Mac Appreciation Group of Island County
Newsletter

Meeting information

MAGIC Minutes for April 16 2025

by Secretary Wendy Shimada, MAGIC*

President Mike Turnbull called the meeting to order at 12:05 pm with 17 attendees present within a few moments. Mike noted that it was the first in-person meeting of the group since before Covid - five years! He said the meeting and presentation would not be available to view on the MAGIC website, as it was the first time using the meeting room's equipment so simplicity was best.

As members briefly introduced themselves and shared where they lived, it was interesting that members came from all over the island. Next month's meeting will return to the regular 4 p.m. time and the Zoom format. There may be an occasional in-person meeting in the future but currently most members have indicated that they prefer the monthly Zoom meeting format.

Ron then gave an interesting and helpful presentation on Photos, showing submitted members' images and some from his own collection. He used his iPad for the presentation, demonstrating some tips and settings to adjust everything from lighting and color adjustments to editing features, organization/labeling and sharing. Members who brought an Apple device to the meeting were able to follow along with Ron's instructions.

There was a Q&A session before the meeting closed at 1:17 p.m. to make room for the next group that had reserved the room.

Note: This Software Update section of the newsletter lists the most relevant Apple updates. Not all updates are listed for all products. Additionally, I'll add other pertinent updates on occasion.

Software Updates

Here is the latest operating systems you should be updated to. You can find the update procedures in the links below. To Check on Mac, iPhone, and iPad, go to Settings> General> Software Update. Be aware that with automatic updates turned on for iOS, it will check for new software but won't install it until the phone is plugged in to power and connected to wi-fi and in the locked mode. (Lock mode meaning it's not being used and not powered completely off.)

MacOS: Sequoia 15.4.1
iPhone & iPad: iOS 18.4.1
Watch OS: 11.4
TV OS: 18.4.1

• Update macOS on Mac
• Update your iPhone or iPad
• Update your Apple Watch

Apple shares new 'hands on' video touting Apple Intelligence features

by Chance Miller, 9to5mac

While some of the most anticipated Apple Intelligence features have yet to ship, Apple is ramping up its marketing of the ones that have. In a new video posted on YouTube, Apple goes in-depth on features like Genmoji, Image Playground, Clean Up in Photos, and more.

"Get to know Apple Intelligence, a powerful set of features built into your iPhone, iPad, and Mac, to help you write, express yourself, and get things done effortlessly," Apple says.

Here are the Apple Intelligence features shown off in this new "hands on" video from Apple:

Remove distractions with Photo Clean Up
• Create emojis from your imagination with Genmoji
• Generate custom images in seconds with Image Playground
• Get the gist of long emails with Mail Summarize
• Rewrite your messages with the perfect tone using Writing Tools
• Turn a quick thought into a real plan with Writing Tools composed with ChatGPT
• Use your camera to learn more about the places, objects and text around you with Visual intelligence
• Unlock instant answers and ideas with Visual intelligence: ask ChatGPT>

This marks the second new video from Apple touting its Apple Intelligence suite of features recently. Last month, the company shared an ad that specifically highlights the Clean Up feature in Photos.

There's still no word on when the more powerful and personal version of Siri will ship to users. During Apple's earnings call with analysts yesterday, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company is "making progress" on those features, but it "needs more time" to get things right.

Continue reading....

Apple Music shakeup hints at TikTok-inspired changes coming

by Ryan Christoffel, 9to5mac

Earlier, news broke that Apple Music was getting new leadership within Apple, including a major new outside hire. That leadership could very well infuse some TikTok-style innovation into Apple Music before long. Here's why.

Apple poached a top TikTok exec to co-lead Apple Music

Apple Music has fresh leadership. There are two new co-heads now at the helm.

Ole Obermann and Rachel Newman have been given shared leadership of all aspects of the streaming service, under the oversight of former head Oliver Schusser.

Newman is a longtime Apple Music exec, but Obermann is brand new to the company—the rare outside hire to move straight into top leadership.

Back in February, Obermann announced his departure from TikTok, where he has worked for the last five and a half years.

At TikTok, Obermann was Global Head of Music Business Development.

But according to Music Business Worldwide, his role at Apple sounds much more product-focused.

Beyond being co-head, more specifically Obermann's job is "a newly created role…focused on strategy and innovation."

Obermann's TikTok tenure centered a lot on striking big deals with artists and helping the platform thrive as a result.

But it seems Apple's successful poaching came with new responsibilities.

