D. Griffin Jones - page 16

The iKier K1 Pro Max is a top-of-the-line laser engraver that will etch your creations into wood to make beautiful pieces of precision physical art. After extensive testing, I was impressed by the hardware and the pieces I was able to make.

Unfortunately, the machine is complicated to set up and the software let me down at every single step in the process. I never got it working with my everyday Mac, I couldn’t use the machine’s built-in software and the included third-party software (only offered with a 30-day free trial) is a convoluted mess of labyrinthian dialog boxes spawned from user interface hell.

Maccy is a fantastic macOS copy-paste manager that supercharges your clipboard history. It allows you to copy … and copy … and copy again, and still paste the first thing you copied. Of course, it works with cut-and-paste too. It’s super well-designed and very easy to use. With a simple keyboard shortcut, you can bring up a small menu to instantly paste something you cut or copied hours ago.

It’s a fantastic utility that will quickly become a must-have on every Mac you use. You can buy Maccy for just $9.99 on the Mac App Store, or build it from its open-source code yourself.

iOS 17 brought dozens of great features and changes, but the latest 17.2 update adds even more.

The headline feature is the new Journal app — other new tweaks come to iMessage stickers, NameDrop and Apple Music. If you have a new iPhone 15 Pro, you can record Spatial Videos and use the Translate app directly from the Action button. You can also customize more notification sounds and StandBy.

Here are the ten best features in 17.2.

Backup Status is a simple app that puts a Time Machine widget on your Mac desktop (or stows it away in your Notification Center). If you don’t want the Time Machine icon cluttering up your menu bar, this is a straightforward alternative.

Time Machine, of course, is Apple’s software that makes continuous backups of your files to a separate part of your disk, an external hard drive or network-attached storage. Everyone should use Time Machine.

And, after you set it up, you should try Backup Status, the fun little app that lets you easily monitor your Time Machine backups.

In iOS 17, many of the default sounds for notifications, alarms and timers have been changed — but how do you get back the old sounds if you don’t like the new ones?

A lot of people get deeply attached to the sound effects. If you want the old noises back, you can change (most of them) back manually. I’ll show you how.

Update: The new iOS 17.2 makes a nice change to alerts in third-party apps. Read on for more details.

You’re running out of time to buy the Apple gifts your loved ones want for the holidays. If you need to buy an iPhone, iPad or AirPods, you need to make a well-informed decision quickly — but how do you know which model to get?

We have a helpful new video that will explain the differences between various iPhone, iPad and AirPods models. Plus, we published detailed written buying guides for your convenience.

Blip is a delightful utilty that lets you transfer files across the internet — directly from your Mac to theirs. There’s no middleman uploading to and downloading from a cloud, no pesky web app to sign into. It’s like beaming your files onto someone else’s computer.

It’s the easiest and most straightforward way to send someone large folders of files or complex projects from your Mac. And best of all, it’s totally free and secure.

In Stray, you play as a cat wandering through a cyberpunk version of the Kowloon Walled City, the most densely populated city in the world (and a fascinating footnote of history). In this future, though, the city teems with robots who dream of visiting the outside world.

It’s been out for PC, Xbox and PlayStation for a while, but the Mac version is out now on the Mac App Store.

Stray is a gripping game in an exquisitely designed and immersive world that proves gaming on the Mac is on the rise once again.

AfterShip Package Tracker is a free app that does exactly what it says in the name: It tracks your packages. You can see all your orders in one place, when they will arrive, and how close they are geographically to you. Push notifications are fast and alert you when your items are on their way.

Plus, unlike just about every other package-tracking app for iOS, AfterShip Package Tracker is totally free, with no in-app purchases.

Google plans to purge old accounts starting in December. However, you can keep your Google account active and prevent it from being deleted. You have until the first day of December to save any inactive Google accounts.

What’s being cleaned out? Any Google account that’s been inactive for two years. If you received an email about a dormant account, you know for sure that you need to take action. However, that’s not foolproof. If your dormant account doesn’t have a recovery email set up, you’d never be notified in the first place.

If you have a bunch of alternate, backup Google accounts — as many do — here’s what you need to do.

If you love YouTube but hate YouTube ads, Vinegar is the best Safari extension you can download. It blocks all ads on YouTube and restores many iOS-native features like playing videos in the background, picture-in-picture, and more on iPhone, iPad and Mac alike.

YouTube ads are freaking insufferable. But if you don’t want to put down the dough for YouTube Premium (currently $13.99 per month), you can pay a one-time fee of just $1.99 to buy Vinegar for all your Apple devices.

If you ever watch YouTube, Vinegar is life-changing. Get it now on the App Store for iOS, iPadOS and macOS.

In a tedious and awkward 10-minute video released Thursday, buzzy startup Humane gave a more thorough introduction of its Ai Pin. The video all but confirms my feelings that we are seeing the next hilarious Silicon Valley failure play out in real time.

Since co-founder Imran Chaudhri’s TED Talk earlier this year, where we got a vague introduction to the supposed iPhone-killer’s features, there remained a slim chance — one in a hundred — that the then-unnamed device wasn’t a total waste.

Any ounce of doubt has been washed away as this new video doubles down on the Ai Pin’s flaws and walks back its only positives. In fact, the introductory video clearly demonstrates why the device will fail: The AI gave completely wrong answers and provided no way to check their accuracy. It’s absolutely untrustworthy. This highlights the broader concerns surrounding Humane AI and its ability to provide reliable and accurate assistance.

