Spelling autocorrect features tend to be divisive, with Mac users usually either loving it or hating it. Most Mac users know they can easily turn off autocorrect through an OS X system preference change, but the System Preferences are only accessible from the graphical interface of a Mac. If you’re wanting to automate the enabling or disabling of autocorrect for systems configuration or setup script, you may find it useful to know that you can not only check the active status of autocorrect, but also disable and enable autocorrect from the command line in OS X by using a defaults command string. This can be great in configuration and it can also be handy for making remote changes too.

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Apple has released a third beta of iOS 8.2, versioned as build 12D5452a, for all compatible iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices. The beta software is available now for those registered with the iOS Developer program.

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While it’s increasingly common to get overwhelmed in the ocean of emails, the Mail app in iOS includes a really great feature to help you quickly navigate between and scan through tons of emails very quickly. The navigation feature is prominent in the Mail app, and though many users will know about this already, it seems to be vastly underused and often outright unknown by plenty of other iPhone owners. It’s too useful to not point out, so we’re going to show you the quickest possible way to move between emails on the iPhone Mail app.

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The Mac Messages app has long had support for sending and receiving iMessages, and now the latest versions of Messages for Mac OS X support a new feature which allows you to send and receive SMS text messages as well. This basically means that you can talk to someone using an Android, Windows phone, ancient flip phone, with the standard SMS texting protocol right from your Mac Messages app.

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An individuals user Library folder contains personalizations, preference files, caches, and other contents specific to any given individual user account on a Mac. While most users won’t need access to their user account Library directory, some advanced users like to have easy access to that folder for a variety of purposes. All modern versions of OS X default to hiding the ~/Library folder to prevent erroneous access, but with OS X El Capitan, Yosemite, and newer, you can use a simple Settings toggle to reveal the folder if desired.

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Many iPhone users have discovered that since updating a few of the household phones to the latest versions of iOS, suddenly when one iPhone rings, so does another completely different iPhone with a different phone number. This is often the case with spouses and partners who find their iPhone ringing when their wife or husbands iPhone gets a call, and vice versa. You have different phone numbers and different iphones, so why on earth are they both ringing together?

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In some rare situations, reinstalling OS X on a Mac may be required. This is made fairly easy as all modern Macs include the OS X Internet Recovery feature, which lets you reinstall OS X through a netboot type of mode that is accessed from the internet rather than a local drive. This is helpful in the event you need to reinstall Mac OS X whether for fun, because something has gone truly haywire, or because you need to replace the system software for whatever other reason.

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Apple has released their annual holiday commercial, titled “The Song”. The advertisement plays out like a short film, following a girl who discovers an old record of her grandmother singing, and then proceeds to use a Mac and iPad to create and share a duet with herself and her grandmothers old recording.

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The Holiday shopping season is here, and let’s face it, the techies and geeks in our lives can be some of the toughest people to shop for. With that in mind, we’ve put together a list of some of the more useful, fun, and interesting potential gifts you can get for the gadgeteers in your lives (or anyone, really). Just don’t be surprised if you see an item or three and think “that looks great, I kind of want that for myself too”, and hey, there’s nothing wrong with that.

Whoever you’re shopping for (yourself included), check out the list below for some great gift ideas for anyone with an iPhone, iPad, MacBook, or whatever other combination of Apple products. And if you have any interesting ideas or great gift finds that you have come across yourself this holiday season (and that would be appropriate), do share your finds with us and let us know in the comments!

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Apple has released a third beta version of OS X 10.10.2 to Mac users who are registered with the Macintosh Developer program. The new beta build of 14C81f apparently focuses on several issues where some OS X Yosemite users have experienced ongoing problems with the new Mac operating system, including Wi-Fi, Mail, and VoiceOver.

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Mac users will find a new Safari update available to them, with the precise version offered depending on the OS X release they are running.

The small software update appears to resolve several bugs, in addition to whatever issues may have appeared in another recent Safari update that was later pulled by Apple.

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The iOS Health app can keep track of your movement, steps, and fitness throughout the day, and it works really great with the new iPhones… most of the time, at least. But sometimes you can open Health app and rather than seeing a chart of your fitness activity for that day, week, or month, you’ll see a blank dashboard, as if all of your prior activity, steps, and mileage has been erased.

Not to worry, your activity logs are not missing, and all of your health data is still on the iPhone*.

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Users who are interested in jailbreaking their iPhones and iPads will find that iOS 8.1.2 can be jailbroken using an updated version of the TaIG tool. The new version of TaiG came almost immediately after the release of iOS 8.1.2, which apparently does not patch the method utilized by the jailbreaking utility.

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A second beta of iOS 8.2 has been released to users participating in the iOS Developer program. The newest beta version arrives as build 12D445d and is said to focus primarily on bug fixes that remain with the mobile operating system.

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Many longtime Windows users have grown to rely on the Notepad app for it’s plain text editing simplicity, for everything from writing little code blocks to just serving as a easy way to strip formatting and styling from anything copied into an open Notepad document. As a result, many Windows switchers to the Mac platform look for something that behaves similar to Notepad, but it turns out that such an app already exists in OS X and thus there is no need to download a third party app for most basic Notepad-like needs. Instead, just make a quick settings change to the TextEdit app that ships with every version of Mac OS X to turn it into a plain text editor.

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Apple has released iOS 8.1.2 update for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users. The small update weighs in around 35MB and focuses primarily on bug fixes, most of which are unspecified, though a specific issue for iPhone users where ringtones and text tones would disappear is mentioned in the download notes.

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OS X Yosemite has a rather peculiar bug with Open and Save dialog windows, where the file selector or saver dialog window shows up as inappropriately large. Sometimes the Open / Save window gets so big that it goes underneath the users Dock or even off screen, effectively preventing the dialog window from being resized.

This bug has been around in OS X 10.10 and has yet to be fixed, so while Mac users wait for another bug fix and system update to OS X Yosemite, we’ll cover a few workarounds that you can use in the meantime if and when you encounter the jumbo Open / Save dialog window.

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Apple has unveiled their picks for the best iPhone and iPad apps and games of 2014. The list includes some apps that you’re probably familiar with, and likely a notable amount of games or apps that you’ve never heard of, which can make these Apple provided “best of” lists a good way of discovering new apps and games.

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