Apple’s WWDC 2024 keynote was aired on the morning of June 10, and tons of things were announced and covered over the course of a nearly two hour long marathon event presentation. Apple Intelligence. iOS 18 with new customizations to the Home Screen and Control Center. iPadOS 18 gets that too, plus a Calculator app. MacOS Sequoia has new features like letting you use your iPhone on your Mac. tvOS 17. watchOS 11. visionOS 2. Plus more! There’s so much!

How can you know what was the big stuff? What the heck is Apple Intelligence? What if you want to watch the entire presentation from the 2024 WWDC keynote?

Read more »

Apple has announced iOS 18, the next major version of system software for iPhone, with a host of new features, design updates, and changes. iOS 18 brings all new customization options for home screen icons including Dark Mode icons with color tinting, the ability to place icons and widgets anywhere on the Home Screen, a customizable Control Center, AI features called Apple Intelligence that can help with both writing and summarizing text, a dedicated Passwords app, new Messages features like any Emoji tapback, a redesigned Photos app, and much more.

iOS 18 debuted at WWDC 2024, alongside MacOS Sequoia, iPadOS 18, watchOS 11, tvOS 18, and visionOS 2.

Read more »

Apple has announced MacOS Sequoia, the next major version of the Mac operating system. Versioned as macOS Sequoia 15, the future software update includes some intriguing new features, including iPhone Mirroring, a host of new AI features called Apple Intelligence, the inclusion of a Passwords app, new features to tile windows easier, new summary and highlights features in Safari, and more.

MacOS Sequoia was announced at WWDC 2024 alongside iOS 18, iPadOS 18, tvOS 18, visionOS 2, and watchOS 11.

Read more »

Calculators are wildly useful tools for various obvious reasons, whether you need to perform simple math or complex calculations. One of the more curious iPad oversights on Apple’s behalf is the lack of a built-in Calculator app, which is missing on iPad, but has been included on the Mac, iPhone, and Apple Watch, since the introduction of those devices.

If you’re an iPad user and you need to use a calculator, there is a native solution on iPadOS, but it’s located within an unexpected location for some users; Spotlight. Yes, Spotlight, the on-device search engine on iPad, can function as a calculator.

Read more »

Steve Jobs being fired from Apple, the company he cofounded, is both a famous moment in Apple history, and broader business history.

The story generally goes that Jobs was fired in 1985 due to a significant disagreement with the Apple CEO, John Sculley, and the companies board of directors.

Who better to discuss the firing of Steve Jobs than ex-Apple CEO John Sculley? In this candid 8 minute video from a Forbes conference in 2013, John Sculley discusses the firing and the circumstances surrounding the now infamous event where Jobs was let go from his own company.

The full video is embedded below and is a worthwhile watch if you’re a fan of Apple history, or have otherwise wondered about the situation where Steve Jobs was excused from his position.

Read more »

Some advanced users, IT staff, and enterprise users may have a need to download, install, and use Windows 11 LTSC, whether that’s for installing into a virtual machine environment running on a Mac or PC, a dual boot situation with an Intel Mac using Boot Camp, or even installing directly onto a PC, medical device, point-of-sale, kiosk, or similar hardware.

Windows LTSC (Long-Term Servicing Channel) versions are unique in that they’re designed for situations where stability and reliability are paramount, long-term support is critical, and changes or features updates are more limited. This is often the case for enterprise deployments, governments, mission-critical situations and applications, medical systems and networks, industrial machinery and environments, for fixed-purpose things ranging from ATM machines to Point-of-Sale terminals, automation systems, medical devices, thin clients, digital signage, kiosks, self-checkout stands, and to accompany other specialized equipment where long-term consistency and stability and more important rather than having the latest shiny features or changes, like Microsoft’s bizarre new feature which displays advertisements in the Windows Start menu.

Read more »

Many MacBook Pro and MacBook Air owners use their laptops in dual use scenarios, functioning as a laptop computer when on the go, and a desktop computer when not. This leads some to wonder if it’s bad for the MacBook battery to leave the computer charging or plugged in, even if it’s not in use.

If your MacBook Pro or MacBook Air is at a desk, or mostly at a desk, is it bad to leave it plugged in all the time? Should you keep your MacBook Air or Pro plugged in and charging all the time? Is that safe to do, or is it bad for the battery and longevity of the laptop? Let’s dive in and explore these important questions!

Read more »

If you are running Windows 11 in VMWare Fusion on a Mac, you might want to setup a shared folder to easily transfer data from the Mac to the Windows virtual machine. There are a few ways to accomplish this, from using VMWare Tools, to using a networking approach, and we’ll cover the latter here.

Read more »

The Keynote presentation app for iPad has a variety of handy keyboard shortcuts available to it that are only accessible when the iPad is connected to a physical keyboard. If you’re a regular Keynote for iPad user, and you have either a Magic Keyboard, Smart Keyboard, keyboard case, or other external keyboard connected to the iPad, you’ll be sure to appreciate learning these helpful keystrokes for using iPad with the Keynote app.

