At 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.
Read MoreYou are backing up your Mac’s data, right? (No? Really? Open System Preferences > Time Machine and set up backups to an external hard drive. We’ll wait. Otherwise, the question is not if you’ll lose data, but when.)
Read MoreOn the Mac, when you’re done with an app you quit it. Many people think the same is true on the iPhone, where you can double-press the Home button to access the App Switcher and then swipe up on an app to quit it. But just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should. Worse, contrary to what some people believe, quitting iPhone apps will likely hurt battery life.
Read MoreWith all the advances in computing and communications, it’s amazing that—after nearly 150 years!—we still use the keyboard layout from the world’s first practical typewriter for entering text into our computers, smartphones, and tablets. But we haven’t improved as typists, nor do we enjoy typing more—if anything, we increasingly abbreviate to avoid typing, hence “CUL8R.” Text messaging aside, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to type less without compromising meaning or making your text look like it was composed by a teenager? Thanks to text expansion features built into the Mac and iOS, and extended with third-party utilities, you can.
Read MoreIf you use AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, or Sprint in the United States with an iPhone 6 or newer model, you can turn on a feature starting in iOS 9 that enables your iPhone to send calls over a Wi-Fi network (and thus the Internet) rather than relying on spotty cellular coverage. It’s especially useful in thick-walled buildings that block cellular signals.
Read MoreIf you regularly lose your pointer on big-screen Mac, Apple has added a feature you’ll like starting in OS X 10.11 El Capitan. Shake the mouse to and fro on your desk, or run your finger back and forth on the trackpad quickly, and the pointer expands briefly so you can find it.
Read MoreThere are oodles of ways to launch Mac apps. You can double-click an app in the Applications folder, click an app icon in the Dock, invoke Launchpad and click the desired app, or choose an app from the Apple menu’s Recent Items > Applications submenu. You can even add commonly used apps to the toolbar of Finder windows by Command-dragging them up there.
Read MoreApple’s new iMac Pro has started shipping, and it’s an astonishing machine. Put simply, it’s the most powerful Mac ever, a title it will likely retain until Apple releases a new version of the Mac Pro, promised for sometime in 2018. But for now, what’s special about the iMac Pro, and should you buy one?
Read MoreDistracted driving may not make headlines, but it’s a huge problem. In the United States in 2015, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says that 391,000 people were injured and 3477 killed in accidents caused by distracted driving.
Many things can distract drivers, but the most concerning—and the most avoidable—is texting. Given that the iPhone has a 30–40% share of the market, it might have been involved in as many as 100,000 injuries and 1000 deaths in just 2015. Not good.
Apple has stepped up to the plate by introducing the Do Not Disturb While Driving (DNDWD) feature in iOS 11.
Read MoreHow long has it been since you changed your passwords...and I use the plural because, of course, you shouldn't be using the same password for multiple services. iMore has a pretty good article explaining why you should change your passwords often and how to easily keep track of them. I also use 1Password (as described in the article) to keep track of over 500 web logins and I have no idea what most of them are and I don't need to. 1Password keeps track of all of them for me and enters them for me on demand. Read on...
Did you hear about the battery-related controversy swirling around Apple at the end of 2017? There has been much hue and cry about how, starting with iOS 10.2.1, iOS has been slowing down iPhones with old, weak batteries to avoid unexpected shutdowns.
Read MoreApple does a great job with Macs, iPhones, and iPads, but stuff goes wrong all the time—as professional providers of technical support we know that better than anyone. So we’re really cheesed off by tech support scams that try to defraud unsuspecting users in the name of fixing problems that don’t exist. Here’s how to protect yourself.
Read MoreEven if you’re not buying a new iPhone this year, you can still enjoy a hefty dose of “New and Improved!” with Apple’s iOS 11, which provides a host of new capabilities. Hold on tight, there’s a lot to cover, and we have another article coming about the iPad-specific changes in iOS 11.
Read MoreAlthough Apple’s eye-catching Desktop image of the High Sierra mountains makes it easy to confirm that your Mac is running High Sierra, the most noteworthy new features are invisible! These changes are aimed at improving your Mac’s performance. But, don’t worry that there’s nothing new in High Sierra to play with—you’ll find plenty to do in Apple’s apps, and we’ll share our favorite features below.
Read MoreMicrosoft has announced that support for Microsoft Office 2011 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook) for Mac is ending October 10, 2017. What does this mean to you?
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