Co-leading Apple Music should prove a big upgrade on its own. But so too will shifting to focus more on "strategy and innovation."

9to5Mac's Take

The core user experience in Apple Music hasn't changed all that much since the service first debuted. New features in the Music app arrive regularly, and enhancements like Spatial Audio have been highlights too.

But in many respects, the core of Apple Music, to me at least, feels like it could use some modernization. I'm excited to see what such a high-ranking TikTok veteran can bring to the service to shake things up.

What changes do you want to see in Apple Music, and are there any TikTok features you think would be a good fit? Let us know in the comments.

Click for article.

Siri just keeps getting good news ahead of iOS 19's big reveal

by Ryan Christoffel, 9to5mac

Not long ago, Siri couldn't seem to catch a break. After Apple officially delayed the assistant's big AI upgrades, several internal leaks highlighted just how bad things were behind the scenes. But now, the tides have seemingly turned, and Siri's good news season is in full swing ahead of iOS 19's big reveal.

Big internal changes preparing Siri for new success

Following the array of troubling Siri reports in early March, there have been numerous encouraging signs emerging from within Apple.

Mike Rockwell, Siri's effective new boss, may have seemed an odd choice at first. But that sentiment quickly changed.

Per numerous reports, Rockwell has wanted to fix Siri for years, and now he finally gets the opportunity. And unlike previous leadership's poor track record for shipping major upgrades, Rockwell proved with visionOS and Vision Pro that he can manage huge projects and deliver.

Rockwell, and his boss Craig Federighi, have already made big changes to right the ship with Siri. Per various reports:

• Apple engineers can now use third-party LLMs to build Siri features
• and the Siri teams have been shaken up with new leadership consisting of top company talent

These internal changes are positioned to make a major impact on Siri. And we're already getting reports on what that will look like.

iOS 19 will upgrade Siri with new powers from Apple and third parties

In April, The New York Times shared some exciting news for users.

Per three sources, Siri's big AI upgrades are expected to launch this fall in iOS 19.

That's a lot sooner than many had come to expect, especially since Apple's original delay announcement seemed to indicate a 2026 release was likely.

ut now, it appears those new Apple Intelligence powers will be ready before too long. That's not the only good iOS 19 news Siri's received, though.

Just yesterday, via Google CEO Sundar Pichai of all people, we learned that Apple will likely add multiple new third-party AI integrations to iOS 19.

Google Gemini will almost certainly be one of them, but it sounds like other AI models are coming too.

This is great news for Siri, because the more new models are integrated with Apple Intelligence, the better Siri will become.

Right now in iOS 18, ChatGPT is the only supported third-party extension. But it has come with significant benefits for users. Now, when Siri can't answer a question, it pulls in ChatGPT to help.

The end result for users is that Siri performs better than before—even though the new intelligence is technically sourced from OpenAI.

With the addition of Gemini and other third-party extensions in iOS 19, Siri will offer users even more value than ever.

Siri in iOS 19 and beyond: wrap-up

Siri's reputation has no doubt suffered this year, but it already wasn't very strong in the first place. With the changes Apple has made internally, and the prospect of big upgrades in iOS 19, Siri could truly be entering a new era.

WWDC is only a month away, so we won't have to wait long to see what Apple has in store. The biggest question now is: will the company announce everything that's coming? Or will it play things safer this year, and under promise so it can hopefully over deliver?

Click for article.

How to join the awesome password-free future and use passkeys

by D Griffin Jones, cultofmac

Managing passwords is and always has been a giant pain. It isn't the best system, but it's the system we've got. Well, not if Apple can do anything about it. Passkeys are a new system that automatically signs you in to online services using your phone's Face ID (or Touch ID) or your computer's password. It's one less thing to remember; it works without fiddling around with a password manager.

Passkeys aren't an Apple-exclusive feature. You can bet the technology will be supported no matter what devices you have because all of these companies are part of the FIDO Alliance that created the system … eventually.

Apple fully supports it in iOS 16 and Safari 16 for Mac, as does Google's Chrome browser on multiple platforms. Android 9 and above supports passkeys via Credential Manager, and Google added passkey support to user accounts on "all major platforms." Microsoft added support to Windows 11 in the 22H2 update.

Follow along as I show you how passkeys work.

How to use passkeys

Device support is one thing, but you also need to have an account on a website that uses passkeys. 1Password has a list at passkeys.directory where you can see every website that is known to support it — all 225 of them, at the time of writing.

