Friday, 01 November 2019 09:06
Need to Charge Your iPhone or iPad More Quickly? Get a Higher Wattage Power Adapter
Written by Adam Engst
By default, most iPhones and iPads ship with Apple’s tiny 5-watt power adapters. They work, but not quickly. However, the iPhone 8 and later, all models of the iPad Pro, and the most recent iPad Air and iPad mini models support fast charging when connected to higher wattage power adapters. You may have an older […]
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Friday, 01 November 2019 09:05
Apple’s New AirPods Pro Offer Active Noise Cancellation and Better Fit
Written by Adam Engst
Are you a fan of Apple’s AirPods, or have you had trouble with them staying in your ears? Either way, you might like the just-released AirPods Pro, which offer a new design with three sizes of soft, flexible, silicone ear tips and welcome new capabilities. The ear tips should make the AirPods Pro fit better […]
Friday, 01 November 2019 09:04
You Can Now Access Flash Drives on an iPhone or iPad—Here’s How
Written by Adam Engst
An unexpected and useful feature of iOS 13 and iPadOS 13 is also nearly invisible, and for most uses, requires a special adapter. With this feature, the Files app now can “see” external storage devices. That’s huge—now you can move data to and from an iPhone or iPad using standard flash drives, SD card readers, […]
Friday, 01 November 2019 09:03
Data Backup Strategies Go Only So Far—What’s Your Plan If Your Mac Dies?
Written by Adam Engst
We assume you have a backup strategy. Hopefully, it includes a bootable duplicate to minimize downtime in the event of a drive failure, a Time Machine or other versioned backup to address the problem of a deleted or corrupted file, and offsite backup to ensure that you don’t lose everything in the event of theft, […]
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Friday, 01 November 2019 09:02
New Organization and Editing in Photos in iOS 13 and iPadOS 13
Written by Adam Engst
Taking photos is a popular use of the iPhone, and Apple has said that the improved cameras gave this year’s iPhone 11 Pro models their “Pro” designation. But Apple continually works to improve the Photos app as well. Taking great photos is only half the job—you also have to be able to find, edit, and […]
Friday, 01 November 2019 09:01
Why Apple Business Manager Is a Win for Apple-Using Firms
Written by Adam Engst
If you run a company, you know how much work onboarding a new employee can be. Beyond teaching them the ropes of your business, they’ll need a Mac and potentially an iPhone or iPad as well. Setting those devices up with all the right apps, settings, and logins can take days or even weeks. And […]
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Do you use 3D Touch on your iPhone? From 2015 through 2018, every iPhone from the iPhone 6s through the iPhone XS supported 3D Touch, other than the iPhone SE and iPhone XR. With 3D Touch, you could (sometimes) press a control, and then press a little harder to make additional options appear. But because […]
Tuesday, 01 October 2019 09:07
Do You Put Dates in Filenames? Use This Format for Best Sorting
Written by Adam Engst
There are plenty of situations where it makes sense to put a date in a filename, but if you don’t use the right date format, the files may sort in unhelpful ways. For instance, using the names of months is a bad idea, since they’ll sort alphabetically, putting April before January. And although the Mac’s […]
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Tuesday, 01 October 2019 09:06
Beware Scammers when Selling Your Old Tech Hardware Online
Written by Adam Engst
Whenever Apple releases hot new hardware, it’s tempting to order the latest and greatest and then put your old Mac or iPhone up for sale on a classifieds site like Craigslist. If you do that, be cautious about potential buyers—it’s increasingly common for a scammer to request that you ship them the device and then […]
Tuesday, 01 October 2019 09:05
Which Precise Mac Model Do You Have? Here’s How to Find Out
Written by Adam Engst
Apple likes to keep Mac names simple, but that’s not always helpful. For instance, if you want to add RAM to your Mac, it’s not good enough to know that it’s an iMac. You’ll need to know that it’s a 27-inch iMac with Retina display from late 2014. To find that out, choose About This […]
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Let’s be honest—text editing in iOS has never been anywhere near as good as it is on the Mac. We may be more accustomed to our mice and keyboards, but the Multi-Touch interface has always been clumsy when it comes to text. Apple keeps trying to improve iOS’s text editing features, and iOS 13 (and […]
Tuesday, 01 October 2019 09:03
What Does Having a T2 Chip in Your Mac Mean to You?
