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Newer Apple Silicon-based Macs can still run older software written for Intel Macs using a “transpiler” called Rosetta 2. The new chips perform better when running software optimized for M1 Macs, however. More developers and projects are making their apps Silicon native, including open source projects like emulators and source ports. You can still install iPhone and iPad apps on an M1 Mac too. MacBook models with an Intel chip still perform and should work for years to come, but we don’t recommend buying into a processor architecture that’s on the way out....

Application-specific passwords are more dangerous than they sound. Despite their name, they’re anything but application-specific. Each application-specific password is more like a skeleton key that provides unrestricted access to your account. “Application-specific passwords” are so-named to encourage good security practices — you’re not supposed to reuse them. However, the name may also provide a false sense of security to many people. Why Application-Specific Passwords Are Necessary RELATED: What Is Two-Factor Authentication, and Why Do I Need It?...

What Are App Clips? Introduced with iOS 14 and iPadOS 14, App Clips allow you to run an application without having to download it from the App Store first. They’re cut down, lightweight versions of apps that download on the fly. If you like the look of an app, or you want to use it again, you also have the option of downloading it to your device permanently. App Clips can be especially useful because functions like Apple Pay are fully supported....

A quick peek at the barrel of your camera’s lens reveals a jungle of letters, numbers, and acronyms. What exactly do they all mean and how can you translate the codes into useful information? Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of Photography Exchange—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. Image courtesy of Canon, USA. The Question Photography Exchange reader Mikal Sundberg is curious about the markings on his camera lens....

Last year was a big year for drones causing many of us to sit up and take notice, and 2015 should be even bigger. This leads to many privacy issues that we need to start seriously considering. Any examination of UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) is a moving target. The news is peppered with drone stories. Mexican cartels are moving product across the border with drones. Drones are crashing on the White House lawn....

To actually erase files from a magnetic hard drive, you would have to overwrite the file with useless data. Some tools attempt to make this easier, offering to “securely delete” a file by deleting it and overwriting its sectors with junk. Such tools will make the specific file you “securely delete” unrecoverable. However, if you have the nuclear launch codes on your computer and need to get rid of them, just “Securely deleting” the file itself isn’t good enough....

Curved TVs were everywhere at CES 2015. We’re not exaggerating: Almost all the TVs being shown off were curved instead of flat! But what’s the advantage of a curved TV, anyway? It wasn’t all about TVs. Samsung was showing off curved computer monitors, too. 4K TVs will be useful someday, but we’re not so sure about curved TVs. Curved Displays, What? RELATED: Should You Get an “Ultra HD” 4K TV?...

Google Drive has a pretty bad spam problem, and it seems Google doesn’t care. Spammers can share files that automatically appear in your Drive, and there’s no way to stop it. Update 1/4/19 10:10 AM CTS: Google got back to us with a statement saying that changes are coming to Drive’s sharing features and they’re “making it a priority.” Here’s the statement in full: Here’s What’s Happening Google Drive’s sharing system is the problem....

Last time we looked at the theory behind IP addresses, subnet masks and name resolution, and we ended the installment with a practical guide on how to change your network settings. This time we take that knowledge and extend it by introducing things like DHCP, Network Locations, Ping and much more. Be sure to check out the previous articles in this Geek School series on Windows 7: Introducing How-To Geek School Upgrades and Migrations Configuring Devices Managing Disks Managing Applications Managing Internet Explorer IP Addressing Fundamentals...

Microsoft operates over 100 retail stores across the USA and Canada. They’re not just places to shop — Microsoft Stores will perform basic Windows PC maintenance for you, for free. It doesn’t matter where you bought the PC, as long as it runs Windows. These are the kinds of services most stores — like Best Buy’s Geek Squad — will charge you a premium for. Microsoft Stores are more than just places to buy a clean, malware-free laptop....

If you have never registered a domain name of your own before, the process can seem a bit confusing or overwhelming. With this in mind, just how does the domain name registration process work? Today’s SuperUser Q&A post has the answers to a confused reader’s question. Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader user43364 wants to know how the domain name registration process works:...

Why Does USB Cable Length Matter? Before we talk about how long a USB cable can be, it’s essential to understand the role of cable length in its performance. USB is an interface that is used by computing devices to transfer data or power from one device to another. When two devices are connected via a USB cable, they use data packets to communicate with each other. But to ensure that the receiver gets each data packet, the source device waits for an acknowledgment signal from the destination before sending the next data packet....

Chromebooks Don’t Need That Much RAM First of all, just because Chrome is a RAM glutton on your Windows machine or Mac, that doesn’t mean it’s a Chrome issue across the board. Chrome OS is very different than a traditional computer, and so is the way it handles RAM. Without getting overly complicated (which is easy to do with a topic like this), let’s take a closer look at how Chrome OS manages RAM....

Recently, we showed you how to add a watermark to a document in Word 2013. You can also add a watermark to worksheets in Excel 2013; however, you must add them manually using the header and footer tools. We will show you how. Open your worksheet in Excel and click the Insert tab on the Ribbon. In the Text section, click Header & Footer. NOTE: If your Excel window is smaller, the Text section might be condensed to a drop-down button....

Is your Android Home screen getting a bit crowded? You’ve probably installed a ton of useful apps and are running out of room. However, there are probably apps you use more often than others. There is an elegant way of curing a crowded Home screen. A free app, called Bar Launcher, allows you to add app shortcuts to the notification tray on the status bar on you Android device. To install Bar Launcher, touch the Play Store icon on your Home screen....

At first, this can seem a bit paradoxical; after all, S3 is usually used as a backup for other services. But, it doesn’t protect from accidental deletions or overwrites, and for mission critical data, you can pay extra to have the bucket replicated across regions. Prevent Accidental Deletion with Object Versioning Let’s make one thing clear first—data in S3 is incredibly safe. It’s used for backups, so it doesn’t make much sense to backup your backup unless you’re really paranoid about losing your data....

Think you can just plug a standard Linux live USB drive into your Mac and boot from it? Think again. You’ll need to go out of your way to create a live Linux USB drive that will boot on a Mac. This can be quite a headache, but we’ve found a graphical utility that makes this easy. You’ll be able to quickly boot Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Kali Linux, and other mainstream Linux distributions on your Mac....

By default, when you use the save as… option to save e-mail messages and attachments in Outlook the items are saved in your My Documents folder. Here’s how to change that. How to Outlook 2013’s Default Save Location on Windows Press the Win + R keyboard combination to bring up a run box, then type “regedit” and hit enter to open the Registry Editor. Then navigate into this key (if your version of Office is different, change the 15....

If you often use the Touch Keyboard feature on Windows 11, you may be delighted to learn that you can make it bigger or smaller depending on your needs. Here’s how. First, open Windows Settings by pressing Windows+i or by right-clicking your Start button and selecting “Settings” from the menu. When Settings opens, click “Personalization,” then select “Touch Keyboard.” In Touch Keyboard settings, use the slider labeled “Keyboard Size” to adjust the size of the on-screen virtual keyboard....

In Windows you can easily find out how much disk space is left using Windows Explorer. The total disk space and how much space is free is displayed for each device connected to your machine. However, how do you do this on an Ubuntu machine? We’ll show you a couple of programs available within Ubuntu that can tell you how much space you have left on your hard disk. Both programs are installed automatically when you installed Ubuntu on your machine, so you don’t have to install them....