Macs—and Apple products in general—tend to last a long time. It’s not unusual to see someone happily using an 8-year-old MacBook Pro. As much as it’s environmentally responsible to use electronics as long as possible, doing so may reduce your productivity or leave your business in a precarious situation if a hardware failure forces an upgrade at an inconvenient time.

Another factor to consider is whether or not you can get service and parts for your older device. It’s easy to assume that Apple will fix whatever you bring in, but unfortunately, that’s not the case. Apple has policies surrounding how long it guarantees to provide service and parts, which is reasonable. No one would expect Apple to repair a 128K Mac from 1984—many repair techs hadn’t even been born then.

All Apple products fall into one of three categories: current, vintage, and obsolete. Current products, which Apple defines as those that were sold within the last 5 years, are eligible for service and parts from Apple, Apple Authorized Service Providers, and Independent Repair Providers. In other words, if you bought your Mac new within the last 5 years, you won’t have any problem getting Apple to fix it.

(Independent Repair Providers are firms that have signed up for Apple’s Independent Repair Provider Program to provide out-of-warranty iPhone and Mac repairs using Apple-provided parts, tools, service guides, and diagnostics. Other repair shops can repair Apple products but may lack Apple certifications and have to source parts from other suppliers.)

Things get trickier with the other two categories:

• Vintage: Apple considers a product to be vintage when the company stopped selling it more than 5 and less than 7 years ago. During this 2-year window, Apple says that service and parts may be obtained, subject to parts availability.
• Obsolete: As you’d expect, a product is considered obsolete when Apple hasn’t sold it for more than 7 years. Apple will not service obsolete products, and service providers cannot order parts for them.

There is one exception to these policies. Mac laptops may be eligible for an extended battery-only repair period for up to 10 years from when the product was last distributed for sale, subject to parts availability. That makes sense since a new battery may be all an old MacBook needs to keep working.

Apple maintains a page listing all vintage and obsolete products. To determine which Mac model you have, choose About This Mac from the Apple menu. For iPhones, iPads, and iPods, Apple provides pages explaining how to identify your model.

Apple’s policies surrounding vintage and obsolete products shouldn’t make a huge difference to most users. That’s because once a Mac hits 5 years old, it’s likely that upgrading to a new model will provide significant benefits. Many businesses prefer a 3-year replacement cycle because they’ve determined that’s the sweet spot where increasing support costs and lower performance make it worth selling the old Mac and buying a new one that’s faster and more reliable.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with keeping a Mac longer if it meets your needs and you don’t mind spending more on support. At some point, though, products in the vintage and obsolete categories are living on borrowed time.

(Featured image by iStock.com/Soulmemoria)

Prior to iOS 13, when you were editing text on an iPhone or iPad, Apple provided a magnifying glass that showed the position of the insertion point. It worked, but was clumsier than just moving the insertion point directly, which is what Apple enabled in iOS 13 and iOS 14. The only problem? Your finger usually obscures the text you want to edit. In iOS 15, Apple brought back the text magnification bubble to show you where the insertion point is in the text under your finger. If you’ve missed that feature, touch and hold on some text and drag the insertion point. Even easier is trackpad mode on the iPhone, which lets you touch and hold the Space bar to turn the entire keyboard area into a virtual trackpad that lets you move the insertion point above.

(Featured image by iStock.com/Ralf Geithe)

For our money, perhaps the most unheralded innovation of the computer age is Copy and Paste. No one thinks about the clipboard—that virtual shelf where copied text and images sit—because it just works. We all use Command-C to copy something and Command-V to paste it without having to retype the text, reimport the graphic, or whatever. Copy and Paste is a huge timesaver because it lets you reuse or build on work already done.

What if you could make Copy and Paste even more powerful? With the right clipboard utility installed on your Mac, you gain two major new features:

• Use clipboard history to access previously copied data. Every time you copy something to the clipboard, it replaces whatever was there before. With a clipboard utility, though, you can see a list of items you’ve previously copied to the clipboard and paste any one of them, which is vastly easier than finding and copying the data again. Clipboard utilities even preserve your clipboard history across restarts.
• Filter or edit the data on the clipboard before pasting. This capability is useful, for instance, if you copied styled text but want to paste plain text, if there’s a mistake in the contents of the clipboard that would be hard to fix after pasting, or if you want to replace all double spaces in the copied text with single spaces.

