Welcome to my blog
Join me on my journey as I share my insights and experiences on web development, business, and content creation.
Join me on my journey as I share my insights and experiences on web development, business, and content creation.
In the vast landscape of macOS utilities, finding a tool that seamlessly manages application uninstallations while ensuring no residual files clutter your system is invaluable. AppCleaner, developed by FreeMacSoft, emerges as a standout solution, providing users with an intuitive interface and powerful features that extend far beyond ordinary uninstallers. Exploring AppCleaner’s Features: User-Friendly Interface: AppCleaner greets users with a clean and intuitive interface, simplifying the process of app removal. Comprehensive File Removal: Unlike basic uninstallers, AppCleaner digs deep, removing not only the application but also associated preferences, settings, cookies, and...
In an era where cybersecurity is paramount, staying ahead of the curve is essential. For the macOS community, NIST’s Security and Compliance Project have opened doors to a new realm of possibilities. In our recent video, we delved deep into this groundbreaking initiative, uncovering the secrets to bolstering macOS security with tailored compliance frameworks. Understanding NIST’s macOS Security and Compliance Project: NIST, known for its expertise in setting security standards, has extended its guidance to the Mac community. The project provides comprehensive insights into hardening macOS systems, ensuring organizations adhere...
In today’s tech-driven world, virtualization has become indispensable. Join me in exploring UTM, a powerful virtualization tool for Mac, and CrystalFetch, its seamless companion for downloading OS files. This comprehensive walkthrough guides you through setting up Windows 11 and Mac OS virtual machines, providing a glimpse into the future of computing. Key Takeaways: UTM Unleashed: Discover the versatility of UTM, simplifying virtual machine creation and management on Mac computers. Windows 11 in Action: Witness the step-by-step setup of a Windows 11 virtual machine, showcasing the synergy between UTM and CrystalFetch....
In the ever-evolving landscape of software development, staying ahead of the curve is paramount. With Apple’s introduction of the Notarization Tool, developers now have a powerful new ally in ensuring the security and integrity of their applications. In this comprehensive guide, we will walk you through the process of notarizing packages and signing them using this groundbreaking tool, ensuring your applications are compliant and ready for the future. Understanding the Transition The first step in this journey is understanding the transition from the AL tool to the Notary Tool. We...
In today’s rapidly evolving tech landscape, efficient management of browser preferences is paramount for IT professionals. Chrome, being a widely used browser, often demands tailored configurations to meet organizational needs. In this comprehensive guide, I’ll walk you through the process of managing Chrome preferences using Mobileconfig files, MDM, and open-source tools. By the end of this journey, you’ll have a profound understanding of how to streamline Chrome settings effortlessly across multiple devices. Prerequisites: Basic knowledge of Mobile Device Management (MDM) systems. Familiarity with macOS terminal and Python. Tools and Resources:...
Hello, tech enthusiasts! Today, we embark on a journey into the world of Mac software deployment using the powerful Packages app. Whether you’re a seasoned Mac admin or a budding developer, understanding the nuances of software deployment is crucial. In this comprehensive guide, we will walk you through the process step by step, ensuring you grasp every detail. Let’s dive in! Step 1: Introduction to Packages App First things first, familiarize yourself with the Packages app. It’s a versatile tool that simplifies software distribution on Mac devices. If you haven’t...
In today’s tech-driven world, application security is paramount. For macOS developers, understanding the nuances of Package Signing & Notarization is essential. Whether you’re a seasoned coder or a curious tech enthusiast, this comprehensive guide will walk you through the intricacies of ensuring your applications are secure, trusted, and ready for distribution. Why Package Signing & Notarization Matter: When users download an application, they expect it to be safe and free from malicious intent. Apple’s Package Signing & Notarization processes guarantee this safety. Notarization is more than just signing; it’s a...
Hey everybody! In today’s video, I’m excited to introduce you to one of my favorite Apple binary applications - Hear. Hear is an incredible program that allows you to transcribe text using the dictation feature directly from Terminal or convert audio and movie files into text. It utilizes the built-in dictation feature of Mac OS, making transcription tasks easier than ever before. 🔧 How to Use Hear: Enable Dictation: Before you install Hear, ensure that dictation is enabled on your Mac. Check your system settings under keyboard preferences to turn...
In today’s tutorial, we’ll delve into the essential process of signing mobile configuration files, a crucial step in ensuring the security and integrity of your configurations. Before we dive in, make sure you have the following prerequisites in place: a mobile config file that needs signing, Xcode installed, and an active developer account associated with your Apple ID. Getting Started: Setting Up Xcode and Certificates Launch Xcode and sign in with your Apple ID under Xcode settings. Create new certificates by managing your certificates in Xcode. Generate development and distribution...
Today, I am thrilled to introduce you to a groundbreaking macOS utility that is reshaping the landscape of Mac administration: MIST. This powerful open-source tool is designed to simplify macOS management tasks, offering an unprecedented level of efficiency and flexibility. In this deep dive, I’ll walk you through the intricacies of MIST, providing insights into how it works, where to get it, and how to harness its full potential. Understanding MIST: MIST, short for the MacOS Install Super Tool, is a versatile utility created by the talented developer Nindi Gill....
We aren’t quite ready to recommend that everyone upgrade to macOS 13 Ventura, but if you use Microsoft Office with macOS 10.15 Catalina, you should start planning for an upgrade. Microsoft has announced that current versions of its productivity suite—Office for Mac 2019, Office for Mac 2021, and Microsoft 365—will receive updates only if your Mac is running macOS 11 Big Sur, macOS 12 Monterey, or macOS 13 Ventura. If you keep using Catalina, your Office apps will continue to work, but they won’t receive enhancements, bug fixes, or security...
Photos has long provided a hidden album you could use to hold images you wanted to keep a little more private. Until this year, however, it was security through obscurity: anyone who knew to reveal the album in Settings > Photos on an iPhone or iPad or by choosing View > Show Hidden Album on the Mac could see its contents. Now you can protect it—and the Recently Deleted album—with Face ID or Touch ID on an iPhone or iPad, or Touch ID or your password on a Mac. You...
We heard from a client that AutoFill in Safari suddenly stopped entering her name and address in Web forms when she chose Edit > AutoFill Form or pressed Command-Shift-A, forcing her to enter her contact information manually, like an animal. (And yes, the “Using information from my contacts” checkbox was selected in Safari’s AutoFill preferences.) Although we have no idea what caused the problem, the solution turned out to be simple. She went into Contacts, found her personal contact card, and chose Card > Make This My Card. Give this...
With a handful of press releases buttressed by a 19-minute video, Apple pulled back the curtains on its new M2 Pro and M2 Max chips and announced updated Mac mini and MacBook Pro models that rely on the new chips. There are no significant design or feature changes with these updated models, just faster performance, enhanced external display support, and support for the latest wireless connectivity standards. The new Mac mini and MacBook Pro models are available to order now, with units in stores and orders starting to arrive on...
Whatever consumer electronics product you can name, there’s probably a “smart” version that you configure via an app or Internet-connected interface once you’ve connected it to your Wi-Fi network. For ease of setup and to keep costs down, many such devices come pre-configured with not just a default username and password, but the same default username and password as all other units. That’s bad enough, but worse, most people never change those defaults, which is just asking hackers and malicious bots to break in and take over. This risk is...
Apple makes it easy to move data between Macs. You can send files via AirDrop, attach them to an email message, put them in a Messages conversation, turn on and connect via File Sharing, or use a file-sharing service like iCloud Drive, Dropbox, or Google Drive as an intermediary, to name just a few of the more obvious approaches. But what if you have a lot of data—say tens or even hundreds of gigabytes—to transfer from one Mac to another? The techniques listed above might work, but we wouldn’t bet...
Every year at its Worldwide Developer Conference in June, Apple previews planned features in the upcoming versions of macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS. However, not all of those features are necessarily ready for the initial releases of those operating systems. In part, that’s because iOS must ship in sync with the latest iPhone models that Apple releases in September, whereas iPadOS and macOS often come out later. Even then, some of Apple’s promised features may not be ready for public consumption until the .1 or .2 updates. Just before...
Password management company LastPass has announced that it suffered a security breach in which attackers stole both encrypted customer account data (which is bad) and customer vaults containing encrypted usernames and passwords (which is much, much worse). On the positive side, the data of users who abided by LastPass’s defaults and created master passwords of at least 12 characters in length will likely resist cracking attempts. Although 1Password is the most popular password manager for Apple users, we’ve mentioned LastPass as an alternative in previous articles, so here’s what happened...
In early December, Apple made a surprise announcement: Advanced Data Protection for iCloud. It’s not as though iCloud’s standard data protection is problematic, but it hinges on one architectural decision that makes some iCloud data theoretically vulnerable: Apple holds the encryption keys necessary to decrypt iCloud data. Because Apple controls those encryption keys, an attacker or rogue Apple employee who could gain access to them could theoretically steal iCloud data. (There are many more safeguards; it’s not like there’s a big printout of keys anywhere.) Plus, since Apple has the...
Apple has released new security content for iOS 16.1.2 and Safari 16.2. Normally we would say that Apple pushed out updates, but in this mysterious case the advisory is about an iPhone software update Apple released two weeks ago. As it turns out, to fix a zero-day security vulnerability that was actively exploited. Mitigation The updates should all have reached you in your regular update routines, but it doesn't hurt to check if your device is at the latest update level. How to update your iPhone or iPad. How to update macOS on Mac....
We all learn differently. While some individuals can read instructions one time and know what to do, there are others who benefit from being taught visually or by ‘doing’. Regardless of how you learn, having a single approach for everyone isn’t ideal. The one thing we do know about learning, or training, is that when it comes to cybersecurity, repetition is important. That doesn’t mean taking the same course every quarter, or re reading the manual once a year. Smart and safe cyber practices are critical to your business’s success....
The Intellectual Property Office (IPO), the UK government body overseeing intellectual property rights in the UK, has quietly released new guidance on piracy and online counterfeit goods. This campaign is a joint effort between IPO and Meta, Facebook’s parent company. The general issue on piracy is about the use of illegal streaming boxes and apps and how these not only expose children to age-inappropriate content due to lack of parental control but also risk putting sensitive personal information in the hands of hackers and digital thieves. What's noteworthy—as TorrentFreak pointed out—is that the UK now flags password sharing, a...
Warnings abound of a major new piece of fraud doing the rounds which uses your relative’s voice as part of a blackmail scam. What happens is the victim receives a call from said relative’s number, and they’re cut off by blackmailers who have them held hostage. The only way to get them back safely is to pay a sizable sum of money, usually within a time limit. Refusal to pay up could clearly end very badly for the person being held to ransom. There’s just one problem with this: It’s all...
We are pleased to announce The Breach, their brand-new, narrative-driven Cybersecurity training course for 2023. This course is a feature of Grove Technologies PII Protect Security Awareness Platform. The annual training course gives businesses the opportunity to educate their staff on new and emerging threats and cybersecurity best practices. The Breach combines the narrative style of a CSI-type TV drama with traditional instructional techniques to create a deeper and more engaging learning experience than ever before. The Breach is simply your companies strongest, most intuitive and comprehensive course ever. “The...
We are writing this blog to educate you around the latest LastPass security breach event that we feel is important enough to share with all our clients not only clients specifically using LastPass. LastPass is a trusted password manager but as we are learning no technology is immune from security issues. The latest security issues are outlined by LastPass here. LastPass disclosed that “some source code and technical information were stolen from our development environment and used to target another employee, obtaining credentials and keys which were used to access...
It’s all too easy to end up with duplicate photos and videos in your Photos library. The most common way is to use the Duplicate command, but we’ve seen duplicates appear due to accidentally repeated actions in other apps, repeated screenshots, multiple imports that include the same image (much as Photos tries to prevent this now), and buggy behavior in iCloud Photos. Identifying duplicate photos and videos is difficult to do manually. Although the human eye is good at noticing when things aren’t the same, it’s much harder to determine...
Happy New Year! For many of us, starting a new year means reflecting on fresh habits we’d like to adopt. Although we certainly support any resolutions you may have made to get enough sleep, eat better, reduce social media usage, and exercise more, could we suggest a few that will improve your digital security and reduce the chances that bad things will happen to you online? Keep Your Devices Updated One important thing you can do to protect your security is to install new operating system updates and security updates...
Deleting contacts on the iPhone and iPad used to be a pain, especially if you wanted to trash multiple contacts. You had to open the contact, tap Edit, scroll to the bottom, and tap Delete Contact. Although you still can’t swipe left on a contact in a list, as you do when deleting in Mail and Messages, iOS 16 and iPadOS 16 provide a simpler method. Touch and hold a contact in the Phone or Contacts lists, and then tap Delete Contact at the bottom.
In iOS 16, Apple tightened security by displaying a confirmation alert when you copy data from one app and paste it into another. More security isn’t bad, but these alerts can become annoying if you copy and paste frequently. In iOS 16.1, Apple added a setting to control the behavior for each app. If you get these alerts too often when pasting in an app, go to Settings > AppName > Paste from Other Apps and switch it from Ask to Allow. Many apps don’t include the setting; hopefully, any...
Although iOS and iPadOS are extremely stable, there are times when rebooting your iPhone or iPad can eliminate odd or problematic behavior, and there’s no harm in trying it. In the past, you’ve had to remember which buttons to press or select Settings > General > Shut Down and then press a button to turn the device back on. In iOS 16 and iPadOS 16, however, Siri has learned a new trick: how to reboot iPhones and iPads. Invoke Siri by holding the side button or Home button, and then...
If you find yourself at a family gathering with bored children over the holidays, allow us to recommend an activity that can keep kids engaged. Figure out something the kids can do that involves motion—knocking down a tower of blocks, rolling a ball or toy car down stairs, even just making silly faces—and record them using the Slo-Mo option in the Camera app. Swipe left (iPhone) or down (iPad) on the viewfinder or labels to move from Photo mode to Slo-Mo mode, and then tap the red record button to...
In mid-November, Apple launched its new Emergency SOS via satellite feature for the iPhone 14 lineup. If you have an iPhone 14 and find yourself in an emergency situation in the US or Canada without cellular or Wi-Fi service, you can still contact emergency services. Apple says the service will expand to France, Germany, Ireland, and the UK in December The service is free for 2 years, and Apple hasn’t said what it will cost after that. The challenge we users face with Emergency SOS via satellite is that it...
We recently wrote about different ways to organize your files, which prompted some people to ask us about the best ways to manage email. Email may have competition from messaging services like Slack and Microsoft Teams, but for many people, it’s still where the most important communications take place. That’s especially true for anyone who has to work with numerous people outside their organization—there’s a reason why business cards nearly always contain an email address. As with file organization, how you manage and organize your email is all about making...
At long last, Apple has plugged one of the most inexplicable holes in its app library—the lack of a Weather app for the iPad and Mac. In iPadOS 16 and macOS 13 Ventura, you’ll now find a large-screen version of the iPhone’s iOS 16 Weather app. Locations you enter on one device automatically sync to your other devices, and the feature set is identical across the different platforms. That’s especially welcome now that Apple has integrated all the features of the acquired Dark Sky service, including hyperlocal notifications of incoming...
The iPhone and iPad have long allowed you to share Wi-Fi passwords with other nearby devices and people as long as they were in your Contacts list. But you couldn’t see those passwords, which is handy for sharing with non-Apple users and devices. In iOS 16 and iPadOS 16, you can now view and copy the stored Wi-Fi password for either the current network or any remembered network. In Settings > Wi-Fi, next to a network’s name (tap Edit at the top right to view stored networks), tap the blue...
ext time you’re flying to visit your Apple-using family or friends, send them your flight number using Messages when you leave. Then they can easily track your flight in the air and see when you’re arriving. Just text them the flight number prefixed with the airline’s abbreviation, like AA for American Airlines, AC for Air Canada, BA for British Air, DL for Delta, or UA for United Airlines. If Messages recognizes the flight number, it will underline it to indicate that tapping or clicking will bring up the current flight...
It’s common for one person in a family to handle booking airline tickets and thus to be in charge of checking in for the flight online and downloading boarding passes. If that’s you, what’s the best way to send each iPhone-wielding person in your family their own boarding pass? Rather than tussle with sharing the check-in confirmation email, add all the family boarding passes to Wallet on your iPhone. Then, for each person’s boarding pass, tap the ••• button ➊, tap Pass Details ➋, tap the share icon in the upper-right...
Email may not be as sexy a way to communicate as modern-day darlings like Messages, Slack, or Microsoft Teams, but it remains the workhorse of business and personal communications. While Apple’s Mail is a mature app that has long provided the necessary basics, there has been room for improvement. In iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and macOS 13 Ventura, Apple has given us some welcome enhancements, many of which have existed in other email systems for some time. These features are extremely similar across all of Apple’s platforms, but they may...
It may seem early to think about holiday shopping, but even as the global supply chain recovers from pandemic-related slowdowns, ship dates remain unpredictable. If you want to make sure you have an Apple something for that special someone, we recommend buying it soon. Here are our recommendations AirTag Do you know someone who’s always misplacing their keys, purse, or backpack, or who’s planning a big trip? They might appreciate Apple’s AirTag tracker this holiday season. Attach one to a keyring (with a separate $29 AirTag Loop, $35 AirTag Leather...
Spam remains one of the scourges of the Internet, although spam filters do a pretty good job of keeping most of it out of email inboxes. However, those spam filters can cause deliverability problems for organizations that send email for marketing or customer outreach. One way that happens is if the IP address—the unique numeric address of every computer on the Internet—of the server that sends your organization’s email lands on a blocklist. Understanding Blocklists Blocklist services are conceptually simple. They maintain lists of IP addresses that have been identified...
Perhaps the most surprising change in the iPhone 14 line, at least in the United States, was the shift from using removable SIM cards to eSIM. SIM cards—SIM stands for Subscriber Identity Module—have been a fixture in the mobile phone world for many years because they provide the unique identification necessary to connect a subscriber and a plan with a phone. Because SIM cards are removable, you can use them to transfer an existing plan to a new phone, switch carriers, or enable temporary service while traveling—all by inserting the...
Until watchOS 9, Low Power Mode on the Apple Watch turned the smartwatch into a dumb watch that only told the time. With watchOS 9 on an Apple Watch Series 4 or later, however, a new Low Power Mode reduces the watch’s capabilities while keeping it largely functional. It turns off the Always-On display, heart rate notifications, background heart rate and blood oxygen measurements, and the automatic start workout reminder. When your iPhone isn’t nearby, it disables Wi-Fi and cellular connections and incoming phone calls and notifications. Other features will...
Back in 2017, when Apple added the notch to the iPhone X for Face ID, the resulting loss of usable screen real estate caused the company to remove the battery percentage indicator from the status area. Since then, you’ve only been able to estimate how much battery life you had left from the icon; you had to open Control Center to see the numeric percentage. In iOS 16, however, Apple has revived the battery percentage indicator for Face ID iPhones, building it into the battery icon itself so it doesn’t...
The iPhone has long been able to play clicking sounds when you tap the keys on the virtual keyboard, but that feedback, while sometimes welcome, can become annoying when you’re trying to be quiet. A new feature in iOS 16 provides haptic feedback—tiny taps you can feel in your fingertips as you tap keys on the keyboard. It’s a subtle but highly effective way of mimicking a real keyboard, and we encourage you to try it. Turn the feature on in Settings > Sounds & Haptics > Keyboard Feedback. (While...
We’ve recently worked with a few clients who were paying too much for their Internet or cellular service. Internet service providers (ISPs) and cellular carriers occasionally adjust their service plans to account for new technologies, economies of scale, changing competitive landscapes, and marketing efforts. Sometimes they’ll increase speeds or capabilities across the board, but more often, when they debut new plans, current customers are grandfathered into their existing plans, often without notification. Upgrading to a new, better plan is usually simple—first, check the plan details on your ISP’s or cellular...
In a series of press releases—no big video event this time—Apple has announced upgrades to the iPad, iPad Pro, and Apple TV. The new models are largely evolutionary, with changes that are welcome but unlikely to change your iPad or Apple TV experience. All are available to order now, with the new iPads arriving on October 26th and the new Apple TV hitting stores on November 4th. One other note. iPadOS 16 and macOS 13 Ventura ship on October 24th. iPadOS 16 is probably safe to install soon, given the...
After years of user requests, Apple has finally beefed up Messages with a few welcome features—options to mark conversations as unread for later reference, edit messages after they’ve been sent, and undo sending entirely. Plus, when you delete junk texts in Messages, you can now report them to Apple and your carrier, and you can find inadvertently deleted conversations in Recently Deleted. Finally, there’s a Tapback improvement for SMS messages to Android users. Before we begin, beware that editing messages and Undo Send work the way you expect only if...
We’ve had decades to get used to organizing computer files, but it’s still hard for many people. Part of the problem is imagining how you—or your colleagues, if you’re in a workgroup—will need to find the files in the future. Another part of the problem is mustering enthusiasm for renaming and reorganizing existing files to match an improved approach. Let’s see if we can help! #1: Start Now and Catch Up Later Don’t let your old files prevent you from starting a new organizational approach. The best time to begin...
Cookies. Cakes. Pies. Brownies. All fantastic treats to have when you’re feeling down. But you know what the easiest and most satisfying dish to make really is? Strong Cybersecurity! Let’s quickly go over what you’ll need and the steps you’ll need to take to have a truly cyber-safe digital presence! Ingredients: Computer, laptop, tablet, phone, or some other device that connects to the Internet 1x Continuous Training Program 1x Password Manager 1x Multi-Factor Authentication 1x Dark Web Monitoring Service 1x Virtual Private Network (VPN) 1x Spam Filter 1x Data Breach...
We’re increasingly hearing from organizations that need to establish that they have sufficient security policies in place, either to meet the requirements of a larger client or to qualify for cyber insurance that insures against breaches and similar losses. Details vary, and we’re happy to work with you on the specifics, but here are some of the kinds of questions you may be asked. Of course, if you don’t have to prove that you’re doing the right thing to some other company, answering these questions for yourself can only improve...
I want you to take a second and imagine the thing you dread the most in the world. The thing that brings you the most anxiety when you know it’s coming up. Everybody has something. Got it? I bet at least a quarter of you thought of an appointment with your doctor or dentist. There’s just something so nerve-wracking about going to the doctor’s because you know that they’re going to tell you something that you don’t like. Maybe you need to exercise more. Maybe you need to change your...
It’s October and that means there is only one type of movie you’re allowed to watch. That’s right, horror! Even the scaredy cats like a good horror movie near Halloween whether it’s Scream, Nightmare on Elm Street, Paranormal Activity, or, well, Halloween. But very few horror movies are realistic. People are always making decisions that don’t make sense. The monsters always walk when they should run. Sometimes it’s too goofy to be scary. But what if we took some horror movies and made them too realistic? What if we added...
It’s fall and for most of us, that means one thing: football season! Most Americans love sitting in front of the TV on Sunday to watch their favorite team battle it out on the gridiron. The touchdowns, the field goals, the interceptions, the big hits. It’s very exciting. But this season we’re asking that while you’re watching the game, you take a second to think about how it compares to a strong cybersecurity strategy. Now we know what you’re thinking. How do you tie together football with cybersecurity? Well, it’s...
iOS 16 has been out for a bit now, and it’s likely safe to upgrade as long as you don’t rely on obsolete apps that might not be compatible. When you take the plunge, the first new feature to check out is the capability to create, customize, and switch among multiple Lock Screens, each with its own wallpaper, clock font, and widgets. It’s reminiscent of how you customize Apple Watch faces. Plus, you can now link a Lock Screen to a Focus so you know when that Focus is active....
hat’s the first thing you think about when you feel that first chilly breeze of Fall? Is it cozy sweaters? Is it football? Is it pumpkin spiced lattes? Well, I can tell you what it should be: cybersecurity! October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and we are celebrating it in style! Get ready for 31 days of tips, tricks, and strategies for keeping you and your business cyber-safe! The best cybersecurity plans go 24/7, 365 days a year, but that doesn’t mean you can’t double down for one month. There’s never...
The Photos app is usually a solid performer, but it does rely on a database behind the scenes, and corruption is a possibility. If you find that your Photos library is showing blank thumbnails or otherwise acting oddly, see if the Photos Repair Library tool can fix it. First, if Photos is open, quit it. Then launch Photos again while holding down the Command and Option keys at the same time. In the window that appears, click Repair. The tool might ask for your account password, and depending on the...
In iOS 14, Apple overhauled widgets, allowing you to add them to your Home screen in addition to the Today View accessible by swiping right on the Home screen. App developers responded with a slew of new widgets, but old-style widgets that are limited to Today View remain available. If you no longer want these older widgets cluttering the bottom of your Today View, here’s how to remove them. Swipe right on the Home screen to enter Today View. At the bottom of Today View, tap the Edit button, and...
Adobe says that Pantone Color Books will be phased out of Adobe Creative Cloud apps, starting with updates to Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop released after August 16, 2022. After November 2022, only three Pantone Color Books will remain: Pantone + CMYK Coated, Pantone + CMYK Uncoated, and Pantone + Metallics Coated. To access all other Pantone Color Libraries, Creative Cloud users will need to purchase a Pantone Connect license and access the libraries through the Pantone Connect plug-in. Pantone Connect costs $59.99 per year or $7.99 per month. For the...
Most of the time, having your iPhone know precisely where you are is good. You want Maps to tell you exactly when to turn, not after you’ve passed an intersection. But too many apps abuse their users’ privacy. We strongly encourage you to stop using such apps entirely, but we acknowledge that it can be hard to give up apps that seem necessary for modern life. Barring that, you could prevent such apps from seeing your location at all, but even that isn’t always feasible. Since iOS 14, Apple has...
Two similar-sounding iOS features generate quite a bit of confusion. Wi-Fi Calling and Wi-Fi Assist both aim to improve your connectivity by using the best network available, but they achieve that goal in diametrically opposed ways. Wi-Fi Calling leverages your Wi-Fi connectivity to replace weak or nonexistent cellular coverage, whereas Wi-Fi Assist uses your cellular data connection when the Wi-Fi connection is poor. Here’s what you need to know. Wi-Fi Calling Of the two technologies, Wi-Fi Calling is more commonly used and more helpful. It enables you to make or...
September is here, which means that Apple will soon start releasing major upgrades for all its operating systems. Note that we say “start.” Apple will release iOS 16 and watchOS 9 alongside new iPhones and Apple Watch models in September. However, Apple has now acknowledged that iPadOS 16 will ship later in the fall—perhaps in October—as version 16.1, likely in conjunction with iOS 16.1 and possibly alongside macOS 13 Ventura. tvOS 16 isn’t interesting enough to worry about much either way. Apple previewed these releases at its Worldwide Developers Conference...
Apple’s September crop has ripened, and the company has once again picked a basket of new and updated hardware for us. At its Far Out event on September 7th, Apple unveiled four iPhone 14 models, three new or updated Apple Watch models, and the second-generation AirPods Pro. After the announcement, Apple said that iOS 16 and watchOS 9 would become available on September 12th, with iPadOS 16.1 and macOS 13 Ventura to arrive in October. As we’ve said before, wait a week or two before installing iOS 16 and watchOS...
Now and then, we run across iPhone apps that feel magical, and we want to share two of them: Seek and Merlin. They both use machine learning to help you identify something from the natural world using your iPhone. If you’re at all curious about the plants, wildlife, and birds you encounter outside, you’ll want to download these free apps. Seek from iNaturalist You’re out for a walk and see a particularly pretty flower or a tree with an unusual leaf shape. In the past, you’d probably wonder what it...
Many websites, from Adobe to Zendesk, let you receive two-factor authentication codes via SMS text messages. That’s good—any form of two-factor authentication is better than none—but you’re often effectively locked out of your accounts if those text messages don’t arrive. A simple fix is to call your cellular carrier and ask to have any blocks removed from your account. Automated scam and fraud prevention systems may have installed those blocks—it wasn’t necessarily related to anything you did—and the carrier can remove them easily.
Are you among the millions of people planning to get a new iPhone 14? It’s exciting, we know, but don’t move too fast when getting started with your new iPhone, or you might cause yourself headaches. Instead, follow these instructions once you’re ready to transfer your data to the new iPhone: Make sure you know your Apple ID and password! You will likely have to enter them at least once during this process. If you have an Apple Watch, it’s safest to unpair it from your old iPhone, which automatically...
