macOS

Once you see that panel slide out, click the “Edit” button at the very bottom. Then click the plus button next to “Social” to add it to your Notification Center list. Forever after, you can tweet, post to Facebook or LinkedIn, or send messages by opening the Notification Center panel and then clicking the icon…

Ever since the release of OS X El Capitan, there was some mild concern in the Apple community. If El Capitan was a bug fix and stability release, would Apple revert to its old ways, in the next release, and return the the evils of a massive set of questionable features that would introduce new…

What you’ll do is select the text you’d like to email (or send through Messages, or tweet about, or add to Notes, etc.) and then right- or Control-click on it. When you do so, a contextual menu will appear, and one of the available options is “Share.” If you hover over that, you’ll see your…

Mission Control Previously, I've written about a nice keyboard shortcut to manually change OS X Spaces quickly. That's optional, but a good tip as well. Also, if you're rusty on OS X Spaces, here's a tutorial. Even though I use a large Hewlett-Packard display, I still don't have enough room to display all the apps…

Episode #178 I planned to write about some smart home products I’ve been testing, but a confluence of events convinced me to change courses midstream. So I’m going to write about troubleshooting Spotlight this week, since that’s what I’ve been doing all morning.  It all began because I knew I wrote a column about Phillips…

Press that “Test Screen Flash” button to see what it’ll look like, but after you toggle on the “Flash the screen when an alert sound occurs” checkbox, that’s what’ll happen from then on. So whenever your Mac needs to let you know something’s going on, you’ll see a visual cue along with the audio one.…

You could actually cobble together a way to share contacts if you’ve got to—for example, by creating an additional iCloud or Gmail account. You’d then log in to that on your family’s devices, turn the contacts syncing on, and add the contacts you want to share to that account. But that’s not an elegant solution…

Now, though, my feelings on that have changed. The idea that every Apple device I own should ring when someone calls me? Madness, and especially so on my computer. There is, however, a really easy way to turn off that “feature,” thank goodness. To do that, open the FaceTime program from your Applications folder. Then…

To avoid becoming a victim, you can check out the suggestions I wrote about in an earlier tip; the best advice there is to avoid clicking on emailed links whenever you can. However, it’s also a great idea to periodically check to see what devices and security events are associated with your Gmail account. Hey,…

However, if you DO need to try to recover info before you rush headlong into resetting a lost password, I’d check your browser first for any items you might have typed into that program (like a website login). In Safari, that information is stored in Safari > Preferences > Passwords. Within there, you’ll see a…

That’s…less than ideal. The thing to find out, though, is whether you and your neighbors happen to be using the same wireless channel. Think of it like radio—if you drive through an area with a ton of competing stations, you won’t be able to hear any of them clearly, right? It’s the same with Wi-Fi.…

Afterward, you’ll find a ton of convenient buttons that you can drag into your toolbar for easy use.  That’s…that’s a lot of possibilities. Today we’re going to be talking about three of my favorites—“Show Related Messages,” “Redirect,” and “Move.” I hope you think they’re as handy as I do!   1. Show Related Messages. Some…

They make for a great trip down memory lane. More interestingly to me, they show both the remarkable refinement and relative lack of change in the paradigm of desktop computing. First, let's look at the Apple operating system image: The Evolution of Apple's Operating System[s] from BetterBuys Next, here's the Microsoft image. Note that it…

Yuck. Let’s make that better! On the Mac, the place you’ll change that setting is within System Preferences > Sharing. At the top of that pane, there’s a box for you to type in.  Then to change this on the iPhone or iPad, visit Settings > General > About. You can edit your device’s name at…