While the majority of the Apple beta testing world has moved into iOS 18 beta, iPadOS 18 beta, and MacOS Sequoia beta, Apple continues to release beta versions for upcoming current generation system software as well. In this case, iOS 17.6 beta 3, iPadOS 17.6 beta 3, and macOS Sonoma 14.6 beta 3, are all available for beta testers.

These are presumed to be primarily bug fix releases with security updates, and are unlikely to include any major new features, as Apple focuses feature development efforts on the upcoming iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia 15 system software that is in concurrent beta development.
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Apple has issued iOS 18 beta 3 for iPhone, along with iPadOS 18 beta 3 for iPad.

iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 include a variety of new features for iPhone and iPad, from new Dark Mode icon and widget themes for the Home Screen, color hued icon customizations, the ability to customize Control Center, improvements to Safari and Notes, significant changes to the Photos app GUI, tons of new AI ‘Apple Intelligence’ capabilities and features like ChatGPT being linked to Siri, and much more.
 
Beta 3 of iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 are available as developer beta downloads for users enrolled in the Apple Developer programs. Because anyone can enroll to become a developer, this makes it possible for any adventurous user to install either iOS 18 beta or iPadOS 18 beta on their iPhone or iPad, respectively. Be aware that beta system software is much buggier than final versions, making this really only appropriate for advanced users, and with secondary devices.

Aside from iPhone and iPad, beta testers will also find tvoS 18 beta 3, watchOS 11 beta 3, and visionOS 2 beta 3. macOS Sequoia beta 3 is curiously absent, at the moment.

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Want to try running Ubuntu Linux on your Apple Silicon Mac? You can do that easily, running Ubuntu right alongside MacOS, and without having to deal with any partitioning, installation headaches, dual booting, or loss of the Mac operating system itself. This is possible with the help of virtual machines, which allow you to run another operating system virtually on top of your Mac, just like any other app.

Running new and different operating systems concurrently with MacOS has never been easier thanks to virtualization apps like UTM, VMWare, VirtualBox, and Parallels, and in this particular article, we’ll be showing you how to run Ubuntu Linux on an Apple Silicon Mac with UTM.

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If you have used Homebrew to try and install a particular package onto an Apple Silicon Mac and you see an error message stating “The arm64 architecture is required for this software” that prevents the installation of the package, you might be surprised by this error message given that you’re using an Apple Silicon Mac (any M1, M2, M3, M4, etc machine).

It turns out that some Apple Silicon Mac users who installed Homebrew in the past may have either inadvertently set the x86 version as the default, or even installed the x86 version (Intel) of Homebrew instead of the arm64 version (Apple Silicon), which then leads to the “arm64 architecture is required for this software” error message when attempting to install a package intended for an ARM Mac.

Fortunately this is pretty easy to fix with a few command line tweaks, so if you see the “The arm64 architecture is required for this software” message with Homebrew, read along and it’ll be resolved in no time.

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There are various ways to monitor CPU usage on a Mac, with perhaps the two most common being with Activity Monitor on the graphical interface side of things, and htop or top on the command line side. While you can show an optional core graph in Activity Monitor, and htop will show CPU core activity as well, there’s another lesser known command line tool called powermetrics that can reveal this information to you as well.

If you’ve a savvy command line user and you’ve never heard of powermetrics before, welcome to the club. I hadn’t either until I stumbled into an article at eclecticlight.co which discussed various ways of seeing CPU core activity with a mention of the ‘powermetrics’ command line tool so naturally I was inspired to investigate something new to me. Sharing is caring, so let’s review how you can use this command as well.

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Hex editors are software tools that are able to view and edit hex data and raw binary data of files, and can be frequently used by programmers, developers, and reverse engineers, to inspect, debug, and analyze files and software. Some advanced users even rely on hex editors for data recovery and digital forensics, or to perform file format analysis, and some gamers rely on hex editors to modify or hack games to change game data or to enter cheat codes.

We’re going to show you two popular and powerful hex editors for Mac, both are open source (and one is cross-platform compatible so if you want to use the same hex editor not only on a Mac but also Linux and a Windows PC, it’s a great option).

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If you use Node.js for web development, creation of web apps, and javascript based network applications, you undoubtedly may come across situations where you’d like to make sure that the latest version of Node.js is installed on your Mac. Upgrading to the latest version of Node.js means you’ll have access to the most recent features and security updates available.

Assuming you have installed Node.js and npm with Homebrew (which implies you have also already installed Homebrew on the Mac too), which is arguably the easiest way to install node.js onto a Mac and to manage the javascript runtime environment, then you will find that updating Node.js to the latest version is really quite simple once you learn how.

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The second beta versions of iOS 17.6, macOS Sonoma 14.6, and iPadOS 17.6 are available to users who are enrolled in beta testing programs for current generation system software of Apple devices.

