Thursday, 01 March 2018 10:04
10 Things You Need to Know about Apple’s New HomePod Speaker
Written by Adam Engst
After months of anticipation, Apple’s new HomePod smart speaker finally shipped in mid-February. Reviews of its audio quality have been positive, and for the most part, it works both as advertised and as you’d expect. However, there were some surprises, most good but some bad. Whether you have a HomePod on your credenza (which may [R30;]
Thursday, 01 March 2018 10:03
Block Telemarketing Calls Automatically on Your iPhone
Written by Adam Engst
Junk calls are one of the great annoyances of the modern world. You’re minding your own business when your iPhone vibrates in your pocket. You pull it out, curious as to who’s calling, but don’t recognize the number. You may notice that it’s in the same exchange as your phone number, suggesting that it’s a [R30;]
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Thursday, 01 March 2018 10:02
Apple’s Family Sharing Simplifies Sharing Purchases and Managing Kid Capabilities
Written by Adam Engst
Family life is all about togetherness, but keeping track of who’s doing what when can be tough. Apple’s Family Sharing service makes it easy to share apps, media, and more within a family of up to six members, and it provides a few helpful digital housekeeping capabilities, such as locating your kid’s misplaced iPad. Here’s [R30;]
Thursday, 01 March 2018 10:01
Apple’s Mac Reminders App Is More Capable Than You May Realize
Written by Adam Engst
With Apple’s productivity apps like Calendar, Contacts, Notes, and Reminders, which look and work pretty much the same on the Mac and in iOS, what you see is largely what you get. Particularly in iOS, they tend not to have much in the way of hidden depths. With Reminders, however, Apple’s engineers snuck some surprising [R30;]
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Thursday, 01 February 2018 07:08
Swipe Back and Forth between Web Pages for Easier Navigation
Written by Adam Engst
For navigation, every Web browser offers back and forward buttons, generally represented by arrows in the upper left of the toolbar. You can also navigate by choosing menu commands and typing keyboard shortcuts—did you know that Command-Left arrow and Command-Right arrow work too? But if you’re using a Mac with a trackpad, you can move [R30;]
Thursday, 01 February 2018 07:07
Trading Faces: Picking a Better Face for People Photos Recognizes
Written by Adam Engst
Apple’s Photos app is remarkably good at identifying people in your snapshots and collecting all the pictures that contain a particular person into a group in its People view. At its top level, the People view shows a thumbnail photo for each person, picking one automatically from all the available photos. Needless to say, it [R30;]
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Thursday, 01 February 2018 07:06
Create and Name Reminders Lists to Use Them Via Siri
Written by Adam Engst
Do you create reminders with Siri on the iPhone? Those reminders are automatically added to your default list, which you set in Settings > Reminders > Default List. That’s great generally—“Hey Siri, remind me to update watchOS tonight at 11 PM”—but less good when you want to maintain different shopping lists. For instance, create a [R30;]
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Thursday, 01 February 2018 07:05
Find the Battery Percentage Indicator on the iPhone X
Written by Adam Engst
Wondering what happened to the numeric battery percentage indicator on the iPhone X? The notch takes up enough space at the top of the screen that there was room only for the battery icon, which can be hard to interpret. If you want to see precisely what percentage of your battery is left, swipe down [R30;]
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Thursday, 01 February 2018 07:04
Install Minor Operating System Updates to Maintain Herd Immunity
Written by Adam Engst
It seems like Apple releases updates to iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS nearly every week these days. It has been only a few months since iOS 11 and macOS 10.13 High Sierra launched, and we’ve already seen ten updates to iOS and seven updates to macOS. Some of these have been to fix bugs, which [R30;]
Thursday, 01 February 2018 07:03
Call 911! Or, with an iPhone or Apple Watch, Invoke Emergency SOS.
Written by Adam Engst
Have you ever needed to call emergency services from your or someone else’s iPhone? Almost by definition, such calls take place at stressful times, and it can be hard to remember what to do. Or, if you’ve been in an accident, it might be difficult or impossible to navigate the iPhone’s interface. In iOS 10.2 [R30;]
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Thursday, 01 February 2018 07:02
Ransomware: Should You Be Worried, and What Protective Steps Should You Take?
