OS X Daily: Want to Sleep In? Tell Siri To Turn Off All iPhone 4S Alarms

Want to Sleep In? Tell Siri To Turn Off All iPhone 4S Alarms
“Steve Jobs – One Last Thing” Documentary to Air on PBS November 2nd
How to Tile Desktop Background Wallpaper in Mac OS X Lion
Charlie Rose Interviews Walter Isaacson on Steve Jobs & the Biography

Want to Sleep In? Tell Siri To Turn Off All iPhone 4S Alarms

Posted: 27 Oct 2011 12:24 AM PDT

Want to sleep in? You can quickly turn off all your alarms on the iPhone 4S by telling Siri simply to “turn off all alarms“, Siri will then confirm the alarm change plus show you the alarm settings. Oversleeping due to Siri likely won’t be a valid excuse to get out of school or work for the day, so it’s best to save this one for the weekend.

More useful during the work week, you can also tell Siri to turn on all alarms and Siri will display the scheduled alarm times:

Turn Off or On all Alarms with Siri

This little tip was sent in by Jeff S by way of FinerThingsIn, thanks for sending this in.

“Steve Jobs – One Last Thing” Documentary to Air on PBS November 2nd

Posted: 26 Oct 2011 11:30 AM PDT

Steve Jobs PBS Documentary

Fire up your DVR and get ready for some couch potato action next week, a documentary about Steve Jobs titled “One Last Thing” will air on PBS this November 2nd at 10:00 PM. The film is said to be an hour long, and will include interviews with Jobs himself, as well as his colleagues and friends. Here’s the official description:

ONE LAST THING takes an unflinching look at Jobs's difficult, controlling disposition, and offers unique insights into what made him tick. While there has been near-universal agreement that Steve Jobs was a great innovator in business and technology, ONE LAST THING looks into why he was so great. What were the influences that shaped his character? What drove him from such humble beginnings to the heights of success?

Featuring interviews with, among others, Ronald Wayne, co-founder of Apple with Jobs and Steve Wozniak; Ross Perot, who invested in NeXT Computer when Jobs was running out of money; Walt Mossberg, principal technology columnist for The Wall Street Journal, who interviewed Jobs every year from 2003-2010; will.i.am, frontman and producer for The Black Eyed Peas, whose "I Gotta Feeling" currently ranks as the most downloaded iTunes song ever; Dean Hovey, designer of the original mouse for Apple; Robert Cringely, writer and host of the PBS series TRIUMPH OF THE NERDS: THE RISE OF ACCIDENTAL EMPIRES; Robert Palladino, calligraphy professor at Reed College, whose classes Jobs credited with inspiring his typography design for the Mac; and Bill Fernandez, who introduced Jobs and Wozniak in Sunnyvale, where the three hung out in his father's garage and tinkered with electronics.

In a never-before-broadcast interview from 1994, Jobs expounds on his philosophy of life: "You tend to get told that the world is the way it is, but life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact; and that is that everything around you that you call life was made up by people no smarter than you … Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again."

In his many successful Apple product launches, Jobs developed his own catchphrase to tease his audiences. Appearing to reach the end of a presentation, he would then announce to the expectant crowd: "Oh — one more thing," before unveiling his latest design achievement. This documentary exploration of the life of one of America's most successful innovators and entrepreneurs pays homage to his famous presentational skills and his unique talents.

This is one of many shows to cover Steve Jobs in the wake of his passing. If you’re a fan of the subject matter, it’s hard to get enough of this stuff.

You can read the press release or check your local listings for more information.

How to Tile Desktop Background Wallpaper in Mac OS X Lion

Posted: 26 Oct 2011 09:48 AM PDT

Tile a background image for wallpaper in Mac OS X Lion

Mac OS X Lion changed the way desktop background pictures are handled. In short, if the image is fit to or larger than your Macs screen resolution, it won’t tile. Likewise, the default OS X Lion wallpapers don’t have the option to tile or change how they are orientated on your display.

Linen wallpaper tile from OS X Lion and iOS 5 The easiest solution to this is simple: you have to use a background image that will tile, meaning it is smaller than your screens resolution.

For the purpose of this walkthrough, we’ll use the linen wallpaper tile from OS X Lion and iOS 5:

Have the wallpaper tile somewhere easy to find, like the OS X Lion desktop
Open “System Preferences” from the  Apple menu
Click on “Desktop & Screen Saver”
Drag the wallpaper image you want to tile into the picture window
When the pull-down menu becomes visible, select “Tile” from the list

If you don’t select “Tile” manually, the default will usually be “Stretch” which looks terrible for most images that are meant to be tiled.

set a background image to tile in Mac OS X Lion

Why was this behavior changed in Mac OS X Lion? Who knows, but we’ve received several questions about this and a few emails which indicates there’s a fair amount of confusion on how this background pictures are handled in 10.7.

Charlie Rose Interviews Walter Isaacson on Steve Jobs & the Biography

Posted: 26 Oct 2011 08:58 AM PDT

Walter Isaacson

Walter Isaacson was on Charlie Rose this week to discuss Steve Jobs and the writing of his biography. If you’re interested in Steve Jobs and his legacy, this is another great interview filled with interesting tidbits. It’s arguably better than the recent 60 Minutes segment and at nearly an hour long, touches on a fairly wide variety of topics related to Jobs.

Watch the interview online at CharlieRose.com (Sorry no embeds available)

The discussion between Isaacson and Rose also clarifies some of the soundbites that you’ve undoubtedly heard related to Mr Jobs cancer treatments, the reason the book was written, the naming of Apple, and what other industries that Steve would have likely disrupted had he survived another 7 years (including one I haven’t found mentioned online… yet).

This is the second recent Charlie Rose episode to cover Steve Jobs, the first being a discussion on Jobs with various Silicon Valley executives and friends just a few days after his passing.