Tips

How to buy Apple Watch with in-store delivery

Earlier today, the Apple Watch hit an additional seven countries around the world, thus bringing the number of countries where the wearable gizmo officially sells to sixteen, with more markets joining Apple's party it in the coming weeks and months.

The Cupertino firm has pledged to sell “some models” in its retail stores to walk-in customers. But, you still cannot just waltz inside an Apple Store, pick up an Apple Watch and walk away—without making an online reservation first.

That's where the Apple Online Store's handy online reservation system comes into play. Called Reserve & Pickup, it lets prospective customers reserve their Apple Watch with in-store delivery for pickup in person. In this tutorial, I'm going to guide you step by step through using the Reserve & Pickup system to find an Apple Watch you'd like to buy and have it shipped to your nearest Apple Store.

How to install beta software on a separate partition

Itching to run the latest macOS beta, but don't want to upgrade your primary Mac installation with a beta release? You'd be wise to carefully consider the prospects of running a beta release as a daily driver. That said, it is possible to run beta software on your primary machine without compromising your current installation.

By creating a small test partition on your primary drive, you can create a great landing space for the beta. Read and watch our walkthrough to see how easy it is.

How to set up Time Machine on Mac OS X

Time Machine is a Mac utility that allows you to automate hourly, daily, and weekly backups on an external drive that's connected directly to your Mac or via a local network. It's seen as the first line of defense against data loss, and features simple setup.

Setting up Time Machine, in its most basic configuration, is extremely easy. All you need to do is launch the Time Machine preferences, turn on Time Machine, select a Backup Disk, and you're pretty much set.

Of course, there's much more to Time Machine than just the initial setup, but in this first post in our Time Machine tutorial series for OS X, we'll cover some of the basic set up options.

How to set up and use Apple Pay with Apple Watch

The Apple Watch has built-in NFC, which stands for Near-Field Communication, for making wireless payments on the go. And in a typical Apple fashion, the watch doesn't even have to be in the range of its paired iPhone, nor does it have to establish a network connection, to make the payment.

Before you can start making payments with a flick of your wrist, you're going to need to set up Apple Pay on your Apple Watch. In this tutorial, I'm going to lay it all out for your and explain how to set up, manage and use Apple Pay with your Apple Watch.

How to change your email display name

Change email display name on iPhone and Mac

When you send someone an email, it usually shows the name you set while creating the account. Suppose you made a typo while setting up your email, or used your nickname or a fake name, and now every email you send has this name you no longer like.

In this tutorial, we show you how to change the name that's displayed in the email you send to someone from your iPhone, iPad, Mac, and iCloud.

How to get around strange Messages bug that crashes your iPhone

An odd bug that lets ill-minded folk send you a message which causes your iPhone to respring has been making rounds.

In case you missed it, a very specific string of symbols and Arabic characters sent through iMessage or SMS sends an iPhone in an immediate respring, causing the device to crash and quickly reboot, as first noticed on Reddit.

It's a serious issue which in some instances can break the Messages app on your iPhone so here are a few possible workaround solutions until Apple delivers a proper fix.

How to fix a “referencing media on the camera” error in Final Cut Pro X

Every now and then, you may run into an issue with Final Cut Pro X where a file doesn't successfully import. Due to this, the media that you're working with in your project is still referencing the location where the file originally was (i.e. SD Card, Camera HDD, etc.).

When this happens, and you try to share/export a project, you'll receive an error message that says "This item cannot be shared while it is still referencing media on the camera."

To fix this problem, you'll need to reimport your footage from the original source using the File menu. It's fairly straightforward, but it's not exactly obvious as to what you should do when you first encounter this issue. Inside, we'll show you the error message and the quick fix in our brief video tutorial.