Minecraft is a popular virtual sandbox video game that allows players to build, explore, create, and survive in a virtual world made up of very pixelated blocks. Offering an open-ended gameplay experience with no specific goals or objectives, players get to enjoy a digital sandbox to explore their own creations or craft their own experience.

In a way, you can think of Minecraft as a bit like digital LEGOs, except that rather than only being able to build structures, you can also gather resources, craft tools, engage in combat, set mechanics, and much more.

Because the Minecraft worlds are procedurally generated, there is practically an infinite number of unique playing experiences available.

If you’re not sure that you or a loved one is going to enjoy Minecraft, you can play the trial version of Minecraft and get a feel for the game. And of course, you can get the free Minecraft trial version for Mac, but it’s not necessarily obvious on the Minecraft site.

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This weekend, why not make the most of your iPhone by exploring some of the best features and embracing the possibilities of new iPhone experiences? Whether you’re mastering the iPhone camera, exploring new podcasts, or finding new apps to try, check out the tips below so that you can enhance your weekend with some iPhone experiences.

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The 15″ MacBook Air is a fantastic Mac, featuring an M2 chip, 15.3″ Liquid Retina display, a 1080p FaceTime HD camera, Touch ID, MagSafe charger, and two Thunderbolt/USB-C ports, and right now you can save $100 on a brand new M2 MacBook Air 15″ model simply by shopping at Amazon.

The base model is equipped with 8GB RAM and 256GB storage, and is available at the discounted price:

• 15″ MacBook Air M2 – 256GB – Midnight – $1199 (from $1299)
• 15″ MacBook Air M2 – 256GB – Space Gray – $1199 (from $1299)
• 15″ MacBook Air M2 – 256GB – Starlight – $1199 (from $1299)

Separately on Amazon, there are also some great deals on AirPods, wired EarPods, and Apple Watch.

• Apple EarPods headphones (wired, Lightning connector) for $17 (40% off from $29)
• AirPods (2nd generation) for $99 (down from $129)
• Apple Watch Series 8 for $329 (down from $399)

Why pay full price for these great Apple products when you don’t need to?

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Users may come across a situation where they would like to find all files in a directory, folder, or subfolder structure, that match a particular string but with variations to the file names, a situation perfect for finding files based on wildcard matches.

For example, maybe you’d like to locate all files on a file system containing the word “invoice” regardless of where in the filename the text of ‘invoice’ appears (eg, files named like the following; invoice1-2023.pdf, big-invoice-wow.pdf, yourfavoriteinvoice.pdf, invoice-2-22.pdf, etc).

This article will show you how to use the command line to find files recursively in directories and subdirectories by using wildcards that match a string of text that could appear anywhere in the filename itself, with several practical examples.

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Mac users may occasionally come across a situation where a process is locking a port, preventing another app or process from using that port. If you come across such a situation, for example maybe you’re trying to use React.js and find out that something is already running on port 3000, you can easily track down what process(es) are using a port on the Mac by turning to the command line.

We’ll show you how to find and kill what process is locking a port on MacOS.

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Everyone knows that Windows has been the most popular desktop operating system by market share for a long time, and if you roll back the clock 20 years you will find that MacOS had a itty bitty slice of the desktop operating system market of around 4%.

But fast forward 20 years, and things have changed quite a bit. Not only has the versions of Windows changed, but so has the Windows market share. In those two decades, the Mac desktop market share has quintupled, while the share of Windows has reduced dramatically as it loses marketshare to Mac, Linux, Chrome OS, and others.

Watch the video below to see this as an animated visualization, as you see Windows XP, Windows 98, and Windows NT slowly melt away to give rise to Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, Windows 11, and of course MacOS, Linux, Chrome OS, and “others”.

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Sometimes when you’re using Excel, you might have data inputted across multiple columns, and you may wish to combine columns. One of the major perks of using spreadsheet software like Excel is that you can easily combine columns with simple formulas and functions, merging two (or more) columns together.

The simplest way to combine multiple columns in Excel is by using the Ampersand & symbol and a simple formula. If you’re new to this, don’t worry, we’ll walk you through it and show you how to combine two (or more) columns in Excel. This works the same with every version of Excel on every platform that Excel works on, including Windows PC, MacOS, iPad, iOS, Android, and the web.

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Fans of the dystopian sci-fi genre might be interested in watching the first full episode of the Apple TV+ show “Silo”, which Apple has made available to watch in full free on Twitter (and embedded below).

Apple describes Silo as follows:

“In a ruined and toxic future, thousands live in a giant silo deep underground. After its sheriff breaks a cardinal rule and residents die mysteriously, engineer Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) starts to uncover shocking secrets and the truth about the silo.”

The full first episode, can be watched from this Twitter embed or on the Twitter website.

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Apple has issued the fourth beta version of MacOS Ventura 13.5, iOS 16.6, and iPadOS 16.6 to users who are testing betas of the current generation of system software.

