Under the hood, macOS relies on Unix, which is a multi-user operating system. That’s why a Mac can host multiple users who, as long as they don’t know each other’s passwords, cannot see each other’s files. To maintain each user’s privacy, macOS relies on permissions that specify who can do what with any given file […]

A side effect of the pandemic is that online videoconferencing improved drastically. Video calls happened before 2020, but videoconferencing wasn’t an everyday activity for most people. Now, with many people working remotely or in a hybrid model, it’s a fact of business life. To support videoconferencing tools, Apple has extended macOS’s basic webcam and microphone […]

Apple’s prices for Thunderbolt, USB-C, and Lightning cables often seem unnecessarily high. $69 for a Thunderbolt 4 cable or $19 for a simple USB-C to Lightning cable? Unfortunately, when it comes to cables, you often get what you pay for. Happily, other reputable hardware manufacturers like Anker, Belkin, and OWC sell quality cables for less […]

We Apple users tend to believe that our devices usually last longer—both physically and functionally—than Windows PCs and Android smartphones. For instance, Apple’s current operating systems work on nearly all Macs, iPhones, and iPads introduced in 2018 and later, albeit with some feature loss on the oldest devices. In a white paper entitled “Longevity, by […]

Let’s say you’re writing documentation to help colleagues use Preview to edit images, sign PDFs, and convert graphics. (A worthy task for which they will thank you!) For this documentation, you want to include the Preview app’s icon so they know what to look for in the Applications folder and Dock. To copy a high-resolution […]

Is your child heading off to college soon? They’ve undoubtedly been using a computer throughout high school, though now is a good time to look at getting them a new one, especially if theirs is old or unreliable, is shared with other family members, or was a school loaner. If you haven’t been keeping up […]

Research suggests that exposure to blue light fools your body into thinking it’s daytime, making it harder to fall asleep if you work late on a Mac with a bright white (which has a lot of blue light) screen. To help, a macOS feature called Night Shift subtly changes the colors of the screen as […]

If you have trouble finding particular items across multiple shelves of books, labeled boxes, or anything else that’s clearly identified with a text name, take carefully composed photos that capture all the titles without glare. Later, you can search for any text in those photos to find them—tap the Search button in Photos on the […]