; AT&T U-Verse, Bright House Networks, Charter, Comcast XFINITY, Cox, Midcontinent Communications, Optimum, Time Warner Cable, or Verizon.

Sky News provides a live 24 hour feed of the news network for anyone in the US, UK, or Ireland, and also offers a library of past shows. Sky News is the least restricted offering, and does not appear to require any specific cable service or provider in order to use.

CrunchyRoll is a Japanese Anime service, and can be signed up for directly on the Apple TV.

Qello is an on demand streaming service for concerts and music documentaries, and also is available for a direct subscription through Apple TV.

Apple TV 5.3 IPSW Direct Download Links

Updating Apple TV to 5.3 can be done through iTunes as usual, which is the recommended approach for most users.

Those who prefer to update manually can use IPSW from the direct download links below that are hosted on Apple’s servers. Using IPSW with an Apple TV requires a USB cable and iTunes, and is the same process as with other iOS devices.

• Apple TV 2,1 (5.3 10B808)
• Apple TV 3,1 (5.3 10B809)
• Apple TV 3,2 (5.3 10B809)

Though no such plans have been announced, hopefully a future update will allow Apple TV users to subscribe directly to services without the inclusion of a separate cable TV package.

The iPad already has very impressive battery life and regularly lasts all day, but who wouldn’t want to have their iPad last even longer? With a group of simple tips, you can extend an iPads battery life even further and get the absolute most out of your tablets battery for as long as possible. These tricks are the real deal, and we’ll focus on things that actually work. Let’s get started and maximize your iPad battery.

1: Take Control of Screen Brightness

Tone the brightness down manually and do it often, because the iPad can be very aggressive with readjusting the screen brightness level, and the higher the brightness the faster the battery drains. The wonderful thing about the iPad is that, even without iOS 7, you can toggle the brightness settings much faster than on the iPhone… all you need to do is:

• Double-tap the Home button and swipe to the left controls to access the brightness slider, slide it leftwards to reduce brightness

For the best possible battery life, keep the brightness as low as it can possibly go. Just like when extending battery on an iPhone, this single tip makes the most difference of all, because the backlit display is one of the most significant drains to battery longevity.

In iOS 7 this is made even easier because you can access brightness controls from the Control Center screen.

2: Set a Low Brightness Level & Turn Off Auto-Adjust

Because the iPad is fairly aggressive with screen brightness, you can extend battery life even further by setting a reduced level (at 35% or so) and then turning off auto-brightness adjustments, which will prevent the iPad from taking the screen to super-bright levels which it is keen to do:

• Go to Settings, then go to “Brightness & Wallpaper” and toggle “Auto-Brightness” to OFF

Do note that turning off auto-brightness will have the opposite effect if you set the brightness level too high, because it will prevent the iPad from adjusting itself down when in dim light.

3: Be Aggressive with Turning Off the Screen

Not using the iPad? Hit that top power button to lock the screen and turn off the display. Just a quick tap is all that’s needed, because holding it for too long will turn the device off.

This helps for the same reason the screen brightness tip does, it prevents the battery-hungry screen from being active more than it needs to be.

4: Use Screen Auto-Lock

Take the above trick a step further and set Auto Lock to an aggressive setting, preferably 2 minutes:

• Go to Settings, then go to General and “Auto Lock”
• Set this to “2 Minutes” for best results

This basically means if your iPad is left alone for 2 minutes or longer, the screen will lock itself, which if you’re concerned about battery is what you want. This is all the more important if at some point you set the screen to never dim or auto-lock, which drains battery quite fast.

Speaking of screen locking, you do use a lock screen passcode, don’t you? No, it’s not going to save you any battery, but it will give you more privacy and peace of mind… taking this theme a bit further, consider disabling the simple pass codes and going with a more secure variation that uses the full keyboard for the passcode.

5: Turn Off Unnecessary Notifications & Lock Screen Alerts

Notifications come in whether you’re using the iPad or not, and the lock screen alerts will wake up the iPad screen to display whatever their message is. The more the screen turns on, the more the battery drains. Plus, Notifications and alerts create unneeded activity, which also can hit battery. Tons of apps want to do send out Notifications but few actually need to, so head into Settings and start turning them off:

• Open Settings, then go to “Notifications” and scroll to “In Notification Center”
• Tap individual apps you want to stop alerts for, and flip the “Notification Center” switch to OFF

Think about your usage of the iPad when addressing Notifications and what apps can send them out, for many of us, it’s surprisingly few. Perhaps just Messages, FaceTime, and one or two others. Turn off the rest, especially for games and apps that nag often with annoying largely meaningless alerts.

