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Help & Tips

Tutorials, screen-casts, and do-it-yourself guides for your iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac, as well as many other Apple related product categories.

Suspended Animation – Keeping an iSight On While the Screen is Off

October 1, 2010 by Steve Leave a Comment
iSight

As part of my larger security system, I use the built-in iSight camera on my iMac to keep an eye on my house while I am away. Since the iMac is also a home server, i don't want it to sleep, but i would like the display to power down to save energy and extend the life of the screen. However, when the display on an iMac goes to sleep, the iSight camera is powered down as well. This obviously prevents me from using that camera to monitor my home.  Here is how to power off the display and keep the iSight on. This is not a hardware hack at all, and requires just a few pieces of free software.  The … [Read more...]

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Prepare for Apple TV Jailbreak: Save Your SHSH Blobs NOW [Tutorial + Video]

September 30, 2010 by Philipp 4 Comments
Apple TV Micro USB Connection

As we have previously reported, the hacking community is already hard at work at developing a jailbreak for the second generation Apple TV. And as usual, once the cat-and-mouse game begins, Apple will work fast to plug any hole discovered by the team. Hence, it is important that you act now and save your SHSH blobs for your new Apple TV so that you'll be always able to revert to the original Apple TV firmware. Our step-by-step tutorial will guide you through this process (with video tutorial at the bottom of the page): 1) Download and install the lastest version of TinyUmbrella. Version 4.1.5 … [Read more...]

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The Mobile Mac Office — Part II: Organizing Your Time [Things for Mac/iPhone/iPad Review]

September 24, 2010 by Philipp 4 Comments
Things for Mac Icon

This is the second part of our Mobile Mac Office series. Be sure to check out 'Part I: Going Paperless' as well. Organizing time effectively can be one of the most challenging aspects of work for small business owners and freelancers alike. You've got a million things on your mind, a growing number of projects to complete, and too little time to manage them all. Trying to stay on top of every task often feels like someone is pointing a stun gun straight at your chest. You'll get less done simply because too much time is spent thinking about managing time. It's a stressful catch 22. To alleviate … [Read more...]

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iPhone 4.1 Upgrade: Retain Original Baseband Unlock [Tiny Umbrella Tutorial - UPDATED]

September 8, 2010 by Philipp 96 Comments
iPhone 4.1 Software Update

Earlier this morning Apple released the promised iPhone 4.1 software update that brings not only new features such as HDR photography and Game Center but also promises to fix — among others — the Bluetooth connection bug we previously exposed. Naturally, many iPhone owners are eager to upgrade to 4.1 as soon as possible. If you rely on a jailbroken or unlocked iPhone 4, however, you absolutely must hold off the upgrade until the iPhone Dev Team releases new tools to keep the jailbreak/unlock alive beyond 4.0.2. If you can live without a jailbroken/unlocked iPhone 4 for the time being, … [Read more...]

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Fit the iPad + Case into a Dock

August 30, 2010 by Steve 3 Comments
IMG_5040

I realize that I may be in the minority here, but I prefer the humble Apple iPad case over designs by other companies. I also prefer the keyboard dock to a bluetooth keyboard. This leaves me with a problem which will be immediately familiar to people like me (few though they may be) who would like to use both a case and a keyboard dock. It doesn't fit. Both the keyboard and standard iPad dock are designed so that the rear cradle fits snuggly against the back of the iPad. As such, the Apple case and (I assume) any other case that covers the rear of the iPad will not fit in the dock at all. … [Read more...]

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A Fix Fir Your iPhone Autocorrect Woes

August 26, 2010 by Steve 12 Comments
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I thought my iPhone autocorrect trouble was over when I read about a simple hack that solved the ducking/fucking problem. I solved that problem by creating a new friend in my Contacts whose name is "f$#k s#!t OMG f*#@&g f@*&!n f#*&ed sh*#ting s#!t w/ s#@tty t$#t a!s a$#hole". This solves the problem by adding my favorite swears into the dictionary the iPhone uses to autocorrect. Unfortunately, Mr. F#!k is also the only name in my address book that starts with the letter F. Adding words is easy, but what happens when you want to remove a word? I type the word "for" in text … [Read more...]

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Are You Saving Your iPhone SHSH Blobs? [GUIDE]

July 28, 2010 by Philipp 7 Comments
AP_20100728_TinyUmbrella-1

Do you own an iPhone? Is there a possibility that you will ever want to jailbreak said iPhone? Maybe you want to sell your new iPhone 4 on Ebay next year? If so you need to save your iPhone SHSH blobs RIGHT NOW! The iPhone DevTeam will soon release a jailbreak and unlock for ALL iOS devices running on iOS 4.0.1. iPod Touch, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, you name it, each and every device will be covered. This is very good news for any potential jailbreaker. However, as soon as Apple releases 4.1 (which is currently in beta) you may lose this opportunity. Even if you never update to 4.1 intentionally, … [Read more...]

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The Best WordPress App for iPad

May 5, 2010 by Steve 14 Comments

Here is a big hint: you already have it. The official Wordpress app is a disaster. The comments on the app will tell you that, as will anyone who has ever had the misfortune of using it. Even the esteemed Andy Ihnatko has nothing but harsh words for it. This mess of an app has lost more than one draft for me, and offers no real formatting options. It's terrible at posting pictures, even worse at plain ol' text, and generally a waste of time, space, bits, and money (it's free, still too much). Other apps have equally poor reviews, and after my experience with the Wordpress app for iPad, I had … [Read more...]

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The Mobile Mac Office – Part I: Going Paperless

May 4, 2010 by Philipp 12 Comments
IMG_6744

You run a small business, freelance, or would like to keep your personal office organized. You own a Mac, an iPhone, or an iPad. Perhaps all three. You work from home, but whenever possible try to get out while still being able to manage your day-to-day operations. If any of this describes the way you work, this is for you! We will show you some some productive and fun ways to stay organized — even while you're on the move. The series will be broken down into four parts: "Going Paperless", "Organizing Time", "Keeping Track of Bills & Payments", and "Accessing Screen/Files From Anywhere". … [Read more...]

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Installing QuickTime 7 on Snow Leopard

March 20, 2010 by Steve 13 Comments
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QuickTime X is a ground-up rebuild of the old standard (the latest prior version was 7.6) and was designed to sturdy the foundation of the platform. QuickTime X features stable new code, a new interface, screen capture functionality and allows fullscreen playback (QuickTime 7 required you to purchase the Pro version for access to this feature). However, many of the advanced features of QuickTime 7 were stripped out of QuickTime X during the rebuilding process. Lost features include: Open Image Sequence Clip Trimming Clip Copy and Paste Exporting to specific codecs Clip resizing and more If … [Read more...]

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