Backups: Trust but Verify

It’s easy to assume your backup app—whether it’s Time Machine, Carbon Copy Cloner, Backblaze, Retrospect, or something else—is quietly doing its job. But it’s possible for a bug to corrupt backups or for a destination disk to fail silently, such that you can’t restore backed-up data. We’ve seen this happen! For peace of mind, set […]
Don’t Miss Calls and Texts: How to Use New Phone and Messages Filtering

Spam is one of the many banes of modern existence. While we receive more email spam than anything else, interruptions from unwanted phone calls and text messages are even more annoying. Apple has added various features over the years to help control spam calls and messages, but none have completely solved the problem. The problem […]
Be Alert for Deepfake Phishing Scams

Phishing scams have entered a new, AI-powered phase and can now convincingly mimic real people. Attackers can generate fake voice or video deepfakes to impersonate CEOs authorizing urgent payments, IT staff requesting access, or family members needing help. If you receive a voice or video call from someone you know at an unknown number who […]
A Few of Our Favorite Things: 2025 Tech Edition

The holidays may be just around the corner, but we field requests for tech gear recommendations year-round. Below you’ll find our suggestions, whether you’re shopping for an Apple tech enthusiast or simply looking to upgrade your own devices and accessories. Plenty of other excellent options exist—we’d love to hear about the peripherals that have worked […]
Charge Your MacBook with the Right Power Adapter

If you lose or break the power adapter that came with your MacBook Air or MacBook Pro, make sure to replace it with a charger that meets or exceeds the machine’s required wattage. A charger with too low a wattage may result in little or no charging (or even battery drain while working), and it […]
iPadOS 26 Brings Mac-Like Multitasking to the iPad

When the iPad debuted, it was essentially a large iPhone. But classic productivity tools rapidly made their way to the iPad, and over the years, Apple has introduced multitasking features, such as Slide Over and Split View, to make it easier to work back-and-forth between apps—imagine writing in Pages while referring to a Web page, […]
Canva’s Free Affinity App Takes on Adobe Creative Cloud

Adobe’s Creative Cloud apps—Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign—are best-in-class, and for many people, they’re essential. But if you’re paying $70 per month for a Creative Cloud subscription even though you don’t need the full power of Adobe’s apps, consider Canva’s new Affinity app, available for free for macOS and Windows, with iPadOS coming soon. The extremely […]
Notable User Interface Changes to Expect in macOS 26
macOS 26 Tahoe is a larger visual leap than any recent upgrade. Although we don’t yet recommend that everyone upgrade, we want to show you some of the user interface changes that will impact your everyday experience of using the Mac. Liquid Glass Changes Many of these changes stem from Apple’s new Liquid Glass design […]
New Features in iOS 26.1

The first feature update to iOS 26 is now available—go to Settings > General > Software Update to install iOS 26.1. It doesn’t introduce any game-changers, but there are a few new options and tweaks worth knowing about. Tinted Option for Liquid Glass For many people, Liquid Glass’s aggressive transparency can make some interface elements, […]
Updated Passwords App Adds History
One small way Apple’s Passwords app lagged behind top password managers like 1Password was in its lack of a password history. It’s sometimes helpful—such as when trying to figure out why a seemingly correct password isn’t being accepted—to see previous passwords for a site and when they were changed. In macOS 26 Tahoe, iOS 26, […]