Macs can use nearly all keyboards built for Windows PC, whether they are USB or Bluetooth, but you may notice that the layout of some of the modifier keys are different on a Mac keyboard from the layout of a Windows keyboard. Specifically, the WINDOWS and ALT key of a Windows keyboard are switched compared to the Mac keyboard layout of OPTION/ALT and COMMAND keys. This can lead to erroneous keyboard shortcuts or other unexpected key press behavior when using a PC keyboard with a Mac.

A simple solution to this problem is to remap the Windows and ALT key and the command and option/alt keys on the Windows PC keyboard connected to the Mac, so that the keyboard layouts will mimic expectations based on the standard Apple modifier key layout, rather than what it says on the PC keyboard. For most Mac users who connect a PC keyboard to their Mac, this will dramatically improve their typing experience when using a PC keyboard.

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Many users with iOS 11 are noticing that their iPad and iPhone will randomly capitalize words that were typed in the middle of sentences. For example, a sentence May look Like This with Randomly capitalized Words for No apparent reason, requiring Many manual Corrections Of what you have Typed.

The random capitalization issue has been around since iOS 11 debuted and has yet to be resolved, but there are a few workarounds that may be of assistance if you’re deeply annoyed by having typed words capitalize themselves at random.

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You can now change the email address used as your Apple ID from third party emails to an @icloud email address, if you so desire. This means if your current Apple ID email login is something like “BloatedPetriDish99@hotmail.com” you can change it to an Apple domain like @icloud.com. Note this is completely different from changing the Apple ID used on an iOS device, because the intention here is keeping the same account data but simply changing the login email, rather than using a completely different and unique account.

But there’s an important catch: this is a one way street and you can’t change the email address back to a third party email address after you switch it to an Apple domain.

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Rarely, iPhone users need to enter DFU mode to initiate a low-level device restore with the help of a computer and iTunes. Entering DFU mode on iPhone X, iPhone 8, and iPhone 8 Plus is different than getting into DFU mode on earlier iPhone models, so if you’re an owner of one of these devices you might want to get acquainted with how to put these models into DFU mode.

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If you’re buying a used iPhone or repairing an iPhone, you may wonder if you can find out if the iPhone was bought as new, is a refurbished model, or is a replacement device provided by Apple via a service request.

Wonder no more, you can use an interesting device model identifier trick to discover if an iPhone is new, refurbished, a replacement, or even personalized by engraving. This can be helpful information for buyers of used devices, if you’ve received a device as a gift or hand-me-down, if you’re troubleshooting or repairing an iPhone, and more.

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Siri for iOS can now play short daily news digests by request, allowing you to quickly hear news recaps from some popular mainstream news outlets and media sources. This is a handy feature if you want to get a quick blurb about what’s apparently newsworthy on a given day, and it works the same on iPhone and iPad.

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Apple is airing new iPhone commercials to show off the Animoji feature of iPhone X. Animoji are animated emoji icons that are unique to iPhone X, and they use the devices front facing camera to mimic the facial expressions and mouth movements of the person creating an Animoji on their iPhone. In the two new Animoji ads, an alien animoji does karaoke to a Childish Gambino song, and a dog animoji does karaoke to a Migos song.

The Animoji iPhone X commercials will apparently run during the Grammy awards first, and will likely continue running on TV and online from there. Additionally, a new iPhone X commercial demonstrating the devices portrait lighting selfie mode is also airing now.

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You probably know the various different methods for how to force quit apps on the Mac by now, but a lesser known capability is that Mac OS allows you to force quit multiple apps at the same time. This can be a great trick when troubleshooting, as well as a just a nice way to quickly force a few different apps to exit if you don’t want them open anymore.

For example, if you want to force quit out of both Safari and Chrome concurrently, you could to that. Or if you have multiple Mac apps that are acting up and stuck on the ‘not responding’ beachball, you could cause them to each force quit at the same time.

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Type to Siri for iOS allows you to interact with Siri by typing text commands on an iPhone or iPad, using either the onscreen software keyboard or an external keyboard.

All of the Siri commands you’re used to using work through Type to Siri, it’s just the command entering process that is different as you quite literally type out a query or command and then Siri responds as usual.

