Cellular carriers in the USA are looking to start selling customer usage data to third parties and marketers, according to TechCrunch. This is being done in an effort labeled as ‘personalization’ and using some other boring and friendly sounding descriptions. Though the information is supposedly aggregate and anonymous, it still may include fairly personal details like what apps you use, your location data, and web browsing history, and other bits of info that privacy conscious individuals probably don’t want to share with the outside world.

Fortunately, it’s fairly easy for users to opt out of these efforts through the major US carriers, including AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile:
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Standby mode is a power saving feature that automatically hibernates a Mac after it has been in sleep mode for a while, which it does to further decrease drain on battery. When a Mac using FileVault encryption is placed into standby mode, a FileVault key (yes, this key is encrypted) is stored in EFI (firmware) so that it can quickly come out of standby mode when woken from deep sleep. For 99% of users, that hardly matters and it’s not a security concern, but for those who are concerned about absolute maximum security and protecting a Mac from some unusually aggressive attacks (i.e. espionage level), you can set OS X to automatically destroy that FileVault key when it’s placed in power-saving standby mode, preventing that stored key from being a potential weak point or attack target.
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The default font size for messages and texts on the iPhone is fairly small, and while it may look fine to many users, it’s simply too tiny to be easily readable for others. iOS makes it easy to change the text size though, offering a wide range of options that are suitable for just about everyones visual preferences. We’re emphasizing the iPhone here, but this setting and adjustment is also available to iPod touch and iPad users.
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If you’ve ever wanted to watch all data transfer and bandwidth usage while you browse the web you’ll know it’s not necessarily an easy task. Thankfully, a little-known feature contained within the excellent Google Chrome web browser provides a simple solution, and it allows for easy monitoring of how much data is consumed in a given web browsing session.
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Some Mac users overlook a feature in macOS / Mac OS X that allows them to attach an Apple ID to their actual user account, not just to iCloud and the App Store. It only takes a moment to set, and it provides for an incredibly simple password recovery option at the login and boot menus, allowing you to regain access to your user account and files just by entering the associated Apple ID.

Going further, Macs with multiple user accounts can assign different Apple ID’s to each unique user account, or you can just choose to tie a single Apple ID to the Mac. If you do choose to attach a lone Apple ID to the Mac this way, be sure to associate it with an administrator (admin) account in Mac OS X, that way you will be able to regain full system access in the event it’s needed because the primary password has been lost.
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Every once in a while an iOS device or app will get stuck in the wrong orientation, unresponsive to rotating the device and it either stays in portrait or horizontal mode, despite every effort to rotate the device any which direction. Though this seems to happen more often on the iPad than the iPhone or iPod touch, it can still occur on every iOS device and with just about any app.

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Different Mac models use different types of RAM, and each also supports a different maximum level of RAM. Unless you spend a lot of time upgrading and repairing Macs yourself, you probably don’t know these exact details off the top of your head, and that’s just fine because the information can be retrieved directly from the Mac in most cases. This is vital information to know if you have determined a memory upgrade is in order, so we’ll cover several different ways to find out what RAM type and speed a given Mac uses, what the maximum amount of supported RAM is, and if RAM slots are available.

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Apple has issued a small security update for all major versions of Mac OS X still in use, including OS X Mountain Lion, Snow Leopard, and Lion.

Release notes are extremely brief, noting simply that the update is “recommended for all users and improves the security of OS X.” There is some indication that the update may address a potential security issue with QuickTime movie player, though that remains unclear at the moment. Users have noticed that the update for OS X 10.8 and 10.7 is quite small, where as for 10.6 it is more sizable.

Everyone can download Security Update 2013-003 from Software Update, accessible via the Apple  menu, or directly through the App Store. Installing the update requires a reboot to complete.

As you probably know, all of your iPhone Contacts and related address book information is stored within iCloud, assuming you use the cloud service to sync and backup your data of course.

