It was pretty exciting news when Apple made it possible to install older versions of iOS apps on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, but if you’ve tried to download a new app that requires a newer OS than your device has, you’ve probably been stumped.
Monthly Archives: November 2013
I love my iPhone 4, but how does it stack up against similar spec’d Android handsets. Sleek looks are very nice, but it’s performance that counts when in the real world.
USB has been around since 1996, but it didn’t come into its own until Apple unveiled the first iMac in May 1998. While the PC world was content to add USB as one more port in addition to parallel and serial ports, the iMac dispensed with legacy ports in favor of a USB-only architecture. Anyone […]
One problem with personal computers is that you can’t run full diagnostics of your boot drive when booted from it. It’s very helpful to have an emergency drive you can boot from to run diagnostics on your primary drive, whether that’s a DVD, hard drive, or USB thumb drive. This article explains how to build […]
Apple introduced a new feature, Safe Sleep, with Mac OS X 10.3 Panther in 2003. When enabled, Safe Sleep writes the contents of your Mac’s memory to a file named sleepimage on its hard drive before putting the computer to sleep (this works like the Hibernate command in Windows). In case the Mac loses power […]
Would you like an iPhone but cannot justify the high price tag? Don’t need all the bells and whistles of a new one? If you think an older one might suits your needs take a look at the 3GS.
It seems like increasingly, at least for most people, digital cameras don’t matter. Sure, just as there were (film) camera professionals and serious hobbyists, there are people buying and using high-end digital cameras.
The first time I heard about Pandora, I was intrigued. The streaming music service analyzes music using 400 different factors and attempts to create playlists that will work with the performer or song you use to seed the playlist.
We listen to radio, podcasts, my iTunes collection, and iHeartRadio at work while we assemble high pressure air hoses. The air compressors in the next room over are noisy, and so is the machine that crimps the ends on each hose. It’s a good thing the stereo has lots of power and a big speaker […]
When I upgraded to an iPhone 4S this past summer, I had the option of trading in my iPhone 3GS for $100 credit or keeping it. I decided to keep it, as I was sure I could find many ways to use it. One of those is as a music player connected to a stereo […]
The iPhone grew out of the iPod, Apple’s first digital music player launched well over a decade ago. Listening to music was the reason the iPod existed, and Apple wanted to make sure that its iPhone (and later iPod touch and iPad) did it well.
Macs have had hard drives for nearly as long as Macs have been available, as is true of PCs, and a lot of those very early hard drives didn’t have great life expectancies. In addition to higher capacity and lower cost per data unit, hard drives have become far more reliable than those from the […]
This is the tale of three operating systems: Windows XP, its presumed successor Vista, and the recently displaced as king of the hill Windows 7.
I am a Mac user and have been for over a decade. No matter how much Windows changes, it will never be enough to pull me away from the beauty that is Mac OS X. But does Vista deserve the stick it gets?
OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is widely regarded as one of the best versions of Mac OS X ever released, but its successor, OS X 10.7 Lion, is often pushed aside. Let’s look at why.
I’ve been using iOS 7 on my iPhone 4S since a day or two after its release, and while the new interface and rearrangement of some things frustrated me at first, I very much like it now. That isn’t to say I’ve had no issues with it.
Imagine if you could seamlessly open any document and run any program on your computer. Wouldn’t that be great? Read and edit old word processor files – MacWord, anyone? WordStar? Run PC games on your Mac, Super Nintendo games on your Windows PC? Like the peaceful utopia in John Lennon’s Imagine, we’re not there yet. […]
If you don’t have a data allowance on your iPhone or other mobile phone, could you survive by just relying on places offering free WiFi?