Written by Adam Engst
Malware makes headlines regularly these days, and although Macs are targeted far less than Windows PCs, Mac users still need to remain vigilant. A particularly serious type of malware is called “ransomware” because once it infects your computer, it encrypts all your files and holds them for ransom. Luckily, despite the virulence of ransomware in [R30;]
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Move over, Amazon Echo and Google Home, there’s a new smart speaker coming soon. First announced back in June of 2017, Apple’s long-awaited HomePod will ship in the US, UK, and Australia on February 9th for $349. You can get it in space gray or white. Where Amazon and Google focus mostly on how you [R30;]
Friday, 05 January 2018 17:31
How to Request a Battery Replacement for your iPhone
Written by MBS Web TeamYou can have your battery replaced at Mac Business Solutions or any Apple Store for $49 when you request your appointment via https://getsupport.apple.com
Tuesday, 02 January 2018 09:08
Amazon Prime Video Finally Comes to the Apple TV
Written by Adam Engst
A $99-per-year Amazon Prime membership provides various perks, including free 2-day shipping from the Amazon online store and streaming access to Amazon’s media libraries. But for Apple TV users, accessing Prime Video content has been frustrating, because there was no Amazon app for the Apple TV. That has all changed now, and if you have [R30;]
Tuesday, 02 January 2018 09:07
Having Trouble Switching Apps on the iPhone X? Try This.
Written by Adam Engst
Since the iPhone X lacks a Home button to press twice for the app switcher, you’ll need to switch apps in a new way. To bring up the app switcher, swipe up from the bottom of the screen to about halfway, and then pause until the app thumbnails appear. Then you can scroll through your [R30;]
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Tuesday, 02 January 2018 09:05
Looking for More Image Editing Power than Photos Can Provide?
Written by Adam Engst
In macOS 10.13 High Sierra, Apple significantly enhanced the editing capabilities of Photos, adding tools for adjusting specific colors, fine-tuning color and contrast via curves, and even focusing an image with vignetting. But it still lacks many features found in other image editors, including applying a filter to an arbitrary portion of an image and [R30;]
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Tuesday, 02 January 2018 09:04
How to Split Restaurant Checks with Apple Pay Cash
Written by Adam Engst
You’re out to lunch with tech-savvy friends, one of whom picks up the check and says, “Just send me your share via Apple Pay Cash.” Say what? Apple Pay Cash is Apple’s new person-to-person payment service, designed to make it easy for individuals to send and receive money. It’s perfect for repaying a friend who [R30;]
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Apple’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? [R30;]
Tuesday, 02 January 2018 09:02
Five Things You Should Never Do with Passwords (and Three You Should)
Written by Adam Engst
Passwords are the bane of our modern existence. Nearly anything you want to do, it seems, calls for a password. As the Internet’s reach extends beyond computers and into phones, TVs, appliances, and even toys, we have to enter passwords with increasing frequency and in ever more annoying ways. To make dealing with passwords easier [R30;]
Tuesday, 02 January 2018 09:01
Learn How You Can Adjust Web Site Behavior with Safari’s Site-Specific Settings
Written by Adam Engst
Although macOS 10.13 High Sierra was light on new features, it did bring one welcome addition to Safari—site-specific settings. Imagine that you regularly visit a blog that you prefer to read using Safari’s Reader view. Rather than invoke it each time you visit, you can now set Safari to use Reader automatically on that site. [R30;]
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Thursday, 14 December 2017 14:50
Final Cut Pro X introduces 360-degree VR video editing
Written by MBS Web TeamApple’s Pro Video Editing App Also Adds Advanced Color Grading, HDR Support and More
When you’re unboxing a new iPhone, it’s time to think about how you’ll move your digital life from your old iPhone to the new one. If your old iPhone is running iOS 11, you can use Quick Start, a new iOS 11 feature that makes the transfer easy. Just turn on the new iPhone, set [R30;]
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