How to use passkeys with a Google account

Add Passkeys to Google account
Screenshot: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac

Add Passkeys to your Google account

Open security settings on your Google account. Below the "How you sign in to Google" section, tap Passkeys. You'll have to tap Create a passkey and tap Continue. A system dialog will come up where you tap Continue again and your phone will ask for Face ID (or Touch ID). Tap Done to go back to security settings.

Sign In to Google with a Passkey
Screenshot: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac

Tap Continue to sign into Google with Face ID.

The next time you sign in, tap Continue > Continue to use Face ID.

This doesn't replace your password — it's a different, faster way to sign in. If you're using a different device, you can always tap Try another way to enter your password. So you shouldn't turn off two-step verification if you already have that turned on.

How to use passkeys on eBay

Prompt "Tired of passwords? Depending on your device, you can sign in with your fingerprint, face, or PIN" with options "Turn on" or "Maybe later"

Use a passkey on eBay. It'll ask you the next time you sign in on the web. Screenshot: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac

When you sign into ebay.com on your iPhone, you'll get a prompt to add Face ID. It's an alternative way of signing in that's faster, safer and easier to manage.

The next time you sign in, you can tap "Turn on". A system popup will appear from the bottom asking you if you want to authenticate with Face ID; tap Continue.

That's it!

iPhone system popup that says "Do you want to sign in to 'ebay.com' using a saved account?" with a "Continue" button
Screenshot: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac

Just tap "Continue" to sign in. It's that simple.

The next time you sign in from the same device, you won't see a password field — you'll see a simple Sign in button that brings up another system prompt.

Tap Continue and you'll be signed in again.

Create an account using passkeys on Best Buy's website

Creating a passkey is also as simple as tapping a single button (where available).
Screenshot: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac

Creating a passkey is also as simple as tapping a single button (where available). Screenshot: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac

I wanted to try creating a passkey on a different website to see if it's the same process. After creating a Best Buy account, I wasn't asked to create a passkey, but I could find the option hidden in account settings.

Tap Create a Passkey and you get the same system prompt. Tap Continue, make sure your face still looks like your face and you're all done.

Sign into an account with passkeys on a computer that doesn't support it

Am I locked out of my eBay and beloved new Best Buy account on computers that don't support passkeys?

No. Enabling passkeys doesn't eliminate passwords, it's just an easier way to sign in on devices that you've activated it on. When I go to ebay.com, I can still sign in using my password.

You also don't need your Mac to run the latest version of macOS to use it because Safari can be updated separately in System Preferences > Software Update. My former 2015 MacBook Pro does not support macOS 13 Ventura, but I could still create and use passkeys all the same.

Using passkeys on a Mac

Mac popup that says "Do you want to allow 'ebay.com' to save a credential?" with a "Continue" button.
Screenshot: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac

Creating passkeys works on the Mac, too.

Using passkeys is excellent. It feels wrong that this is far safer than a password — it feels like things need to be inconvenient to be safe. It couldn't get any easier.

But people inevitably use the same password for nearly every account they have, because how in the world are you supposed to keep more than ten unique alphanumeric passwords in your head?

Password managers are a decent stop-gap solution that quickly devolves into a storage problem with passwords not updating, passwords kept here but not there, and fiddling around with an app for way too long just to get into a dumb website.

I can only hope that I will be able to live in the glorious password-free future that awaits us for at least a couple of years before I die.

Click for article.

WIZARD SEZ: I am very cautious about putting passwords or passkeys on the internet where nothing is absolutely safe. Be careful!

When mail is "Over Quota"

by Robert Y Elphick, MAGIC

Introduction

When you MAIL application reports that your email is "Over Quota" it means that the server that provides all your emails (for example, Whidbey Telecom, Outlook, Yahoo, and Gmail) has run out of space. The provider allows a certain amount of memory on it computer systems for your use. This is usually assigned to you when you set up the email address and the monthly charge probably reflects how much you are aligned.

When you get messages that your email is "Over Quota", it has nothing to do with the MAIL program you are using.

Over Quota

When your email account is "Over Quota", two things may happen:

• Since you have no more of their disk space available to store it, your email provider will reject email sent to you. Usually, the provider sends a bounce message to the sender saying the mail could not be delivered.
• Your email provider may send you an email message to let you know you're "Over Quota" or ."Mailbox full"

A common cause for being "Over Quota" is going on a long trip.

