40 years ago on January 22, 1984, Apple ran the famous “1984” advertisement for the Macintosh during the Super Bowl.
The commercial features an unidentified heroine wearing a Macintosh tank top who runs into a gathering of enthralled sycophants staring up at a screen of a droning Big Brother, wherein the protagonist tosses an anvil into the screen to destroy the spell. The tagline “On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 wont be like ‘1984.’” then appears on screen and is spoken. Quite a commercial eh? If you’ve never seen the commercial, it’s embedded below and worth a watch.
Looking for a new fun wallpaper to spruce up your Apple devices? Apple released a creative new graffiti-themed wallpaper to celebrate the launch of a new store in the Hongdae area of Seoul, South Korea. Hongdae is apparently known for being a trendy area, and has a street affectionately named “Picasso Street” that features prominent artwork and graffiti.
Tetris is a classic and fun game that has hallmark simple yet challenging gameplay. Something about trying to piece together falling geometric shapes into lines is satisfying, and considering there are some studies that demonstrate Tetris may be good for the brain, what’s not to like? But if you want to play Tetris on your Mac, it’s harder than you might expect.
Fortunately there are a few options to play Tetris on the Mac, and technically they work on any other device too because they’re web based, so you can play the same Tetris games on an iPhone, iPad, Mac, Windows PC, Linux, Android, or whatever else you’ve got with a capable web browser. And there’s also a way to play Tetris from the Terminal app on Mac, if you’re into the command line.
If you’re the type of person who likes to keep track of their daily step count by using iPhone as a step counter, it is frustrating when the iPhone Health app step counter does not update as frequently as you’d like. Additionally, there are some challenges that are linked to specific step counts, and many people have step count goals, so being able to rely on that iPhone Health app as your step counter is important for many users.
If you find the iPhone Health app step counter to be updating too slowly for your needs, and you’d like to see a real-time live view of your steps as detected by iPhone, you can do that.
You can quickly change your Apple Watch face by swiping on the watch face – that is, if you enable this feature first.
While older versions of watchOS system software allowed users to switch watch faces easily by swiping, that feature was later changed because apparently some users were accidentally activating it. However, as long as you have updated to the latest available version of Apple Watch system software, you will have regained the option to change watch faces by swiping on the screen. So while some users may be wondering what happened to the ability to change the watch face by swiping, it still exists but it has to be enabled first.
Apple has issued Release Candidate builds for iOS 17.3, iPadOS 17.3, macOS Sonoma 14.3, watchOS 10.3, and tvOS 17.3, for users involved in the beta testing programs.
Release Candidate (RC) builds are typically the final version of a beta release cycle before the update becomes broadly available to all users. Occasionally, a second (or even third) RC build is released, if some notable bug or security issue is addressed.
The final versions of iOS 17.3, ipadOS 17.3, and macOS Sonoma 14.3 will be released next Tuesday, on January 23, according to Apple.
If you’ve installed macOS Sonoma into a UTM virtual machine you may get into a situation where you’d either like to restore the VM from a Time Machine backup, or even reinstall Sonoma in the VM, or perform other actions on the virtual machine from Recovery Mode. But, as you likely have noticed by now, booting into recovery on an Apple Silicon Mac requires holding down the Power button.
If you’ve ever attempted to do this within a UTM virtual machine, you’ll quickly notice it doesn’t work – instead, pressing the power button during the boot sequence will lock the Mac screen, as pressing the power button does on all Apple Silicon Macs (M1, M2, M3, etc included).
How do you boot into macOS recovery mode in UTM? It’s actually pretty easy once you learn how.
The latest Apple Watch models are apparently facing another sales ban starting tomorrow, due to an ongoing patent dispute with a company named Masimo, according to reports.
This basically means that Apple will be temporarily blocked from selling Apple Watch models that have blood oxygen sensors, which includes Series 9 and Ultra 2, though there are suggestions that Apple will release a software update to watchOS to try and get around any patent issues.
Now, despite all this patent drama regarding Apple Watch, if you’re in the market to buy one, you’ll be pleased to know that Amazon is continuing to sell fully functional Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 models with bloody oxygen sensors intact, at least for the time being, and at nice discounts too, taking $70 off the price of Series 9, and $50 off the Ultra 2.
Apple Watch Series 9 for $329 (down $70)
Apple Watch Series 9 is discounted to $329 (down from $399 MSRP) in select colors and band size combinations. Apple Watch Series 9 offers a 41mm display, fantastic fitness tracking capabilities, a heart rate monitor, blood oxygen reader, ECG capability, crash detection, fall detection, ovulation tracking, always-on display, GPS, pinch gesture support for interacting with the Apple Watch with just one hand, and a powerful new chip to make the watch faster than ever before.
The rugged Apple Watch Ultra 2 has all the fitness tracking capabilities you know and love of Series 9, including the blood oxygen sensor, plus a tough enclosure, an action button, longer battery life, and water resistance down to 100 meters.
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One of the fun ways to customize your iPhone experience is to change the default alert sound effect to something you like or prefer.
For a long time, the default alert sound effect was Tri-Tone and could not be changed, and then with later iOS releases Apple changed the default alert sound to the Rebound sound effect. But in the most recent versions of iPhone system software, you can change the default alert sound to anything you want it to be, whether it’s Tri-Tone, Rebound, or anything else.
Some Mac users are interested in viewing their Health data, workout data, activity and fitness data, all that is gathered from Apple Watch and iPhone, on their Mac. Recently, Apple added the Health app to iPad, so where is Health app for Mac? This should be easy, right?