Which clipboard utility is right for you depends on what else you might want it to do, or you might even have one installed without realizing it. That’s because clipboard enhancements are a bit like blades in a Swiss Army knife: they tend to be bundled into other utilities. You won’t go wrong with any of these clipboard boosters: the dedicated clipboard helper Copy ’Em, the launcher LaunchBar, and the macro utility Keyboard Maestro. And while we’re highlighting these three, there are innumerable other great utilities that offer similar features.

Copy ’Em ($14.99) focuses on clipboard enhancements, bundling nearly every clipboard-related feature you could want into an attractive interface. It offers a full clipboard history, makes it easy to paste multiple items quickly or in a batch, can transform pasted text in various ways, and lets you organize clippings into groups. It also enables you to edit text clippings, search for text in your clippings, and ignore apps whose clipboard changes clutter your clipboard history. There’s even a separate version for the iPhone and iPad, should you want to share your clipboard history with your other devices. Other well-known clipboard utilities include CopyPaste ($30), Paste ($14.99 per year), and Pastebot ($12.99).

LaunchBar ($29) is a keyboard-focused launcher, so its primary feature is opening or switching to an application or file by typing a hotkey followed by a few letters from the name of the app or file. That’s hugely useful in its own right, but LaunchBar also maintains a filterable clipboard history across restarts, lets you paste a clipping as plain text, and can merge copied text with whatever is already on the clipboard. Other apps in this category include Alfred (with the optional £34 Powerpack), Butler ($20), and QuickSilver (donationware).

Keyboard Maestro ($36) is a macro utility, which means that it lets you string together a series of actions—copy this, switch apps, click there, paste, and switch back, for instance—and then invoke that series with a trigger such as a hotkey, menu command, timer, or system activity. Keyboard Maestro offers hundreds of actions and numerous triggers, but from the clipboard perspective, it provides a persistent clipboard history, multiple named clipboards, filtering of clipboard contents when pasting, removal of styles from pasted text, and a user-specified hotkey for anything you want to do.

Regardless of which of these utilities you choose, you’ll soon be juggling the contents of your clipboard like a pro…and wasting a lot less time!

(Featured image by iStock.com/LightFieldStudios)

You know that you can drag files or folders to the Trash icon in the Dock for later deletion. And you probably know that you can select multiple items on the Desktop or in a Finder window by Command-clicking each one in turn (Shift-click to select a sequential range of items in a list view), after which you can drag them all to the Trash. But there’s no reason to expend effort mousing if you prefer to keep your hands on the keyboard—just press Command-Delete to send one or more selected files and folders directly to the Trash. Finally, if you need your disk space back right away, press Command-Shift-Delete to empty the Trash. However, we recommend not emptying the Trash frequently—that way, you have a chance to recover something you discover that you needed after trashing it.

(Featured image by iStock.com/FabrikaCr)

Much has been written about the performance benefits of Apple’s M1 family of chips, but you may not have realized that M1-based Macs can also run many iPhone and iPad apps. It makes sense, given that the M1 chip grew out of the work Apple did for the A-series processors in the iPhone and iPad, and the latest iPad Pro models also rely on the M1.

Why Run iOS Apps?

Depending on how you use your iPhone and iPad, you’re thinking either, “Hey, this is great, because I want to run my favorite apps on my new Mac!” or “What could I possibly gain from putting a little iOS app on my Mac?”

If you’re in the latter camp, think about the apps you regularly use on your iPhone and iPad. Some undoubtedly have Mac versions, and others may offer Web apps that you can run in Safari on your Mac. But a few probably exist only on the iPhone or iPad, or their Web apps are limited. That might be especially true of games, one-trick-pony apps (like the Mandelpad app shown below), and smart home device apps.

What iOS Apps Are Available for the Mac?

In theory, any iPhone or iPad app should run on an M1-based Mac. However, Apple allows developers to set a switch that prevents an iOS app from installing on Macs. Developers may want to prevent that if they already make a Mac-specific app or don’t want to be on the hook for supporting customers using their iOS app on Mac. Sadly, many popular apps like Netflix, Kayak, and Libby won’t run on the Mac.

Luckily, there’s an easy way to determine which of your iPhone and iPad apps will run on your M1-based Mac. Using the Mac App Store app:

1. Click your avatar in the lower-left corner to view your account.
2. Under Account, click iPhone & iPad Apps to view the iOS apps you’ve purchased.
3. If desired, use the Purchased By pop-up menu to the right to see apps that other people in your Family Sharing group have purchased.
4. Scan the listing, which is sorted by the date you acquired the app.
   

