Group messaging is one of those features that’s great when you want to be in a group conversation, and completely annoying when you don’t want your iPhone to be included in a barrage of group text messages. A new feature in iOS aims to relieve the latter situation, when your iPhone or iPad is being stormed by an onslaught of incoming messages from a group conversation that you just happen to be included in, allowing you to selectively mute a specific group chat in the Messages app of iOS. This is basically a message sender or message thread specific Do Not Disturb available in iOS, and it works great.

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iTunes 12 brought about some fairly significant user interface changes to the media player app, one of which is the size of the font shown in playlist and music views. The new default iTunes font is smaller with tighter padding between list items, and accordingly it can be difficult to read for some users. But unlike most places in OS X, iTunes does offer an ability to change the size of onscreen fonts, which can help make that playlist and music text more readable.

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The iPhone 6 Plus is easily the best smartphone I’ve had and I would highly recommend it to anyone for a variety of reasons, notably the wonderful screen and stellar battery life. While there is plenty to rave about, sometimes sharing what’s not to like can be helpful to others who are thinking about making a purchasing decision too. So after using the iPhone Plus for a few months, here are some of my unexpected findings and thoughts about the biggest iPhone ever made.

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Many Mac users who rely on Mail app for accessing their emails in Mac OS are in the habit of navigating emails with their mouse, double-clicking an email, closing it, then repeating to go to the next message. A lesser known option is to use the keyboard to navigate within Mail messages of Mac OS X, which can be considerably faster for many users once they learn the tricks of how to use it. Not only can you navigate between emails this way, but you can also reply, send, forward, mark as unread, and perform many other Mail functions directly with a keystroke.

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Apple has released the first beta of iOS 8.1.1 to those participating in the iOS Developer program. The update arrives as build 12B432 and is said to include multiple bug fixes, as well as performance improvements for the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S. Being a minor release, it is unlikely that iOS 8.1.1 will include any new features.

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Apple has released the first build of OS X 10.10.1 to those registered with the Mac Developer program. Labeled as “Pre-release OS X Update Seed 10.10.1”, the build is 14B17 and is currently available to developers, as well as those signed up to be participating in the OS X Yosemite Public Beta program.

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Messages on iPhone and iPad can grow to take up considerable storage space over time, particularly for users who frequently send and receive multimedia on an iPhone. Each photo taken with an iPhone camera can easily consume 4MB, and movies will take up even more space, and it’s not unusual for an iPhone user to eventually wind up with several GB of messages and attachments. For users who don’t want to manage their own messages by deleting large messages, attached files, or old conversations, modern iOS versions have an option that will automatically delete old messages from your iPhone or iPad.

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RSS is a really great way to follow some of your favorite web sites and skim headlines to check out specific articles you most want to read. Many Mac users rely on third party apps for subscribing to RSS feeds, but the newest versions of Safari for OS X have an RSS subscription feature built directly into the web browser. Subscribing to RSS feeds this way is simple, and reading feeds is just as easy too, so let’s take a moment to learn how to use it.

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This weeks featured Mac setup is the workstation of Dr Alain B., the Co-Founder and CEO of a startup. Let’s jump right in to learn a bit more about the hardware, software, and how it’s all put to use:

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Automatic Updates has been possible for Mac apps for quite some time, but up until now the system updates of Mac OS X were not part of that automatic installation option. That changed with Mac OS X High Sierra, Sierra, Yosemite, and El Capitan, and now Mac users who would rather take a hands-off approach to maintaining their Macs OS X software updates can choose to automatically check for and install core system updates. This is in addition to the existing options for automatically updating their Mac apps and installing important security updates too, making some of the more important maintenance tasks for Macs completely automated for the users who choose to enable these features.

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Apple recently launched the updated iPad Air 2 and iPad Mini 3, and splashed upon the product pages showing off the fancy new retina displays are two lock screen wallpapers of some beautiful mountain scenery. Many users though we’d see these wallpapers available with iOS 8.1, but for whatever reason they weren’t included with that iOS release. While they still may show up in a future version of the mobile OS, in the meantime you can get those two beautiful mountain wallpapers sized for your iPhone.

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The Pangu group has released a utility that will jailbreak iOS 8.1 on any iPhone or iPad device which can run the latest iOS release, including the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. The jailbreak is untethered and includes Cydia, but there’s a catch… at the moment the Pangu 1.1 tool runs only on Windows, though a Mac version is said to be in the works and will debut soon.

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iPhone users now have the ability to choose their desired maximum cellular data speed from available options. This data speed toggle was added to the iPhone with iOS 8.1 and is not yet available on all carriers, but for those that do support the data choice feature it’s quite easy to use.

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Handoff is a really great feature of modern versions of Mac OS X and iOS that allows a Mac user to pass off or resume an app session to their iPhone or iPad, or vice versa. For example, you can start typing an email on your iPhone, then pass it off to your Mac and finish writing that email or send it off. Or if you’re reading an article in Safari on your Mac and need to rush out the door, you can quickly hand it off to your iPad and read the rest on your horse as you commute to the office. There’s a lot of potential with Handoff as part of the broader Continuity experience, and it really aims to bring greater productivity to those who have an array of Apple devices.

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Want to hide some photos on iPhone and iPad? Everyone likely has a few photos sitting on their iPhone they’d rather nobody else see, whether it’s embarrassing selfies, poorly filtered or edited pics, a picture of a receipt or personal paperwork, or anything else in the realm of private photos. Those pictures can make showing someone another picture on your iPhone (or iPad) an awkward experience, as you’re hoping they don’t start flipping through your Camera Roll to discover that terrible photo of you after winning the pie eating contest. Fortunately the newest versions of iOS include an easy way to mitigate that potential awkwardness by allowing users to go about hiding select photos.

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The Dock is just one of a variety of aspects of the Mac OS X interface that was overhauled and flattened in Yosemite. Gone are the days of the 3D Dock, the new Yosemite Dock defaults to looking like a flatter version, much like the iOS Dock. If you long for the Dock with some dimensions or some transparency to it, you can use a free third party utility to get the 3D Dock back in OS X Yosemite, or you can even choose to make the Dock completely transparent.

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Some Mac users who updated MacOS have found Mail app to experience errors or problems when trying to send email. Typically this is in the form of an SMTP server connection error, a mailbox that’s seemingly stuck offline, a repeated request for a password from Mail app (a fairly common issue which we’ve fixed before), or some other connection error. If you’re experiencing any of these issues with Mail app, the solution is likely simple as we’ll show you.

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Apple Pay is a contactless payment platform that is newly available to iPhone 6 users. It works well and is incredibly simple; once you’ve added a card to Apple Pay, you just need to wave your iPhone over an Apple Pay compatible NFC payment terminal to pay for whatever you’re buying. The iPhones built-in TouchID sensor serves as an ID mechanism to prevent unauthorized usage, and you never need to pull out a credit or debit card after its configured. And yes, it really works that well once you have it setup, and that’s what we’re going to cover here.

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