6: Deny Location Usage & Turn Off Location Services

It’s kind of amazing how many apps want access to location data, and while on something like the iPhone that could make sense, on the iPad it’s much more rare. The iPad isn’t the iPhone, and realistically, it rarely needs your location to perform functions, thus you should be much more aggressive with denying Location requests. When an app asks for Locaiton data, think, does this really need my location to work? If the answer is probably not, choose “Don’t Allow”.

So what about existing apps that use location information, thereby draining battery when that information is requested? That’s when you dig into Location Services, and at the very least turn off almost every app individually, if not going all out and just switching the feature off completely:

• Open Settings, go to “Privacy”, then go to “Location Services”
• Toggle individual apps to OFF, or set all Location Services to OFF

Do this for almost everything. The only apps I let use Location are ones that actually need your location, whether that’s maps related, things like Siri, PBS app and TV guides since they use your location to show you what’s on TV, but outside of particular varieties, little else needs it, and they will just drain battery to retrieve that information.

7: Turn On the Percentage Indicator

Ok, so this isn’t going to save any battery directly, but it does give you a much better idea of how fast things are draining and how much time you have left and it’s just a good thing to have enabled:

• Open Settings, go to “General”, then “Usage” and flip “Battery Percentage” to ON

The percentage indicator is also a good way to easily measure the impact of certain apps usage, and if you see a percent or two tick away rather quickly when using a particular app, you can make a decision as to whether or not it’s necessary given your current battery needs.

8: Skip the App Store & Don’t Update Apps When Battery Life Matters

Of course you should use the App Store, and of course you should update your apps… except when you’re trying to really squeeze the most out of your iPad battery and make it last as long as humanly possible. This is because internet usage for downloading the screen shots, store screens, and downloading apps themselves uses more battery power, whether on wi-fi or cellular connections. Additionally, the action of updating and installing apps uses the iPad processor which also milks the battery a bit.

Basically, unless there’s an app that you really really want to download or update, just skip this process when in battery conservation mode, and leave the updates and store browsing until later when you care a bit less about the potential battery drain. This is obviously more of a usability tip, but it does make a difference.

9: Avoid the Heat

Heat is detrimental to all electronic devices and their batteries, and the iPad is no different. This is so easy to do, and it does make a difference. All you need to do is keep the iPad out of intense heat. That means don’t try to use it in direct sunlight on a 95 degree day, and don’t leave the iPad baking on the seat of a hot car while you shop for 10 hours at the Apple Store (lucky you). With it being summer, this is particularly true.

Not only will this make your battery last longer at the moment, but this actually will help to improve the longterm battery life of the iPad. Remember, intense heat = bad, whether its a Mac, iPad, iPhone, or anything else with a battery for that matter.

9: Quit & Kill Unnecessary Apps*

*Oh boy here we go, the dreaded quit app recommendation. This is usually the single most misreported ‘trick’ to improve battery life on any iOS devices… but guess what? It does work sometimes because some apps do drain battery life more than others. Typically these are the apps that are accessing Location data or are transferring things in the background. If you’ve been following along here you’ve probably already turned off a lot of Location usage for apps, but don’t feel bad about just quitting the apps that you know are using location data that you don’t need to use at the moment.

Want to go further? You can quit multiple apps at the same time by just tapping the close buttons simultaneously, using a little-known multitouch trick.

Your Genius Bar friends will hate you, but hey, quit all those unneeded apps.

10: Reboot the iPad Sometimes

Though the iPad can quite literally run for months on end without a reboot, it doesn’t hurt to restart the device every once in a while. This is all the more true when apps are misbehaving, freezing or crashing, or just acting weird in general, all of which can lead to excessive battery drain. Because the iPad is so fast to boot, this will only take a moment:

• Hold the top Power button until the “Slide to Power Off” option appears on screen, then slide to power off
• Hold the power button again until the iPad turns on

Easy. Plus, this gives you the opportunity to install iOS updates, and it has the side effect of halting and quitting all background apps if they were causing any issues.

iPad battery draining weirdly fast? Restore

This isn’t much of a direct battery life extension trick, but if your iPad is experiencing some unusual battery drain, set aside the time to backup the device to the computer, then restore the device with iTunes. It’s quite rare, but sometimes a preference or something within the iOS system software itself can go errant and lead to excess battery drain, and restoring the device almost always resolves the issue. If you do restore and still experience unusually short battery life, call Apple or visit an Apple Store.

Got any great battery tips for the iPad? Let us know @osxdaily on Twitter, on Facebook, hollar at us on Google Plus, or send us an email. Comments are disabled for the moment.

