A perfect storm of errors led to Dustin Curtis being locked out of many Apple services, with no easy way to get help from Apple. We try to tease out how this happened.

Artists are making big money by selling on the blockchain, with some hipsters and hypesters claiming it’s the future of digital art.

Adam Engst loves his M1-based MacBook Air but is missing the stellar user experience of the old MagSafe charging technology from his old 2012 MacBook Air. He found a cheap magnetic charging solution from various Chinese manufacturers. 

A report from a reader of the Dutch translation of TidBITS led us to discover both a message viewing bug in Mail and a problem with how we were building those translated issues. Read on to learn what not to do in email and how to work around Mail’s bug.

Web browser maker Brave Software has acquired the open-source search engine Tailcat and will soon be spinning it off as a new privacy-focused search engine.

Apple has shared data from the Apple Hearing Study showing that a troubling percentage of participants are exposed to harmful levels of sound and are suffering hearing loss. Turn down that volume!

Some third-party, non-compliant, powered USB-C hubs and docks are bricking recent MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models. Apple has updated Big Sur to prevent the problem; the question is if Macs running Catalina or Mojave might still be at risk.

If you garden, it’s time to think about starting seedlings indoors in many parts of the world. “Take Control of Apple Home Automation” author Josh Centers shows how you can use HomeKit to help.

macOS 11 Big Sur has thrown a cryptographically signed monkey wrench into the inner workings of backup apps that make bootable duplicates. There are now workarounds, and Apple promises to fix the necessary underlying tool, but Adam Engst suggests that we need to rethink the role bootable duplicates play in a modern backup strategy.

Jeff Porten closes his CES 2021 coverage with a first-ever deep dive into the annual Innovation Awards given out by the Consumer Technology Association. The range is impressive, but which of these products would you actually use?

Malwarebytes Labs has published its annual report on the state of malware in the computer industry, with a section focusing on the Mac. The good news is that the number of malware detections is down 38% and very little detected Mac malware is dangerous; the bad news is that Apple’s security enhancements have made it harder to remove potentially unwanted programs (PUPs).

Mike Masnick of TechDirt explains why everyone is mad at Facebook for cutting off links to Australian news sites, even though Australian publishers accused Facebook of taking advantage of them by linking to them.

With the latest release of the comprehensive Apple Platform Security guide, Apple has increased the guide’s scope and technical depth while revealing just how completely security has been integrated into the Apple ecosystem. Security Editor Rich Mogull takes a closer look at what vertical integration means for the present and future of Apple security.

The classic IBM Model M keyboard has been reborn in Kentucky, and you can even get one that’s customized for the Mac.

After several privacy controversies and pressure from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Amazon is rolling out end-to-end encryption for its Ring video doorbells.