You have likely noticed that downloading a free app from the iOS App Store triggers the ‘Enter Password’ dialog screen on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. While this is a valid precaution to prevent unauthorized users from installing apps onto an iOS device, it’s not always desired, particularly for shared iPads and iOS devices used by multiple users and kids.

With the help of a simple settings adjustment, you can prevent iOS from requesting a password to download a free app, while still maintaining the password requirement for downloading paid apps.

Read more »

When a user sets up a new Mac, there is a helpful option to use an iCloud ID and Apple ID to login and unlock the Mac. Users can also choose at any time to have their iCloud ID as their login for OS X too. While this is undoubtedly a helpful feature and it can keep things simpler, requiring only a single password to remember, and making it easier to recover and reset a lost password on their computer, it can also have disadvantages for some situations. Additionally, some users prefer to use different passwords for different purposes for security reasons.

Whatever the reason, if you opted to use an iCloud password to login to a Mac when setting up OS X, you can later choose to disassociate the iCloud login and use a separate unique local login password on that Mac again.

Read more »

Ready for another featured Mac setup? This time around we’re featuring the great desk setup of Toby R. , a web developer who has a dual display setup and some great under-the-desk cable management. Let’s jump right in and learn more about this setup:

Read more »

Want to see a movie tonight? Wondering what the showtime are of a movie playing nearby? You can quickly find local movie showtimes by using the Spotlight search feature in Mac OS X. Yes you read that right, the same Spotlight that works as an app launcher and file search engine, can also uncover movie showtimes and other details about whats playing in theaters!

Read more »

Want to quickly delete a Messages conversation on Mac? The Mac Messages app maintains a transcript of conversations that have been carried out on the computer, thus when you open a message window to a particular sender, you’ll see the prior conversations, pictures, and other sent/received data in the same message thread. If you’d like to clear out these conversations transcripts and related media, you can quickly do that without having to clear all Messages app chat history logs from the entire application.

Read more »

The Mac Photos app works well for most users, but occasionally a variety of hiccups can be encountered when interacting with photo libraries, ranging from crashes, to hanging on Photos app launch, a failed import, thumbnails missing from an image library, pictures missing from a library that was imported, or even a completely empty Photos app on launch despite having the proper photo library selected in the Photos app.

If you encounter any of these library management and photo library viewing issues, you can manually trigger a repair of any photo library, which will often resolve the problem being experienced.

Read more »

Apple is apparently planning on replacing Helvetica Neue, the current default system font in iOS and OS X, with the ‘San Francisco’ font used on Apple Watch, according to a new report from the well sourced 9to5mac. The font change to “San Francisco” will apparently arrive to OS X 10.11 and iOS 9, but if you don’t want to wait for the next version of Mac OS, you can modify your OS X Yosemite system font now to replace Helvetica Neue with San Francisco, and it looks a whole lot better than Comic Sans. Comic Sans joking aside, the San Francisco font actually looks pretty great, so if you’re up for a change or want an idea of what the next version of OS X may bring to the UI, here’s how you can get a sneak peak yourself.

Read more »

A somewhat strange error message can occur at random on iOS, typically for iPhone users, that states “Unable to Download Item. Please try again later” with a “Done” and “Retry” button options. The thing that makes this error message strange is that it appears at random and not after the user has attempted to download or update anything to the iOS device.

So what should you do if you get this error message on your iPhone or iPad at random, sometimes even repeatedly?
Read more »

Apple has released the first update to Apple Watch software, versioned as Watch OS 1.0.1. The update is a fairly small download weighing about 51MB, and includes performance improvements and bug fixes for the device, making it recommended for all Apple Watch users to install. Release notes accompanying Watch OS 1.0.1 are included below.

Read more »

Apple has released updated versions of the Retina iMac 27″ and Retina MacBook Pro 15″. Both models received fairly minor updates to specifications, but offer some notable improvements which make them worthwhile for users considering new Mac hardware. Separately, Apple also released a Lightning Dock charger for iPhone.

