iOS 9.3.2 Beta 3 Released for Testing

Apr 26, 2016 - 2 Comments

iOS 9.3.2 beta 3

Apple has released iOS 9.3.2 beta 3 to users participating in the beta testing program. The new build arrives versioned as 13F65 and presumably focuses on bug fixes and improvements to the mobile operating system.

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By Paul Horowitz - News - 2 Comments

Apple Runs 2 New iPhone 6S Commercials: “Onions” & “Fingerprint”

Apr 25, 2016 - 8 Comments

New Onions 4k video iPhone commercial

Apple has issued a set of new iPhone commercials, one focusing on the devices high resolution camera, and the other emphasizing the Touch ID fingerprint reader.

Both ads are airing now and are a bit lighthearted, if you watch primetime TV you’ll likely see them shortly, otherwise they have been embedded below for easy viewing.

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By Paul Horowitz - News - 8 Comments

Open Winmail.dat Attachments Files on iPhone & iPad with TNEF Enough

Apr 25, 2016 - 8 Comments

Opening winmail.dat files in iOS Mail on iPhone and iPad

iPhone and iPad owners who regularly receive emails from Windows-based users may find ‘winmail.dat’ files attached to the email messages, a file type which Mail.app can struggle to identify or open. Since winmail.dat files can be anything from a simple styled rich text email, to a calendar invite, vcf contact card, or even a legitimate email attachment, it can sometimes be necessary to open and read the winmail.dat file in iOS, which is what we’re going to show you how to do.

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How to AirPlay YouTube from Mac to Apple TV

Apr 24, 2016 - 14 Comments

AirPlay YouTube from Mac

Have you ever been watching a YouTube video on a Mac and wished you could send it to your Apple TV to view on a bigger screen? You can do exactly that with the help of AirPlay and the latest versions of Mac OS X, which make sending a YouTube video from the Mac to an Apple TV as simple as a few clicks.

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By Paul Horowitz - Apple TV, Mac OS, Tips & Tricks - 14 Comments

Use the Free VPN in Opera Browser for Improved Privacy & to Access Regional Content

Apr 23, 2016 - 30 Comments

Using the Opera VPN

Opera, the alternative web browser, now includes a free VPN service, which is built directly into the web browser itself. The free VPN allows you to hide your IP address, access region restricted content or blocked content by bypassing a firewall or regional restraints, hide browsing activity from other users on the same local network, and theoretically enhance overall privacy and anonymity.

Using the VPN offered in Opera is quite easy, and we’ll show you exactly how to set it up and use the free service. Once it has been enabled, you can choose a region to assign a virtual location to and use an IP from that region. For example, you could use the Opera VPN to give you a USA based IP address, allowing access to US restricted video content on Netflix, Amazon, HBO, PBS, even if you’re somewhere else on the globe.
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By Paul Horowitz - Security, Tips & Tricks - 30 Comments

How to Use Find My Friends on a Mac

Apr 22, 2016 - 12 Comments

Find my Friends on a Mac

Find My Friends is available as a widget on the Mac within Notification Center, allowing users to see a list and location of their friends and family who have chosen to share their location with them. This has many practical applications, but parents, close friends, and partners will likely find it to be most useful.

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By Paul Horowitz - Mac OS, Tips & Tricks - 12 Comments

Two Apple Earth Day Ads Highlight Renewable Energy & Liam the Robot

Apr 22, 2016 - Leave a Comment

apple-earth-day-commercials-2

Apple has released two new commercials for Earth Day. The first advertisement emphasizes the companies renewable energy efforts to power servers, and the other second ad focuses on recycling iPhones with the help of a robot.

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By Paul Horowitz - News - Leave a Comment

How to Set Any Picture as Background Wallpaper on iPhone & iPad

Apr 21, 2016 - 16 Comments

How to Change Wallpaper Background to Any Picture on iPhone

“How do you change the picture on the background?” is one of the more common questions heard from newcomers to the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This is all the more true when you took a great picture with the devices camera and you want to set that picture as the wallpaper on the iOS device, or when someone sends you a nice photo that saved to the device from Mail or found with Safari, and now want to set as the background image of your iPhone or iPad.

We’ll show you how to quickly set the background wallpaper on the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, you can choose any picture on your device to use as the wallpaper picture this way.

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By Paul Horowitz - iPad, iPhone, Tips & Tricks - 16 Comments

Enable a Confirmation When Deleting Files & Folders with rm Command

Apr 21, 2016 - 5 Comments

Terminal in OS X Most command line users know that the “rm” command for removing and deleting files is quite powerful, able to delete just about any file imaginable within the file system – whether it should be removed or not. Once you add in wildcards and sudo, rm and srm because exponentially more potent and potentially dangerous, so for advanced users who wish to add in a layer of security to the rm feature they can enable a confirmation dialog with the rm and srm commands. This also offers a helpful protective mechanism for those who are learning the command line and want to place a a layer of verification between the instantaneous deletion of files and their command execution.

