Announced at the September 1 media event, iOS 4.1 for iPhone and iPod Touch is now available to download from Apple. Well, for developers anyway. The iOS 4.1 GM seed is listed on the iPhone developer page for immediately download for developers, but everyone else will have to wait until next week to get the full release.

Version 4.1 of iOS includes several important bug fixes as well as a couple new features:

• Proximity sensor issue fixed for iPhone 4 owners
• Bluetooth problems fixed
• iOS 4 slowness problems with iPhone 3G fixed – this is a big one for iPhone 3G owners
• HDR photo features
• HD video upload over WiFi
• TV show rentals
• Game Center

Developers can access and download the iOS 4.1 GM from the iPhone Developer home page right now.

Everyone else will have to wait for next week where to get the iOS software update, you’ll open up iTunes and click on “Check for Update” if a manual notification doesn’t inform you of the available download on it’s own. You can then choose to just download the update or download and install the update. Presumably you will need iTunes 10 before everyone else can download and install the iOS 4.1 update.

iOS 4.1 will not be released for iPad, but iOS 4.2 will be available on the iPad in November which will bring all the iOS 4 software features to iPad.

Apple has announced that iOS 4.2 for the iPad will be available in November when it is also released for iPhone and iPod touch. This is in line with previous rumors suggesting iOS 4.2 would unify all the versions of iOS across the i-device product lineup. This also fits into Apple saying that iOS 4 for iPad would be available in the fall.

iOS 4.2 will bring all the existing features of iOS 4.1 to the iPad plus new features that are exclusive to iOS 4.2:

• Multitasking
• Folders
• AirPlay wireless music, movie, and photo streaming
• Printing support over wireless networks
• Game Center for multiplayer and social gaming
• Unified and improved Mail inbox
• Search text within Safari
• Enhanced enterprise support
• Accessibility enhancements
• Keyboard and dictionary enhancements

Of course the most anticipated features are multitasking and folders, but some of the other additions look to be great as well. Airplay looks promising, which will allow you to stream music and video to and from the iPad over WiFi, and Print center, will allow you to wirelessly print and manage documents from the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. The total new features and improvements count over 100, which will make the iPad function almost as if it’s a new device.

The exact release date isn’t known but November isn’t too far off, we’ll let you know when you can download the update. You can read more about the upcoming iOS 4.2 update for iPad at Apple.com

iTunes 10 has been announced and will be available to download starting today via Software Update. Featuring a fancy new icon that finally ditches the CD, iTunes 10 also has a more attractive album management system and a built in social network.

Perhaps the most interesting feature of iTunes 10 is Ping, the new social music discovery network from Apple. Built directly into the iTunes app, Ping allows iTunes users to follow artists and other users, get concert listings, discuss music, share your music preferences, and more. With 160 million existing iTunes users and the ability to access Ping on your Mac, PC, iPhone, and iPod Touch, Ping is looking to quickly dominate the social music scene. Ping’s feed looks a lot like Facebook and I’d expect a way to cross-publish between the two shortly. Ping will only be accessible via iTunes 10.

To get the newest version of iTunes 10, load up Software Update from the Apple menu, it will appear as an available download.

Did you know that you can use Quick Look to zoom in on items within Expose? This is an awesome trick sent in by one of our readers:

“While in Exposé in Snow Leopard, press the space bar while mousing over a window. You’ll get an actual-size preview of the window. You can read all of the text, view the progress of an installation, track a download, and more from a quick glance without ever actually switching applications.”

Try it out yourself: enter into Expose and then hover over a window and hit the spacebar to enlarge it as a full sized preview. This is really cool and very useful. Enjoy!

Thanks to David H for sending this in!

The quickest way to set your IP address from the command line is to issue the following command in the Terminal:
sudo ipconfig set en1 DHCP
This will renew your DHCP lease and you will be issued a new IP address from the DHCP server. FYI: en1 is generally wireless/airport, en0 is generally ethernet.

You can check that the IP is set by getting your current IP address from the command line with:
ipconfig getifaddr en1
Doing this before and after will insure you have a new IP.

You can specify an IP address to set via the command line with the following:
sudo ipconfig set en1 INFORM 192.168.0.150

You can also get a new IP address from a DHCP server by bringing down the interface and starting it back up again:
sudo ifconfig en1 down ; sudo ifconfig en1 up

Note: for whatever reason, when you are setting the IP address manually via the command line the Mac OS X Network Preferences doesn’t necessarily catch up to the changes. Do not be surprised if the Network preference pane is telling you that you “Airport does not have an IP address and cannot connect to the Internet.” when in fact, you do have one and you are online. You can verify that you are connected to the LAN or internet by using the ping command.

