Can you chart a murder? How to build an interactive novel – Six Colors
[Editor’s Note: I asked Antony to detail the process by which he created his interactive crime novel, Can You Solve The Murder?, which required some specific tools and a lot of intricate planning. And of course this article contains no spoilers for the book or any of Antony’s work.—J.S.] I’m an author, primarily writing crime […]
Introducing FixBot: We Built an AI That Actually Knows How to Fix Things
Moving my family across the country towing our trusty ‘92 ski boat, I hit a patch of ice in Kansas and slid our trailer into a snowbank. A wonderful local mechanic helped me melt the snow jammed into the wheel, reinflate my tires and sent us on our way. A hundred miles later, I pulled […]
Missing Launchpad in MacOS 26? Here’s How to Bring It Back
Customize the look. Screenshot by Justin Pot As I said, it’s not a perfect replacement, but take some time setting up folders and tweaking the settings and I think you’ll find it works well. And you can’t complain about the price. A Few Other Alternatives Now, there are a few other alternatives to keep in […]
How to tell what’s playing audio on your Mac – Six Colors
My friend and editor Joe and I were trying to talk. But something on his end continued to produce sound, and he couldn’t tell what it was. After some exploration, he realized that we had started using Slack’s “huddle” feature for a one-to-one audio chat and switched to FaceTime. He hadn’t hung up in Slack, […]
How To Use Parallels to Run Windows on a Mac
While Apple is very keen that its macOS software is only ever run on Macs, there are numerous options for doing the opposite and running Windows on Apple computers. If you’re a developer, or need access to both Windows and Mac apps, or simply want the flexibility of two operating systems, this isn’t too difficult […]
How to Get Windows Games Working on a Mac
There are all kinds of reasons to prefer Macs over Windows-based PCs. Gaming isn’t one of them. That isn’t to say that you can’t game on a Mac—modern Apple Silicon computers are fairly powerful. The problem is that many popular games don’t offer downloads that will run natively on a Mac. Search the Mac App […]
How to Create a Recovery USB Drive to Fix Your Computer
The process of creating the USB recovery drive can take some time—about two hours based on my testing, though the speed of your system and USB drive will play a part in that—and you’ll see a message on screen when the job is done. When your recovery USB drive is called upon, you need to […]
How to Turn Off Apple Intelligence on an iPhone, iPad, and Mac
apple Intelligence isn’t as big a success story as Apple may have expected. The suite of artificial intelligence features—introduced late in 2024 in iOS 18.1—has received mixed reactions. Some capabilities, like automatically transcribing voice notes and recordings, creating custom emojis, and proofreading, are handy. Others not so much. Apple came under fire for inaccurate notification […]
How to Tell If You’re Using a Slow iPhone Charger
In iOS 18, Apple has introduced a clever new way to identify if your iPhone charging setup is running at less than optimal speeds. The new feature appears directly in Settings, making it easy to spot when you’re not getting the fastest possible charge. The Battery section displays a Slow Charger message when your iPhone […]
Here’s How to Check Your iPhone’s Battery Health
Earlier this year, Apple retested the batteries of its iPhone 15 models and updated its battery life claims for the entire series, suggesting that they offer better longevity than previously thought. Curious about the battery health of your iPhone 15? Here’s how to check it. Apple in February 2024 updated the technical specifications for the […]