Something interesting happened to me this past year: My Mac ceased to have any use for me as a document scanner. The iPhone took it over. Now, in fairness, I don't do any really high-resolution scanning. For me scanning is pure utility: Needing to legibly digitize real-world documents. But it's an evolution. And so much of how we use our devices is about evolution. Even a couple of...
How your Mail app is set to load remote content can give e-mail scammers valuable information about you. A setting in Apple's Mail app for OS X that makes it more convenient to view your emails may also be telling scammers that you're reading your emails. To make your Mac more secure from potential threats, you can disable the remote content loading function. Follow along and we'll...
Don't leave your gorgeous new Apple Watch to charge out on the table. Get it up and charging with these great stands. Whenever a new Apple product comes out, accessories are sure to follow. Many of us are going to want to display or set out the Apple Watch for charging. Here are our favorite stands to help show it off more elegantly. Most of these are coming within a few weeks of the...
The popular Mac text editor BBEdit also supports EditorConfig in this new release. BBEdit's a powerful tool for Mac-based app and web developers. The latest release makes it even better. What's more, it's a recommended download for current users. Other improvements include a new CSS/SCSS language module, Arrange submenu and Save All In Window command. There's more besides. Git is a...
Ever get the sense that OS X Yosemite isn't quite fully baked? That's how I feel especially when I depend on Continuity features like Instant Hotspot. Continuity in Yosemite and iOS 8 makes the experience of using a Mac and iOS device much more fluid and seamless. You can take and make phone calls from your Mac, continue composing an email on your phone with a swipe, read a web page on...
Is your Mac's Bluetooth menu a mess of devices you no longer use? You can clean it up almost instantly! Bluetooth makes it easy to connect external devices like speakers, mice, keyboards, even printers and other computers. If your Bluetooth menu is a mess and you'd like to clean it up, here's an easy way. Pairing Bluetooth devices to your Mac is usually an effortless affair: Put the...
So much for the "post-PC era:" Apple generated more revenue from Macs this quarter than iPads. A number of factors seem to be aiding the growth. Despite a contracting worldwide PC market, Apple managed to buck the trend — once again — by selling more Macs than it ever has during its second quarter: More than 4.5 million Macs in total. What's more, Macs beat iPads in terms of revenue....
Apple has set up a donation page to help facilitate donations to the American Red Cross, flagged to help the victims of the recent Nepal earthquake. The nation of Nepal has suffered a devastating earthquake that has killed thousands. Apple has set up a donation page on iTunes to help raise money for American Red Cross relief efforts in the region. The quake struck before noon local...
I'm an unabashed fan of mechanical keyboards, so you might assume that I don't like the new tech in the MacBook, but you'd be wrong. I love it. I want to see it everywhere, especially on the desktop. I'm smitten with two parts of the new MacBook: The keyboard and the new trackpad. I'd love to see them available for desktop Macs too. The MacBook keyboard uses a new switch mechanism...
Some owners of Mac laptops have noticed a "stain" problem on their displays. Are you having this problem? Reader Bhaskar Bhat recently alerted me to a web site that describes a problem I've had with my early 2013 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro. I thought I'd pass it along in case you've had the same issue. Staingate.org has been set up with photos and a form you can fill out, if you so...
If you're tired of your Mac not being ready when you are in the morning, or if you want to save electricity, you can set your Mac to start up and shut down on demand. As power efficient as modern Macs have become, it's still a waste of electricity to have a Mac operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week if you don't need to. That's why Apple's built in some wake, sleep, start up and shut...
Have you used Valve's popular Steam service to install and play games on your Mac? If so, you may be wasting a lot of hard drive space. Steam makes it easy to download and play great Mac games. Steam hides your downloaded games, though, which makes it easy to waste dozens or hundreds of GB of hard drive space. Here's how to reclaim it. J.R. writes: I just ran DaisyDisk on my Mac...
Some Apple customers' resistance to going to an actual Apple Store is a telling problem for the most profitable retailer in the United States. My weekend job is working at a local independent Apple reseller. For the past week or two we've had a steady trickle of customers who have come in looking for the Apple Watch. We have to tell them we don't have it — the only places where you can...
Linear Tape-Open (LTO) is excellent for long-term data archival and storage. A new 2.5 TB LTO drive combines Thunderbolt and USB 3.0. If you're an IT manager or responsible for backing up data for long-term archival, you may be interested in a new LTO drive from mLogic called the mTape Connect. Priced at $4,499, the mTape Connect is squarely aimed at the enterprise market,...
Porsche is the latest automobile brand to throw their hat in the ring with support for Apple's CarPlay technology. Which Porsche models will be getting CarPlay support and when is still an open question. But the luxury brand's logo has been added to Apple's own information on CarPlay, and seems to have snuck onto the web site in the past few weeks. The luxury car maker was added to...
If you're an old school Mac gamer looking to relive the days even before Apple was doomed the first time, here's a game to check out. Old school Mac gamers may remember the name Ray Dunakin. The developer made Mac games back in the early 1990s, released as shareware. Now one of his hits is available for download from the Mac App Store. Dunakin developed classic graphical adventure...
If you're looking for a cool way to show off your love for Apple, a custom t-shirt is a fun way to do it. A-Shirt.com is a t-shirt club that zeroes in specifically on Apple fans looking to show off their love for Apple products and their style. In an e-mail to iMore, A-Shirt founder Cyril Pavillard explained his motivation: It's a project I recently launched from Peru and mixes...
A change to the previous version of Microsoft's AutoUpdate utility caused updates to break in Office 2011 for OS X. A fix is ready for download. AutoUpdate 3.0.5 was installed with the last Office update a few days ago. Microsoft has backed off from the mess it made with a new version of AutoUpdate you can download now. The problem only happens if you're using both the Office 2016...
The First Person Shooter (FPS) genre has been popular since the advent of games like Marathon and Doom. Looking for some for the Mac? Here you go. There's certainly no shortage of them for the Mac, although I'll readily admit you can't get all the same ones you can get for the PC. Our friends at MacGamerHQ.com have rounded up their list of ten of the best. MacGamerHQ has restricted...
I found that I absolutely love empty Apple Stores, and I hope that you do too. Shut up, you vulgar little tongue cluckers. There is nothing not fabulous about being able to walk into a serene, austere Apple Store and check out the new gear without having to stand in line and feel boxed in. Disastrous product launch? Bullshit. I liked being able to book a Watch try-on...