Many people get an Apple Watch specifically for fitness tracking, working out, activities, and to better learn about their health and fitness. One important metric to be aware of for cardiovascular fitness is your heart rate relative to your individual heart rate zone data, and Apple Watch will calculate this information based upon your age and activities.
While many athletes know that you can get your maximum heart rate by taking 220 minus age (for example if I am 31, then the calculation would be 220-31=189, with 189 being my maximum heart rate), but it’s a little bit trickier to get your different zone information, so let’s turn to the data that is gathered by Apple Watch and see the heart rate zones on your iPhone.
The iPhone now has a Journal app, where you can jot down your day, highlights, including notes, pictures, videos, workouts from Apple Watch, and more, plus the Journal app even has journaling suggestions that are available as well. If you don’t find the suggestions of what to write about or journal about to be particularly helpful, you can turn this feature off easily.
Apple Watch users may potentially see an error message on their iPhone that states that “Could Not Connect to Apple Watch”, which then advises a few troubleshooting tips. Often those troubleshooting tips offered in the error message will fix the issue, but sometimes you need some additional help in fixing the error message and connecting the iPhone to Apple Watch again.
Let’s review some troubleshooting tips that will help to resolve the connection issue between Apple Watch and iPhone.
Looking for some great deals on some new Apple gear? Amazon has you covered with a handful of nice discounts on brand new Apple Watch Series 9, MacBook Air 15″, iPad 9th gen, iPad 10th gen, iPad mini, iPad Air, and more. Check them out and treat yourself (or someone else).
Apple Watch Series 9 for $329 (down $70)
The brand new Apple Watch Series 9 is available for $329 again, which matches the all-time-low price that was briefly available during the holiday shopping season. The deal price is available in a variety of color options and band size combinations, down from the Apple retail price of $399. Apple Watch Series 9 offers a 41mm display, fantastic fitness tracking capabilities, a heart rate monitor, blood oxygen reader, ECG capability, crash detection, fall detection, ovulation tracking, always-on display, GPS, pinch gesture support for interacting with the Apple Watch with just one hand, and a powerful new chip to make the watch faster than ever before.
Don’t need all that Apple Watch Series 9 has to offer? Apple Watch SE 2 is a great budget choice, featuring a 40mm screen, fitness tracking functionality, sleep tracking, crash detection, a heart rate monitor, and is water resistant, making it a fantastic entry-level Apple Watch for just about anyone.
The iPad 9th generation with a 10.2″ display is available for just $249, which is a $70 discount from the Apple MSRP. The iPad 9th generation features a 10.2″ Retina display, A13 Bionic chip, 64GB of storage, 12MP front camera, 8MP back camera, Touch ID on a Home Button, wi-fi, great battery life, and is available in Space Gray and Silver color options. This is a fantastic deal on a great entry-level iPad, whether it’s for a gift, more casual use, kids, parents, grandparents, couch surfing, kitchen use, or whatever else you may want to use an iPad for.
The 10th gen iPad includes a modern design without a Home button, A14 chip with great battery life, 10.9″ display, 64GB storage, 12MP front/back camera, Touch ID, and is available in select color options at a great discounted price. If you want a bit more power, more features, and a more modern design than the 9th gen, than the 10th gen is a great pick.
The M1 iPad Air 5th gen model is available for just $499, down from the $599 retail price. The 5th gen iPad Air features the powerful M1 chip, 10.9″ Liquid Retina Display, 64GB storage, 12MP front and 12MP back cameras, Touch ID, all day battery life, and full compatibility with Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil 2. Available in Starlight, Space Gray, Purple, Blue, or Pink. This is a great iPad that is quite powerful, and combined with a Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil is quite a package.
The 15″ MacBook Air M2 models feature the powerful M2 processor, SSD storage, a 1080p FaceTime webcam, Touch ID, backlit keyboard, and a great slim lightweight design, and is available in the popular Midnight Blue and Starlight at a nice discount. Be sure to clip the on-page coupon to get the final discounted price when added to your cart.
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Some M2 MacBook Air users have discovered their MacBook is running slow from time to time, perceiving what feels like dramatically reduced performance. Usually when this happens, the MacBook Air slows down when the Mac is running on battery power, but the workload being performed is not particularly abnormal or even demanding; maybe it’s a Safari browsing session with a few work apps open simultaneously, for example.
We’re going to assume you’ve run through the standard performance troubleshooting steps for MacOS of things like making sure there are no crashing apps, unresponsive apps that need to be force quit, or apps pegging CPU in the background, Messages isn’t slowing the Mac, and that the Mac hard disk is not out of disk storage – each of these will also slow down any Mac. The situation we are focusing on here is specific to MacBook Air (and MacBook Pro) laptops that feel unusually slow when running on battery power.
If you’ve accidentally closed tons of Safari tabs on iPad or iPhone and want to restore them, or you lost all of your Safari tabs by trying to create a Safari Tab Group (a surprisingly common occurrence, what a feature bug), you are probably desperately wondering how you can recover and reopen all closed tabs in Safari and restore them all to your iPhone or iPad.
Apple has released the third beta versions of iOS 17.3, iPadOS 17.3, and macOS Sonoma 14.3 to users participating in the beta testing programs. There’s also a new tvOS beta version for those interested in that.
You can install and run macOS Sonoma in a virtual machine, for free, with the use of UTM. UTM runs on Macs, iPhones, and iPads, but we’re going to focus specifically on installing macOS Sonoma in a UTM virtual machine running on a Mac.
Yes this means you can run a virtualized macOS Sonoma installation atop macOS Sonoma, macOS Ventura, or even macOS Monterey, depending on the version of system software the host operating system is running.
This tutorial will walk through the complete set of steps to install macOS Sonoma into a virtual machine, using UTM on the Mac.
