Blog

The decision is easier than you might think, because Apple® may be phasing out My Photo Stream. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. For those who still have a choice, which way should you go? Let’s look closer.

CranstonIT is pleased to share with its clients a powerful new workflow automation tool that helps small and medium-sized businesses connect data from different cloud services.

Split View on the Mac helps you focus on your work in one app—perhaps a word processor—while providing access to one other app, like a Web browser. Before, you had to click and hold on the green full-screen button in the upper-left corner of any window. That's all changed.

Are you overwhelmed by email? Is your Inbox filled with promotions, special offers, and the like? These messages aren’t spam but that doesn’t mean you want to hear from them repeatedly.

It’s perhaps one of the most under-appreciated tools on your Mac®. It’s Spotlight®, and it hunts down pretty much anything on your hard drive that you can’t find on your own. And now, with macOS® Catalina, Spotlight is just getting started.

If your Mac is anything like ours, it’s suffering from an infestation of menu bar icons. Sure, the Wi-Fi menu is essential, and many others can be helpful. But if you have too many, or they’re in random order, finding one when you need it can be frustrating.

As you undoubtedly know, TYPING IN ALL CAPS is considered shouting on the Internet. Doesn’t it bug you when you accidentally tap the Caps Lock key and start writing in uppercase?

In your list of conversations in Messages, you probably have lots of people who have generic icons next to their names or numbers. A new feature in iOS 13 lets you share your preferred name and avatar picture with other iMessage users.

Power users like keyboard shortcuts because it’s faster to press a couple of keys than to navigate lengthy menus.

Have you ever seen the dreaded “No Service” label at the top of your iPhone’s screen, even when you’re pretty sure there should be cellular reception?

When Apple® released iOS 13 exclusively for iPhone® (and iPod touch®) last September, it offered many new features that didn’t make headlines — but are quite useful nonetheless. One such feature is Markup tools, a hidden powerhouse, and now more capable and intuitive than ever for adding notations to screenshots and photos.

Every time Apple® releases a new iPhone®, or even an iOS update, the added apps and features put more demands on the device’s battery. Consider, too, that rechargeable batteries in today’s mobile technology are consumable components that degrade over time, and become less capable of holding a charge or delivering optimal performance.

The Datto Networking Appliance offers everything your network needs in a single, compact device. Perfect for small and medium-sized companies, this device ensures your business remains connected and productive during Internet outages with fully integrated 4G LTE Internet failover. The Datto Networking Appliance is now a part of CranstonIT’s managed services commitment to deliver the latest in advanced network security.

Historically, picking a new Wi-Fi network has required you to open the Settings app and tap Wi-Fi, forcing you to unlock your iPhone or switch away from what you were doing.

For many of us, voicemail replaced answering machines, so we don't think of voicemail messages as being something we can save or share.

The next time you buy and set up a new Mac, make sure to migrate data and apps from your previous Mac to it right away during the initial setup.

If you’ve resisted requiring a password on your Mac after it wakes up or comes out of the screen saver because it’s too much work to enter repeatedly, an Apple Watch can make authentication much easier.

As company meetings become more virtual — and as businesses continue to explore new ways to cut costs — the challenge becomes finding the right technology partner to make it all happen. That’s why CranstonIT is pleased to announce its new partnership with Zoom, the leader in modern business video communications.

You would be right if you guessed the iPhone® was Apple’s best-selling product of all time. But would you know what comes next?

Most people have no idea how many digital photos they’ve taken or, even more perplexing, where they are located. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when that search begins.

AirDrop has become a fast and reliable way to transfer data from one iPhone to another that’s nearby.

Did you know that the word for the irrational fear of Friday the 13th is paraskevidekatriaphobia? Neither did we, but what that supposedly unlucky day is good for—whenever it rolls around—is reminding us to test our backup systems.

With the iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, and iPhone 11 Pro Max, Apple changed the way the Camera app’s shutter button works in ways that could cause confusion.

In previous versions of iOS, a scroll bar would appear on the right edge of the screen while you were swiping through a long Web page, email message, or document. Apple has made the scroll bar more helpful, and you’ll want to use it to scroll long pages more quickly than you can with swiping.

If you want to import photos from a device other than an iPhone or iPad and what if you don’t want those images in Photos. Turn to Apple’s Image Capture app.

If you’re experiencing a sporadic problem with your Mac, the sort of thing that happens often enough to be annoying but not so frequently as to be reproducible, allow us to suggest one little-known troubleshooting tip.