Some lucky first-day owners of the new M3 MacBook Pro unboxed their machines Tuesday to discover a reversal of fortune: Their new Macs arrived with a broken version of macOS that can’t install software updates.

Some MacBook Pros shipped to customers with an unreleased (well, more like unintentionally released) build of macOS Ventura 13.5. This version can’t be updated to macOS Sonoma through the standard Software Update feature in System Preferences.

Here’s how to fix the admittedly rare problem.

The Kuxiu X36 Boom Mic Arm is a solid metal piece of gear for mounting a microphone to your desk. It has a clean, logo-free design that blends in with any setup.

Unlike other boom arms, the Kuxiu X36 isn’t free-floating and adjustable with a single finger — it’s a firm stand that will hold its position. It’s split into three segments, not just two, so it’s nonetheless highly adjustable.

After some months of testing, I was surprised to find a much better use for it than mounting my microphone. Read on to see what it’s best for.

Apple introduced the next generation of MacBook Pro and iMac, each powered by the next generation of its in-house silicon: M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max. The Macs run faster than ever before thanks to smaller transistors and additional cores packed into each processor.

The products are already available to order — so is it time for you to upgrade? That all depends on which devices you have, so I’ve put together a buying guide with sharable images and a video to help you decide.

Yesterday’s “Scary Fast” Apple event, debuting the MacBook Pro and iMac with the M3 family of chips, was a short affair at just 30 minutes. But what if you only have, say, a minute and a half?

Here are the announcements from last night cut down to a 90 second video.

At Monday’s “Scary Fast” event, Apple rolled out a simple update to the iMac, the perennial all-in-one desktop computer, with the new M3 chip. This comes alongside the new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro.

“The world’s best all-in-one gets even more powerful and even more capable,” said CEO Tim Cook. “We’re giving the iMac a giant leap in performance while keeping the same, impossibly thin design,” said SVP of hardware engineering John Ternus.

iMac starts at the same price of $1,299. You can order it today and it will be available next week.

AirBuddy is a handy Mac app that lets you monitor all your nearby Bluetooth devices and AirPods. You can check battery life, switch them back and forth between multiple Macs on your desk, and best of all — get the same beautiful AirPods animations that you see on your iPhone.

It offers granular Bluetooth controls that Apple should build right into macOS.

EZ Internet Solutions is a rural internet service provider that can give you a solid cellular internet connection that’s truly unlimited — no data cap, no speed throttling. If you live in a spot without any internet infrastructure, but you do have a cell connection, it is a solid option you should consider.

EZ Internet Solutions offers cellular home internet in places AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile don’t. Contrast that with HughesNet, a popular satellite internet provider, which charges an arm and a leg only to give you a fraction of the speed.

I truly live in the middle of nowhere, and yet I’ve been using EZ Internet to live stream a video podcast every week for months without a hitch.

NetNewsWire is a delightfully simple RSS reader for Mac, iPhone and iPad that syncs over iCloud. What’s an RSS reader? It’s the best way to keep up with your news, read blog posts, get YouTube videos, read webcomics and follow anything online.

NetNewsWire is an app I leave open perpetually on my Mac and open dozens of times a day on my iPhone. Since its relaunch a few years ago, it’s become one of the most important, core apps for my work and relaxation. Best of all, it’s totally free and open-source with no ads or tracking.

There are a lot of awesome features in iOS 17 — Contact Posters, StandBy, Safari profiles, shared passwords and much, much more. Here’s a simple to-do list on how to make the most of Cupertino’s latest and greatest iPhone operating system.

Reading Time for iPhone and iPad lets you build a library of books, then tracks your progress as you read. It encourages reading by making everything easier and more fun.

You can easily scan books by their barcodes to add them to your library. When you start a reading session, a Live Activity will show up on your Lock Screen, in the Dynamic Island or in StandBy.

The Reading Time app keeps track of your progress with detailed stats — like your reading speed, and estimated time until you’re finished — in an organized dashboard of books.

If you haven’t looked at any of Apple’s accessibility features because you’re not blind or deaf, and don’t think they would make your life easier, you might be surprised.

Apple built a handful of accessibility features into iOS 17 that let people with various disabilities use the iPhone in new and unexpected ways. However, absolutely anyone can take advantage of these tools, which prove surprisingly helpful in certain situations.

You can already get live captions to watch videos silently, lock your phone into one app to keep people from snooping around, play soothing ocean or forest sounds and more.

In iOS 17, five accessibility features take things even further. Assistive Access simplifies your phone to its bare features to make it easier to use; Live Speech and Personal Voice let you type on the keyboard to speak using your own voice; Detection Mode and Point and Speak help you get around using your iPhone camera.

Our hands-on demo will show you what these features can do for you.

The transition from Intel processors to Apple silicon changed every Mac for the better … almost. But there are a few niches in the lineup that have yet to be filled.

While Apple’s computers are best-in-class, there are a few categories the company does not currently compete in. These are the top seven Macs that Apple doesn’t make.

Glass is a return to the simplicity of Instagram circa 2012. It’s a social network specially tailored for looking at and posting beautiful photography. I have a thing for niche social networks, I guess.

I was an early adopter of Instagram, which initially was a picture-first social network. It’s lost focus in the years since, getting crowded with Stories, Reels, shopping and countless more half-baked features that don’t make sense. I now avoid it at all costs.

You don’t need to be a professional photographer to use it — although you do need $30/year.