HCS Blog

Long ago, to get ready for a trip, we’d mostly make sure we had our plane tickets, books and magazines to read, and a snack. Prepping for travel in today’s tech-heavy world comes with a new set of tasks, most of which shouldn’t be left to the last minute.

Identify Devices, Chargers, and Cables to Bring

Resist the temptation to bring every piece of tech you have. Do you really need your iPad and MacBook Air if you’re not planning to work on vacation? Is a point-and-shoot camera worthwhile if you take most of your photos with your iPhone?

Although most Mac users rely on Apple’s Safari for Web browsing, plenty of people prefer Google Chrome for its cross-platform compatibility, massive collection of extensions, and tight integration with the Google ecosystem. Chrome is by far the most popular browser in the world, with about 65% of the market, compared to Safari’s 18%. Still others opt for alternative browsers based on the same open-source Chromium engine, such as Arc, Brave, Microsoft Edge, Opera, and Vivaldi.

Unfortunately, Chrome’s dominance makes it a target for attackers in two ways. First, attackers may attempt to find vulnerabilities that would let them steal data or compromise credentials. Second, although Google reviews extensions submitted to the Chrome Web Store, researchers have discovered malicious extensions with millions of downloads. To keep your copy of Chrome secure, we recommend two things: relaunch the browser regularly and be careful with extensions.

Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference keynote was a lightning-fast (even in the full 1:44-long video—or try the 3-minute recap) look at what Apple is bringing to the software side of the Apple experience in the next year. Although some past keynotes have introduced hardware like new Macs and the Vision Pro, this year’s keynote stuck to new operating system features before previewing a suite of AI features collected under the umbrella term “Apple Intelligence.”

Apple previewed a boatload of new features and listed even more on its website. We’ll focus on those we think will make the biggest splash in your Apple experience, but we recommend that you scroll through Apple’s pages for each operating system to see more of what’s coming. Those are linked below, along with basic hardware requirements so you can see if your devices will be eligible to upgrade (not all features will be available on all devices):

If you have trouble finding particular items across multiple shelves of books, labeled boxes, or anything else that’s clearly identified with a text name, take carefully composed photos that capture all the titles without glare. Later, you can search for any text in those photos to find them—tap the Search button in Photos on the iPhone or iPad, or use the Search field in Photos on the Mac. Photos highlights the search term on the found photo. (If Photos on the Mac doesn’t surface an expected photo, try again on your iPhone, which seems to get more hits on harder-to-read text.) This capability comes courtesy of Apple’s Live Text feature, which uses machine learning to identify text in photos. Think of it as the lazy person’s database!

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

Research suggests that exposure to blue light fools your body into thinking it’s daytime, making it harder to fall asleep if you work late on a Mac with a bright white (which has a lot of blue light) screen. To help, a macOS feature called Night Shift subtly changes the colors of the screen as the sun sets to reduce the amount of blue light hitting your eyes. In essence, everything gets slightly warmer. To configure your Night Shift schedule—so it turns on and off automatically—go to System Settings > Displays > Night Shift. You can set any times, but Sunset to Sunrise adjusts for the sun’s movement in your location throughout the year. One warning: if you edit photos or videos, or work on graphics where specific colors matter, Night Shift’s color changes may be problematic.

(Featured image by iStock.com/PeopleImages)