Read more »

If you’ve ever printed anything from a computer, you’ve inevitably wound up trying to print something that you soon discovered wasn’t needed. Regardless, rather than letting the print job continue and waste ink and paper, the best thing to do is cancel the printers print job or jobs. There are a few ways to cancel printing in Mac OS X, we’ll show you the easiest using a simple printer tool that’s bundled onto all Macs.

Read more »

By default, the iPhone records video at 30 FPS, but newer model iPhones support video recording at a silky smooth 60 FPS (frames per second) at a full 1080p resolution. This optional high frame rate video capture mode must be enabled in the iPhone Camera settings before you’ll find it available when recording video with the Camera app however.

Read more »

Some users who have updated to new versions of OS X with Photos app have discovered that Photos app does not meet their needs, and thus would like to continue using iPhoto on the Mac. This is possible, at least for the time being, but there can be some hiccups in getting iPhoto running again in OS X Yosemite with Photos app installed. Visit the Macs /Applications/ folder and open iPhoto app to discover if you need to take further action or not, some users will have the app open just fine and need no further steps – you’re good to go at that point. But, not all OS X users are in that boat, and sometimes you’ll see the iPhoto icon has a cross through it signifying it won’t open.

Most commonly, Mac users will encounter the following error message when trying to launch iPhoto on a Mac with Photos app: “In order to open “iPhoto.app”, you must update to the latest version. The version of iPhoto installed on this Mac is not compatible with OS X Yosemite. Download the latest version for free from the Mac App Store.” but when you click on “Search App Store”, you’ll get an error saying “Item Not Available”.

Read more »

Users managing a Photos app library on the Mac have almost certainly deleted a picture, video, if not dozens of them. Sometimes this is intentional, sometimes it’s accidental, and sometimes it’s regretful, and perhaps later, a user wishes they could recover those deleted pictures. If you find yourself in that situation, then you may be able to recover the deleted images with the help of a Photos app recovery feature, without even having to turn to backups from Time Machine in OS X.

Read more »

Mac Mail users may find that even if they have
disabled auto-correct in OS X, an automatic Spell Check function continues to persist in the Mail app of Mac OS X. For users who are confident in their spelling abilities, bothered by the spell-check function, or who are just tired of correcting the auto-corrections in their outbound emails, you may find it helpful to completely disable the spell check feature in Mail app on the Mac.

Read more »

Wondering what time a movie starts? Or maybe you want to see a movie tonight and you aren’t sure which one? Maybe you just want to see any movie at a specific time? As long as you have your iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch handy, you can get all sorts of movie showtime details by simply asking Siri.

For a broad query into what movies are playing nearby and when the showtimes start, summon Siri as usual (with the Home button or “Hey Siri”, and then just ask the following type of questions:

Read more »

The first time you login to a new user account, boot a fresh Mac, or a clean Mac OS X install, you’ll be presented with a default Dock selection without any customizations, which includes a variety of apps depending on the Mac hardware and what software is installed.

A common default Mac OS X Dock icon set would include apps like Launchpad, Safari, iTunes, Calendar, Contacts, Pages, Keynote, Numbers, Photos, iMovie, Mail, Messages, and the other pre-bundled apps the Mac comes with.

Users usually are quick to customize their Docks with their own app choices, but if you ever want to reset the Dock to the default state and start anew, you can do that at any time by using a defaults command.

Read more »

Apple has released the third beta version of OS X Yosemite 10.10.4 for Mac users who are part of the Mac developer program or participating in the OS X Public Beta. The new build arrives as 14E17e and is compatible with all Macs that can run OS X Yosemite.

The release notes accompanying the beta of OS X 10.10.4 suggest a focus on Photos app and Migration. There are no obvious new features, suggesting the release will primarily be aimed at bug fixes and improvements to the Mac operating system.

Read more »