If you run a company, you know how much work onboarding a new employee can be. Beyond teaching them the ropes of your business, they’ll need a Mac and potentially an iPhone or iPad as well. Setting those devices up with all the right apps, settings, and logins can take days or even weeks. And that’s just for one person—imagine if you need to lather, rinse, and repeat for dozens or even hundreds of new employees?

The solution is Apple Business Manager, which ensures that every Apple device you purchase is associated with your corporate account—and in some cases, with a particular user—before it’s shipped to you. That enables zero-touch configuration and makes manual setup a thing of the past. Here’s how we make this happen.

We’ll work with someone at your company—your Business Contact—to set you up with two Apple programs: Apple Custom Store and Apple Business Manager. Your Business Contact will merely need to respond to some email messages from Apple and have a call with Apple to verify that they can agree to Apple’s Terms & Conditions on behalf of your company.

Apple Custom Store

The first program, Apple Custom Store, provides a customized corporate store for purchasing Apple devices. That’s important because all devices purchased through your Apple Custom Store are automatically tied to your company. In fact, they’re connected to your company until you intentionally release them while decommissioning, which can help protect against theft or employees keeping devices they shouldn’t.

Even more important, all new Mac purchases must go through the Apple Custom Store because there’s no easy way to add Macs purchased in any other way to Apple Business Manager.

Once you’re set up with an Apple Custom Store, we can suggest custom device configurations tailored to your company’s needs and even create templates for systems customized for different job roles. As a bonus, you’ll receive special “loyalty pricing” based on your annual purchase volume.

Apple Business Manager

The second program, Apple Business Manager, is what enables you to enroll and manage devices purchased through your Apple Custom Store. When we say “manage” we’re talking about mobile device management, or MDM. In essence, MDM systems allow IT administrators to define “profiles” that specify your company’s settings and policies. Those might be particular to a user, such as configuring email login credentials, or they might be general to everyone, such as security policies that require all iOS devices to use a six-digit passcode and Macs to turn on their screensavers after 2 minutes and require a password to unlock. And, of course, an MDM system lets your company control when to install operating system updates, ensuring that nothing happens before you’re ready.

You use Apple Business Manager to associate a new device purchased from your Apple Custom Store with the employee who will be receiving it. When the device arrives, the employee unboxes it and turns it on, and your MDM system goes to work downloading apps and configuring settings. Once the employee signs in with their credentials, the MDM system continues to configure the device for that person. No one from IT even has to touch it—hence “zero-touch” configuration.

Enrolling your devices in your MDM system via Apple Business Manager doesn’t just help with initial deployment. Employee turnover is a fact of life, and with a device in Apple Business Manager, you can use your MDM system to redeploy a device quickly by wiping it and re-enrolling it for the new employee.

We recommend that all Apple-using businesses purchase through an Apple Custom Store and use Apple Business Manager to tie those devices to the company’s MDM system. Contact us for more information about what’s involved, and for our MDM recommendations.

(Featured image by Annie Spratt on Unsplash)

A small but welcome new feature of iOS 13 is Driving ETA, which helps you share your estimated time of arrival with a contact whenever you’re navigating with the Maps app. To use Driving ETA, start navigating to a destination in Maps, tap Share ETA at the bottom of the screen, and pick the person with whom you want to share your location and arrival time. (You’ll share in Maps with iOS 13 users and via Messages with everyone else.) The other person will receive a notification of your ETA and if you’re delayed, updated times. You do have to start navigation in Maps to use Driving ETA, so it’s a little inconvenient when you already know the route, but it’s a brilliant feature for long-distance trips.

(Featured image by Dan Gold on Unsplash)

We assume you have a backup strategy. Hopefully, it includes a bootable duplicate to minimize downtime in the event of a drive failure, a Time Machine or other versioned backup to address the problem of a deleted or corrupted file, and offsite backup to ensure that you don’t lose everything in the event of theft, fire, or flood. (And for many California residents these days, fire is an increasingly likely concern!)