While many beta testers have likely proceeded ahead with installing the iOS 18 beta, iPadOS 18 beta, and MacOS Sequoia beta, undoubtedly there are developers who are testing their software with betas of iOS 17.6, iPadOS 17.6, and macOS Sonoma 14.6 as well.

No major new features or changes are expected in these versions of system software, suggesting they are likely releases aimed at bug fixes and security updates.

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One of the most useful features of the ChatGPT app for Mac is the ability to upload files to ChatGPT to have them summarized and analyzed.

For example, you can upload a PDF file, and ask ChatGPT to give an analysis of the document, or to summarize it, and ask questions specifically related to the document itself. The great thing about this is that the contents of the document don’t matter, ChatGPT will figure that out and analyze it accordingly, whether the PDF is a resume, recipe, cookbook, music tablature or notation, book, guides, document, charts, presentations, or whatever else.

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Night Shift is a nice feature from Apple that warms the color tones on screens during the evening and nighttime hours, with the idea being that it may help to reduce eyestrain and blue light exposure. Night Shift has been around on Mac, iPhone, and iPad, for quite some time, but the feature has been notably absent from Apple Watch… at least at any obvious level.

But it turns out that Apple Watch does have Night Shift, at least on relatively newer models, with newer watchOS system software, there’s just no Settings toggle for it. Instead, Apple Watch users can enable Night Shift on their watch by using Siri.

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Ball is a super fun project for Mac that is goofy, simple, and wildly creative. It’s, well, a virtual bouncy ball.

Ball lives in your Mac Dock, and when you click on the Dock icon, the bouncy ball pops out and drops onto your screen. The big red bouncy ball has decent physics too, so you can drag it high and drop it, and it’ll bounce down and around, or you can throw it against the side of your screen and watch it ricochet around. Just play around with it, that’s what it’s for.

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ChatGPT for Mac is now broadly available to every Mac user as a free download, complete with the latest GPT capabilities. While some of you may have bypassed the waitlist to gain early access, the official ChatGPT Mac app is now is now available to anyone and everyone, all you need is an OpenAI account and any Apple Silicon Mac.

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MacOS Sequoia beta 2 has been released for users participating in the MacOS Sequoia 15 beta program for Apple Developers.

Technically speaking, anyone can enroll in the dev program and install MacOS Sequoia beta, but due to the nature of beta system software that is not advised for anyone who is not an advanced user or developer.

MacOS Sequoia 15 beta includes iPhone mirroring (assuming the iPhone is running iOS 18 beta as well), and has other new features like improved window tiling, dedicated Passwords app, AI Apple Intelligence features, changes to Safari and Photos app, and more.

Separately, iOS 18 beta 2, iPadOS 18 beta 2, watchOS 11 beta 2, tvOS 18 beta 2, and visionOS 2 beta 2, are also available for developers to test.

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Apple has released the second beta version of iOS 18 for iPhone and iPadOS 18 for iPad.

iOS 18 beta 2 and iPadOS 18 beta 2 are available to download now for those registered in the Apple Developer beta testing programs. Technically speaking, anyone can install iOS 18 beta on iPhone or iPadOS 18 beta on iPad, but this is really only appropriate for advanced users.

iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 feature some intriguing new capabilities, like Dark Mode icons and color hued icons, Control Center customizations, Apple Intelligence AI features, changes to Photos app, and much more.

Separately, beta testers can also find beta 2 for macOS Sequoia, tvOS 18, watchOS 11, and visionOS 2 as well.

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There are no shortage of interesting projects and things to do with Rasbperry Pi devices, but this one will be particularly intriguing to fans of retro Macintosh and emulation; you can emulate a Macintosh 128k complete with VGA video and keyboard/mouse input, using nothing but a Pico Microcontroller!

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Apple often picks really beautiful wallpapers and imagery to go with their products, and while the iPhone, iPad, and Mac have tended recently towards more abstract wallpapers and product imagery, the Apple Vision Pro has some really gorgeous landscapes in the “Environments” feature of the spatial computing headset.

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tvOS 18 includes some intriguing new features that aim to improve your Apple TV experience, including Enhance Dialogue to make it easier to hear voices and dialog in shows and movies, Live Captions offers live transcripts of FaceTime calls on Apple TV, new screen savers, new Fitness features, Home app guest access, and more.

If you’re an advanced Apple TV user, you might be interested in installing the tvOS 18 beta onto your Apple TV, which can be done rather easily and by anyone in a similar way that anyone can install iOS 18 beta on iPhone.

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Some Mac users who are attempting to install MacOS Sequoia beta into a virtual machine may run into an error message that states “A software update is required to install macOS in a virtual machine.”

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