From the basics like creating a new presentation and new slides, to duplicating slides, finding information, starting slideshows, showing transitions, navigating within the presentation, and much more, read along and you’ll learn a variety of handy keyboard shortcuts for the Keynote app on iPad.

Read more »

Some Mac users may need to install Java on their Apple Silicon equipped Mac – whether it’s an M1, M2, M3, or other M-series ARM chip – allowing them to run Java-based applications and software on their computers. Whether it’s to run specific enterprise software, use particular educational tools and compsci courses, run Java web apps, or to access and use Java development tools and the JDK (Java Development Kit), there are numerous reasons why installing Java in MacOS can be necessary, though it’s typically only advanced users and developers who require Java.

Modern Macs and modern versions of MacOS do not include Java by default and haven’t for quite some time, so if you need Java on an Apple Silicon Mac, you will have to install it manually. We’re going to demonstrate how you can install Java on an M-series Mac with an M3, M2, M1, or whatever Apple Silicon Mac you’re using.

Read more »

The powerful new M4 iPad Pro and M2 iPad Air series come equipped from the Apple factory with some pretty nice looking wallpapers, but that doesn’t mean you have to buy a new iPad just to enjoy the appearance on your current devices.

The M2 iPad Air wallpapers feature bright shiny colorful abstractions based upon the color the devices that vaguely spell out ‘AIR’, while the M4 iPad Pro wallpapers are dark black yet still feature colorful abstracts that spell out “PRO” in a similarly discrete fashion. Whatever they say and whatever your device, they look pretty neat.

Read more »

sysmond, which as you may have surmised from the process name, is short for System Monitor Daemon, is part of Activity Monitor. Thus, if you use Activity Monitor to keep a watch on your Mac system resources, processes, CPU usage, Energy use, Disk, Network, and critical to our discussion here – Memory usage, you may find that sysmond is using a lot of system resources in and of itself.

Let’s dig into sysmond a bit to learn more about what it is, and why it sometimes uses a very large amount of CPU, and how you can correct that.

Read more »

Do you miss iTunes for Mac? Do you really miss Aperture for Mac? Do you have fond memories of iPhoto in MacOS? What if you could run any of these three now defunct apps in modern MacOS Sonoma? With the help of an app called Retroactive, you can do exactly that, installing iTunes, Aperture, and iPhoto, onto modern Macs running MacOS Sonoma (or Ventura, Monterey, Big Sur, and Catalina).

Read more »

The Numbers spreadsheet application for iPad includes quite a few useful keyboard shortcuts for when the iPad is connected to an external keyboard.

If you use Numbers for iPad regularly, you’ll almost certainly benefit from knowing these keystroke combinations to perform various actions within the Numbers app. So grab your iPad keyboard and launch the Numbers app, and get learning!

We’ve got a broad range of keyboard shortcuts for Numbers on iPad to learn and master, and you’ll be glad to know many of these.

Read more »

If you’re an Apple Watch user, you should know about a convenient feature for iPhone that helps you to easily find a misplaced Apple Watch. Much like how you can ping an iPhone with Apple Watch to find an iPhone, you can now go the other direction too, by pinging your Apple Watch from your iPhone, which will cause a sound to play from the Apple Watch.

Pinging a lost Apple Watch from iPhone is super easy, but curiously enough, the feature is not available by default on iPhone even after it has been setup and paired with an Apple Watch. Instead, you have to manually enable this feature first, and we’ll show you how to do that, and how to use this handy ping feature to help find a misplaced Apple Watch by using your iPhone.

Read more »

Mac users, iPhone users, and iPad users, should all be aware that updating to macOS Sonoma 14, iOS 17, or iPadOS 17, may silently enable iCloud Keychain on their devices. Essentially this means that by updating to the latest iOS, iPadOS, or MacOS, you may be unintentionally enabling the feature and thereby uploading your saved keychain and login information to Apple’s iCloud servers. If you like and use this feature, obviously that’s not an issue, but if you don’t use iCloud Keychain and don’t want to use it, having it enable itself after updating system software may be considered problematic, or a nuissance.

Read more »

VMWare Tools is an optional toolkit to install into a Windows virtual machine in VMWare that allows you to have easier sharing of files between the host Mac operating system and the Windows virtual machine, as well as some other useful features like time syncing between host and client, being able to pass data back and forth between the host and client, additional customization options, and more.

VMWare Tools isn’t necessary to simply run a VM, and it’s not needed for everyone, but advanced users, or those who want to have easy options to share files between a Windows VM and the host MacOS might particularly appreciate these features, and want them installed in VMWare Fusion on their VM.

We’ll show you two ways to install VMWare Tools into a Windows VM in VMWare; using the easy installer, and by installing it manually by ISO file.

Read more »

ChatGPT for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, all include a very impressive Voice Chat feature, that lets you have voice chats and full on conversations with the advanced AI Large Language Model. One of the fun ways to customize Voice Chat with ChatGPT is to change the voice to something you prefer, and there are multiple options available to choose from.

We’ll show you how you can easily change the voice of that used in conversation mode of ChatGPT on iPhone, iPad, or Mac.

Read more »