Have you noticed a little orange dot next to the icon for Control Center on the menu bar in macOS 12 Monterey? (And if not, you can’t miss it now.) Apple added that dot to alert you that something is using the Mac’s microphone to listen to the room. Click the Control Center icon to see which apps are using the mic. In nearly all situations, it will be entirely innocuous: Siri needs to listen for the “Hey, Siri” trigger, as in the screenshot below, and the Zoom app needs...
You probably know that selecting a file in the Finder and choosing File Get Info (Command-I) brings up the Get Info window. This window provides information about the file, including its name, kind, size, creation and modification dates, and much more. You can also use Get Info to hide or show filename extensions, lock and unlock files, and change permissions. But what if you want to do those things to multiple files or figure out how large a set of files is? Turn to the Finder’s Inspector window instead. Select...
First, don’t panic. Most likely, you’re borrowing something with an Apple AirTag location tracker attached to it, or someone left something with an attached AirTag in your car. Second, tap the alert to open the Find My app, which displays a map showing where the AirTag has been with you, which might shed some light on where it started traveling with you. Third, in the Find My app, tap Play Sound to try to locate the AirTag by its audible alert. Fourth, if you find the AirTag, hold it near...
It has finally happened. Keys on your MacBook Pro aren’t responding, there’s a crack on the screen, or the battery no longer holds enough of a charge to make it useful. A repair is in your future, which entails bringing the Mac to an Apple Store or Apple Authorized Service Provider or shipping it back to Apple. Regardless of what repair approach you take, there are some steps that we—and Apple—highly recommend that you follow first. Why? Three reasons: You need to protect yourself from data loss. The Mac could...
Sure, we know that phone calls aren’t the most common thing people do on their iPhones—especially anyone under 30—but it’s still important to be able to make and take calls. There are a wide variety of reasons that outgoing or incoming calls might fail, so the solutions vary equally as widely. Some may seem a little scattershot, but most are easy to try and set back if they don’t help. Try another location: This can’t come as news, but sometimes you’re in a bad spot for cellular coverage. Move to...
We Mac, iPhone, and iPad users have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to calendaring flexibility. Apple provides free calendar services via iCloud, and the Calendar app lets you add calendar accounts from a wide variety of providers. Most notable among them are Microsoft Exchange and Google Calendar, which are commonly used in the business world. Since you can add multiple calendar accounts to the Calendar app, there’s no problem bringing your entire scheduling life together, even if your work uses Exchange and your kid’s school uses Google. But...
Do you have a child starting college soon? It’s likely that your kid has been relying heavily on a computer throughout high school, but if it was a school-provided laptop or shared family computer, now’s the time to get them something of their own. And even if they had their own laptop throughout high school, if it’s old or unreliable, college is a good excuse to bring them up to date. If you haven’t been paying close attention to Apple’s Mac lineup, you might wonder which model makes the most...
If you’re over 40, you probably remember the point in The Wizard of Oz where the movie switches from black-and-white to Technicolor (and if not, go see it!). It wasn’t the first color film, but the vibrant images of Dorothy’s ruby slippers, the yellow brick road, and the Emerald City helped make the movie a classic. On the Mac, whenever you want to fill a drawing with color, colorize some text, or format spreadsheet cells in color, you need to use the Colors window, commonly called the color picker. Like...
We all get too much email, and while Mail can’t help you get less (other than by making it easy to unsubscribe from mailing lists), it does provide shortcuts for processing your mail more quickly. Regardless of whether you’re using iOS, iPadOS, or macOS, you can swipe on messages in the message list to perform various actions—some of which you can customize. It’s an efficient way to work through email quickly. Swiping on the iPhone and iPad In iOS and iPadOS, when you swipe a short distance right on an...
Every so often, we encounter someone struggling to find and launch an app on their Apple Watch because they have trouble seeing and interacting with the icon-centric grid view layout. If you’re in that camp, there’s a better way. In the iPhone’s Watch app, tap My Watch at the bottom, and then tap App View. Then select List View, which provides an alphabetically sorted, scrolling list of all your apps. From then on, it’s easy to press the Digital Crown to show the apps, turn it to scroll, and tap...
If you’ve been moving your SIM card from phone to phone over the years, you might inadvertently be preventing your current phone from taking full advantage of 5G connectivity. Cellular carriers aren’t always forthcoming about what will and will not work, but at least in the US, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon all make noises about how you need a 5G-capable SIM card to use the latest and greatest 5G technologies. The solution is simple: stop by a carrier’s store or contact them to ask for a new SIM. It should...
Imagine you’re on vacation, staying at an Airbnb and collecting tourist points in the surrounding area throughout the day. Since you’ll be heading back to your Airbnb regularly but may not remember its address reliably, it’s best to make it a favorite in Maps before you even leave home. That way, you can navigate to it easily without searching repeatedly or looking for it in your Recents list. Similarly, take a few minutes to add other addresses that you know you’ll need, such as the rental car dropoff spot. In...
Various calendar services let you schedule a meeting based on invited attendees picking preferred times from a set of specified options—Doodle is the most well-known. But the problem with such services is that you have to know which dates and times are likely to work for the people you’re polling. If you want to set up an hour-long meeting sometime in the next week but have no idea what might work for others, you’ll spend an excessive amount of time specifying all the possible options. A free—if oddly named—Internet service...
A large screen—or several screens!—increases productivity by helping you see more content at once. It’s a big help to refer to a Web page in one window while writing in another, for instance, or to check your calendar while composing an email. But the more screen real estate you have, the easier it is to lose track of the tiny pointer arrow. Happily, Apple added a clever trick for finding the pointer to macOS—quickly slide your finger or shake your mouse back and forth horizontally a few times to enlarge...
At Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in June, the company threw back the curtains on macOS 13 Ventura, iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and watchOS 9. These operating systems won’t be available until September or October of 2022, and we usually recommend waiting some time to upgrade—particularly for macOS. Even so, it’s not too early to think about how these operating systems might impact your plans to buy new hardware in the next six months. Any Apple device you buy now—or have bought in the last few years—will be able to run...
Grove Technologies has been named as one of the world’s premier managed service providers on the prestigious Channel Futures 2022 NextGen 101 rankings. The NextGen 101 list honors industry-leading managed service and technology providers who are driving a new wave of growth and innovation for the tech channel via the groundbreaking solutions they deliver for their customers. The Channel Futures NextGen 101 are those companies that hold great promise given the leading-edge information technology and communication solutions they offer. Many of those business models revolve around generating recurring revenue from...
Everyone is accustomed to using the Copy and Paste commands on the Mac, but fewer people know that you can also copy and paste between your Mac and your iPhone and iPad. Apple calls this feature Universal Clipboard, and it’s so deeply integrated into macOS, iOS, and iPadOS that it can be easy to miss. You won’t find a switch for Universal Clipboard or any other mention of it in System Preferences or Settings. To use Universal Clipboard, all you have to do is copy some content—a bit of text,...
Most of the time, it’s appropriate when an auto-correct feature turns single and double hash marks into single and double curly quotes. However, there are times when the curly quotes are awkward for some reason or actively wrong. For instance, hash marks indicate feet and inches, as in 5' 6". You could attempt to disable the auto-correct feature or copy and paste a hash mark from some other place, but the simple fix is to type the hash mark, watch auto-correct change it, and immediately press Command-Z to revert to...
Interlaced.io Announces Acquisition of Grove Technologies Leading IT Managed Services Provider Adds Innovative, DC IT Group to Business June 22, 2022 Washington, DC – Interlaced.io, a leading managed IT services provider, announced today the acquisition of Grove Technologies, a high-performing IT Service Provider based in the DC Metro Area. Founded by Jon Brown in 2014, Grove has grown to be a staple name in providing services to Apple-integrated and cybersecurity-focused small businesses. “Partnering with Jon Brown and the Grove Technologies Team will improve our ability to bring Interlaced’s world-class IT...
Renting a car has become more interesting in recent years due to changes automakers have been making to car electronics. For example, Apple’s CarPlay is becoming a common feature on rental cars. That lets you run Apple Maps or Google Maps on your iPhone while displaying the map on the car’s built-in screen and routing spoken directions through the car’s speakers. It’s way better than trying to prop your iPhone on the dash for navigation directions. Although there are no guarantees, rental cars are usually recent models, so it’s likely...
ack in the early 1980s, DOS filenames couldn’t be more than 8 characters long with a period and a 3-character extension. That was limiting, so when Apple developed the Mac operating system in 1984, it allowed longer names and eliminated the need for an extension, although Mac OS X’s Unix roots meant a return of the filename extension in 2001. Since then, filename restrictions have loosened to the point where it’s easy to think that they no longer exist. If only that were true! In some ways, the situation has...
Increasingly need to take photos of documents—vaccination cards, driver licenses, passports, etc.—to submit for online verification. That’s often easier said than done, especially when taking a photo at night under lights that obscure the text with glare and shadows. Similarly, when photographing a screen to document a problem for tech support, it’s often difficult to capture it without a problematic reflection. For a possible solution, back up from the thing you’re photographing and use your iPhone’s zoom feature to enlarge the document or screen. The extra distance often lets you...
It’s often tough to figure out exactly what a singer is saying (which can lead to some amusing mistakes), but for many songs in Apple Music, you can bring up full lyrics in the Music app, regardless of which device you’re using. On the Mac, click the speech balloon button in the upper-right corner to display the lyrics pane on the right side of the window. On an iPhone, tap the playback controls at the bottom of the screen to bring up the Now Playing view, then tap the speech...
uring its Worldwide Developer Conference keynote on June 6th, Apple took a brief break from showing off new features in upcoming operating systems to throw back the curtains on its new M2 chip and a pair of laptops that use it: an all-new MacBook Air and an updated 13-inch MacBook Pro. Apple said that both laptops will be available in July. Next Generation M2 Chip Boosts Performance, Offers More Memory Although we’re still wrapping our heads around the insane performance offered by a Mac Studio with the M1 Ultra chip,...
You’re on vacation with your family, staying in an Airbnb, with multiple Apple devices to connect to the apartment’s Wi-Fi. Typing the password repeatedly would be a pain, but happily, Apple has added a password-sharing feature to all its operating systems. Once you enter the password on your iPhone, whenever someone else—or another of your devices—tries to connect to the Wi-Fi network, your iPhone will prompt you to share the password. Tap Share Password and then Done. It’s also a great way to share your home Wi-Fi password with a...
It’s that time of year again. Apple CEO Tim Cook and numerous Apple employees took the virtual stage again at the company’s Worldwide Developer Conference keynote on June 6th to share what we can expect to see later this year in macOS 13 Ventura, iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and watchOS 9. (Almost no mention was made of tvOS or the HomePod, but Apple will undoubtedly move them forward in small ways as well.) The announcements came thick and fast, and like last year, many of the technologies cut across several...
Many people have an Apple TV in the living room, hooked to a large-screen TV. It’s a great streaming media box for Apple TV+, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and a slew of other services. It even supports a bunch of games. Don’t let the Apple TV’s consumer focus fool you, though. It’s also a highly useful device for businesses in two important ways: digital signage and presentation display. Apple TV for Digital Signage For businesses that need to post signs, it’s easy to print something out and stick it on...
One of the best ways to keep malware from infecting your computers is to avoid visiting websites designed to do just that. No one intentionally visits loadmetogetinfected.com, but malware authors employ all sorts of tricks to lure unsuspecting users into viewing malicious sites. Various tools can help, but the easiest free technique is called DNS filtering. DNS, which is short for Domain Name System, is the Internet technology that maps human-readable computer names like www.apple.com to the numeric IP address of Apple’s server, 17.254.0.91. Every time you click a link...
In a move that should surprise no one, Apple has discontinued macOS Server, which started out as a server-focused version of Mac OS X and eventually morphed into a set of add-on network servers for macOS. Exactly what was in macOS Server varied over time, but in 2018, Apple trimmed it to just Profile Manager, Open Directory, and Xsan. That was made possible in part because Apple integrated Caching Server, File Sharing Server, and Time Machine Server into every installation of macOS 10.13 High Sierra and later. If you’re still...
or our money, perhaps the most unheralded innovation of the computer age is Copy and Paste. No one thinks about the clipboard—that virtual shelf where copied text and images sit—because it just works. We all use Command-C to copy something and Command-V to paste it without having to retype the text, reimport the graphic, or whatever. Copy and Paste is a huge timesaver because it lets you reuse or build on work already done. What if you could make Copy and Paste even more powerful? With the right clipboard utility...
The iPhone’s Calendar app defaults to graphical views for Day, Week (rotate to landscape), Month, and Year, but only the Day view shows information about your actual events, and even then, it’s easy to miss events that are outside the times that fit onscreen. If you find those views frustrating, you may have missed the all-important list view options. In Month view, tap the List button ➊ to split the screen, showing the calendar above and a list of events for the selected day below. In Day view, tap the...
Prior to iOS 13, when you were editing text on an iPhone or iPad, Apple provided a magnifying glass that showed the position of the insertion point. It worked, but was clumsier than just moving the insertion point directly, which is what Apple enabled in iOS 13 and iOS 14. The only problem? Your finger usually obscures the text you want to edit. In iOS 15, Apple brought back the text magnification bubble to show you where the insertion point is in the text under your finger. If you’ve missed...
Much has been written about the performance benefits of Apple’s M1 family of chips, but you may not have realized that M1-based Macs can also run many iPhone and iPad apps. It makes sense, given that the M1 chip grew out of the work Apple did for the A-series processors in the iPhone and iPad, and the latest iPad Pro models also rely on the M1. Why Run iOS Apps? Depending on how you use your iPhone and iPad, you’re thinking either, “Hey, this is great, because I want to...
You know that you can drag files or folders to the Trash icon in the Dock for later deletion. And you probably know that you can select multiple items on the Desktop or in a Finder window by Command-clicking each one in turn (Shift-click to select a sequential range of items in a list view), after which you can drag them all to the Trash. But there’s no reason to expend effort mousing if you prefer to keep your hands on the keyboard—just press Command-Delete to send one or more...
Macs—and Apple products in general—tend to last a long time. It’s not unusual to see someone happily using an 8-year-old MacBook Pro. As much as it’s environmentally responsible to use electronics as long as possible, doing so may reduce your productivity or leave your business in a precarious situation if a hardware failure forces an upgrade at an inconvenient time. Another factor to consider is whether or not you can get service and parts for your older device. It’s easy to assume that Apple will fix whatever you bring in,...
Shortly after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Apple made it so your Apple Watch could unlock your Face ID-enabled iPhone when you were wearing a mask. Starting in iOS 15.4, the company has taken the next step and enabled Face ID on the iPhone 12 and later to work even when you’re wearing a mask. If you didn’t already set up Face ID with a mask after updating to iOS 15.4, go to Settings > Face ID & Passcode and enable Face ID with a Mask. You’ll have to...
With the recent release of macOS 12.3 Monterey and iPadOS 15.4, Apple shipped Universal Control, the last major technology promised in its 2021 operating system upgrades. Universal Control enables you to use the keyboard and mouse or trackpad attached to one Mac to control up to three other Macs or iPads—you can even copy and paste or drag items between devices. It’s a great way to make more of your Apple devices while staying on task—no longer do you need to stop using your Mac to accomplish something on your...
In today’s world, there’s no reason to remember our contacts’ phone numbers or email addresses—that’s a job for our Macs, iPhones, and iPads. This sort of data is so core to using digital devices that Apple has long provided an ecosystem-wide solution in the form of Contacts and syncing through iCloud. Unfortunately, it’s all too common to end up with multiple cards for the same person in Contacts, either precise duplicates or versions that contain different details. Further muddying the situation, many of us have multiple contact accounts—such as from...
Do you need to be careful about how much data you use with your iPhone or iPad, either via cellular or Wi-Fi? That could be true for those with Internet data caps, people using an international plan while traveling, and anyone in an area with slow data speeds. To reduce your data usage, turn on Low Data Mode, which you can do separately for cellular and Wi-Fi. For cellular, look in Settings > Cellular > Cellular Data Options, where you can either enable Low Data Mode for LTE/4G or take...
For several decades, Russia has targeted a wide variety of cyberattacks at countries with which it has had disputes. That includes the United States and other Western nations, which have recently levied unprecedented sanctions against Russia after it invaded Ukraine. President Biden has warned that “Russia could conduct malicious cyber activity against the United States” in response, encouraging the private sector to increase the protection of systems and networks. This isn’t theoretical—the US Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency lists numerous such attacks in the last five years. It’s tempting to...
Although the Mac’s Dock shows all your running apps, it’s often not the most efficient way to switch among them. Instead, turn to the App Switcher. You may know that pressing Command-Tab switches to the last-used app, making it easy to flip back and forth between two apps. However, if you press Command-Tab and continue to hold the Command key down, the App Switcher itself appears, with icons for all running apps. When you let up on the Command key, the App Switcher disappears, and you’ll switch to the selected...
If you’re thinking about buying a new Mac, you’re almost certainly planning to get one that uses a chip from Apple’s M1 family—the M1, M1 Pro, M1 Max, and M1 Ultra. Only the Mac Pro and one Mac mini configuration still rely on Intel CPUs, and they will likely be discontinued before the end of 2022. That’s not a bad thing—the M1 chips offer astonishing performance combined with low power consumption. But the move from Intel chips to Apple silicon has changed the game when it comes to one decision:...
Although Apple has improved the built-in password management features in macOS and iOS (you can now add notes to password entries!), third-party password managers like 1Password and LastPass are still more capable. For those still getting started using a password manager, another new capability will ease the transition: Safari password export. To export a CSV file of your Safari passwords, choose Safari > Preferences > Passwords, and enter your password when prompted. From the bottom of the left-hand sidebar, click the ••• button, choose Export All Passwords, and save the...
Long gone are the days of printing a document, marking it up with a red pencil, and sending it back to the author to input the changes. In the modern world, we use comments and change tracking to collaborate in word processors like Microsoft Word, Google Docs, Apple’s Pages, and Nisus Writer Pro. The specifics vary a little by app, but in essence, once you turn on change tracking, every change you make becomes visible to others working on the document, and they can accept or reject the change. Changes...
We’ve become accustomed to our iPhones and iPads switching into Low Power Mode to preserve battery life, and you can enable it manually if you want to reduce power usage for a day. New in macOS 12 Monterey for the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro is a similar feature, though you must enable it manually. Open System Preferences > Battery, click Battery in the sidebar, and select Low Power Mode. It reduces the screen brightness automatically and may decrease CPU performance. Make sure to turn it off once you don’t...
Whether you have guests who want to get on your home Wi-Fi network, customers who need to join your business network, or attendees who want to use your conference network, it’s always fussy to share the network name and password. If an iPhone user has your Apple ID email address in Contacts, their device should automatically prompt you to share your Wi-Fi password, but that won’t work in many situations. Here’s another option: a QR (Quick Response, if you’re curious) code that, once scanned, lets the person join your network...
In iOS 15 and iPadOS 15, Apple added a feature that would have been even more welcome before the advent of the App Library: the capability to manage apps from Search. But it’s still handy as a way to delete or position an app you can’t find on a Home screen page. Swipe down from the middle of the Home screen to enter Search, after which you can work with any app you see in Siri Suggestions or find with a search ➊. Touch and hold an app to display...
We all have old electronics squirreled away in our drawers and closets. It’s hard to admit that a computer, phone, or peripheral that cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars years ago has little or no value. That’s doubly true if it doesn’t work anymore. Once you’ve decided to get rid of that PowerBook 520 from the 1990s or your first digital camera from 2004, resist the urge to toss it in the trash. In some places, it’s illegal to throw out electronics because they tend to contain heavy metals...
Normally, when you rotate an iPad, the screen happily flips from portrait (vertical) to landscape (horizontal) orientation as appropriate. Rotating an iPhone has the same effect in some apps, though many are written to work only in one orientation. If you ever end up in a situation where your device’s screen doesn’t rotate when you think it should, the reason is likely that Rotation Lock has been turned on in Control Center. Swipe down from the top-right corner of your screen (or up from the bottom of the screen on...
At its March 8th Peek Performance event, Apple freshened its iPhone and iPad product lines with a new third-generation iPhone SE and fifth-generation iPad Air, along with new green hues for the iPhone 13 line. Then Apple focused on the big announcements of the day: the entirely new Mac Studio, powered by the insanely fast M1 Ultra chip and accompanied by the stunning 27-inch Studio Display. Mac Studio with M1 Ultra and Studio Display Redefine the Mac Lineup In 2020, Apple started to transition Macs away from Intel processors to...
For years now, Apple has made transparency a part of the macOS interface, which has the effect of blending the menu bar into the background and making menus and some windows take on the background hue, as you can see on the left side of the illustration below. For many people, transparency blurs the interface, making it harder to differentiate interface elements from the wallpaper. It also causes problems for screenshots meant for publication because the images end up with unrepresentative color levels. To prevent that from happening, open System...
Over the past few months, there has been a spate of media reports about how people may have been tracked without their knowledge using AirTags, Apple’s elegant location trackers. Like many mainstream media forays into the tech world, the reports are often short on detail and sometimes unclear on the reality of how the AirTags work. Nor is it clear that there have been many successful cases of AirTag abuse, but the mere fact that people are trying to use AirTags to stalk others is concerning. Apple put significant effort...
There’s little more frustrating than running out of space, which always seems to happen at just the wrong time. Luckily, Apple makes it easy to check any time, before it becomes a problem. On the Mac, choose About This Mac from the Apple menu and click Storage. On an iPhone or iPad, navigate to Settings > General > iPhone/iPad Storage. For iCloud, you can look in either System Preferences > Apple ID on the Mac or in Settings > Your Name > iCloud > Manage Storage on an iPhone or...
The beauty of the iPhone camera is that it combines the ease of use of a point-and-shoot camera with the image quality of a DSLR. To take a picture, you simply open the Camera app, frame your shot, and tap the shutter button. Simple, but what’s happening behind the scenes is anything but. The iPhone captures multiple images at once, concentrating on variables such as exposure, focus, tone, highlights, shadows, and more. It then merges all that data to produce what it thinks is the best possible image. Impressively, all...
Back in iOS 14, Apple added the App Library, which collects all the apps on your iPhone. With everything available in the App Library, iOS 14 was also able to provide the option of hiding Home screen pages, a boon for those of us with too many disorganized pages. In iOS 15, Apple has taken the next step. You can still hide Home screen pages, but if you never want to see them again, you can delete them (apps remain in the App Library). Or, if they’re not in the...
When it comes to upgrading to a new version of macOS, we err on the side of caution, at least in our recommendations. (We often install even beta releases on secondary machines for testing purposes.) Upgrading is easy, but if you upgrade too soon, the new version of macOS could render favorite apps inoperable, create workflow interruptions, and have other negative consequences. On the other hand, waiting too long can cause problems—it’s important so you can stay in sight of the cutting edge for security reasons and take advantage of...
Most of the time, when you unlock your iPhone or iPad, you want to launch an app. In iOS 15 and iPadOS 15, you no longer have to unlock the device, find the app on a Home screen page, and tap it. Instead, you can open an app directly from the Lock screen, assuming Settings > Face/Touch ID & Passcode > Today View and Search is turned on. Just swipe down from the middle of the Lock screen ➊ to access the Search screen, which lists apps from Siri Suggestions...
If you’re completely happy with your email provider, move on, there’s nothing to see here. But if you’re unhappy with your provider’s reliability, spam filtering, or stability as a business, or if you’re tired of having a 1990s-style address from aol.com or hotmail.com, you can switch. There are innumerable email providers, and many are undoubtedly good at what they do. But we’ve seen these services performing the best over the years. We’ll start with recommendations for business and then look at options for individuals. Business Accounts For a business, email...
It’s unfortunate that the most recent iteration of the Magic Mouse has its Lightning charging port on the bottom, making it impossible to use while charging, unlike the Magic Keyboard and Magic Trackpad, which work fine when plugged in. To check if your Magic Mouse needs charging before it starts to nag (and starts acting a little funky), look in one of these spots. If your menu bar is displaying the Bluetooth icon, click it, and the charge level should show up. Or click the Control Center icon on the...
As pandemic-related restrictions ebb and flow, many people continue to work from home at least some of the time. A key requirement for successful remote work is a fast, solid Internet connection. Unfortunately, it’s all too common for Internet connections to degrade over time as cables endure a variety of insults ranging from water seeping into connectors to squirrels gnawing through insulation. You might be surprised at how variable such problems can be—we once saw an Internet connection that dropped out infrequently; it turned out that squirrels had damaged just...
In previous versions of iOS, you could change the systemwide text size to make all apps—at least those that support Dynamic Type—display text at larger or smaller sizes. (Most people who use this feature want the text larger so it’s easier to read with aging eyes.) In iOS 15 and iPadOS 15, however, Apple lets you adjust the text size on a per-app basis, so you can increase it only for those apps where it really makes a difference for you. First, make sure Text Size is showing in Control...
Have you heard the expression “hit by a bus”? It’s a somewhat macabre attempt to inject a little levity into planning for the unthinkable event of dying without warning. No one expects to be hit by a bus, but people do die unexpectedly in all sorts of ways. That’s terrible, of course, but it’s also incredibly hard on that person’s family, who suddenly must deal with an overwhelming number of details. Many of those details revolve around the deceased’s digital life—devices, accounts, passwords, subscriptions, and more. We strongly encourage everyone,...
Few would disagree that the most popular image editing software in the world is Adobe Photoshop, the top illustration app is Adobe Illustrator, and the preeminent page layout package is Adobe InDesign. Many design and publishing professionals spend their lives in one or more of these apps. There’s one problem: cost. Adobe provides access to them only via Creative Cloud subscriptions, where each app costs $21 per month, making it hard to pass up the $53-per-month All Apps bundle that includes all three plus Premiere Pro, Acrobat Pro, and more....
Before macOS 12 Monterey, if you wanted to sell, trade in, or give away your Mac, you had to boot into Recovery, erase the internal drive with Disk Utility, and reinstall macOS to ensure that the new owner would get a fresh start and couldn’t see any of your data. In Monterey, Apple has made the process much easier for newer Macs that use Apple silicon or that are Intel-based with a T2 security chip. Open System Preferences, and from the System Preferences menu (yes, it has menus), choose Erase...
Siri has plenty of tricks up its sleeve, and we’ve just discovered a new one. Let’s say you set iPhone alarms to wake up and remind you to take medication throughout the day. However, if you don’t have your iPhone handy when those alarms go off, it can be annoying (for both you and others) to find your phone and stop or snooze the alarm. If you have a HomePod, it turns out that you (or someone else) can say, “Hey Siri, snooze the alarm” or “Hey Siri, stop the...
Apple’s Find My technology is a lifesaver when it works, enabling you to locate and potentially retrieve lost or stolen devices. It’s not perfect, even with the addition of the Find My Network, which drafts other nearby Apple devices to relay the location of a lost device, but it’s a heck of a lot better than nothing. Part of the problem is that you have to notice that a device is missing before you can bring Find My into play to see where it might be. No longer, thanks to...
Some people find it hard to find the mouse pointer at times, particularly on a large screen or when working in Dark Mode or in apps with dark interfaces. You’ve long been able to increase the size of the pointer generally and also zoom it temporarily by shaking it, but in macOS 12 Monterey, Apple now lets you change the color of the pointer. That could be a boon to those who have trouble seeing it otherwise. Go to System Preferences > Accessibility > Display > Pointer, click the Pointer...
Quick quiz: what does a red number badge on the Phone icon on your iPhone mean? You’d be right if you said that it indicates the number of missed calls or voicemail messages. The Mail and Messages apps also use a red badge to display the number of unread messages; Settings uses one to indicate that software updates are available; and Reminders shows a badge for the number of tasks due today. Third-party apps also use red badges to indicate that some number of somethings await you inside. You’ll also...
The new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models feature a camera housing built into the screen, resulting in a notch like that on the iPhone. Most developers are updating their apps to ensure that no controls or menu bar items appear blocked or hidden by the notch, but if you use an older app that doesn’t play nicely with the notch, there’s a fix. Quit the app if it’s running, select it in the Finder’s Applications folder, and choose File > Get Info. In the Info window that opens, select...
We continually recommend that every Apple user rely on a password manager like 1Password or LastPass for creating, managing, and entering passwords securely. What we haven’t encouraged as heavily is relying on Apple’s built-in password management features. Although they’re free, they’ve been too basic and hard to use over the years, relying largely on an ancient utility called Keychain Access. However, with the release of iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS 12 Monterey, Apple has at long last created a coherent platform-wide interface—the bluntly named Passwords—for viewing, editing, and deleting...