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By Paul Horowitz - Command Line, Tips & Tricks - 5 Comments

12 Beautiful Hidden Nature Wallpapers from Apple for Earth Day

Apr 20, 2016 - 11 Comments

Apple Earth Day Hidden Nature Wallpapers

Apple has been running an Earth Day Lessons campaign aimed at students to raise awareness of various environmental issues surrounding conservation, ecosystems, and ecology. Like many other microsites on Apple.com, these web pages are filled with beautiful high resolution images, this time themed around Earth, featuring subjects from zebras, shorelines, kelp forests, to tree farms and sea otters. Well it turns out if you spend a little bit of time with the Web Inspector tool, you can uncover some pretty great wallpapers on the Apple environmental focus site.

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By Paul Horowitz - Customize - 11 Comments

Beta 2 of iOS 9.3.2, OS X 10.11.5 , WatchOS 2.2.1, tvOS 9.2.1 Available

Apr 20, 2016 - 6 Comments

Beta builds

Apple has released the second beta versions of OS X 10.11.5, iOS 9.3.2, WatchOS 2.2.1, and tvOS 9.2.1. The updated beta releases are available now to individuals running the prior beta builds.

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By Paul Horowitz - News - 6 Comments

How to Open Winmail.dat Attachment Files on Mac OS X

Apr 19, 2016 - 21 Comments

Opening Winmail.dat attachment files in Mac OS X

Many Mac Mail users who send and receive emails with their Windows counterparts using a mail client like Outlook or Microsoft Exchange will discover a “winmail.dat” file attached to those emails. If you try to open a winmail.dat file on Mac OS X, you’ll usually find there is nothing available to open the attachment, or it often contains gibberish and is illegible.

We’ll show you several ways Mac users can open winmail.dat files attached to emails. We’ll also explain what a winmail.dat file is and where they come from.

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Apple Releases Updated MacBook 12″ for Early 2016

Apr 19, 2016 - 17 Comments

MacBook 2016 models

Apple has quietly released an update to their 12″ MacBook lineup, with newer processors, improved graphics, faster memory, faster PCIe flash storage, longer battery life, and the addition of an all new Rose Gold model.

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By Paul Horowitz - Mac, News - 17 Comments

The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Laptop Camera, Should You?

Apr 18, 2016 - 94 Comments

Putting tape over camera on MacBook

Do you put tape over your computers camera? If you have ever been to an IT event or security conference you have undoubtedly seen many laptops with tape covering over their built-in cameras. The practice is becoming so common within some groups of people that you’ll occasionally even see the taped webcams in coffee shops and the workplace too.

Interestingly enough, it’s not just your techy coworker or survivalist uncle who is taping over their webcams, it turns out the Director of the FBI does the exact same thing. And so does Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

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By Paul Horowitz - News, Security - 94 Comments

How to Convert a Live Photo to Still Photo on iPhone

Apr 18, 2016 - 5 Comments

Convert a Live Photo to a Still Photo

The Live Photos feature on new iPhone cameras is fun and interesting as it turns a still photo into a short live action clip automatically. While you can turn the Live Photos feature off and on easily with a quick toggle, another approach is to not think about it by leaving the feature on, then simply converting the Live Photo to a Still Photo if you no longer want it to be an animated live action shot.

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By Paul Horowitz - iPhone, Tips & Tricks - 5 Comments

Speed Up Time Machine by Removing Low Process Priority Throttling

Apr 17, 2016 - 18 Comments

Speed up Time Machine

It’s well known that all Mac users should set up Time Machine to automate backups of their computer, and while most Mac users let OS X go about backing up to Time Machine at it’s own pace, which sometimes borderlines on glacial, some users may wish to speed the backup process up a bit. With the help of the command line you can do just that and dramatically speed up the Time Machine backup process, but there are some major caveats to this trick because it applies beyond Time Machine, making it appropriate for advanced Mac users only, and used on a limited basis.

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Boost Game Performance on Retina Macs with a Simple Trick

Apr 16, 2016 - 12 Comments

Civilization on Mac

Mac users with Retina displays may have noticed that gaming performance is sometimes reduced on these machines. The reason is quite simple; if you’re running the game at native resolution, then the Mac has to drive the game at full resolution of the display at 2880 x 1440 or greater. A common solution to this is to go into a games individual Display settings and manually adjust them so the games resolution is lower, but another approach to this is available for Retina Macs like the iMac and MacBook Pro.

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By Paul Horowitz - Games, Mac OS, Tips & Tricks - 12 Comments

Opening DOCX Files on a Mac, Without Microsoft Office

Apr 15, 2016 - 15 Comments

DOCX file on a Mac Mac users may encounter DOCX files from time to time, often sent from a Windows user as an email attachment or otherwise, as the .docx file types are standard document files created in newer versions of Microsoft Office. But what if you don’t have Office on the Mac? That’s ok too, even if you don’t have Office installed in Mac OS X, you can still open, read, and edit docx files on modern versions of Mac OS X, most often without any added software.

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By Paul Horowitz - Mac OS, Tips & Tricks - 15 Comments

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