Ever wondered what all those status icons and symbols mean that sit in the iPhone status bar, along the top of the screen? You’re certainly not alone, and while some of those little symbols make perfect sense, others can be a bit of a mystery even to longtime iPhone users. Sure, the obvious ones like cell bars signal (or the true numerical signal if you enabled it) and the 4G, LTE, battery, and Wi-Fi indicators are pretty self explanatory, but what about that little circle you see sometimes? Or what about the moon icon, or the two interlinking circles? Or the little arrow that points up and to the right?

Don’t let those status bar icons be a mystery any longer, because Apple provides a nice little table in their official User Guide to sort things out, showing each individual icon and what they mean. Because that user guide is a PDF though, most people don’t ever see it, so we’re reproducing the table below for quick reference.

You’ll notice there is quite a bit of overlap with these icons on the iPhone and the iPad and iPod touch too, with most variation coming from whether the latter two devices are equipped with cellular capabilities or not. Yes, some of the icons are changing a little bit in iOS 7, but Apple isn’t abandoning existing precedent and the changes are minor enough for the status icons to still be recognizable to users.

This is from the official iPhone User guide from Apple (PDF file), which can be a pretty useful addition to iBooks on any iOS device if you want to save the pdf file locally to your phone for future reference.

An unlocked iPhone means it can use any cellular network, so long as you have a compatible carrier SIM card. Due to this, unlocked iPhones are more valuable and highly desired for both local and international users, because it allows you to use any GSM carrier whether at home or abroad just by swapping out SIM cards. But how do you know if an iPhone is unlocked or not? You usually can’t tell just by looking at it, but we’ll show you how to find out if the device is factory unlocked or not using one of three methods. If you plan on doing some international travel, you’ll want to check before you leave. Similarly, if you plan on buying or selling an iPhone, you’ll want to check if its unlocked or not before completing the transaction.

First, here are a few safe assumptions: if an iPhone was bought on contract, it will probably remain locked to that carrier. Exceptions to this are if an iPhone has been manually unlocked by a provider (many CDMA carriers will unlock the SIM card slot on iPhone models even while in contract, you just have to ask), or if an iPhone has ended its contract and the device has been unlocked per request, such as you can do with AT&T. On the other hand, if you know that the iPhone was bought unlocked from Apple by paying full price, then you don’t need to do anything other than swap in whatever carrier SIM card you want to use.

Let’s get on with three easy ways to check the unlock status of any iPhone:

Method 1: The Easiest Way to Check if an iPhone is Unlocked: SIM Cards

By far the simplest way to determine if an iPhone is unlocked or not is to swap in another GSM provider SIM card, wait a moment or two, and see if the iPhone gets service. That’s all you will need to do, but this assumes you have access to another GSM SIM. For example, in the USA you could check if an AT&T iPhone is unlocked simply by borrowing a T-Mobile SIM card, placing it in the iPhone, and seeing if the device gets service. Either use a friends SIM card or visit a T-Mobile store and they’ll be able to check for you. If you don’t have access to alternative provider SIM cards, you can also check through the web using the next method.

Method 2: Checking iPhone Unlock Status via Web Service

Don’t have an alternate carrier SIM card available? No big deal, you can use a free web service called IMEI Info to check an iPhone’s unlock status, but there’s a catch; you have to use a Facebook account and click a “Like” button to actually determine if the device is locked or unlocked. If you’re OK with that, the service is extremely easy to use:

• Find the iPhone IMEI number by dialing *#06# on the phone – you do not need cell service to dial that number, the iPhone just has to be turned on. If the *#06# trick doesn’t work, you can also find the IMEI from iTunes, on the back of iPhone 5, on the devices SIM card slot, or through the iPhone itself as described here
• Head over to the IMEI.info site
• Enter the devices IMEI number exactly as shown, click “Check”, then at the next screen choose the big green “SIMLOCK & WARRANTY” button under the Free checks header, followed by the Like button as requested

After you click the “SIMLOCK” button, you’ll have to “Like” the IMEI service on Facebook to actually get the unlock status of the iPhone. It may take a moment or two as a server is accessed where the IMEI numbers are checked against. When finished, you’ll find the iPhone’s status as well as some other information:

IMEI.info does have a limitation in place for checking up to three IMEI numbers per day, that limit is IP based and not cookie based, so you’ll need to use a proxy or VPN if you want to go beyond that limit for some reason or another. And yes, IMEI Info will also find unlock statuses of Android phones and other devices as well, even the antiquated dumb phones of yesteryear.

