I explain what matters in plain English, with practical steps you can use and recommendations based on my experience helping clients.
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A client got in touch recently with a maddening problem. When he received texts on his iPhone, Messages displayed notifications for messages from everyone…except his wife! Needless to say, this was a problem. Since notifications appeared correctly for other people, it wasn’t related to overall setti
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 Reminders, however, Apple’s engineers
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 a green + pointer and it will m
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, Command-F generally invokes Find. But
A few days ago Apple added an extensive collection of music videos for Apple Music subscribers. Here's where to find them: iPhone In the Music app tap the "Browse" tab at the bottom of your screen Tap "Music Videos" (you may have to scroll down a bit) iPad In
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 consternation, that after 2 weeks bac
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 capabilities, such as locating your kid
Here’s one for those who use Apple’s Notes app for storing bits of information. By default, Notes in macOS gives you a single window, with each note listed in a sidebar. But what if you want to see two notes at once? Or keep one always available no matter what else you’re doing? Click the desired no
As much flack as Siri often gets, she excels in a few core functions. In particular using Siri for quick mathematical functions works very well. Perhaps you’re trying to total receipts for an expense report, average your kid’s report card grades, or split a restaurant bill. Either way, instead of la
The first time you run the News app on iPhone or iPad, you are greeted with a welcome screen that helps to curate a custom news feed for you. If you hurry through the process it's really easy to enable breaking news alerts for what seems to be every news source. I've seen many phones that get alerts
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 navigate the iPhone’s interface. In
For people who use their Mac a lot it may be worth learning the various gestures available for the trackpad and mouse, or for others if you find yourself accidentally invoking these gestures it may be worth disabling them in the Apple menu > System Preferences > Trackpad (or Mouse) &am
Do you create reminders with Siri on the iPhone? Those reminders are automatically added to your default list, which you set in the Settings app > Reminders > Default List. That’s great generally—“Hey Siri, remind me to pick up the dry cleaning at 5pm tomorrow”—but less good when you w
One of the most important things you can do to stay safe on the Internet is to be careful while reading email. That’s because online criminals know that we’re all busy, and we often don’t pay enough attention to what we’re reading or where we’re clicking. To take advantage of our inattention
Since iPhone X lacks a Home button to double click for the app switcher, you’ll need to switch apps in a new way. To bring up the app switcher, swipe up from the bottom of the screen to about halfway, and then pause until the app thumbnails appear. Then you can scroll through your launched apps by s
Apple’s Calendar apps in both macOS and iOS let you manage multiple calendars, some of which may be private and others may be shared with family or colleagues. That’s great, but if you create a new event on the wrong calendar, you may end up oversharing with colleagues (who don’t need to know about
You’re out to lunch with tech-savvy friends, one of whom picks up the check and says, “Just send me your share via Apple Pay Cash.” Say what? Apple Pay Cash is Apple’s new person-to-person payment service, designed to make it easy for individuals to send and receive money. It’s perfect for repaying
Apple’s new iPhone X does away with the Home button, which has been a fixture since the original iPhone and has long served as the Touch ID sensor. To replace Touch ID, Apple developed a new facial recognition technology called Face ID. With Face ID, the iPhone X scans your face to authenticate you
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