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Avoid Inclement Weather by Enabling Notifications in iOS 15’s Weather App
Thanks to Apple’s 2020 acquisition of weather company Dark Sky, the iPhone’s Weather app has learned some new tricks in iOS 15. (It still isn’t available on the iPad, oddly.) Most obvious is its addition of weather maps that can show precipitation, temperature, and air quality. More subtle are the notifications that can aler... Read more -
Shrink Apps to Prevent the MacBook Pro Notch from Obscuring App Controls
The new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models feature a camera housing built into the screen, resulting in a notch like that on the iPhone. Most developers are updating their apps to ensure that no controls or menu bar items appear blocked or hidden by the notch, but if you use an older app that doesn’t play nicely with the notch, there’s a fix. Quit the app if it’s running, select it in the F... Read more -
FaceTime Gains Cool New Features in Apple’s Latest Operating Systems
It’s no exaggeration to say that videoconferencing went mainstream during the pandemic. However, Apple’s FaceTime didn’t stack up well against Zoom and others due to its emulation of the telephone call experience, questionable interface decisions, and lack of cross-platform compatibility. However, with iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS 12 Monterey, Apple has nearly brought FaceTime into feature pari... Read more -
Should You Use Apple’s New Password Manager in iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS 12 Monterey?
We continually recommend that every Apple user rely on a password manager like 1Password for creating, managing, and entering passwords securely. What we haven’t encouraged as heavily is relying on Apple’s built-in password management features. Although they’re free, they’ve been too basic and hard to use over the years, relyin... Read more -
Apple’s Evolution of Do Not Disturb Helps You Focus
Between texts, alarms, reminders, calls, and myriad other notifications on our iPhones, iPads, and Macs, it’s a miracle we get anything done at all. To free us from this onslaught, Apple previously provided Do Not Disturb, which let you set times during which you could be free from interruption. In iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS 12 Monterey, Apple has gone even further. Do Not Disturb is now c... Read more -
Pay Attention to the iPhone’s Emergency SOS Auto Call Feature
Did you know that pressing and holding the side button and one of the volume buttons on an iPhone 8 or later brings up a screen that lets you power your iPhone off, show your medical ID, and invoke Emergency SOS? (On earlier iPhones, press the side or top button five times.) Slide Emergency SOS, and your iPhone will immediately call emergency services, which could be lifesaving in a real emerge... Read more -
Print Mailing Labels for Your Holiday Cards with Apple’s Contacts App
If mailing your holiday cards (which you designed in Photos with a plug-in like Motif or Mimeo Photos, right?) is made harder by having to write addresses on envelopes, ... Read more -
Need to Resize Images in Various Ways? Give Preview a Try
Even those of us who don’t work with graphics professionally often find ourselves needing to resize images. Perhaps you have a large square headshot, but the site to which you’re uploading requires it to be exactly 100 by 100 pixels. Or maybe you have an iPhone 13 Pro photo that’s 4032 by 3024, but you need the long side to be 1280 pixels and the short side to be 800 pixels. You might even need... Read more -
Live Text Digitizes Text in Photos in iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS 12 Monterey
The most magical feature of Apple’s latest crop of operating systems—iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS 12 Monterey—may be Live Text. You’re probably familiar with the concept of optical character recognition (OCR), which turns all the text on a scanned page into normal text you can select, copy, and edit. Live Text does exactly that in Photos, Safari, and the Camera app, plus lets you search ... Read more -
With Apple Watch Faces, Too Much Choice Can Be Confusing
The Apple Watch has a lot to offer older people, including heart rate monitoring, atrial fibrillation detection, fall detection, and electrocardiogram recording. But if you are—or are helping someone who is—of the generation where watches once did nothing beyond telling the time, too many options can be overwhelming. Adding to the confusion is how easy it is to create and accidentally swipe bet... Read more