Information about the physical gadgets you use.
Is it time to make your Apple devices smarter? Apple has just released macOS 15.1 Sequoia, iOS 18.1, and iPadOS 18.1 with an initial collection of Apple Intelligence features and a promise of more coming in December. The company is making a big deal about Apple Intelligence, calling it out as a key feature of […]
Read moreMacs are much more reliable than in the past, but it remains the case that computers and apps can fail in a wide variety of ways. And they’ve become so integral to daily life that an occasional failure is almost inevitable. Unfortunately, if you aren’t prepared for that eventuality, you may lose work and suffer […]
Read moreAn uninterruptible power supply, or UPS, provides essential protection from power surges, spikes, brownouts, and outages. But if you’re not at your Mac when the power goes out, the UPS may run out of battery before you (or the power) return. Happily, if you connect your Mac to your UPS with a USB cable, macOS […]
Read moreAlthough paying attention to online security is of primary importance, don’t forget local security. You don’t want to go out for lunch and let someone wandering by your office poke through your email, messages, photos, and private files. To ensure this doesn’t happen, set your Mac to start the screen saver or sleep the display […]
Read moreAre you planning to upgrade to a new iPhone 16? It’s exciting, we know, but it’s best to proceed deliberately when setting up your new iPhone to avoid causing yourself headaches. Follow these instructions when you’re ready to transfer your data—and, for many people, much of your digital life—to the new iPhone. Apple also has […]
Read moreIt’s September, which brings the annual Apple crops: new iPhones, Apple Watches, and AirPods. At its recent Glowtime event, Apple unveiled the new iPhone 16 lineup, Apple Watch Series 10, and AirPods 4, alongside smaller announcements about existing products. As always, the enhancements in the new products are evolutionary, making them attractive to anyone already […]
Read moreiOS, iPadOS, and macOS all let you specify whether any given app should show no notifications, temporary banners, or persistent alerts: look in Settings > Notifications and System Settings > Notifications. Temporary banners appear briefly and then automatically disappear, which is appropriate for notifications requiring no acknowledgment. But what if you see a temporary banner […]
Read moreUnder 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 […]
Read moreA 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 […]
Read moreApple’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 […]
Read moreWe 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 […]
Read moreLet’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 […]
Read moreIs 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 […]
Read moreResearch 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 […]
Read moreIf 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 […]
Read moreTake a moment and look behind your Mac. Do you see a tangle of cables? The main downside of a mess of cables is that it’s a cluster of chaos that attracts dust bunnies. However, it’s possible for power cables—especially when tightly bundled or looped—to emit electromagnetic interference that can disrupt or degrade the signal […]
Read moreWould you like some guidance on selecting a new monitor? Clients often ask me to recommend a good monitor or tell them which monitor they should buy. These requests are actually surprisingly difficult for two reasons. First, there are numerous monitor manufacturers and each company makes a range of models so it’s tough to track the entire market. … Read more
The latest versions of the Mac and iPad apps in Apple’s iWork suite—Pages 14, Keynote 14, and Numbers 14—have gained a helpful feature: non-contiguous text selection. By holding down the Command key, you can select chunks of text that aren’t next to each other. For example, imagine you want to make the first part of […]
Read moreMost people like smart quotes and dashes, at least most of the time. Your Mac is probably set up to turn the single (') and double (") hash marks and double hyphens (--) that you type into the apostrophes (’) and single smart quotes (‘’), double smart quotes (“”), and em dashes (—) used in […]
Read moreBy default, the battery icon in your Mac laptop’s menu bar shows how full your battery is. Clicking it reveals the exact percentage, but you can also set macOS to display the battery percentage next to the icon. The setting isn’t where you might expect in System Settings > Battery. Instead, you’ll find it in […]
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