How to help your family stay more secure online

Many of us travel during the holidays to visit family, have them visit us, or at least touch base with those we haven’t talked to in a while. One of the kindest gifts you can give beyond your own company and a new blender is to help relatives sort out online password and security problems that they may not even know they have.

The trick is to balance knowledge, agency, and capability. Don’t set up your 97-year-old grandfather with a two-factor authentication approach unless he both wants it and can, unaided, use it. Likewise, your 22-year-old daughter living away from home after college might appreciate mom’s password advice, but she might not take it to heart unless you share your own story of woe—and maybe pick up the cost of password-management software.

Apple's 'Communicating Stylus' for Capturing Digital Versions of Handwritten Notes Wins Patent

Apple today was awarded a new patent by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that concerns a new type of digital stylus that translates a user's handwritten note into a digital version when connected to a smartphone, tablet, or any "digital computing device" (via Apple insider). 

The patent also details various exchangeable tips for the stylus, including actual ink, markers for a whiteboard, or a rubberized nub akin to most popular tablet styli. The stylus activates when various motion-sensing hardware, including accelerometers, detects when the pen is picked up out of its dock, pressed to a writing surface, or simply turned on manually. 


Thanks to motion sensors able to detect a 3D plane, the stylus uses an initial zero point to transmit the movement and flow of handwriting as varying changes in position to the desired computing device. This technology also means an actual surface isn't needed to transmit data -- simply writing notes in the air would suffice. The patent even details ways for users to choose how the data is transmitted, including continuously or at chosen intervals, allowing battery life to be preserved. 

As noted by Apple Insider, there are many practical solutions for Apple's new patent. The pen allows a user to display their writing on multiple displays, a possible solution for work meetings and classrooms. It could also be a digital solution for note-taking, as the user would take notes with the pen on a paper tablet, and a digital copy would be sent to a phone or tablet tucked away in a bag. The automatically produced digital backup could then be more easily edited and shared. 

The patent isn't exactly new, being initially filed nearly five years ago in January of 2010, and is by no means a confirmation that Apple will be moving forward with a smart stylus of any kind. But, like most patents, it is an interesting glimpse into what possibilities the company is looking into for the future.

Apple drops iOS 8.1.2 to bring back vanished ringtones

Check your settings: Apple just released a software update for iOS 8 on Tuesday. iOS 8.1.2 includes general bug fixes and, most importantly, fixes a problem that caused ringtones purchased via iTunes to disappear from your device—which has been a known problem since iOS 8.0.2. 

While the update itself won’t bring your ringtones back from the dead, Apple has another way to restore missing purchases: After you install the update, follow Apple’s ringtone restore link(itunes.com/restore-tones) on your device, which will redirect you to iTunes. Follow the on-screen prompts from there.

Like iOS 8.1.1, released on November 17, iOS 8.1.2 is a minor update that focuses solely on bug fixes. It does not bundle in any of the major new features that are rumored for iOS 8, like improvements to Maps and split-screen multitasking for the iPad. Apple is also working on iOS 8.2 with the WatchKit SDK, which was seeded to developers in mid-November.

YouTube’s app for Apple TV gets major overhaul

Sure, Apple hasn’t done anything major with its Apple TV streaming device in a while, but that doesn’t mean content channels are neglecting it entirely. YouTube announced an update to its Apple TV channel on Tuesday, introducing a complete design makeover and some new features.

The design looks similar to YouTube’s channels found on the Roku and other streaming services, with crisp video thumbnails and tools for easy discovery. New features for the Apple TV include personalized recommendations based on other videos you’ve watched, predictive search, and the ability to subscribe to specific YouTube channels. YouTube’s video announcement calls it “the full YouTube experience, right from your TV.” Sounds about right.

Apple asks court to dismiss iTunes DRM case after curious plaintiff twist

Apple is asking a California U.S. District Court to dismiss the class-action case accusing the company of violating antitrust laws.

Apple’s attorneys argue that the two plaintiffs in the case over iTunes DRM, who represent about 8 million iPod owners, don’t have standing to sue Apple because they didn’t even own affected iPod models, according to a motion for dismissal filed Friday.

Apple asked Melanie Tucker on Thursday to produce proof that she purchased iPods between 2006 and 2009, before Apple ended use of DRM in iTunes. Tucker and co-plaintiff Marianna Rosen claim Apple prevented songs from rival music services from playing on iPods with firmware updates in iTunes 7.0 and 7.4. Tucker’s attorneys confirmed that she didn’t purchase iPods covered within the class, and removed her from the plaintiff list on Thursday.

How to mount and manage non-native file systems in OS X with FUSE

Mac OS X supports a handful of common file systems—HFS+, FAT32, and exFAT, with read-only support for NTFS. It can do this because the file systems are supported by the OS X kernel. Formats such as Ext3 for Linux systems are not readable, and NTFS can’t be written to. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t occasions when you’d want to use one of them. With FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) you can.

FUSE mimics the kernel’s handling of file systems and allows OS X to both interact with unsupported formats and use many other storage routines, some of which are rather creative. With FUSE, such formats can be handled very similarly to natively supported file systems and allow you to interact with drives your Mac otherwise could not read to or write from. Here’s how you can put FUSE to work.

Why Apple wiped some of your iPod songs without telling you

Interesting nuggets of information tend to come out of Apple trials, and this week’s iTunes class-action courtroom drama is no exception. The plaintiffs claim Apple would delete songs downloaded from rival music services when iPod owners synced their devices to iTunes over a two-year period from 2007 to 2009.

Apple didn’t deny the claim raised by attorney Patrick Coughlin in U.S. District Court Wednesday. Security director Augustin Ferrugia said Apple would remove songs to prevent users from syncing malicious files to their computers, according to a Wall Street Journal report from the courtroom.

Apple Releases Safari 8.0.1, 7.1.1, and 6.2.1

Apple today released Safari 8.0.1 for OS X Yosemite, Safari 7.1.1 for OS X Mavericks and a Safari 6.2.1 for older versions of OS X. The release comes nearly three weeks after the Safari betas were first seeded to developers. 

The new Safari builds can be downloaded through the Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store. Safari 8.0.1 for OS X Yosemite requires OS X 10.10 or 10.10.1, while Safari 7.1.1 for OS X Mavericks requires OS X 10.9.5 and Safari 6.2.1 for OS X Mountain Lion requires OS X 10.8.5. 

According to the release notes, Safari 8.0.1 fixes an issue that could prevent history from syncing across devices without iCloud Drive turned on, fixes an issue preventing saved passwords from being autofilled after two devices are added to iCloud Keychain, improves WebGL graphics performance on Retina displays, and allows users to import usernames and passwords from Firefox.

How to recover passwords with Keychain Access

If you’re the kind of upstanding person I believe you to be, over the coming holidays you’re going to spend some time with family and friends. And because you’re the kind of person who watches videos like this, you’re probably one of the tech savvier people they know. And because you are, sure enough you’re going to get this question:

“I need to get into my old email account but I can’t remember the password. What should I do?”

Sure, you could go through the steps to request a new password if it’s offered, but maybe you can avoid all that with this simple tip.

Launch Keychain Access, search for the name of the account you want to discover the password for, double-click on it, and an information window will appear. Enable the Show password option and you’ll be prompted for the user password for that account. Enter it and click Allow. The password will appear in the appropriate field.