No significant features or changes are expected in iOS 16.6, iPadOS 16.6, and macOS Ventura 13.5, as Apple is undoubtedly spending the majority of their beta efforts on iOS 17 beta, iPadOS 17 beta, and MacOS Sonoma 14 beta, which are concurrently available.

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If you have a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air running the latest versions of MacOS system software, like Sonoma or Ventura, you may be interested in knowing how you can show the battery percentage in your Mac menu bar.

Displaying the battery percentage indicator MacOS in Sonoma and Ventura has moved to a new settings location yet again, making it different from Monterey and Big Sur, so if you have been hunting around for this setting unsuccessfully, you certainly aren’t alone.

Read along and you’ll have the battery percentage indicator showing in your Mac menu bar in no time at all, giving you instant insight into how much battery life you have left on your Mac laptop.

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CAPTCHA’s are those annoying “prove you are a human” tests that are common on the web, making you do things like select all the motorcycles, crosswalks, or cars in a series of images, or type out a series of fuzzy characters to match, before you can proceed to login or access a particular website. The point of CAPTCHAs is to prevent automated attacks, brute force attempts, and other common web-spam activity, but the most obvious consequence to CAPTCHAs for the average user is annoyance.

Thanks to a little feature that is included on the iPhone and iPad however, you can automatically verify CAPTCHAs, and skip them entirely. Rather than be annoyed by CAPTCHAs, if you’re on a modern version of iOS and iPadOS you can skip and bypass CAPTCHAs on the web.

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Homebrew is a fantastic package manager for the command line on Mac, but something that is perhaps less fantastic for some individuals is that Homebrew defaults to enabling ‘analytics’, which means your Mac will transmit data from your Mac to Homebrew about Homebrew usage. No thanks!

The Homebrew analytics include everything from user agent, Google Analytics version and other information, and a Homebrew analytics tracking ID and user ID. The data is said to be anonymous, but as we all know about metadata, “anonymous” is relative, and perhaps not so anonymous after all. So if you are a Homebrew user, you may be interested in disabling the analytics feature, which is turned on by default on every Homebrew installation.

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Pixelmator is arguably the best photo and image editing app for Mac, other than the much more expensive Photoshop anyway. If you bought Pixelmator Classic some time ago, and you haven’t yet went for the upgrade to Pixelmator Pro (or perhaps you don’t need the new features), then you may be interested in downloading and installing Pixelmator Classic onto a Mac, whether it’s a new M1/M2 Mac, or a clean install on an older Mac.

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Want to get ahead of the curve and run watchOS 10 beta on your Apple Watch? WatchOS 10 features freshly redesigned apps, a new smart stacks feature, new watch faces, and other refinements to the Apple Watch operating system, and some advanced users may be interested in trying out the newest watchOS on their wrists.

Much like how anyone can now install iOS 17 beta, iPadOS 17 beta, or MacOS Sonoma beta, any user who enrolls their device in the free Apple Developer program can also run watchOS 10 beta on their watch. Of course, it’s an early developer beta, so users should have full expectation of bugs, quirks, suboptimal performance, and potential compatibility issues, making this really only appropriate for advanced users who understand the ramifications of using beta system software on any device, let alone their watch (which can not be downgraded).

We’re going to walk through the steps on installing watchOS 10 beta onto Apple Watch, using the free developer beta program.

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Apple has released MacOS Monterey 12.6.7 and MacOS Big Sur 11.7.8 for Mac users who are continuing to run those versions of MacOS, rather than Ventura.

Additionally, macOS Ventura 13.4.1, iOS 16.5.1, iPadOS 16.5.1, iOS/iPadOS 15.7.7, and updates to watchOS are available.

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iOS 15.7.7 and iPadOS 15.7.7 have been released for older iPhone and iPad models that are not running iOS/iPadOS 16, of which iOS 16.5.1 and iPadOS 16.5.1 updates were just released.

iOS/iPadOS 15.7.7 include important security updates, and are recommended to install.

Separately, Apple has also released updates for iOS 16.5.1, iPadOS 16.5.1, MacOS Ventura 13.4.1, macOS Monterey 12.6.7, macOS Big Sur 11.7.8, and updates to watchOS.

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Apple has released iOS 17 beta 2 and iPadOS 17 beta 2 to users actively participating in the beta testing programs for system software.

Anyone can install iOS 17 beta or install iPadOS 17 beta right now by enrolling in the Apple Developer program, which is now free.

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The second beta version of MacOS Sonoma has been released to users enrolled in the developer beta testing program for Apple system software.

MacOS Sonoma, versioned as macOS 14, includes a variety of new features for Mac, like new screen savers, a new Lock Screen, the reintroduction of widgets to the Mac, new Messages features, Safari Profiles support which allows for unique profiles for things like work and school, FaceTime video messages support, and many other various changes and improvements.

Technically, any user can enroll their Apple ID to participate in the Apple Developer program which gives them access to be able to install MacOS Sonoma beta on a Mac, but this should be limited to advanced users, and for secondary hardware. A public beta will be released next month.

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