A good backup strategy protects your data, though it’s decidedly a case of “necessary, but not sufficient.” That’s because problems that can cause data loss can also result in the loss of your primary hardware. Therein lies the question: what would you do if your Mac failed today?

Without getting into the full topic of disaster preparedness, let’s run through some possibilities of how you could respond if your main Mac were to die and need to be repaired or replaced, either of which could take days or weeks. There is no right answer here—all we’re trying to do is help you consider such a situation so you can better ensure you’re ready if it does happen.

Go Without Temporarily

If your Mac usage is relatively minimal, you might be able to do without while you repair or replace your Mac. That might be the case if your home Mac has died but you do most things at work anyway, or if you use an iPhone or iPad for most of your communications anyway.

Switch to an iPad Briefly

If you need to accomplish more serious tasks while your Mac is at the shop or en route from Apple, one possibility would be to migrate those activities that can’t wait to an iPad. Those who are considering an iPad as a fallback device should be aware that, in our experience, it’s often difficult to move your work to an iPad quickly.

You’ll almost certainly need a physical keyboard for the iPad, for instance, and even if you use many of the same apps, like Apple’s iWork suite or Microsoft Office apps, there may be unanticipated gotchas. Even if most of your work takes place in email and on the Web, you may encounter issues when dealing with attachments or with logging in to lots of sites—a cross-platform password manager like 1Password or LastPass is essential.

The only way to know if you can complete your work on an iPad successfully is to do it for real. Take a day when you don’t have major commitments or deadlines and try to accomplish everything on the iPad, working through each sticking point as you run into it.

Have a Backup Mac Available

Few of us can afford to have an exact duplicate of our primary Mac sitting idle in case of disaster, but it’s not that difficult to ensure that you have some Mac available to switch to. And it wouldn’t be a stretch for a business to have one reasonably capable Mac that’s waiting on the sidelines in case 1 of 15 or 20 Macs were to fail suddenly.

Many people like the combination of a primary desktop Mac and a less powerful laptop Mac for traveling. An advantage to that approach is that, with the right cables, the laptop Mac could be pressed into service with an external display and access to a bootable duplicate hard drive should the desktop Mac die.

Another strategy that works well is to hold onto an old Mac that you’re replacing instead of selling it or handing it down to another user. That way, even if the performance may be slower than ideal, you can always fall back to it if necessary.

Finally, you may be able to borrow a Mac from someone who has an extra or doesn’t need theirs for a while. In that case, you’ll need to make sure you can connect and boot from your bootable duplicate. That may require twiddling a setting on a T2-equipped Mac, and it may be slower than running from the internal drive, because most people probably won’t want you to backup, reformat, and later restore the data on their internal drive.

Buy a New Mac for 13 Days

Apple has a policy that you can return a newly purchased Mac within 14 days for a full refund. That means that if you have an Apple Store nearby, you can buy a new Mac, restore your data onto it, use it until your failed Mac has been repaired, and then return it. Apple Store employees often even recommend this approach for those who drop Macs off for repairs that will take more than a day or two.

Of course, if you’re going to do this, retain everything in the package, take good care of your interim Mac, and be sure to reformat its internal drive before boxing it up for return. We recommend using FileVault when setting it up to ensure that your data can’t be extracted from the internal drive, which can be possible even after a reformat.

Only you can figure out which of these approaches—or some entirely different one—will work best in your situation. The main thing is that you think about it ahead of time and make sure you have the necessary hardware and accessories on hand. All hardware fails at some point—will you be ready?

(Featured image based on originals by Ruth Archer on Pixabay and William Iven on Pixabay)

Taking photos is a popular use of the iPhone, and Apple has said that the improved cameras gave this year’s iPhone 11 Pro models their “Pro” designation. But Apple continually works to improve the Photos app as well. Taking great photos is only half the job—you also have to be able to find, edit, and enjoy your photos, and that’s where the company focused its efforts in iOS 13 and iPadOS 13 (which we’ll refer to collectively as iOS 13 from now on). Here’s what’s new.