The all-new 16-inch MacBook Pro®, Apple’s most powerful and featured-packed notebook ever, has been released.This new MacBook Pro features an immersive 16-inch Retina® display, performance up to 80 percent faster, the latest 8-core processors, the largest battery capacity ever and advanced thermal architecture that enables the system to run at higher power for sustained periods of time.

Once of the fastest ways to communicate an emergency SOS is with your iPhone®. Specifically, it’s by creating a Medical ID using the Health app on your phone.

CranstonIT is pleased to introduce a new partnership that can help transform your WiFi network into a new revenue stream for your company.

For unknown reasons, Apple redesigned the toolbar in the iOS 13 version of Mail.

By default, most iPhones and iPads ship with Apple’s tiny 5-watt power adapters. They work, but not quickly.

A small but welcome new feature of iOS 13 is Driving ETA, which helps you share your estimated time of arrival with a contact whenever you’re navigating with the Maps app.

If your business relies on the power of the Apple® ecosystem, here are two free solutions that help enable next-level turnkey management of all your devices — and save you money in the process.

Are you a fan of Apple’s AirPods, or have you had trouble with them staying in your ears?

Brandon joined CranstonIT in October. He came to us from PureRED, a national marketing communications company with local offices in North Huntingdon.

It won’t surprise anyone that YouTube and Instagram are the most popular apps on the iPhone®. But it might surprise everyone that the iPhone houses the world’s most popular camera.

Apple likes to keep Mac names simple, but that’s not always helpful. For instance, if you want to add RAM to your Mac, it’s not good enough to know that it’s an iMac. Apple likes to keep Mac names simple, but that’s not always helpful. For instance, if you want to add RAM to your Mac, it’s not good enough to know that it’s an iMac.

There are plenty of situations where it makes sense to put a date in a filename, but if you don’t use the right date format, the files may sort in unhelpful ways.

Whenever Apple releases hot new hardware, it’s tempting to order the latest and greatest and then put your old Mac or iPhone® up for sale on a classifieds site like Craigslist. If you do that, be cautious about potential buyers.

Do you use 3D Touch on your iPhone®?

iPadOS 13 debuts with this new generation of iPad Pro®, iPad, iPad mini and iPad Air® devices. iPadOS serves to recognize that iPad continues to grow into its own computing platform. So while iPadOS was built on the same foundation as iOS, it delivers a truly unique and distinct experience for iPad users.

Few people get so little email that they want an iPhone® notification for every message that rolls in. But many of us have just a couple of people—our personal VIPs—whose messages are important enough to warrant an alert.

Apple’s release of macOS® 10.15 Catalina is not simply another OS X® refresh, but instead a robust version packed with new features that continue to push the OS forward.

CranstonIT is pleased to offer its clients a modernized and more intuitive approach to small business physical security. Verkada builds enterprise security cameras that combine cutting-edge technology with intelligent cloud-based software. With its line of indoor and outdoor D-Series cameras, Verkada eliminates the need for local servers, firewall equipment and network video recorders — reducing complexity and lowering operating costs.

If you have a friend whom you refer to only by his nickname, it can be annoying to feel like you should use his proper first name when adding him to Contacts.

macOS 10.15 Catalina update has released, should you update?

Forward Delete still exists on Apple’s Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad, but it’s missing from the Magic Keyboard and all Mac laptop keyboards.

Do you have a document that you open regularly, perhaps from your Desktop? If you’d like to make it stand out from other documents, why not give it a custom icon?

The new iPhone® 11 is here. With three new models from which to choose, Apple® has upgraded performance, design and functionality over previous versions.

On September 19th, iOS 13 will be here, with promising new ways the iPhone® will impact your daily life. So what can we expect?

Email is the ultimate necessary evil. We can’t live with it, we can’t live without it, we can’t kill it. By 2021, according to data research expert Statista, humans worldwide will send and receive 320 billion emails — every single day.

iOS 13 update is fast approaching, should you update?

It’s extremely uncommon for a Mac to freeze or crash these days, but it can happen. What should you do if your Mac locks up and becomes completely unresponsive to the mouse and keyboard?

Is your Apple Watch® failing to turn on its screen when you raise it, display notifications from your iPhone, or even update the time zone? Find out how to check your settings.

Do you sometimes find it difficult to read articles on your iPhone because of ads, banners, extraneous layout, social media icons, and too-small fonts? We certainly do, and there’s often a quick fix for the myriad ills of modern Web pages: Safari® Reader.

