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.

How to share iCloud calendars

Apple's Calendar application for the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, Mac and iCloud.com makes it simple to share events and to-dos with select people, or let anyone with a link subscribe to a read-only calendar.

For example, you could share a “To Do” calendar with your significant other, create a calendar for your entire family so every member can put errands on it, invite your wife to a shared “Kids” calendar to keep parents in the loop about school activities and more.

Not only do shared calendars increase your productivity in the workplace, they help those who use them become more organized in everyday life. You can assign edit privileges to invitees, adjust how participants access the calendar and more.

Invitees have a myriad of options at their disposal to view shared calendars, including the iCloud Calendar web app, the stock Calendar app on the iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and Mac or Microsoft Outlook on a Windows computer.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to share a calendar privately or publicly on iPhone, iPad, Mac and iCloud.com. You will also learn how to manage calendar sharing by adding or removing participants, changing privileges, adjusting calendar notifications, and more.

Apple launches worldwide USB-C cable replacement program

Apple on Friday announced a worldwide replacement program for a limited number of USB-C charging cables that were shipped with 12-inch MacBook with retina display units or sold separately through June of 2015. A design flaw in these cables may cause unexpected premature failure.

As a part of the program, anyone with an affected cable is eligible to gain a free replacement through Apple.

Google is shutting down Picasa desktop app and Picasa Web Albums to focus on Photos

Google on Friday announced that the Picasa desktop app and its corresponding online photo-sharing service, called Picasa Web Albums, are soon going to be officially dead. This didn't come as a shock: since the launch of Google Photos, Picasa's fate was pretty much sealed.

As of March 15, 2016, Google will no longer be supporting the desktop Picasa application for Mac and Windows. After the cut-off date, existing Picasa installations will still work.

However, Google has said it will cease development of the app so there will be no future updates nor will the Picasa app continue to be available for download after March 15.

Using Gatekeeper to help secure your Mac

macOS comes with a security feature known as Gatekeeper, which can help prevent unwanted apps from launching on your Mac without your permission. It can also prevent potentially malicious apps from launching because it can be used to limit the kinds of apps that are allowed to open on your Mac.

In lieu of the recent Sparkle updater framework vulnerability having been uncovered in a variety of popular macOS apps, now is a great time to set up your Gatekeeper settings to prevent potential issues with malware on your Mac in the future.

In this tutorial, we'll be showing you how Gatekeeper works and how you can configure it to keep your Mac just as secure as you want it to be.

Some of the Mac apps known to be affected by the Sparkle vulnerability

A vulnerability discovered in an outdated version of the Sparkle updater framework that many third-party OS X apps depend on for serving the user with regular updates has been getting a lot of attention recently.

As we reported on Tuesday, the security problem affects a number of third-party Mac apps downloaded from the internet, and not apps downloaded from the Mac App Store. The vulnerability roots from the lack of an encrypted connection and gives a malicious hacker the ability to perform a man-in-the-middle attack.

But what OS X apps are affected? This is the information you need to know as soon as possible to keep your Mac safe from potential malware threats.

Apple seeds beta 3 of OS X 10.11.4 and iOS 9.3 to public testers

Two days after seeding iOS 9 beta 3 and OS X 10.11.4 beta 3 to developers, Apple has made the updates available to public testers. Folks who are registered in the company's Beta Software Program can now install the new firmware on their various devices.

As usual, the new iOS 9.3 beta is available over-the-air via the Settings app to those already running 9.3, and the new El Capitan 10.11.4 beta can be found in the Updates tab of the Mac App Store. You just need to make sure your Mac or device is enrolled.

Latest El Capitan beta has fixed Safari’s mishandling of shortened Twitter “t.co” links

An annoying issue pertaining to broken Twitter links, which has persisted in Safari for Mac since November 2015, has been fixed in the third beta of the forthcoming OS X 10.11.4 El Capitan software update, according to user reports on the Apple Support Communities forums.

The “Safari can’t open the page because the server where this page is located is not responding” error page no longer appears when clicking shortened “t.co” Twitter links with the secure HTTPS protocol in Safari and third-party apps like Tweetbot.

What you need to know about the Sparkle vulnerability affecting some OS X apps

A new vulnerability has been discovered to affect a wide variety of third-party apps for OS X that have been downloaded from the internet and use an outdated version of the Sparkle updater framework.

The new vulnerability puts a number of users of affected third-party apps at risk of being hijacked when those apps attempt to use the outdated framework to alert users of new app updates.

How to disable suggested search terms in Safari

Google Suggestions while typing in Safari address bar

Safari Smart Search Field lets you type in either an URL to visit or a search query to send to the default search engine. It's also a place where search suggestions automatically pop up as you type. With this cool feature, you can type just the first few letters of a query and rely on the search engine (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.) to help you complete the search term without needing to type out the rest of your query. But, certain users may not be fond of this feature for privacy reasons.

If you're among them, use the step-by-step instructions provided in this tutorial to turn off suggested search terms in Safari for iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

How to delete your old iPhoto library

After upgrading your Mac to OS X Yosemite or later, the new Photos app gets installed automatically.

On first launch, Photos will auto-upgrade your default iPhoto library to its new library format. People with multiple iPhoto libraries must manually convert them to the new format by holding the Option (⌥) key when clicking the Photos icon in the Dock.

Upon completing migration, you'll have two sets of photo libraries on your machine: the original iPhoto libraries and their Photos counterpart.

In order to free up a significant amount of storage space on your Mac, you can safely delete any iPhoto library that has been migrated to the new Photos app.

Apple’s Notes app in OS X 10.11.4 El Capitan can import files from Evernote

The forthcoming OS X 10.11.4 El Capitan software update, currently in testing, will bring out the ability to import Evernote content into the stock Notes application, Apple's Vice President of Marketing, Brian Croll, has confirmed in an interview with Japanese publication PC User, as relayed yesterday by the Japanese blog Mac Otakara.

Through a new Import Notes menu command, Mac owners will be able to import Evernote files into Notes, which in OS X 10.11.4 supports Evernote's proprietary .enex file format.