Method 3. Checking Unlock Status with iTunes by Restoring

One final method of checking an iPhone’s unlock status is by resetting to factory defaults and restoring through iTunes by connecting the device to a PC, if you see the familiar “Congratulations, the iPhone is unlocked” message you know the iPhone has been unlocked:

This message is what you’ll see if you went through the free unlocking methods offered by AT&T after a contract is over, or if you requested a SIM unlock through Verizon or Sprint while still on contract.

Wondering what is in that zip file or archive you downloaded, but you don’t want to extract it to find out? Maybe you are hunting around in a see of archives for a specific file you zipped up a while ago, but you’re not quite sure which archive contains it? You can easily peer into zips and other archive formats to view their contents without actually unzipping or uncompressing them, which is an excellent way to check if a particular archive has a file or folder you are looking for, and to make sure you downloaded the proper file.

There are a few easy ways to view zip contents on a Mac and we’ll cover three of them, two of which are zip-centric command line based and built into all versions of OS X (and many other unix and linux variations for that matter), and another approach which uses a free third party utility and Quick Look to be able to quickly glance at any archives contents.

Viewing Zip Archive Contents with zip info

The most informative for zips and perhaps the easiest to remember is the ‘zipinfo’ command. At it’s most basic usage, it requires no flags or anything fancy, just point it at a zip file and you’ll see a full list of the archives contents, the file size of each item within the archive, file count, total size of the zip, the read/write/execution permissions per file, file modification date and time, the compression level and efficacy of the compression, and of course, the file names. All of this information is revealed without uncompressing the zip.

zipinfo archivename.zip

Here’s an example of the command and some sample output, remember output always looks cleaner in the terminal than it does on a webpage:

$ zipinfo archive.zip
Archive: archive.zip 1743 bytes 5 files
-rw-r--r-- 2.1 unx 4068 bX defN 11-May-13 14:25 magicsample.conf
-rw-r--r-- 2.1 unx 204 bX defN 16-May-13 09:38 magicfile
-rw-r--r-- 2.1 unx 132 bX defN 21-May-13 12:44 testingsomething.txt
5 files, 4486 bytes uncompressed, 991 bytes compressed: 77.9%

The zipinfo command will only work for zip archives, and it will not view the contents of password protected zips.

Checking Zip Contents with unzip

Another way to see the contents of zips is to use the familiar ‘unzip’ command with a simple -l flag. The reported information is not as detailed as ‘zipinfo’ but it still includes meaningful details including individual file size, file modification date and time, total file count, and file names.

unzip -l archivename.zip

Sample output of the command is shown below:

$ unzip -l archive.zip
Archive: archive.zip
Length Date Time Name
-------- ---- ---- ----
4068 05-11-13 14:25 magicsample.conf
204 05-16-13 09:38 magicfile
132 05-21-13 12:44 testingsomething.txt
-------- -------
4486 5 files

For most uses it’s probably best to use the zipinfo command, if not for it’s simplicity, than for it’s extended reporting of archive contents. One advantage to unzip however is that it appears on more unix platforms than zipinfo, meaning you should find it to be compatible with almost any OS you run across, whereas zipinfo is often not as common to come across. Nonetheless, zipinfo is bundled in virtually every version of Mac OS X so if you’re primarily a Mac user you should never have issues using it, even if you’re stepping back in time with a very early OS X version.

Again, unzip -l will only view the contents of .zip files, so if you’re looking for an all-encompassing solution for viewing the contents of many archive formats go with the BetterZipQL utility we’ll cover next.

Viewing Contents of Any Archive Without Extraction via Quick Look

If you’d rather not dig around in the command line, you can use a free third party Quick Look plugin to view the contents of zips and nearly any other archive files without extracting them. Called “BetterZip QuickLook Generator”, the plugin is easy to install and to use, and it works with the latest versions of OS X. BetterZipQL is great for a few reasons, it’s quick and simple to use thanks to Quick Look’s easy access from the space bar, plus it supports much more than zip, allowing you to view all of the following archive formats without extracting them: ZIP, TAR, GZip, BZip2, ARJ, LZH, ISO, CHM, CAB, CPIO, RAR, 7-Zip, DEB, RPM, StuffIt’s SIT, DiskDoubler, BinHex, and MacBinary. Nice huh?

To use BetterZipQL to view the contents of all these archive formats, you’ll need to download and install BetterZipQL first, here is how to do that, plus how to use it once you’ve gone through the simple installation process:

• Download BetterZip for Quicklook here and uncompress it
• From the Finder, hit Command+Shift+G to summon Go To Folder and go to /Library/QuickLook/
• Drag the unzipped BetterZipQL.qlgenerator file into that /Library/QuickLook/ folder
• Open Terminal and restart the Quick Look daemon for the plugin to load:

qlmanage -r

• Find any zip file in the Finder, select it, then hit the Spacebar to view the contents

The viewed zip (or other archive) will look like the following, you can interact with folders and hierarchies to dig deeper into archive formats if desired:

BetterZipQL is great but the interface is clearly designed for earlier versions of OS X, thus it looks a little out of place with the more subtle lighter appearances of newer versions of Quick Look. Nonetheless, it still works great and the funky mismatched appearance is hardly any reason to not download it and use the awesome free utility.

