There are various ways to monitor CPU usage on a Mac, with perhaps the two most common being with Activity Monitor on the graphical interface side of things, and htop or top on the command line side. While you can show an optional core graph in Activity Monitor, and htop will show CPU core activity as well, there’s another lesser known command line tool called powermetrics that can reveal this information to you as well.

If you’ve a savvy command line user and you’ve never heard of powermetrics before, welcome to the club. I hadn’t either until I stumbled into an article at eclecticlight.co which discussed various ways of seeing CPU core activity with a mention of the ‘powermetrics’ command line tool so naturally I was inspired to investigate something new to me. Sharing is caring, so let’s review how you can use this command as well.

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Hex editors are software tools that are able to view and edit hex data and raw binary data of files, and can be frequently used by programmers, developers, and reverse engineers, to inspect, debug, and analyze files and software. Some advanced users even rely on hex editors for data recovery and digital forensics, or to perform file format analysis, and some gamers rely on hex editors to modify or hack games to change game data or to enter cheat codes.

We’re going to show you two popular and powerful hex editors for Mac, both are open source (and one is cross-platform compatible so if you want to use the same hex editor not only on a Mac but also Linux and a Windows PC, it’s a great option).

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If you use Node.js for web development, creation of web apps, and javascript based network applications, you undoubtedly may come across situations where you’d like to make sure that the latest version of Node.js is installed on your Mac. Upgrading to the latest version of Node.js means you’ll have access to the most recent features and security updates available.

Assuming you have installed Node.js and npm with Homebrew (which implies you have also already installed Homebrew on the Mac too), which is arguably the easiest way to install node.js onto a Mac and to manage the javascript runtime environment, then you will find that updating Node.js to the latest version is really quite simple once you learn how.

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The second beta versions of iOS 17.6, macOS Sonoma 14.6, and iPadOS 17.6 are available to users who are enrolled in beta testing programs for current generation system software of Apple devices.

While many beta testers have likely proceeded ahead with installing the iOS 18 beta, iPadOS 18 beta, and MacOS Sequoia beta, undoubtedly there are developers who are testing their software with betas of iOS 17.6, iPadOS 17.6, and macOS Sonoma 14.6 as well.

No major new features or changes are expected in these versions of system software, suggesting they are likely releases aimed at bug fixes and security updates.

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One of the most useful features of the ChatGPT app for Mac is the ability to upload files to ChatGPT to have them summarized and analyzed.

For example, you can upload a PDF file, and ask ChatGPT to give an analysis of the document, or to summarize it, and ask questions specifically related to the document itself. The great thing about this is that the contents of the document don’t matter, ChatGPT will figure that out and analyze it accordingly, whether the PDF is a resume, recipe, cookbook, music tablature or notation, book, guides, document, charts, presentations, or whatever else.

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Night Shift is a nice feature from Apple that warms the color tones on screens during the evening and nighttime hours, with the idea being that it may help to reduce eyestrain and blue light exposure. Night Shift has been around on Mac, iPhone, and iPad, for quite some time, but the feature has been notably absent from Apple Watch… at least at any obvious level.

But it turns out that Apple Watch does have Night Shift, at least on relatively newer models, with newer watchOS system software, there’s just no Settings toggle for it. Instead, Apple Watch users can enable Night Shift on their watch by using Siri.

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Ball is a super fun project for Mac that is goofy, simple, and wildly creative. It’s, well, a virtual bouncy ball.

Ball lives in your Mac Dock, and when you click on the Dock icon, the bouncy ball pops out and drops onto your screen. The big red bouncy ball has decent physics too, so you can drag it high and drop it, and it’ll bounce down and around, or you can throw it against the side of your screen and watch it ricochet around. Just play around with it, that’s what it’s for.

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ChatGPT for Mac is now broadly available to every Mac user as a free download, complete with the latest GPT capabilities. While some of you may have bypassed the waitlist to gain early access, the official ChatGPT Mac app is now is now available to anyone and everyone, all you need is an OpenAI account and any Apple Silicon Mac.

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MacOS Sequoia beta 2 has been released for users participating in the MacOS Sequoia 15 beta program for Apple Developers.

Technically speaking, anyone can enroll in the dev program and install MacOS Sequoia beta, but due to the nature of beta system software that is not advised for anyone who is not an advanced user or developer.

MacOS Sequoia 15 beta includes iPhone mirroring (assuming the iPhone is running iOS 18 beta as well), and has other new features like improved window tiling, dedicated Passwords app, AI Apple Intelligence features, changes to Safari and Photos app, and more.