Mail Settings

When you set up your email you will be required to select either an IMAP or a POP3 account.

IMAP accounts keep your emails on the server until you delete them. This system means that all your devices are in sync because all of them are using the same data on the server. The user needs to delete them from the server so than non of the devices will see them - it is up to the user to copy them into their own folders in the MAIL program to preserve them on the user's computer. The server acts as the Master.

POP3 accounts download the emails onto you computer and delete them from the server after a specified number of days. In MAIL it is set up in settings:

I use POP3 so that my server never gets full. However, I need to remove unwanted emails from each device separately - easy since I only use my computer and iPhone for emails and generally manage my emails on the computer and erase them all from the iPhone after viewing. My computer is the Master.

However you got the "Over Quota" message there are three possible solutions:

1. Increase the quota with the provider, and pay any additional cost.
2. Reduce the number of emails online by deleting them.
3. Move the necessary number of emails offline onto you computer/device.

Click for article on this website..

One of Apple Maps' best recent features borrows from the Notes app

by Ryan Christoffel, 9to5mac

iOS 19 will be unveiled next month, but plenty of iPhone users still haven't discovered all the new features of the last major update. Apple Maps, for example, scored a great addition inspired by the Notes app in iOS 18, but it's completely hidden by default. Here are the details.

Maps' new save feature unlocks a hidden notes interface

I've been a longtime Apple Maps user, but several iOS 18 improvements have made this an especially strong year for the app.

The ability to search a specific map area has been huge for me, and I'm a big fan of the new save button too.

For those who haven't used it much, the save feature lets you quickly add a location to your Library. By hitting the plus button in the top-right of a place listing, you can save it to:

• find the place more easily later
• and make it appear prominently on the map moving forward.

Saving places comes with a third benefit, though: it unlocks a hidden notes feature.

Notes in Apple Maps let you save key info about a place

After you hit the '+' button to save a place, you may or may not notice that a new section appears on that place's listing.

Just below information on its hours, ratings, cost, and distance, you'll find a new notes section. It reads:
Add a Note
Only you'll see what you write here.

Tap the note section and you'll be able to jot down anything you want to remember about that place.

There aren't any formatting options, but here's hoping Apple adds those in a future update.

Regardless, notes are still a great way to save important information about a place for later.

Recently, I've been exploring different bakeries throughout New York City.

My Instagram 'Search & Explore' page is packed full of cookies, cakes, cinnamon rolls, and more. It's dangerous.

Now, when I come across a bakery I want to try out, I'll save it in Apple Maps and add a note mentioning the specific pastry I need to try out.

You can, of course, use notes in whatever other way makes sense to you. Maybe you use it like a diary of places you've been, or to save key information like I do with bakeries.

Notes can even be added to dropped pins, so for example you might use a note to save instructions about the best place to enter a large building. It's a flexible feature to suit any need.

I'm not sure why Apple hid notes behind the save function, other than I suppose to keep the Maps UI from getting cluttered.

But if you're like me, once you find it, you won't want to go back to saving your notes in a separate app.

How have you been using the notes feature in Apple Maps, or how do you plan to use it? Let us know in the comments.

Continue reading....

Let Apple Mail organize your emails for you

by D.Griffin Jones, cultofmac

With the new automatic mail categorization in Apple Mail, you can organize your emails and keep your personal inbox less cluttered. It'll intelligently put all your newsletters, receipts and promotions into separate folders.

If you struggle keeping up with your inbox, this feature is a great way to make your email easier to understand at a glance.

Organize emails with Apple's automatic mail categories

Email is more than 50 years old, but it's still central to almost everyone's work and personal lives. If you have thousands of emails in your inbox, the only way to achieve inbox zero is by declaring bankruptcy: Select everything and archive it. (Or simply mark them as read, if that's your style.)

But if you want to maintain an organized inbox going forward, you need a new strategy. And Apple's automatic mail categorization is a good, built-in way to get yourself organized.

This feature is available in iOS 18.2 or later.

Continue reading and see video....

WIZARD SEZ: See also MAGIC article on MAIL categories including how to stop them.

Look things up with your iPhone's camera using Visual Intelligence

by D. Griffin Jones, cultofmac

Apple's new Visual Intelligence feature provides a quick way to find information just by pointing an iPhone 16's camera at an object in the real world. Then you can ask ChatGPT to explain what you're looking at, do a reverse image search to find products and look things up visually, get information on a business as you walk down the street, quickly add events to your calendar and identify plants and animals.