What about new apps? Whenever you’re searching for an app in the Mac App Store using an M1-based Mac, you’ll see the same two tabs: Mac Apps and iPhone & iPad Apps. Click the latter to see all the apps that match your search and will run on your Mac. Because of developer-set limitations, you may not find what you’re looking for with a search.

How Do You Install iOS Apps?

When viewing the list of your purchased iPhone and iPad apps in the Mac App Store as described above, simply click the download button to install the app in your Applications folder.

If you’ve found a new app that you want to download, click the Get or price button, just as though it were a Mac app.

How Do You Use Multi-Touch Apps on a Mac?

Needless to say, trying to tap and swipe on your Mac’s screen with a finger won’t have any effect. You’ll need to use your Mac’s keyboard and pointing device—preferably a trackpad—to control your iPhone and iPad apps. For the most part, such actions should map in an intuitive manner: you click instead of tapping, and trackpad gestures like pinching work the same.

If that doesn’t work, or if the app in question requires tilting the iPhone or iPad, choose Preferences from the app’s menu and turn on Touch Alternatives to map keys on the keyboard to device actions like tilting, tapping, and swiping. How well the Mac’s input devices will work for controlling an iOS app will undoubtedly vary.

We’re not going to pretend that being able to run iPhone and iPad apps on your M1-based Mac is world-changing. It’s all too easy to whip out your iPhone and use such an app in the environment for which it was designed. But there are likely situations where it would be convenient to have an iOS app running alongside the rest of your Mac apps, and that’s now possible.

(Featured image by iStock.com/Apple)

The iPhone’s Calendar app defaults to graphical views for Day, Week (rotate to landscape), Month, and Year, but only the Day view shows information about your actual events, and even then, it’s easy to miss events that are outside the times that fit onscreen. If you find those views frustrating, you may have missed the all-important list view options. In Month view, tap the List button ➊ to split the screen, showing the calendar above and a list of events for the selected day below. In Day view, tap the List button ➋ to switch to a more easily scanned list for each day.

(Featured image by iStock.com/gpointstudio)

One of the best ways to keep malware from infecting your computers is to avoid visiting websites designed to do just that. No one intentionally visits loadmetogetinfected.com, but malware authors employ all sorts of tricks to lure unsuspecting users into viewing malicious sites. Various tools can help, but the easiest free technique is called DNS filtering.

DNS, which is short for Domain Name System, is the Internet technology that maps human-readable computer names like www.apple.com to the numeric IP address of Apple’s server, 17.254.0.91. Every time you click a link to visit a new Web page, your Mac queries a DNS server to learn the IP address associated with the domain name embedded in the link—it all happens seamlessly and instantaneously in the background.

Typically, your Mac will automatically use the DNS servers specified by your Internet service provider. However, you can change your DNS servers manually, and one good reason to do so is to take advantage of DNS servers that look at your Mac’s DNS requests and refuse to resolve names associated with malicious sites. Such DNS filtering is great since it protects you from malicious sites without you having to do anything special. Such sites simply won’t load at all.

One more thing. DNS filtering can also block porn sites. That’s helpful if you want to avoid accidentally loading adult content or to ensure that those in your office don’t, in order to reduce the chances of a sexual harassment complaint. As with malicious sites, filtered adult sites just won’t load.

Setting up DNS filtering is easy. All you have to do is replace your current DNS server addresses with the IP address of a particular public DNS service—the steps are later in this article. The two providers we recommend are Quad9 and Cloudflare, both of which are free and run by reputable companies. Of the two, Quad9 is more focused on user privacy, but Cloudflare offers additional DNS filtering capabilities that may be useful.

The options are:

• Quad9 malware blocking: 9.9.9.9 with a secondary of 149.112.112.112
• Cloudflare malware-only blocking: 1.1.1.2 with a secondary of 1.0.0.2
• Cloudflare malware and adult content blocking: 1.1.1.3 with a secondary of 1.0.0.3

You should always enter the secondary DNS server in case the primary server goes down. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to connect to any sites at all.

However, don’t mix in other DNS servers. If you use Cloudflare’s adult content filter as your primary DNS server with your ISP’s DNS server as a secondary, when Cloudflare refuses to resolve an adult site, macOS will drop down to the secondary ISP server, which will resolve it happily, thus eliminating the utility of the Cloudflare’s filtering.

