Apple has announced an event for March 8, 2022, at 10 AM PST. The event will be virtual, taking place at the Steve Jobs theater from the Apple Park Cupertino campus.

Rumors surrounding the lead-up to the event suggest a round of updated hardware is expected to be unveiled, including updates to the iPad Air, 13″ MacBook Pro, Mac mini, and perhaps iPhone SE. Of course these are just rumors so what actually is announced remains to be seen.

It is reasonable to expect that iOS 15.4, iPadOS 15.4, and macOS Monterey 12.3 will be released to the public on or near the event date. Those new operating systems include support for Universal Control on Mac and iPad, a variety of new Emoji icons, support for iPhone using Face ID with a mask, an EU Covid digital vaccine pass, and more.

Those interested in watching the Apple event can go to Apple.com at 10am on March 8 to watch live, or go to this YouTube link, or use the YouTube embed below.

Some privacy conscious WhatsApp users may which to enable disappearing messages for a particular text message thread or conversation. By turning on the disappearing messages feature, the messages in the chat will vanish automatically from all parties in the chat, at the specified time frame.

This feature can be useful for many obvious reasons, so let’s see how you can make messages disappearing automatically in WhatsApp on iPhone, iPad, or any other device.

Read more »

Apple has released the fifth beta versions of macOS Monterey 12.3, iOS 15.4, iPadOS 15.4, watchOS 8.5, and tvOS 15.4 to users enrolled in the beta testing programs for device system software.

The new beta versions continue to refine the beta experience, and are available now to download for developers and public beta users.

Read more »

If you’re creeped out or bothered by the Street View cameras for Google Maps and Apple Maps taking pictures of your house, you can request for Google Maps or Apple Maps to hide, blur, and censor the address. When the request has been approved, the home address gets pixelated or blurred, effectively blocking any identifying imagery of the house.

Read more »

Get a fancy new MacBook Pro 14″ or 16″ model with the powerful M1 Pro or M1 Max chip? These are feature packed laptops with plenty of oomph, and there are also some unique aspects to the hardware.

Let’s take a look at some specific tips and tricks for the new MacBook Pro 14″ and MacBook Pro 15″ models, with either M1 Pro or M1 Max chips.

Read more »

The Mac includes a command line interface to run and interact with Shortcuts app. This could be potentially useful to some macOS users who rely on the Shortcuts app for scripting and automation, and who spend a lot of time in the Terminal

The currently available shortcuts command line flags include ‘run’, ‘list’, ‘view’, and ‘sign’, but note that with the exception of ‘list’, they will all launch the Shortcuts app in the GUI on the Mac.

Read more »

The latest versions of WhatsApp for Mac and Windows allow you to use WhatsApp on the computer without having a phone that is connected to the internet. For example, you can continue to use WhatsApp on a Mac while your iPhone is updating system software and offline during that process, or you can use WhatsApp on the computer and turn off your phone if you just want some peace and quiet. This works exactly the same with WhatsApp on Mac, Windows PC, iPhone, and Android, but of course we’ll be focusing on the Mac and iPhone side of things here.

Read more »

Picture-in-Picture video mode is a popular feature that allows you to watch a video in an overlay panel while doing other stuff on your iPhone or iPad. While using Picture in Picture with YouTube should work for most users as expected (even without the YouTube Premium subscription), not everyone can get it working. Fortunately, we’ve found a workaround for getting Picture in Picture mode working on iPhone or iPad, by using Shortcuts and a third party app.

Read more »

The Apple HomePod Mini and HomePod is quite popular, and for many users it’s their first smart speaker. If you’re new to these devices, you may be unfamiliar with how some of the basics works, like playing music on HomePod mini.

Read more »

Have you ever wanted to send a confidential email, or an email that expires after a while? With Gmail for iPhone and iPad, you can easily do just that, choosing to send confidential emails that are passcode protected, and that expire in a set amount of time after they reach the recipients inbox. Additionally, the confidential emails can’t be forwarded, copied, or printed, or downloaded. Sound useful? Let’s see how this works in the Gmail app for iPhone and iPad.

Read more »

Some Mac users use bootable install USB drives for updating or installing MacOS Monterey onto a computer. If you’re wondering how to make a bootable macOS Monterey installer drive, we’ll walk through the process.

This is generally for more advanced users, typically who wish to use a bootable installer drive for erasing and formatting a Mac, clean installing, troubleshooting purposes, or updating multiple Macs to macOS Monterey without having to re-download the installer. For most users, the simplest way to install Monterey is the standard upgrade path.

Read more »

Beta testers in the Apple system software programs will find iOS 15.4 beta 4, iPadOS 15.4 beta 4, and macOS Monterey 12.3 beta 4 available to test on their enrolled devices.

Read more »

Low Power Mode allows you to prolong the battery life of a MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, or MacBook, by reducing energy usage on the device to optimize the battery performance. This is a fantastic feature for Mac laptop users on the go, since an unplugged laptop is only as useful as it’s battery life.

Mac laptops already get pretty good battery life (particularly the M1 series and newer), but with Low Power Mode you can get even more usage out of a MacBook, and it’s done all behind the scenes through software optimizations.

Read more »

If you’re looking to browse the web with a bit more anonymity and privacy than usual, the Brave browser offers a unique feature going beyond standard private browsing modes; and that is private browsing with TOR.

Read more »

If you have a bunch of automations set up on the HomePod, chances are that over time you may have some automations that you eventually want to turn off, perhaps to avoid them functioning on a particular day or time. It’s easy to temporarily turn off a HomePod or HomePod mini automation.

Read more »

As the Brave web browser gains popularity, Brave users and privacy-centric Mac users may wish to adjust the default web browser in macOS to Brave. That’s super easy to do on the Mac, so let’s check out how it works.

Read more »

Want to burn a CD on your modern Mac with macOS Monterey or Big Sur with the Music app? You can do that!

Yes indeed, you can rip a CD on your good old modern Macintosh computer, so crawl out of your cave and dust off your caveman clubs, fellow troglodytes, because we are going to learn how to burn a music or audio CD on the Mac.

For the unfamiliar out there, a CD, which stands for Compact Disc, is a form of physical media that was very popular in the 1990’s and early 2000’s, before the days of streaming music over your iPhone from Spotify or Apple Music took over. “Burning a CD” means basically copying a playlist made from music files in the music app to the CD, so that you can play it in a CD player. If this sounds like something you’re interested in, read along!

Read more »

Have a bunch of Terminal windows open on your Mac that’d you like to merge into a single tabbed window? No problem, you can stop juggling several different terminal windows and get them all sorted out into a nice and easy to manage single tabbed window, thanks to a handy feature built into the Terminal app.

Read more »