Type to Siri on iPad and iPhone is an incredibly useful feature for myriad reasons, whether you just prefer to type, can’t use voice commands with Siri, have an accessibility setup where typing is more practical, or perhaps just because you like the idea of having a smart command line of sorts that is backed by a little virtual assistant.

Sound good? Then let’s turn on the Type to Siri feature in iOS so that you can use Siri with a keyboard on an iPad or iPhone.

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Apple has unveiled the first beta versions of iOS 11.3, macOS High Sierra 10.13.4, and tvOS 11.3. The new beta 1 builds of the various Apple operating systems arrive just a day after the final versions of iOS 11.2.5 and macOS 10.13.3 update debuted.

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Apple has released the final version of macOS High Sierra 10.13.3 for Mac users running the High Sierra operating system. Apple has also released security updates for Mac users running MacOS Sierra and Mac OS X El Capitan, along with iOS 11.2.5 for iPhone and iPad, and updates to watchOS and tvOS.

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Apple has released iOS 11.2.5 for iPhone and iPad. The final version of iOS 11.2.5 includes bug fixes, security enhancements, along with support for the HomePod speaker system from Apple, and a new capability for Siri to read short news digests to you.

Additionally, Apple has released software updates for Mac as macOS 10.13.3 and security updates 2018-001 for El Capitan and Sierra, along with updates to Apple TV, and watchOS.

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If you’re tired of the “Upgrade to macOS High Sierra” notifications nagging your Mac to install a system software update that you perhaps have made a conscious decision to avoid, then you will likely appreciate this tip to completely stop the upgrade macOS notifications.

As you likely know by now, there is no way to really dismiss the “Upgrade to macOS High Sierra” alert, there’s either an “Install” button which immediately attempts to install the update, or a “Details” button which launches into the App Store and also nudges you to install. There’s not a “Never” or “Ignore” option in the notification, which leads some users to believe there is no choice but to install the software updates presented. But that’s not the case, you can ignore the update and also get rid of the notifications bugging you to update.

Note this tip is specifically aimed at users who are not yet upgraded to macOS High Sierra and who specifically do not want to update to macOS High Sierra for whatever reason. This works on earlier versions of MacOS system software, including Sierra and El Capitan, and will likely work the same moving forward too.

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Instagram now defaults to showing other peoples accounts when you were last active using the Instagram application. For example, if you’re using Instagram right now then other Instagram users will be able to see that you are using the app at that moment. If you used the app exactly 23 minutes ago, other users can see that too.

Some Instagram users may enjoy broadcasting to the world when exactly they are using that specific application. On the other hand, privacy advocates and more casual Instagram users may not appreciate the broadcasting of app usage to other Instagram users.

If you want to disable the Activity Status feature on Instagram so that nobody will be able to tell when you were last using the Instagram app, we’ll show you how to do it.

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Uptime determines how long a computer or iOS device has been turned on for, or at least when the hardware was last booted or rebooted. On a unix machine or any Mac, you can check uptime with the uptime command or system System Information, but the iPhone and iPad has no such mechanism for seeing uptime by default. Fortunately there are a few third party apps available which can reveal device uptime in iOS, so if you want to know when an iPhone or iPad was last turned on or rebooted, you can uncover that information with the help of such an application.

We’ll cover two simple options to retrieve uptime information from an iPhone or iPad, so that you can see when the iOS device last went through a boot sequence.

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Imagine strapping an iPhone 7 to the bottom of an airplane, placing the camera into Panorama mode, and then flying around and capturing giant sweeping panorama images of the ground as you fly over it. The images would probably look pretty amazing, right? Well there’s no reason to imagine what they’d look like, because one photographer did exactly that.

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Apple has released macOS 10.13.3 High Sierra beta 7 to users enrolled in the MacOS beta testing programs, along with iOS 11.2.5 beta 7 for iPhone and iPad beta testers.

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iPhone has the capability to automatically answer inbound phone calls. Much as this sounds, with the auto-answer feature enabled, the iPhone will answer all phone calls automatically that come to the phone.

Auto-Answer Calls is an excellent accessibility setting that has many obvious uses and a wide range of applications for nearly all sorts of iPhone users, and there are some less-than-obvious uses for this setting too if you use your imagination a bit. If this sounds like an interesting or valuable feature to you, here’s how to turn automatic call answer on with the latest iOS releases.

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