Apple has opened the public beta testing program for macOS High Sierra 10.13, the next major version of the Mac operating system.

MacOS High Sierra Public Beta is now available to download and install for any user who is interested in beta testing the system software. However, be forewarned that beta system software is notoriously less stable and unreliable compared to final versions, and is thus not suited for primary hardware or critical workstations for the vast majority of Mac users. Beta software is most appropriate for advanced users, enthusiasts, developers, designers, and early adopters.

Read more »

Some Mac users may need to install Java into macOS Sierra or MacOS High Sierra. Typically the need for Java is for specific app usage, particular app compatibility, or for developers, and it’s worth mentioning that most Mac users won’t need to bother installing Java at all. For those that do need Java however, you will find it’s easy to get onto the latest versions of MacOS.

Read more »

If you ever use an iPhone to connect to a speaker system, car stereo, headphones, or microphone, or stereo via Bluetooth, you may have been in a situation where you have an active phone call on the iPhone but want to change from the Bluetooth audio source, be it speakers or headphones.

It’s easy to switch the iPhone from Bluetooth audio and continue the call uninterrupted, without losing the call, without losing any audio, without turning off Bluetooth, without disconnecting the Bluetooth device, and without having to hang up or call back. Done properly there will be no interruption as you disconnect from Bluetooth and switch back to the iPhone.

Read more »

Apple has released the fifth beta versions of macOS 10.12.6 and iOS 10.3.3 to users participating in the relevant beta testing programs.

Read more »

Did you know the iPhone or iPad can read aloud anything that is on screen? The Speak Screen feature of iOS is helpful for many reasons, but in order to use it you must first enable the ability within the device settings, and then learn how to use the speak function.

Read more »

Apple has opened the public beta testing program for iOS 11, launching iOS 11 Public Beta to all users who are interested in running the latest beta system software on their iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

Read more »

iOS Messages includes the Invisible Ink feature which allows people to send obfuscated messages to and from iPhone and iPad. The invisible messages arrive visibly obscured, and the content of the invisible message can only be revealed by swiping a finger on the blurred message(s) to temporarily reveal the message text, image, or video. And yes, that means invisible messages can send not just as invisible text, but also as invisible photos and invisible videos too.

Invisible Ink offers simple privacy in a fun way to share secrets or otherwise personal information through the Messages app of iOS without having them be visible to an onlooker. The feature is part of the Message Effects set and is available on releases of iOS for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

Read more »

If you’re a fan of Apple history and iPhone lore (the iPhone is 10 years old this year!), you’ll enjoy watching this trio of video clips featuring various interviews with some of the original iPhone team members who were tasked with developing the project.

Read more »

“Photos Agent” is a little Photos app helper process that often runs on the Mac, it’s for Photos app users and it handles background tasks like downloading and uploading to iCloud Photo Library, downloading and updating Photo Streams and shared streams, and other related iCloud Photos and Photos app tasks.

For users who don’t use Photos app on the Mac, nor any of the iCloud Photos or iCloud Photo Library features, you may find it annoying or problematic if the “Photos Agent” process appears and starts taking up a large amount of system resources, from CPU, to bandwidth, and disk I/O, and you may want to attempt to stop Photos Agent from consuming resources in such a matter.

Read more »

Have you ever wished you could access a mapping application from the command line? Now you can with Mapscii, which is sort of like Google Maps or Apple Maps but for the Terminal, with all of the mapping data rendered in ASCII text and characters.

Read more »

Whether you’re moving a file over to iCloud Drive or copying a file to iCloud Drive from the Mac, you may want to know the upload progress as the file is transferred to iCloud.

Fortunately the Mac Finder makes this easy, and you’ll be able to see the status of uploads to iCloud Drive from several locations in the file system. We’ll show you four different ways to check iCloud Drive upload progress on the Mac so that you can watch file transfers as they go from the local file system to iCloud.

Read more »

Apple has released the second beta versions of iOS 11, macOS 10.13 High Sierra, tvOS 11, and watchOS 4. Each update is available now for users participating in the developer beta testing programs.

Read more »

Did you know you can search through web browsing history in Safari on an iPhone or iPad? With the excellent Safari History search feature you can easily retrieve and find previously visited sites, webpages, and videos, whether from earlier in the day or even well over a year ago – assuming the searchable Safari history has not been removed anyway.

Read more »

Apple is airing a new iPhone 7 commercial, this time focusing on the Memories feature built into the new Photos app of iOS.

Read more »

Mission Control is one of the better productivity enhancing features on the Mac, allowing you to quickly see all open windows, documents, and applications on Mac OS in a broad overview screen. This offers a fantastic way to quickly navigate through depths of open apps and windows and to quickly get to what window or app you’re looking for.

Read more »

Apple has released the fourth beta version of macOS 10.12.6 for users participating in the beta testing program. Additionally, iOS 10.3.3 beta 4 and tvOS 10.2.2 beta 4 are available.

Read more »

Did you know the Mac Messages app can support chatting with Google Hangouts natively?

This is a nice feature for Mac users who chat with Google Hangout and leave a web browser window open to do so, since you’ll be able to communicate and message through Google Hangouts (aka modern Google Talk) but directly in the same Messages app you use for iMessage communication on the Mac.

Read more »

For those who watched the WWDC2017 keynote, you may have noticed during the unveiling of iMac Pro that the hardware shown featured some pretty stunning onscreen images of what looks like a bursting cloud of color.

Not surprisingly, that iMac Pro image of a colorful cloud burst makes a great wallpaper too, so why not get it for your Mac, PC, iPhone, iPad, or Android?
Read more »