Tag Archives: iCloud

How to manage multiple Photos libraries on your Mac

PhotosIconXAs an OS X user you likely have at least some of your photos stored in Apple’s provided Photos application, and by doing so, you can use them with iCloud services, and in applications that interface with OS X’s media sharing services. However, there might be times where you want to keep some photos separate from others, and manage them in more private ways than having them accessible by other applications and services. Continue reading

How to put your personal Mac on your work’s network

NetworkIconXQuite often corporate networks will have restrictions that prevent you from using them with your personal system. Sometimes, only systems that have been imaged by an IT department are allowed on a domain, with others being restricted via MAC address filtering (among other methods) from even connecting. However, you may find yourself having worked on projects using your personal laptop, and then needing to either access a printer or copy files to network resources at work. While using USB drives is the preferred approach for this, depending on your network setup you may be able to get yourself onto the network. Continue reading

Family Sharing may be draining your iPhone’s battery

BatteryIconXIf your iPhone is suddenly not holding its charge, then the problem may be stemming from the use of Apple’s Family Sharing service.

Being a fairly generic problem, battery drain on an iPhone can happen from a number of different reasons, and while potential causes include worn out or damaged batteries not being able to hold a charge, this generally progresses over time and is more prevalent with older devices. Continue reading

Intermittent but frequent OS X pauses may be from iCloud syncing

iCloudIconXWhen using your Mac running OS X Yosemite, you may find that at certain times during the day your Mac will begin to pause, showing the spinning color wheel repeatedly and quite frequently. When this happens, it interrupts all ability to type and interact with other applications, leaving you with the only options of waiting or attempting to restart your system to clear the problem. Continue reading

iCloud syncing in Photos causing Wi-Fi hangups in OS X 10.10.3

PhotosIconXSome people who have updated their Macs to OS X 10.10.3 are noticing dropouts in Wi-Fi connectivity. While such problems have affected past OS X versions, in these cases often the problems only started after updating to version 10.10.3, and not before. Whenever Wi-Fi problems crop up in OS X, unfortunately there can be a myriad of reasons that might take meticulous troubleshooting to fix; however, one issue that seems common to many affected people is some interference with the iCloud syncing features in Photos. Continue reading

Manage a Mac pausing during Setup Assistant

SetupAssistantIconXIf you set up a new Mac with a clean installation of OS X Yosemite, then you might find yourself in a situation where the OS X Setup Assistant utility pauses and hangs with the spinning color wheel. This may persist for minutes on end, and have you assuming the setup has failed, requiring you to manually reset your Mac. However, when you do so, the same behavior persists. Continue reading

iWork for iCloud and Apple IDs now available for Linux and Windows

iCloudIconXIf you are a fan of Apple’s iWork productivity suite, then you will now be able to create an Apple ID and use the suite via Apple’s iCloud Web apps when logged in from any Web browser, on any operating system, instead of being limited to a Mac.

Apple’s iWork for iCloud was announced at the 2013 World Wide Developer Conference, as a productivity expansion for Apple’s popular iWork desktop suite, and joined other Continue reading

Two-factor authentication comes to iMessage and FaceTime

NewMessagesIconXApple recently debuted a two-factor authentication approach for securing Apple IDs from hacking; however, this has been limited to authenticating on Apple’s Web site or making purchases using iTunes. Now Apple has expanded this security measure to work with its text, voice, and video messaging services. Continue reading

Easily send large e-mail attachments with iCloud in Yosemite

MailIconYosemiteXSending attachments via e-mail to a colleague or friend is perhaps the most common approach for sharing files, and is a method that is nearly as old as e-mail itself; however, one limitation that many e-mail services have is a cap on the size of attachments that you can send, which depending on the service is generally between 10-25MB per attachment. Even though this allows the sending of most standard documents, more and more frequently there may be times when you need to send files that exceed this size. Continue reading

Prevent Messages from splitting into multiple conversations

NewMessagesIconXWhen using Messages on either your iPhone, iPad, or Mac, you might run into an issue where conversations will become split into multiple threads, where at times messages will arrive in one thread and at other times they may end up in the other. This can not only be a little cluttering to your organization in Messages, but can be confusing since you might not know what thread to use when attempting to connect with someone. Continue reading