With the release of iOS 18.4, Apple added the capability to use Visual Intelligence on iPhone 15 Pro models. Here's how it works.

How to use Visual Intelligence Apple's Visual Intelligence feature integrates real-world awareness into iOS, using AI to make your iPhone smarter about what it sees. Capable of recognizing objects, text and scenes through the camera, it unlocks new ways to interact with information instantly and intuitively.

While Visual Intelligence relies heavily on third parties like ChatGPT and Google, its integration into the iPhone makes it a powerful tool for everyday use. Apple's new AI tool puts those incredibly useful information sources directly at your fingertips.

However, you will need the right combo of hardware and software. You need a device that supports Apple Intelligence. That means an iPhone 16 or iPhone 16 Pro model running iOS 18.2 or later. It also works with iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16e running iOS 18.4 or later. However, since neither of them comes with a Camera Control, you'll need to activate Visual Intelligence via the device's Action button.

Table of contents: How to use Visual Intelligence on the iPhone 16

1. Update iOS and enable Apple Intelligence
2. Click and hold the Camera Control
3. Add it to the Action button or Control Center
4. Look things up by snapping a picture
5. Capture calendar events and look up businesses
6. Identify plants
7. How does Visual Intelligence work?
8. More Apple Intelligence features

Continue reading and see video....

How to Enable Automatic Dark / Light Mode on iPhone & iPad

by osxdaily

If you're an iPhone or iPad user, you might appreciate a feature that automatically switches your devices appearance from Light Mode to Dark Mode, and vice versa, automatically. Furthermore, you can set the automatic enabling of Dark and Light mode to follow sunset and sunrise, or a custom schedule, whichever you prefer.

As you probably know, using Dark Mode on iPhone switches all the appearance elements from bright white screens and bright icons to dark blacks and greys, making the interface potentially easier on the eyes especially at night and in low-light situations. Similarly, using Light Mode will use the bright whites and bright icons as the default interface appearance. With automatic dark and light mode switching, the transition between these interface appearances happens on a schedule you choose.

Enabling the auto-switching of dark/light mode in iOS and iPadOS is easy:

1. Open the "Settings" app on your iPhone or iPad
2. Go to "Display & Brightness"
   
3. Under the 'Appearance' section toggle the switch for "Automatic" to the ON position
   
4. Optionally, tap on "Options" and choose "Light until sunset" to automatically switch the appearance modes with sunrise and sunset, or choose "Custom" to select a manual schedule for automatic appearance switching between dark mode and light mode

The appearance change will be immediate to dark mode if you're after sundown and using light mode, or if you're using light mode and it's after sunrise.

Using the automatic switching of light mode and dark mode combined with automatic Night Shift can make using the device at night much easier on the eyes, as it reduces the screen brightness. You can also manually toggle Night Shift through Control Center if you want to enable that as needed.

The screenshots demonstrate enabling automatic dark mode and light mode switching on an iPhone, but this setting is the exact same on iPad too. If you have a Mac, you'll find there's also an easy way to enable automatic dark mode and light mode switching on MacOS as well.

Click for article.

How to Change Photos Thumbnail Sizes on iPhone & iPad

by osxdaily

If you've ever wanted to browse your photo library a bit more efficiently, adjusting the thumbnail size in the Photos app on your iPhone or iPad can make a big difference. Whether you're looking to see more images on the screen at once, or you prefer larger previews for easier viewing, changing the thumbnail size gives you more control over how your photos are displayed in iOS. This is a very simple adjustment to make that can make navigating through hundreds or even thousands of pictures faster and more comfortable, especially on devices of varying screen sizes, like the iPhone and iPad.

How to Adjust Thumbnail Size in Photos on iPhone & iPad

This trick is simple but uses a gesture that users may or may not already be familiar with:

Open the Photos app as usual and go to the main camera roll, then perform the following gestures with your fingers, depending if you want larger of smaller thumbnails:
1. • Larger thumbnails: Use a spread gesture (two fingers spreading apart) to make the Photos thumbnail size larger
   • Smaller thumbnails: Use a pinch gesture (two fingers pinching inwards) to make the Photos thumbnail sizes smaller
2. The Photos thumbnail sizes will adjust instantly according to the gesture you used

If you're looking to see more thumbnails on screen at the same time, use the two finger pinch gesture to make the thumbnail sizes smaller.