Written by Adam Engst
If you own an iMac Pro, or a Mac mini, MacBook Air, or MacBook Pro model introduced in 2018 or later, your Mac has one of Apple’s T2 security chips inside. On the whole, having a T2 chip in your Mac is a good thing, thanks to significantly increased security and other benefits, but there […]
Tuesday, 01 October 2019 09:02
Everything You Need to Know about Multitasking in iPadOS 13
Written by Adam Engst
With this year’s operating system updates, Apple has formally acknowledged that the iPhone and iPad have different uses and different needs. To that end, Apple has given the iPad version of iOS 13 its own name—iPadOS 13. The big changes include a desktop-class version of Safari that works better with complex Web apps, a redesigned […]
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Tuesday, 01 October 2019 09:01
We Recommend You Delay Upgrading to macOS 10.15 Catalina
Written by Adam Engst
Dear clients, Apple plans to release macOS 10.15 Catalina sometime in October, and like all major operating system releases, Apple has been talking it up since it was introduced at the company’s Worldwide Developer Conference in June. It will feature new Music, TV, and Podcasts apps to replace iTunes. A new Mac Catalyst technology will […]
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Wednesday, 11 September 2019 12:06
The Scoop on the New iPhone 11, Apple Watch Series 5, 7th-gen iPad, and Apple Services
Written by Adam Engst
At its September 10th special event, Apple unveiled a slew of new products and services, including the iPhone 11, the Apple Watch Series 5, the seventh-generation iPad, Apple Arcade, and Apple TV+. The company also said that iOS 13 and watchOS 6 would ship on September 19th, with iPadOS 13 appearing on September 30th and […]
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Tuesday, 03 September 2019 12:08
Want to Use Your Friends’ Nicknames in iOS? Here’s How
Written by Adam Engst
If you have a friend whom you refer to only by his nickname, it can be annoying to feel like you should use his proper first name when adding him to Contacts. Worse, then he shows up in Messages with a name you don’t recognize as easily. Here’s how to convince iOS to use his […]
Tuesday, 03 September 2019 12:07
Personalize Your Mac with Custom Document Icons
Written by Adam Engst
Do you have a document that you open regularly, perhaps from your Desktop? If you’d like to make it stand out from other documents, why not give it a custom icon? This was common practice on the Mac back in the day, and it’s still possible in modern versions of macOS. Go to Google Images […]
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Tuesday, 03 September 2019 12:06
How to Get Custom Alerts for Email from Your VIPs
Written by Adam Engst
Few people get so little email that they want an iPhone notification for every message that rolls in. But many of us have just a couple of people—our personal VIPs—whose messages are important enough to warrant an alert. If that’s true for you, and you want to know right away when your boss or your […]
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Tuesday, 03 September 2019 12:05
Two Secret Key Combos for Forward Delete on the Magic and MacBook Keyboards
Written by Adam Engst
Traditionally, extended keyboards come with a Forward Delete key that, when you press it, deletes characters to the right of the insertion point, unlike the main Delete key, which deletes to the left of the insertion point. Forward Delete still exists on Apple’s Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad, but it’s missing from the Magic Keyboard […]
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Tuesday, 03 September 2019 12:04
When Should You Upgrade to macOS 10.15 Catalina, iOS 13, iPadOS 13, watchOS 6, and tvOS 13?
Written by Adam Engst
As we get into September, it’s a good bet that Apple will be pushing out the next major versions of macOS, iOS, watchOS, and tvOS, along with the new iPadOS, which is iOS with iPad-specific tweaks. Apple previewed these new versions back in June, and they’ve been in public beta since. Once Apple makes macOS […]
Tuesday, 03 September 2019 12:03
Make a Backup before Upgrading to Catalina or iOS 13!
Written by Adam Engst
Confession time. If there’s one topic we can’t stop talking about, it’s backups. Backups are essential, since no one can guarantee that your Mac or iPhone won’t be lost or stolen, be caught in a flood from a broken pipe, or just fail silently. It happens. You should have a good backup strategy that ensures […]
Tuesday, 03 September 2019 12:02
Some of Our Favorite Features of iOS 13 and iPadOS 13
Written by Adam Engst
It’s hard to sum up iOS 13’s benefits succinctly because Apple has made so many improvements (we’ll get to what’s cool about iPadOS 13 later in the article). That means there’s something for just about everyone. Here are some of the changes we think you’ll most appreciate. Better Text Handling An area in iOS that […]