When you type on a Mac, how attentive are you to the characters your computer spits out? If you touch type, are your fingers aware of the pips that help them find their home on the keyboard? The Home Row On a U.S. English QWERTY keyboard layout, typing professionals encourage users to place [...]
If you’ve been following Mac Mondays for a while, you might realize this is my first post about Apple Watch. Apple made a significant shift to the user experience in watchOS 10, so this feels like a good opportunity to help users get acquainted. With the new version comes more consistent interaction with an [...]
Contacts is one of the Mac’s core applications for organizing and preparing to communicate. It’s been part of the Mac since 2001 (originally introduced as Address Book) and remained largely unchanged. Don’t let that concern you, though, as Contacts has been fairly well-designed and effective throughout its decades of service. While Contacts lacks some [...]
I spend very little time managing my contacts, but I know that the Contacts app on a Mac is more efficient in most respects than the same app on iPhone or iPad. It’s easy to organize contacts in groups, merge duplicates at will, delete contacts I no longer need, and even make smart groups [...]
This series of tips, mostly new to iOS 17, continues with some excellent additions to the operating system. How many of these have you already heard of? While some features are advertised by Apple during release events, others go unmentioned and are often randomly discovered by users. Some of these are undocumented by Apple [...]
Following last week’s edition, this second helping of iOS 17 tips includes a little history of map features, a longtime-coming in the clock app, and a menu interface capability I just figured out. Enjoy! Offline Maps One of the early advantages of Apple Maps was that it was built using vectors, whereas Google [...]
Have you upgraded to iOS 17 yet? Any iPhone since the Xs and Xr is compatible. There are a slew of new features that can help you be more productive, flexible, and focused. If you’d rather wait until the first major update, I’m told iOS 17.1 will likely arrive by early next week. [...]
Do you use Google Docs or any of Google’s other office apps (Sheets, Slides, etc.)? They’re great for collaboration, as I shared in Cloud Storage. If so, you likely have found yourself on Google Drive, faced with a possibly confusing hodgepodge of interface elements. There are documents, folders, and computers (oh my!), plus shared, starred, [...]
We’re not talking about what happens when, in rage, you throw your phone across the room. Rather, what’s worth considering when traveling outside your home area to a domestic or international location where your primary cellular carrier lacks service? Over the last few weeks, I have been helping my parents and others navigate the [...]
On an upcoming episode of Mac Geek Gab, you’ll hear a tip from Allison recommending not to follow the common Internet security recommendation to regularly change passwords, except when enforced. In 2016, while on leave from Carnegie Mellon University, Lorrie Faith Cranor was the FTC’s chief technologist. She published an article indicating that such password changes are [...]