Storage issues are increasingly frustrating small businesses. Without fast and easy access to data, companies experience poor customer service, lost sales opportunities, poor team collaboration and an overall lack of operating efficiency. One emerging solution is called Network Attached Storage, or NAS.

We all do it. We want to save a few cents on store-brand napkins, lick-it-yourself envelopes and birthday cards for distant uncles. But there are some items we buy that just aren’t worth risking a buck or two.We’re talking cables here — quality cables that can help avoid possible damage to your Apple® ecosystem.

The term “dark web” has been tossed around a lot in recent years, but few people understand what it really means. Yes, it is a haven for the creepiness of child pornography, drug trafficking and terrorist activity, but it is also a platform for white-collar cybercriminal attacks and so much more.

We’ve all had it happen. “Can I use your Mac for a minute to check my email?” The answer can be “Yes,” but to keep people from poking around on your Mac, have your visitor log in as Guest.

Apple’s Batteries widget is a little known but highly useful tool for quickly assessing which of your small Apple devices is lowest on power. Find out how to access Apple's Batteries widget.

By default, Safari on the Mac hides full Web addresses—technically known as URLs—from you, showing just the site name in the Smart Search field at the top of the window. Check out this tip to see how to get the full URL to appear.

One of the big no-nos with passwords is sending them to other people as plain text in email or a text message conversation. Find out how to keep your password safe in this tip.

Your technology can’t go it alone when it comes to keeping cool during hot months. Your devices need your help to continue to perform at optimum levels.

At the Worldwide Developer Conference last month, Apple® unveiled the completely redesigned Mac Pro® and its companion screen, the Pro Display XDR. The all-new products have met with gushing reviews, and words like astonishing, other-worldly and all-out engineering have been tossed around like so many teraflops. The new Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR will arrive this fall.

From Apple® and CranstonIT come a couple of important updates for users of the MacBook® line of notebook computers.

With the introduction of macOS® 10.15 at the Worldwide Developer Conference this month, Apple® plans to whisk you away to Catalina. Apple promises it will give you more of everything you love about Mac® — as it takes next steps to bring the macOS and iOS platforms closer than ever before.

One of the key announcements from the recent Worldwide Developer Conference focused on iOS 13. But with the emergence of iPadOS as an iPad®-dedicated operating system, the noise surrounding iOS 13 was more hum than buzz.

CranstonIT has long been beating the drum about the value of a password manager. With data security now everyone’s concern, it’s just too critical a tool for any organization to be without.

It's helpful to unplug occasionally and ignore email while on vacation or otherwise away from your work routine. And it's a good idea to set up a vacation auto-responder to tell correspondents what to do in your absence. It might be tempting to create such an auto-reply with a rule in Mail or on the Mac, but resist the temptation!

When you follow a link in Safari, you generally don't know where you're going to end up. Safari provides an easy way to look at the URL under a link. Check it out!

iCloud Photos (whichApple previously called iCloud Photo Library) is wonderful when it's working properly. Photos in iOS and macOS can pause syncing for a variety of reasons, and sometimes it doesn't restart when it should. Check out how to find the sync status and how to resume syncing now.

Storage issues on your Mac® — like aging — don’t hit you all at once. They sneak up on you as the weeks and months creep by. Then suddenly, much like yourself, your MacBook® or iMac® takes longer to start up, and even longer to get moving. Is there a fix? For you, lay off the pizza and hit the gym. For your Mac, it’s even easier.

For the first time ever, AirPods® are Apple’s best-selling accessory. The beloved dangling wireless headphones wrested that position from the hated dongle, the iPhone® product lost or damaged with almost stunning regularity. But now the dongle sits second on Apple’s accessory list, as the new AirPods are more magical than ever.

Samepage is a business collaboration tool that connects people with projects, conversations and files. Samepage helps teams work smarter and more productively. So even when you are on the go, you can access all your files and keep the conversation going — right from your smartphone or tablet.

It's maddening to want to read a serial number or other bit of fine print that you can barely see. But fret no longer - your iPhone or iPad makes a fabulous magnifying glass!

There's little worse than missing and important call or text because your iPhone was in Do Not Disturb mode or because the Mute switch was engaged. If there are certain people - a spouse, parent, or child - whose calls and texts you always want to break through the cone of silence, iOS has the solution: Emergency Bypass.

If you’re an Apple Music subscriber, you probably know that it can play music that’s related to a particular artist or track. But, did you know that Apple Music can create a special radio station just for you, based on tracks you’ve played before?

How would you capture a screenshot of a long Web page that requires scrolling? Rather than stitching multiple screenshots together, try this trick...

