Monday, 01 November 2021 11:05
Safari 15.1 Reverses Course, Reverts to Old Tab Interface
Written by Adam Engst
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 […]
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Monday, 01 November 2021 11:04
Avoid Unusual Top-Level Domains in Custom Domain Names
Written by Adam Engst
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 […]
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Monday, 01 November 2021 11:03
Live Text Digitizes Text in Photos in iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS 12 Monterey
Written by Adam Engst
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 […]
Monday, 01 November 2021 11:02
Need to Resize Images in Various Ways? Give Preview a Try
Written by Adam Engst
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 […]
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 […]
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Tuesday, 19 October 2021 12:16
New M1 Pro and M1 Max Chips Power the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros
Written by Adam Engst
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 […]
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Friday, 01 October 2021 10:08
When It Comes to Wi-Fi Networks, Sometimes It’s Better to Forget
Written by Adam Engst
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. […]
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Friday, 01 October 2021 10:07
Messages Not Being Delivered to Blue-Bubble Friends? Check Cellular Data
Written by Adam Engst
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 […]
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Friday, 01 October 2021 10:06
After Upgrading to iOS 15, Check Do Not Disturb in Focus Settings
Written by Adam Engst
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 […]
Friday, 01 October 2021 10:05
When Migrating to a New iPhone or iPad, Try Quick Start First
Written by Adam Engst
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 […]
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 […]
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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 […]
Friday, 01 October 2021 10:02
Apple Radically Improved Multitasking in iPadOS 15. Here’s How to Use It
Written by Adam Engst
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 […]
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Friday, 01 October 2021 10:01
Beware the Bulging Battery! (And What to Do If Yours Expands)
Written by Adam Engst
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 […]
Wednesday, 15 September 2021 16:36
Apple’s 2021 Crop: Four iPhones, Two iPads, and an Apple Watch
Written by Adam Engst
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. […]
Wednesday, 01 September 2021 10:08
Sort Your Lists Differently in Reminders in iOS 14 and Big Sur
Written by Adam Engst
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 […]
Wednesday, 01 September 2021 10:07
Losing the Occasional Important Message? Set up a Ham Filter
Written by Adam Engst
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 […]
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Wednesday, 01 September 2021 10:06
About That Worrying Message Saying Your Password Has Been Breached…
Written by Adam Engst
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 […]
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Wednesday, 01 September 2021 10:05
The Plug Is Mightier Than the Puck: Wireless Charging Is Wildly Inefficient
Written by Adam Engst
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 […]
Wednesday, 01 September 2021 10:04
Frequently Asked Questions Surrounding Apple’s Expanded Protections for Children
Written by Adam Engst
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 […]
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Wednesday, 01 September 2021 10:03
When Should You Upgrade to macOS 12 Monterey, iOS 15, iPadOS 15, watchOS 8, and tvOS 15?
Written by Adam Engst
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 […]
Wednesday, 01 September 2021 10:02
Solve Networking Puzzles with Powerline Networking and MoCA
Written by Adam Engst
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 […]
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