Some Mac users have experienced a variety of performance issues with OS X El Capitan and Yosemite, ranging from a sluggish and problematic Finder, to WindowServer going crazy pegging the processor, to assorted wi-fi difficulties. While OS X 10.10.3 has helped address some of the trouble, another issue appears to have popped up for a select group of users, where opening a folder is incredibly slow, taking multiple seconds before the contents of a folder populate. The very slow folder opening experience can happen in any Open or Save dialog box or the Finder of OS X, or just about anywhere else you may be working with the file system on the Mac.

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Apple has released the first beta version of OS X 10.10.4 to those registered with the Mac Developer program.

Few specifics are offered in the release notes for build 14E7f, simply stating that 10.10.4 “improves the stability, compatibility, and security” of a Mac.

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Apple has released a supplemental update to OS X 10.10.3, aimed at resolving startup problems encountered by users who happen to be running some apps that capture video.

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When you connect a power source to an iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or MacBook, a familiar charging chime sound will trigger from the device, indicating that a cable is attached and the device is getting power. If you like hearing that auditory confirmation that a device is getting power, you can add the exact same audio playback feature to any MacBook Pro or MacBook Air by turning to the command line of MacOS and Mac OS X. You’ll even get an onscreen visual cue on the Mac indicating where the battery charge is, which looks straight out of iOS as well.

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Apple Pay will default to using the first credit card or credit card added to an iPhone for purchases, even if you have added multiple cards. Your first card may not be the account you want to default charges to however, thus some users may wish to change the default card in Apple Pay.

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Now that many of our Emoji characters have various skin tones in iOS and OS X, you may want to access and use the new diverse emoji icon set on the Mac. This is quite simple, but do note that not all Emoji have the diverse skin and hair color options.

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Apple has announced their annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) will take place June 8 through June 12 in San Francisco, California.

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Apple has released the first beta version of iOS 8.4 to those registered with the iOS Developer program. The first iOS 8.4 build arrives as 12H407d and looks to prominently feature a freshly redesigned Music app with several new features.

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The Mac Photos app allows for the creation of entirely new photo libraries, which means it’s easy to make a separate photo library if you want to keep some pictures outside of a primary image collection. This can be helpful for many reasons, whether to differentiate a personal photo library from a work picture library, or perhaps to keep a private photo library separate from other less private pictures on the same computer.

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The iPhone Camera app includes a self timer function, a great feature for any camera that allows you to set a countdown timer before a picture is snapped. There’s many uses for the timer function, but it often allows for the photographer or camera owner to be in the picture frame as well, rather than just shooting pictures from behind the lens.

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Apple has changed the Emoji characters in iOS and OS X to include many new diverse emoji variations. In the process of diversifying our Emoji keyboards, Apple also turned most of the default people emoji icons into curious looking yellow characters, which look a bit like LEGO characters meet The Simpsons. But once you understand how to access the diverse Emoji skin tone variations, you can change the yellow people emoji to default to your choice of the diverse emoji variations.

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Some Mac users may occasionally run into issues with Finder, discovering that Finder will misbehave wildly, sometimes becoming very slow and unresponsive, crashing, or using inordinately high CPU. Given that Finder is a critical component of the Mac and nearly all Mac OS users rely on it for file system navigation, Finder trouble can be pretty frustrating, but fortunately the issues seen with Finder in MacOS and Mac OS X are generally very easy to resolve. This guide will aim to help troubleshoot common Finder problems on the Mac.

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Mac users who are running OS X Mavericks and OS X Mountain Lion will find an important security update available to them. Labeled as Security Update 2015-004 1.0, the software update includes many fixes to a wide variety of potential security issues for OS X, and is therefore recommended for all Mac users running OS X 10.9.5 or OS X 10.8.5 to install.

Users who are running OS X Yosemite will find the same security fixes bundled within the OS X 10.10.3 software update, thus there is no separate security update patch available for Yosemite.

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Apple has released an update for iTunes, versioned as iTunes 12.1.2. The small update is available now for Mac OS X and Windows, includes various improvements to the media management application that is basically essential for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users. This update is particularly important for Mac, as it enables syncing photos between iTunes and the new Photos app in OS X.

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Apple has released iOS 8.3 for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. The software update includes 300 new Emoji icons, a variety of small new features, some minor user interface changes to keyboards, a variety of new languages for Siri, and a handful of performance fixes and optimizations, including resolutions to various wi-fi issues and Bluetooth connectivity. Full release notes for iOS 8.3 are listed below.

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Apple has released the final version of OS X 10.10.3 to all Mac users running Yosemite. The public version of OS X 10.10.3 includes the Photos app to replace iPhoto, and contains a handful of bug and performance fixes as well, including improvements to Wi-Fi stability and performance, over 300 newly designed Emoji icons, Spotlight Look Up suggestions, a resolution to some Bluetooth connectivity issues, and improvements to Safari and Screen Sharing. Full release notes are included below.

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Can’t remember where a file you recently opened was stored on the Mac, or where an MacOS X app you recently used was kept or originated from? Maybe you don’t know where something you recently used went to? No big deal, a simple keystroke modifier trick allows you to jump directly to the containing location of any app or file found in the “Recent Items” list of Mac OS X.

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If you use VirtualBox to run guest operating systems within a virtual machine on the Mac, like Windows 10 or Ubuntu Linux, you may find yourself needing to resize the virtual disk size where the OS resides. This is often the case when you inadequately estimate how much space is required for properly installing in a virtual machine with dynamically allocated storage.

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