Macintosh

Apple has continued replacing Macs at the lower end of the product line with new models featuring the company’s homegrown M1 chip.

This is a twofer tip. You may not have known that every document window in macOS has long had a proxy icon in the title bar, next to the filename.

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.

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.

Some of the trickiest editing and proofreading problems are related to characters you can’t typically see on the screen: spaces, tabs, and returns.

For the most part, Spotlight works well. Press Command-Space or use the Search field in a Finder window, and it finds everything that matches your search term.

With iCloud Drive, Apple provides an Optimize Mac Storage checkbox that, when checked, stores the full contents of iCloud Drive on the Mac only if there’s enough space.

We’re all accustomed to the Do Not Disturb feature on our iPhones since they’re with us for most of the day and often spend the night next to the bed. But Apple long ago added Do Not Disturb to the Mac as well, and it’s useful for muting your Mac at night to eliminate unnecessary noises and for preventing unwanted notifications during presentations.

We regularly hear from people who think they need Adobe Acrobat DC to manipulate PDFs. Don’t misunderstand: Adobe Acrobat is the gold standard, but it’s complicated and expensive—$14.99 per month or as part of Creative Cloud for $52.99 per month. In contrast, Apple’s Preview is easy and free with macOS.

In November, Apple unveiled its new M1 chip and three new Macs that use it: the MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, and Mac mini.

You probably know that you can select an image in the Finder and press the Space bar to preview it in a Quick Look window.

Starting with macOS 10.15.5 Catalina, Apple introduced a battery health management feature that improves your battery’s lifespan by adjusting charging patterns to reduce the rate at which the battery chemically ages.

On the Mac, nearly every file has an extension, a set of characters after a period that indicates what type of file it is and determines which app opens it.

Continuing its pandemic-driven approach of short, focused announcements, Apple once again took to the Internet to stream its “One More Thing” event. On center stage this time was the Mac, or specifically, three Macs, all of which replace the longstanding Intel chip with Apple’s new M1 chip. All three Macs can be ordered now and will be available within a week or so.

We’re big fans of column view in Finder windows (choose View > as Columns). You never have to worry about missing icons that are outside the window, everything is sorted alphabetically, and selecting a file shows a preview. But the column widths can be too thin, such that they cut off file and folder names, or too wide, forcing you to scroll unnecessarily.

We wanted to make sure that those of you who work on a Mac laptop with an external display know that you can close your laptop’s screen and keep working.

Over the last few releases of macOS, Apple has been beefing up the Mac’s privacy controls so they more closely resemble what the company has done in iOS.

On the Mac, scroll bars are essential for both orienting yourself and navigating within a Web page or document window.

Apple’s workhorse desktop Mac, the 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K display, hasn’t seen an update since March 2019—nearly a year and a half ago. Happily, the company has finally released a new version of the popular iMac, outfitting it with 10th-generation Intel processors, increasing its RAM and storage capacities, and improving its audio and video capabilities.

Every so often, we hear from a Mac user with a seemingly impossible problem: a document window in some app is opening somewhere outside of the screen so it’s effectively invisible and they can’t work with it in any way.

In a move that completes the transition of the MacBook line from the troubled butterfly keyboard to the Magic Keyboard, Apple has released a new 13-inch MacBook Pro. The company also doubled the amount of storage in each of the standard configurations while keeping prices the same, and it ramped up the specs in the model with four Thunderbolt 3 ports.

This isn’t about periscopes or mouthwash—when it comes to searching, a scope is the area in which a search takes place.

If you have access to multiple printers, you probably know that you can choose one from the Printer pop-up menu at the top of the Print dialog. But macOS has a feature that should make it so you don’t have to switch printers manually as often.

Tired of typing your admin account password whenever you try to install software or change security settings on your Mac?

In a widely expected update, Apple has introduced a new MacBook Air that replaces the much-maligned butterfly keyboard with the new Magic Keyboard. The MacBook Air also gains faster processors, enhanced graphics, and more storage options, all for $200 less than before.

When you’re in the Finder, choosing File > New Finder Window does, as you’d expect, open a new Finder window.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

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.

Mac mini is back on our radar, and it’s back with a vengeance. Reintroduced two weeks ago, this powerful new Mac mini is aimed squarely (get it?) at professional users. Although it retains the same diminutive form factor as recent iterations — 7.7 inches square and 1.4 inches — there is no need to kick Mac mini's tires this time around.

Continuity Camera links macOS® 10.14 Mojave to iOS12. This new feature allows you to snap a picture or scan a document with an iPhone® or iPad® running iOS 12 and have that image instantly appear on your Mac® running 10.14 Mojave.

If you think everyone knows how to take out the trash, you would be mistaken. That’s because the Trash Can embedded in your macOS® is not your father’s trash can, and works very differently in macOS® than in any other operating system.

macOS Mojave has been previewed by Apple as the latest version of the world’s most advanced desktop operating system, with updates inspired by professionals but designed for everyone.