Age of Empires II, regarded as one of the best real-time strategy games of all time, is finally available for Mac. Sure, it originally debuted back in 1999 for Windows, but AoE 2’s depth and replayability has allowed it to maintain a longstanding following that has kept the game wildly popular even 25+ years later. ... Read More

Some Mac users may discover the mds_stores process has run amuck, consuming absurd amounts of CPU and memory when viewed in Activity Monitor. Typically this is accompanied by unusually sluggish system performance on a Mac, which is what inspired the visit into Activity Monitor to begin with, and there you may find that mds_stores is ... Read More

A fair number of people who use the ChatGPT app for Mac have recently run into a strange and alarming malware message when attempting to open and use ChatGPT. The error says that “Malware Blocked and Moved to Trash” and informs the user that “ChatGPT.app was not opened because it contains malware. The action did ... Read More

Apple has released MacOS Sequoia 15.7.7 and MacOS Sonoma 14.8.7 for users who are not running or interested in updating to MacOS Tahoe 26.5. The Sequoia and Sonoma updates include security patches only, and no other changes or features are along for the ride. Curiously, the versioning is MacOS Sequoia 15.7.7, and MacOS Sonoma 14.8.7, ... Read More

MacOS Tahoe 26.5 has been released by Apple. The MacOS 26.5 software update is available for Mac users running the Tahoe operating system and includes a handful of changes, bug fixes, and security patches. Mac users not running MacOS Tahoe 26 will find security updates available to MacOS Sequoia 15.7.6 and MacOS Sonoma 14.8.6. Additionally, ... Read More

If you’re looking for a new unique way to spruce up your Mac desktop visual experience, you might enjoy trying out live wallpapers with a free Mac app called Wallpaper Reactor Lite. Live wallpapers are much like they sound like; active moving wallpaper images rather than a single static image. It’s a neat visual effect, ... Read More

The menu bar on a Mac tends to fill up with clutter and icons over time. Between system icons like Spotlight, the date and clock, wi-fi, third party apps, various utilities, and popular tools, it’s quite easy for the menu bar to become a crowded strip of icons that’s distracting and harder to interact with. ... Read More

The Apple laptop lineup recently expanded with the all new MacBook Neo, an entry-level Mac laptop aimed at students and more casual everyday users, while the MacBook Air recently got upgraded with the powerful M5 chip, making it more capable than ever before. This is leading many Mac shoppers to ask the obvious shoppers question; ... Read More

Update: Apparently NotePad++ for Mac is unofficial and not associated with the Windows version or developer. According to a blog post by the Windows developer Don Ho, the Mac release has “nothing to do with Notepad++. It’s not authorized, not endorsed, and not affiliated with the project in any way. The owner is using the ... Read More

Whether you’re preparing to sell, recycle, or repurpose a Mac, or you’re going through old hard drives and storage disks that you wish to clear all data from, securely erasing the drive is an important step. Simply deleting files or formatting a disk isn’t always enough, especially for hard drives and external storage, since data ... Read More

The Calendar app on iPhone, iPad, and Mac offers a handy automatic event detection feature, able to find details like dates, times, and locations, through the Messages app and even Mail app, of presumed events and appointments. The auto detection system is part of Siri, and recognizes dates as potential events, placing them in a ... Read More

The Passwords app, Apple’s built-in password manager for Mac, iPhone, and iPad, not only stores your logins and passwords for easy authentication, but it can also alert you to security risks. Passwords app makes it easy to quickly find compromised, reused, or weak passwords, and take action to secure your accounts. If you’re a Passwords ... Read More

Performing a clean install of macOS Tahoe can be a necessary task in some situations, offering a way to start fresh on a Mac. Since a clean install removes everything and reinstalls MacOS from scratch, you are presented with basically a brand new Mac from a software standpoint. Clean installations can be useful for users ... Read More

MacOS includes a built-in way to assess memory usage, called Memory Pressure, and it can give you a lot of insight into your Macs performance, and whether or not you need more RAM. This is particularly informative if you feel like your Mac is slow, apps and media are stuttering, or you’re experiencing the annoying ... Read More

If you have felt your Mac is curiously sluggish, you may have opened Activity Monitor to investigate at some point and noticed a process called “WindowServer” using a large amount of CPU or memory. High CPU usage and memory consumption of WindowServer has been a long reported issue on MacOS with various system software versions, ... Read More

One common complaint of MacOS Tahoe users is that it can be difficult to determine which window is active or in the background. With all of the flatter and low contrast design elements in Tahoe, there is a significant reduction in contrast between background and foreground apps and windows, which can make visual focus less ... Read More

Some Mac users who are sensitive to eye strain and PWM display flickering have turned to a small free utility called StillColor to modify how MacOS renders colors on their screen. The StillColor tool has a feature that can disable something called “temporal dithering”, a usually imperceptible display technique that alternates pixel colors at the ... Read More

Apple has released MacOS Tahoe 26.4.1 as a software update for Mac users running the Tahoe operating system. The update includes unspecified bug fixes, making it recommended for all Tahoe users to install. The MacOS Tahoe 26.4.1 update is particularly important for users of the new M5 MacBook Air and M5 MacBook Pro series to ... Read More

If you miss the early internet dialup days of AOL (America OnLine), you can dial back the tech clock and enjoy some retro computing nostalgia by checking out the fantastic Dialtone project. Dialtone lets you sign in to a fully functional reverse engineered AOL experience with an original AOL 3.0 client, running inside a web-based ... Read More

macOS Tahoe 26 has been a controversial release of MacOS system software, mostly due to it’s completely redesigned interface built around what Apple calls Liquid Glass, which has a new look, but includes some major usability and legibility issues. Tahoe is also just buggier and less refined than other Mac operating systems like Sequoia. Accordingly, ... Read More