Years, Months, Days, All Photos

Previously, Photos grouped photos first by years, then by “collections,” and finally by “moments.” To simplify things, Photos now offers four more sensible groups: Years, Months, Days, and All Photos.

Years shows a single image that helps you keep the years apart—previous years’ images come from the same time of year as the current day. Next, tap a year icon or the Months button to see a few tiles representing the events at which you took photos in each month. To zoom in again, tap the Days button or any event to see a curated selection of photos for each day you took photos in that month.

The key word above is “curated”—Photos is using artificial intelligence to show you just the best or most representative images and eliminate similar shots, so some photos won’t appear at all in Days view. When that happens, you’ll see a +# tag on the last image indicating the number of hidden images. To see everything, tap that +# tag or the All Photos button. You may find yourself wanting to use All Photos a lot if Photos is hiding images from you in Days view.

Enhanced Photo and Video Editing

Photos in iOS 13 also gains significantly more editing capabilities, bringing it closer to par with the Mac version. In iOS 12, you could adjust some light, color, and black-and-white options. iOS 13 retains the light and color options and bolsters them with new tools and an improved interface. The black-and-white options disappear, but you can simulate them by applying a monochrome filter like Noir, Silvertone, or Mono, and then using the rest of the editing tools.

When you tap the adjust button while editing an image, Photos displays a horizontally scrolling list of 16 controls, each with a circular button on top and a slider below. Move the slider to adjust that setting with a real-time preview. Also notice how the circle fills in to reflect what you’ve done. All edits are non-destructive, and you can tap the circle to turn its associated edits off, or tap again to turn them back on. This tap-off/tap-on interface works well for comparing before and after versions.

The full list of controls now includes:

• Auto: Tap to apply suggested enhancements—it’s always worth a try!
• Exposure: Simulates changing the amount of light that reaches the camera sensor
• Brilliance: Applies region-specific adjustments to brighten dark areas, pull in highlights, and add contrast to reveal hidden detail
• Highlights: Increases or decreases detail in light portions of the image
• Shadows: Increases or decreases detail in darker portions of the image
• Contrast: Adjusts the contrast of the photo
• Brightness: Adjusts the overall brightness of the image
• Black Point: Sets the point at which the darkest parts of the photo become completely black
• Saturation: Adjusts the overall color intensity of the image
• Vibrance (new): Boost muted colors without affecting skin color or saturated colors
• Warmth (new): Adjusts the amount of yellow or blue in the image to make it feel warmer or cooler
• Tint (new): Adjusts the amount of magenta or green in the image to change the tint
• Sharpness (new): Makes edges of objects crisper and more well-defined
• Definition (new): Adds contour and shape as well as mid-tone definition and local contrast (try it—it’s often helpful)
• Noise Reduction (new): Smooths graininess and eliminates light speckles in dark images
• Vignette (new): Darkens the edges of the image to focus attention on the subject at the center

Previously, Photos allowed you to crop and straighten an image, and iOS 13 also now lets you adjust the vertical and horizontal perspective. You likely won’t change perspectives often, but it’s nice to have the option.

Even more impressive, Photos in iOS 13 lets you apply all these edits—the adjustments and cropping/tilting—to videos as well as still images. Video edits are non-destructive, too, which makes it easy to play with effects. Photos video editing may not compare with the full features of a video editor like iMovie, but it’s a huge step forward.

Other Improvements

Apple also tweaked other aspects of Photos.

• Multiple search terms work better now, so it’s easy to search for “cat tree” and find just the pictures of your cat in a tree.
• Live Photos and videos begin playing as you scroll past them, which is pretty neat.
• You can control the intensity of any filter to fine-tune the look of a photo.
• Soundtracks for Memory movies are now based on what you listen to in Apple Music.
• You can now pinch-to-zoom while editing to see the effect of an edit on a portion of the photo.

If you haven’t explored the new features of Photos on your iPhone or iPad after updating to iOS 13 or iPadOS 13, take some time and check them out.