If you're lookin to see more details of photos and fewer thumbnails on the screen at the same time, use the two-finger spread gesture to make the thumbnail sizes larger.

As you play around with these gestures, you'll notice you can make the thumbnails take up basically the entire width of the screen if you'd like to, or shrink them down so many thumbnails are visible at once on screen. How you use this feature is entirely up to you and what you're looking to see on your specific Photos app and device.

The pinch and spread gestures may be familiar to some iPhone and iPad users already, because they're the same gestures used to zoom in and zoom out of many other apps and features on the devices, including zooming in and out of Safari, many other apps, zooming in/out on videos, zooming with the camera, and also for some unexpected features like saving as PDF. Point being, this is a widely used gesture on iPhone and iPad, particularly for zooming in and out, but also for some other functionality as well.

Click for article.

This reader says his Apple Watch saved his life—make sure yours is set up too

by Zac Hall, 9to5mac

A 9to5Mac reader, Mike Taylor, recently shared a powerful account of how his Apple Watch may have saved his life—echoing a similar story we reported earlier this week.

What started as mild shortness of breath turned into a life-threatening emergency. After leaving work one evening, Taylor collapsed in a nearly empty parking lot on the way to his car. He blacked out from what he later learned were multiple large blood clots in his lungs—one of which was blocking oxygen to his heart.

In a Reddit post, Taylor recalled what happened: "I thought I just had a lingering cold or maybe some weird COVID symptoms, mostly shortness of breath. Nothing crazy… until one evening after work. I was walking through an almost-empty parking lot on my way to my Jeep when things suddenly got worse. I felt lightheaded, dizzy, and seriously winded. I barely made it to the back of my vehicle before I blacked out.

"Next thing I know, I'm coming to, face-down on the pavement, and my Apple Watch is vibrating and flashing SOS. It had detected the hard fall and was automatically calling 911. In my dazed state, I actually stopped the call (don't be like me 😅), but thankfully, 911 called me right back."

Paramedics arrived within minutes and rushed him to the ER. A doctor later told him the quick response likely made the difference between life and death. His wife, located 35 miles away, was instantly notified through her iPhone thanks to emergency contact alerts.

Taylor credits the Apple Watch's fall detection and emergency features for helping save his life, and urges others to set theirs up properly. "You never think you'll need this stuff until you really do," he said. "I'm glad to be here. Still so amazed that my watch pretty much saved me."

Here's a quick checklist to make sure your Apple Watch is ready in case of an emergency:

• Enable Fall Detection in the Watch app under Emergency SOS
• Add emergency contacts in the Health app on your iPhone
• Fill out your with key info like allergies and conditions
• Enable Share During Emergency Call so contacts are notified automatically
• Make sure your watch has cellular or is near your iPhone for connectivity

These settings take just a few minutes to configure—and they could save your life.

Click for article.

Want your Apple Watch to stop opening apps and just show the face? Here's how

by Zac Hall, 9to5mac

Wish your Apple Watch would always show your watch face when you glance at it? Be default, Apple Watch will launch certain apps or show the Smart Stack based on your activity. If you prefer to always see your watch face, however, there are a few things to tweak.

Live Activities

watchOS 10, the software that runs on the Apple Watch, introduces support for Live Activities. Like on the iPhone, these special widget-style notifications can update in real time without sending individual alerts for sports score updates and each step of your food delivery.

If you always want to see your watch face when you glance at your wrist, Live Activities can get in the way. Fortunately, there's a toggle for these:

1. Open Settings app and tap General
2. Scroll to Auto-Launch and tap to open section
3. Tap Live Activities Settings at the top of the list

From this section, you're able to enable/disable Live Activities or enable/disable auto-launching Live Activities. Turning off Auto-Launch Live Activities still allows you to view Live Activities when you swipe up or double tap gesture to open the widgets view, but they will stop taking over your watch face when they're active.

A third setting allows you to enable/disable showing Live Activities when your wrist is down and your Apple Watch screen is dimmed. This is turned on by default, but you can change it if you have Live Activities enabled.

Media apps

Separately, there's an option in the Live Activities Settings section to control how media apps behave. You can optionally choose to disable Live Activities for media apps and still auto-launch them for other apps that support Live Activities in the Smart Stack.

By default, Auto-Launch for media apps is enabled. If this is on, you can change the current default behavior of auto-launching the Smart Stack widgets view to auto-opening the media app instead. This is how media apps behaved with auto-launch in previous watchOS versions.