What many people don’t know, is that the web interface of iCloud provides an incredibly simple method of exporting those same iPhone contacts, giving you easy access to individual contacts in the address book, or even the ability to export and save the entire contacts list itself – all directly from the web, with or without the iPhone itself.
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Network Locations in Mac OS X allow you to save specific configurations and settings for different networks. Once they’re setup, you can use them to change between various network configurations quickly, without having to re-enter any settings. These are perfect if you are switching between things like an automatic DHCP config vs a manually assigned IP address, different routers with unique settings at different locations, toggling proxy use on or off, using different and specific DNS configurations, or just have custom network configs for specific places like work, home, or school.

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iOS is obviously going in the direction of not needing iTunes at all, but in the meantime you still need to sync an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to copy over music libraries, videos, media, perform local backups, apps, and more. Typically iTunes will sync with an iOS device without incident, but sometimes things go awry, and iTunes just won’t sync at all. If you find yourself in that frustrating situation, here is what you can do to fix it and get the iPhone, iPod, or iPad syncing with iTunes on a Mac or PC again.

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Gmail is an excellent mail client, but one feature that has always felt missing was a simple sorting ability to view only the unread email messages residing in an inbox. It turns out you can show only the unread messages with Gmail though, you just have to use either a simple search operator to reveal only unread messages, or use a different Inbox sorting method that displays unread emails first regardless of the message age. Using either method is very simple, so pick whichever is best for your situation.

This tutorial will show you two different approaches to easily view and see unread messages in Gmail.
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Personal Hotspot allows you to turn an iPhone or cellular equipped iPad into a wireless router, thereby sharing the devices internet connection with other Mac, Windows PC, iOS, Android, or any other capable hardware that connects to the hotspot. Often called “internet tethering” or simply Wi-Fi Hotspot, this is an excellent feature for telecommuters and travelers in particular, and it’s also a great backup internet connection if a home or work network temporarily goes down. Plus, with the ever increasing range of LTE and 4G service, it’s not uncommon for a cellular connection to actually be faster than standard DSL or a cable modem anyway.

Widely supported, the only real requirement for using Personal Hotspot, other than an iPhone or 4G/LTE iPad, is a cellular data plan from a carrier that offers the service. Fees vary per provider and per area, so you will need to check with your specific cell carrier if you are not sure what it costs to use, or how to order the feature for your data plan.

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It’s time for a new wallpaper roundup, so we’re bringing you nine high-resolution space themed images. These pictures are all large enough that they should look great on just about any screen size, whether its a desktop Mac, PC, iPhone, or a retina iPad.

Click through the images or links to get to the full versions, most of which are hosted by NASA from their Hubble and Picture of the Day sites, download them to your devices, and switch up that desktop with a journey into deep space.

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The famous white Apple earbuds are great, but anyone who has had any pair of headphones and heavily used them for a long time knows they can damage over time, and sometimes you’ll wind up with a set that no longer plays sound out of both ear pieces. The problem with this is that many stereo recordings have sound tracks that are intended specifically for the left and right channels, so when one side of the headphones, earbuds, or even a speaker dock and car speakers stops working, you can wind up missing some of the audio that is playing.

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Though most iPhone owners know what which model they have, not everyone does, and sometimes you’ll come across an iPhone and have no idea what it is. This is usually because some iPhone models share the same enclosure, and because of that it can be very hard to differentiate them just by a first glance. For example, the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S look almost identical, the iPhone 3G and 3GS also look practically identical, and the iPhone 5 and it’s successor (5S?) are also likely to look basically the same. Thus, the easiest way to differentiate an iPhone when it’s not immediately obvious is by looking at the actual iPhone model number, then comparing that to a list of devices to determine what the iPhone actually is.

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Ever needed to quickly mirror a Mac display, switching another screen from an extended desktop to the mirrored image of what’s on the primary screen? Sure, you can visit the System Preference Display panel and fumble around in settings, but there is a much easier and faster way to toggle display mirroring with just a simple keyboard shortcut.
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iOS devices can use an optional encrypted backup feature that protects all backups with a strong encryption layer and password, meaning those backups are both unusable and unreadable without that password. If you chose to encrypt the backups of an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with such a password and then somehow forgot the password to those backups, you may have an option available to recover it and then regain access to those backups for recovery and general usage.

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