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

Responding to customer complaints and media mocking, Apple has introduced a new 16-inch MacBook Pro that features improves on its predecessor in several ways, most notably with a scissor-switch keyboard in place of the flaky butterfly-key keyboard. The 16-inch MacBook Pro replaces the previous 15-inch MacBook Pro at the top of Apple’s notebook line and starts at $2399. The 13-inch MacBook Pro and MacBook Air remain unchanged.

Apple also announced that the new Mac Pro (starting at $5999) and Apple Pro Display XDR (starting at $4999) will ship in December 2019—we’ll have more details once those are available.

New Keyboard Provides More Key Travel

Apple says the 16-inch MacBook Pro’s new Magic Keyboard features “a redesigned scissor mechanism and 1mm travel for a more satisfying key feel.” That’s a positive way to say that many people disliked typing on the previous keyboard’s butterfly mechanism. Plus, keys failed frequently, causing Apple to redesign the keyboard multiple times and offer a repair program for out-of-warranty devices.

Although the new 16-inch MacBook Pro still features a Touch Bar with a Touch ID sensor in place of the classic F-keys, another important keyboard enhancement is the return of the physical Escape key and the reinstatement of the traditional inverted-T layout for the arrow keys.

Initial reviews from pundits who received early access to the new MacBook Pro were positive, with several vocal critics of the previous keyboard saying the new one feels the way a keyboard should.

About That 16-inch Display… and Other Displays

You might expect the 16-inch MacBook Pro’s display to be its most notable feature, and it is legitimately bigger, with that 16-inch diagonal measurement and a slightly higher native resolution. But since nearly everyone uses Retina displays at scaled resolutions like 1920-by-1200 or 1680-by-1050, the practical upshot is that the new MacBook Pro won’t show any more content on the screen than the previous model, but what it does display will be a little bit larger. And it’s still gorgeous.

To drive that larger screen, the 16-inch MacBook Pro continues to offer both integrated (for better battery life) and discrete (for faster performance) graphics. On the latter side, you can choose from the AMD Radeon Pro 5300M with 4 GB of memory, or the Radeon Pro 5500M with either 4 GB or 8 GB of memory. Those graphics chips simultaneously support up to four 4K external displays or up to two 6K displays.

More Power, More RAM, More Storage

Apple claims the 16-inch MacBook Pro is up to 80% faster than the previous 15-inch MacBook Pro, thanks to new 9th-generation processors: the 6-core Intel Core i7 and the 8-core Intel Core i9.

16 GB of RAM is the base level, which is good, since we don’t recommend any less than that. For those who need a higher RAM ceiling, Apple offers 32 GB ($400) and 64 GB ($800) build-to-order options.

When it comes to SSD storage, the base level is 512 GB, but you can upgrade to 1 TB ($200), 2 TB ($600), 4 TB ($1200), or a whopping 8 TB ($2400).

Radically Better Audio

Apple clearly had audio professionals in mind while designing the 16-inch MacBook Pro. Along with the beefy processors, high RAM ceilings, and massive storage options, all of which will be popular with the audio crowd, the new notebook features significantly improved audio input and speakers.

For input, the MacBook Pro relies on a three-mic array with high signal-to-noise ratio and directional beamforming that Apple claims delivers a 40% reduction in hiss. Podcasters have praised the new mic array, though without suggesting that it competes with dedicated mics.

Equally compelling for anyone who listens to music is the new six-speaker, high-fidelity sound system. Its force-canceling woofers with dual opposed speaker drivers reduce unwanted and sound-distorting vibrations and enable the bass to go half an octave deeper than the previous model. There’s still a 3.5mm headphone jack too.

Slightly Larger Physical Package

Between the larger screen, the six-speaker sound system, and the 100-watt-hour battery that Apple says provides up to 11 hours of battery life, the company had to increase the size of the 16-inch MacBook Pro slightly compared to the previous 15-inch model.

It’s only about 8mm wider and 5mm deeper, which likely won’t be noticeable. However, it also weighs 4.3 pounds (1.95 kg), which is noticeably more than the 4.02 (1.82 kg) pounds of the previous model.

