by Marilyn | Jul 16, 2021 | Article, How-To, iPad, iPhone, Mac, Mail, productivity
Complaining about getting too much email is like complaining about bad traffic—we brought it upon ourselves, and while it’s impossible to escape entirely, it’s worth knowing how to reduce it. Apple is fully cognizant of the issue, too, and has built features into the... 
by Marilyn | Jun 22, 2021 | Article, Explainer, iOS 14, iPadOS 14, privacy
You’ve likely seen mention of the dispute between Apple and Facebook. It revolves around App Tracking Transparency (ATT), a technology Apple released in iOS 14.5. The goal of ATT is to give iPhone and iPad users more control over the extent to which app makers can... 
by Marilyn | Jun 17, 2021 | Apple Card, Family Sharing, Tip
Apple did a good job rethinking some aspects of credit card use with the Apple Card, but one omission was the inability to share it with other family members. With the new Apple Card Family, once everyone has upgraded to iOS 14.6, you can add members of your Family... 
by Marilyn | Jun 16, 2021 | Article, customization, FaceTime, iOS 15, iPad, iPadOS 15, iPhone, Mac, Monterey, News, privacy, productivity, Siri, watchOS 8, widget
At its Worldwide Developer Conference keynote on June 7th, Apple shared details about what we can expect to see later this year in macOS 12 Monterey, iOS 15, iPadOS 15, watchOS 8, tvOS 15, and HomePod Software 15. It was a firehose of announcements, but one thing... 
by Marilyn | Jun 7, 2021 | Article, Dropbox, Explainer, Google, Google Docs, Google Drive, iCloud, iCloud Drive
People talk about “the cloud” all the time these days, but what do they really mean? There’s no agreed-on definition, which can render some conversations nearly inscrutable. We can’t pretend to have the final answer—if there will ever be such a thing—but here’s how we... 
by Marilyn | Jun 3, 2021 | AirTag, Article, Bluetooth, Explainer, iOS 14, iPhone, Ultra Wideband
Apple’s new AirTag tracking device is an amazing bit of technology—it’s an elegant disc about the size of a stack of four US quarters that communicates its location with other Apple devices using Bluetooth and Ultra Wideband. Pair an AirTag with your iPhone and put it... 
by Marilyn | Jun 3, 2021 | Apple Pencil, Article, How-To, iOS, iPad, iPhone, Mac, PDF, Preview, productivity
Over the last decade, and particularly during the last year of pandemic life, documents have become more likely to arrive in email or as downloads than on paper. If you need to return a signed document on paper, it’s easy to print and sign it before popping it in the... 
by Marilyn | Jun 2, 2021 | ad blocker, Article, Explainer, privacy, productivity, Web browser
Typically, we like to help you solve problems in these articles. But there’s one problem we all face that has no good solution: ads on Web pages. Let us explain the background, after which you can decide how you want to proceed. Put simply, advertising is the economic... 
by Marilyn | May 27, 2021 | File Sharing, iPad, iPhone, Mac, privacy, Security, Tip
Given their integration into the Mac’s Finder, it can be easy to forget that online file sharing services like Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive can be accessed using a Web browser by anyone with your username and password. Obviously, you... 
by Marilyn | May 24, 2021 | Mac, Security, Tip
If you’re using QuickBooks Online with the service’s Mac app to manage your business’s accounting, you may have seen a message like the one below announcing that Intuit has stopped updating the QuickBooks Online app. This doesn’t affect your QuickBooks Online account,... 
by Marilyn | May 21, 2021 | accessibility, Big Sur, customization, Mac, menu bar, Tip
In macOS 11 Big Sur, Apple went back to a design direction from the earliest days of Mac OS X: a translucent menu bar. Since its color changes depending on the desktop picture, many people aren’t enamored of it (left, below). Luckily, reverting to the traditional... 
by Marilyn | May 20, 2021 | iOS, Tip, Troubleshooting, updates
If you’ve turned on automatic App Updates in Settings > App Store on your iPhone or iPad, you might wonder how you’d know if an app was updated or what changed. To find that information, open the App Store app and tap your avatar icon in the upper-right corner.... 
by Marilyn | May 19, 2021 | Article, business, Explainer, Hardware, maintenance, upgrade
Have you heard the term technical debt? It’s what you incur whenever you delay upgrading software and hardware for too long. It’s like forgetting to brush your teeth regularly and putting off dental checkups. There may be no immediate downside, but the ongoing... 
by Marilyn | May 18, 2021 | Article, customization, How-To, iPad, iPhone, Mac, productivity, videoconferencing
After a long day of video calls, you might feel like your brain has been wrung out like a wet washcloth—we certainly do. It’s exhausting to stare into a computer for hours every day while participating in meetings or classes. This condition is called Zoom fatigue, and... 
by Marilyn | May 17, 2021 | privacy, Tip
So you’ve gotten your COVID-19 vaccination. Congratulations, and thank you for nudging the planet closer to the herd immunity needed for life to return to normal! It’s a good idea to take a photo of your card as a backup before filing it with your other important... 