Tech Talk

by: Paul Horowitz Now that many of our Emoji characters have various skin tones in iOS and OS X, you may want to access and use the new diverse emoji icon set on the Mac. This is quite simple, but do note that not all Emoji have the diverse skin and hair color options. >> Full Article <<

by: Paul Horowitz This is a helpful reminder for Mac users that it’s important to periodically restart your Mac to maintain optimal system performance.Rebooting your Mac from time to time offers several benefits that help system performance and stability. Over time, it is not unusual for certain backgrounds processes, applications, and system tasks to accumulate and start consuming large amounts of memory, CPU, and system resources, which can lead to a reduction in system performance or even an outright sluggish and slow Mac. Not only does a reboot help to clear out memory usage, system caches, and end any unnecessary processes running in the background, it’s also valuable because it allows for the installation of a

by Amanda Silberling There are three inevitabilities in life: death, taxes, and tech platforms making design changes that are universally disliked. The latest victim to this phenomenon is the Apple Mail app, which got a major redesign in iOS 18. This update is also rolling out on iPads and MacBooks.The new Apple Mail design separates emails into categories, like Primary, Transactions, Updates, and Promotions. It also gives contact photos to each sender, which aligns with the company’s new branding features for businesses across the iOS e

by: Jamie Cuevas Occasionally, some iPhone users have gone to use their Camera app and discovered the Camera app icon is missing from their iPhone Home Screen. Uh oh! Does this mean your Camera app was deleted? What do you do now? Don’t distress, fixing a missing Camera app on iPhone is usually pretty easy.The Camera app is an integral part of the iPhone and the bundled app experience, and while rarely it may seem to go missing, become inaccessible, or appear to be deleted, it’s still on your iPhone. We’ll show you how to track it down and get using the Camera app again with four helpful tips. >> Full Article <<

 In the updated Notes app in iOS 18, you can transcribe audio to text for free: Your iPhone will automatically transcribe voice notes for later.This is a great feature to use in a college class, if you want to record audio of a lecture alongside your notes. You can use it in meetings — the irritating in-person kind — for recording what people actually said alongside your notes. It’s also great for generating podcast transcripts or any kind of writing. It’s a quick and easy way to get a first draft. >> Full Article <<

by: Paul Horowitz Apple Intelligence is an intriguing and powerful set of AI features available on the latest models of Mac, iPhone, and iPad with modern versions of system software. These AI features are tied to ChatGPT and range from useful writing and summarization tools, to business plan creation, to writing emails on your behalf,

February 17, 2025 By Sergiu Gatlan More ASUS customers can now install Windows 11 24H2 after applying a BIOS update that resolves blue screen of death (BSOD) issues acknowledged in October.As Microsoft revealed last year when it added a compatibility hold blocking the Windows 11 2024 Update on affected systems, these problems occur when trying to update to Windows 11 24H2 on some ASUS devices with very specific hardware components.Redmond said at the time that the known issue mainly impacts ASUS X415KA and X515KA laptop models. "During the update process, devices might experience a blue screen with an error message and cannot complete the installation o

 iMessage effects can add much more meaning, emotion and fun to your texting. You can add bold, italics, underline and strikethrough text, just like a formatted document, and even choose from a bunch of cool, animated effects.You can make congratulations more bombastic, to rejoice in someone’s finest moments. Or, you can use formatting and effects to convey sarcasm, stress and sorrow more clearly. >> Full Article <<

by: Paul Horowitz The Photos app on iPhone received a significant layout redesign in iOS 18 that has left many iPhone users annoyed or frustrated as the new Photos design is not necessarily intuitive or easy to use for everyone. Things have been moved around, albums or features they were using might be missing or harder to access, the order of which photos show up in your camera roll may be different, and it can even be more difficult to locate particular categories of media with new layout too.If you’re unhappy with the Photos app layout in iOS 18 on iPhone, read along and we’ll help you to improve the Photos layout so that it behaves more similarly to that you were accustomed to before. 

