Tips & Tricks

With so many holidays scattered throughout the year, it’s easy to lose track of when is what, and on which day the next falls. Fortunately, the Mac Calendar app makes it simple to toggle the display of all holidays directly in the Calendar app, so you’ll never lose track over what date Palm Sunday, Earth … Read More

All iOS users know the familiar “ding” alert sound of a new email landing in the inbox of your iPhone or iPad. For those of us who live attached to technology, these alert sounds have basically trained our brain to stop what we’re doing and check our inbox, often relying only on the mute button … Read More

Game Center is the online gaming basis for many games in iOS and OS X, letting users play online, track scores, play against friends, it’s also generally required to use for almost every game played on an iPhone or iPad. When signing up for Game Center for the first time, plenty of us chose a … Read More

Considering that so much of the functionality of iOS is dependent on the internet, it’s pretty frustrating if you can’t join a wireless network because of a mystery “Unable to join the network [name]” error popping up on an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. You may encounter this alert trying to join a wifi network … Read More

The latest versions of Chrome for iOS offer an optional data compression feature that uses Google servers to further compress web pages visited before accessing them from your iPhone or iPad. Put simply, toggling this setting can help to reduce your cellular data consumption when browsing the web within the Chrome app for iOS, and … Read More

Provisioning profiles are typically installed onto iPhones and iPads for development and testing purposes, but non developers may wind up with them on their iOS devices too, whether from testing an app or installing something like GBA4iOS from the web. For non-developers, this usually goes unnoticed until they get one of the “Provisioning Profile Expiration” … Read More

The Messages app is the native instant messaging client for Mac OS X which supports everything from iMessage, Facebook chat, to other instant messaging services. You can block specific contacts from sending your Mac any iMessages too, though you’d be forgiven for missing the addition of the feature or for simply overlooking it when scouring … Read More

Some iPhone and iPad users, myself included, have experienced an unusual level of battery drain after updating devices to iOS 7.0.6. This is typically accompanied by an iPhone (or other device) feeling abnormally warm to the touch.

Many advanced Mac users have noticed that Activity Monitor appears slower these days when the app is updating CPU, Memory, Disk, Energy, and Network data, with the monitoring app apparently no longer offering real-time system resource statistics. Instead, Activity Monitor now defaults to offering a general aggregate of system use that feels relatively delayed. Well … Read More

The popular Evasi0n utility has been updated to support jailbreaking iOS 7.0.6. Though iOS 7.0.6 is a minor version change to iOS, it includes an important security fix that prevents potential man-in-the-middle attacks and/or data interception from occurring, thus it is highly recommended for all users to install as soon as possible, including those who … Read More

The Mac includes a fantastic command line tool called textutil which allows for quick text file format conversions, translating almost any text or word document type into another. We’ve discussed textutil for a variety of uses, but typically it has been for one-off conversions of a specific file into a new file type. This time … Read More

How many times have you been reading an article on the web when you tapped on a link that sent you somewhere you weren’t expecting? Maybe it was to an article that wasn’t anticipated, or maybe it was to another website entirely. Sometimes we just want to know where we’ll be going before going there, … Read More

If you follow the general tech world through just about any medium, be it Twitter, Pinterest, or blogs, you may have seen a pretty bold battery charging claim gaining popularity lately, usually something along the lines of: “charge your iPhone twice as fast just by switching it into AirPlane Mode!” The theory behind that claim … Read More

Batteries on the MacBook Pro, MacBook, and MacBook Air are made to offer many hours of work on a single charge. Unfortunately, sometimes apps get in the way of our wonderful Mac battery life, often without a user even noticing until suddenly their battery life has been drained dramatically. The good news is it doesn’t … Read More

It’s fairly common for computer users to delay updating to major operating system releases, and though Mac owners tend to be a bit better at upgrading than Windows users, many are still running old versions of OS X. For some users there are good reasons for this, maybe lingering on outdated OS X versions like … Read More

Some Mac users may encounter an apparently random disappearance of Bluetooth functionality, often after rebooting or updating Mac OS X. The first obvious indicator is that no Bluetooth hardware works, be it a keyboard, mouse, headset, or otherwise, and when attempting to visit the Bluetooth menu of Mac OS X a “Bluetooth: Not Available” error … Read More

Every modern iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch has access to a feature called Automatic Downloads, which can be used a bit differently than intended as a means to remotely install apps onto iOS devices from a computer. All you need is iTunes on OS X or Windows logged into the same Apple ID as what’s … Read More

Ever wanted to create an iPhone or Android ringtone from an existing audio file, but wanted to complete the process entirely from the command line? You’re in luck, because Mac OS X has a little audio conversion tool that can turn any existing audio track into an Android or iPhone compatible ringtone in seconds. We’ll … Read More