This post is presented by Dashlane.

Christmas season used to mean spending days dashing between stores to rack up presents for loved ones. Now it means buying online from people and companies all over the country, maybe even the planet.

Online shopping is the norm now, so protecting your credit card information involves more than covering the keypad as you enter your PIN at the cashier’s stand. To avoid losing your payment information this shopping season, the best line of defense is a good password manager.

At the beginning of each summer, coastal cities in Greece spend thousands of dollars cleaning up dead seagrass that washes up on the country’s beaches. Tourism officials see it as an eyesore and are more than happy to send tons of it to local landfills.

But to Greek startup Phee, the dead leaves of the vascular sea plant known as Posidonia oceanica make beautiful iPhone and iPad cases.

Waze CEO Norm Bardin will never forget the day his company started on the path from small startup to becoming practically a household name. He says the beginning of this rise is all due to Apple and its CEO.

But that wasn’t really Tim Cook’s plan. Waze’s success is due to a bad, bad time for Apple.

2018 has been one of the best years ever for Apple. Looking at some of the company’s most popular metric shows that the numbers are up across the board (stock price excepted).

Never before have there been more developers making more money off iOS while Apple extends its ever-growing reach. Revenue hit an all-time high. And the next big thing feels like it’s just on the horizon.

Here’s Apple’s 2018 by the numbers.

Apple has busted out one more beta update for developers to play with before the end of 2018 with the first build of iOS 12.1.3.

The new iOS 12.1.3 beta 1 update comes just days after Apple released iOS 12.1.2 to the public as a way to fix patent claims by Qualcomm in China. Along with the new iOS beta, there are also new beta updates for macOS Mojave and tvOS.

The past 12 months have been one of the busiest ever for Apple’s video team.

Apple churned out more than 120 ads and other videos in 2018, unleashing some of its most memorable commercials in years.

After hours of watching all of Apple’s 2018 ads, we rounded up the 10 absolute best, some of which you probably haven’t even seen yet. Get ready to relive all the good times!

Apple Music will make its way to third-party Alexa speakers eventually, Amazon has confirmed.

The streaming service finally joined Alexa earlier this week — you may have gotten an announcement notification on your iPhone — but it’s currently available only on Amazon’s own Echo devices.

A new MacOS app gives photographers a speedy way to create web galleries from the Photos library.

How fast? That depends on how fast you can click on a folder.

Chinese electronic parts maker O-Film Tech could bail out the struggling Japan Display, a new report reveals. Both companies are listed on Apple’s 2018 Supplier List.

O-Film reportedly wants to buy a 33 percent stake in Japan Display, which provides Apple with LCD displays. Japan Display has been having major problems for some time. This year alone, its stock has fallen 80 percent.

Jefferies analyst Timothy O’Shea has added his name to the growing number of Apple watchers concerned about iPhone demand. His message? That Wall Street estimates remain too high, and that Apple’s situation, “could get worse before it gets better.”

Apple has lost more than one-fifth of its value since its $1 trillion record market cap earlier this year.

Fortnite’s festive event for 2018 has kicked off, giving players the opportunity to unlock exclusive holiday rewards and play fresh limited-time game modes every day.

The challenges you’ll need to complete to earn those rewards will be revealed at 9 a.m. ET each day, but thanks to a new leak, we already know what to expect from 14 Days of Fortnite.

When it comes to appealing to potential employers, every bit of extra skill helps. And there are few skills more portable and marketable than mastery of Microsoft Excel. It’s used in countless offices, for everything from bookkeeping to contacts to project management and way beyond. So these Excel courses are a must-see for any digital professional.

Beleaguered French president Emmanuel Macron is hoping to win back public favor by putting in place tax hikes on American tech giants doing business in Europe.

France has reportedly been working with other countries in the European Union to introduce a digital tax on companies including Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google. The new taxes, set to be introduced in January, could pull in $792 million.

You can now view your Twitter timeline in reverse chronological order on iOS.

Twitter has been testing the feature, which lets you see the newest tweets first, for the past couple of months. Now it is being rolled out to all — starting with those on iOS.

Apple is continuing its strategy of sending out push notifications to iPhone and iPad users, intended to promote the company’s services and offerings.

It appears to be part of a new more aggressive marketing strategy on Apple’s part. But not everyone is happy about it.

Update: Williamson County elected to award Apple tax breaks worth $16 million over 15 years. The Williamson County commissioners voted 5-0 to approve the deal. Another $25 million will come from the Texas Enterprise Fund.

Apple apparently netted itself a good deal for its newly announced $1 billion campus in Austin, Texas. According to a new report, Williamson County could pay back 65 percent of property taxes to Apple in exchange for a long-term commitment to creating jobs.

The money would be paid in yearly installments. It would start when Apple hires 700 people, then continue for the next 15 years. In return, Apple would invest $400 million and hire 4,000 people for the new site.

With Arduino, it’s possible to build almost anything you can imagine. Whether it’s wearables, apps, or robots, the freedom Arduino offers can be liberating or intimidating, depending on your skill level. So this bundle of parts and lessons is a great resource for anyone looking to break into Arduino.

Mark Rober already served the citizens of planet Earth by helping build the Curiosity rover currently roaming Mars. Now add holiday hero to his engineering credentials.

The ex-NASA engineer designed a series of revenge-bait packages that looked like HomePods — but showered unsuspecting thieves with glitter and deadly doses of fart spray.

The iOS music scene is stronger than ever, and 2018 saw some pretty awesome apps, from the simple MIDI keyboard app KB-1, to an Nanostudio 2, an entire Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) app that took its English programming team 6years to build. And that’s just the beginning. Lets check out the best iOS music apps of 2018.

Satechi just launched an aluminum iMac stand with a built-in USB-C hub. Not only will it give your computer some additional height, it makes it much easier to connect a variety of external peripherals.

The iMac comes with multiple built-in USB ports, but the ones in this hub are easier to access. 

It’s Christmas season, and you know what that means: Extra-long queues at airport check-in and “security;” once-a-year travelers who won’t just get out of the plane’s aisle and just sit the hell down; and of course parents/kids/friends who insist that you never emailed them the details of your flight.

We can’t fix the queues, the morons who mill in the aisles, or your lying friends and family, but I can show you how to quickly track a flight right from the Messages app, or anywhere else you see a flight number written down on your iPhone. Let’s take a look.

This post is presented by Tenorshare.

There are plenty of ways to lose data you care about. Usually, it’s because a drive goes kaput, a file system is corrupt, or some other hardware or software failure. But it can also happen thanks to malware, an accidental click or a power surge due to bad weather. However your data gets lost, there are few options for getting it back.

iPhone fans are already chomping at the bit for a redesigned model less than three months after the iPhone XS and XS Max made their debut.

A new concept design for the iPhone XI made its way to YouTube today imagining some big changes that could come to Apple’s flagship device in 2019. Chief among the new features is a three lens camera array accompanied by some design tweaks inspired by the new iPad Pro.

Take a closer look:

Even if you don’t have much interest in editing RAW and JPG images on your iPad, you might still want to check out Darkroom. The brand-new iPad version of the popular photo app offers a view of your standard iCloud Photo Library that’s better-looking and easier to use than the native Photos app. And that’s just for starters.

Andrew Kim used to be a senior designer at Tesla where he contributed to the development of numerous car models. Recently, however, he joined the list of people who’ve left that car company for Apple. 

It’s not yet known what projects Kim is working on for his new employer, but he could be contributing to Apple’s autonomous vehicle project. That said, Kim’s design experience extends beyond cars.