Would you like to have even more Christmas spirit on your Mac, in the form of a twinkling Christmas tree? Of course you would! If the falling snow and blinking Christmas lights weren’t enough for your Mac desktop, you can add a little Christmas tree into the mix too, complete with a Christmas countdown.
Christmas Tree app is simple, with a handful of settings options accessible by right-clicking on the tree. There, you’ll be able to adjust if the lights on the tree twinkle, if the star blinks, whether you want the tree to float above all windows, to show a dock icon or not, and whether you want the tree countdown to be for December 24 Christmas Eve, or December 25 Christmas Day.
The classic cartoon “A Charlie Brown Christmas”, about a child who is upset about the commercialization of Christmas, is free to watch this weekend only on Apple TV+ (though you can continue to watch it free with an Apple TV+ free trial at any other time).
Perhaps you had grown accustomed to watching the heartwarming anti-commercialization of Christmas classic free every year on regular television, but apparently that won’t happen this year since Apple acquired the rights to “A Charlie Brown Christmas” in 2020 and has commercialized it by placing the cartoon within their paid Apple TV+ service. Except for this weekend, anyway!
If you want to get your Mac into the holiday spirit, why not put some blinking Christmas lights and falling snow on your Mac screen? That’s exactly what the free Mac app MacLampsX will do for you, decorating your Mac for the holidays, complete with customizable holiday light bulbs, snowfall, and holly.
You can change the bulbs themselves (and even add or make your own custom bulbs), adjust the density of the falling snow, make the bulbs and snow appear over everything or just on the desktop, and much more. MacLampsX is a fun little app that harkens back to the earlier days of classic Mac OS, where there were tons of fun Shareware and Freeware apps available for the Macintosh platform.
As you use the Mac, opening windows and dragging them around, you may have noticed that the color of the windows can shift tone and change hue, sometimes fairly dramatically so, and depending on what your MacOS wallpaper is set to. For example, if you have an orange wallpaper as your desktop background picture, the windows on the Mac will be tinted orange as well. It’s not quite a transparent effect, but more of a translucent effect where only the color of the wallpaper will bleed through to tint the windows in the foreground.
This feature is referred to as wallpaper tinting in MacOS, and you can turn off this window color tinting feature on the Mac if you’d like to.
Amazon is offering a fantastic deal on the Apple Watch Series 8, available in select colors for just $249, with delivery before Christmas.
Apple Watch Series 8 features a 41mm display, GPS, fitness tracking capabilities, blood oxygen reader, ECG app, water resistance, an always-on display, and much more.
I (Paul) personally just bought a Series 8 for myself at the $249 price (Merry Christmas to me), because I’d rather save the $80 than have the one-handed double-pinch gesture support that is the primary differentiating feature between the Series 8 and Series 9, but my use case for Apple Watch is almost exclusively as a fitness tracker.
The Apple Watch Series 8 is so similar to the Apple Watch Series 9 that they’re practically identical in appearance and features, though the Series 9 supports a one-handed double-pinch gesture that Series 8 does not offer, and the Series 9 has a more powerful chip and brighter display. If the Series 9 strikes your fancy more than last years model, Amazon is also offering an incredible deal on that model.
If you want the latest and greatest Apple Watch Series 9, Amazon is offering that at a great price taking $70 off the retail price. Apple Watch Series 9 features a 41mm display, GPS, fitness tracking capabilities, a blood oxygen reader, ECG app, water resistance, an always on display, and supports a one-handed double tap pinch gesture feature.
And if the Series 9 isn’t enough for you, the ultra-rugged Apple Watch Ultra 2 is also available at a discounted price from Amazon.
The rugged Apple Watch Ultra 2 has all the fitness tracking capabilities you know and love, plus an action button, longer battery life, and water resistance down to 100 meters.
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Many users like to use an external mouse with their Mac, but not everyone knows how to sync and add a mouse to their Mac. The process of pairing a mouse with a Mac is fairly straight forward, but like many things with modern MacOS versions and the System Settings experience, it may be less than obvious to some.
We’re going to walk through the steps of setting up a mouse for use with MacOS Sonoma and MacOS Ventura. Whether you plan on using an external mouse with a MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac, Mac mini, Mac Studio, or Mac Pro, you’ll find the process is the same.
A fair number of Mac users are experiencing some irregular click issues when using an external mouse with macOS Sonoma, and sometimes even the internal trackpad on various Mac laptops running Sonoma. For example, mouse clicks may randomly not register as clicks, or all clicks may be registered as right-click, or the trackpad or mouse may become unresponsive to clicks.
The mouse click issue has been reported to happen with Apple’s own Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad, internal trackpad on MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, Logitech MX Master mouse, Dell mouse, Logitech bluetooth mouse, and many other hardware mouse and trackpads, suggesting the issue is not necessarily related to the hardware itself, but is likely a software issue with macOS Sonoma, since many users who are experiencing the problem did not encounter the issue in previous macOS operating systems.
Let’s cover some troubleshooting steps and tips to sort out and fix your mouse clicking issues in macOS Sonoma.
iOS 16.7.3 and iPadOS 16.7.3 for iPhone and iPad have been released for users who are not updating to iOS 17.2 or iPadOS 17.2, either because they have not yet updated, are not able to run iOS 17 and iPadOS 17 on their devices, or because they are not interested in doing so.
Specifically, the iOS 16.7.3 and iPadOS 16.7.3 are available for iPhone 8 series and later, iPhone X and later, iPad Pro 1st generation and later, iPad mini 5th gen and later, and iPad 5th gen or later.