What about viewing archives in iOS?

Not on a Mac but still need to see what’s in an archive? If you’re on the go with an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch and want to check the contents of a zip, rar, sit, or many other archive formats, you can use the excellent free WinZip utility for purposes of viewing contents, plus it can also open and extract zips and other archive formats, you can read more about zips and iOS here if interested.

Heads up to MacWorld for the zipinfo trick and for finding the BetterZip Quick Look utility. I’ve been using the unzip -l tool for years and it’s always great to find new alternatives.

Setting up a dual-boot environment for OS X Mavericks and OS X 10.8 (or even 10.7 and 10.6 if you’re still running an older version of Mac OS X) is easy and allows for a fresh installation of Mavericks to test and develop with. Because the original OS X installation remains untouched, it’s also the safest way to give Mavericks a trial run, which is perfect for running the Developer Previews or if you’re just not sure you’re ready to run OS X 10.9 full time yet.

You don’t need another hard drive to be able to do this, instead you utilize unused space on the existing drive to create a new partition that runs the alternate OS. This process can be completed from a Mavericks boot drive if desired, and using such an USB installer tends to prevent any potential errors with Disk Utility (more on common errors you may encounter at the very bottom of this article), but it is not necessary.

Be sure to back up the Mac before modifying the partition table, the easiest way to do that is by starting Time Machine immediately rather than waiting for the scheduled backup to take place. Let that complete before beginning.

Partitioning & Installing OS X Mavericks for a Dual Boot Mac

• Launch Disk Utility, from /Applications/Utilities/
• Select the hard drive from the left side menu, then choose the “Partition” tab
• Click the [+] plus button to add a new partition, size it to at least 12GB and name it something logical, like “Mavericks”, then click “Apply”



• Quit out of Disk Utility when finished, then launch the “Install OS X 10.9” app from the /Applications/ folder
• At the installation menu, choose the “Mavericks” partition you created as the destination drive, then choose Install (you may need to click “Show All Disks” for the partition to show up)

OS X Mavericks will install and, when finished, will boot directly into 10.9.

To switch booting between OS X versions, restart the Mac and hold down the Option key, then choose whichever partition you wish to start up from. You’ll notice the initial boot menu does not display the OS X version, which is why it’s important to name the partitions something fairly explanatory, like “Mavericks”. You can also change the boot disk by going to “Startup Disk” within System Preferences and selecting the OS X partition to use, the preference panel option will display the OS X versions for each partition.

The whole process should run trouble free, but if Disk Utility throws an error it’ll probably be either ”Couldn’t unmount disk” or a “Partition Failed” message, both will require a reboot and slightly different methods to resolve, and can be mitigated by using a USB install disk rather than attempting to partition from the active startup drive.

For those of us who use several different types of network connections to get online, you may want to take a moment to set the networking service priority in OS X. This insures that a Mac isn’t connecting through the wrong networking interface when multiple network services are available.

For example, if you have a Mac that is connected to an ethernet network, but also finds available wi-fi networks, you can set one of those to be the preferred connection type. This can also be used to prioritize connections through a VPN, and you can go a step further and set the priority on a per-location basis, which is perhaps the most useful way to use this trick.

Use Service Order to Prioritize Network Connection Types

At it’s most basic function, you can choose the networking service priority by doing the following:

• Open System Preferences from the  Apple menu, then go to the “Network” panel
• Click the [+] plus icon in the lower left portion of the networking panel and choose “Set Service Priority” from the drop down menu



• At the “Service Order” window, drag networks according to the desired priority, the topmost service will have the highest priority

In this example screenshot, “Wi-Fi” has top priority, with “Wi-Fi Hotspot” as the second most prioritized service (meaning, if wi-fi is not available, use wi-fi hotspot if it’s available, otherwise use the services below it in descending order)

Note this does not prioritize one wireless network over another, unless the Mac happens to have multiple wi-fi cards available to it with unique interfaces, though that would be a fairly unusual circumstance. Instead, prioritizing individual wireless networks is done through the Advanced Wi-Fi options as described here.