Dan wrote in with the following: “I have a MacBook Pro and I want to make it even faster, what’s the best hard drive upgrade for the MacBook Pro?”

This is a great question, and the answer will vary depending on your budget. I’m going to recommend a few options at different price points, all of which make excellent and speedy MacBook Pro hard disk upgrades.

Upgrading the hard drive on your MacBook Pro is pretty easy and it’s a great way to breathe new life into an older machine, or turn a new machine into a blistering fast workhorse. It’s pretty impressive what a new hard drive can do for your systems performance, so without further ado here are my recommendations for the best drives:

Seagate Momentus XT 500 GB 7200RPM – $150 – the Seagate Momentus XT is basically the newer version of the Seagate Momentus drive. If you want a superfast hard disk but don’t want to spring for an SSD, this is the drive for you. Seagate claims the drive performs 80% faster than traditional 7200 RPM drives, and I don’t think thats much of an exaggeration. Apps launch faster, boot times are faster, everything is snappier, without a doubt you will see noticeable speed improvements. The drive approaches speeds of an SSD but costs significantly less, and despite the huge speed boost from the faster drive, battery life isn’t really affected. Their marketing speak says it’s an “SSD hybrid drive”, whatever that means I don’t know because it’s still a spinning drive at 7200RPM, but one thing I do know is that this is an amazingly fast drive. This is a highly recommended upgrade to a MacBook Pro and offers the best disk performance and reliability for the price.

• Pro: Extremely fast, best price/performance ratio, more reliable than older Seagate Momentus
• Con: Costs more than a standard 7200 RPM drive

Seagate Momentus 500GB 7200RPM Hard Drive – $65 – the Seagate Momentus is incredibly fast and very cheap, without a doubt this is the fastest MacBook Pro hard drive upgrade under $100. A friend of mine replaced his stock 7200rpm drive with one of these in his MacBook Pro and it absolutely screams, scoring nearly twice as fast in many XBench tests for reads/writes. It is a very noticeable improvement and the MacBook Pro feels much faster even just working in the Finder, opening applications, and cold booting. Whether you choose this model or the aforementioned Momentus XT should depend on your budget and how much you value reliability. For whatever reason this drive seems to have a higher failure rate than the XT model and also a tendency to vibrate a bit if it isn’t installed snuggly.

• Pro: Cheap, extremely fast
• Con: Slightly noisier than the stock MacBook Pro hard disk, 7200RPM drives have a higher failure rate, may vibrate if installed poorly

Western Digital Scorpio Blue 500 GB 5400RPM Hard Drive – $55 – the Western Digital Scorpio Blue is about as fast as a 5400RPM drive can get, in some tests it will approach the speeds of the Seagate Momentus. So why not just go with the Seagate Momentus you may ask? Well, there’s a few valid reasons; the main being that faster drives have a higher failure rate. All hard drives can and do fail, but the Momentus’s higher RPM’s make it statistically more likely to have a higher failure rate. If you’re looking for a fast and reliable drive, the Western Digital Scorpio Blue is a great option with it’s quick performance and high reliability.

• Pro: Cheap, reliable, quiet, faster than stock MacBook Pro drives
• Con: Not as fast as Seagate Momentus or SSD

Intel 160 GB X25-M SSD – $438 – no surprise, but the ultimate MacBook Pro hard drive upgrade is a super fast solid state drive. Performance with a SSD is blistering fast; apps open almost instantly, boot time is minimal, and everything just hauls butt, plus it is completely silent since there are no moving parts. I’ve used a MacBook Pro with this drive before and it was the quickest laptop I’ve ever seen. So what’s the downside? Price. For about $440 you’ll get 160GB, which is a fraction of the disk space you get with a standard spinning drive like the Seagate Momentus or Western Digital Scorpio, both of which come in at 500GB for less than $75. If you aren’t concerned about the price, this is without a doubt the best MacBook Pro hard drive upgrade you can get.

• Pro: Outrageously fast, completely silent
• Con: Price

So there you have it, these are the four best MacBook Pro hard drive upgrades. These are based on personal experience and reading around on the web, I’m sure there’s other great drives out there but for the price and performance I think they’re tough to beat.