The software update includes security fixes and is therefore recommended for all eligible users.
MacOS Ventura 13.6.3, MacOS Monterey 12.7.2, and Safari 17.2 are now available as software updates for Mac users who are not installing Sonoma or interested in the just released macOS Sonoma 14.2 update. Many Mac users continue to run older versions of system software for compatibility reasons, general preference, or a multitude of other reasons, and installing these small point release updates is a good way to insure those older versions of system software are maintained with adequate security patches and critical bug fixes.
Aside from the Mac, there are updates available for older iPhone and iPad models versioned as iOS 16.7.3 and iPadOS 16.7.3, as well as iOS 17.2 and iPadOS 17.2 for newer iPhone and iPad hardware, along with updates for tvOS, watchOS, and HomePod.
Apple has issued the first beta versions of iOS 17.3 for iPhone, ipadOS 17.3 for iPad, and macOS Sonoma 14.3 for Mac. The beta builds are available now to users enrolled in the beta testing programs on their compatible devices.
Stuck in another boring Zoom Meeting? Ready to be done with those dull virtual meetings or Zoom classes for the moment, or the day? Zoom Escaper will come to your rescue, by allowing you to “self-sabotage your audio stream, making your presence unbearable to others” according to the apps developer, LOL!
Zoom Escaper is an absolutely hilarious utility that does exactly what it says it does; self sabotage your audio stream.
With Zoom Escaper, you can add echo, feedback, voice delay, or even emulate a bad connection and chop up your audio stream.
But that’s not all, with Zoom Escaper you can also turn on sound effects of an upset crying baby, a crying man, wind blowing, dogs barking, construction and jack hammers, or someone urinating into a toilet – each with their own volume slider, so you can really dial up the nuisance factor.
iOS 17.2 update for iPhone, and iPadOS 17.2 for iPad, have been released by Apple. iOS 17.2 includes the Journal app for iPhone, while both iOS 17.2 and iPadOS 17.2 include PDF autofill capabilities, some improvements to Messages app like the ability to add stickers from contextual menus in messages and a catch-up arrow, new weather widgets, and other smaller changes. Full release notes are included below.
Separately, Apple has released macOS Sonoma 14.2 for Mac, watchOS 10.2 for Apple Watch, tvOS 17.2 for Apple TV, and iOS/iPadOS 16.7.3 updates for older iPhone and iPad models, and macOS Ventura 13.6.3 and macOS Monterey 12.7.2 for older Macs.
Apple has released macOS Sonoma 14.2 as a software update for Mac users running the Sonoma operating system. macOS Sonoma 14.2 includes a few minor new features like the ability to use autofill with PDF files, new Weather widget options, some minor additions to Messages like the ability to add stickers from the reactions contextual menu, Clock app can now run multiple timers, and more. The full release notes for macOS Sonoma 14.2 are included below.
Separately, Apple has issued iOS 17.2 for iPhone, iPadOS 17.2 for iPad, watchOS 10.2 for Apple Watch, tvOS 17.2 for Apple TV, and iOS/iPadOS 16.7.3 updates to older iPhone and iPad models. Mac users running Ventura or Monterey will find macOS Ventura 13.6.3 and macOS Monterey 12.7.2 available as updates instead of macOS Sonoma 14.2.
It’s Green Monday, which is one of the busier online shopping days that allows for purchases to be delivered in time for Christmas, and Amazon continues to offer fantastic deals on miscellaneous Apple products.
From deals on AirPods, Apple Watch, AirTags 4-packs, MacBook Air M2 models, iPad Air, iPad mini, fantastic external displays, and more, check them out!
Apple now has the exclusive rights to “A Charlie Brown Christmas”, which means if you’d like to watch the Christmas classic from 1965 this holiday season, you’ll need to watch it through the Apple TV+ service. Fortunately, Apple TV+ offers a free seven-day trial, so you can sign up for the free trial long enough to enjoy “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and then cancel the service if you’d like to.
The Apple TV+ app is included on every Apple device including Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV, and the entire streaming service is also available on the web to any device with a web browser (meaning any Windows PC, Linux machine, Chromebook, Android, etc) can also watch the Christmas show.
Instagram is a very popular photo sharing and video sharing social network where users post photos, videos, reels, and stories, but, curiously, by default Instagram does not upload the highest quality photos or videos. Instead, a buried settings option allows you to enable high quality uploads of photos and videos to Instagram.
If you feel like your videos, photos, and reels are a little blurry or pixelated once they upload to Instagram, or the quality is lower than you’d like it to be, then turn on this hidden setting for instagram to enable the highest quality uploads for videos and photos.
Apple deals continue for the holiday shopping season, with many items receiving nice discounts from Amazon. And, delivery is still available by Christmas for most! Check out the Apple section at Amazon and browse around, and glance at the deals we have highlighted below.
Extensions and Quick Actions in MacOS allow you to enable and disable additional features in places like the Sharing menu, Touch Bar, and contextual menus in the Finder. For example, you can add or remove Markup options, Quick Actions, Sharing options, photo editing options, and much more. These are a popular feature for many Mac users, but the latest versions of MacOS make customizing these features a challenge, because many users can’t find the settings, and are left wondering where Extensions and Quick Actions are located on the Mac now.
Like so many other curious or outright baffling settings relocations in macOS Sonoma / Ventura, Extensions has come along for the ride, and if you can’t locate Quick Actions or Extensions in macOS Sonoma and macOS Ventura System Settings you certainly aren’t alone.
