Glenn Fleishman

Data synchronization is a way to ensure that you’re always up to date across all your devices, no matter what changes, and you typically get an online backup as an extra. But when you’re using a cellular-connected Wi-Fi hotspot, such as the Personal…

There’s got to be the name for the paradox that occurs when you’re told by the Mac App Store that you both have an update for a free or purchased app and you can’t install it. Maybe it’s the Apprisoner’s Dilemma? You might experience this no-win…

Sometimes you make a rookie mistake, like shutting down a hosted email account before you—well, before I—download all the messages that are stored on the server and synced to my Macs and iOS devices via IMAP. I felt like a dope. I had already…

Several months ago, we posted a column called “What to do when FileVault won’t turn on,” which offered a set of strategies when you couldn’t get macOS to let you enable FileVault, Apple’s full-disk encryption (FDE) technology. These worked for some…

It can sometimes be tricky to tease out the difference between two similar iOS or macOS features that aren’t quite identical. The option on an iPhone to enable Text Message Forwarding to other devices and the Messages in iCloud feature are a case in…

You’ve heard of a JPEG file, which typically has .jpeg or .jpg at the end of its name. But what’s a “.peg” file? Likely an error on JPEG files, and one that appears to have cropped up years ago but still plagues some users. It’s unclear why some JPEG…

The dangers of monopolies and trusts have long been clear. A company or an allied group that controls most sales of a good or service can use that power to set prices at an arbitrarily high level. Without competition, markets wither, and consumers…

I first started using page-layout software in 1985 with Aldus PageMaker 1.0. If I recall correctly, it took a few years before you could create a master template that had items that appeared on every page, including guides that helped with placement…

Time is an illusion that helps us make sense of many things, including when we took pictures and shot video. On an iPhone, iPad, or nearly any camera, a timestamp is embedded into the image or video metadata based on the current time and timezone of…

If you find yourself moving from one country to another, you will certainly bring some belongings with you (unless you’re an ascetic). But what of your digital goods? Items you’ve downloaded are typically transportable, but those that you’ve…

You have the option with iTunes to add music and other audio files to its library in one of two ways: you can use the default method of copying all files into the iTunes Media folder, or you can opt to add by reference, where the file remains where…

Despite offering phones and tablets with ever-more onboard storage, Apple knows that people can still easily outpace available room as they download ever more apps and digital content for those apps. In iOS 11, Apple added an option to offload apps…

Do you care to know the location of all the streetlamps in Minneapolis? The mission number and details of each Soyuz capsule launch since 1967? Or what kinds of pictures of coffee beans you can use in a blog entry? The answers are available thanks to…

Apple added a new anti-tracking feature to Safari that prevents one-to-one tracking of users who click an ad on one site and make a purchase on another, unrelated site. Instead, the connection will be blurred so that an advertiser can only track the…

Apple added an option in late 2016 to give you the equivalent of cloud-based bottomless Desktop and Documents folders in macOS to pair with iCloud Music Library and what’s now called iCloud Photos. In the iCloud preference pane, you can click iCloud…

While software programs usually live in the Applications folder in macOS, they can be found all over the place. That’s because some apps are really tiny utilities that applications or services require and which shouldn’t be launched by a user. Others…

Time Machine in macOS can automatically back up every volume you have mounted on a Mac except those that you exclude. You manage the exclusions list by opening the Time Machine preference pane and clicking Options, where you can also add particular…

Apple likes to hide the fuss of technical choices in its software. That includes Photos, which provides a lot of sophisticated functions with a friendly veneer. However, when it comes to exporting images, you might not know which option to take…

If you ever used iTunes on the Mac to sync photos and albums with iOS, you could have problems enabling iCloud Photos, Apple’s synchronization and backup options for images and videos captured in and imported into iOS and macOS. Apple This situation…

When you mount a drive in the Finder, you expect it to stay there. If you’ve found that your previously reliable external hard disk drive or SSD starts ejecting itself, trouble is obviously afoot. The message “Disk Not Ejected Properly” usually…