Apple has issued the fourth beta version of iOS 17.6, iPadOS 17.6, and MacOS Sonoma 14.6.

These new beta builds are separate from the concurrent beta tracks of upcoming system software, which most beta testers have likely installed instead, with iOS 18 beta, iPadOS 18 beta, and MacOS Sequoia 15 beta. If you are running any of those beta versions, you will not see beta updates to iOS 17.6, iPadOS 17.6, and MacOS Sonoma 14.6.

No major new features are expected in these releases, suggesting they’re likely to focus on security patches and bug fix updates.

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The MacOS Sequoia public beta program has just began, offering Mac users an opportunity to get early access and experience with the upcoming major MacOS system software release. Like all betas, the MacOS Sequoia public beta is not for everyone though, particularly since beta system software is much buggier and less stable than final versions.

If you’re an advanced Mac user who is comfortable with the risks associated with running beta MacOS versions, and if you’re interested in installing and running macOS Sequoia public beta, follow along and you’ll be running macOS Sequoia 15 beta in no time at all.

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Apple has released the first public beta version of MacOS Sequoia 15, beginning the public beta testing program for any Mac user who is interested in running beta versions of the upcoming system software release.

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Apple has started the iOS 18 public beta program for iPhone, and iPadOS 18 public beta for iPad, allowing any interested user to beta test the upcoming system software version on their iPhone or iPad.

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Apple has released revised versions of iOS 18 beta 3, iPadOS 18 beta 3, and macOS Sequoia beta 3.

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A fun new Mac app offers a rather creative way to remind you to empty your Mac Trash can… buzzing flies! Yes indeed, after your Mac Trash can has accumulated a little too much clutter, BananaBin puts buzzing flies around the trash, offering an unmistakable visual reminder to empty your digital Trash bin.

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Apple has issued macOS Sequoia beta 3 for developers participating in the MacOS Sequoia beta testing program.

MacOS Sequoia, versioned as MacOS 15, includes a variety of new features, including iPhone Mirroring that allows you to see and interact with your iPhone on your Mac screen, a new Passwords app, Apple Intelligence AI features, a nifty new window tiling feature, improvements to default apps like Safari and Notes, and some notable changes to Photos app, as well as many other smaller features and changes.

While anyone can enroll their Apple ID to participate in the developer beta program, running beta system software is really only appropriate for advanced users. If you’re savvy and/or adventurous enough to be curious, you can learn how to install MacOS Sequoia beta here with the developer beta.

Aside from MacOS Sequoia beta 3, developers can also find iOS 18 beta 3 and iPadOS 18 beta 3, watchOS 11 beta 3, tvOS 18 beta 3, and visionOS 2 beta 3, for testing purposes as well.

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Many iPhone users have noticed that when they record a high definition video on their iPhone, and then send it to an Android user through text message, that the video arrives to the Android user very blurry and in impressively low resolution, with the quality of the video degraded considerably.

The fuzzy pixelated image at the top of this article is a thumbnail demonstrating one such video of a scene from a Japanese garden with little waterfalls and plant features, recorded at high resolution on an iPhone 14 Pro, but when it arrived on the Android users phone (a new Samsung Galaxy), the video appeared so pixelated, low quality, fuzzy, and blurry, that the entire scene was practically indecipherable!

If you’re an iPhone or Android user, you might be wondering why videos sent from iPhone to Android show up as low quality ultra pixelated messes, and what to do about it, and that’s what we’re helping you with here.

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While the majority of the Apple beta testing world has moved into iOS 18 beta, iPadOS 18 beta, and MacOS Sequoia beta, Apple continues to release beta versions for upcoming current generation system software as well. In this case, iOS 17.6 beta 3, iPadOS 17.6 beta 3, and macOS Sonoma 14.6 beta 3, are all available for beta testers.

These are presumed to be primarily bug fix releases with security updates, and are unlikely to include any major new features, as Apple focuses feature development efforts on the upcoming iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia 15 system software that is in concurrent beta development.
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Apple has issued iOS 18 beta 3 for iPhone, along with iPadOS 18 beta 3 for iPad.

iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 include a variety of new features for iPhone and iPad, from new Dark Mode icon and widget themes for the Home Screen, color hued icon customizations, the ability to customize Control Center, improvements to Safari and Notes, significant changes to the Photos app GUI, tons of new AI ‘Apple Intelligence’ capabilities and features like ChatGPT being linked to Siri, and much more.
 
Beta 3 of iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 are available as developer beta downloads for users enrolled in the Apple Developer programs. Because anyone can enroll to become a developer, this makes it possible for any adventurous user to install either iOS 18 beta or iPadOS 18 beta on their iPhone or iPad, respectively. Be aware that beta system software is much buggier than final versions, making this really only appropriate for advanced users, and with secondary devices.

