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When Asking about Phishing Email, Make Sure to Write Separately Too
Sadly, email is not an entirely reliable communications medium, thanks to spam filters, addressing errors, and server failures. With certain types of email, it’s worth double-checking that a message was seen. One example of that we see is with reports of phishing email, which miscreants use to try to trick you into revealing passwords, credit card info, or other sensitive information. Phishing ... Read more -
PostScript Type 1 Fonts Losing Support This Year—Here’s What to Do
For you graphic designers out there, Adobe has announced that it will be ending support for PostScript Type 1 fonts starting with Photoshop in 2021. All Adobe apps will stop allowing users to author content using Type 1 fonts beginning January 2023. This announcement shou... Read more -
Manage Your Apple Purchases and Subscriptions on the Mac and iPhone
Last quarter, Apple’s Services segment generated a whopping $15.8 billion in revenue, 14% of the company’s total—sales of apps, media, and subscriptions are a big deal to Apple. And if you’re like us, you’re probably now paying Apple for services like Apple Music, Read more -
Reclaim Local Storage Space by Removing iCloud Drive Downloads
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. However, you may wish to recover local storage space without selecting that option—luckily, that’s easy to do. Open iCloud Drive in the Finder, Control-click a file, and choose Remove Download. The file remains in iCloud Drive, ... Read more -
M1-Based Macs Have New Startup Modes: Here’s What You Need to Know
For many years, Macs have relied on sets of keys held at startup to enable specific modes. Most notably, pressing Option displays the Startup Manager and lets you pick a boot drive, Command-R starts up from macOS Recovery, Command-Option-P-R resets the NVRAM, Shift starts up in Safe mode, D opens Apple Diagnostics to check the hardware, and T starts up in Target Disk Mode. Needless to say, obsc... Read more -
Not Enough Space to Install iOS 14 or iPadOS 14? Try This Approach
Suppose you have an older iPhone or iPad, especially one with only 16 GB of storage. In that case, it’s possible that you won’t have enough space to upgrade to iOS 14 or iPadOS 14 through Settings > General > Software Update. That’s often true due to an inexplicably large Other category when you look in Settings > General > iPhone/iPad Storage. Upgrading using iTunes (in macOS 10.14... Read more -
Don’t Worry about an Occasional “Not Charging” Message on Your MacBook
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. (Find it in System Preferences > Energy Saver > Battery Health.) One thing to... Read more -
Remember to Enable Text Message Forwarding When You Get a New Mac or iPad
You’ve long had text messages forwarding from your iPhone to your Mac and iPad, but after you get a new device, it might be a while before you realize that it’s not receiving texts sent to your iPhone. It turns out that, when you get a new Apple device, you must manually enable it to receive forwarded texts from your iPhone—the setting is off by default. On your iPhone, go to Settings > Mess... Read more -
Beware iCloud Phishing Phone Calls!
We’ve been hearing reports of an uptick in the scam phone calls that claim to be from Apple. If you answer, an automated message tells you that your iCloud account has been breached and asks you to call a provided 1-866 number. Do not do this! Apple will never call you unprompted. Unfortunately, the criminals behind this particular phishing attack are spoofing Apple’s phone numbers effec... Read more -
What’s the Deal with All the Privacy Requests in Catalina?
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. You’ve undoubtedly noticed that when you first launch a new app on your iPhone or iPad, it often prompts for access to your contacts or your photos, the camera or microphone, and so on. The idea behind those prompts is that you should always b... Read more