802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0 remain standard for wireless connectivity, and the 16-inch MacBook Pro continues to offer four Thunderbolt 3.0 ports for charging and connectivity. You’ll still need a collection of dongles for connecting to USB-A peripherals, HDMI and DisplayPort monitors, Ethernet networks, and so on.

Price and Availability

You can buy the 16-inch MacBook Pro now, in either silver or space gray. The base model starts at $2399 with 16 GB of RAM, 512 GB of storage, a 6-core Intel Core i7 processor, and the AMD Radeon 5300M graphics chip. That’s a totally legit Mac, but if you need more power and can pay for it, a maxed-out configuration with 64 GB of RAM and an 8 TB SSD  would set you back $6099.

Note that the 16-inch MacBook Pro ships with macOS 10.15 Catalina and almost certainly cannot be downgraded to 10.14 Mojave.

Frankly, this new MacBook Pro is a solid upgrade, particularly for those who have been delaying due to the problems with the butterfly keyboard. The only real problem is that the smaller, lighter, and less expensive 13-inch MacBook Pro and MacBook Air are still saddled with that keyboard. We hope 2020 will bring the redesigned scissor-switch keyboard to those models as well.

(Featured image by Apple)

If you’re experiencing a sporadic problem with your Mac, the sort of thing that happens often enough to be annoying but not so frequently as to be reproducible, allow us to suggest one little-known troubleshooting tip. Malfunctioning USB devices—keyboards, mice, hubs, printers, etc.—can sometimes cause truly inscrutable problems ranging from startup issues to kernel panics. USB-caused issues aren’t common, but when they do happen, they can be challenging to track down. If you’ve tried everything else, disconnect all unnecessary USB devices and, if possible, swap your wired keyboard and mouse for another set. Then see if the problem goes away.

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

For unknown reasons, Apple redesigned the toolbar in the iOS 13 version of Mail. Such things happen, but this time, Apple made a big mistake and moved Mail’s Trash button to where its Reply button used to be. Lots of people who have become accustomed to tapping Reply are now finding themselves deleting messages inadvertently, since a tap in the same location in iOS 13 deletes the message. It’s hard to retrain muscle memory—the ability to reproduce a particular movement without conscious thought—but if you find yourself deleting messages accidentally, you’ll need to slow down and remember to tap the new location of the Reply button.

(Featured image by Skitterphoto from Pexels)

Are you a fan of Apple’s AirPods, or have you had trouble with them staying in your ears? Either way, you might like the just-released AirPods Pro, which offer a new design with three sizes of soft, flexible, silicone ear tips and welcome new capabilities. The ear tips should make the AirPods Pro fit better for more people, and an Ear Tip Fit Test will tell you which size is right for your ears. The hot new feature is Active Noise Cancellation mode, which significantly cuts down on the background din of planes, trains, and automobiles. Alternatively, Transparency mode reduces surrounding noise while still letting you hear important announcements and stay aware of the environment around you. And, of course, Apple promises superior sound quality. The AirPods Pro cost $249 and come with a Wireless Charging Case.

(Featured image by Apple)

An unexpected and useful feature of iOS 13 and iPadOS 13 is also nearly invisible, and for most uses, requires a special adapter. With this feature, the Files app now can “see” external storage devices.

That’s huge—now you can move data to and from an iPhone or iPad using standard flash drives, SD card readers, or even powered USB hard drives. It’s also a great way to play videos and other data that won’t fit in the available free space on your device. (You’ll still need an app on the iOS device that knows how to open the files—for videos, try VLC for Mobile.)

iOS should be able to read any unencrypted file system supported by the Mac’s Disk Utility, including the PC-focused MS-DOS (FAT) and exFAT, and the Apple-focused MacOS Extended (HFS+) and APFS. If you’re formatting a drive for sharing with a PC, we recommend exFAT; for use within the Apple ecosystem, use Mac OS Extended.

