It pays to speak up. After being introduced to the ckbk cookbook service, Adam Engst expressed his disappointment in the app asking to track and was rewarded a few weeks later with an update that resolved the issue.

What better day than Friday the 13th to check that your backups are actually working by restoring some critical files?

Chatbots have just progressed to the next level with OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT. Programmer David Shayer explains what’s behind ChatGPT’s curtain and ponders how we’ll deal with AI-driven chatbots that sound confident and reasonable but may be entirely wrong.

Amazon sells Kindle ebook readers customized for kids, bundled with extra features and services. But the Kindle Kids interface lets Amazon promote whatever it wants to kids while preventing parents from managing what their kids see.

The results are in and wow, do people not use a lot of Apple’s features. In fact, only 4 of 20 features garnered more votes from those who used the feature than those who didn’t. Some of the usage patterns are no surprise—SharePlay, really?—but others caught us off guard.

Apple released a slew of new features with iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS 12 Monterey. But how many people are actually using them? Respond to our survey, and we’ll post the results next week.

Slack has overhauled the limits on its free plan, claiming that the majority of active free teams will have access to more message and file history than before. But your mileage may vary—and some people feel betrayed. Adam Engst explores the topic and muses about what we should be able to expect from free services.

Adam Engst recently took a trip from upstate New York to Vancouver, British Columbia. As always, technology made the trip significantly easier than in the past, though he found that some bits (CarPlay in rental cars and North American T-Mobile connectivity) were vastly more helpful than others (an App Clip for buying gas and Apple Maps encouraging illegal U-turns).

Although there’s much to look forward to in macOS 13 Ventura, iOS 16, and iPadOS 16, there are also some features that had us scratching our heads, wondering what had gotten into the Cupertino drinking water. 

Apple will be unveiling new technologies at WWDC 2022, and while some will undoubtedly be welcome, we have additional ideas that we hope will make their way into future versions of Apple’s operating systems.

iCloud Drive folder sharing has been around since macOS 10.15 Catalina, which makes it all the less acceptable that someone with whom the folder is shared can delete a file permanently and with only one possible—and unmentioned by Apple—option for recovery.

Do you feel like Apple’s “pro” Macs aren’t designed for your particular profession? You’re not alone. TidBITS publisher Adam Engst has been using Macs for over three decades, and he has some ideas for how Apple could better support professionals who don’t work with audio, video, or photos all day.

We live in a global, interconnected world, so the Russian invasion of Ukraine isn’t just news reports from far away. Between impacted Ukrainian Apple developers, efforts by other Apple-adjacent firms, and calls for Apple to block the App Store in Russia, we’re all in this together.

Apple’s Do Not Disturb feature has evolved into the ecosystem-wide Focus, which provides so many options and capabilities that it may be impossible to predict when notifications will work and when they won't. Adam Engst shows you how to use Focus and suggests that you stick to the basics.

Feeling overwhelmed by negativity? Adam Engst shares some 2021 wrap-up posts showing that even in a pandemic-ridden year, a lot of good stuff happened that didn’t make the headlines. He also looks at the solution to a macOS upgrade problem and explains how to bring back the menu command for creating an ad hoc Wi-Fi network.