The Apple SuperDrive is an external CD / DVD drive that reads and writes to optical discs, and while it works great with many Macs, there are some Mac models where the SuperDrive doesn’t work, like any Mac that happened to come with a built-in optical drive. For the computers that do not support the SuperDrive, connecting the device often pops-up an error message stating that the Superdrive “is not supported on this Mac”.

Before giving up on using a SuperDrive, you might be able to use a command line hack method discussed here to make a Superdrive work on any Mac, whether it’s supported or not. Of course there is no need to do this on supported machines but for devices where the drive isn’t working, it can be helpful.

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If you’re ripping CDs to import a music collection into iTunes on a Mac or Windows PC, you may be interested in knowing that you can change the media encoding for imported music. By default, iTunes will import and rip CDs using the MP3 Encoder at 160kbps, but if you want to change the encoding settings you will find options to import the CD and encode music as AAC, AIFF, Apple Lossless (m4a), MP3, and WAV.

There are two ways to access the iTunes encoder settings for importing music from CDs, either directly from the import screen, or from the iTunes Preferences. Accessing is the same in iTunes for Mac OS and for Windows. However you access the import settings, the settings will be the same and will become the default for future importing of CDs into iTunes.

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Apple has released the 6th beta version of iOS 11.3 for users participating in the iOS beta testing program.

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The latest versions of iOS offer a very nice feature that lets you easily share wi-fi passwords from an iPhone or iPad so that other people can quickly join a wireless network that you’re already connected to. While there is still no way to see the wi-fi router password in iOS, the ability to share a wi-fi password and assist another device to join a wireless network is a great feature and a step in the right direction.

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If you’re a command line user, you can imagine that it’d be useful to have a Terminal window available instantly to you from anywhere on the Mac, whether you’re currently in the Finder, Safari, Xcode, or any other application entirely. Well there’s no need to imagine, with iTerm you can have an instantly available terminal that drops down from the top of the Macs screen, giving you immediate command line access at the push of a hot key.

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Apple has announced their annual Worldwide Development Conference (WWDC) will begin on Monday, June 4. The event, which is to be held in San Jose California, will last through June 8.

Though aimed at developers, WWDC events are significant to a wider audience because Apple usually debuts their next major operating system versions during a keynote presentation at the start of the conference.

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Removing apps from an iPhone or iPad has always been an easy endeavor, and you can easily uninstall any iOS app from a device in just seconds. Of course iPhone X, iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, iPhone XR and 3D Touch iPhone models can still quickly delete apps from the home screen too, but because of some hardware features of those devices, deleting apps may appear like it works differently. Some users may attempt to delete an app on iPhone XS, XR, X, iPhone 8, or other 3D touch iPhone models and find that no “X” appears at all, or that the icons don’t jiggle, or that they feel a little buzz sensation and then find a pop-up menu instead of the “X” button to delete an app.

This guide will walk through how to delete apps on the newest iPhone models, including understanding how deleting apps works on iPhone X, iPhone XS, XR, and also offer some general tips on deleting apps on any other iPhone with a 3D Touch screen.

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Apple has released the fifth beta version of iOS 11.3 to users participating in the iOS beta testing program for iPhone and iPad system software, alongside macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 beta 5 for Mac beta testers.

Separately, tvOS 11.3 beta 5 has also been made available to users beta testing Apple TV system software.

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If you ever need to make a copy of a file or folder on the Mac, you’ll be happy to know that there is a super-easy way to accomplish that task thanks to the Duplicate File feature in the Mac Finder. The name is self descriptive, as Duplicate will create an exact copy of any file or folder that is specified, replicating the original item in the same active directory.

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The iPhone has a handy Stopwatch feature, with two different visual modes and the capability of notating laps. The all-purpose stopwatch is fantastic for anything where you want to time something, whether it’s tracking an athletic endeavor, performance, or simply some other event or occurrence where a stopwatch measurement is appropriate.

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You probably know that you can quickly get to Emoji icons on the Mac via keyboard shortcut or menu items, but did you know you can search Emoji on the Mac? Using the Emoji search feature makes it much faster and easier to get to a particular Emoji icon rather than browse through hundreds and hundreds of Emojis.

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In order for a variety of Siri features to work, Siri must know who you are, and the more Siri knows about you the better some of those features work when activated from an iPhone or iPad.

For example, if Siri knows your home address then you can ask Siri to “give me directions home” from anywhere, and the virtual assistant will attempt to route a path home. Or if you found an iPhone and want to see who the owner is (and likewise want someone to be able to do the same if you ever lost your iPhone) then you must have your information set with Siri.

This tutorial will walk through the simple steps of informing Siri who you are by using your iPhone or iPad.

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Advanced Mac users may appreciate using the Homebrew package manager, which greatly simplifies the process of installing command line software and tools on a Mac.

For example, if you want to easily install favorite command line tools on a Mac like cask, htop, wget, nmap, tree, irssi, links, colordiff, or virtually any other familiar unix command line utility, you can do so with a simple command. Homebrew downloads and builds the package for you.

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MacOS High Sierra is the last macOS release to support 32-bit apps “without compromise” (presumably meaning without performance degradation, and with maximum compatibility), and betas of macOS 10.13.4 are now notifying users if 32-bit apps are being run. This might suggest that 32-bit Mac apps will run through a compatibility mode like Rosetta or Classic in the near future, and eventually, it seems likely that Apple will drop support for 32-bit apps on the Mac completely in a some future system software release, favoring 64-bit apps.

But there are a fair amount of 32-bit apps which are widely used on many Macs, despite Mac OS itself being 64-bit since Snow Leopard. If you’re not sure what apps are 32-bit or 64-bit, then you’ll be glad to know that Mac OS has a handy tool available within System Information to quickly show you all the apps which are 64-bit or not.

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The iOS Maps app has quite a few tricks up its sleeve, including a settings toggle that allows you to get directions to and from destinations while avoiding highways and freeways. This is particularly helpful for iPhone users that rely on the Maps app for directions and getting around, but it works on iPad as well.

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Apple has released the fourth beta version of iOS 11.3 to users enrolled in the iOS beta testing program, alongside the fourth beta build of macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 for Mac system software testers.

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Need to know the size of a particular file? Or have you ever wondered how large a particular folder is on a Mac? With a simple trick you an quickly get the size of any file, folder, or item as found within the Finder file system of Mac OS.

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iTunes offers a simple way to track down and find duplicate songs in a music library, so if you find yourself hearing the same song every once in a while when listening to iTunes on a Mac or Windows, or after copying music to an iPhone, iPad, or iPod, then it’s quite possible duplicate tracks are to blame.

It’s fairly easy for music libraries to contain duplicate songs and tracks, particularly as you build a collection over time. If you’re ripping CDs and importing music into iTunes, downloading songs from SoundCloud and the web, buying albums and songs from multiple sources like iTunes, Amazon, and elsewhere, it’s fairly easy to eventually end up with duplicate versions of the same song.

While iTunes has long has the capability of finding duplicate songs, the feature has been moved in modern versions of iTunes from version 12.0 and later, which has led many users to believe that you can’t find duplicate tracks with the app anymore. But that’s not the case, it has just been relocated.

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