Using Network Locations & Network Service Order

Setting network priority per “Location” is perhaps the most useful way to use this trick. This lets you set priorities that are specific to unique networks or areas, like work ethernet, home wi-fi with VPN, telecommuting hotspot with an iPhone or a tethered Android, a shared Mac hotspot, etc

• From the “Network” panel, pull down the “Location” menu and choose “Edit Locations…”
• Click the [+] plus button to create a new network location
• Adjust the network settings as appropriate to the given network location setting, then use the “Set Service Order” trick mentioned above

Once different locations are set up with their respective service orders, you can now easily switch between them directly from the  Apple menu by pulling down to the “Locations” menu and choosing the desired network location.

This is highly recommended for anyone who regularly uses different networks, but laptop users who travel frequently between different locations with their Mac will likely find it most useful.

The visual change between iOS 7 and iOS 6 is obviously significant, and this graphic does a great job of showing just how the iOS home screen has evolved over time with the iPhone. Covering versions 1.0 through 7.0 and a time period of 2007 to 2013, it gives an interesting look into how things have changed in the past and how they are changing now:

Click here or on the image above for the full sized image

When set alongside each other like this the newest changes with 7 look less drastic, but certainly much brighter and more colorful than before. In some ways the iOS 7 home screen has more commonality with the original 1.0 through 3.0 releases than the more recent 4, 5, and 6 builds, at least in flatness and the Dock design. If you want to get a preview of what 7.0 will look like on your iPhone or iPod touch, load these iOS 7 preview videos and screen shots on your iOS device, they do a fairly good job of what to expect, at least with what we’re seeing in beta 1 and what is visible through Apple’s initial marketing materials.

Heads up to @applespotlight for retweeting this find

Disk Utility usually works trouble-free, but a frustrating “Couldn’t Unmount Disk” error can halt whatever the attempted task is right in its tracks. This can happen during partitioning, disk verification and repair, and even during formatting, and there’s usually little to no additional information provided as to how to resolve the problem or even what the problem is.

Typically the “Couldn’t Unmount Disk” error pops up when the currently boot drive is being modified, thus the easiest solution is to boot from another drive and run Disk Utility from there instead. For the boot drive, it shouldn’t matter which version of OS X it’s for (assuming 10.7, 10.8, and 10.9 at least), the only requirement is that it has Disk Utility – which they all do. This will allow you to fix the problem, regardless of the cause, by one of two means, the first is a sure-thing to fix the issue, while the other only works sometimes. We’ll cover both with a bit of explanation.

Resolve the Unmount Error with a USB Boot Drive

This is the recommended method because it should always fix the error. You will need any OS X boot drive to complete this task, I used a Mavericks boot installer drive for this purpose but others should work too, whether they are installation drives or just recovery drives, the important thing is they are bootable and separate from the primary boot disk that stores the installed OS:

• Attach the USB boot drive to the Mac and reboot
• Hold down the OPTION key during boot, then select the attached boot drive (typically has an orange icon at the boot menu)
• At the boot menu, choose “Disk Utility” (if using an Installer disk, pull down the “Utilities” menu to access Disk Utility)
• Go to “First Aid” and verify the disk, then repair if needed
• Now perform the original task that threw the “Couldn’t Unmount” error

I ran into this twice recently, first when attempting to modify partitions on a drive, which came right along with a separate “partition failed” error, and again was triggered when attempting to format those partitions. The above steps did the trick and everything was working again as expected.

This is a good example of why it’s very valuable to have a bootable USB thumb drive set up with whatever version of OS X is running on your Macs, because without a separate boot drive some of these errors would be unresolvable. Such boot drives are easy to create on your own, here are instructions for making boot disks for OS X 10.9, OS X 10.8, and OS X 10.7. For older Macs running prior versions of OS X, typically anything running OS X 10.6 or earlier will have a SuperDrive, and thus shipped with a bootable DVD that can serve this same purpose.

Fixing Disk Utility Errors via Recovery Partition

If the Unable to Unmount Error is triggered by first aid or formatting a non-boot partition, you may be able to fix the error by booting from the Recovery partition that is included with all new versions of OS X. This will not work if the error was triggered by attempting to modify the boot disk through partitions or formatting, and you will need to use the method above instead.

• Reboot the Mac holding down the “Option” key and choose the Recovery partition
• Select “Disk Utility” from the boot menu
• Go to “First Aid” to verify and repair the disk, or go to “Erase” to format the disk

Again, if the disk throwing the errors is the same as the primary boot partition that Recovery is also on, the above method may not work to resolve the problem. In that case, you’ll need to boot from a separate USB drive to fix the error.

