Everyone—or at least everyone reading this article—knows how to use a Web browser. But just because you can click links, search for websites, and type URLs doesn’t mean that you’re surfing the Web as smoothly and effectively as you could. We all have sites that we visit regularly—a local newspaper, perhaps, or a social [...]
Apple has long provided a microphone button in the keyboard to invoke dictation on the iPhone and iPad. But, it wasn’t always easy to hit, and you had to switch back to the keyboard to fix the inevitable mistakes. (Apple’s dictation is a huge timesaver but far from perfect, particularly with homonyms and proper [...]
On occasion, we all need to scan a document—an invoice, a recipe, instructions from a book—but far more people have an iPhone or iPad than a hardware scanner. Luckily, Apple has built a scanning capability into iOS, iPadOS, and macOS for some years now. The next time you’re faced with a piece of paper [...]
If you’ve ever tried to use Face ID to unlock an iPhone while lying on your side in bed, you may have noticed that it didn’t work. That’s because Face ID used to require that the iPhone be upright, in portrait mode. In iOS 16, however, Apple has improved Face ID so it will [...]
Apple makes it easy to share contact cards on the iPhone or iPad—just scroll down in a contact and tap Share Contact. But what if you don’t want to share every piece of data on that card? To avoid oversharing in iOS 16 or iPadOS 16, tap Filter Fields at the top of the Share [...]
Whatever consumer electronics product you can name, there’s probably a “smart” version that you configure via an app or Internet-connected interface once you’ve connected it to your Wi-Fi network. For ease of setup and to keep costs down, many such devices come pre-configured with not just a default username and password, but the same [...]
In early December, Apple made a surprise announcement: Advanced Data Protection for iCloud. It’s not as though iCloud’s standard data protection is problematic, but it hinges on one architectural decision that makes some iCloud data theoretically vulnerable: Apple holds the encryption keys necessary to decrypt iCloud data. Because Apple controls those encryption keys, an [...]
Photos has long provided a hidden album you could use to hold images you wanted to keep a little more private. Until this year, however, it was security through obscurity: anyone who knew to reveal the album in Settings > Photos on an iPhone or iPad or by choosing View > Show Hidden Album [...]
Password management company LastPass has announced that it suffered a security breach in which attackers stole both encrypted customer account data (which is bad) and customer vaults containing encrypted usernames and passwords (which is much, much worse). On the positive side, the data of users who abided by LastPass’s defaults and created master passwords [...]
Although iOS and iPadOS are extremely stable, there are times when rebooting your iPhone or iPad can eliminate odd or problematic behavior, and there’s no harm in trying it. In the past, you’ve had to remember which buttons to press or select Settings > General > Shut Down and then press a button to [...]
