Apple is about to release four major operating system upgrades—macOS 10.14 Mojave, iOS 12, watchOS 5, and tvOS 12. When should you take the leap and install them? Short answer: it depends. Long answer: read on!
Read MoreYou’ve been asked to create a document for work. Perhaps it’s a report, a form, or even a brochure. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re using Microsoft Word, Adobe InDesign, Apple’s Pages, or even Google Docs. The best thing you can do to be nice to Future You is to take a few extra minutes to use named styles.
Read MoreStarting in OS X 10.10 Yosemite, Apple added transparency throughout the user interface, so when you’re looking at a menu, for instance, the color of the background bleeds through slightly. If that transparency makes the text hard for you to read, if you’re taking screenshots for publication, or if you just don’t like it, never fear, because you can turn it off.
Read MoreThe iPad’s onscreen keyboard is an awkward size—too small for adults to type on like a regular keyboard in landscape mode, but too large to thumb-type on like an iPhone in portrait mode unless you have large hands like a pro basketball player. If you fall into the thumb-typing camp, there’s a hidden feature in iOS just for you.
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Those who have used Macs for years know that you can resize nearly any window by dragging its bottom right corner—through Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, there was even a resize handle in that spot. But did you know that, starting in 10.7 Lion, Apple made it possible to resize a window from any edge? So if you haven’t updated your habits, try moving the pointer to the edge of a window in the frontmost app, which causes the pointer to change to a double-headed arrow. Click and drag to make the window larger or smaller in either direction. Resizing from any corner works as well; click there, and you can drag to resize the window in two directions at once.
When giving commands to Siri, you can refer to people by relationship, rather than name. So, if you want to call your mother on your iPhone, you can say “call my mother” instead of something like “call Natasha Jauch-Hoechstetter.” But to do this, you need to introduce Siri to your family.
Read MoreOne of the most useful, if low-tech, features of the iPhone is its flashlight, which you turn on by tapping the Flashlight icon in Control Center (get to it by swiping down from the top right of the Lock screen or Home screen). But you don’t have to retrace your steps in Control Center to turn the flashlight off.
Read MoreOnce again, another sex-extorion (hence, sextortion) scam is going around and potential victims are receiving bogus emails implying that the sender of the email has incriminating video or photos and will expose the victim if a ransom isn't paid. The thing that makes this one a bit different than previous bogus emails is that a real, previously used password is included in the email making it seem more "real" to the victim.
Read MoreAs 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.
Read MoreDid you know that many keys on the small iPhone keyboard are hiding additional characters?
Read MoreAt Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference keynote on June 4th, the company unveiled the first developer versions of all four of its operating systems: macOS 10.14 Mojave, iOS 12, watchOS 5, and tvOS 12. They won’t be available until this fall, likely in September or October, but here is a glimpse of what you can expect.
Read MoreWe’ve all done it. You swing into a meeting late, and as everyone looks up at you accusingly, you mutter, “Sorry. Traffic was terrible.” Maybe it was, but if you’d left at the right time for the traffic conditions, you could have arrived on time. Happily, the Calendar apps in both macOS and iOS can build travel time into event alerts so you can leave at the right time. There’s a bit of setup, but once you form the habit of attaching locations to your events, you’ll get a reputation for punctuality.
Read MoreIn the interest of getting more users familiar with things you can do on iPad like using an Apple Pencil, using multiple apps at once, getting more out of the keyboard, etc., they've posted several short videos that can give you some more ideas.
Read MoreFinder icons sometimes hint at their file’s contents, but if you find yourself opening file after file to look at the contents quickly, the Mac has a little-known feature just for you: Quick Look. To give it a spin, find a file in the Finder, click it once to select it, and press the Space bar. If it’s a supported type of file, Quick Look displays a window showing the contents of the file. Press the Space bar again to close the window.
Read MoreAt a special education event on March 27th, Apple introduced a new 9.7-inch iPad that offers faster performance, support for the Apple Pencil, and a few new camera-related features. The company also released new versions of the iWork apps—Pages, Numbers, and Keynote—that let users draw, sketch, and write with the Apple Pencil.
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If you have an old iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch that you want to sell or give away, you don’t want to leave any of your apps, data, or personal information on the device. Luckily, Apple makes it easy to reset to factory defaults. Go to Settings > General > Reset (all the way at the bottom) and then tap Erase All Content and Settings. Enter your passcode, confirm the erasure (twice!), and then type your Apple ID password. After all that, the device restarts just as though you’re taking it out of the box for the first time.
If you have lots of apps on your iPhone or iPad, rearranging their icons on your home screens by dragging from screen to screen can be tedious. Try this tip to simplify moving icons around. As always, tap and hold on any icon on a home screen until they all start wiggling. Then, navigate to your rightmost home screen and drag one icon off the Dock temporarily. Now, for other icons you want to move between screens, drag the icon to the Dock, swipe quickly to get to the desired screen, and then drag the icon off the Dock into the position you want. When you’re done, put your original Dock icon back and press the Home button to stop the icons from wiggling.
You’re on a trip, accompanied by your trusty iPhone and MacBook Air. Suddenly there’s an emergency at work, and you need to get online with your Mac. You can pick up a cell signal with the iPhone, but there’s no Wi-Fi to be found—what to do?
Never fear, since you can use your iPhone’s cellular data plan to create a personal Wi-Fi hotspot that lets your Mac access the Internet through your iPhone. Also called “tethering,” it’s fast, easy, and can be a life-saver when you just have to get online with a Mac (or a Wi-Fi–only iPad).
Read MoreWe understand. That MacBook Pro you bought a few years back doesn’t seem like it should need replacing, but performance has started to lag, and you don’t have the money for a shiny new Touch Bar model. Adding RAM up to 8 GB can help, but the best bang for your buck in terms of performance comes from swapping your Mac’s hard drive for a solid-state drive, or SSD.
Read MoreDo Web sites that auto-play ads or videos drive you mad? Especially when you reopen Safari and several of them in remembered tabs start playing simultaneously? Since OS X 10.11 El Capitan, Safari can put an end to that cacophony on your Mac. Whenever audio is playing in a tab, an audio icon appears next to the name of the tab and at the right of Safari’s Smart Search field. Click either one to mute the tab. If you’ve ended up with multiple tabs playing, you can mute all those except the current tab by Option-clicking either of those audio icons. And, finally, click and hold the audio icon in the Smart Search field for a menu with Mute and Unmute commands, and a list of all tabs that contain audio.
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