by: Paul Horowitz The Mail app on iPhone and iPad has been around since the beginning of those devices, and many people have grown familiar with how the Mail app works and behaves. But recently, Apple has been making a lot of tweaks and adjustments to the Mail app, and some of these changes are not necessarily welcome by the user, or they can lead to confusion. One such example that is causing some frustration is the “Follow Up” suggestions feature on Mail for iPhone and iPad, which resurface emails that have not yet received a reply, nudging you to send a follow up email. The most common complaint about this feature is that it leads to the impression that the email thread has been updated and the email has received a reply, which then is loaded only to discover there is no new reply in the email thread, which has ca

6:00 AM PST · February 12, 2025 Adobe is hoping to capitalize on the early success of its Firefly AI models by launching a new standalone subscription service that gives users access to the company’s AI image, vector and video generating models.This marks Adobe’s boldest attempt yet to turn its Firefly AI models into a real product.The company is also launching a redesigned webpage, firefly.adobe.com, where people can use Adobe’s AI models. This includes the new Firefly AI video model, which is rolling out in public beta on the Firefly website and in the Premiere Pro Beta app.

by: Jamie Cuevas Ongoing complaints about the Photos app redesign in iOS 18 persist, with users who are frustrated with how difficult it can be to locate certain images or photos that once were easy for them to find. For example, if you take a lot of screenshots on your iPhone you might want quick and easy access to them, and find the new Photos interface to be confusing. While there are a few helpful tips for fixing the iOS 18 Photos app redesign and sorting Photos

by: Paul Horowitz One of the polarizing Mail for Mac features is “Follow Up”, which are suggestions on emails that Apple Mail thinks you should follow up with. The idea behind “Follow Up” suggestions in Mail is pretty simple; if you haven’t received a reply or heard back from a particular person or email, the last sent message will appear at the top of your Mail Inbox with a “Follow Up” tag attached to it. This feature has caused some confusion for people, because it sends old emails to the top of the inbox, which can make it appear as if the email is new or got a reply, when in fact it did not.While some users may appreciate the nudge, others may find the Follow Up feature to be unwanted or annoying, and thus want to turn it off in Mail for Mac. That’s exactly what we’re going to show you how to do. 

Monday 27 January 2025 16:01, UK Chinese tech firm DeepSeek launched a free assistant it says uses less data at a fraction of the cost of the major players in the industry, sending Nvidia and Oracle stocks plummeting. Leave a comment on any of our posts in the box below. Full Article

by: Paul HorowitzMacOS Sequoia 15.3 update is now available to all Mac users running Sequoia.The latest software update for Mac includes Genmoji support, which allows users with Apple Intelligence supported hardware to generate custom Emoji icons in Messages, along with changes to improve AI summaries, bug fixes, security enhancements, and some other minor changes.For Mac users who are not running Sequoia, you will find macOS Sonoma 14.7.3, MacOS Ventura 13.7.3, and Safari 18.3 available as updates instead. >> Full Article << 

 (Image credit: John McAfee (via Twitter)) These days, dead lunatics don't stay dead for long. Take a bow John McAfee, one of the most wild personalities in computing, who was best-known for the

by: Paul HorowitziOS 18.3 for iPhone and iPadOS 18.3 for iPad have been released for all eligible devices.The new software updates focus on bug fixes, security enhancements, and bring some changes to AI features like Visual Intelligence and Apple Intelligence Summaries, the latter of which were generating inaccurate summaries and headlines which bothered some people. Since many iPhone and iPad models do not have Apple Intelligence support, those specific devices obviously will not gain any of those those particular changes. >> Full Article <<

