Rarely, when you plug an iPhone or iPad into a particular Lightning charger cable you’ll see a pop-up or lock screen message on the device that says something to the effect of “This cable is not certified and may not work reliably”. This usually prevents the lightning cable from charging the device as well. Though most users will never see this error, if you do see that message, there’s almost always a reason why.

We’ll cover the three most common reasons you’ll see the “not certified” message on an iOS device, and also what you can do about it.

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A simple trick that can help manage iPhone battery life is to set the battery percentage remaining to be visible. This battery percentage indicator is off by default in iOS, and while that adds an element of simplicity to the status bar, the lonely battery icon isn’t particularly informative – to me, anyway. We’re going to change this so the percentage of battery charge is always visible both on the lock screen and home screen of iOS, right alongside the battery icon. This will give you a much better idea of how much of a charge is remaining on the iPhone, and also how charged up the phone is before you head out the door.

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Have you ever needed to flatten a directory structure, moving all file contents from a directories child folders into a single folder? While you can do this manually by moving around files and folders from the file system of Mac OS X or Linux, a faster option is to turn to the command line. Maybe at one point you created a nested hierarchy of directories that you now need to undo by moving all files out of those nested folders and back into a single directory, or maybe you’re looking to simplify a directory structure, whatever the reason, this trick works quite well.

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Now that the Continuity feature allows the Mac to receive incoming calls from your associated iPhone, in addition to standard FaceTime video and audio chat, you may want to take a moment to customize the ringtone that sounds when a call is coming to a particular Mac. This is particularly helpful with multiple-Mac environments with different users, or even with multiple Macs and iOS devices using the same ID that may ring at the same time, since it will differentiate each machine.

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Apple has released the first beta of iOS 8.3 to those registered with the iOS Developer program, arriving as build 12F5027d. This is somewhat unusual given that iOS 8.2 is also currently still in beta release as version 8.2b5, but it may suggest a different focus for each point version of the operating system.

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iOS 9 will primarily aim for system performance and stability improvements, according to a new report from the well-sourced 9to5mac. Furthermore, iOS 9 will have a ‘”huge” focus’ on fixing bugs and bringing under the hood improvements to the mobile experience, while the new iOS version will have less of an emphasis on bringing new features to compatible iPhones and iPads.

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Apple has started to run a new iPad ad focused on creating noise with the device, called ‘Make Music with iPad’. The commercial follows an artist known as “Elliphant” and shows how a song is composed using various apps on the iPad to write lyrics and make a beat.

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Knowing what network an iPhone uses can be important for trying to repurpose an old device, buying a used iPhone, or simply to determine if a particular iPhone will work on a network of choice. While the iPhones top status bar will show the carrier name of an active cellular network, if the device isn’t activated or doesn’t have a SIM card, it won’t display anything other than “No Service” in the status bar. That doesn’t mean you can’t find out what network the device is locked to or last used though.

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This week we’re featuring the great Apple setup of Theatrical Producer Toby S., who humorously shares some of the challenges faced by expats while working and living abroad in a nation filled with counterfeit gadgets and fake everything. But the Macs are all real, so let’s dive right in an learn a bit more in this amusing overview:

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The Mac Notification Center gained widgets in OS X Yosemite, which are revealed when the Notification Center is opened and the “Today” view is chosen. This looks and functions a bit like Widgets in iOS, and these widgets range from World Clock, Calculator, Weather, Reminders, Calendar, Stocks, Social, and an to an iTunes widget, but they can include third party widgets that came bundled with other Mac apps too. To get the most out of Widgets in Notification Center, you’ll probably want to customize which widgets are shown or hidden to better suit your needs and preferences.

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The Instant iPhone Wi-Fi Hotspot feature in Mac OS X is incredibly useful if your Mac is on the go or you need an alternate internet connection, but even if you’re not aiming to use the cellular internet sharing capability of iPhone there are some other handy uses for the feature, like checking two of your iPhone vital stats without having to pull the device out of a pocket or purse.

As long as Instant Hotspot has been set up and the compatible Mac and compatible iPhone are nearby one another, you can remotely check on the battery life and cellular signal strength of that iPhone right from the Mac with a quick glance, even if the iPhone and Mac are in different rooms.

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If you’re not happy with the usage of Helvetica Neue as a system font in OS X Yosemite, why not go completely ridiculous and replace the Mac system font with Comic Sans? Yes Comic Sans, somewhere high on the list of worst fonts ever, can now be the universal system font on Mac OS X. Even if you don’t find it particularly amusing, at the very least it should give you a newfound appreciation for Helvetica Neue.

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Apple has released the first pre-release seed version of OS X 10.10.3 to developers. This particular beta version of Mac system software arrives as build 14D72i and seems to focus primarily on a new Photos app, which aims to replace iPhoto in OS X.

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Sometimes you need to enter a password into the terminal, usually for sudo or su commands, which lets users execute a command with super user privileges. This is fairly typical for allowing access to read or modify something that would otherwise not be possible with a standard user account. You’ll commonly see sudo prefixing another command, looking something like “sudo nano /etc/hosts“. Though most of the command line and sudo is generally only appropriate for advanced users, occasionally more casual computer users may need to turn to the Terminal, perhaps to enable a feature, modify a system file, or even for troubleshooting purposes. For novice users who wind up at the command line, a very common question occurs with entering passwords into the Terminal, almost always related to sudo and the apparent inability to type a password into the command line of Mac OS X (or Linux for that matter).

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TextEdit is a surprisingly handy Mac app that is mostly underutilized and under appreciated, and while it’s certainly not going to compete with the abilities of pro text editors like BBEdit and TextWrangler, it can function as a simple code editor in a pinch. One of the quintessential features of any good text editor is the ability to jump to a specific line number, and TextEdit can do that.

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Mac users can adjust the idle time to sleep their computers easily through the Energy Saver preference panel, but many advanced Mac OS X users may wish to turn to the command line to perform such a task. This allows for scripting, remote checking and changing idle sleep behavior through SSH, and you can also use it to set the idle time requirements beyond what is allowed through the standard System Preference approach.

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If you have ever switched from an iPhone to an Android or Windows phone, either temporarily, out of necessity, or for testing purposes, you may have noticed that a new phone will sometimes not receive inbound messages that have been sent from other iPhone users. Well, you probably didn’t notice it because you didn’t get any of the messages, but someone probably told you that they sent you a text and you never received it. These disappeared messages are almost always due to a quirk of iMessage, which seems to strongly couple itself to a phone number that belongs to an iPhone, and if not disabled or deregistered, that iMessage attachment can end up hoarding the messages in some sort of ethereal messaging purgatory, which then prevents them from being delivered to the new non-Apple phone. Fear not though, because you can get a phone number out of iMessage Purgatory by using one of two different methods outlined below.

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Those registered with the iOS Developer program will find a new beta of iOS 8.2 available. The fifth beta version build arrives as 12D5480A and continues to focus on general bug fixes and improvements.

The upcoming iOS release will also include support for iPhone and iPad communicating with the Apple Watch, the Watch is set to be released sometime in April, perhaps indicating a rough timeline for when public users can expect the iOS 8.2 final version as well.

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