One final note before you get started. Apple’s iCloud Private Relay service (in beta in macOS 12 Monterey, iOS 15, and iPadOS 15) sends all your traffic through two proxy servers, which prevents DNS filters like Quad9 and Cloudflare from working. That’s unfortunate since iCloud Private Relay is a useful way to hide your IP address and browsing activity from your network provider and the websites you visit. Apple is clear about this limitation, noting in its various DNS server interfaces:

DNS requests are being routed by iCloud Private Relay for this network. Turn off Private Relay to manually configure DNS settings.

If you need to turn off iCloud Private Relay on the Mac, open System Preferences > Apple ID and deselect the checkbox next to Private Relay. On an iPhone or iPad, open Settings > Your Name > iCloud > Private Relay and flip the switch to Off.

Set Up DNS Filtering in macOS

To use DNS filtering on the Mac, follow these steps, which should work in any version of macOS. We’re using Quad9 as the example here, but replace the primary and secondary IP addresses as desired if you want to use one of the Cloudflare filters.

1. Open System Preferences > Network, and select the adapter you use (likely Wi-Fi or Ethernet) in the sidebar.
2. Click the Advanced button, and in the sheet that appears, click DNS.
3. Click the button under the DNS Servers list and enter 9.9.9.9.
4. Click the button again and enter 149.112.112.112.
5. Click OK to dismiss the Advanced preferences, and click Apply.
6. Close the Network preference pane.
   

It’s difficult to perform a real-world test to tell if Quad9 or Cloudflare’s malware blockers are active since there’s no way to know which sites they block. However, Quad9 provides a test page at on.quad9.net that should help. If you use Cloudflare’s adult content filter, you can tell if it’s working because your Web browser will refuse to load adult sites.

Set Up DNS Filtering in iOS and iPadOS

The steps for setting up DNS filtering in iOS and iPadOS are a bit different. For this example, we’ll use the Cloudflare malware filter, but again, you should replace the IP addresses below with the filter you want to use.

1. Open Settings > Wi-Fi and tap the button next to your current Wi-Fi network.
2. Scroll down and tap Configure DNS, which is probably set to Automatic.
3. On the Configure DNS screen, tap Manual.
4. In the list of DNS servers, tap the red delete buttons next to any entries there.
5. Tap the green Add Server button and enter 1.1.1.2.
6. Tap the green Add Server button again and enter 1.0.0.2.
7. Tap Save in the upper-right corner.
   

That’s it! You should have no trouble using either Quad9 or Cloudflare, but if you need to revert to your previous DNS servers, it’s easy to do. On the Mac, just delete the manual entries you created—macOS will automatically use the DNS servers provided by your ISP. On an iPhone or iPad, select Automatic in the Configure DNS screen to replace the manually entered DNS servers with those from your ISP. In either case, if you’re not going to use DNS filters, it’s worth turning on iCloud Private Relay. We hope that Apple adds DNS filtering options to iCloud Private Relay so you could additionally choose to filter out malicious sites and adult content.

(Featured image by iStock.com/Funtap)

Shortly after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Apple made it so your Apple Watch could unlock your Face ID-enabled iPhone when you were wearing a mask. Starting in iOS 15.4, the company has taken the next step and enabled Face ID on the iPhone 12 and later to work even when you’re wearing a mask. If you didn’t already set up Face ID with a mask after updating to iOS 15.4, go to Settings > Face ID & Passcode and enable Face ID with a Mask. You’ll have to run through the Face ID training sequence again, and more than once if you sometimes wear glasses, but it’s quick and easy. Face ID may not work quite as well when you’re wearing a mask, and it doesn’t support sunglasses, but it’s way better than having to enter your passcode whenever you’re masked.

(Featured image by iStock.com/Prostock-Studio)

With the recent release of macOS 12.3 Monterey and iPadOS 15.4, Apple shipped Universal Control, the last major technology promised in its 2021 operating system upgrades. Universal Control enables you to use the keyboard and mouse or trackpad attached to one Mac to control up to three other Macs or iPads—you can even copy and paste or drag items between devices. It’s a great way to make more of your Apple devices while staying on task—no longer do you need to stop using your Mac to accomplish something on your iPad, and if you have both an iMac and a MacBook Air, it becomes trivially easy to use them simultaneously.

Universal Control can simplify grabbing a file from your MacBook Air while using your iMac, or it might make it easy to check something in an iPad-only app without switching from your familiar Mac keyboard and trackpad. For those who would benefit from more screen space, Universal Control simplifies keeping a Web browser window open on one Mac while you’re writing about it on another.

