The all new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar has been announced though it is not shipping quite yet, but that doesn’t mean you can’t test out the new TouchBar functionality on an existing Mac, even without the official hardware Touch Bar across the top of the keyboard. Thanks to a third party app, you can give it a go and get a Touch Bar experience on any Mac, interacting with it with either using your mouse cursor or by using a connected iPad instead.

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Ever wondered what the status is of a large app download coming from the Mac App Store, but you don’t want to check the progress through the Mac App Store itself? Just refer to Launchpad in the Dock of Mac OS X instead, you don’t even need to have the App Store open to see the apps download progress.

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Now that we can block callers on the iPhone by selecting a specific number or contact, wouldn’t it be nice to go further and stop all “Unknown” callers and “No Caller ID” calls from coming to the iPhone too? Typically the “Unknown”, “No Caller ID”, and “Blocked” callers are telemarketers, robocalls, and other annoying types, so it’s not like you’re going to be missing much if we prevent these nuisances from contacting us.

We’ll show you a clever workaround that effectively prevents all “Unknown” calls and all “No Caller ID” calls from calling an iPhone, and also prevents any other unrecognized number from getting through to you as well.

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Safari for Mac allows for optional third party browser extensions to be installed, performing functions like social sharing, note taking, interface with apps like 1password, amongst others. Sometimes Safari extensions can be useful, but sometimes they are no longer needed, or they can be problematic and cause freezes or trouble with Safari or for the ability to work with a specific website, and accordingly users often need to delete extensions from the browser.

This article will show you how to easily remove Safari extensions on a Mac. It’s important to note that Safari Extensions are different from Safari Plug-ins, which are removed separately.

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Apple has released the second beta version of MacOS Sierra 10.12.2 for users enrolled in the beta testing programs.

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Have you ever wanted to change a group of files file extensions in Mac OS? For example, lets say you wanted to change a bunch files with a .htm extension to .html, or a group of files from extension tie .JPEG to .PNG. We’ll show you how to easily batch change a group of file extensions on the Mac, without changing the actual file names.

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Apple has released a second beta version of iOS 10.2, alongside new beta versions of tvOS 10.1 beta 2 and watchOS 3.1.1 beta 2.

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Users can securely download a file from any remote server with SSH by using the scp tool at the command line. Essentially this means you can have a file stored securely on a remote server and transfer it to local storage without having to expose that file to the outside world, because scp offers the same level of security and requires the same authentication that ssh does.

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“Where are screenshots stored on the iPhone or iPad?” is a common question for users who are new to capturing screenshots of their devices. If you take many screenshots on an iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Apple Watch, you’ll likely find the Screenshots photo album view to be useful in iOS and iPadOS.

Essentially the Screenshots photo album serves as a presorted album of all pictures on an iOS / iPadOS device that are screenshots. This includes any screenshots that are taken natively on the device, but also screenshots that are saved to the device and stored in the general Photos app and camera roll.

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Have you ever received a PDF file that you would like to convert to a Word DOC or DOCX format? Typically this is necessary when you have PDF that you want to edit the contents of a bit, maybe a resume or a thesis, but of course the PDF could be more complex. If you’re looking to convert a PDF into DOC, DOCX, RTF, or TXT format, we’ll cover a few options to get the extraction job done in Mac OS X. This is basically the opposite scenario of converting a Word doc to PDF via Microsoft Office Word app, but it’s just as frequently necessary.

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Mac and iOS users can start iMessage conversations and send text messages from the web, email, or anywhere else a link can be clicked, by using a custom URL to launch the Messages app. Using this you can start an iMessage chat to any other iMessage user or send them an SMS through the Messages app (from an iPhone, or assuming SMS relay is setup on the Mac). This is a neat little trick that is quite similar to starting a FaceTime call from a URL or the web and it can be useful for staff directories, internal webpages, emails, HTML signatures, or even if you just want to offer a simple method of contact through a general webpage.

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If you need to view the IP addresses of other hardware on the same LAN (Local Area Network) as a Mac, the command line arp tool works quite well. You’ll quickly find other devices IP and accompanying MAC addresses, which can make direct network connections easier and be helpful for many other network and troubleshooting purposes.

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Want to record an iPhone call? Did you know there is a very easy way to record iPhone phone calls using nothing but your iPhone and a voicemail trick? I know you’re thinking what does recording an iPhone call have to do with voicemail, but it turns out that a simple trick allows you to use the service to record any phone call, and it works great. Not only will you get the recorded phone call, but you’ll be able to save and share the call recording as an audio file as well.

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Mac systems administrators may find a need to convert an existing regular user account into an administrator account on a Mac. While most Mac users would be best served by converting account status to admin through the Users & Groups preference panel, advanced users can perform the same function through the Terminal by using the Directory Service command line utility dscl.

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iOS 10.1.1 has been released by Apple for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. The small software update includes a bug fix for Health data not showing up for some users, but it’s possible the update includes other small changes as well.

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Apple has released iOS 10.2 beta 1 for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, and macOS Sierra 10.12.2 for Mac. The latest beta versions of system software focus on bug fixes and feature enhancements.

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Siri has the ability to read anything on the screen of an iPhone or iPad to you. And yes, that means Siri will quite literally read aloud whatever is open and on the display of an iOS device, whether it’s a web page, an article, an email, a text message, anything on the screen will be read out loud by Siri, and you’ll even have controls for speeding up and slowing down speech, as well as pausing and skipping sections.

To get the excellent Siri Speak Screen ability working on your iPad or iPhone, you will need to enable a little appreciated accessibility feature called speak screen, and then it’s just a matter of initiating the proper request with Siri.

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Most new iPhone and iPad models ship with the pre-installed iWork / iLife suite of apps, including Pages, Keynote, iMovie, Numbers, and Garageband. While this is a great collection of apps, many users who won’t be using them (or at least all of the apps) may rather have extra storage space available, which is nearly 3GB of storage in this case.

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