by Lucy McAdams | May 25, 2018 | Finder, Mac, Tip, troubleshooting
Finder freezes. They shouldn’t happen at all, and they don’t happen often, but it’s not unheard of for your Mac’s Finder to freeze, freak out, or otherwise stop responding properly. To bring it back to life, hold down the Option key, click and hold the Finder icon in...
by Lucy McAdams | May 23, 2018 | iPhone, Parenting, Restrictions
Smartphone addiction is real. Do you check your iPhone before you get out of bed? During family dinners? Right before you go to sleep? Constantly during the day even when you’re on vacation? If you—or your family members—feel that you’re disappearing into your phone...
by Lucy McAdams | May 21, 2018 | Backup, Mac, troubleshooting
Backing up your Mac is like flossing your teeth: everyone knows they should do it every night, but too many people never get around to it. Unlike flossing, once you set up backups, they don’t require daily attention. And turning on Apple’s Time Machine backup feature...
by Lucy McAdams | May 18, 2018 | Email, iOS, Mac
Don’t get us wrong—email is great. But sometimes there’s too much of it at work, as colleagues share information too broadly or chime in unnecessarily, and as marketing offers and other junk fills your inbox. Over the past few years, lots of organizations—including...
by Lucy McAdams | May 16, 2018 | iOS, Siri, Tip, troubleshooting
Siri is supposed to be a competent voice assistant, but sometimes Siri can’t even pronounce your own name correctly! Luckily, it’s easy to fix Siri’s pronunciation for any name. Just say to Siri, “Learn how to pronounce Jill Kresock.” (Siri defaults to “krehsock”...
by Lucy McAdams | Apr 30, 2018 | How-To, Internet, iOS, iPhone, Mac, Personal Hotspot, Wi-Fi
Finding good Internet access for your Mac or Wi-Fi-only iPad while traveling can be maddening. Look in your Wi-Fi menu while sitting in an airport and you’ll see a bunch of networks, most of which require a password or won’t connect for other reasons. It isn’t any...
by Lucy McAdams | Apr 27, 2018 | AirPods, Apple TV, Apple Watch, iPad
Looking for that awesome gift? Birthdays are when many of us start wracking our brains for gift ideas for our loved ones—or for our own wish lists. If your special someone is an Apple user, we have a few suggestions. Chargers, Cables, and Adapters, Oh My! We know that...
by Lucy McAdams | Apr 25, 2018 | Mac
If you’re over 40, you probably remember the point in The Wizard of Oz where the movie switches from black-and-white to Technicolor (and if not, go see it!). It wasn’t the first color film, but the vibrant images of Dorothy’s ruby slippers, the yellow brick road, and...
by Lucy McAdams | Apr 23, 2018 | Mac, Tip
Dragging files and folders around is core to the Mac experience—drag a file from one folder to another to move it, drag a folder from one drive to another to copy it. But did you know that if you hold down the Option key while dragging a file in the Finder, you’ll get...
by Lucy McAdams | Apr 20, 2018 | Calendar, iOS, Tip, troubleshooting
When it comes to calendars, we’re mostly concerned with the future. But sometimes you want to travel back in time too, to see when you had that doctor appointment or last went to the gym. If you scroll back in the Calendar app in iOS, you might discover, to your...
by Lucy McAdams | Apr 18, 2018 | Battery, Health, Messages, privacy, Safari, troubleshooting
At the end of March, Apple released updates to all four of its operating systems, but iOS 11.3 was the most notable. It boasts a variety of new features and other changes—you can think of it as the midpoint update between iOS 11’s first release and iOS 12, probably...
by Lucy McAdams | Apr 16, 2018 | Apple Pay, iPad, iPhone, privacy, Security
You’ve probably heard of Apple Pay, but have you set it up so you can use it to pay for purchases at checkout? If not, give it a try, since it’s one of those living-in-the future Apple technologies that feels like science fiction every time you use it. Simply put your...
by Lucy McAdams | Apr 13, 2018 | Facebook, How-To, iOS, Mac, privacy, Security
Facebook has dominated the news headlines of late, but not for good reasons. There were the 50 million Facebook profiles gathered for Cambridge Analytica and used in the 2016 presidential election. Facebook has long been scraping call and text message data from...
by Lucy McAdams | Apr 11, 2018 | Apple Pencil, iPad, iWork, Keynote, Numbers, Pages
At a special education event on March 27th, Apple introduced a new 9.7-inch iPad that offers faster performance, support for the Apple Pencil, and a few new camera-related features. The company also released new versions of the iWork apps—Pages, Numbers, and...
by Lucy McAdams | Apr 9, 2018 | iPad, iPad Pro, Smart Keyboard, Tip
If you’re working on an iPad with a physical keyboard—either a Bluetooth keyboard or an iPad Pro with Apple’s Smart Keyboard—there are quite a few keyboard shortcuts you can use to work faster. Many are what you’d guess if you have Mac experience; for instance,...