Aside from iPhone and iPad, beta testers will also find tvoS 18 beta 3, watchOS 11 beta 3, and visionOS 2 beta 3. macOS Sequoia beta 3 is curiously absent, at the moment.

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Want to try running Ubuntu Linux on your Apple Silicon Mac? You can do that easily, running Ubuntu right alongside MacOS, and without having to deal with any partitioning, installation headaches, dual booting, or loss of the Mac operating system itself. This is possible with the help of virtual machines, which allow you to run another operating system virtually on top of your Mac, just like any other app.

Running new and different operating systems concurrently with MacOS has never been easier thanks to virtualization apps like UTM, VMWare, VirtualBox, and Parallels, and in this particular article, we’ll be showing you how to run Ubuntu Linux on an Apple Silicon Mac with UTM.

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If you have used Homebrew to try and install a particular package onto an Apple Silicon Mac and you see an error message stating “The arm64 architecture is required for this software” that prevents the installation of the package, you might be surprised by this error message given that you’re using an Apple Silicon Mac (any M1, M2, M3, M4, etc machine).

It turns out that some Apple Silicon Mac users who installed Homebrew in the past may have either inadvertently set the x86 version as the default, or even installed the x86 version (Intel) of Homebrew instead of the arm64 version (Apple Silicon), which then leads to the “arm64 architecture is required for this software” error message when attempting to install a package intended for an ARM Mac.

Fortunately this is pretty easy to fix with a few command line tweaks, so if you see the “The arm64 architecture is required for this software” message with Homebrew, read along and it’ll be resolved in no time.

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There are various ways to monitor CPU usage on a Mac, with perhaps the two most common being with Activity Monitor on the graphical interface side of things, and htop or top on the command line side. While you can show an optional core graph in Activity Monitor, and htop will show CPU core activity as well, there’s another lesser known command line tool called powermetrics that can reveal this information to you as well.

If you’ve a savvy command line user and you’ve never heard of powermetrics before, welcome to the club. I hadn’t either until I stumbled into an article at eclecticlight.co which discussed various ways of seeing CPU core activity with a mention of the ‘powermetrics’ command line tool so naturally I was inspired to investigate something new to me. Sharing is caring, so let’s review how you can use this command as well.

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Hex editors are software tools that are able to view and edit hex data and raw binary data of files, and can be frequently used by programmers, developers, and reverse engineers, to inspect, debug, and analyze files and software. Some advanced users even rely on hex editors for data recovery and digital forensics, or to perform file format analysis, and some gamers rely on hex editors to modify or hack games to change game data or to enter cheat codes.

We’re going to show you two popular and powerful hex editors for Mac, both are open source (and one is cross-platform compatible so if you want to use the same hex editor not only on a Mac but also Linux and a Windows PC, it’s a great option).

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If you use Node.js for web development, creation of web apps, and javascript based network applications, you undoubtedly may come across situations where you’d like to make sure that the latest version of Node.js is installed on your Mac. Upgrading to the latest version of Node.js means you’ll have access to the most recent features and security updates available.

Assuming you have installed Node.js and npm with Homebrew (which implies you have also already installed Homebrew on the Mac too), which is arguably the easiest way to install node.js onto a Mac and to manage the javascript runtime environment, then you will find that updating Node.js to the latest version is really quite simple once you learn how.

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The second beta versions of iOS 17.6, macOS Sonoma 14.6, and iPadOS 17.6 are available to users who are enrolled in beta testing programs for current generation system software of Apple devices.

While many beta testers have likely proceeded ahead with installing the iOS 18 beta, iPadOS 18 beta, and MacOS Sequoia beta, undoubtedly there are developers who are testing their software with betas of iOS 17.6, iPadOS 17.6, and macOS Sonoma 14.6 as well.

No major new features or changes are expected in these versions of system software, suggesting they are likely releases aimed at bug fixes and security updates.

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One of the most useful features of the ChatGPT app for Mac is the ability to upload files to ChatGPT to have them summarized and analyzed.

For example, you can upload a PDF file, and ask ChatGPT to give an analysis of the document, or to summarize it, and ask questions specifically related to the document itself. The great thing about this is that the contents of the document don’t matter, ChatGPT will figure that out and analyze it accordingly, whether the PDF is a resume, recipe, cookbook, music tablature or notation, book, guides, document, charts, presentations, or whatever else.

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Night Shift is a nice feature from Apple that warms the color tones on screens during the evening and nighttime hours, with the idea being that it may help to reduce eyestrain and blue light exposure. Night Shift has been around on Mac, iPhone, and iPad, for quite some time, but the feature has been notably absent from Apple Watch… at least at any obvious level.

But it turns out that Apple Watch does have Night Shift, at least on relatively newer models, with newer watchOS system software, there’s just no Settings toggle for it. Instead, Apple Watch users can enable Night Shift on their watch by using Siri.

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