If the very latest iMac® — unveiled a couple of weeks ago — looks familiar, well, it should. If the very latest Porsche 911 — unveiled a couple of weeks ago — looks familiar, well, it should. Seemingly, both of these high-profile products have experienced evolutionary, not revolutionary, changes over the years. And why not? Both the iMac and the 911 have always offered drivers brilliant engineering and powerful performance in iconic head-turning form factors. But a closer look under the hood tells us otherwise with each iteration. And since this space is about technological, and not automotive, excellence, let’s focus on the new iMac.

One could say Jessi Reed’s career path is right on target. The new Scheduling Assistant for CranstonIT has transitioned from a stay-at-home mom to a chaotic business environment and, essentially, little has changed.

Although Apple® recently revamped its iPad® product line with two new products, it’s the elevation of the Apple Pencil® that’s making news. While a new generation of Apple Pencil was introduced last November — and here’s where it gets confusing — the new 7.9-inch iPad mini® and new 10.5-inch iPad Air® products only support the first-generation Pencil. The news here is that they support it at all, making the new models infinitely more capable.

Save up to $158 with two free tickets to the Pittsburgh Business Show, the event created to help business owners connect to the people, products and resources they need to succeed. Simply visit us at cranstonit.com for more details and your free tickets for both days of the show. The Pittsburgh Business Show will be held May 14 & 15, 2019, at PPG Place, 1 Fourth Avenue in Pittsburgh. While at the show, be sure to attend one of the several presentations delivered by CranstonIT President Patrick Cranston.

What determines whether a message goes into the archives or gets deleted? iOS hides that option...read more to see how to choose where your messages go.

Have you ever looked over your spouse’s shoulder and thought, “Hey, that’s a cool app.”? If you set up Family Sharing you can not only see what apps they have but you can download the apps you want with just a few simple clicks.

If you can't send or receive email, if photos aren't transferring via iCloud Photo Library, or if some other iCloud-related service isn't responding this is the first thing you should do.

Mulitnational tech companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook will never call or text you out of the blue.

We’re so pleased to announce the addition of Krista Craft to our team. Krista will manage Billing and Inside Sales for CranstonIT.

How to clear the clutter from your iOS device

Phishing is a scam where someone sends you a bogus email that attempts to fool you into revealing your passwords, login credentials, credit card numbers, banking information or other sensitive information. While phishing is a problem that often hooks individuals, attackers are now targeting businesses more frequently than ever before.

Need to check something in another message while composing a new one on your iPhone? Here's how...

Sometimes it's not convenient to have your Mac open on your desk next to the big screen. If you'd like to close your Mac's screen and just use the external display, you can!

Messages for iOS and macOS® devices generally works well, it does have its head-scratching quirks. Here are a few common solutions.

There are ways for groups to work simultaneously or sequentially. There are real-time collaboration features built into many apps. And possibly the most elegant of them all, Samepage, a business collaboration tool that connects multiple people with projects, conversations and files.

As your business becomes more successful, your IT environment becomes more complex. And at some point, the concept of depending on tech support only when needed becomes inefficient and costly. There is a better solution — managed IT services with device-management software.

Password manager is a software app used to store and manage the passwords that a user has for various online accounts and security features. These apps store the passwords in an encrypted format and provide secure access to all information with the help of a single master password. For security reasons, CranstonIT always recommends you use a password manager...

New from CranstonIT, the Datto Networking Appliance ensures your business remains connected and productive during Internet outages with fully integrated 4G LTE Internet failover. This single, compact device is now a part of our managed services commitment to deliver the latest in advanced network security.

Few iPad® owners have ever really taken advantage of the suite of gestures. But if you take the time to learn and understand their functionality, you’ll realize more productivity benefits than you might think.

They are questions potential clients ask CranstonIT all the time. So here are some foundational benefits for working with an Apple professional and why, ultimately, it is the right choice.

The new MacBook Air sets a higher standard for portability. The iconic wedge is noticeably thinner (almost an inch by width and more than half an inch by depth) and lighter (by about a quarter pound). It is also the greenest Mac ever, created from 100 percent recycled aluminum.

It’s a constant refrain in many homes — a kid clamoring to use an iPad®, iPhone® or even an Apple Watch® to play games, watch videos or chat with friends. As a parent, you know when enough is enough, and that too much screen time can often affect homework, family dinners or socialization in general. With iOS 12, Apple® is doing its part to limit device addiction. Screen Time is a feature that not only monitors how much time your child is spending on his or her phone or tablet, but provides the tools and guidance on how to control that usage.