First, make sure all the Macs and iPads you want to use with Universal Control meet its system requirements. macOS 12.3 and iPadOS 15.4 are essential, and most (but not all) Macs and iPads that can run those versions are compatible. All the devices must be signed in to the same iCloud account, that account’s Apple ID must have two-factor authentication enabled, and no device can be sharing its Internet or cellular connection. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi must be turned on, and Handoff must be ​​enabled in System Preferences > General on the Mac and in Settings > General > AirPlay & Handoff on the iPad. That may sound like a lot, but most of those are defaults.

Apple says everything must be within 30 feet (10 meters), but in nearly all cases, you’ll want the devices to sit next to one another so you can easily see what you are doing on all the screens.

The only trick with setting up Universal Control is that it must be initiated from a Mac. Open System Preferences > Displays, click the Universal Control button, and in the dialog that appears, enable all three switches. Only the first one is necessary; the other two make connecting in the future easier.

After you click Done, you’ll return to the Displays preference pane, where any available Macs and iPads should appear, much like they were external monitors. If they don’t show up, click the Add Display pop-up menu and select the device you want to control under “Link Keyboard and Mouse.” You can also select them in Control Center, after clicking Displays. As long as you’ve selected “Automatically reconnect to any nearby Mac or iPad,” you shouldn’t have to repeat this step.

(The “Mirror or Extend to” section of the Add Display pop-up menu is where you select devices to use as external displays for your Mac. Macs running Monterey appear here courtesy of AirPlay, as do Apple TVs; iPads appear thanks to Apple’s Sidecar technology.)

Drag the device screen icons to match where they sit on your desk. The screenshot above indicates that you’d move the pointer from the double-screen iMac to the right to control the MacBook Air and down from the middle of the iMac screens to control the iPad.

When your pointer moves to another device’s screen, everything you do from then on will affect apps on that Mac or iPad, with one caveat. After the pointer moves to another device, you usually need to click once to create “focus,” which means specifying which window should receive subsequent clicks and keystrokes. If you forget to do this (it will become second nature quickly) and start typing, keystrokes will go to the previous device.

To help you move data between your devices, Universal Control offers two additional features beyond clicking and typing:

• Copy and paste: As you might expect, you can copy data on one device with Command-C, move the pointer to another device, and paste it into an app on the second device with Command-V.
• Drag and drop: Alternatively, you can drag files and other types of data from one device to another. This works well between Macs, and you can also move data between Macs and iPads in many situations, such as dragging an Apple Pencil sketch from an iPad and dropping it in a graphics app on the Mac. If a drag doesn’t work, try copy and paste or fall back on sharing the data via AirDrop or iCloud Drive.

Keep in mind that once you’ve turned it on, Universal Control has no concept of primary and secondary devices. In practice, you’ll probably use one keyboard and pointing device to control everything, but that’s not necessary. You can use a trackpad and keyboard connected to any device to control any other device, switching whenever you’d like.

Since Apple labels Universal Control as a beta, you may experience occasional dropouts or rough edges. If it loses track of a device, try putting the device to sleep and waking it again, and if that doesn’t work, open the Displays preference pane and select the device from Add Displays again.

Controlling one Mac from another is extremely fluid because the pointer and keyboard act exactly as expected. However, if you haven’t previously used a trackpad and hardware keyboard with an iPad, you may find its approach somewhat surprising. It’s a hybrid between a traditional pointer and a touchscreen, so the pointer is attracted to Home screen icons and many other controls, transforming it into a selection highlight. Either way, Universal Control just works. Give it a try!

(Featured image by Apple)

Do you need to be careful about how much data you use with your iPhone or iPad, either via cellular or Wi-Fi? That could be true for those with Internet data caps, people using an international plan while traveling, and anyone in an area with slow data speeds. To reduce your data usage, turn on Low Data Mode, which you can do separately for cellular and Wi-Fi. For cellular, look in Settings > Cellular > Cellular Data Options, where you can either enable Low Data Mode for LTE/4G or take one more step into Data Mode for 5G. If you’re using two plans with a dual SIM iPhone, you can set each one separately. For Wi-Fi, go to Settings > Wi-Fi and tap the i button next to the desired Wi-Fi network and then tap Low Data Mode. Apple lists what you can expect to change in Low Data Mode. If you need a similar capability for the Mac, check out TripMode.

(Featured image by iStock.com/Created_by_light)