Mac

Stay up-to-date on the latest Mac news, and tutorials. Get expert tips and tricks to optimize your Mac’s performance and learn about the latest Apple products and software updates. Discover the best Mac apps and accessories to enhance your user experience.

Adobe updates Photoshop CC for Mac with rich support for Touch Bar shortcuts

Adobe today refreshed Photoshop CC 2017 for Mac with support for customizable shortcuts on the new MacBook Pro's Touch Bar. Apple showed off Touch Bar shortcuts in Photoshop during its Mac event last month, and now you can try them out yourself. This release brings three categories of Touch Bar-supported functions to Photoshop CC for Mac: Layer Properties, Brushes and your Favorites.

Microsoft: more Mac users than ever switching to Surface over MacBook Pro “disappointment”

If you believe Microsoft, Apple fans are so disappointed with the new MacBook Pro that they're now switching to Surface PCs and laptops in droves. In a blog post Monday by Brian Hall, CVP Microsoft Devices Marketing, trash-talked the new MacBook Pro, openly calling it a “disappointment”.

In the same breath, he suggested that the excitement of new Surface products coupled with the supposed MacBook Pro disappointment is now encouraging more people to switch from Macs to Surface than ever before.

You can now report calendar spam on iCloud.com, support for iOS devices coming soon

A new kind of spamming technique relying on iCloud Calendar has caused and continues to cause a lot of pain as these unwanted invites hit users' email inboxes and trigger a notification. As noted on Reddit, the iCloud Calendar web app seems to have gained a new link for reporting spammy calendar invites and blocking their senders.

This feature will be rolling out to the stock Calendar app on iOS devices soon, an Apple representative allegedly told a disgruntled customer.

Convert and push media into any Apple device with WALTR 2, no jailbreak or iTunes needed

Softorino, a purely European crew packed with talented developers, recently released WALTR 2 as a successor to the original app that's captured more than 500,000 downloads worldwide in just under 20 months since its debut.

A well-deserved success, if you ask me, because WALTR made it super easy to convert audio and video files encoded in “foreign” formats, such as DivX/MKV movies with subtitles and FLAC audio files, without requiring a jailbreak.

I raved about WALTR in my review, underscoring how its drag-and-drop simplicity allows just about anyone to bypass the mess that is iTunes. And boy, does it fly: in my tests, WALTR transcoded a 2.64-gigabyte MKV file on my 1.3 GHz Intel Core i5 mid-2013 MacBook Air into an iOS-friendly format and sent it over USB to my iPhone 6 in under two minutes.

Building on this remarkable engine, WALTR 2 is now available with new features like support for more than two-dozen legacy iPod models and other devices starting from iOS 5. It uses automatic metadata recognition that works perfectly, gives you the ability to transfer media to your device wirelessly, supports PDF and ePUB file formats and much, much more.

10 great gift ideas for iMac users

Welcome to the latest edition of iDB’s ongoing Gift Ideas series, where we provide curated roundups of some of our favorite products. Throughout the year we cover and test a number of devices and accessories, so we decided to use that experience to help those searching for the perfect present. Today’s roundup is focused on iMac users.

Apple seeds macOS Sierra 10.12.2 beta 6 to developers

Just 24 hours after iOS 10.2 beta 7 dropped and three days following macOS Sierra 10.12.2 beta 5, Apple on Thursday issued a sixth beta of what would become the second major update to macOS Sierra. macOS Sierra 10.12.2 beta 6 (build number 16C63a) is now available to registered developers.

The update can be deployed via the Mac App Store's Updates tab on Macs which are registered with the Apple Developer Program. The full installer is on Dev Center.

10 great gift ideas for MacBook users

Welcome to the latest edition of iDB’s ongoing Gift Ideas series, where we provide curated roundups of some of our favorite products. Throughout the year we cover and test a number of devices and accessories, so we decided to use that experience to help those searching for the perfect present. Today’s roundup is focused on MacBook users.

Latest macOS 10.12.2 beta fixes MacBook Pro graphics glitches, says Apple’s Federighi

An annoying graphics glitching issue that some owners of the new MacBook Pro are seeing should become a thing of the past when macOS 10.12.2 Sierra software update releases for public consumption, according to a purported email message from Apple's software boss Craig Federighi.

Portland-based MacRumors forum member Dennis reportedly received a reply from Federighi after asking Tim Cook via email about the reported glitches, which range from screen tearing and broken textures to brightly colored flickering and checkerboard patterns to issues with translucency, transparent graphics and other visual artifacts.

How to fix TinyUmbrella v9.3.4 crashing on launch

Many jailbreakers will be familiar with the program TinyUmbrella, which has traditionally been one of the best ways to save SHSH blobs for their iOS devices onto their Macs for safekeeping. What SHSH blobs are, their function, and how to save them is outside the scope of this article, (I will put something together soon on this), but suffice to say that saving these blobs is of some importance to many jailbreakers and that TinyUmbrella has been the go-to application for doing so for a long while.

Whilst the application was updated as recently as August by its creator Semaphore, many Mac users (myself included) have noted that the new version, 9.3.4, gives an error on launch and cannot be used at all. This guide will walk you through the fix to get your umbrella back up again on Mac, so you can carry on wishfully saving those blobs.

Some new MacBook Pros are shutting down repeatedly and unexpectedly

Some proud owners of the new MacBook Pro with TouchBar are reportedly seeing their notebooks shut down repeatedly and unexpectedly. According to a report from Jeff Porten of TidBits, the problem might be related to external hard drives connected to the notebook through its Thunderbolt 3/USB-C ports.

Apple declined comment. This is yet another in a series of teething issues that have been plaguing early adopters of the new MacBook Pro. Just a few days ago, for example, some MacBook Pro owners reported an annoying graphics glitching issue.

MacPaw unveils Setapp, the Netflix of high-quality Mac apps

The way you get apps is about to change: Setapp from MacPaw is one of the best things to happen to third-party Mac development in years. Think of Setapp as the Netflix of quality software or an “unstore” alternative to Apple’s store. But unlike the Mac App Store which continues to disappoint with sandboxing requirements, lack of paid upgrades and other missing features, Setapp unlocks dozens of high-quality, cherry-picked Mac apps in exchange for a flat-fee monthly subscription of $9.99.

You won't find subpar software in Setapp and all of the apps are fully functional and available without trials or In-App Purchases, including ones like Screens, Ulysses, RapidWeaver 7, Reveal and Eltima Player.

After testing Setapp for approximately two weeks, I've come to the conclusion that it is the best source of premium Mac apps that you can get for a fraction of their combined price, all at once.