After experiencing an SSD drive in a Mac, I’d go for the Intel X25 SSD on my MacBook Pro. If I didn’t pick that one I would go with the Seagate Momentus XT since it represents high speed, reliability, and it’s priced well. Ultimately, the best drive for you will depend no your budget and needs, so choose accordingly.

Regardless of what you end up choosing, be sure to get a USB powered hard drive enclosure to make good use of your old drive, they’re cheap and will turn your old hard disk into a portable external drive.

Feel free to chime in with any recommendations or personal experiences regarding your own MacBook & MacBook Pro drive upgrades.

The eagerly awaited AutoCAD for Mac is due to ship again in October of this year, this is the first Mac version of AutoCAD since 1992. Alongside the upcoming Mac version will be AutoCAD WS for iPhone and iPad, which will allow users to share, view, and make small changes to their designs remotely.

The Mac OS X release of AutoCAD will feature a very Mac-friendly user interface with Cover Flow style file browsing, multi-touch gestures, and full cross-platform support, as well as the usual AutoCAD feature set.

AutoCAD is the leading industrial design software for 2D and 3D drafting, with over 10 million active users. Pre-orders will be available starting September 1, but the software won’t ship for another month. The Mac version will be priced the same as the Windows release at $4,000, but will be made available for free to students and teachers through an education program. AutoCAD WS for iPhone and iPad is expected to be released for free.

Anytime that you run a command through the Terminal directly by a command name like ls or dscacheutil, your Mac is looking through a series of directories for that command to exist. This list of directories is called the PATH, and it’s a carry over from the unix underpinnings of Mac OS X. As you may have guessed, checking your PATH in Mac OS X is the same as it is in most other unix variants:

echo $PATH

Executing that command, you’ll see something like:
$ echo $PATH
/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin

The directories listed are those that are searched for commands. So the next time someone asks you if a directory is in your path, now you know where to look.

If you use a Hotmail account, you’ll be happy to hear that you can now use your Hotmail account on your iPhone thanks to Microsoft enabling Exchange ActiveSync support. This allows Hotmail to push and sync email, calendar, and contacts to your iPhone.

Here are the steps to setup Hotmail to sync and push to your iPhone (this works on the iPad too):

• Launch Settings
• Tap on “Mail, Contacts, Calendar”
• Tap onto “Add Account”
• Select “Microsoft Exchange”
• Enter your full Hotmail email address into both the Email and Username fields
• Leave Domain blank
• Enter your password
• Enter “Hotmail” as the Description
• Tap onto “Next”
• Now you must enter the server, use “m.hotmail.com” for the Server name then tap onto “Next”
• The iPhone will now verify that your Hotmail information is entered correctly, the next screen you’ll be able to enable Mail, Contacts, and Calendars

Hotmail is the original web mail, so it’s not surprise there’s still millions of hotmail accounts still in use today despite the competing offers from Google, Yahoo, and others. It’s a bit surprising it took Microsoft this long to get Hotmail working with the iPhone, but better late than never.

If you have MP3’s that are skipping, sounding weird, or that a media player like iTunes won’t open, sometimes you just need to run them through an MP3 validator app to check and repair the files. A great free MP3 checker is called MP3 Scan+Repair, it’s got an easy drag and drop interface that will repair MP3’s quickly.

• Download the MP3 Validator here
• Launch the app and then drag MP3 files into the interface for them to be automatically checked.
• When an error is detected in an MP3 file, a little icon will appear next to the name in the app
• To initiate the repair, click on the hammer icon to repair the file
• Note that you might want to make a backup before repairing the MP3 since it does overwrite the original file.
• The repaired MP3 will appear in the same location as the original corrupt MP3

The process is pretty quick and you can repair a bunch of songs at once, it fixed one of my stubborn MP3’s immediately and now it plays and opens fine with iTunes.

I’ve never really figured out exactly why some MP3 files will become corrupted and then need to be repaired, but it’s nice to come across a free app that handles the repairs quickly. In my experience MP3 corruption usually happens when downloading music from new music sites and blogs, so perhaps the file becomes corrupted in the transfer process.

If you don’t want to download any additional software you can try some other methods. I’ve found creative workarounds in the past when iTunes won’t play a song that involves importing the file into QuickTime and exporting it as a movie track before reimporting into iTunes… this works fine but it’s a bit of work just to play an MP3.