More auto-launching apps

Lastly, you can choose to disable Live Activities for certain apps while still auto-launching Live Activities for other apps. This granular level of control is at the bottom of the Live Activities Settings section. Here you'll find the ability to disable, auto-launch Smart Stack, or auto-launch the app itself. Supported apps include Alarms, Compass, Mindfulness, Music Recognition, Stopwatch, Timers, Voice Memos, Wallet, and Workout.

There's also a section in Settings > General > Auto-Launch to control how auto-launch works when your Apple Watch is submerged. By default, models with the Depth app will auto-launch it when submerged. You can instead choose to keep your Apple Watch on the watch face. While things could change in the future, grasping these three categories will give you full control over always showing your watch face or auto-launching Live Activities, apps, or snorkeling/diving apps.

Click for article..

Here's everything new Apple TV+ has coming in May

by Ryan Christoffel, 9to5mac

Apple TV+ has maintained strong momentum this spring with hits Your Friends & Neighbors and The Studio. Both series will continue dropping new episodes in May, but Apple has a variety of other brand new debuts coming too. Highlights include the sci-fi comedy/thriller Murderbot and a big-budget Indiana Jones-style adventure movie, Fountain of Youth. Here's everything coming to Apple TV+ in May.

Continue reading and see previews....

by Penny Holland, MAGIC*

Apple warns iPhone users in 100 countries that they are victims of spyware

by Ben Lovejoy, 9to5mac

p>Apple has notified iPhone users in 100 countries that their devices have been infected with spyware, implying that it may be NSO's Pegasus.

The company has warned victims to take it seriously, and to immediately take a number of security actions in response. One of the recipients has shared almost the entire message, the first time I can recall seeing more than a brief excerpt … Apple alerts spyware victims

Our NSO guide explains the background to the main iPhone spyware used for these attacks. The tl;dr version is that the Israeli company makes Pegasus spyware to compromise iPhones, and sells it to governments - without being too picky about which ones. In many countries, attacks have been made against journalists, political opponents, human rights activists, lawyers, and more.

Apple of course seeks to block this spyware each time a new version is detected, but the sophistication of the attacks can make this difficult.

Apple introduced a new level of protection back in 2021. It added code to iOS which aims to detect when an iPhone has been compromised even when the specific attack mechanism is unknown. Apple then sends alerts to victims.

Apple threat notifications are designed to inform and assist users who may have been targeted by state-sponsored attackers. These users are individually targeted because of who they are or what they do. Unlike traditional cybercriminals, state-sponsored attackers apply exceptional resources to target a very small number of specific individuals and their devices, which makes these attacks much harder to detect and prevent. Victims are alerted by iMessage, email, and a notification on the Apple ID website.

Victims in 100 countries alerted this week

TechCrunch reports that Apple has this week sent spyware alerts to victims in 100 countries. While only two people have as yet identified themselves, Apple's message includes the reference to the number of countries involved.

One of the victims, Dutch right-wing activist Eva Vlaardingerbroek, shared almost the entirety of the message from Apple, which you can read below. The company doesn't specify the spyware, but does specifically reference Pegasus as an example.

9to5Mac's Take

Apple's ability to detect signs of a spyware attack even when the mechanism is unknown is a powerful defence against these attacks. The company is careful to reveal nothing about how it is able to detect a compromised phone, to prevent companies like NSO attempting to evade this detection.

Click for full article.

Malware Examples *

by Ron Sharp and Robert Elphick, MAGIC *

Here are some tips if you do respond to a scam email. Call your bank. Put a stop payment on your charge card if it is involved. Change your account password for whatever accounts are involved. If it's a PayPal account, log into that account and change the password. If you use a bank account online change that password. You can also set up email "rules" to block email from the sender if their email address shows. If you use Apples Mail app you'll find the "Rules" options in the Mail app Settings. You should also change the password to your email account that the scam email came to.

SCAM pretending to help USAID recipients
DO NOT CLICK.

SCAM message - note the from has nothing to do with PatPal
DO NOT RESPOND./i>.

Another scam pretending to be from WhidbeyTel
Note the from address
NO NOT CLICK

Revolting phishing email. Totally false
NO NOT RESPOND

Not from Whidbey Telecom - see from address
NO NOT RESPOND

Malware message - Note the URL is not WSDOT
NO NOT RESPOND

This is Phishing - see from
NO NOT RESPOND

Scam simulating a Apple iCloud warning email!
Delete!