If mailing your holiday cards (which you designed in Photos with a plug-in like Motif or Mimeo Photos, right?) is made harder by having to write addresses on envelopes, you can skip the handwriting step this year. Although many people don’t realize this, it’s easy to print mailing labels on standard label stock using the Contacts app on the Mac. You can even add a personal touch by including a graphic and using a custom color and font choice. Follow these steps: In Contacts, choose File > New Group to...
Did you know that pressing and holding the side button and one of the volume buttons on an iPhone 8 or later brings up a screen that lets you power your iPhone off, show your medical ID, and invoke Emergency SOS? (On earlier iPhones, press the side or top button five times.) Slide Emergency SOS, and your iPhone will immediately call emergency services, which could be lifesaving in a real emergency. Even without touching that slider, if you continue to hold the side button and volume button, after a 5-second...
Do you like using full-screen mode on your new M1-based MacBook Pro but hate having the menu bar disappear unless you move the pointer to the top of the screen? Happily, in macOS 12 Monterey, Apple has at long last added a setting to keep the menu bar visible at all times. Open System Preferences > Dock & Menu Bar and uncheck “Automatically hide and show the menu bar in full screen.” The change won’t affect apps currently in full-screen mode until you toggle their window state again or quit...
It’s no exaggeration to say that videoconferencing went mainstream during the pandemic. However, Apple’s FaceTime didn’t stack up well against Zoom and others due to its emulation of the telephone call experience, questionable interface decisions, and lack of cross-platform compatibility. However, with iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS 12 Monterey, Apple has nearly brought FaceTime into feature parity with Zoom and others and it has even added a few features that break new ground. FaceTime Links One of the smallest new features in FaceTime may be the most important. No...
Thanks to Apple’s 2020 acquisition of weather company Dark Sky, the iPhone’s Weather app has learned some new tricks in iOS 15. (It still isn’t available on the iPad, oddly.) Most obvious is its addition of weather maps that can show precipitation, temperature, and air quality. More subtle are the notifications that can alert you to incoming precipitation at your precise location. To turn them on in Weather, tap the location button in the lower-right corner of the screen, tap Turn On Notifications, and agree to the necessary location and...
Between texts, alarms, reminders, calls, and myriad other notifications on our iPhones, iPads, and Macs, it’s a miracle we get anything done at all. To free us from this onslaught, Apple previously provided Do Not Disturb, which let you set times during which you could be free from interruption. In iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS 12 Monterey, Apple has gone even further. Do Not Disturb is now called Focus, and Apple has made it more powerful and flexible. Focus can turn on automatically at certain times, at particular locations,...
Safari 15.1 Reverses Course, Reverts to Old Tab Interface With the betas of Safari 15 on the Mac and iPad, Apple experimented with a variety of interface tweaks related to tabs. By the time Safari 15 shipped, however, Apple had pulled back on the more radical changes from the betas, offering the new Compact Tab Bar layout and colorized tab bar as options. Even with the more traditional Separate Tab Bar layout, however, tabs appeared as buttons above your favorites, a switch from earlier versions of Safari. With Safari 15.1...
Live Text Digitizes Text in Photos in iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS 12 Monterey The most magical feature of Apple’s latest crop of operating systems—iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS 12 Monterey—may be Live Text. You’re probably familiar with the concept of optical character recognition (OCR), which turns all the text on a scanned page into normal text you can select, copy, and edit. Live Text does exactly that in Photos, Safari, and the Camera app, plus lets you search for text in photos. And it does it in...
Avoid Unusual Top-Level Domains in Custom Domain Names Remember the heady dotcom days, when businesses were desperate to get a short, memorable, easily typed .com domain? It quickly became difficult to get what you wanted—so much so that deep-pocketed companies paid exorbitant sums for just the right domain. Before we go any further, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page. Domain names are necessary because computers on the Internet are all identified by inscrutable numeric IP addresses. You can remember and type apple.com easily; 184.31.17.21 not so much....
Apple Provides Temporary iCloud Backup Space for New Device Transfers When you move from an old iPhone or iPad to a new one, the easiest approach is often the Quick Start device-to-device transfer. But if that doesn’t work, or if you have to give up one device before receiving the other, iCloud Backup is a fine alternative. Fine, that is, if you have enough iCloud storage space, which many people with the free 5 GB plan do not. For devices running iOS 15 or iPadOS 15, Apple just introduced the...
Need to Resize Images in Various Ways? Give Preview a Try Even those of us who don’t work with graphics professionally often find ourselves needing to resize images. Perhaps you have a large square headshot, but the site to which you’re uploading requires it to be exactly 100 by 100 pixels. Or maybe you have an iPhone 13 Pro photo that’s 4032 by 3024, but you need the long side to be 1280 pixels and the short side to be 800 pixels. You might even need to cut out an...
Use Visual Look Up in Photos in iOS 15 to Identify Plants, Pets, and More Have you ever wanted to identify a plant, flower, or pet breed, or find out what that famous painting is called? Us too. In iOS 15 and iPadOS 15, Apple added a new AI-driven feature called Visual Look Up that provides more information about photos of plants, flowers, pets, books, artworks, and landmarks. When you’re viewing a photo, swipe up or tap the sparkle-badged info button ➊ to see metadata about the image (camera model,...
The Best Apple-Related Gifts for 2021 It may seem early to start thinking about the holiday shopping season, but with the global supply chain suffering pandemic-related slowdowns, there’s no telling how long it will take to get something you order today. Apple has generally done a good job of managing its supply chain issues, but even still, if you want to make sure you have an Apple something for that special someone, we recommend buying it soon. Here are our recommendations. AirTag Do you know someone who’s always misplacing their...
With Apple Watch Faces, Too Much Choice Can Be Confusing The Apple Watch has a lot to offer older people, including heart rate monitoring, atrial fibrillation detection, fall detection, and electrocardiogram recording. But if you are—or are helping someone who is—of the generation where watches once did nothing beyond telling the time, too many options can be overwhelming. Adding to the confusion is how easy it is to create and accidentally swipe between multiple watch faces, making it so the Apple Watch suddenly looks and works completely differently. If that’s...
Apple Radically Improved Multitasking in iPadOS 15. Here’s How to Use It Multitasking has long been a mess on the iPad, not so much because it didn’t work but because it was tough to memorize the secret swipes necessary to put multiple apps into Split View, work with multiple windows in apps that supported them, and hide and show what you wanted in Slide Over. In iPadOS 15, Apple hasn’t changed the underlying multitasking capabilities much, but it has made them far more discoverable with onscreen controls and tips that...
When Migrating to a New iPhone or iPad, Try Quick Start First You have a new iPhone or iPad—congratulations! When transferring your data to the new device, you have three options: Quick Start, an iCloud backup, or a Mac backup. All will work, but they don’t quite provide the same end result (particularly if you didn’t encrypt your Mac backup). Our advice—backed by this post from Apple expert John Gruber—is to try Quick Start first because it transfers everything directly from your old device to your new one, maintaining app...
Messages Not Being Delivered to Blue-Bubble Friends? Check Cellular Data Here’s a tricky situation that threw one of our clients for a loop recently. Texts they sent in Messages via iMessage (indicated by blue bubbles) to their son, letting him know they were stopping by weren’t being delivered, making their visits a surprise. But other texts worked fine. The problem, it turned out, was that Cellular Data had somehow gotten turned off in Settings > Cellular. So messages worked fine as long as the iPhone was on Wi-Fi at home,...
Last year, Apple started to transition Macs away from Intel processors to its custom M1 system-on-a-chip. The M1’s performance is stellar, but Apple has used it only in low-end models so far: the MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, Mac mini, and new 24-inch iMac. For professionals looking for more power, Apple unveiled the future of high-end Macs at its October 18th Unleashed event. Two new chips—the M1 Pro and M1 Max—increase performance significantly beyond the M1, and Apple built them into new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models along with...
New Features to Try (Or Not) in Safari 15 Along with a new version of Safari in iOS 15 and iPadOS 15, Apple has released Safari 15 for macOS 11 Big Sur and macOS 10.15 Catalina. Why do this before macOS 12 Monterey ships? Some of the browser’s new capabilities—notably the Tab Groups feature—integrate it more deeply into your Apple device experience by syncing across devices. So, assuming you have Safari 15 on at least some of your devices, what’s new, and is it any good? New Tab Bar Interface...
When It Comes to Wi-Fi Networks, Sometimes It’s Better to Forget It’s easy, particularly when traveling, to end up connecting to a Wi-Fi network that doesn’t provide Internet access, requires credentials you don’t have, or lacks access to the network’s printer. Unfortunately, once your iPhone, iPad, or Mac has connected to such a network, it may reconnect to it later, causing consternation when things don’t work. The solution? Whenever you realize a Wi-Fi network is worthless, forget it. (The network, that is.) On the Mac, open System Preferences > Network...
Topics: We welcome Jon Brown of Grove Technologies. Jon is a long time VIP supporter of the show. Jon recalls attending a WWE even with the CCP crew, thanks to Joe’s sister. Starting a new business proved to be challenging initially. He talks about his learning curve and experiences building his current business. Jon has a concept like Uber for Tech Support. Grove Technologies is going to offer its internal SaaS based tool for other businesses and industries. There are integrations built for other tools like Addigy, Watchman, Jamf, etc....
What Is iCloud+ and What Can You Do With It? As you upgrade to iOS 15, iPadOS 15 (and macOS 12 Monterey by the end of the year), you’re going to see references to iCloud+. You might even already be an iCloud+ subscriber! That’s because iCloud+ is Apple’s new name for what you get if you pay for additional iCloud storage for yourself and up to five family members, which has been possible for a long time. iCloud+ comes with some new features as well, namely iCloud Private Relay (still...
After Upgrading to iOS 15, Check Do Not Disturb in Focus Settings In iOS 15 and iPadOS 15, Apple expanded the concept of Do Not Disturb to what it calls Focus. You can create a Focus for different types of activities, so only specific people and apps can break through your cone of silence at appropriate times. Focus subsumes the old Do Not Disturb functionality, and your settings may not transfer when you upgrade, leaving you open to being woken at night by a previously silenced notification. To check and...
Beware the Bulging Battery! (And What to Do If Yours Expands) We’ve been seeing a spate of bulging batteries of late, both in Mac laptops and iPhones. A bulging battery is a Very Bad Thing™ and must be dealt with immediately because it could catch fire or even explode. As lithium-ion batteries age, the chemical reactions that produce power no longer complete fully, resulting in the creation of gasses that can cause the battery to swell. Additionally, manufacturing errors or damage to the membranes that separate the internal layers of...
In iOS 14, Apple added a feature that warns you when one of your website passwords stored in iCloud Keychain has appeared in a data breach. We’ve fielded some questions of late from people worrying if the message is legitimate, and if so, what they should do. What has happened is that online criminals have stolen username and password data from a company, and your credentials were included in that data breach. You should indeed change your password immediately, and it’s fine to let the iPhone suggest a strong password...
In 2017, Apple added support for Qi wireless charging to the iPhone 8 and iPhone X, and with the iPhone 12 lineup, it introduced its own MagSafe wireless charging technology. There’s no denying the convenience of wireless charging, but keep in mind that it’s extremely inefficient compared to wired charging. Individually, that may not matter much when you’re charging overnight from a wall-connected charger. But across billions of phones, it’s more problematic. One estimate suggests that wireless charging requires nearly 50% more power than cable. And if you’re charging from...
For many years, Apple’s Reminders app let you sort your lists, but in just one way that applied to all lists equally. That was a problem if you had a to-do list that you wanted to sort by Due Date and a list of foods in your freezer that you wanted to sort by Creation Date (to see which were older) or Title (for a simple alphabetical sort). Happily, in iOS 14 and macOS 11 Big Sur, Apple finally addressed this limitation, letting you sort each list independently. Your choices...
Although spam remains as much of a scourge as ever, spam filters have improved enough that most people see relatively little spam and lose relatively few legitimate messages (known as “ham”) to spam filters. However, good email messages are still sometimes caught by spam filters. To reduce the chance of missing an important message, consider making a “ham filter.” A ham filter looks for certain words—usually proper nouns—that are likely to appear only in legitimate messages and then marks such messages as Not Spam or moves them out of a...
September is traditionally when new iPhones are ripe for the picking, and this year’s crop is no exception. At its California Streaming event on September 14th, Apple unveiled four iPhone 13 models. Apple also announced the expected Apple Watch Series 7, but entirely unanticipated were an upgrade to the iPad and a redesigned iPad mini. Left to the fine print in Apple’s press releases was the fact that iOS 15, iPadOS 16, and watchOS 8 will become available for download on September 20th. As we’ve said before, you should wait...
September is here, which means that Apple will soon start releasing major upgrades for all its operating systems. Apple previewed these releases at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June, and many people have been testing the public betas since. Once Apple judges macOS 12 Monterey, iOS 15, iPadOS 15, watchOS 8, and tvOS 15 to be ready for prime time, the question arises—when should you install them? (Note that we say when and not if. There’s no harm in delaying a major operating system upgrade until Apple has sanded off...
For most homes and offices, a standard or mesh Wi-Fi network works fine for providing Internet access throughout the building. And when higher throughput is necessary, it’s usually not that difficult to pull Ethernet cable from room to room. But some buildings seem almost impervious to networking—imagine thick brick walls that both block Wi-Fi signals and make it nearly impossible to pull wire from one room to another. It may not be the entire building—you may just have trouble extending a network into a remote attic or basement room, or...
Imagine you’re staring at a file or folder—perhaps confidential employee information that you need to send to your accountant. If attaching it to an email message makes you think, “That doesn’t seem like a good idea,” award yourself a gold star! Sending sensitive files via email is a bad idea, partly because the email could be intercepted in transit (possible but highly unlikely), but more because the files then live in both your and your recipient’s email accounts in an unprotected form. If an attacker were to gain access to...
Apple’s recent announcement that it would soon be releasing two new technologies aimed at protecting children has generated a firestorm of media coverage and questions from customers. Unfortunately, much of the media coverage has been based on misconceptions about how the technology works, abetted by uncharacteristically bungled communications from Apple. It’s not inconceivable that Apple will modify or even drop these technologies in the official release of iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS 12 Monterey, but in the meantime, we can provide answers to the common questions we’ve been hearing....
Some clients have reported problems with HP laser printers failing to print. Sometimes there’s an error. Other times, the print job just disappears into the ether. It’s unclear why this is happening or how widespread it is, but here’s a workaround that can help. Create a new printer configuration by clicking the + button in System Preferences > Printers & Scanners and selecting your printer in the list. Then, from the Use pop-up menu, choose something other than the default Secure AirPrint driver. We’ve had the most luck with Generic...
You know you can make albums and smart albums in Photos, and do searches to find photos that contain particular objects. But what if you want to separate photos from videos, identify which images in an album have been edited, or pick out just the ones you’ve favorited? For that, use Photos’ filters. On the Mac (below left), click the Showing menu in the upper-right corner, and in iOS and iPadOS (iPhone screens below right), tap the ••• button in the upper-right corner and tap Filter. Either way, you can...
We constantly say, “Use a password manager!” for good reason. Password managers make it easy to generate, store, and enter strong passwords. You don’t have to decide whether or not your password is strong or weak, remember it, and type it accurately every time you log in to a website. Seriously, just get 1Password or LastPass, or you could use Apple’s iCloud Keychain. But what about those passwords you have to enter regularly, like your Mac’s login password, your Apple ID password, and the master password for your password manager?...
Most Apple Watch users charge their watch every night, putting it on a charger as part of a bedtime routine. If that’s you, make sure you’re not missing one of the Apple Watch’s best features: nightstand mode. When you enable it in the iPhone’s Watch app, in General > Nightstand Mode, a charging Apple Watch displays the charging status, current time and date (in a large, easily readable font), and the time of any alarm you’ve set. It uses a green color that won’t shock your eyes in the middle...
Do you have a child heading off to college soon? As you’re undoubtedly aware from high school, a computer is essential for a college student. If you haven’t been paying close attention to Apple’s Mac lineup, you might wonder which model makes the most sense. First, don’t buy anything without first checking with the college. Many college departments have specific requirements based on the software that students have to use in their classes. Generally, these revolve around processor type, amount of RAM, and storage space. Luckily, current Macs should meet...
In cybercriminal circles, ransomware is all the rage. Once it has infected a computer, it encrypts all the files and then presents a ransom demand—pay up to get the decryption software necessary to recover the data. Ransomware has been in the news all year, with the Colonial Pipeline attack in particular spending weeks in the headlines. Attacks rose 485% in 2020 and show no signs of abating. The amounts demanded by the attackers are increasing, too, with PC manufacturer Acer and Apple supplier Quanta both hit with $50 million demands....
It’s common to want to share files, photos, and other data between your devices—or with friends and family. When the desired person or device isn’t nearby, it’s easiest to use Messages or Mail. But what if you want to move a file between two of your Macs, from your iPhone to your Mac, or to your friend who’s across the table? For transfers within immediate proximity, Apple provides AirDrop, a quick and easy way to move data between devices. Make Sure AirDrop Is Ready to Go First off, AirDrop requires...
Sure, you could select a file in the Finder and choose File > Move to Trash or drag it to the Trash in the Dock. Similarly, you can trash selected photos in Apple’s Photos app by choosing Image > Delete X Photos, or by pressing the Delete key, but both of those methods result in a dialog asking if you’re sure. The easiest way of trashing a file in the Finder or a picture in Photos is to select it and press Command-Delete. Poof, it’s in the Trash (Finder) or...
It’s tempting to think that most external storage devices—whether simple hard drives or more complicated network-attached storage (NAS) units—are relatively similar because they all do roughly the same thing. However, a recent problem with older Western Digital My Book Live NAS devices highlighted that there can be large differences. In that case, hackers figured out how to cause a factory reset that wiped the entire drive of all files. (If you have one, note that Western Digital recommends disconnecting it from the Internet immediately.) Two tips: Although no one could...
As vaccination rates climb, many businesses are starting to think about reopening their offices and bringing back employees who have been working from home for the last year. That’s a big decision that will undoubtedly vary from company to company, but we’d like to suggest a few things to consider. Please contact us early in such deliberations so we can provide guidance before problems crop up. Full Return or Hybrid Model? Perhaps the biggest question firms will have to answer is if they’ll require all employees to return or if...
Complaining about getting too much email is like complaining about bad traffic—we brought it upon ourselves, and while it’s impossible to escape entirely, it’s worth knowing how to reduce it. Apple is fully cognizant of the issue, too, and has built features into the last couple versions of Mail—on the Mac, iPhone, and iPad—to help out. Here are three that you might find useful in different situations: mute, block, and unsubscribe. Mute It’s a huge email conversation about the annual holiday party at work, but you can’t go, and more...
Don’t you hate it when a familiar song is playing but you can’t think of what it’s called? Or worse, when you hear a new track you really like but have no one to ask what it is? Never worry about that again, thanks to your iPhone or iPad. Back in 2018, Apple bought the music identification app Shazam and has since integrated it into iOS. You can still use Shazam, but it’s easier to ask Siri, “What’s playing?” or tap the Music Recognition button in Control Center (add it...
With mask wearing over the past year rendering Face ID ineffective at cash registers, we’ve become fond of using the Apple Watch for contactless payments with Apple Pay. We recommend it highly since it’s so fast and convenient. Once you’ve set up a credit card in the Wallet app on your iPhone, switch to the Watch app, go to My Watch > Wallet & Apple Pay, and tap the Add button next to the desired card. From then on, to pay for a purchase, double-click the Apple Watch’s side button...
For many people, increasing vaccination rates mean that long-delayed vacations are now possible, and in-person conferences are slowly starting up again too. But before you head out for the beach or the convention center, you’ll want to write an out-of-office email auto-reply message to send to everyone who tries to get in touch while you’re away. A bit of thought upfront could reduce stress for your correspondents—and ensure that they don’t hunt you down for that burning question. Before we look at what information should be in an effective out-of-office...
As climate change continues to wreak havoc on our weather, many areas are seeing record temperatures this summer—Seattle just recorded its hottest days ever. You may be able to trade your business suit for shorts or skirts to stay more comfortable, but your electronic gear can’t do the same. Keeping your tech cool is about more than comfort—as temperatures rise, performance can suffer, charging may get slower or stop, various components might be disabled, and devices can become unreliable. How Hot Is Too Hot? You might be surprised by how...
Many security breaches—even high-profile ones—stem from simple oversight. There’s one spot in macOS that has long been particularly susceptible to such lapse: the Sharing pane of System Preferences. In it, you can enable a wide variety of sharing services, some of which could allow another user to access your Mac remotely. They all let you limit access to particular users, but passwords can be stolen, accounts can be compromised, and server software can have bugs. For safety’s sake, if you’re not actively using a sharing service, turn it off. The...
People talk about “the cloud” all the time these days, but what do they really mean? There’s no agreed-on definition, which can render some conversations nearly inscrutable. We can’t pretend to have the final answer—if there will ever be such a thing—but here’s how we think of “the cloud.” (And now we’ll stop quoting it.) At a basic level, many people seem to equate the cloud with anything that’s online or with the Internet as a whole. That’s not incorrect, since everything in the cloud does take place online and...
You’ve likely seen mention of the dispute between Apple and Facebook. It revolves around App Tracking Transparency (ATT), a technology Apple released in iOS 14.5. The goal of ATT is to give iPhone and iPad users more control over the extent to which app makers can track their data and activities across apps and websites owned by other companies. Before App Tracking Transparency, nothing prevented companies from sucking a vast amount of data about your everyday activities and connecting it to other data to build an insanely detailed picture of...
Although extremely uncommon, it’s not unheard of for a Mac, particularly an older model, to restart unexpectedly. If it happens once, chalk it up to cosmic rays and move on. But if it happens multiple times, try these two things right off. First, use compressed air to remove dust from cooling vents or the inside of the Mac, if you can open it up. Dust can cause heat buildup, which can in turn cause restarts. Second, try plugging the Mac into a different electric circuit or, ideally, into an uninterruptible...
pple did a good job rethinking some aspects of credit card use with the Apple Card, but one omission was the inability to share it with other family members. With the new Apple Card Family, once everyone has upgraded to iOS 14.6, you can add members of your Family Sharing group to your Apple Card account as either Co-Owners or Participants. Co-Owners can merge their credit lines, manage the account together, and build credit as equals. You can also invite children over 13 and young adults as Participants. For their...
Apple’s new AirTag tracking device is an amazing bit of technology—it’s an elegant disc about the size of a stack of four US quarters that communicates its location with other Apple devices using Bluetooth and Ultra Wideband. Pair an AirTag with your iPhone and put it in your laptop bag, and from then on, you can use the Find My app to find your bag no matter where you’ve left it. The key to the system is Apple’s Find My network of hundreds of millions of Apple devices, which detect...
At its Worldwide Developer Conference keynote on June 7th, Apple shared details about what we can expect to see later this year in macOS 12 Monterey, iOS 15, iPadOS 15, watchOS 8, tvOS 15, and HomePod Software 15. It was a firehose of announcements, but one thing became clear: Apple wants to spread its technologies across its entire ecosystem of devices. Although each platform—Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and HomePod—retains its unique qualities, nearly every feature that the company announced works across as many platforms as make sense....
A new feature of Messages in both iOS 14 and macOS 11 Big Sur is the option to pin up to nine conversations at the top of the conversation list for easy access. No longer do you have to worry about them scrolling out of sight. On an iPhone or iPad, touch and hold a conversation and tap Pin in the menu that appears; on a Mac, Control-click the conversation and choose Pin. (Remove them by repeating the action and choosing Unpin.) Each of your devices can have different conversations...
2020 Recap With 2020 fading into the distance, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on the year. It was a challenging year for all of our clients and for Grove. The pandemic brought a new level of uncertainty and fear to the forefront of many of our clients’ minds, and it seems appropriate to address how Grove changed to ensure we provided the best possible support for you. Because of the stay-at-home mandates in most states we operate in, Grove started working from our respective homes in January...
Over the last decade, and particularly during the last year of pandemic life, documents have become more likely to arrive in email or as downloads than on paper. If you need to return a signed document on paper, it’s easy to print and sign it before popping it in the mailbox. But what if you need to send it back via email or another online method? You could print, sign, scan, and return the scanned document, but that’s both tedious and wasteful. Happily, Apple has made it easy to digitize...
Home screen widgets are one of the coolest features of iOS 14. They enable apps to offer quick access to features or at-a-glance previews of changing information, such as the Weather app’s widget providing a quick look at upcoming weather. What you may not realize, however, is that an app’s widgets become available for adding to your Home screen only if you have launched the app since upgrading to iOS 14. (To see the list, press and hold on an empty part of the Home screen and then tap the...
We’ve all gotten that panicked “Where are you?!?” text message at some point. Sometimes it’s an easy question to answer, but at other times, the answer is “Well, right here, wherever that is.” That’s unsatisfying, of course, but using Messages on your iPhone, you can do better. Tap the person’s name at the top of the conversation, tap the Info button, and in the screen that appears, tap Send My Current Location. Messages immediately sends a little thumbnail map showing where you are, and if the recipient taps it, they...
Have you heard the term technical debt? It’s what you incur whenever you delay upgrading software and hardware for too long. It’s like forgetting to brush your teeth regularly and putting off dental checkups. There may be no immediate downside, but the ongoing maintenance and low cost of regular cleanings will likely save you from painful and expensive fillings and root canals. It’s easy to start down the path toward technical debt. Perhaps you rely on an out-of-date productivity package, an industry-specific program that gets infrequent updates, or an accounting...
So you’ve gotten your COVID-19 vaccination. Congratulations, and thank you for nudging the planet closer to the herd immunity needed for life to return to normal! It’s a good idea to take a photo of your card as a backup before filing it with your other important papers, just in case. (If you lose the original, you may be able to get a new one from the site where you got the vaccine or through your state’s Immunization Information System.) However, we do want to offer a note of caution....
If your Mac is like ours, it’s a busy place, with oodles of open windows and lots of icons lying around. If you want to display the Desktop or see a single app’s windows, you may find yourself clicking around or using keyboard shortcuts, but did you know that you can access many of the Mac’s special views with just a flick of your wrist—no click necessary? A long-standing but little-known feature called Hot Corners makes this possible. The key to unlocking Hot Corners is in System Preferences, in either...
When you copy text from a Web page, PDF, or word processing document, macOS usually includes the associated formatting, so the words you paste may end up in 68-point blue italic if that was what the source text looked like. That’s often undesirable. More commonly, you want the text to take on the styling of the text where you’ve pasted it. In most Mac apps, there’s a quick trick to achieve this goal. Look on the Edit menu for the Paste and Match Style command (sometimes called Paste and Match...
After a long day of video calls, you might feel like your brain has been wrung out like a wet washcloth—we certainly do. It’s exhausting to stare into a computer for hours every day while participating in meetings or classes. This condition is called Zoom fatigue, and it’s a recent affliction for most of us because the pandemic has dramatically increased the popularity of video calls. We don’t mean to beat on Zoom here—this condition plagues people who use Cisco WebEx, FaceTime, Google Hangouts, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Skype, and...
If you’re using QuickBooks Online with the service’s Mac app to manage your business’s accounting, you may have seen a message like the one below announcing that Intuit has stopped updating the QuickBooks Online app. This doesn’t affect your QuickBooks Online account, which you can and should use via a Web browser at qbo.intuit.com now. Even if the QuickBooks Online Mac app continues to work, which it likely will for some time, we recommend that you delete it and switch entirely to a Web browser. It’s not safe to use...
You have to feel for Apple sometimes. The company’s engineers put an astonishing amount of work into the hardware and software necessary for Face ID to recognize your face nearly instantly and unlock your iPhone or iPad. Regardless of whether you’re wearing a hat and glasses. Even in the dark. It’s one of those pieces of technology that’s so advanced that it’s indistinguishable from magic. But the one thing that stymies Face ID every time is also the most important factor in curbing the spread of the coronavirus: the humble...
If you’ve turned on automatic App Updates in Settings > App Store on your iPhone or iPad, you might wonder how you’d know if an app was updated or what changed. To find that information, open the App Store app and tap your avatar icon in the upper-right corner. Scroll down and you’ll see an Updated Recently list. If you pull down on the screen, that will force it to refresh, and you may see a list called Upcoming Automatic Updates at the top. For any downloaded update, you can...
Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive all have their place, but as of March 2020, Apple users no longer have to venture outside the Apple ecosystem for online folder sharing. Before then, you could share a single file in iCloud with another iCloud user, but nothing more. With iCloud Drive Folder Sharing, you can share an entire folder, complete with permissions that control what your collaborators can do with the contents of the folder. Pros and Cons Why use iCloud Drive Folder Sharing instead of the more established services?...
In macOS 11 Big Sur, Apple went back to a design direction from the earliest days of Mac OS X: a translucent menu bar. Since its color changes depending on the desktop picture, many people aren’t enamored of it (left, below). Luckily, reverting to the traditional opaque menu bar is simple. Open System Preferences > Accessibility > Display and select Reduce Transparency. That will turn the menu bar gray again and make other windows and menus opaque, too (right, below). Simple gray might not be as whizzy as fancy transparency,...
On April 20th, Apple took to the Internet to stream its “Spring Loaded” event. Pundits had been unable to figure out a theme based on the name, but Apple was being blunt: the event was taking place in the spring, and it was loaded with announcements. With Apple CEO Tim Cook bookending the presentation—and doing a cameo as a master thief at 37:26 into the presentation—the company announced an M1-based 24-inch iMac, M1-based iPad Pro models, the long-rumored AirTag item tracker, and an enhanced Apple TV 4K with a redesigned...
Some of the trickiest editing and proofreading problems are related to characters you can’t typically see on the screen: spaces, tabs, and returns. Just because they’re invisible doesn’t mean they don’t affect the look of a document, often in negative ways. For instance: An extra space can cause an awkward jump from one word to the next, or it could push punctuation away from the final word in a clause or sentence. And yes, current convention among professional publishers and typographers calls for one space after a period, not two....
Along with the now-ubiquitous videoconferencing, screen sharing and online presentations have become vastly more common during the pandemic. This isn’t yet another article about how to give a better presentation or feel more confident. (Although those might happen too.) The goal of this article is to help you avoid situations that could embarrass you in front of clients, colleagues, or bosses. Follow this advice and you could avoid an unfortunate happenstance that might even cause you to be fired. Here’s the problem. Even more so than before the pandemic, our...
Given their integration into the Mac’s Finder, it can be easy to forget that online file sharing services like Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive can be accessed using a Web browser by anyone with your username and password. Obviously, you should always have strong, unique passwords, but to be safe, it’s best not to use services designed for public file sharing to store unencrypted files containing sensitive information like credit card numbers, Social Security numbers, passport scans, privileged legal documents, financial data, and so on. Keep such...
Email is a major part of all our lives, both personally and professionally, and as such, it can add up. Before you know it, you have years of email stored away—potentially tens or even hundreds of thousands of messages. Most of the time, that’s fine. Email doesn’t take up any physical space and not even that much digital space in the scheme of things. However, there are situations where you might want to archive email, by which we mean download it from the server and store it for posterity on...
This is a twofer tip. You may not have known that every document window in macOS has long had a proxy icon in the title bar, next to the filename. The proxy icon is not just cosmetic. You can drag it to Mail to attach the document to a message, to a Web browser to upload it, or to any other location you can drag a document’s icon in the Finder (top screenshot, below, showing Preview in Catalina). You can also drag proxy icons from Finder windows to Open and...
Since the earliest days of the iPhone, Apple’s Safari and Mail have been the default Web and email apps for iOS and, later, iPadOS. There was no way to choose alternatives that would be used whenever an app wanted to open a Web page or create an email message. That has now changed with iOS 14 and iPadOS 14. To switch to a different Web browser (such as Brave, DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser, Firefox, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, or Opera Touch) or a different email app (such as Boomerang, Chuck, Hey,...
For the most part, Spotlight works well. Press Command-Space or use the Search field in a Finder window, and it finds everything that matches your search term. Sometimes, however, Spotlight fails to turn up a file that you know is present, likely due to index corruption. To fix the problem, you can force Spotlight to rebuild its index. (Don’t do this unless it’s necessary since reindexing can take a long time and may impact the performance of your Mac while it’s happening.) Open System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy, and...
We’re cautious when it comes to recommending upgrades to new versions of macOS. Apple makes the upgrade process easy—though it can be time-consuming—but upgrading can create workflow interruptions, render favorite apps inoperable, and have other consequences. At the same time, it’s important to stay in sight of the cutting edge for security reasons and to take advantage of advances from Apple and other developers. Upgrading is not an if question; it’s a when question. We’re not saying that everyone needs to upgrade to macOS 11 Big Sur now, but if...
For you graphic designers out there, Adobe has announced that it will be ending support for PostScript Type 1 fonts starting with Photoshop in 2021. All Adobe apps will stop allowing users to author content using Type 1 fonts beginning January 2023. This announcement shouldn’t come as a surprise. Adobe introduced Type 1 fonts at the dawn of the Macintosh age back in 1984, started collaborating with Microsoft on the more versatile OpenType fonts in 1996, and stopped developing Type 1 fonts in 1999. Although some operating systems still support...
Last quarter, Apple’s Services segment generated a whopping $15.8 billion in revenue, 14% of the company’s total—sales of apps, media, and subscriptions are a big deal to Apple. And if you’re like us, you’re probably now paying Apple for services like Apple Music, extra storage for iCloud Photos, various app purchases and subscriptions, and perhaps the new Apple Fitness+. It’s a lot to keep track of, but particularly with subscriptions, it’s essential to stay on top of the charges and make sure you’re paying only for services you’re still using....
For those who cook, the Apple Watch provides a helpful Timer app that ensures we don’t forget whatever’s in the oven until it’s burnt to a crisp. Setting the timer is easy from the app’s interface, but even easier is using Siri: just hold the Digital Crown and say, “Set a timer for 8 minutes.” When the timer goes off, the watch makes a sound or vibrates and presents you with Stop and Repeat buttons. But often, when a timer goes off, you’re wearing oven mitts or moving quickly, making...
Typically, we like to help you solve problems in these articles. But there’s one problem we all face that has no good solution: ads on Web pages. Let us explain the background, after which you can decide how you want to proceed. Put simply, advertising is the economic engine of the Web. Google and Facebook make billions and billions of dollars every quarter, almost entirely on advertising. Publications ranging from the New York Times to your local newspaper rely on online ads for significant portions of their revenue. (Historically, newspapers...
Sadly, email is not an entirely reliable communications medium, thanks to spam filters, addressing errors, and server failures. With certain types of email, it’s worth double-checking that a message was seen. One example of that we see is with reports of phishing email, which miscreants use to try to trick you into revealing passwords, credit card info, or other sensitive information. Phishing messages can be tricky to identify—that’s their goal. If you’re forwarding a possible phishing email to us or another trusted technical contact for evaluation, remember that spam filters...
Remember when we had to keep magnets away from floppy disks to avoid scrambling them? Modern storage is no longer vulnerable, but magnets and electromagnetic fields from consumer electronics can interfere with medical devices, like implanted pacemakers and defibrillators. Although iPhone 12 models contain more magnets than prior models, Apple says they’re not expected to pose a greater risk of magnetic interference. However, after a study found that one pacemaker could be deactivated by holding an iPhone 12 near it, Apple issued a support document recommending that you keep your...
Hot on the heels of the release of the new Apple Silicon architecture, a new piece of malware for the Apple M1 processors was recently released. The malware has been detected on almost 37,000 Macs with no evidence yet of a harmful payload being found or determined. Security analysts have not been able thus far to determine the author or the malware’s specifics motives only so far as a proof of concept. There are two different types of this malware. One was built primarily for the Intel-powered Macs while the...
We’re all accustomed to the Do Not Disturb feature on our iPhones since they’re with us for most of the day and often spend the night next to the bed. But Apple long ago added Do Not Disturb to the Mac as well, and it’s useful for muting your Mac at night to eliminate unnecessary noises and for preventing unwanted notifications during presentations. In System Preferences > Notifications > Do Not Disturb, you can tell macOS to turn the feature on during specific times, when the display is sleeping or...
In the heyday of iTunes, Apple users stored their music, movies, and TV shows on their Macs and shared them with other Macs in their homes, as well as their iPhones, iPads, and Apple TVs. Of late, however, streaming has become Apple’s preferred media consumption approach, thanks to the rise of Apple Music and the way the Apple TV app aggregates video streaming services like Netflix. Nevertheless, even though iTunes has been replaced by the Music and TV apps on the Mac, it’s still possible to maintain your libraries of...
With iCloud Drive, Apple provides an Optimize Mac Storage checkbox that, when checked, stores the full contents of iCloud Drive on the Mac only if there’s enough space. However, you may wish to recover local storage space without selecting that option—luckily, that’s easy to do. Open iCloud Drive in the Finder, Control-click a file, and choose Remove Download. The file remains in iCloud Drive, and if you need it locally, you can click the cloud icon next to its name to download it. If you’re not sure which files in...
We regularly hear from people who think they need Adobe Acrobat DC to manipulate PDFs. Don’t misunderstand: Adobe Acrobat is the gold standard, but it’s complicated and expensive—$14.99 per month or as part of Creative Cloud for $52.99 per month. In contrast, Apple’s Preview is easy and free with macOS. Here are six tasks that people may think require Acrobat but can easily be accomplished in Preview. Remove and Rearrange or Export Pages Have a PDF with unnecessary pages? You can delete them in Preview. First, make sure page thumbnails...
With vaccinations underway, there’s light at the end of the COVID-19 pandemic tunnel. But given the enormity of the task and the unknowns surrounding coronavirus variants, we’ll still be in this tunnel for some time to come. Happily, there’s a new app called NOVID that, if you and your friends (and their friends, etc.) install it, provides early warning as COVID-19 infections creep closer in your personal network of connections. It’s like weather radar for disease. Developed by a Carnegie Mellon University math professor, NOVID is a free app for...
We’ve long recommended that everyone use a password manager like 1Password instead of attempting to memorize or write down passwords. Although there are other password managers, 1Password is the leading solution for Apple users, thanks to a focus on macOS and iOS from its earliest days. 1Password offers numerous benefits, including: Automatic generation of strong passwords so you don’t have to invent them Secure storage of passwords, even if your Mac or iPhone were stolen Automatic entry of usernames and passwords that’s much easier than manual entry Auditing of existing...
In iOS 14 and iPadOS 14, Apple added two new status indicators to the right side of the status bar at the top of the screen. They’re designed to give you feedback about what an app is doing. An orange dot indicates that an app is using the microphone, and a green dot means that an app is using the camera (and possibly the microphone as well). They’re subtle and shouldn’t be distracting, but if you ever notice them when you don’t think the camera or microphone should be in...
Our iPhones are the keys to our digital lives, holding our most private photos, conversations, and financial data, among much else. That’s why Apple goes to such lengths to help us protect our privacy and security. But we all have people with whom we share some level of access, whether that means shared photo albums, shared locations, or even shared passcodes. Unfortunately, trusted relationships sometimes disintegrate, occasionally in ugly ways that could endanger your safety. If that happens, you want to make sure to disable whatever sharing you had with...
For many years, Macs have relied on sets of keys held at startup to enable specific modes. Most notably, pressing Option displays the Startup Manager and lets you pick a boot drive, Command-R starts up from macOS Recovery, Command-Option-P-R resets the NVRAM, Shift starts up in Safe mode, D opens Apple Diagnostics to check the hardware, and T starts up in Target Disk Mode. Needless to say, obscure key combinations aren’t the friendliest way to help someone who may already be stressed out about their Mac not working, so Apple...
If you think of AirPods as earbuds, you’re not alone. But just as Apple has given us larger iPhone Max models, the company has now introduced the AirPods Max, which expand the traditional earbuds to full-sized headphones. The AirPods Max offer top-notch Apple design, premium materials, Active Noise Cancellation (with Transparency mode), Adaptive EQ, spatial audio, and tight integration into the Apple ecosystem with the custom H1 chip. They boast 20 hours of battery life, and the audio quality is reportedly very good, if not at the level of high-end...
Even as we get 5G cellular connectivity and high-speed Wi-Fi networks, there are plenty of times when you might want to reduce your data usage. Perhaps you’re trying to avoid running over a data cap while traveling, or maybe you’re sharing a Wi-Fi network with a very slow Internet connection. Either way, you can prevent your iPhone from using more data than necessary by enabling Low Data Mode. For cellular, find the switch in Settings > Cellular > Cellular Data Options. For Wi-Fi, in Settings Wi-Fi, tap the i button...
It’s difficult for most of us to imagine that a camera—something that still feels like it’s a standalone object—could be improved significantly with a software update. But now that cameras are part of our phones, code is king. With iOS 14, the camera in your iPhone becomes all the more capable. You’d be excused for not discovering the new features, though, so here’s a rundown. Apple ProRAW For professional and committed amateur photographers using an iPhone 12 Pro or Pro Max, perhaps the most important new feature of iOS 14...
We’ve published overviews of the major features in iOS 14 and iPadOS 14, along with detailed looks at our favorite features. But Apple keeps releasing updates with new features, and we wanted to take a moment to catch you up on what Apple has added in versions 14.1, 14.2, and 14.3. (If you’re running iOS 14 or iPadOS 14, you should update to the latest version, which is 14.3 as of this writing. There’s no benefit to staying at an interim version.) Here’s what you may have missed. Apple Fitness+...
Happy New Year! For many of us, the start of a new year is an opportunity to reflect on fresh habits we’d like to adopt. Although we certainly support any resolutions you may have made to get enough sleep, eat healthy, and exercise, could we suggest a few more that will improve your digital security? Keep Your Devices Updated One of the most important things you can do to protect your security is to install new operating system updates and security updates soon after Apple releases them. Although the details...
Suppose you have an older iPhone or iPad, especially one with only 16 GB of storage. In that case, it’s possible that you won’t have enough space to upgrade to iOS 14 or iPadOS 14 through Settings > General > Software Update. That’s often true due to an inexplicably large Other category when you look in Settings > General > iPhone/iPad Storage. Upgrading using iTunes (in macOS 10.14 Mojave and earlier) or the Finder (in 10.15 Catalina and later) is one workaround, but there’s another that’s often better. Make a...
Photos in iOS 14 provides four views of your library: Years, Months, Days, and All Photos. For the first three, Photos picks representative images that may not include particular shots you’re looking for. The All Photos view shows everything, but it can be overwhelming. What’s not apparent is that you can navigate All Photos more easily by pinching in to shrink the thumbnails and then pinching out to make them larger again. At the largest size, a single photo takes up the entire width of the screen.
In July 2017, Adobe announced that it would stop distributing and updating Flash Player on December 31st, 2020. Web standards like HTML5 provide a viable alternative to Flash content, and organizations that relied on Flash have had three years to replace it. Because Adobe will no longer be addressing security vulnerabilities in Flash with updates, Flash Player now prompts users to uninstall. We strongly recommend doing so—just click the Uninstall button if you get this alert. If you don’t, a Flash Player Install Manager app in your Utilities folder should...
Several years ago, Apple bought a company called Shazam, which made an app that identified songs by listening to the music playing nearby. Since then, Apple has built Shazam into Siri in iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS. Most recently, Apple added it to Control Center in iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 as well, so you can invoke it without speaking. To use Shazam, whenever you want to identify a song that’s playing nearby, just ask Siri, “What’s playing?” or tell it “Name that tune” or have some fun and say...
You probably know that you can select an image in the Finder and press the Space bar to preview it in a Quick Look window. And you may know that you can use the arrow keys to preview other files in the same folder without closing and reopening the Quick Look window. But did you know that if you select multiple images in the Finder and hold down the Option key when pressing the Space bar, the Finder will run a full-screen slideshow with a 5-second interval between images? Move...
You likely know that you can use Do Not Disturb to prevent random notifications on your iPhone from waking you at night—it’s easy to set a Do Not Disturb schedule for your usual sleeping hours. Another setting in there is important but often overlooked. If you ever use your iPhone during those Do Not Disturb hours—perhaps to read a book while a partner or roommate is asleep—you don’t want it to make any noise. To prevent that, in Settings > Do Not Disturb, make sure to set Silence to Always...
Starting with macOS 10.15.5 Catalina, Apple introduced a battery health management feature that improves your battery’s lifespan by adjusting charging patterns to reduce the rate at which the battery chemically ages. (Find it in System Preferences > Energy Saver > Battery Health.) One thing to be aware of with battery health management is that it might cause your MacBook to display “Battery Is Not Charging” in the battery status menu even when it’s plugged in. That’s normal, and it’s nothing to worry about. Of course, if you regularly see that...
You’ve likely seen our tip on using the Dock on an iPhone or iPad as a temporary holding place that makes rearranging apps easier. We’ve learned two new tips that help even more! First, you can move multiple apps at once. Start by touching an app, waiting to feel a tap, and then moving it (or just touch and hold and tap Edit Home Screen to enter jiggle mode first). Once you’ve picked up an app, drag it down to the blank spot on the right side of the Home...
With so many of us working at home these days, it’s worth remembering that spouses, children, and housemates may have easy physical access to your Mac. And, particularly if you share a Mac with them, you might want to consider how you protect your browsing privacy. Even if you wouldn’t be embarrassed if your spouse were to see what sites you visited, you might not want a nosy pre-teen or housemate’s snoopy friend scrolling through your browser history. Or you may just want to keep research into someone’s birthday present...
Ever since Apple introduced the Activity app to watchOS, you’ve been able to adjust your Move goal, which is measured in kilocalories, but your Exercise goal was locked at 30 minutes and the Stand goal at 12 hours. In watchOS 7, you can finally change these last two. In the Activity app on your Apple Watch, scroll to the bottom and tap Change Goals. Then, for each screen, adjust the goal numbers in whatever way will most motivate you. Some people like setting the goals higher than they’re likely to...
Topics: This week we welcome Jon Brown of Grove Technologies and VIP sponsor of Command Control Power! Jon takes us through his path of leaving a 9-to-5 job and starting a consultancy to fill a visible void. Grove Technologies started by focusing on organizations that had internal IT and could use supplemental support. Joe knows the feeling of not being able to take time off when you are a team of one. Grove Technologies is currently a team of 3 full time people and additional 1099 contractors. A problem we...
With iPadOS, you have to remember that it shares most of its capabilities with iOS. So if it seems that iPadOS 14 doesn’t have as many major new capabilities as iOS 14, that’s not quite fair—many of iOS 14’s new features also appear in iPadOS 14. You’ll get pinned conversations in Messages, cycling directions and city guides in Maps, privacy reports and translation capabilities in Safari, and much more. Sadly—and oddly—missing from iPadOS 14, however, are iOS 14’s App Library and Home screen widgets. The must-try new feature in iPadOS...
The App Library in iOS 14 ensures that you can find all the apps installed on your iPhone without having to hunt through Home screens. So if you already have a lot of Home screens that contain a random assemblage of apps, it might be easier to hide those screens than to remove all the apps on them. To do this in iOS 14, touch and hold any empty spot on the Home screen to enter jiggle mode. Then tap the lozenge around the dots that represent your Home screens....
You’ve long had text messages forwarding from your iPhone to your Mac and iPad, but after you get a new device, it might be a while before you realize that it’s not receiving texts sent to your iPhone. It turns out that, when you get a new Apple device, you must manually enable it to receive forwarded texts from your iPhone—the setting is off by default. On your iPhone, go to Settings > Messages > Text Message Forwarding, and flip the switches for the new devices.
Our Four Favorite Features of iOS 14 Harvest season is here again, and Apple has deemed iOS 14 (along with iPadOS 14, watchOS 7, and tvOS 14) ready for the picking. Although the betas have been pretty stable and no major problems have appeared in the first few days, we still recommend waiting at least a few weeks before installing via Settings > General > Software Update. In large part, that’s because many developers were taken by surprise by Apple’s release, so they’re working hard to release updates that work...
We’re big fans of column view in Finder windows (choose View > as Columns). You never have to worry about missing icons that are outside the window, everything is sorted alphabetically, and selecting a file shows a preview. But the column widths can be too thin, such that they cut off file and folder names, or too wide, forcing you to scroll unnecessarily. You probably know you can drag the handles at the bottom of the column dividers, but that’s fussy when you have lots of columns. Instead, double-click a...
Some of us like to customise the look and feel of our Home Screens whether it is to match our branding or just to give a different look and feel. You’ll need to add a photo or image to your Photos or Files on the iPhone/iPad for each App you want to make a custom icon for. Icon packs are also being made available for iOS 14 via many online retail sites, just search for iOS14 icon packs! Now open the Shortcuts App, it is pre-installed on iOS devices, if...
This year Apple reached a valuation of $2 Trillion which is both an achievement and a curse at the same time. Now scrutiny from government organisations is likely as to where the extraordinary revenue is coming from. Already Spotify has issued a complaint in Europe alleging the 30% cut Apple takes from all sales via the App Store is uncompetitive as the Apple Music service is not subject to the same 30% tariff, this complaint has legs, as it was the European commission that ended Internet Explorer’s monopoly of the...
It’s all too easy to end up with a boatload of Bluetooth devices connected to your Mac. Apple devices will likely have sensible names, like Magic Mouse 2, but what if someone has given you a device with their name in it? Or you’ve ended up with a device called something really random like f023cp37. Happily, macOS lets you rename most Bluetooth devices, including pointing devices, keyboards, earbuds, and headphones. Open System Preferences > Bluetooth, Control- or right-click a device, and choose Rename. In the dialog that appears, enter the...
If you’re flying, driving, or biking to visit an iPhone-using friend or family member, you can reduce anxiety related to arrival time or pickup plans (and perhaps provide amusement) by sharing your location temporarily so they can watch your progress. The easiest way to do this is to go into a Messages conversation with that person on your iPhone, tap their picture at the top, tap the i button that appears, tap Share My Location, and then tap either Share for One Hour or Share Until End of Day, whichever...
We wanted to make sure that those of you who work on a Mac laptop with an external display know that you can close your laptop’s screen and keep working. Apple calls this closed-clamshell or closed-display mode. Of course, it requires that you connect an external keyboard and mouse or trackpad, via either USB or Bluetooth, and the laptop should be connected to power as well. Apple also recommends putting the Mac to sleep before disconnecting the external display. Why would you want to use closed-display mode? Mostly to conserve...
We’ve been hearing reports of an uptick in the scam phone calls that claim to be from Apple. If you answer, an automated message tells you that your iCloud account has been breached and asks you to call a provided 1-866 number. Do not do this! Apple will never call you unprompted. Unfortunately, the criminals behind this particular phishing attack are spoofing Apple’s phone numbers effectively, so the call looks legitimate. Be very careful about which unrecognized phone calls you answer, and if you’re ever asked for personal information like...
About a year ago, Fujitsu informed owners of older models of the company’s ScanSnap scanners that it wouldn’t be updating the necessary ScanSnap Manager app to be 64-bit, effectively preventing those people from using their scanners in macOS 10.15 Catalina. Unexpectedly, Fujitsu has now reversed course, releasing ScanSnap Manager V7 with support for the previously orphaned ScanSnap S1500, S1500M, S1300, and S1100 models. Even though they’re not listed as being compatible, ScanSnap Manager V7 also reportedly works with the S300M and S510M, so if you have any older ScanSnap scanner,...
On the Mac, scroll bars are essential for both orienting yourself and navigating within a Web page or document window. But they may not appear unless you hover the pointer over the right spot or start scrolling with a gesture on a trackpad or a turn of a mouse scroll wheel. If that bothers you, go to System Preferences > General and under Show Scroll Bars, select Always. That way, scroll bars will always be visible without you having to guess where they are or perform some incantation to reveal...
People whose iPhones or iPads have relatively little free space have long struggled with the fact that iOS likes to download updates so they’ll be ready for installation. “Who wants to wait for a long download?” Apple thought. Unfortunately, lots of people do. The problem is that if you don’t want to update right away, that download consumes precious gigabytes of your free space in the meantime. In iOS 13.6 and iPadOS 13.6, Apple has finally provided a setting you can disable to prevent iOS from downloading updates ahead of...
Sure, you know that the Space bar in the iOS virtual keyboard types a space character. But did you realize that if you tap it twice, it inserts a period? (Probably, but if not, now you do.) That’s to make it easier to provide proper punctuation, which will have the added benefit of irritating your kids when you text them. Even better, if you touch and hold the Space bar in iOS 12 or later, that invokes the trackpad mode that lets you move the insertion point around in your...
Every so often, we hear from a Mac user with a seemingly impossible problem: a document window in some app is opening somewhere outside of the screen so it’s effectively invisible and they can’t work with it in any way. Just closing (with File > Close) and reopening the window, or quitting and relaunching the app, or even restarting the Mac won’t usually help because the app will reopen the window in the same off-screen position. The solution is to try various commands in the app’s Window menu, such as...
If you have lots of apps on your iPhone or iPad, rearranging their icons on your Home screens by dragging from page to page is tedious. Although the new App Library promised for iOS 14 later this year will help you find apps, rearranging them will still be a manual process. To make organizing your Home screens easier, try using the Dock as a temporary shelf. Touch and hold on any icon and then tap Edit Home Screen (or just start dragging) to start all the icons wiggling. Then, navigate...
Whenever you tap a link to open a Web page on your iPhone or iPad, it automatically opens a new tab. Having hundreds of tabs open won’t cause any problems but can make working with tabs clumsy. You can close all tabs—touch and hold the tab button and then tap Close All X Tabs—but you might prefer to prevent them from building up in the first place. To do that in iOS 13, navigate to Settings > Safari > Close Tabs and choose from Manually, After One Day, After One...
Whenever you view a document that’s longer than will fit onscreen, a scroll bar appears (often only if you’re actively scrolling). That’s true whether you’re using an iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Inside the scroll bar is a control called a scroller that you can drag to scroll more quickly than by swiping or using keyboard keys. But did you know its size and position are useful for orienting yourself within the page? First, the scroller position within the scroll bar reflects how far down the page you are. Second, the...
Since iOS 12 and macOS 10.14 Mojave, Apple has supported Group FaceTime, which lets you have a video call with up to 32 people. However, as has become painfully obvious in today’s era of non-stop videoconferencing, Group FaceTime has a feature that some find obnoxious: automatic speaking prominence that causes the video tile for the speaker to grow and move around. Happily, Apple finally took the feedback and added options to disable that feature in iOS 13.5, iPadOS 13.5, and macOS 10.15.5 Catalina. In iOS and iPadOS, disable the Speaking...
NIST security controls are often the most rigorous and attested cybersecurity requirements for any organization to implement. NIST controls, specifically 800-53, are recognized as the framework for companies wanting to implement requirements that need cybersecurity compliance for the federal government information systems and processing for both cloud and on-premises systems. NIST 800-53 consists of between ~100-400 controls requirements across 17 different control families depending on the FISMA rating (high, moderate, or low) of that system. For companies wanting to implement NIST security controls, specifically the technical controls including AC/AU/IA/SC as...
If you have access to multiple printers, you probably know that you can choose one from the Printer pop-up menu at the top of the Print dialog. But macOS has a feature that should make it so you don’t have to switch printers manually as often. Open System Preferences > Printers & Scanners, and look at the bottom of the Print view. The Default Printer pop-up menu lists all your installed printers, plus an option for Last Printer Used. That last one makes sense if you print a number of...
The following prerequisites are required, unfortunately you cannot use any iPad or Mac: A compatible Mac running macOS Catalina A compatible iPad running iPadOS 13 Macs that can utilize Sidecar in Catalina: MacBook Pro or MacBook from 2016 MacBook Air from 2018 iMac from 2016 / 27-inch, 5K from late 2015, iMac Pro Mac mini from 2018 Mac Pro from 2019. iPads running iPadOS 13 that can act as a second monitor using Sidecar: iPad 6th generation 5th generation iPad iPad mini 5th generation iPad mini 4 iPad Air 3rd...
This isn’t about periscopes or mouthwash—when it comes to searching, a scope is the area in which a search takes place. When you use the Search field in a Finder window to look for files and folders, you have the choice of two scopes: This Mac or the current folder. You can always switch the scope after starting the search by clicking the other choice near the top of the window, but it’s easier to set the default search scope in Finder > Preferences > Advanced so it’s set right...
The Covid-19 (coronavirus) contact tracing API from Apple & Google has yet to be adopted across the board with countries opting to produce their own systems. However, some countries such as Switzerland are now switching from their own system to the contact tracing API, with other countries such as Portugal & Ireland choosing to adopt the solution from Apple & Google. With Austria and Switzerland announcing they will be switching to it Countries across the globe that have managed to control the rate of infection are looking for contact tracing apps...
Tired of typing your admin account password whenever you try to install software or change security settings on your Mac? A new feature in macOS 10.15 Catalina removes that requirement for Apple Watch owners. In System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General, select the checkbox for “Use your Apple Watch to unlock apps and your Mac.” Then, whenever an app asks for your account credentials, you can instead just double-press the side button on your Apple Watch. Of course, if you forgot to wear it or its battery has...
Tuesday 26th of May, Cupertino stated the bug in Family Sharing that caused apps not to open has been fixed. The bug would cause your iPhone, iPad, or iPod to show a message stating: “This app is no longer shared with you”, and requesting that you purchase the app yourself from the App Store. This is despite the fact the app is still paid for and being shared via the family sharing feature. The error affected many apps, including Facebook, Audible, & WhatsApp. The issue first surfaced in May with...
It seems simple enough, but there are some great features, built in apps, and third party apps that can really improve your workflow when copy and pasting. The very basics are on a Mac are; highlight the content you want to copy and press Command + C. Then where you want to paste the content you have just copied place the cursor and press Command + V. You can also copy & paste using the contextual menu, which is accessed using a right click or holding the CTRL Key and...
When you’re writing a blog post or email newsletter, you’ll eventually hit the question of how to capitalize words in a title. There is no one right way, but just as with poor spelling and grammar, randomly capitalized titles can reduce reader trust in your knowledge, competence, and expertise. The trick is to pick a capitalization form and style guide to follow. There are two capitalization forms: title case (where important words are capitalized) and sentence case (which is capitalized like a normal sentence). Then there are a handful of...
QuickTime is great, but it won’t play an AVI file out of the box or the lesser-known MKV for example. And with the introduction of MacOS Catalina we have had to say goodbye to our beloved QuickTime 7. QuickTime 7 offered the Pro version for a one time payment which basically upgraded the standard QuickTime player adding many useful video editing features and import / export options, I’m still using it to this day! Just not on a Mac running Catalina. If you try to open an .avi file or...
If you’re plugging your iPhone in regularly but getting low-battery warnings when you shouldn’t, consider the possibility that something is preventing your iPhone from charging successfully while plugged in. If there’s no lightning bolt badge on the battery icon when the iPhone is plugged in, that’s a sure sign that no power is reaching the device. Another hint that failures could be happening intermittently would be a lack of charging in the Last Charge Level graph in Settings > Battery when you know the iPhone was plugged in. Luckily, the...
If like me Apple’s move from the original 30-pin port in 2012 to the Lightning ports you saw this as a positive move, the Lightning connector being a much more user-friendly connector. Next they took away the home button and the headphone socket, the home button going in favour of a larger screen was no real hardship once you learnt the new interface. However losing the headphone jack was a real annoyance for some people, as a compromise Apple provided a free lightning headphone set with new iPhones, sadly this...
Sharing your location works well when you’re out with friends or family and want everyone to be able to see where everyone else is. It’s easy to enable in various spots in iOS 13—in Messages, in Contacts, in the Find My app, and so on. You can share your location for an hour, until the end of the day, or indefinitely, but beware of this final option. If you’re with a group for a weeklong trip, for instance, sharing indefinitely makes sense, but it’s easy to forget to turn it...
So the Tech world’s software giant has released a version of its web browser for MacOs again after a 17-year absence. It’s actually big news as the last time a Web Browser from Microsoft was available on the Mac it was Internet Explorer 5 which saw the end of a 5 year partnership between Apple & Microsoft where Internet Explorer was bundled with MacOs and was the default browser. Following several years of antitrust actions against Microsoft for bundling their web browser with their operating system & Apple’s announcement it...
If like us you are itching to get into your local Apple store to check out the latest offerings from our favourite tech company you may be in for a wait. Apple said on the 13th of March it was closing all retail stores not in China as a result of Covid-19. As of today the 13th of May Apple are reopening in certain countries & states in a phased reopening plan. Apple has opened its stores in China and is reopening stores in other countries throughout Asia Pacific, this...
Are you the person your friends and family members turn to for questions about the Mac? In normal times, those questions might come over dinner or at another in-person gathering, such that you could look directly at their Mac to see what was going on. Now, however, with everyone staying at home due to the coronavirus pandemic, answering those questions has seemingly gotten harder. But it doesn’t have to be that way, thanks to a built-in feature of macOS that you may not have known about: screen sharing. With the...
Video Blog We work with lots of businesses, all Mac based businesses. The biggest point of confusion for many Mac based small businesses is to understand all the business offerings that Apple has to offer. Apple has many offerings for Apple businesses. From where to buy and how to buy *(Apple Retail vs Apple Resellers). From purchasing and pricing options *(Apple Card vs Leasing). As well as its own support offerings *(Applecare, Apple Store & Joint Venture) the path forward for many businesses is not always clear and with so...
When you’re in the Finder, choosing File > New Finder Window does, as you’d expect, open a new Finder window. But what folder appears in that window? By default, new Finder windows open to Recents, which is a built-in smart folder showing recently opened documents. If you’d prefer to see items in a fixed location on your drive, go to Finder > Preferences > General and choose any location from the New Finder Windows Show pop-up menu. We’re partial to Desktop or Documents, but you can choose whatever folder makes...
Starting back in iOS 11, Apple made Control Center significantly more useful by letting you customize it more to your liking by adding and rearranging buttons. You can even remove a few of the default buttons if they’re just taking up space. Opening and Closing Control Center To open Control Center in iOS 11 and later on an iPhone X or later (the models with Face ID), swipe down from the top-right corner of the screen. For iPhones with a Home button that use Touch ID (including the just-released iPhone...
Whether for work or socializing, we’re all spending a lot more time in video calls these days. But—surprise!—it turns out that many of our group video calls could be more pleasant, less embarrassing, and overall better if we follow a few basic audiovisual tips. Make Sure You Have Decent Lighting Natural light is best, but room light is generally fine too, especially if it’s coming from the side. Overhead light isn’t quite as flattering, but whatever you do, avoid light that comes from underneath your face or you’ll look like...
In a move that completes the transition of the MacBook line from the troubled butterfly keyboard to the Magic Keyboard, Apple has released a new 13-inch MacBook Pro. The company also doubled the amount of storage in each of the standard configurations while keeping prices the same, and it ramped up the specs in the model with four Thunderbolt 3 ports. Like the MacBook Air that Apple released several months ago, the most notable change in the new 13-inch MacBook Pro is the replacement of the butterfly keyboard with the...
Futureproof IT a 100% online summit aimed to raise awareness of critical IT issues facing small businesses and money for COVID-19 PPE The first ever Futureproof IT summit was announced early last month an event put on by Alectrona, Abelloni, Technolutionary and the MacAdmins Podcast., Apple consultants looking to give back amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Futureproof IT scheduled for a May 18th - 20th is “A first of its kind virtual summit, bringing together global tech leadership to address the operational, security, and financial impact of COVID-19.” meant for IT professionals and small businesses owners...
Washington, DC: Grove Technologies today announced free cybersecurity training, an engaging online video-based training program. The robust cybersecurity training program is designed to educate employees on common threats to their organization’s cybersecurity and offers a new way for small to medium-sized businesses to educate their employees on cybersecurity risks and best practices amid the coronavirus pandemic, right from their home. As many organizations have been forced to begin operating from a remote work environment, more employees than ever before have started working from home. The problem with this is that...
If your Mac is acting up and you suspect a hardware problem, there’s an easy first step that you can—and should—try before calling for tech support: Apple Diagnostics. (On Mac models released before June 2013, Apple instead included a similar set of diagnostics called Apple Hardware Test.) Apple Diagnostics is a set of hardware test routines that Apple bakes into every Mac. It tests numerous internal subsystems in your Mac, including the CPU, memory, and firmware; displays and graphics adapters; connectivity via USB, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and Thunderbolt; batteries and power...
Vast numbers of people who previously reported for work at an office every day are now working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That’s sensible, and if you’re included in that group, there was probably even a little thrill of “I get to work from home!” at first. But as those who have telecommuted for years know, it’s not as simple as settling down on the couch with your laptop. Here are a few tips. Make a Dedicated Work Space, If Possible Particularly if you’re not home alone, you’ll...
Whether you’re working from home or just stuck at home, it can be tough to communicate with colleagues, friends, or family. Sure, there’s email, but that gets hard to manage quickly, and it can be difficult to stay focused with so much news rolling in. For friends and family, Facebook might seem to be the digital town square. However, many people avoid Facebook due to its impressive record of abusing its users’ privacy, failure to protect that user data from hackers, and exploitation by foreign governments. And it’s wildly inappropriate...
Four years after the release of the original iPhone SE, Apple has introduced a second-generation iPhone SE with aggressive pricing that starts at just $399. Whereas the original model used the svelte, easy-to-hold iPhone 5s case design with a 4-inch screen, this new iPhone SE repurposes the larger iPhone 8 design with its 4.7-inch screen. But Apple didn’t just rebrand the iPhone 8. The new iPhone SE sports several important updates that make it a compelling purchase for the price, including a new processor and eSIM capability. Most notably, Apple...
With many people under stay-at-home orders, videoconferencing is going mainstream. If you work in a sufficiently large organization, you probably have already been indoctrinated into a recommended solution, whether it’s the built-in videoconferencing features of Slack or Microsoft Teams, or a dedicated videoconferencing system like Zoom or Webex. But what if you’re in a small workgroup, are a freelancer, need to communicate with members of a non-profit group, or just want to stay in touch with friends and family? There are numerous options, but here are a few free options...
In iOS 13, in what can only have been a prank gone wrong, Apple simplified the message toolbar in Mail, putting the Delete button where the Reply button had been in iOS 12 and leaving a lot of blank space in the toolbar. As millions of users accidentally deleted messages instead of replying, hilarity ensued. (Not really.) In iOS 13.4, Apple has seemingly acknowledged the error of its ways, returning to a four-button toolbar similar to iOS 12’s five-button toolbar and moving the Delete button to the far left of...
Technolutionary, Alectrona, and Abelionni all Apple Consultants Members, and all active IT Providers for those who need IT Support Services in the US and Europe, have partnered together to start the first ever Futureproof IT Summit. This summit is the first of its kind and will be 100% virtual. As you can find on the Futureproof IT site, this first summit is geared to talking to the challenges posed onto businesses due to COVID-19. A first of its kind virtual summit, bringing together global tech leadership to address the operational,...
Apple’s credit card, the Apple Card, offers a nice mix of integration with Apple Pay, daily cash back, and an elegant interface in the Wallet app on your iPhone. Until recently, however, it was impossible to get your transaction data out of Wallet except in PDF form. Apple has now added exports in either CSV or OFX format. CSV is appropriate for importing into a spreadsheet, whereas many financial apps can import OFX files. To export your data from Wallet, tap your Apple Card and then tap Card Balance. Under...
When Apple released iPadOS 13.4 recently, it came with an unexpected feature: trackpad and mouse support. Apple plans to release a Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro that has a built-in trackpad in May as well, but in the meantime, you can control an iPad entirely via a Magic Trackpad 2 (the wedge-like one that recharges via a Lightning port). Pair it in Settings > Bluetooth, and look for settings in Settings > General > Trackpad. Apple did an impressive job with integrating a cursor into the iPadOS experience: the small,...
Early today ZOOM started alerting its customers that “in order to preserve bandwidth and to ensure that they were making the best use of global bandwidth we may experience intermittent use of HD during meetings with 3 or more participants”. They later went on to explain that ZOOM Rooms and rooms with a Conference Connecter will remain HD enabled. This comes amid a wave of news recently regarding bandwidth being used at a higher capacity ever seen in the home and enterprise markets as uncertainty around COVID-19 grows. Additionally this...
We are proud to be able to offer SMS based and Apple Business Chat support to our valued clients. Adding text based chat support is a natural extension of our ability to help our clients which we can now do via Messages for MacOS or iOS. You can initiate an Apple Business Chat by clicking on the Chat bubble below. Apple Business Chat is a new way to communicate with Apple and other businesses using Messages. Start a chat to get answers to your questions, schedule appointments, resolve issues, make...
In partnership with the US Centers for Disease Control, Apple has released a free COVID-19 Screening Tool iOS app and nearly identical Web site. The interactive screening tool poses a series of questions about symptoms, risk factors, and recent exposure. Then it offers customized CDC recommendations, including guidance on social distancing and self-isolating, how to monitor symptoms, whether or not a test is recommended, and when to contact a medical provider. In addition, the app and Web site provide useful information about COVID-19, advice about how to keep yourself safe,...
Note: This is a re-post of this article over at Bleeping Computer’s website. ZOOM has been in the news recently for concerns over its lack of end-to-end encryption, privacy concerns regarding data its sharing with Facebook and most recently the increase in ZOOM Meeting Bombings or unwanted intrusions. ZOOM-bombing is when someone gains unauthorized access to a Zoom meeting to harass the meeting participants in various ways to spread and hate and divisiveness, or to record pranks that will be later shown on social media. Just yesterday, the FBI released...
We have received notifications from our federal partners that there are scams you should be aware regarding to Coronavirus. Some of these types of scams include: Individuals and businesses selling fake cures for COVID-19 online and engaging in other forms of fraud Phishing emails from entities posing as the World Health Organization or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Malicious websites and apps that appear to share virus-related information to gain and lock access to your devices until payment is received, Seeking donations fraudulently for illegitimate or non-existent charitable...
There’s little more frustrating than being unable to print a document when you need it. You choose File > Print, and nothing happens. Or, worse, macOS looks like it’s printing, so you focus on some other task, only to realize 20 minutes later that nothing has come out of the printer. Now what? Try these troubleshooting steps. Check the Printer’s Print Queue App Whenever you print, the printer’s Print Queue app appears in your Dock, named for the printer. (If it doesn’t, open System Preferences > Printers & Scanners, select...
At 3:00pm ET today Maryland’s Governor Larry Hogan, used the emergency broadcast system to alert all MD residents that there is now as of 8pm ET on March 30th, 2020 a stay at home mandate starting at 8pm ET. Public Safety Alert Public Health Emergency Announcement: Gov. Hogan issued a Stay-at-Home Order, effective at 8pm tonight. No Marylander should leave their home unless it is for an essential reason. Gatherings are limited to 10 or fewer. Grocery stores and essential services remain open. We are counting on you to help...
To our valued clients, This is an unprecedented time in our history. The COVID-19 pandemic is having an impact on the health of our loved ones, the businesses we rely upon, the health of the global economy, and the way we live our daily lives. As we all continue to navigate through these unique and evolving challenges, we want you to know that Grove Technologies is still here for your technical support needs. Currently, there are no cases of the virus reported among employees of Grove Technologies. The safety of...
For quite a few years, Apple enabled users to download their iPhone or iPad photos to their Macs with a service called My Photo Stream. It wasn’t perfect, but it was free, and it did a decent job of ensuring that photos you took on your iPhone or iPad would end up on your Mac. Then Apple introduced iCloud Photo Library, later renamed to iCloud Photos, which is a full-featured cloud-based photo syncing service. However, because it stores all your photos in the cloud, most people need to purchase more...
As you undoubtedly know, TYPING IN ALL CAPS is considered shouting on the Internet. Doesn’t it bug you when you accidentally tap the Caps Lock key and start writing in uppercase? The Caps Lock key is vestigial—it was invented as a “Shift lock” key to make it easier to type the second characters on the keys of a mechanical typewriter without also holding down the Shift key the entire time. It’s seldom useful on a computer; Google replaced it with a Search key on Chromebook keyboards. It still appears on...
In your list of conversations in Messages, you probably have lots of people who have generic icons next to their names or numbers. You likely look like that to other people as well, but a new feature in iOS 13 lets you share your preferred name and avatar picture with other iMessage users (blue-bubble friends). In Messages, first tap the ••• button and then Edit Name and Photo. Then, in the activity view that appears, tap Edit under your photo to select a new photo and set your name as...
In a widely expected update, Apple has introduced a new MacBook Air that replaces the much-maligned butterfly keyboard with the new Magic Keyboard. The MacBook Air also gains faster processors, enhanced graphics, and more storage options, all for $200 less than before. Apple also threw back the curtains on an updated iPad Pro that will be compatible with a new iPad Pro-specific Magic Keyboard that includes a trackpad. The iPad Pro is available now, but the Magic Keyboard won’t ship until May. MacBook Air Gains Magic Keyboard, Faster Performance, and...
Split View on the Mac helps you focus on your work in one app—perhaps a word processor—while providing access to one other app, like a Web browser. (Make sure “Displays have separate Spaces” is selected in System Preferences > Mission Control.) Before macOS 10.15 Catalina, you had to click and hold on the green full-screen button in the upper-left corner of any window, drag that window to one side of the screen, and click a window on the other side to put them side by side. Catalina makes this easier...
Grove Technologies cares about your business and the safety of your employees, its on that note that we have decided to start teleworking, a decision that many of our clients have already made from March 19th - April 1st. What does this mean for your company and IT Support? We have always offered the best in class remote support and we will continue to do so. Should you need assistance please call 888-253-9103 for assistance or email support@grovetech.co. You can also book an appointment by visiting our scheduling page here....
Are you overwhelmed by email? Is your Inbox filled with promotions, special offers, and the like? These messages aren’t spam—you almost always bought something from the company or have some sort of relationship with the sender—but that doesn’t mean you want to hear from them repeatedly. Luckily, it’s easy to get off the lists of legitimate senders. Just scroll to the bottom of each message and look for an unsubscribe link. Often it will be the word “Unsubscribe” or an instruction to “click here to remove yourself.” Click the link...
By default, Apple gives every iCloud user 5 GB of storage space. That disappears quickly, given how it’s shared between iCloud Mail, iCloud Drive, iCloud Photos, Messages, and iCloud-enabled apps. Apple will, of course, sell you more iCloud space. $0.99 per month gets you 50 GB, $2.99 per month provides 200 GB, and for $9.99 per month, you can use a whopping 2 TB. The latter two plans can even be shared with others in your Family Sharing group. As we’ve noted elsewhere, using iCloud Photos almost certainly requires you...
For some Mac users, macOS 10.15 Catalina is no longer a choice. That’s because the new 16-inch MacBook Pro and the 2019 Mac Pro that Apple released late last year ship with Catalina installed and can’t run any previous version of macOS. But for most people, it’s time to consider an upgrade to Catalina. Most backup software now works with Catalina’s bifurcated drive approach that puts the system on a separate, read-only volume from your data and apps. We’ve all had several months to come to terms with the fact...
Spearfishing. It’s no longer just a tropical ocean sport that could provide seafood for dinner. In today’s tech world, spearfishing is when someone targets you specifically, usually with the goal of taking over your online accounts. Once that’s done, the attacker will try to siphon money from your bank account, impersonate you in an attempt to deceive family or colleagues into sending money, or attempt to ruin your reputation. You’re probably thinking, “No one would ever target me. I’m not interesting enough.” It is true that the people who should...
A common question we hear is, “Why is my iPhone/iPad battery draining so fast?” Luckily, Apple provides tools that help you see exactly how your iPhone uses its battery over the last 24 hours and—with less detail—over each of the last 10 days. Plus, you can tweak settings that will improve battery life, both in the here-and-now and for as long as you have your iPhone. To access these tools, go to Settings > Battery. Useful Battery-Related Options Before we get into what you can learn from the Battery screen,...
Ever wanted to take a photo of a receipt and circle the item for which you should be reimbursed? Or perhaps you’d like to put some text or a speech balloon on a photo? You can do all that and much more using iOS 13’s Markup tools. They’re available when you take a screenshot, in Files and Photos, and even for image and PDF attachments in Mail. Here’s what you can do. Accessing iOS 13’s Markup Tools How you invoke the Markup tools varies a bit by app. Here are...
Power users like keyboard shortcuts because it’s faster to press a couple of keys than to navigate lengthy menus. If you have trouble remembering shortcuts, check out KeyCue, which displays a concise table of all currently available shortcuts. But what about menu items that lack shortcuts? Make your own in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts. Click the + button, choose an app from the Application menu, fill in the Menu Title field, click the Keyboard Shortcut field, press your desired key combination, and click Add. You...
If your Mac is anything like ours, it’s suffering from an infestation of menu bar icons. Sure, the Wi-Fi menu is essential, and many others can be helpful. But if you have too many, or they’re in random order, finding one when you need it can be frustrating. You can employ two techniques to increase the accessibility of your menu bar icons: Delete any Apple-provided status icon you don’t use by holding down the Command key and dragging it off the menu bar. (To put it back, select the “Show...
Historically, picking a new Wi-Fi network has required you to open the Settings app and tap Wi-Fi, forcing you to unlock your iPhone or switch away from what you were doing. In iOS 13, however, Apple added a better way to connect to a new Wi-Fi network. Open Control Center (swipe down from the upper-right corner on an iPhone X or later or an iPad; or up from the bottom on an earlier iPhone), press and hold on the network settings card in the upper-left corner to expand it, and...
Have you ever seen the dreaded “No Service” label at the top of your iPhone’s screen, even when you’re pretty sure there should be cellular reception? It’s not common, but the iPhone’s cellular radio can occasionally get confused. Luckily, you can easily fix the problem. Open Control Center (swipe down from the upper-right corner on an iPhone X or later or an iPad; or up from the bottom on an earlier iPhone) and tap the airplane icon to put the iPhone in airplane mode. That turns off the cellular radio....
The New York Times recently published a bombshell article revealing just how completely our every movement is tracked by companies in the business of selling our locations to advertisers, marketers, and others. Anonymous sources provided the Times with a dataset from a single location-data company that contained 50 billion pings from the phones of more than 12 million Americans over several months in 2016 and 2017. This data enabled the Times reporters to track numerous people in positions of power, including military officials, law-enforcement officers, and high-powered lawyers. They were...
Let’s get one thing straight. You know that you should never, ever share your iPhone or iPad passcode with anyone you don’t trust implicitly, like a spouse or adult child, right? That’s because, with your iOS passcode, someone could change your Apple ID password, and if you use iCloud for email, completely steal or otherwise abuse your online identity. (Scared? Good. If you’ve given anyone your passcode, go change it right now. We’ll wait.) So if sharing your passcode is such a terrible idea, how do you let someone else...
For many of us, voicemail replaced answering machines, so we don't think of voicemail messages as being something we can save or share. But on the iPhone, every voicemail message is just an audio file. If you want to retain a message for posterity or share one with a friend or colleague, you can do that easily. While viewing a voicemail message, tap the share icon to bring up an activity sheet. In it, you can save the file to any app that can handle audio files, or share the...
Email has been around for decades, but there are no hard-and-fast rules for how you should close a message with either the signoff or the signature block. If you’ve always wondered about the best ways to finish off a message or are uncomfortable with what you’ve been doing, here’s our advice. Use the form of your name that you want the recipient to use. If your given name is Mohammed, but everyone calls you Mo, use that for signing most of your messages. Otherwise, they’ll have no idea you prefer...
Digital cameras have been around long enough that people have stopped making snarky comments about how hard it is to find anything in a shoebox filled with hundreds of unorganized photos. But given the tens of thousands of photos many of us now have, it’s hard to be smug about the ease of finding any given image. Luckily, Apple has provided us with numerous tools in the Photos app to help. Some of these organization systems you have to set up and maintain, but others work silently for you in...
If you’ve resisted requiring a password on your Mac after it wakes up or comes out of the screen saver because it’s too much work to enter repeatedly, an Apple Watch can make authentication much easier. In previous versions of macOS, just wearing an unlocked Apple Watch is enough to enter your Mac’s password; in Catalina, the Apple Watch can also enter your password when prompted by apps. First, make sure your Apple Watch has a passcode (in Watch > Passcode), is on your wrist, and is unlocked. Then, in...
The next time you buy and set up a new Mac, make sure to migrate data and apps from your previous Mac to it right away during the initial setup. It can be tempting to see what it’s like to use it fresh from the factory or to delay migrating because doing so would force a macOS upgrade, but waiting is a mistake. The problem is that if you do real work in an account on the new Mac, when it comes time to use Migration Assistant to bring over...
AirDrop has become a fast and reliable way to transfer data from one iPhone to another that’s nearby. Just tap the share icon and in iOS 13’s activity view, either tap an AirDrop shortcut in the top row or tap AirDrop in the second row and select choose a person or device in the subsequent AirDrop screen. But what if your iPhone doesn’t appear for the person who wants to share with you? Assuming Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are both on, the fix is generally to go to Settings > General...
We’re not going to beat around the bush. Apple’s new Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR redefine what “pro” means. If you aren’t certain that the fastest and most powerful Mac and an expertly calibrated 6K Retina display will enable you to make more money immediately, they’re probably not for you. You should also be ready to spend at least $12,000—and likely several thousand more—on the combination. For that money, though, you’ll get a system that puts every previous Mac setup to shame. Mac Pro The new Mac Pro, which...
In previous versions of iOS, a scroll bar would appear on the right edge of the screen while you were swiping through a long Web page, email message, or document. But the scroller was merely an indicator of where in the page you were and how much content there was (the bigger the scroller, the less content). In iOS 13 and iPadOS 13, however, Apple has made the scroll bar more helpful, and you’ll want to use it to scroll long pages more quickly than you can with swiping. To...
Does it seem like that red badge on the Settings app indicating that there’s a new iOS 13 or iPadOS 13 update pops up at least once per week? You’re not imagining things—Apple has been frantically squashing bugs in its mobile operating systems since their release in mid-September. If you haven’t yet upgraded from iOS 12, there’s no harm in waiting until the new year to see if things have settled down. (Well, no harm as long as you don’t receive a pair of Apple’s snazzy new AirPods Pro as...
Accidents, particularly those involving automobiles, are all too common, and while no one plans to be in one, you can prepare for the eventuality. If you end up in a state where you can’t speak with emergency responders or are too shaken up to share your details clearly, your iPhone can provide them with essential medical information. Emergency responders are trained to know how to access these details. Apple makes this possible via the Medical ID feature of the Health app, which you can use to record medical data and...
Did you know that the word for the irrational fear of Friday the 13th is paraskevidekatriaphobia? Neither did we, but what that supposedly unlucky day is good for—whenever it rolls around—is reminding us to test our backup systems. If something does go wrong, backups can save your bacon, but only if they’re actually working. So on Friday the 13th this month, take a few minutes to make sure you can restore files from Time Machine, see if you can boot from your bootable duplicate, and generally verify that your data...
Most Mac users rely on iPhones and iPads to take photos and store them in the Photos app, which happens automatically for those who use Apple’s iCloud Photos syncing service. But what if you want to import photos from a device other than an iPhone or iPad—say a Samsung smartphone running Android—and what if you don’t want those images in Photos? Turn to Apple’s Image Capture app, which has shipped with macOS for ages and is stored in your Applications folder’s Utilities folder. To use it, connect your device to...
we can move data between Macs. You can send files via AirDrop, attach them to an email message, put them in a Messages conversation, turn on and connect via File Sharing, or use Dropbox or Google Drive as an intermediary, to name just a few of the more obvious approaches. But what if you have a lot of data—say tens or even hundreds of gigabytes—to transfer from one Mac to another? The techniques listed above might work, but we wouldn’t bet on it. If you had an external hard drive...
With the iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, and iPhone 11 Pro Max, Apple changed the way the Camera app’s shutter button works in ways that could cause confusion. Tapping it once still takes a single still photo, but if you press and hold on the shutter button, it now captures a quick video. (Previously, pressing and holding on the button took photos in burst mode; to do that on the iPhone 11 models, slide the shutter button to the left.) Once you’ve started taking a quick video, slide your finger...
By default, most iPhones and iPads ship with Apple’s tiny 5-watt power adapters. They work, but not quickly. However, the iPhone 8 and later, all models of the iPad Pro, and the most recent iPad Air and iPad mini models support fast charging when connected to higher wattage power adapters. You may have an older one of these around, or you can buy a new one. Apple has bundled with iOS devices or sold 10-watt, 12-watt ($19), and 18-watt ($29, USB-C) power adapters, and the company has also produced 29-watt,...
We assume you have a backup strategy. Hopefully, it includes a bootable duplicate to minimize downtime in the event of a drive failure, a Time Machine or other versioned backup to address the problem of a deleted or corrupted file, and offsite backup to ensure that you don’t lose everything in the event of theft, fire, or flood. (And for many California residents these days, fire is an increasingly likely concern!) A good backup strategy protects your data, though it’s decidedly a case of “necessary, but not sufficient.” That’s because...
If you’re experiencing a sporadic problem with your Mac, the sort of thing that happens often enough to be annoying but not so frequently as to be reproducible, allow us to suggest one little-known troubleshooting tip. Malfunctioning USB devices—keyboards, mice, hubs, printers, etc.—can sometimes cause truly inscrutable problems ranging from startup issues to kernel panics. USB-caused issues aren’t common, but when they do happen, they can be challenging to track down. If you’ve tried everything else, disconnect all unnecessary USB devices and, if possible, swap your wired keyboard and mouse...
If you run a company, you know how much work onboarding a new employee can be. Beyond teaching them the ropes of your business, they’ll need a Mac and potentially an iPhone or iPad as well. Setting those devices up with all the right apps, settings, and logins can take days or even weeks. And that’s just for one person—imagine if you need to lather, rinse, and repeat for dozens or even hundreds of new employees? The solution is Apple Business Manager, which ensures that every Apple device you purchase...
New 16-inch MacBook Pro Model Sports a Redesigned Scissor-Switch Keyboard Responding to customer complaints and media mocking, Apple has introduced a new 16-inch MacBook Pro that features improves on its predecessor in several ways, most notably with a scissor-switch keyboard in place of the flaky butterfly-key keyboard. The 16-inch MacBook Pro replaces the previous 15-inch MacBook Pro at the top of Apple’s notebook line and starts at $2399. The 13-inch MacBook Pro and MacBook Air remain unchanged. Apple also announced that the new Mac Pro (starting at $5999) and Apple...
For unknown reasons, Apple redesigned the toolbar in the iOS 13 version of Mail. Such things happen, but this time, Apple made a big mistake and moved Mail’s Trash button to where its Reply button used to be. Lots of people who have become accustomed to tapping Reply are now finding themselves deleting messages inadvertently, since a tap in the same location in iOS 13 deletes the message. It’s hard to retrain muscle memory—the ability to reproduce a particular movement without conscious thought—but if you find yourself deleting messages accidentally,...
An unexpected and useful feature of iOS 13 and iPadOS 13 is also nearly invisible, and for most uses, requires a special adapter. With this feature, the Files app now can “see” external storage devices. That’s huge—now you can move data to and from an iPhone or iPad using standard flash drives, SD card readers, or even powered USB hard drives. It’s also a great way to play videos and other data that won’t fit in the available free space on your device. (You’ll still need an app on the...
A small but welcome new feature of iOS 13 is Driving ETA, which helps you share your estimated time of arrival with a contact whenever you’re navigating with the Maps app. To use Driving ETA, start navigating to a destination in Maps, tap Share ETA at the bottom of the screen, and pick the person with whom you want to share your location and arrival time. (You’ll share in Maps with iOS 13 users and via Messages with everyone else.) The other person will receive a notification of your ETA...
Are you a fan of Apple’s AirPods, or have you had trouble with them staying in your ears? Either way, you might like the just-released AirPods Pro, which offer a new design with three sizes of soft, flexible, silicone ear tips and welcome new capabilities. The ear tips should make the AirPods Pro fit better for more people, and an Ear Tip Fit Test will tell you which size is right for your ears. The hot new feature is Active Noise Cancellation mode, which significantly cuts down on the background...
Taking photos is a popular use of the iPhone, and Apple has said that the improved cameras gave this year’s iPhone 11 Pro models their “Pro” designation. But Apple continually works to improve the Photos app as well. Taking great photos is only half the job—you also have to be able to find, edit, and enjoy your photos, and that’s where the company focused its efforts in iOS 13 and iPadOS 13 (which we’ll refer to collectively as iOS 13 from now on). Here’s what’s new. Years, Months, Days, All...
Apple likes to keep Mac names simple, but that’s not always helpful. For instance, if you want to add RAM to your Mac, it’s not good enough to know that it’s an iMac. You’ll need to know that it’s a 27-inch iMac with Retina display from late 2014. To find that out, choose About This Mac from the Apple menu. In some cases, you might even need to know the model identifier, which is a numeric code that’s accessible if you click the System Report button in the About This...
If you own an iMac Pro, or a Mac mini, MacBook Air, or MacBook Pro model introduced in 2018 or later, your Mac has one of Apple’s T2 security chips inside. On the whole, having a T2 chip in your Mac is a good thing, thanks to significantly increased security and other benefits, but there are some ramifications that you may not realize. What Is a T2 Chip? Let’s step back briefly. In late 2016, Apple introduced the T2’s predecessor, the T1, in the first Touch Bar–equipped MacBook Pros. The...
Do you use 3D Touch on your iPhone? From 2015 through 2018, every iPhone from the iPhone 6s through the iPhone XS supported 3D Touch, other than the iPhone SE and iPhone XR. With 3D Touch, you could (sometimes) press a control, and then press a little harder to make additional options appear. But because the 3D Touch hardware was expensive, it never made its way to the iPad or iPod touch. Apple replaced 3D Touch in the entire iPhone 11 line this year with the iPhone XR’s simpler Haptic...
Let’s be honest—text editing in iOS has never been anywhere near as good as it is on the Mac. We may be more accustomed to our mice and keyboards, but the Multi-Touch interface has always been clumsy when it comes to text. Apple keeps trying to improve iOS’s text editing features, and iOS 13 (and iPadOS 13) brings some welcome changes in how we go about positioning the text insertion point, selecting text, and performing the familiar options in the Mac’s Edit menu: Cut, Copy, Paste, and Undo/Redo. Has it...
With this year’s operating system updates, Apple has formally acknowledged that the iPhone and iPad have different uses and different needs. To that end, Apple has given the iPad version of iOS 13 its own name—iPadOS 13. The big changes include a desktop-class version of Safari that works better with complex Web apps, a redesigned Home screen that sports more icons and Today View widgets, a new floating keyboard you can use for thumb-typing or with one hand, Apple Pencil improvements, and the Sidecar feature that lets you use an...
There are plenty of situations where it makes sense to put a date in a filename, but if you don’t use the right date format, the files may sort in unhelpful ways. For instance, using the names of months is a bad idea, since they’ll sort alphabetically, putting April before January. And although the Mac’s Finder is smart enough to sort filename-3 before filename-20, most other operating systems are not (because 2 comes before 3). So, to make your life—and the lives of everyone with whom you share files—a little...
Whenever Apple releases hot new hardware, it’s tempting to order the latest and greatest and then put your old Mac or iPhone up for sale on a classifieds site like Craigslist. If you do that, be cautious about potential buyers—it’s increasingly common for a scammer to request that you ship them the device and then to “pay” you by forging payment email from PayPal or using a stolen PayPal account (whose owner will likely get PayPal to take the money back from you). Instead, insist on an in-person meeting in...
Dear clients, Apple plans to release macOS 10.15 Catalina sometime in October, and like all major operating system releases, Apple has been talking it up since it was introduced at the company’s Worldwide Developer Conference in June. It will feature new Music, TV, and Podcasts apps to replace iTunes. A new Mac Catalyst technology will make it easier for developers to make their iPad apps available for the Mac. Photos, Reminders, and Notes all get major upgrades. Screen Time has migrated over from iOS. And Sidecar lets you use an...
Traditionally, extended keyboards come with a Forward Delete key that, when you press it, deletes characters to the right of the insertion point, unlike the main Delete key, which deletes to the left of the insertion point. Forward Delete still exists on Apple’s Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad, but it’s missing from the Magic Keyboard and all Mac laptop keyboards. If you like using Forward Delete (and well you should!), the secret key combinations that simulate it for any Apple keyboard that lacks it are Fn-Delete and Control-D. You can...
It’s hard to sum up iOS 13’s benefits succinctly because Apple has made so many improvements (we’ll get to what’s cool about iPadOS 13 later in the article). That means there’s something for just about everyone. Here are some of the changes we think you’ll most appreciate. Better Text Handling An area in iOS that has long begged for improvement is text handling. Although the familiar approaches still work, you can finally select text by merely tapping and swiping. Double-taps select recognized bits of text like phone numbers and addresses,...
If you have a friend whom you refer to only by his nickname, it can be annoying to feel like you should use his proper first name when adding him to Contacts. Worse, then he shows up in Messages with a name you don’t recognize as easily. Here’s how to convince iOS to use his nickname instead. Open his card in Contacts, tap Edit, scroll to the bottom, tap Add Field, and tap Nickname. That puts a Nickname field at the top, under his proper name, for you to fill...
In a break from Apple’s pattern of alternating cycle of releases, macOS 10.15 Catalina is not a refinement of 10.14 Mojave like 10.13 High Sierra was for 10.12 Sierra. Instead, Catalina boasts significant changes, both obvious things like new apps and less-obvious things like under-the-hood improvements. Here are some of our favorites. iTunes Is Dead! Long Live Music, TV, and Podcasts After 18 years of being a fixture on the Mac, the increasingly bloated iTunes has been replaced with a trio of independent apps: Music, TV, and Podcasts. Note that...
At its September 10th special event, Apple unveiled a slew of new products and services, including the iPhone 11, the Apple Watch Series 5, the seventh-generation iPad, Apple Arcade, and Apple TV+. The company also said that iOS 13 and watchOS 6 would ship on September 19th, with iPadOS 13 appearing on September 30th and macOS 10.15 Catalina due sometime in October. Don’t feel the need to update to iOS 13.0 right away, though, since Apple also said that iOS 13.1 would arrive just 11 days later, on September 30th....
As we get into September, it’s a good bet that Apple will be pushing out the next major versions of macOS, iOS, watchOS, and tvOS, along with the new iPadOS, which is iOS with iPad-specific tweaks. Apple previewed these new versions back in June, and they’ve been in public beta since. Once Apple makes macOS 10.15 Catalina, iOS 13, iPadOS 13, watchOS 6, and tvOS 13 available, the question looms large—when should you install them? (Note that we say when and not if. There’s no harm in delaying major operating...
Do you have a document that you open regularly, perhaps from your Desktop? If you’d like to make it stand out from other documents, why not give it a custom icon? This was common practice on the Mac back in the day, and it’s still possible in modern versions of macOS. Go to Google Images and search for “searchTerm icon” to see what images are available. (It’s fine to use any graphic for one-time personal use; if you’re planning to distribute the file or publish the icon in any way,...
Confession time. If there’s one topic we can’t stop talking about, it’s backups. Backups are essential, since no one can guarantee that your Mac or iPhone won’t be lost or stolen, be caught in a flood from a broken pipe, or just fail silently. It happens. You should have a good backup strategy that ensures backups happen regularly, but it’s not paranoid to make double extra sure when you’re doing something that’s more likely to cause problems than everyday activity. And by that we’re thinking about upgrading to a major...
Few people get so little email that they want an iPhone notification for every message that rolls in. But many of us have just a couple of people—our personal VIPs—whose messages are important enough to warrant an alert. If that’s true for you, and you want to know right away when your boss or your spouse or your child sends you a message, set up VIP Alerts. In Mail in iOS, in your Mailboxes list, tap the i button next to the VIP mailbox. If necessary, use the Add VIP...
Have you wondered what you can do with the Wallet app on your iPhone? Although it started life called Passbook, Apple soon realized that the only sensible name was Wallet. That’s because it stores digital versions of roughly the same sort of things you might put in a physical wallet: credit and debit cards, store cards, membership cards, and even cash (well, Apple Pay Cash, anyway). Nearly all airlines can put your boarding passes in Wallet, too, and if you buy something like a concert ticket online, you may be...
An ever-increasing number of people have hearing loss due to exposure to loud noise and age. If you’re in that group, but don’t yet need hearing aids, try using your AirPods to help you hear better in certain situations. iOS’s Live Listen feature uses your iPhone’s mic to pick up specific sounds and then sends that audio directly to your AirPods, helping you focus on what you want to hear. To enable Live Listen, go to Settings > Control Center > Customize Controls and tap the green + button next...
Apple has put a lot of effort into Mail, providing lots of features you can employ to get through your email more quickly. But one of the most effective ways to improve your email productivity has nothing to do with an email app. Instead, train yourself to write better email and you’ll cut down on a lot of unnecessary back-and-forth and confusion. Remember, email is not chat—you say things in an interactive conversation that could take days to untangle in an email thread. Here are some of the top ways...
It’s extremely uncommon for a Mac to freeze or crash these days, but it can happen. What should you do if your Mac locks up and becomes completely unresponsive to the mouse and keyboard? The trick is to press and hold the power button until the Mac turns off. Wait 5 or 10 seconds, and press it again to turn the Mac back on. You will lose any unsaved changes if you do this, so use it only as a last resort when you can’t restart normally. Look for the...
Most people are probably waiting until September to buy a new iPhone, but Apple is laying the groundwork for making the migration from an old phone to a new one even easier this time around. In iOS 12.4, Apple introduced a new way to migrate your data directly from one iPhone to another. This is an extension of the iOS 11 Quick Start feature that helps you set up a new iPhone with settings from your current device. All you have to do is turn on the new iPhone and...
An ever-increasing number of Web sites boost their security via two-factor authentication (2FA), which requires you to type in a short numeric code to complete a login after entering your username and password. It’s a big win because that code is generated on the fly and is good for only a short time (often 30 seconds). So even if your username and password were revealed in a data breach, your account is safe if you use 2FA. We recommend using it whenever possible. You get these codes—usually six digits—in one...
If you’ve filled up your external hard drives or become frustrated by their limitations, it’s time to look into a network-attached storage (NAS) device. What’s a NAS? It’s an intelligent storage device that can accept one or more hard drives or SSDs and connects to your network via Ethernet. NAS Benefits A NAS is a good choice for anyone who needs access to lots of storage, but small businesses in particular will appreciate the benefits of a NAS. They include: More storage: Most NAS devices provide multiple drive bays, so...
Winter Wonderland may be a great song to listen to when the snow flies, but if you’re sweltering in summer heat, having it pop up while iTunes is shuffling through your music feels wrong. Happily, there’s a way to prevent holiday music from playing out of season—this trick is also useful for keeping children’s songs from shuffling alongside tracks from Abba, Beethoven, and The Clash. In iTunes, select the songs you want to prevent from being included when you shuffle all tracks, and choose Edit > Get Info. In the...
We’ve all had it happen. “Can I use your Mac for a minute to check my email?” The answer can be “Yes,” but to keep people from poking around on your Mac, have your visitor log in as Guest. To enable the Guest account, go to System Preferences > Users & Groups. If the lock at the bottom left is closed, click it and enter your admin credentials. Then click Guest User in the list, and select “Allow guests to log in to this computer.” To switch to the Guest...
Most iOS apps and many Web sites make phone numbers “hot” so you can tap them to call. But it’s not uncommon to run across a number that’s formatted oddly or broken across a line of text such that it can’t be recognized. Just because iOS can’t recognize it doesn’t mean you have to memorize the number temporarily or flip back and forth to the Phone app to type it in it. Here’s a workaround. Double-tap the start of the phone number to select it, and then drag the rightmost...
One of the big no-nos with passwords is sending them to other people as plain text in email or a text message conversation. You presumably trust your recipient with the password, but what if their email was hacked or phone stolen? Instead, always use a site like 1ty.me or One-Time Secret, which lets you turn a password into a Web link that can be opened only once. Send that link to the recipient, and when they get the password out, they can store it in a secure password manager like...
By default, Safari on the Mac hides full Web addresses—technically known as URLs—from you, showing just the site name in the Smart Search field at the top of the window. If you click in the field or press Command-L, the full URL appears, which is good for checking that you’re really where you think you should be and not on some dodgy site. It’s also useful if you need to copy just a portion of the URL to share or otherwise work with. To make that check easier, go to...
Most Mac users probably think of searching on the Mac in relation to finding files on their drives. That may be the most common use of Apple’s Spotlight search technology, but over the years, Apple has continually enhanced Spotlight’s capabilities, turning it into a veritable Swiss Army Knife that you can invoke with a quick press of Command-Space bar or a click on the magnifying glass at the right side of the menu bar. Here are a few of our favorite uses for Spotlight that you may not have been...
When summer brings sunny days and rising temperatures, you may have ditched your business suit for shorts or skirts to stay comfortable, but your technological gear can’t do the same. And keeping your tech cool is about more than comfort—as temperatures rise, performance can suffer, charging may get slower or stop, various components might be disabled, and devices can become unreliable. How Hot Is Too Hot? You might be surprised by the recommended operating temperatures for Apple gear—whether you’re talking about an iPhone X or a MacBook Pro, the company...
Today we’re going to explore branding and customization of a few popular open source Mac management tools Munki and Munki Report. Before we dive into the specifics and get into the weeds it’s important to first recap and review the importance of branding and its role in the IT admin space. Why is branding so key when it comes to our ability to support our users? When you look at some of the brands on this screen you get a sense, a feeling and it sparks an emotional tone. Branding...
You know how to use the Camera app on your iPhone or iPad to take a video, but did you know that you can also record a video of what happens on the screen of your device? That’s useful if you’re trying to explain the steps of some technical process to a friend or show a tech support rep what’s going wrong in an app or Web site. You could also use a screen recording to copy a video from Facebook, for instance, that you want to send to a...
Apple’s prices for Lightning, USB-C, and Thunderbolt 3 cables often seem high—$19 for a USB-C to Lightning cable or $29 if you want a 2-meter version? Unfortunately, when it comes to cables, you often get what you pay for. Happily, other reputable hardware manufacturers like Anker and Belkin make quality cables and often charge less than Apple. Stay away from the bargain basement prices from no-name Chinese manufacturers, and if you see a supposedly genuine Apple cable selling for a too-good-to-be-true price, consider the possibility that it’s counterfeit. Apple has...
Do you sometimes find it difficult to read articles on your iPhone because of ads, banners, extraneous layout, social media icons, and too-small fonts? We certainly do, and there’s often a quick fix for the myriad ills of modern Web pages: Safari Reader. Whenever you see the Safari Reader icon to the left of the site’s domain name in the address bar, tap it to switch to a cleaner view that dispenses with all the unnecessary trimmings and presents the content in a larger, more readable font. Tap the font...
By default, Apple populates your Mac’s Dock with all sorts of apps and arranges them in a particular order. But there’s no rhyme or reason to the defaults, and you shouldn’t be afraid to add, remove, and rearrange apps on your Dock. To add an app, drag its icon from the Applications folder to the desired spot on the Dock. To remove an app you never use, drag its icon far enough off the Dock that a Remove tag appears above the icon and then let go. To arrange the...
Apple’s Batteries widget is a little known but highly useful tool for quickly assessing which of your small Apple devices is lowest on power—something you may wish to do particularly when traveling with only one charging cable. To access it, switch to Today view on the iPhone, accessible by swiping right on the Home screen or Lock screen. If the Batteries widget isn’t already there, scroll to the bottom, tap Edit, and tap the green + button to the left of Batteries in the list. Of course, if you just...
When Apple introduced the 12-inch MacBook in April 2015, the machine was the thinnest Mac ever, with a tapered design that starts at a mere 3.5 mm and grows only to 13.1 mm. A change from previous laptop models that made such an incredibly thin design possible was a new keyboard that swapped a scissor-style switch under each key for a new “butterfly mechanism” that’s 40 percent thinner. In October 2016, Apple started using a second generation of the so-called “butterfly” keyboard in the MacBook Pro line. Then, in July...
Heads up! If you’re using an older 15-inch MacBook Pro—the version with lots of ports that predates the current Thunderbolt 3 models—Apple has started a recall program to replace batteries that could explode and catch on fire. (We’re not kidding.) The affected MacBook Pro models were sold primarily between September 2015 and February 2017. To find out if your 15-inch MacBook Pro is affected, enter its serial number into Apple’s recall page. If it is included in the recall, shut it down and stop using it immediately! Contact Apple for a free...
It’s easy to share a single photo from your iPhone or iPad with a friend, but if you want to share a bunch of photos or lengthy videos, sending them in Messages or Mail might not work or could impact your (and your recipients’) data caps. In iOS 12, Apple added a clever feature that instead uploads the files to iCloud and lets you share a simple link that your recipients can use to view and download. Use this approach and your messages will send and be received faster and...
If you’re like many of our clients who use Dropbox intensively, you have a desktop Mac with a large drive and a MacBook with much less drive space. How do you prevent your large Dropbox account from overwhelming the laptop Mac’s available storage? The answer is Dropbox’s Selective Sync feature. On the MacBook, click the Dropbox icon in the menu bar, click your avatar in the upper-right corner, and choose Preferences. In the Preferences window, click Sync and then click the Choose Folders to Sync button. Deselect the folders you...
Apple is well known for its splashy media events, now usually held in the Steve Jobs Theater at the company’s new Cupertino campus. But Apple reserves such events for major announcements. Smaller announcements, such as minor updates to particular product lines, operating system updates, or new repair programs, get only a press release, if that. But just because a change doesn’t merit much fuss doesn’t mean it’s uninteresting—if you’ve been waiting for the right moment to buy a new Mac, for instance, an announcement of a small MacBook Pro revision...
Here’s What’s Coming from Apple in 2019 At Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference on June 3rd, the company unveiled the next versions of all its operating systems—macOS 10.15 Catalina, iOS 13 (and a new iPadOS), watchOS 6, and tvOS 13–along with the much-anticipated new Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR. Nothing that was announced will ship until later this year—probably September—but we wanted to give you a quick overview of what’s coming down the pike. macOS 10.15 Catalina With macOS 10.15, which Apple is calling “Catalina,” the company is working to...
We often recommend using a password manager like 1Password or LastPass, but we’ve gotten a few questions asking why we’re so adamant about this. Lots of people think that all they need to do to keep their online accounts secure is create a single password with some numbers, often switching a lowercase L with a 1 and a capital E with a 3. And that’s for accounts people care about—for those that they don’t see as important, they’re likely to use a simple password like their child’s or pet’s name....
You Can’t Teach an Old Dog…. or Can You? I remember trying to explain a VCR to older relatives. It wasn’t that they were less intelligent or unable to grasp the overall concept, it was that it wasn’t a necessary thing to learn in their opinion. They weren’t interested in the technology; they had fared fine in life so far without having to watch a recorded episode of anything. In fact, most of their lives were spent without television altogether. While not exactly the same, there are similarities in this...
Business email compromises (BEC) scams made a big statement in 2018, seeing a 133% increase over 2017, according to a recent report by Beazley Breach Response Services. The Beazley Breach Briefing looked at information gathered from investigations into more than 3,300 data incidents that were reported to Beazley in 2018. The investigations revealed that nearly half (47%) of the data incidents investigated were the result of a hack or malware. Diving deeper, the investigations revealed that half of those hacking or malware incidents were BEC scams. What is a BEC scam? BEC...
We are all aware of federal compliance regulations when it comes to the privacy and security of our information. For example, you’d be hard pressed to find someone who hasn’t heard of HIPAA. Yet are you aware that regulations have been put in place at the state level that have the same goal – to protect our security and privacy? This month (March 2019), the state of New York reached the end date for the Cybersecurity Regulation of the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) regulations. These required third-party...
Tis the season! You’re making mental plans with what is hopefully a generous tax refund and deciding what to do with the surplus of cash you’ll soon have on hand. Along the way from starting to submitting the paperwork, there are quite a few roadblocks to be aware of. Even if you aren’t getting a refund, your personal information is as valuable as the money you’re hoping for to scammers, so be on high alert. A compromise of this nature can expose so much personal information from social security number...
Human-error; we talk about it all the time, but what exactly do we mean? Human-error occurs when an individual performs a task or does something with an unintended outcome. It’s easy to point the finger at employee’s as being an organization’s weakest link, but without appropriate security awareness training provided by the employer, how can employees truly know what to watch out for? An IBM study found that human-error accounts for 95% of security incidents, yet security awareness training for employees often ends up on the back burner. In a...
Breaches are becoming increasingly common as cybercriminals continue to advance their skills and tactics to trick their victims into falling for their scams. While cybercriminals are remaining diligent in their efforts to carry out their attacks, small business owners continue to underspend on cybersecurity. An article on Entrepreneur looks at 5 things your employees are doing that put your business at risk. The 2016 State of SMB Cybersecurity Report revealed that half (14 million) of the 28 million small businesses in the U.S. had been hacked by cybercriminals, but why? According to...
The dark web is often known for the illegal activities conducted there, and while not everything on the dark web is illegal, it’s most appealing factor is its anonymity. The dark web is often a place where stolen data and personal information is bought and sold following a data breach or hacking incident. An article on Experian takes a look at what your personal information is worth on the dark web and how you can help protect yourself from being exposed. How much is your information worth to an identity thief on...
Identity theft is an unfortunate occurrence that is all too familiar with most business owners, but do those individuals know where the compromised data will end up? Often, these business owners are unaware of the virtual marketplace where stolen data is purchased and sold by cybercriminals; a place known as the “Dark Web”. An article on Lexology explores what the Dark Web is, what information is available for purchase there and how it impacts small businesses. What is the Dark Web? The Dark Web, which is not accessible through traditional search engines...
Touch ID lets users register up to five fingers that can unlock an iPhone, which has long been a boon for those who share access to their iPhone with trusted family members. However, users of the iPhone X haven’t been able to give a second person Face ID-based access, forcing those people to wait for Face ID to fail and then tap in a passcode manually. iOS 12 lifts that limitation, allowing a second person to register their face with Face ID on the iPhone X and the new iPhone...
It’s a constant refrain in many homes—a kid clamoring to use an iPad or iPhone to play games, watch videos, or chat with friends. As a parent, you know too much screen time is bad, especially when it affects homework or family dinners. At the same time, an iOS device may be essential for communication and schoolwork. In iOS 12, Apple introduced Screen Time, which shows how much time you spend on your own device, and helps you control your usage—see our recent article for details. But Screen Time also...
Before iOS 12, you’d tap the camera button in a Messages chat in order to share either a brand-new photo or a photo that had already been taken. In iOS 12, Apple changed things so tapping the camera button only lets you take a fresh photo. To find and send a photo that’s already in Photos, use the Photos mini-app in Messages. If necessary, tap the Apps button to the left of the message field to show the Messages apps, and then tap the Photos button to see a list...
You probably fall into one of two camps: people who haven’t the foggiest idea what pressing Command-Shift-3 or Command-Shift-4 do on the Mac, and those who use those keyboard shortcuts regularly to take screenshots. Either way, macOS 10.14 Mojave makes it easier than ever to create a still image of what’s on your Mac’s screen and to record a video of actions you take on the screen. (And don’t worry, the old shortcuts still work just as they always have.) For those who aren’t screenshot takers, why would you want...
For years, you’ve used the App Store app to install operating system and app updates on your Mac. That’s still true for apps, but with macOS 10.14 Mojave, Apple moved operating system updates to the new Software Update preference pane, which replaces the old App Store preference pane. Open System Preferences > Software Update to check your version of macOS and access available updates—there will be an Update Now button to click. You should also visit this pane to tell your Mac how to best handle system and app updates:...
With macOS 10.14 Mojave, Apple has beefed up the Mac’s privacy so it more closely resembles privacy in iOS. You’ve noticed that when you launch a new app on your iPhone or iPad, it often prompts for access to your photos or contacts, the camera or microphone, and more. The idea behind those prompts is that you should always be aware of how a particular app can access your personal data or features of your device. You might not want to let some new game thumb through your photos or...
It can be easy to become overwhelmed by iOS notifications, particularly if you have chatty friends or apps. In iOS 12, Apple corralled notifications by grouping them into stacks so you no longer see an endless screen of alerts. To expand a stack of notifications on either the Lock screen or in Notification Center (swipe down from the top of the screen), tap the stack. Once you’ve expanded a stack, you can tap Show Less to restack it, tap the X button to remove the entire stack, or tap any...
Black Friday and the start of the holiday shopping seasons are nearly upon us. If you’re looking for gift ideas for your Apple-using loved ones, we have a few suggestions that are guaranteed to be popular. Apple Watch The new Apple Watch Series 4 may be the gift hit of the season as adult children buy it for aging parents. That’s happening due to the Apple Watch’s health monitoring capabilities, which include fall detection, atrial fibrillation detection, and (soon) the capability to record electrocardiograms. It may seem expensive at $399...
At a special event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Apple threw back the curtains on significant updates to the long-ignored MacBook Air and even longer-ignored Mac mini. Then Tim Cook and company followed up with revamped 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pros, complete with an enhanced Smart Keyboard Folio and redesigned Apple Pencil. You can order all of Apple’s new gear right away, though demand may delay shipping for a week or two on some items. MacBook Air Gains Retina Display and Touch ID When Steve Jobs introduced the MacBook...
Do you end up with so many tabs in Safari that it becomes impossible to read the truncated tab titles? There’s no shame in that, and Safari 12—which comes with macOS 10.14 Mojave and is a free update for 10.12 Sierra and 10.13 High Sierra—now offers an option to add an icon representing the Web site to each open tab. Called a favicon, this tiny image is usually carefully designed to identify its site and makes it easier to pick out the tab. To enable the feature, open Safari >...
Do you frequently reach for your iPhone for a quick check of Facebook or Messages? It’s all too easy to let social media, the latest hot game, or even your work email intrude on your real life. If you’re uncomfortable with how much—and when—you use your iPhone or iPad, iOS 12’s new Screen Time feature can help you limit your usage in two ways, by time of day and by time spent in an app. (Screen Time can help you monitor and limit your children’s iOS usage too. This article...
The Mac’s Dock gives you quick access to frequently used apps, documents, and folders, and makes it easy to switch to a running app. In macOS 10.14 Mojave, the Dock has another feature: a list of apps you’ve used recently that aren’t on your default Dock. Icons for these apps appear between your Dock’s default apps and any documents or folders that you’ve added—look closely and you’ll notice subtle lines in the Dock that delineate this area. It always holds at least three apps, but expands to hold as many...
We love the Do Not Disturb feature in iOS—it’s essential for keeping notifications from waking us up at night or causing embarrassing light and noise in dark movie theater. But it’s long had a problem. When you invoked Do Not Disturb manually for a movie or doctor’s appointment, you had to remember to turn it off manually when you were done, or risk missing important notifications. No more! In iOS 12, Apple enhanced Do Not Disturb in two ways: enabling it to disable itself automatically after a certain amount of...
Before iOS 12, Apple Maps was the only mapping app you could run on the dashboard in a CarPlay-equipped automobile. But Maps doesn’t always work well, and some people prefer directions from Google Maps or the Google-owned Waze. Once you upgrade your iPhone to iOS 12 and update to the latest version of Google Maps or Waze for iOS, you’ll be able to use those apps on your CarPlay screen. Happy navigating!
The feature Apple is promoting most heavily with macOS 10.14 Mojave is Dark mode, which the company advertises as “a dramatic new look that helps you focus on your work… as toolbars and menus recede into the background.” Let’s look at what Apple has done with Dark mode, after which you’ll have a better idea of what to think about while trying it. Enable Dark Mode First, to turn Dark mode on, go to System Preferences > General and click the Dark thumbnail to the right of Appearance. Mojave immediately...
Although most of what’s new in iOS 12 are new features, one change for change’s sake may throw you. In iOS 11 on an iPad, you would bring up Control Center by swiping up from the bottom of the screen, just like on all iPhones other than the iPhone X. With iOS 12, however, Apple brought the iPad in line with the iPhone X and the recently released iPhone XR, XS, and XS Max. Swiping up from the bottom of the screen on the iPad now reveals the Dock, and...
Have you found yourself composing an email message on your Mac while staring glumly at the receipt or document you need to scan and attach to the message? Adding that scan to the message isn’t impossible, but until macOS 10.14 Mojave, it hasn’t necessarily been easy. It’s super simple now, thanks to a new Mojave feature called Continuity Camera. It lets you take pictures or scan documents with an iPhone or iPad running iOS 12 and have those images show up immediately on the Mac, either in a document or...
A Simple Technique for Decluttering Your Reminders List Productivity experts recommend offloading things you have to remember to a task-management app like Apple’s Reminders, which syncs your to-dos among your Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. That’s particularly helpful for tasks you want to be reminded of in a few months or next year, but then those far-in-the-future tasks—especially repeating ones!—clutter your main Reminders list. The solution? Create a Far Future Reminders list, and move reminders to it that aren’t relevant within the next month or so. Just make sure...
A Hidden Trick that Lets You Navigate Your iPhone with One Hand Unless you can palm a basketball, you may not be able to use an iPhone single-handed. But sometimes one hand is all you can spare. If you find yourself in such a situation, give Reachability a try. On a Touch ID–based iPhone, tap (don’t press) the Home button twice to slide the iPhone’s interface halfway down the physical screen, bringing everything into reach of your thumb. On the Face ID–equipped iPhone X, put your thumb in the bottom...
Some Web sites have separate desktop and mobile versions, each theoretically providing the best browsing experience for its platform. Unfortunately, mobile Web sites sometimes leave out necessary features or hide content. That’s especially annoying if you’re browsing on an iPad, where the desktop site would work fine. If you run across such a site while browsing in Safari on the iPhone or iPad, you can ask for its desktop version. Press and hold the Reload button at the right side of the address bar, and then tap Request Desktop Site....
Look Up All Sorts of Information with a Quick Click or Tap on the Mac Apple makes it easy to look up information about any word you can see on your Mac, in nearly any app. To access this information, Control- or right-click the word and choose Look Up “word”, use the trackpad to tap the word with three fingers, or hover the pointer over it and press Command-Control-D. macOS displays a popover with a dictionary definition. And in 10.12 Sierra and later, you can also swipe right with two...
Make More Space for Documents by Putting Your Dock on the Side of Your Mac’s Screen By default, Apple locates the Dock at the bottom of the Mac’s screen. If that location interferes with you seeing as much of your document windows as you’d like, you can set it to appear only when you move the pointer to the bottom edge of the screen. But there’s a better way: put the Dock on the side of the screen where there’s plenty of horizontal room and it won’t get in the...
Teach Siri How to Pronounce Names Properly Siri is supposed to be a competent voice assistant, but sometimes Siri can’t even pronounce your own name correctly! Luckily, it’s easy to fix Siri’s pronunciation for any name. Just say to Siri, “Learn how to pronounce Jill Kresock.” (Siri defaults to “krehsock” rather than the correct “kreesock” in this case.) Siri first asks you to say the person’s first name and then presents a list of options for the best pronunciation. Tap the play button next to each option to hear it,...
The Secret Keyboard Shortcut for Comparing Before/After Edits in Photos on the Mac Photos on the Mac provides so many editing tools that it’s easy to lose track of how an edited image compares to the original. You can always use the Revert to Original command and then undo it, but that’s fussy. Instead, Photos provides a Show Original button in the upper-left corner, between the window controls and the Revert to Original button. Click and hold it to see your original image; let up to see the edited version...
When you double-click a document, macOS uses the document’s file extension to figure out which app should open the file. So, by default, a PDF file called laser-squid.pdf opens in Preview because the Finder knows that everything with a .pdf extension should open in Preview. But what if you would prefer to open .pdf files in Adobe Reader, or you want comma-separated value (.csv) text files to open in Numbers? To change any mapping, select a file of the type in question and choose File > Get Info to open...
Tired of “Sent from my iPhone” as Your Email Signature? When you use Apple’s Mail app on your iPhone to send email, the default signature is “Sent from my iPhone.” If you’d rather not advertise that fact with every email, or would prefer to change it to something more personal, don’t bother poking around in the Mail app itself. Instead, go to Settings > Mail > Signature, where you can change the signature to anything you like or delete it entirely. If you have multiple email accounts configured, such as...
Update AirPort Express Base Stations to Add AirPlay 2 Apple may have discontinued its AirPort Wi-Fi base stations, but in a surprise parting gift, the company has released a firmware update to the AirPort Express that gives it AirPlay 2 capabilities like multi-room audio. If you have an AirPort Express connected to speakers through its audio jack, first use AirPort Utility on the Mac or iPhone to update its firmware to version 7.8. Once you do that, you’ll be able to play audio simultaneously through the AirPort Express and to...
Use Copy as Pathname to Help Someone Find a File on the Mac Have you ever needed to write directions for where to find a file on the Mac? That’s easy if it’s in a well-traveled location, like the Music or Pictures folder, but more difficult if it’s in an obscure hidey-hole. Rather than write out instructions like “Look in the Chrome folder inside Google’s Application Support folder in your user Library folder,” select the item in question, hold down the Option key, and choose Edit > Copy “ItemName” as...
Did You Know This Hidden Trick for Opening System Preferences Panes Directly? The System Preferences app on the Mac contains about 30 icons, each leading to additional settings panes. Rather than opening System Preferences, scanning the collection of icons, and clicking the one you want, you can jump directly to the desired pane. Just click and hold on the System Preferences icon in the Dock, and choose a pane from the pop-up menu.
Tired of Skewed Lines in Your Photos? Use the Camera App’s Hidden Level. If you’ve ever photographed a sheet of paper or some other rectangular object, the image may have come out skewed because you inadvertently tilted the camera. The iOS 11 Camera app has a level feature to help you avoid this problem, but it’s so subtle that you may not have noticed it. To use it, first go to Settings > Camera and turn on the Grid switch so thin white lines divide the viewfinder image into a...
Apple has thrown back the curtain on its latest batch of iPhones and a new model of the Apple Watch. The company also announced plans to release iOS 12, watchOS 5, and tvOS 12 on September 17th. macOS 10.14 Mojave will follow a week later on September 24th. X Appeal: The New iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR Last year’s iPhone X was a massive hit, so Apple has gone further down that road, dropping the Home button and Touch ID and focusing on Face ID in this...
Did You Know You Can Customize the Columns in a Finder Window’s List View? When a Mac folder contains a lot of files, the Finder’s List view often works best, since it lets you focus on a single folder and easily sort the contents by clicking the different columns: Name, Date Modified, Size, and Kind. But did you know that you can resize columns, rearrange them, and even add and remove columns? To resize a column, drag the vertical separator line to the right of its name. To move a...
Did You Know Your EarPods Work as a Remote Shutter Button for Photos? Have you ever composed the perfect photo in the iPhone’s Camera app and then been unable to tap the shutter button without jiggling the iPhone and blurring the image? That can be especially difficult with macro shots that require physical contortions to position the iPhone properly. Sometimes, pressing one of the physical volume buttons on the iPhone to trigger the shutter is the solution. But, even better, connect your iPhone’s wired EarPods and then press one of...
How to Recover Space by Offloading Unused Apps in iOS 11 Running low on space on your iPhone or iPad in iOS 11? This problem may be easier to deal with than you expect because Apple has added a quick way to free up storage space by removing unneeded apps. Go to Settings > General > iPhone/iPad Storage, where you’ll see a Recommendations section. This section may include an option to Offload Unused Apps with an estimate of how much space you could save. Tap Enable to allow iOS to...
Remember That You Can Search for Nearly Anything in Your Photos Library Apple’s Photos app on the Mac can identify thousands of different objects in your photos, so it’s easy to find photos based on their content. You can find objects (cars and trains), scenery (beaches and forests), and even some events (weddings and parades). This is both big fun and useful for those times when you can’t remember when you took a photo, but do remember what’s in it, like a cat, camera, or carousel. To carry out a...
Here’s How to Hide All Windows on Your Mac So You Can Work on the Desktop If your Mac is anything like ours, you end up with lots of apps open, each with one or more windows that obscure the Desktop. For those people who like to save in-progress documents to the Desktop and keep current project folders there, all those windows get in the way. macOS has a solution. Open System Preferences > Mission Control, and in the Keyboard and Mouse Shortcuts section, from the Show Desktop pop-up menu,...
Fix a Frozen Finder with This Quick Tip Finder freezes. They shouldn’t happen at all, and they don’t happen often, but it’s not unheard of for your Mac’s Finder to freeze, freak out, or otherwise stop responding properly. To bring it back to life, hold down the Option key, click and hold the Finder icon in the Dock, and choose Relaunch. (If the “click and hold” action feels odd, you can instead hold down Control and Option, and then just click.) In theory, you should be able to keep working...
Sad news: Apple is discontinuing its photo printing services, which enabled you to create and order physical prints, cards, calendars, and books from within Photos on the Mac. If you’re building such a project right now, be sure to place your order before September 30th, 2018. After that, Apple is directing users to download a Photos Project Extension from the Mac App Store. You’ll see this dialog whenever you click a project in Photos. When you click the Open App Store button, Photos opens the App Store app and shows...
On the face of it, Apple’s Find My iPhone feature does what it says. If you lose your iPhone, you can identify its last known location by looking in the Find iPhone app or on the iCloud Web site, and you can make it play a sound. It’s great for tracking down a missing iPhone, whether you misplaced it in the house or left it behind at a restaurant. But Find My iPhone does much more! For starters, it works with nearly any Apple device. You can use it to...
A trackpad is not a mouse. In some ways, that’s obvious—you swipe your fingers on it, rather than dragging it around. Less obvious, however, are the many gestures that make using a trackpad on your Mac faster and more fun. These gestures aren’t limited to laptop users, thanks to Apple’s Magic Trackpad 2, which brings gesturing goodness to any desktop Mac. Here’s how to put your fingers to work. Four Fingers on the Trackpad The four-fingers-down gestures are dramatic and an easy way to appreciate the power of trackpad gestures,...
There’s an Internet saying: “If you’re not the customer, you’re the product.” The point is that, if you’re getting a service for free, the company providing it sees you not as a customer, but as a product to sell, generally to advertisers. This is how Google, Facebook, and Twitter operate. They provide services for free, collect data about you, and make money by showing you ads. In theory, the more that advertisers know about you, the better they can target ads to you, and the more likely you’ll be to...
When Apple first announced macOS 10.13 High Sierra and iOS 11, one of the promised features was Messages in iCloud, a way of syncing your conversations in Messages via your iCloud account. Despite the fact that Messages already tries to sync its conversations between your devices, this feature proved difficult for Apple to deliver, and it didn’t appear until the recently released macOS 10.3.5 and iOS 11.4. The idea behind Messages in iCloud is that it, as the name suggests, stores your conversations and their attachments in your iCloud account,...
Most Macs are busy places, with oodles of open windows cluttering the screen. If you want to look at the Desktop or do something different, you may find yourself clicking around or using keyboard shortcuts, but did you know that you can access many of the Mac’s special views with just a flick of your wrist? A little-known feature called Hot Corners makes this possible. The key to unlocking Hot Corners is in System Preferences, in either the Desktop & Screen Saver pane or the Mission Control pane. In either...
For many years now, Apple’s AirPlay feature has made it possible to stream audio from an iOS device or Mac to an AirPlay-enabled speaker, AirPort Express base station, or most recently, a HomePod. Because AirPlay transfers sound over a Wi-Fi network, it eliminates the need for stereo wires and lets you put your speakers where you want them. In June 2017, Apple threw back the curtains on AirPlay 2, saying it would play the same song on multiple speakers (with AirPlay 1, this is possible only in iTunes) or play...
Data breaches have become commonplace, with online thieves constantly breaking into corporate and government servers and making off with millions—or even hundreds of millions!—of email addresses, often along with other personal information like names, physical address, and passwords. It would be nice to think that all companies properly encrypt their password databases, but the sad reality is that many have poor data security practices. As a result, passwords gathered in a breach are often easily cracked, enabling the bad guys to log in to your accounts. That may not seem...
As students prepare to head off to college, Apple has updated the Touch Bar-equipped MacBook Pro line to provide even more powerful options for students and professionals alike. The changes are primarily under the hood, focusing on faster performance, more RAM, and larger SSD-based storage, but there are a few modest physical changes too, including a quieter keyboard and a True Tone display. Despite these improvements, pricing remains the same as for last year’s models. The 13-inch MacBook Pro that has function keys instead of a Touch Bar remains the...
Nearly all of us have to work together in a group at some point. Whether it’s for your job, a PTA, a club sports team, or a family trying to organize a vacation, it’s helpful to have a spot where everyone in the group can contribute information, comment on what others say, and build a structure around that information. Most project management apps and services provide a canned workflow, but unfortunately, these tools are often overly structured. For a more flexible approach, check out Trello, a free online service you...
As iPhones have become ever more prevalent, one of Apple’s bundled apps—Find My Friends—has become significantly more useful. Although there are legitimate concerns about sharing your location willy-nilly, Find My Friends gives everyone full control over what they share, making it truly helpful for families and close friends. So if you’ve ever thought it would be useful to know when your child left their soccer game or wanted them to receive an automatic alert when you leave to pick them up, Find My Friends is the app for you. It’s...
In Troubleshooting 101, one of the first questions is always, “What version of the operating system are you running?” There’s a big difference between Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and macOS 10.13 High Sierra, and the solution to any particular problem will likely revolve around knowing what operating system is in play. The same is true of Apple’s other operating systems: iOS, watchOS, and tvOS. And, although they aren’t quite in the same category, Apple’s AirPods and HomePod both have system software that can be updated as well. For...
Attend any live theater presentation, and someone will ask the audience to silence their cell phones. But what about your Apple Watch? You don’t want it lighting up or making noise during the show either. To ensure that doesn’t happen, swipe up on the face to display Control Center, and then tap the theater masks icon to enable Theater mode (you may have to scroll down to see it). That automatically turns on Silent mode and prevents the screen from lighting up unless you tap it, press a button, or...
Taking Out the Garbage: Tips for Working with the Trash on the Mac One of the great innovations of the Mac, way back when, was the concept of the Trash. Instead of deleting files immediately, you’d put them in the Trash, where they’d sit until you either took them out or removed them for good by emptying the Trash. You undoubtedly know the basics of working with the Trash: drag files in, drag mistakenly trashed files out, and choose Finder > Empty Trash to delete the files and recover the...
Overloaded by Work Email? Give the Slack Messaging Tool a Try. Don’t get us wrong—email is great. But sometimes there’s too much of it at work, as colleagues share information too broadly or chime in unnecessarily, and as marketing offers and other junk fills your inbox. Over the past few years, lots of organizations—including small and large firms, non-profits, academic departments, student project teams, and government agencies—have moved their internal communications to the group messaging service Slack, which is free but includes paid plans with additional features. It’s also possible...
Continuing our run down of the sharing preference pane, Bluetooth Sharing allows you to easily share files via Bluetooth with other Bluetooth enabled devices. The devices do not have to be Apple products they can be Android phones for example. It can be a convenient way of transferring files when two computers are not on the same network, however the transfer speeds are quite slow compared with Ethernet or Wi-Fi networking. Go to: System Preferences > Sharing Check the Bluetooth Sharing checkbox and set the options: Special attention should be...
Moment Helps You Gauge Your iPhone Use and Offers Parental Oversight Option Smartphone addiction is real. Do you check your iPhone before you get out of bed? During family dinners? Right before you go to sleep? Constantly during the day even when you’re on vacation? If you—or your family members—feel that you’re disappearing into your phone too often or at inappropriate times, it may be time to do something about it. To start, you might want to quantify the problem, and for that, you can turn to a free iPhone...
What Is The Best Hard Drive to Use for Your Backups? Backing up your Mac is like flossing your teeth: everyone knows they should do it every night, but too many people never get around to it. Unlike flossing, once you set up backups, they don’t require daily attention. And turning on Apple’s Time Machine backup feature is easy—simply open System Preferences > Time Machine, click Select Backup Disk, and pick a hard drive to hold your backups. Ah, but there’s the rub. If you don’t have an appropriate hard...
Internet Sharing It really does do what it says, you can share the internet connection on your Mac with other computers on the same local network. Or if you don’t have a local network you can share your Mac’s Internet connection via Ethernet, Wi-Fi, USB & Bluetooth. Go to: System Preferences > Sharing In this article, I’m going to share the iPhone USB connection from my Mac to Wi-Fi & Ethernet connections, this is useful if say your broadband is offline or you are changing provider. Before enabling Internet Sharing...
Enabling remote Apple events Continuing our run down of the sharing preference pane we’ll cover remote Apple events, remote Apple events allow apps running on other Macs to send commands directly to the Mac with remote Apple events enabled these commands can include “opening an app”, “printing a document” or even playing music. Basically, remote Apple events allow you to quickly run a task on another Mac without having to use screen sharing. Go to: System Preferences > Sharing Check the Remote Apple events option: Again, you should specify which...
You’ve probably heard of Apple Pay, but have you set it up so you can use it to pay for purchases at checkout? If not, give it a try, since it’s one of those living-in-the future Apple technologies that feels like science fiction every time you use it. Simply put your iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch within an inch or so of a compatible payment terminal (look for an Apple Pay or contactless payment logo), put your finger on the Home button to use Touch ID (or double-press the iPhone X’s side...
At the end of March, Apple released updates to all four of its operating systems, but iOS 11.3 was the most notable. It boasts a variety of new features and other changes—you can think of it as the midpoint update between iOS 11’s first release and iOS 12, probably coming next September. All remaining updates to iOS 11 are likely to be minor maintenance updates. Here’s what’s new. iPhone Battery Health The most anticipated change is the Battery Health feature that Apple promised to add in the wake of revelations...
When it comes to calendars, we’re mostly concerned with the future. But sometimes you want to travel back in time too, to see when you had that doctor appointment or last went to the gym. If you scroll back in the Calendar app in iOS, you might discover, to your consternation, that after 2 weeks back, the only items in your calendar are old repeating events. What gives? Weirdly, since calendar events consume almost no storage space, iOS lets you select how far back to sync events from your master...
If you’re working on an iPad with a physical keyboard—either a Bluetooth keyboard or an iPad Pro with Apple’s Smart Keyboard—there are quite a few keyboard shortcuts you can use to work faster. Many are what you’d guess if you have Mac experience; for instance, Command-F generally maps to Find. But to see a list of supported keyboard shortcuts in an app, simply press and hold the Command key on the keyboard until an information panel appears. Some apps, like Calendar (shown below), even have multiple pages of shortcuts; swipe...
Dragging files and folders around is core to the Mac experience—drag a file from one folder to another to move it, drag a folder from one drive to another to copy it. But did you know that if you hold down the Option key while dragging a file in the Finder, you’ll get a green + pointer and it will make a copy in the destination? That’s easier than duplicating, moving, and renaming the file. Similarly, if you want to move a large folder from one drive to another, hold...
A client got in touch recently with a maddening problem. When he received texts on his iPhone, Messages displayed notifications for messages from everyone…except his wife! Needless to say, this was a problem. Since notifications appeared correctly for other people, it wasn’t related to overall settings. It turned out that he—or someone else, or iOS gremlins—had inadvertently enabled the Hide Alerts switch for the Messages conversation with his wife. To fix it, all he had to do was display the conversation in Messages, tap the i button at the upper...
Facebook has dominated the news headlines of late, but not for good reasons. There were the 50 million Facebook profiles gathered for Cambridge Analytica and used in the 2016 presidential election. Facebook has long been scraping call and text message data from Android phones. And within the Facebook iOS app, the company pushes the Onavo Protect VPN, an app made by a subsidiary that literally collects all your mobile data traffic for Facebook. Because of this, many have encouraged Facebook users to delete their accounts. That even includes the billionaire...
As of June 1st 2018, the Mac App Store will require all apps to support 64-bit, in advance of this after you update to macOS 10.13.4 the first time you open a 32-bit app you will see the following alert. If you press the “Learn More” Button it takes you to the apple.com website which explains. “Starting with macOS High Sierra 10.13.4, apps that have not been updated to use 64-bit processes produce a one-time alert when opened. This gives users advance notice that they are running 32-bit software, which...
Continuing our run down of the options in the file sharing preference pane, we are going to explain the Remote Management option. Remote management works with the Apple Remote Desktop app which is a paid app from the Mac app store, so you won’t need to use this service unless you want to allow other people to control your Mac using the Apple Remote Desktop app. Go to: System Preferences > Sharing Now check the Remote Management option from the service list: You may be prompted to choose which options...
When you enable remote login, you can access your Mac using Secure Shell (SSH) from another computer. If you don’t know what this is then you most likely do not want to enable it as it will make your Mac less secure, however if you need to use SSH to access your Mac read on! Go to: System Preferences > Sharing Check the Remote Login Service. This will also enable secure FTP (sftp). You now need to set which users can log in: From the Allow access for list: All...
If you’ve got a perfectly usable printer that only supports USB connections that is to say non-network or non-wireless printers it’s possible to share it on your network so other Macs can print to it. To share your printer on a Mac or with a UNIX computer the computers must be on the same network as your Mac, Mac users must be running OS X Tiger or later. Go to: System Preferences > Sharing Check the Printer Sharing checkbox, and the Printer Sharing status will change to On. In the...
Continuing with our run down of the sharing preference pane, we’ll look into File Sharing. File sharing is one of the most useful services available when you have a more than one computer, care should be taken not to open up the files on the networked computers in a way that allows anyone to access your files. To enable File Sharing on your Mac, go to System Preferences > Sharing Next check the box for File Sharing Mac and Windows computers can now see your computer on the local network....
Apple’s iCloud Drive offers you a way to safely and securely store and save your files - from documents to images and videos. iCloud Drive works similar to Dropbox or Box, but has now integrated a lot of new features through iOS 11, allowing you to collabo-rate with others and work using Apple software such as Pages, Keynote and more. Set Up: Mac, iPhone and iPad The first step is to set up your iCloud Drive account if you haven’t already. On the Mac Make sure you are running the...
Today more than ever it is important to keep your computers up to date to safeguard from security vulnerabilities that hackers and cybercriminals might use to attack or gain entry to your computer files and confidential data. Apple has made this process easier through software notifications that you can receive automatically to install updates. You can also make upgrades automatically if you like. If you receive a notification that software updates are available, you can choose when to install the updates, or choose to be reminded the next day. Here’s...
Snazzy shadowed text probably isn’t appropriate for your company’s annual report, but if you’re whipping up a flyer for a birthday party, you might want to jazz up the text. You can do that in most Mac apps that support macOS’s system-level Fonts palette. Select your text, and then bring up the Fonts palette. Generally speaking, such as in Pages and TextEdit, you do that by choosing Format > Font > Show Fonts, though the exact location may vary by app. Then click the shadowed T button toward the right...
Here’s one for those who use Apple’s Notes app for storing bits of information. By default, Notes in macOS gives you a single window, with each note listed in a sidebar. But what if you want to see two notes at once? Or keep one always available no matter what else you’re doing? Select the desired notes in the sidebar by Command-clicking them, and then choose Window > Float Selected Notes to open them in their own windows. Or, just double-click them in the sidebar! Then, to make sure one...
Family life is all about togetherness, but keeping track of who’s doing what when can be tough. Apple’s Family Sharing service makes it easy to share apps, media, and more within a family of up to six members, and it provides a few helpful digital housekeeping capabilities, such as locating your kid’s misplaced iPad. Here’s an overview of how Family Sharing can enhance your family’s everyday life, both online and in the real world. Manage Your Kids’ Purchases Every Family Sharing group has an organizer. That person (probably you) sets...
Have you had an incoming call and seen all your Apple devices light up and had your iPad start ringing with your iPhone? Here’s how to fix it! This scenario has happened to many Apple users who have multiple devices, where they are picking up their iPhones to answer calls but hear ringing in other parts of their home or office where their other Apple devices are also ringing! Quite a commotion really! This is one of those add-on features that Apple offers that you might just not need to...
With Apple’s productivity apps like Calendar, Contacts, Notes, and Reminders, which look and work pretty much the same on the Mac and in iOS, what you see is largely what you get. Particularly in iOS, they tend not to have much in the way of hidden depths. With Reminders, however, Apple’s engineers snuck some surprising little features into the Mac version. We like using Siri on the iPhone, Apple Watch, and HomePod to add items to our iCloud-synced Reminders to-do lists and shopping lists whenever we think of them. And...
File this warning under “unless it’s absolutely necessary.” If you use iCloud Photo Library on your Mac, don’t sign out from iCloud. Also, don’t deselect the iCloud Photo Library checkbox in either the Photos options of the iCloud pane of System Preferences or in the iCloud preferences in Photos itself. Why not? Because, when you re-enable iCloud or iCloud Photo Library, Photos will re-upload all your photos, which could take days. (It’s not really re-uploading all of them, but even just resyncing will take a long time.) Worse, if you...
After months of anticipation, Apple’s new HomePod smart speaker finally shipped in mid-February. Reviews of its audio quality have been positive, and for the most part, it works both as advertised and as you’d expect. However, there were some surprises, most good but some bad. Whether you have a HomePod on your credenza (which may be a bad spot for it!) or you’re still deciding if you want to buy one, here are ten things you should know: Furniture rings. Let’s get this one out of the way. The HomePod...
Junk calls are one of the great annoyances of the modern world. You’re minding your own business when your iPhone vibrates in your pocket. You pull it out, curious as to who’s calling, but don’t recognize the number. You may notice that it’s in the same exchange as your phone number, suggesting that it’s a neighbor. But no. When you answer, it’s “Heather,” a pre-recorded voice wanting to sign you up for a resort vacation, give your business a loan, or help with your credit card debt. Angered by the...
