News, Tips, and Tricks
For Mac, iPad, iPhone, Apple TV, and Apple Watch.
What Is The Best Hard Drive to Use for Your Backups?
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...
Fix a Frozen Finder with This Quick Tip
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...
Apple Introduces New iPad with Apple Pencil Support, Updates iWork
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...
Apple Pay Is Faster, Easier, More Secure, and More Private Than Using Credit Cards
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...
iOS 11.3 Introduces New Battery Health Feature, Business Chat, and More
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...
Here’s How to Lock Down Your Facebook Privacy Settings—to the Extent Possible
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...
10 Things You Need to Know about Apple’s New HomePod Speaker
After months of anticipation, Apple’s new HomePod smart speaker finally shipped in mid-February. As of March 19th, Computer Advantage will be officially selling the HomePod. Reviews of its audio quality have been positive, and for the most part, it works both as...
Block Telemarketing Calls Automatically on Your iPhone
Junk calls are one of the great annoyances of the modern world. You’re minding your own business when your iPhone vibrates in your pocket. You pull it out, curious as to who’s calling, but don’t recognize the number. You may notice that it’s in the same exchange as...
Apple’s Mac Reminders App Is More Capable Than You May Realize
With Apple’s productivity apps like Calendar, Contacts, Notes, and Reminders, which look and work pretty much the same on the Mac and in iOS, what you see is largely what you get. Particularly in iOS, they tend not to have much in the way of hidden depths. With...
Apple’s Family Sharing Simplifies Sharing Purchases and Managing Kid Capabilities
Family life is all about togetherness, but keeping track of who’s doing what when can be tough. Apple’s Family Sharing service makes it easy to share apps, media, and more within a family of up to six members, and it provides a few helpful digital housekeeping...
Call 911! Or, with an iPhone or Apple Watch, Invoke Emergency SOS.
Have you ever needed to call emergency services from your or someone else’s iPhone? Almost by definition, such calls take place at stressful times, and it can be hard to remember what to do. Or, if you’ve been in an accident, it might be difficult or impossible to...
Create and Name Reminders Lists to Use Them Via Siri
Do you create reminders with Siri on the iPhone? Those reminders are automatically added to your default list, which you set in Settings > Reminders > Default List. That’s great generally—“Hey Siri, remind me to update watchOS tonight at 11 PM”—but less good...