Being put on hold is never fun, and for some particularly busy companies that hold time can easily end up being 30-45 minutes of waiting and twiddling your thumbs to talk to whatever representative awaits you on the other end. If you’re lucky, they’ll put on some lame hold music or have some repetitive “we’ll … Read More

The iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch displays have precise brightness controls, and thanks to a light sensor, they’re smart enough to automatically adjust brightness depending on environmental lighting conditions. But it’s not always perfect especially if you use it at night, and if you’re in frequently changing lighting conditions that behavior can reduce battery life. … Read More

Effectively filtering the nonstop noise from email can make or break the productivity in your day, and VIP lists are one of the easiest ways to help this in iOS and Mac OS X by emphasizing some senders over others. If you’re new to VIP listing, it’s a very simple to use feature that is … Read More

Want to get new emails faster on your iPhone or iPad? You can do that with a settings adjustment to how the Mail app works. Have you noticed that it can sometimes take a while to get an email notification on to the iPhone? The time it takes to check for new emails from mail … Read More

Many longtime Mac users may know the handful of keyboard shortcuts to instantly reboot, shut down, and sleep Macs, but for those who haven’t memorized the precise keystrokes yet, a much safer option is to instantly summon the power controls for OS X instead. This allows you to choose the power option you need while … Read More

Like many of you, I’m a sucker for fancy new wallpapers of neat looking stuff, and if there’s one place that routinely cranks out some of the most mind-blowing amazing imagery that is perfect for wallpapers, it’s NASA. This little mini-collection is a handful of freakishly gorgeous pictures of various nebulas around the universe, and … Read More

The iPad is a great cooking tool that’s perfect for keeping track of recipes and being the ultimate kitchen resource, but if you’ve ever cooked with an iPad you’ll know the screen can get pretty mucked up with various ingredients, and if you aren’t careful it could even damage the device. Thankfully, another kitchen item … Read More

Want to know exactly how much storage photos are taking up on your iPhone or iPad? Opening the Photos app in iOS will tell you how many total photos are within the different picture albums and Camera Roll, but how much space do the pictures actually take up? If you want to know the actual … Read More

If you need to get a new IP address from a router that any iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or other iOS device is connected to, you can either set a manual IP address or, what’s likely more relevant to most people, you’ll want to renew the DHCP lease directly from the wi-fi router itself. Renewing … Read More

Converting images to new file formats is very easy thanks to a variety of tools built directly into OS X (and most Linux distributions). Though the easiest method uses Preview for converting images, there’s a command line option that uses the same sips tool we’ve discussed before to perform batch resizing from the command line. … Read More

Most Bluetooth accessories don’t have battery indicators located on the device itself, and that includes the Apple Wireless Keyboard, Magic Mouse, and Magic Trackpad. Rather than waiting for the battery to run low, thereby causing the devices connection to weaken, stop registering movements, clicks, or certain behavior, you can choose to manually intervene by periodically … Read More

This lovely colorful plastic toilet is also an iPad stand, and that means you can now finally potty train a child (or yourself, no judgment here!) with the help of a convenient iPad-toilet combo. I don’t know about you, but I have far more questions than answers about this thing. Is there an app that … Read More

The default iOS setting for iPhones is for message alerts to chime with the text tone twice, in a two minute interval. While the repeat text message alert sounds, notifications, and vibrations on the iPhone can be helpful for some people, those of us who are basically glued to our phones tend to experience quite … Read More

Emoji icons are a lot of fun and special characters can be extremely useful, but the standard way of opening the character viewer panel isn’t the smoothest in the world. Fortunately, OS X has an excellent bundled menu bar option that can be enabled to allow for extremely fast Emoji and character access, letting you … Read More

Moving email around between inboxes in the iOS Mail app is easy, and perhaps sometimes it’s too easy, because accidentally moving or archiving mail messages seems to be an ongoing issue for many. In fact, one of the most frequently asked questions I get from newcomers to the iPhone or iPad is “where did my … Read More

Your iPhone is a smartphone, and if it isn’t making you smarter as well then you just aren’t using the devices included features to it’s full potential. Here are three super simple tips that let your iPhone make you smarter, these will be perfect for educators, learners, students, or really, just about anyone – unless … Read More

Have you ever gotten a new album or podcast, synced it over to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, then when you went to play the songs you discovered they were grayed out in the Music app? The album is there, the song title is there, but because the song is grey you can tap … Read More

Update: Adobe apparently made some sort of error, and is not actually giving away any CS2 software for free. Here is what they have to say on their Community Forums: On behalf of Adobe Systems Incorporated … You have heard wrong! Adobe is absolutely not providing free copies of CS2! What is true is that … Read More