The visually overhauled iOS 7 beta includes a handful of nice new default wallpapers, two of which are static (the left pink blue dots and galaxy image), and two are animated (the right two varieties of blue and purple vector bubbles). Obviously without iOS 7 you won’t be able to get the animated wallpapers, but you can get a static image of them and they still look pretty nice. These are all sized for the iPhone and iPod touch with 4″ displays at a 640×1136 resolution. They’ll look fine on the smaller 3.5″ displays too, but trying to size these up for an iPad or Mac just won’t look that great.

Save the full sized images below, or you can download them all in a convenient zip put together by CultOfMac.

Download all wallpapers in a zip


(If you download the zip bundle directly to an iPhone or iPod touch, don’t forget to grab an app like WinZip too so you can extract the zip archive directly in iOS, otherwise you’ll need to download it to a Mac or PC and unzip it there first)

Pink & Blue Dots (static)

Galaxy

Purple & Blue Vector Bubbles

Subtle Blue Vector Bubbles”>

We can expect to see quite a few more default wallpapers bundled with iOS 7 with the final release, as well as versions of the existing wallpapers sized for the iPad retina display when the beta 2 build arrives to support the iPad, but until then make do with these.

Don’t forget to grab the nice default wave wallpaper from OS X Mavericks too or check out our numerous wallpaper roundup posts.

You’re probably aware that iPhone will automatically detect phone numbers in web pages, allowing you to tap directly on a phone number and choose to call that number, send it a message, add it to Contacts, or to copy it to the clipboard. The tap-to-dial function is easily the quickest way to call a number found on the web:

But what about phone numbers that are mnemonic and listed as letters? Often called vanity numbers, these will be like 1-800-COMCAST, 1-800-MY-APPLE, 1-800-SOS-APPLE, etc, and they are not automatically detected by iOS. At first glance they don’t appear to be usable on the iPhone, but it turns out they are, just not directly.

Dial Vanity Numbers with Copy & Paste

To call a vanity number and convert it to numbers, you just need to tap-and-hold on the alphabetic version, select “Copy”, and then go to the Phone app. Once in Phone app, choose the Keypad, then tap and hold on the blank region on the top and choose “Paste”. This will instantly convert the lettered vanity number into an actual phone number, that’s nice in and of itself, but of course you can then dial it too.

You’ll notice the vanity alphabetic number is still maintained below the converted numerical version, so you can be sure you are calling the right place.

Heads up to iLounge for finding the handy little converter trick.

The designers at Teehan+Lax have built a complete iOS 7 GUI elements template, and are now offering it for free as a very functional PSD file. Everything is fully layered, well-labeled, and organized logically, making it an excellent tool to use for mocking up apps and concepts as they would appear natively in the completely redesigned iOS 7 interface.

Being a PSD it is obviously aimed at Photoshop, but it works perfectly fine in Pixelmator in our testing, and all layers remain intact (at least in Pixelmator 2.2).

• Get the iOS 7 elements PSD here from Teehan+Lax

Do note that because iOS 7 is currently in beta, some of the elements may change slightly from the beta release to the final release. We can expect Teehan+Lax to update the template file for any significant changes though. Happy designing.

Fed up with iOS 7 beta and it’s quirky bugs? You can downgrade fairly easily, which is probably a good idea for most casual users who aren’t accustomed to handling beta OS releases in various stages of development, because it’s really not meant for everyday use on your primary device anyway. Yes, Apple’s developer notes attached to iOS 7 beta releases specifically say that any iPhone or iPod touch that upgrade to iOS 7 can not downgrade back to iOS 6, but that’s not actually true in practice. In fact, just like with prior beta versions of iOS, you can downgrade back to whatever the most recent stable iOS release is with relative simplicity, so ignore the dev portal message and get back to a stable version. It only takes a few moments, and it’s not much different than restoring iOS in general.

Requirements are minimal, but be sure you have a recent version of iTunes running on a Mac or PC, the IPSW files for iOS 6.1.4 or 6.1.3, and a USB cable. Before getting started with the downgrade process, you will want to download the appropriate iOS 6 IPSW for your device and save it somewhere easy to find, like the desktop:

• iPhone 5 – iOS 6.1.4 IPSW – (direct links to GSM or CDMA)
• iPhone 4 – iOS 6.1.3 – (direct links to GSM CDMA)
• iPhone 4S – iOS 6.1.3 – (direct link to GSM & CDMA)
• iPod touch 5th gen – iOS 6.1.3 – (direct link)

As with any other iOS update, downgrade, or modification, you should back up before beginning. You can do that with iTunes to the computer, which is often faster since you’re already connected through USB, or with iCloud if you prefer.