Necessary Hardware

If you plan to use a flash drive with an iPhone or iPad regularly, it’s worth buying a new MFi Lightning flash drive that you can plug in directly. Apple’s MFi program should ensure that drives with that label meet the necessary power and file system requirements. Or, if you have a 2018 iPad Pro model with USB-C, get a USB-C flash drive.

But what about all those USB flash drives and hard drives you already have? To connect those to a Lightning-based iPhone or iPad, you’ll need Apple’s $39 Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter. For the USB-C iPad Pro models, any USB-C hub with a USB-A port should work.

There is one big gotcha, which is that many USB flash drives require 500 milliamps (mA) of power, which is more than the iPhone or iPad can provide. When that’s the case, iOS will usually alert you to the problem (or the drive simply won’t show up in Files). You’ll need to provide extra power by plugging a standard Lightning-to-USB cable into the adapter and a power source. That passthrough power should usually be enough to charge the device and run the flash drive, although we’ve seen flash drives that work with the iPhone 11 Pro but not with a 10.5-inch iPad Pro. (Avoid Apple’s older $29 Lightning to USB Camera Adapter, which supports only the slower USB 2 and doesn’t provide passthrough power.)

Happily, flash drives that require only 100 mA of power work fine without additional power. To learn how much power a drive requires, connect it to your Mac, open the System Information app (in the Applications folder’s Utilities folder), click USB in the sidebar, select the drive in the USB Device Tree at the top, and then read the Current Required line.

Accessing Your Drive

Once you’ve connected a drive to your device, you can access it in Files. On the iPhone, or if you’re using your iPad in portrait orientation, tap the Browse tab at the bottom of the screen. On an iPad in landscape orientation, Browse appears automatically in the sidebar.

Either way, you can find your drive in the list of locations—remember that flash drives are often called Untitled or have funky names.

Copying Files to and from Your Drive

The Files app works a bit like the Mac’s Finder in that it lets you copy files by dragging or by using Copy and Paste. This latter approach is often easier:

1. In Files, navigate to the file you want to copy.
2. Tap and hold it until a popover appears with commands.
3. Tap Copy in the popover.
4. Tap the Browse tab to return to the Browse screen, and then tap your flash drive.
5. Tap a blank spot in the flash drive’s directory, and then tap Paste in the popover.

Moving a file works similarly, except that once you tap Move in the popover, iOS displays a list of destinations.

Dragging to copy a file is easier on the iPad if you open two Files windows showing different locations in Split View. With Files as the frontmost app, swipe up to reveal the Dock, and then tap and hold the Files icon briefly so you can drag it to the left or right edge of the screen. Then, to copy files, simply drag them from one view to the other.

Even without Split View, you can also drag to copy files on the iPhone. Tap and hold the file you want to copy, but instead of letting up or working with the popover, start dragging. Then, with another finger (your thumb may work well), tap the Browse tab to switch back to the Browse screen, and then keep dragging the file onto your flash drive. If you’re dextrous, you can even tap the flash drive with another finger to open it—do this to nest the dragged file into a sub-folder on the flash drive.

Obviously, you can also use the commands in the tap-and-hold popover to perform numerous other actions on files. These commands include Duplicate, Delete, Info, Quick Look, Tags, Rename, Share, Compress, and Create PDF.

One last thing. On the Mac, you need to eject external storage devices manually by dragging their icons to the Trash, Control-clicking them and choosing Eject, or pressing Command-E. Once you’ve done that, you can unplug the drive. Happily, that’s not necessary for drives mounted in iOS—just use common sense and don’t remove a flash drive while files are being read or written.

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

Apple likes to keep Mac names simple, but that’s not always helpful. For instance, if you want to add RAM to your Mac, it’s not good enough to know that it’s an iMac. You’ll need to know that it’s a 27-inch iMac with Retina display from late 2014. To find that out, choose About This Mac from the Apple menu. In some cases, you might even need to know the model identifier, which is a numeric code that’s accessible if you click the System Report button in the About This Mac window, and then click Hardware at the top left of the System Information window. It will be something like iMac15,1.

(Featured image modified from an original by Startup Stock Photos from Pexels)