Separately, iOS 18 beta 2, iPadOS 18 beta 2, watchOS 11 beta 2, tvOS 18 beta 2, and visionOS 2 beta 2, are also available for developers to test.

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Apple has released the second beta version of iOS 18 for iPhone and iPadOS 18 for iPad.

iOS 18 beta 2 and iPadOS 18 beta 2 are available to download now for those registered in the Apple Developer beta testing programs. Technically speaking, anyone can install iOS 18 beta on iPhone or iPadOS 18 beta on iPad, but this is really only appropriate for advanced users.

iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 feature some intriguing new capabilities, like Dark Mode icons and color hued icons, Control Center customizations, Apple Intelligence AI features, changes to Photos app, and much more.

Separately, beta testers can also find beta 2 for macOS Sequoia, tvOS 18, watchOS 11, and visionOS 2 as well.

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There are no shortage of interesting projects and things to do with Rasbperry Pi devices, but this one will be particularly intriguing to fans of retro Macintosh and emulation; you can emulate a Macintosh 128k complete with VGA video and keyboard/mouse input, using nothing but a Pico Microcontroller!

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Apple often picks really beautiful wallpapers and imagery to go with their products, and while the iPhone, iPad, and Mac have tended recently towards more abstract wallpapers and product imagery, the Apple Vision Pro has some really gorgeous landscapes in the “Environments” feature of the spatial computing headset.

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tvOS 18 includes some intriguing new features that aim to improve your Apple TV experience, including Enhance Dialogue to make it easier to hear voices and dialog in shows and movies, Live Captions offers live transcripts of FaceTime calls on Apple TV, new screen savers, new Fitness features, Home app guest access, and more.

If you’re an advanced Apple TV user, you might be interested in installing the tvOS 18 beta onto your Apple TV, which can be done rather easily and by anyone in a similar way that anyone can install iOS 18 beta on iPhone.

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Some Mac users who are attempting to install MacOS Sequoia beta into a virtual machine may run into an error message that states “A software update is required to install macOS in a virtual machine.”

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WatchOS 11 for Apple Watch was recently announced, and watchOS 11 beta is available to run and install right now on compatible Apple Watch models. WatchOS 11 has a variety of features like training load tracking, ability to add rest days to your workouts or pause your activity rings without losing your streaks, live language translation, more features for pregnancy, easy tap-to-cash payment features that let you place your Apple Watch near another watch or iPhone to send Apple Cash, and more.

Should you run watchOS 11 beta? Probably not. Like any other beta version of system software, watchOS 11 beta is going to be buggier than expected, which could mean compatibility issues, reduced battery life, crashes, and other unexpected behavior. But because installing watchOS 11 beta requires iOS 18 beta, if you’re already running iOS 18 beta you’re likely savvy enough to run the watchOS 11 beta too.

Let’s walk through how to install watchOS 11 beta on an Apple Watch.

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Many curious users have installed iOS 18 beta onto iPhone or iPadOS 18 beta onto iPad, but since beta system software is not always the smoothest ride, some of these people might be interested in removing the beta from their device and downgrade iOS 18 beta back to the iOS 17 stable releases.

Whether you’re experiencing specific issues with the iOS 18 beta, battery drain, hot iPhone, app incompatibility, bugs, performance degradation, or any other reason, you can downgrade and get back to iOS 17 stable releases with a little effort.

Let’s walk through the steps of downgrading iOS 18 beta and returning to iOS 17 on an iPhone. This guide also applies to downgrading iPadOS 18 beta to iPadOS 17 on iPad, too.

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iPadOS 18 was announced with some compelling new features, including new customization options for the Home Screen like being able to place icons and widgets anywhere, Dark Mode icon color hue customizations, Messages scheduling, a revamped Photos app with new capabilities like being able to remove subjects from pictures, a bunch of AI features to help writing, improved Siri with connections to ChatGPT, and much more.

If you’re interested in exploring iPadOS 18 beta on your iPad, you’ll want to take into consideration the nature of beta system software, check iPad model compatibility against the supported devices list, and you might find it helpful to walkthrough the process of installing the iPadOS 18 developer beta onto iPad.

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Apple may be beta testing the next major system software releases with MacOS Sequoia beta and iOS 18 beta, but concurrently they’re also continuing to beta test upcoming system updates for existing iOS and macOS versions. Specifically, Apple has just released the first beta versions of iOS 17.6, MacOS Sonoma 14.6, iPadOS 17.6, watchOS 10.6, and tvOS 17.6.

If you’re a beta tester, you likely have jumped ahead and already installed iOS 18 beta or installed MacOS Sequoia beta, and those users won’t be eligible to get the iOS 17.6 beta or macOS 14.6 beta unless they downgrade first.

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