Downgrading iOS 7 Beta Back Down to iOS 6.1.4 or iOS 6.1.3

Have the IPSW for your device downloaded? Then you’re ready to go:

• Connect the iPhone or iPod touch to the computer through a USB cable
• Open iTunes and select the iOS device, then go to the “Summary” tab



• Now you need to restore, but through IPSW instead of letting iTunes do the work. Mac users: Option+Click the “Restore iPhone” button, Windows users: Shift+Click the “Restore” button



• Locate the iOS 6 IPSW firmware file you downloaded a moment ago, and choose “Select”, then confirm by choosing “Restore”

The iOS device will go black, you’ll see the little loading bar, and in just a few minutes iOS 6.1.4 (or 6.1.3) will be loaded back onto the device and the iPhone or IPod touch will boot as if new.

Once the device has rebooted back to iOS 6, you’ll probably want to restore from a backup made recently so you can get all your stuff back, or just use the iOS device as new.

Heads up to iClarified who first noticed the process, though their variation includes a few steps that are not quite necessary. Additionally, many other sites have included various downgrade steps or overly complicated the process, so unless you’ve managed to brick the device, you do not need to put the device into DFU mode. Likewise, unless you updated directly from a jailbroken version of iOS 6.1.2 or see an iTunes 3194 error, you do not need to edit the hosts file at all to block or unblock any servers.

Happy downgrading, and enjoy iOS 6 again. Remember, the final version of iOS 7 will be released this fall, likely in late September or sometime in October.

Just like other recent major Mac updates, OS X Mavericks arrives as an app that wants to update the current OS X installation, and with a little work you can make a bootable USB installation drive. This allows you to easily perform partitioning for dual boot situations, clean installs, upgrades on multiple Macs, and more, plus it’s just really convenient to have for troubleshooting and simple future installations, without having to re-download OS X 10.9 every time you want to install it or perform an upgrade.

But unlike before with creating prior version OS X boot install drives, the process is slightly different with Mavericks and requires an additional set of steps to make the installer actually function as a a bootable installer disk. It’s not too complicated, just a bit more time consuming.

Before beginning, make sure the Mac you want to install Mavericks on meets the system requirements for 10.9. You will need OS X Mavericks (obviously), and an 8GB (or larger) USB drive that you don’t mind formatting, we’re using a USB thumb drive for the purpose of this walkthrough but an external hard drive should work as well.

Create a Bootable OS X 10.9 Mavericks Installer

• Download OS X Mavericks (get Developer Preview from Apple, devs only for now) but do not install it yet
• Attach the USB drive to the Mac and launch Disk Utility
• Choose the USB drive from the left side menu, click the “Partition” tab, select “1 Partition” from the drop down menu, and then click the “Options” button to select “GUID” as the partition type, click “OK” then click “Apply”
• Launch Terminal to show hidden files and relaunch the Finder using this defaults command string:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE;\killall Finder;\say Files Revealed

• Go to the /Applications/ folder to locate the “Install OS X 10.9 Developer Preview.app” file
• Right-click and choose “Show Package Contents”, then open “Contents” and open “SharedSupport”



• Double-click to mount “InstallESD.dmg”
• Open the mounted ‘OS X Install ESD’ image, and right-click “BaseSystem.dmg” choosing “Open” to mount the image (BaseSystem.dmg is invisible by default, thus why invisible files must be made visible in the earlier step)



• Go back to Disk Utility, then select “BaseSystem.dmg” from the sidebar and then click the “Restore” tab
• With “Source” set to “BaseSystem.dmg”, set “Destination” to the USB drive by dragging the USB drive into the box, then click “Restore” to begin – confirm that contents of the drive will be erased



• When finished, go to Finder and navigate within the newly created USB drive to System > Installation > and delete the file (alias) located here named “Packages” – keep this window open



• Go back to the ‘OS X Install ESD’ mounted drive, and drag & drop the “Packages” folder into the /System/Installation/ directory you just deleted the Packages alias from, let this large folder copy

Once that Packages folder is finished copying to the drive, the USB drive is now ready to be booted from which it can install OS X Mavericks from.

Booting from OS X Mavericks Install Drive

• With the USB drive attached, reboot the Mac and hold down the Option key
• Select the orange drive, labeled “OS X Base System 1″ from the boot menu
• Proceed with the installation as usual

Enjoy OS X Mavericks! By the way, if there is a more direct method to create a bootable installation drive, we couldn’t figure it out. Trying to restore or use the InstallESD.dmg file does not work like it used to in the past, but it’s entirely possible there is another way. If you know how to do it, send us an email, hit up @osxdaily on Twitter, let us know on Facebook, or hollar at us on Google Plus.