January 21, 2025 By Sergiu Gatlan Bitbucket is investigating a massive outage affecting Atlassian Bitbucket Cloud customers worldwide, with the company saying its cloud services are "hard down."This web-based version control repository hosting service, owned by Atlassian, helps developers and teams collaborate on software projects by managing code, tracking changes, and integrating with other tools for development workflows.Bitbucket is popular among small teams and large enterprises using Atlassian's ecosystem of tools and is particularly appealing to those looking to integrate source control with project management tools like Atlassian Jira.In April 2019, Atlassian said that over 

by: Paul Horowitz The Type to Siri feature on Mac is super useful, particularly now that Siri has Apple Intelligence features. Using Type to Siri is perhaps even more handy for Mac users than using the voice activated Siri commands, but some Mac users may find themselves accidentally triggering Type to Siri by inadvertently pressing the initiating command sequence.If you wish to change the keyboard shortcut for Type to Siri on Mac, you can do so rather quickly with a settings change, as we’ll detail here. >> Full Article <<

by: Paul Horowitz Some MacOS Sequoia users have discovered that the com.apple.mediaanalysisd directory in MacOS is taking up very large amounts of disk storage capacity with cache files.If you have discovered your Mac disk space has reduced since installing or updating to MacOS Sequoia, the inordinately large com.apple.mediaanalysisd cache file issue could be to blame. A variety of Mac users have reported the directory being filled with 15GB+ of data, with some users noting 50 GB, 80 GB, even 140GB of cache files, filling users entire disk drives with the cache bundle files.Let’s review what the directory is, and how to recover your disk storage space. 

by: Ali Khan You may occasionally find a situation where a question mark icon appears in the Mac Dock, sometimes it’s even several question mark icons. If you click on the question mark icon in the Dock, nothing happens. What is the question mark? Why is there a question mark icon in the Dock? How do you remove or fix it? We’re going to answer these questions and resolve this issue. ⇨⇨ Full Article ⇦⇦  

 December 9, 2024 By Chris Vallance Google has unveiled a new chip which it claims takes five minutes to solve a problem that would currently take the world's fastest super computers ten septillion – or 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years – to complete.The chip is the latest development in a field known as quantum computing - which is attempting to use the principles of particle physics to create a new type of mind-bogglingly powerful computer.Google says its new quantum chip, dubbed "Willow", incorporates key "breakthroughs" and "paves the way to a useful, large-scale quantum computer."However experts say Willow is, for now, a largely experimental device, meaning a quantum computer powerful enough to solve a wide range of real-world problems is still years - and bill

Yesterday I put on my RayCon Earbuds to listen to some music on my 27 inch iMac running Catalina. When I took the earbuds out of the case I usually hear a “Connected” voice then I can use them on the Mac to listen. Well, yesterday when I took them out of the case I heard music already. Sounded like background gamer music. I couldn’t connect to the Mac. I opened Bluetooth Preferences on the Mac and “The Everyday Earbuds” was gone. No other unidentified connections showed on the preferences but was still hearing gamer music. I took the RayCon case and earbuds out of our apartment and the music stopped. Came back into our apartment and the earbuds paired up with the Mac and the music was gone and I could use them on the Mac. I’m wondering if someone in our parking lot was gaming in a car or the apartment next to us?  This brings up the question, How safe is Bluetooth since my keyboard also is connected to the Mac by Bluetooth?Here are my connect

I'm on a 150/15 Plan on Cable so tell us about yours! My results are via 5G Wireless connection.   Daniel ;)   Here is my link to Rogers Speed Test if you want to try it: http://www.rogers.com/web/Rogers.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=support_internetServices_&cm_mmc=grdrt-_-all-_-en-_-speedcheck  also if you have any other speed tests sites that are good post them.   http://www.speedtest.net/   http://www.speedtest.net/result/3564098168.png  

 Mac keyboard shortcuts are a great way to speed yourself up when you’re using your computer. Mastering them means more time spent getting things done and less time spent moving your hands back and forth between keyboard and trackpad.There are the basic Mac keyboard shortcuts like Command-C and Command-V for copy and paste; Command-B, Command-I and Command-U for bold, italics and underline; Command-Z and Shift-Command-Z for undo and redo. But for a lot of people, that’s where their knowledge ends.You can do so much more than you may know. Here’s a guide to the best Mac keyboard shortcuts. ⇨⇨ Full Article ⇦⇦