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Internet Crime

Any one bothered by internet criminal activity should report it to the Federal Bureau of Investigation Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) at this web page. This includes phishing, malware, spoofing, any demand for money.

Sell or Swap

by MAGIC

Got something you would like to sell or give away? Need something second hand or out of date? Contact MAGIC at this email .

A Mid 2007 20 inch iMac with 1 terabyte storage drive.

A late 2006 20 inch iMac with 250GB storage drive.

Contact Brian Mahieu e-mail
or text Brian

Texting and Encryption *

by Ron Sharp, MAGIC

You may have read in recent months that texting between dissimilar product devices is not safe. So texting between Apple and Android devices is not encrypted but texting between Apple devices is, and Android to Android is.

Even though I read that I still text to family members, both Apple and Android. But it's not anything sensitive. It's like "Hi, What are you doing today?" So I think it's okay. But then maybe joking around I might say something that an algorithm would flag. Then what? In hindsight I could start to worry. So I think one definitely has to be careful if you're texting to any devices other than Apple.

Apple and Google have plans to encrypt SMS for texting, but no date has been established at this time. In the meantime, caution is the norm, as with so many things these days. Seems like humanity hasn't progressed so much in the last century despite the technology progressing!

On a side note, since I used the word algorithm, I might elucidate since that word that gets interjected often. Algorithms are a set of rules for calculations and problem solving. So I imagine computers scan millions of text messages for certain words. The List of words is probably pretty big. Then there may be rules to prioritize the words. Like if the word "kill" is found, it's flagged and sorted to the Red Flag folder. Then another algorithm might take those messages and look for other words to determine the importance in context.

You couldn't have security agents reading all those text messages just to find out that a text message was referring to killing weeds, or killing carpenter ants. With that in mind it seems inconceivable to filter our texting conversations accurately. So what to do? I'd say we each have to make our choices and hope for improvements in security as well as overall humanity! But just be aware of situations so you can make your own decisions.

Browsing and Searching the internet *

by Ron Sharp, MAGIC

If you want to look something up on the internet you open your browser. That is you click on Safari, or maybe Firefox, hopefully not Chrome. Chrome, Google's browser, is the worst for safety and tracking your searches.

Now once you have Safari open, you type in your search words. So you'll either type them right into the URL text box, or open your default search page which may be Google or DuckDuckGo, or Yahoo, or other search app and use the text box that opens on that page.

Here's what you should know. The browser app you opened is the application that displays the webpage. It has to handle text, images, videos, sound, and anything else that might be imbedded in a webpage. But when you type your search words into a search box, then a different application does the internet search.

For most browser apps, the text box that shows the URL, which is the address of the webpage, doubles as a search text box. And as with most browsers, you can choose which search application to use. So no matter if you use Safari or Firefox, or whatever, you choose your own search application. (called "Search Engine")

With Safari, you have the search choices of Google Search (Google/Alphabet), Yahoo Search (Yahoo), Bing Search (Microsoft), and DuckDuckGo (open source). The advantage of DuckDuckGo is that they do not track you, unlike the other search engines. Google in particular tracks and saves every webpage you visit because their business is advertising. So they sell that information to retailers.

(Open Source software is described as software that the designers allow others to participate in the development of the product. So it is not managed by a large company. Kind of like a co-op)

DuckDuckGo's theme is to be safe from tracking. But be aware that besides their search engine app, they also make a browser application. I thinks it's unfortunate that they don't identify it a little differently than their search app, both their browser and search app are called DuckDuckGo.

So if you happen to click on DDG and download it thinking your getting the search app and you get the browser then you may find that all your bookmarks are missing or changed, and the toolbar looks different. That's because you are using a new browser, not the one you've been using that has all your bookmarks saved.

Safari has a few advantages over the other browsers in that since it is Apple's browser it works well with other applications on your Mac computer. For instance, it automatically saves passwords to Apple's password manager, recognizes addresses and phone numbers and can save them your Contacts app, etc. Another advantage is that Safari is automatically updated when you install security or operating system updates. With other browsers you have manually check for and install updates, which can be often.

Safari also does security checks on websites. After going to a webpage, you can see if Safari blocked any trackers by clicking on the shield icon in the tool bar on the top left of the page. For instance the image shows for the last page loaded Safari blocked 9 connections and prevented 32 trackers from profiling you.

Fun or Informative Videos *

by Ron Sharp, MAGIC

Best of Buster Keaton's greatest stunts:

Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale: