Writings by Kirk McElhearn
Apple recently presented this year’s operating systems, and they are full of new features to boost your productivity and increase your fun. macOS Ventura, iOS 16, and iPadOS 16 also have a number of useful new features to enhance your security and privacy. Most of these features are present in all of the operating systems. Here’s an overview of what to look forward to this fall.
Read the rest of the article on The Mac Security Blog.
For this year’s Worldwide Developer Conference, Apple has presented the new operating systems that we’ll be downloading in a few months. macOS Ventura, iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and watchOS 9 were all highlighted in a two-hour presentation. In addition, Apple has shown off two new Mac laptops that will be available next month.
Read the rest of the article on The Mac Security Blog.
If you use a Mac, iPhone, or iPad, you can store files in iCloud Drive, Apple’s cloud storage service. This is just one of the many iCloud features available, ranging from privacy and backups to cloud sync of your photos and music library.
iCloud Drive is especially useful if you have two Macs; you can sync your Desktop and Documents folders to iCloud Drive, so you can easily switch between working on a desktop Mac and a laptop. And you can even access these files on your iPhone or iPad.
In this article, I’ll explain how iCould Drive works, and tell you how you can get the most out of this service.
Read the rest of the article on The Mac Security Blog.
With a wide range of iPhone and iPad models to choose from, why would you use an iPod touch today? Apple isn’t trying to sell it; they have hidden the device. You won’t find the iPod touch on any of its main pages; you have to search for it if you want one. When you get there, you see that you can have “Fun at full speed.” This is the slogan Apple used the last time they updated the iPod touch, back in May 2019. The 7th generation device sports an A10 Fusion chip, and was updated from the previous 2015 model, which had an A8 processor.
That update did more than just increment the processor, which moved from 2 cores to 4 cores and nearly doubled the clock speed. It increased the RAM from 1 GB to 2 GB; it includes a better graphics chip; and it has four cores instead of two. It also ensured that the device runs with more recent versions of iOS. The 6th generation iPod touch is limited to iOS 12; the 7th generation runs the current iOS 15.
Starting at $199, it is the cheapest iOS device. It comes with 32 GB storage, and you can increase it to 128 GB ($299) or 256 GB ($399). For comparison, the low-end iPhone SE (2nd generation) costs $429 with 64GB and the 256 GB model costs $579. So if you want a portable device with a lot of storage, the iPod touch is the cheapest.
But why use the iPod touch today? Here are 17 reasons you might want to use this device.
Read the rest of the article on The Mac Security Blog.
It has been one year since Apple released AirTags, the small tracking devices that leverage the vast network of iPhones and iPads. Designed to help you find your keys, track your luggage, and keep tabs on your backpack, these devices have also been used for stalking and theft. Here’s an overview of the first year of AirTags.
Read the rest of the article on The Mac Security Blog.
iCloud is the umbrella for Apple’s services that you can access with your Mac, iPhone, or iPad. Not all of the company’s services; there are other services, such as Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, and others, which you access with a paid subscription. But iCloud is the backbone of the services you use to manage your data and communicate with others.
In this article, I’ll explain what all the various elements of iCloud are, and how they work together.
Read the rest of the article on The Mac Security Blog.
The ports that you use to connect keyboards, mice, and hard drives to your Macs have changed over the years. Current Macs have USB-C, which provide standard USB speeds, along with faster Thunderbolt to compatible peripherals. But what’s the difference between USB-C and Thunderbolt ports, and how can you tell them apart? And which cables do you need to get the most out of them?
In this article, I’m going to explain what Thunderbolt and USB-C ports are, how to identify them, how they work, which features they offer, and how to choose the right cables for your needs.
Read the rest of the article on The Mac Security Blog.
In this 143-page book, you’ll learn how to use version 4 of Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack to capture and enhance any audio coming out of your Mac, whether it’s your own voice via a microphone, a streaming radio show in Safari, or audio from a DVD. Audio expert Kirk McElhearn covers a variety of scenarios—including recording Zoom calls, digitizing LPs, and making podcasts—and provides a bonus chapter about editing your recordings in Rogue Amoeba’s Fission audio editor.
Get Take Control of Audio Hijack.
You’ll learn how to pipe sound through Audio Hijack to enhance its quality without recording. For example, by boosting the volume or tweaking the bass—movies on Netflix never sounded better!
You’ll also discover special features such as reusable sessions, recording to more than one file (and format) at once, scheduling recordings, time shifting during live playback, effects like ducking and panning, adding automatic metadata before recording, and more. And you’ll learn how to use Audio Hijack as a powerful tool for live streaming or broadcasting.
The Fission chapter has directions for trimming, cropping, adding, replacing, splitting, and fading audio. It also explains how to turn an audio file into a ringtone and—podcasters and educators take note!—how to make a chapterized AAC file.
Apple’s HomeKit controls many smart home devices: from lights to thermostats, from doorbells to home security systems. Many users may never see the Home app, while others may use it regularly with dozens of devices, but and can use Siri to turn these devices on and off.
HomeKit has slowly grown since its introduction, and Apple has expanded its reach through new devices. Yet they don’t publicize this much. One technology, called Thread, enhances the way smart home devices can work, and two Apple devices – the Apple TV 4K and the HomePod mini – provide special features for Thread networks.
In this article, I’ll explain what Thread is, why you should care, and how the smart home is getting smarter.
Read the rest of the article on The Mac Security Blog.
For some people, running Windows on a Mac is the perfect way to use a specific app that is unavailable on Mac, or to play Windows games. For a long time, it was easy to run Windows on a Mac. Since Windows is designed to run on an Intel processor, you could Windows on your Mac and boot into Windows, or run it in a virtual machine on your Mac.
But with the new M1 Macs, which run on a variant of ARM processors, everything has changed. In this article, I’ll look at the various options for running Windows on an Intel Mac, then discuss how you can run Windows on a new M1 Mac.
Read the rest of the article on The Mac Security Blog.