In my previous post we spoke about how to share access to a DVD disk over the local network to a Mac that has no DVD drive. The next item in the list for Sharing is Screen Sharing, this can be very useful if you want to control one Mac on the same network from another. It allows you to view and control the Macs desktop and apps as well as access the folders and files. It is a little more complicated than using DVD sharing in that you also...
Have you been alarmed to see your iMac suddenly stopped working after you installed a security update or used new software? Here’s what you can do. When your trusty iMac does not turn on, it is easy to get panicked. Fixing this and getting your computer back up and running may be quick or take a while depending upon the problems that need to be addressed. For some users who installed the MacOS High Sierra update before the security patch was released a week later, this software update could have...
The sharing preference pane in System Preferences allows you to easily share access to your Macs files, Screen, attached devices such as printers and DVDs and much more. Sharing the DVD drive on an iMac across your network can be very useful if you have another Mac without a disk drive such as the MacBook Air. To access the Sharing preference pane, go to System Preferences > Sharing: Once you are in the Sharing preference pane it is worth making a note of the Computer Name and even changing this...
Notification in macOS keep all the potential dialog boxes and pop ups that apps generate under control and in one place. The Notification center can also provide you access to information quickly like your calendar and weather information using widgets, some of the widgets such as the weather widget are built in others are added by apps. To see your notifications click on the 3 bars in the top right hand corner of macOS: To edit the widgets click on the edit button on the today tab. Then use the...
Since macOS 10.11.2 (macOS Sierra) the keychain app has been updated for better security and the keychain repair utility has been removed to stop malware hijacking the repair utility and accessing your passwords. So, what can you do if for example you have a constant nag from macOS to enter your keychain password after logging in. The answer is you have to repair it yourself, it’s not as difficult as you might first imagine although more time consuming than pressing a button to repair the keychain. If your only problem...
Apple also released updates for macOS 10.13.3, tvOS 11.2.6, and watchOS 4.2.3 , these updates are just patches to fix the “Telugu” bug which causes apps like messages to crash when a single character of the Telugu language is sent to them, Telugu is a Dravidian language native to India. These updates also fix other bugs, including a macOS bug which displays messages in the Messages app in the wrong order. The bug surfaced on a bug report site called Open Radar just over a week ago, and is as...
Your Mac relies on developers to provide an uninstaller for each app so often you are left with the only option of dragging an app from the Applications folder and dropping it in the trash. I’m going to run through the options with you here and the pros and cons of each, as always when deleting something from your Mac it is a good idea to make a backup first Time Machine is easy and convenient to use. To safely remove an app and its data: Step 1 see if...
When you have upgraded to a new iPhone, you will still want access to your old iPhone data and settings. You may have already set up your new iPhone, enjoying its new settings but not transferred your data from your older device. Here’s how you can do that. First check that that you have data backed up on your older device. If not, open iTunes, select the device icon and click Back Up Now. You can check for an existing backup by going to Tunes > Preferences > Devices and...
As well as performing a complete backup of your Mac Time Machine also has some really powerful features for restoring individual files, folders, version control and even fragments of a file. We discussed making a full backup with Time Machine here. Restoring a single file or folder simply navigate to the location it was stored in, Enter Time Machine from the Menu Bar Icon, or search in Spotlight for Time Machine. When Time Machine first opens the Timeline will be set to Now, that’s the bar on the right-hand side...
You probably know that you can change Siri’s voice on your Mac, iPhone or iPad. You can also change Siri’s voice on your HomePod. The settings for the voice options are just in a different location in the Home app instead of the Settings app. Here’s what to do if you would like to change Siri’s voice to a male or female or give it a different accent (American, British and Australian are currently available). Open the Home app and find your HomePod in the list of Favorite Accessories. Long...
We have all had that moment where you save and save your files into your Google drive folder only to find out that days prior the Google Drive app had somehow stopped sycing your files. You need to get a file from Google Drive because your computer’s battery is dead and the files are not in the cloud. This is a more common problem then you might think. If its not Google Drive it could be another app that you rely on. Dashlane, LastPass, and Crashplan are other great examples...
Your Mac comes with a fantastic App which allows you to easily create your own mini Apps that can complete all kinds of actions automatically so if you regularly do things such as set the volume to 40% exactly you can create an automator workflow to do it for you. You can also easily link this with the dictation service that is built into osX to create something that really does save time and is really cool to boot. Today I will show you how to create a simple workflow...
Setting up this iPhone feature is a snap, but could save your life or a loved one. Your iPhone has so many features today that you may never use or access. There’s one how-ever that could literally save your life - it is Medical ID. With Medical ID, you can save im-portant medical information on your iPhone that can be shared with a hospital or EMT to give you emergency treatment in case you would need it. Open the Health app. Tap the Medical ID tab on the bottom right....
Apple’s wireless headphones make it easy to enjoy a little private TV time. Apple’s wireless headphones, AirPods, makes watching television privately, more enjoyable. AirPods are terrific for iPhones, iPads, and Macs, but often people are unaware that you can also use them with your Apple TV (4th generation or 4K). In fact, you can enjoy TV late at night or early in the morning with audio beaming wirelessly over the living room without causing any disturbances or waking anyone else up! Here’s how you do it. Pair AirPods with Apple...
Macs are pretty safe in personal computer terms with “safety. built right in” as Apple likes to say. However, this is not to say Macs are invulnerable to various Malware the latest being the MaMi malware. The MaMi malware works by hijacking the DNS system on the Mac itself, DNS is used to route domain names so when you visit apple.com you are actually accessing an I.P address, the location of domain names are stored on name servers and routed via DNS often by your ISP. The first step in...
You can easily increase the performance of your iCloud access and the time it takes to perform updates across all your Apple devices using OSX & iOS. That includes your Mac(s) your Apple TV and your iPhone(S) & iPad(s). It’s not difficult to do and won’t cost you a cent! Using High Sierra’s content caching the software updates for iOS (your iPad, iPhone, & Apple TV) & OS X (your Mac) are stored on one of your Macs. Then your other Apple devices can access that content quickly from your...
We have recieved many concerns and questions regarding the nature of the latest two exploits. Here is more information on what they are exactly, what they do and what you need to do about it. Two large security vulnerabilities, named Meltdown and Spectre, were revealed this month, when a research team unexpectedly shared the flaw publicly ahead of planned announcements. The security flaws were discovered a few months ago and privately revealed to chip companies, operating system developers and cloud computing companies who were all working to develop necessary security...
Sometimes whether it is for backup purposes or for hosting, you will want to move your photos stored in your Apple Photos application library on your Mac to an external drive instead of the startup boot drive. Making the change is simpler than you think. First, quit the Photos app. Next, copy the entire Photos Library by dragging it from the startup volume to the external volume that you want to move it to. After you have completed the transfer, hold down the Option key while you launch the Photos...
On Monday the 8th of January 2018 Apple released macOS High Sierra 10.13.2 Supplemental Update. You may have heard about “Spectre” & “Meltdown” in the news in the last week of 2017 these are hardware-based exploits that exploit the way CPU’s process data, this could allow a hacker to gain access to your sensitive data. Meltdown was addressed in the macOS High Sierra 10.13.2 update in December 2017, for Spectre there is no hardware fix, instead Apple is addressing the vulnerability using Safari. When you update to macOS High Sierra...
With cloud integration, it is easier than ever to share the same file across multiple devices. Once you have enabled your iCloud Photo Library, you can see the photo that you just took on your iPhone, on your Mac computer as well. However, once you delete a photo on an iOS device or Mac computer, the photo is also deleted everywhere. Can you restore photos? If you delete a photo from your iCloud Photo Library, can you restore it? These are two frequently asked questions about photo syncing and storage...
How To Protect Your Files and Computer When A Scam Site Overtakes Your Safari Homepage on your iPhone or Mac Scam sites have been known to overtake Windows computers all time, but with increasing Mac adoption, there have been scammers now attempting to fool users with serious malware. Some scams have tried to convince users that something is wrong with their computer and list a fake phone number to call and demand unreasonable amounts of payment (some fake company that is never Apple). This is an example of a phishing...
Earlier this week we reported that Apple had acknowledged some iPhone’s are being throttled to prevent unexpected shutdown see our previous post. If your like me you want to check the status of your iPhone’s processor speed to see if it is being throttled and/or check if your iPhone battery needs replacing here’s how you can do it for free. In the first instance to check the status of your iPhone battery; go to: Settings > Battery And if your battery needs to be replaced a message saying “Your iPhone...
Apple has made accessibility for differently abled people a cornerstone of iPhones and iDevices since 2007, and most of us never bother to explore these controls on our iPhone unless there is a specific need. Well one really useful Accessibility tool is the AssistiveTouch feature, if your iPhone power button stops working for example how can you restart the device or lock the screen? (hint the iPhone will turn on if it has switched itself off when you connect the charging cable). Enabling AssistiveTouch Go To: Settings > General >...
If like me you use the Boot Camp Control panel in Windows to restart your Mac into High Sierra and you are using an SSD drive for High Sierra, you may or may not notice that you can no longer choose your Macintosh startup disk in the Boot Camp Control Panel in Windows. The Windows “Boot Camp” partition will be selectable but that is all. And if you have set the Windows Boot Camp partition as the Startup Disk in System preferences > Startup Disk in High Sierra then you...
High Sierra has some new features for the mail App, and here is how they work. Better Search Just like Spotlight the Mail App now supports natural language search, if that phrase leaves you stumped it means you can search using in a more natural way such as using “from Jon last week” rather than specifically jon@gmail.com 11/13/2017. You can be even more vague here is an example “jon@ November 2017”. Other examples include searching for a spreadsheet with “Numbers file” rather than searching for a “.xls” or “.numbers” Split...
Did you know you can print right from your iPhone or iPad? All you need is to be connected to a printer on a wireless network and to use AirPrint or a third-party app. It’s very easy when you have a compatible printer. You can print wirelessly with just the click of a button. Check the list of AirPrint printers available on Apple’s website. Apple’s AirPrint technology has been available for several years. Today the technology can be used on printers that do not have AirPrint installed but are wirelessly...
System Preferences (gear icon) on your Mac offers easy ways to customize menu options to access important settings on your computer. The menu has built-in items to adjust your computer’s operating system from its appearance to energy settings, network connectivity and more. It can also contain third-party icons from third-party software or hardware. You can remove any of these items from System Preferences at any time. Start with opening the System Preferences menu. This is the gear icon. You may have it in your Dock already (appears by default). You...
Most of you that use Photos on your Mac will use it to download or upload your photos and videos from your iDevice (iPad’s and iPhone’s) and maybe even use some of the advanced features for sorting, filtering and organizing your collection see: https://jonbrown.org/blog/photos-smart-albums/) The Photos App on your Mac also comes with a range of pro editing tools allowing you to make quick edits to your photos right from the App.3 To reveal the editing tools press the “edit photo” button: Once in the editing window a list of...
How to Fix Critical High Sierra Security Vulnerability in macOS with Root Password An official fix is now available via Apple directly as of today, Nov 29 less than 24 hours after the vulnerability was discovered. You can also fix this via the steps below. After a security flaw was detected by a software developer who publicly announced the error Tuesday, Apple has now responded with a security update available through the mac App store (blue icon) in less than 24 hours. If you do not see the expected update...
Updating AirPod software, also known as firmware, is simpler than you think. AirPods are Apple’s wireless earbud headphones that many iPhone owners enjoy using. Just like your other iOS devices need to be updated regularly with software updates, AirPods also need regular updates. Unlike other Apple products that have their own software update menu unique to them and ‘Update Now’ buttons, AirPods does not have them. Updating AirPods is simple. You just need to know where to look. Automatic Updates AirPod firmware updates automatically if your AirPods are stored within...
Tracking any package is fast via macOS with an instant package tracking ability that recognizes most tracking numbers and helps you take action faster. Similar to the tracking feature available on iPhones and iPads, macOS offers a convenient way to track packages you are receiving without having to log into a browser. You can quickly track your package via email or a message that contains the tracking number. This data detection feature quickly recognizes any active tracking number you have received such as FedEx, UPS, Amazon or other. Click on...
iOS makes it easy to quickly track any shipment or package via your tracking number in your email, note or message. This is a handy little tip that can speed up tracking your package and can be especially useful when you’re in a hurry or waiting on an important delivery. First open up your email or message with the tracking number. Apple’s data detection software will automatically recognize tracking numbers from a variety of popular shipping and delivery services including Amazon, Apple and shipment services such as UPS, FedEx and...
iPhone X users have reported when using Face ID they can’t see previews of the lock screen notifications. Before Face ID on the iPhone X recognizes you, the notifications show but with no detail. This is happening because Notification previews are set by default to “When Unlocked” on the iPhone X whereas other iPhones still get the notifications with the previews that we are so used to. In terms of privacy and security this is actually an improvement something Apple waxes lyrically about when discussing Face ID, because currently anyone...
Every time Apple releases a new iPhone or iPad along with it comes an update to our beloved iOS. And after updating to the latest version of iOS on our iPhone or iPad sometimes you find the device has slowed to a crawl. If you don’t want to take my word for it, between early August and November 2017 which is just after the launch of the iPhone X, iPhone 8, and iOS 11 the number of Google searches for “Slow iPhone” rose over 50 percent. For the tin hat...
My Photos won’t upload from iPad or iPhone I have had this crop up a few times with family and friends devices when the Photos App stops uploading to their iCloud photo library. Unable to access recent photos or videos in iCloud they turned to me for a fix. Here is a rundown of the fixes I have applied to get the Photos App uploading to iCloud again. Restart your device As we know one of the reasons for using iPhone’s and iPad’s is their outstanding reliability in comparison to...
If you are new to Apple News, News is a preinstalled application on every iOS device (iOS 9 or later). The app provides text-based content, videos, and photos from various sources, and now you can publish straight to Apple News yourself! When you do this you will be creating your own channel which people can subscribe to, any good or popular articles you produce may also appear in other people’s News feed. If like myself you will be using a web browser to publish to Apple News you will need...
Former Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts has been reinventing Apple Stores to be thriving community centers at a time when traditional retail has taken a hit. While retail as a whole has taken a major hit with well known chains like Macy’s cutting jobs and closing stores, others declaring bankruptcy and many shoppers turning to Amazon increasingly, Apple has chosen to reinvest in retail. 2015 was a difficult year for iPhone sales in the U.S. with only 11% of Americans buying new phones at Apple Stores and majority of consumers going...
Apple’s latest software release iOS 11, available for download via the App Store on your iPhone or iPad, offers a quick way to free up space now on your iPhone or iPad via suggested options. You can find these suggestions via the Settings app (black gears on gray background icon). To use the space saving options, open the Settings app and scroll down to General. Click on General and go down to iPhone Storage. A new menu opens showing your current usage with three options below - Offload Unused Apps,...
This error message may appear on MacOS laptops. Learn how to fix it pronto. Sometimes Mac users have run into an unexpected snafu where they realize they cannot connect to their WiFi and get an error message ‘Wi Fi No Hardware Installed.” This message appears when you click on the Wi-Fi symbol on the upper right of your screen. Most computers today, including desktops are usually connected to the Internet via wireless networking so getting this message can be very frustrating. We all use the Internet for communicating and researching...
Continuing our tips on using iOS11 this week we will look at the Photos App. Finally Apple has included a QR scanner in the Photos App I’ve been waiting for this since the original iPhone! You no longer need a third party App to use a QR code. In case you don’t know, this is a QR code: Simply open the Camera App and point your iDevice at the QR code and a pop up appears. Tap the pop up to use the information in the QR code. In this...
Letting go of the ubiquitous Home button, a constant on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch since the first iPhone in 2007, is a bold change in the new iPhone X. Over time, this button has gained more functionality. However, in building the new iPhone X with an edge-to-edge OLED display, Apple has eliminated the Home button entirely. How do you use the iPhone X without the Home button? Here’s a quick introduction. You can view Apple’s intro video here. New Touch Gestures and Commands of iPhone X Most gestures...
If like me you use iCloud Drive across your devices that is Windows Laptops, iPads, iPhones, and Macs you may have noticed with the iOS 11 update this is now called “Files”. Other than the fact Apple has changed the name from Drive to Files (at least 20 minutes lost googling what happened to my iCloud Drive) there is nothing I don’t like about Files in iOS 11. It’s easier to use, it integrates with Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Adobe Creative Cloud and more. Files also supports macOS Servers, if...
One of the major updates to macOS High Sierra has been Safari, the default web browser for the Mac. Here is how to use the new contextual menu (pop up) “Website Settings”: After visiting a website simply right click on the address bar and choose “Settings for this website”. Or go to Safari > “Settings for this website” A pop up will then open. These settings will then be the default behavior for the website you are currently viewing every time you visit it with Safari, in this example we...
A new strain of ransomware called BadRabbit is spreading through Eastern Europe. Likely created by the same authors as the Petya/Not Petya ransomware outbreak in June, BadRabbit ransomware uses a website to drop a fake Flash update and then drops its payload. Bad Rabbit Lock Screen Countries we know to be impacted so far are Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Germany, with attacks centered on targets as wide-ranging as infrastructure, transportation, and media outlets. It is unknown at this time whether the attack will continue to spread, but it does...
Apple’s listened to feedback and now offers a quick way to free up space on your iPhone or iPad via iOS 11. Apple’s latest software release iOS 11, available for download via the App Store on your iPhone or iPad, offers a quick way to free up space now on your iPhone or iPad via suggested options. You can find these suggestions via the Settings app (black gears on gray background icon). To use the space saving options, open the Settings app and scroll down to General. Click on General...
With iOS11 now on your iPhone or iPad, the latest revision to the control center allows you to customize which items are shown and all the controls have been consolidated onto a single screen, the controls are also grouped and organized, here is how to hit the ground running with the new control center. The default controls are now , Flight Mode, Mobile data, WIFI, Bluetooth, Music, Screen Lock, Do not disturb brightness , Volume, Screen Mirroring, Torch, timer, Calculator, and the Camera. For myself Screen Mirroring, Mobile Data, and...
Save your data from a folder or connected device in a disk image. This is our second post on disk images. Creating a disk image is helpful in backing up and transferring data. Here’s how you do it. Pull up Disk Utility to create a disk image that contains the content inside a saved folder or connected device such as a USB device. Doing this will not copy over the free space from the device on to the disk image. After saving the disk image, you an restore the disk...
Has your Mac Status or Menu bar become too crowded that it is no longer useful? Here are some tips to remove programs, organize and simplify your menu bar. The Menu bar on your Mac display, flush against the top of the screen offers convenient, quick access to your current apps on the left side and static Status icons on the right. Some third-party apps like Dropbox and Adobe may also install icons in the Menu bar for quick access next to your Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Airplay, Battery, Time, Siri, Spotlight...
Sometimes it’s best to wipe your hard drive and start afresh if you’ve been troubleshooting a problem for a while. You’ll need to backup your old files first. Whether you are looking to archive old user accounts because you are reformatting your hard drive or you are backing it up for safekeeping, here’s how you do it. You’ll need to be logged in as a local administrator, but not for the user account that you want to back up. Doing this process will help you also restore all other user...
How to use WiFi Calling from ATT / Verizon on Your iPhone All four major U.S. cellular carriers support Wi-Fi Calling on iPhones. Here’s how you can turn on this feature on supporting networks. In the wake of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, it is useful to know how you can activate Wi-Fi calling on your iPhone. This could make a difference in an emergency situation for you or people you care about. Supporting Wi-Fi calling is simple for iPhones. Just go into the iOS Settings app (Gear icon on a...
While text messaging your friends and family, you’ve noticed some iPhone messages are blue or green. When you text message a friend, family member or colleague via your iPhone, your text message may appear blue or green. The color indicates the method you’ve used and also at times, the type of device you are sending to. Blue Background When your text message has a blue background, it means that your message exchange happened via iMessage and that you sent or received your message to and from another iOS device. iMessage...
Apple Plans to Spend $1 Billion on Original Programming for its new TV Shows Apple is a new player in the TV market, joining big players Amazon and Netflix in video streaming with a $1 B investment in original programming in the next 12 months. Apple’s new TV show ambitions became evident with its ‘Planet of the Apps’ reality TV show available via Apple Music, headlined by Hollywood actresses Gwyneth Paltrow and Jessica Alba earlier in June 2017. The two women are also entrepreneurs of lifestyle brands Goop and Honest...
Information about Face Recognition Software on Apple’s new OLED iPhone X Surfaces Facial recognition is expected to replace Touch ID in a new ‘Face ID’ feature available on the OLED iPhone X. Rumors have been circulating about a new facial recognition software that will be replacing the Touch ID software entirely on the new OLED iPhone X. These rumors were confirmed by developers who had access to beta software and were able to test out some features including the setup process of the new ‘Face ID’ feature. Face ID and...
Although macOS is more secure than most other operating systems, the increasing user base for macOS is drawing in hackers. So long as you keep your system up to date with the latest updates from Apple most malware is kept at bay. However it is still possible to get malware (viruses, adware, and spyware) on a Mac that infect other systems on the Mac such as JAVA or third party browsers such as Google Chrome. Plus you could be passing on Windows viruses that do not affect your Mac but...
If you own an iPhone or an iPad you will be well aware of the limitations of your device when it comes to storage and the quantity of data that you are trying to store on it. To make it simpler the iPhone and iPad now have great quality cameras, and it takes a lot of drive space to store these high quality images and videos. Hopefully the new standards (HEVC and HEIF) being adopted with better compression will go some way to resolve this. The easiest method to free...
Downloading the latest apps you love and taking a lot of photographs may soon fill up your iPhone or iPad faster than you intended. Clearing out junk files, unwanted items in your device’s cache and files that hog up memory, can free up space on your iPhone or iPad and get your devices running faster and smoother than ever. Here’s how you can clean up your mobile devices and get them running better. Clearing up space on your iPhone or iPad will improve performance especially on older models and clearing...
Having a workstation (Desk?) as such is part and parcel of being an IT professional, you need somewhere to keep all of those paper documents for bills and the IRS plus somewhere to keep your USB pen drives, Hard Drives, Printers, 3D printers scanners etc. If like me you’ve opted for a non portable Mac for your day to day office tasks such as writing these articles, then that Mac probably has files that are not practical to make copies of to carry about with you when using your MacBook...
Your Mac makes it easy to sign documents - a common task that is often tedious - by using Preview or QuickLook, both available on every Mac with OS X Lion or later. For the longest time, in order to sign a document that you had received via email such as a PDF file, you would have to print out the file first, sign it on the dotted line using a pen, scan the docu-ment and send it to yourself using a USB flash or email, and then finally send...
You can share your Internet connection on your Mac with others locally. Your Mac makes it easy to share your Internet connection locally. Start by opening the Sharing Preferences via System Preferences. Click on Sharing and select Internet Sharing. Next, choose Share Your Connection From in the menu that pops up and choose the Internet connection that you want to share. This could be Internet over Ethernet or other options available to you. Next choose how you want to share your Internet connection in the To Computers using list. If...
CEO Tim Cook emphasized Apple’s interest in the technology during the Q3 earnings call Monday. For a while, it’s been apparent that Apple is developing an autonomous driving system. This is clear from information shared by California’s DMV where Apple got a DMV permit to test autonomous driving systems this past April. Apple joined a list of 30 companies that have been granted autonomous car testing permits by the state of California. This list includes automotive manufacturers, automotive suppliers, startups and tech players. Initially, there was a lot of excitement...
In this week’s how to I’m going to go over one of the basics in macOS Sierra, the App switcher can save minutes in each working day freeing up time to do other things. Switching Apps If like me you regularly use multiple apps to complete a task such as Photoshop , BBEDIT, & Pages. Switching between the apps can be time consuming moving the mouse around looking for the correct icon in the Dock. To quickly switch between running Apps press Command (Apple Key) + Tab (⌘ + ⇥...
Apple ID has included 2FA (Two-factor authentication) on macOS and iOS devices for some time and it is strongly advised you use it. Thanks to Apple using 2FA across all of your devices it is very easy and makes accessing Apple’s Cloud Services very secure such as iCloud Drive, you will now need more than just the email address and password you use for your Apple ID. You will also need to have a trusted device in hand or alternatively have a verification code sent via SMS or phone call...
If like myself you often find yourself working late into the night on your Mac you can find your eyes starting to hurt. The good news is there is a way to make the screen less harsh on the eyes. You can find Night Shift in: Apple menu () > System Preferences, then click Displays. If automatic brightness is enabled on your Mac the screen will also be dimmer if the ambient light is not as strong which can make your eyes even more strained. Apple describes Night Shift as:...
You can easily share and transfer files between iPhones, iPads and Macs. AirDrop uses Bluetooth LE to discover connections and broadcast them and Wi-Fi to transfer data. It’s fast, easy to use and secure. Files you can AirDrop include: photos videos contacts docs passbook passes voice Memos map Locations Turn on AirDrop On Mac computers, select Go from the Finder menu. AirDrop appears in the menu. On iOS devices from iPhones to iPads, you can turn on AirDrop from the Control Center by just swiping up from the bottom of...
You’ve opened the box and here’s what you can do next to get your Apple TV set up and running. Apple has improved upon its popular Apple TV and even brought Amazon Prime into its fold of popular shows. You know you want one now, and here’s a quick walk-through with tips to set up. After you have unpacked the box, take out the power and HDMI cables. Plug the HDMI right into a free TV port (usually on the back of your TV). For some folks who use an...
Back in 2008 I was burgled and lost a MacPro G5, on that Mac I had been working for months on a 3D render of my local town’s high street in Bryce 3D of all programs. Not only did the thieves steal my Mac they stole the backup hard drive which was connected to it :-( . Luckily I had my MacBook which I use for work safely in the trunk of my car, but no copy of the 3D files to continue with, hence months of work was lost...
The macOS finder which powers the desktop, file manager, and more it’s likely to be your most used app, Apple describes it as “The Macintosh Desktop Experience”, the Finder has some great hidden features, here are some to get you started and make your work flow better. Resize Columns If like me you organize your files into a folder structure of some kind, you will find from time to time that the columns do not fit the file names: And if like me you have been dragging the columns out...
Your Mac makes it easy to do things by opening up any files you click on right away, using default applications. Sometimes though, you need a different application to open up a certain kind of file. It’s very convenient how your Macintosh computer immediately opens up any file you double click on in its default application. You can get going on what you want to do right away. For example, when you click on a Microsoft Word file that you have, your computer opens up the file for you in...
Basic copy and paste on a Mac has not changed much since the 1990s, Right click copy or ⌘ Command + C . You can also print screen which saves a screenshot of your monitor(s) to the desktop by pressing ⌘ Command + ⇧ Shift + 3, if you have multiple monitors this command will save a screenshot of each screen to the desktop. There are however some great third party apps available, I’m going to outline my favourite which is “Skitch” and if you use Evernote it integrates with...
Retrieving an old password that you have forgotten may seem difficult at first, but in most cases, can be done easily if you are using Mac OS X Keychain. Whether you need access to an old password or you’re helping a friend or family member, it helps to know how to retrieve an old password on your Mac. It’s easy to forget old passwords you have not used in a while. Maybe you got a request like this: “I have to get into my old email account, but I cannot...
Disclaimer: Great care should be taken when altering the behavior of the cooling fans if you overheat your Mac for an extended period you will destroy it! As such do this at your own risk and if you need to consult an expert. That being said this tip can really help extend the working life of your Mac. One of the most common hardware failures on all computers not just Macs is continued over heating of the internal components especially the GPU (graphics card), and traditional HDD modules (hard drives...
Roundup of 3 Fast & Clever Mac Tips and Tricks Here are three macOS 10 tips, tricks and shortcuts to help you keep be productive and keep your Mac running well. Change System Preferences with Siri Before you go searching for your system preferences, try using Siri instead for simple changes. Talking to your Mac may feel a bit strange at first, but you’d be surprised how much Siri’s grown in the past two years alone! Press ⌘ + SPACE and Siri will pop right up. For example, see how...
Using Photos in Mac OS Sierra to create Smart Albums Photos has been included with OS X since Yosemite 10.10.3 2 years ago now! If like me you’ve resisted using it in favor of what you are used to you are missing out. Photos has some really great features that work quickly from within MacOS allowing you to quickly access the photos from all your Apple devices. Organizational abilities. One of the better features Photo’s provides are its organizational abilities. Extending the built in features such as geotagging and face...
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