• December 29, 2020

    Pinch to Zoom in All Photos View in iOS 14

    Photos in iOS 14 provides four views of your library: Years, Months, Days, and All Photos. For the first three, Photos picks representative images that may not include particular shots you’re looking for. The All Photos view shows everything, but it can be overwhelming. What’s not apparent is that you can navigate All Photos more easily by pinching in to shrink the thumbnails and then pinching ... Read more
  • December 21, 2020

    A Quick Shortcut to Create an Instant Slideshow from a Folder of Images

    You probably know that you can select an image in the Finder and press the Space bar to preview it in a Quick Look window. And you may know that you can use the arrow keys to preview other files in the same folder without closing and reopening the Quick Look window. But did you know that if you select multiple images in the Finder and hold down the Option key when pressing the Space bar, the Fi... Read more
  • December 17, 2020

    Did You Know That Your iPhone Can “Name That Tune”?

    Several years ago, Apple bought a company called Shazam, which made an app that identified songs by listening to the music playing nearby. Since then, Apple has built Shazam into Siri in iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS. Most recently, Apple added it to Control Center in iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 as well, so you can invoke it without speaking. To use Shazam, whenever you want to identify a song that’... Read more
  • December 10, 2020

    So, Are Apple’s New M1-Based Macs Any Good?

    In November, Apple unveiled its new M1 chip and three new Macs that use it: the MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, and Mac miniRead more
  • December 8, 2020

    Take a Few Minutes to Lock Down Your Facebook Privacy Settings

    Even beyond its often controversial behavior in the 2020 US presidential election, Facebook continually makes news headlines for its numerous privacy and security problems. Most notable, of course, were the 50 million Facebook profiles ga... Read more
  • December 7, 2020

    Want to Send Holiday Cards This Year? Try Building Them with Motif for Photos

    In 2018, Apple dropped support for creating print projects from within Photos, including greeting cards, calendars, and books. Instead, Apple allowed other print-service companies to build Photos Project extensions that gave users the same sort of capabilities. At first, they didn’t match up with what Apple had previously provided, but they’ve improved over time. It’s the holiday card season... Read more
  • December 1, 2020

    Overwhelmed by Apps? Use iOS 14’s App Library to Manage Your Home Screens

    Many of us have been using iPhones for years, and apps we bought or downloaded long ago molder in corners of our Home screens. Even if you haven’t played Flappy Bird in years, its pixelated icon still stares glumly at you every time you peer at its Home screen, and it’s far from alone. To find out how many apps you have, go to Settings > General > About and look next to Applications. So w... Read more
  • November 30, 2020

    Use These Settings to Show or Hide Filename Extensions

    On the Mac, nearly every file has an extension, a set of characters after a period that indicates what type of file it is and determines which app opens it. So, .png indicates a PNG graphic that opens in Preview by default, .pages denotes a Pages document, and .docx identifies a file as belonging to and opening in Microsoft Word. Plus, the extension for all applicati... Read more
  • November 26, 2020

    The Best Apple-Related Gifts for 2020

    The holiday shopping season is fast approaching! Given the significant stresses placed on society’s fulfillment, distribution, and delivery systems by the pandemic, we recommend you start thinking about your holiday gift-giving sooner rather than later. Even Apple, which generally does an excellent job predicting demand and shipping products quickly, has been suffering from delays this year. Bu... Read more
  • November 23, 2020

    How to Make Sure Your iPhone Doesn’t Make Noise in the Night

    You likely know that you can use Do Not Disturb to prevent random notifications on your iPhone from waking you at night—it’s easy to set a Do Not Disturb schedule for your usual sleeping hours. Another setting in there is important but often overlooked. If you ever use your iPhone during those Do Not Disturb hours—perhaps to read a book while a partner or roommate is asleep—you don’t want it to... Read more