Although macOS 10.13 High Sierra was light on new features, it did bring one welcome addition to Safari—site-specific settings. Imagine that you regularly visit a blog that you prefer to read using Safari’s Reader view. Rather than invoke it each time you visit, you can now set Safari to use Reader automatically on that site. Similarly, if there’s a site whose text is too small, Safari can remember your page zoom setting for that site. Neat, eh?

Here’s how to make the most of Safari’s site-specific settings. First, load a site whose settings you’d like to customize. Then, choose Safari > Preferences and click Websites in the toolbar. You see a list of general settings in the sidebar at the left, followed by any plug-ins you’ve installed. For each setting or plug-in, you can set what happens when you visit the site you just loaded—or, if you have a bunch of sites open in different tabs, you can customize the behavior for any open site. Here are your options.

Reader

Reader view displays an article as a single page that’s formatted for easy reading, without ads, navigation, or other distractions. It’s such a significant change that it’s off by default—you enable it by clicking the Reader button to the left of the URL in the address bar. To turn it on for all of a site’s articles, in Safari’s Websites preferences, select Reader and choose On from the pop-up menu next to the site name.

Content Blockers

Another way of seeing fewer Web ads is to install a Safari content blocker. Choose Safari > Safari Extensions to open Safari’s Extension Gallery, and then scroll down slightly to find the page’s Search field, where you can search for blocker. There are lots—look for one like Adguard AdBlocker that supports Safari’s content blocking API. Once you’ve installed one, select Content Blockers in the Websites preferences. By default, Safari blocks ads on all sites, so choose Off from the pop-up menus for sites whose ad content you want to see.

Auto-Play

Little is more annoying than sites that play a video when a page loads, distracting you from the text you want to read. Even worse are those sites—Macworld, we’re looking at you—that auto-play videos that aren’t even related to the page. Safari squelches auto-playing videos by default, but for sites like YouTube, you might want to allow videos to play. You can also choose to stop only videos that have sound.

Page Zoom

It’s easy to hit Command-Plus to zoom in on a page, increasing the text and graphics proportionally, but who wants to do that every time you visit a page sporting barely readable words? With the Page Zoom setting, Safari will use your preferred zoom every time you visit a particular site. In fact, you don’t have to do anything other than set a zoom level with Command-Plus when you’re viewing a site because Safari remembers it automatically, as you can see in the Configured Websites section for Page Zoom. To tweak it manually, choose a zoom level from the site’s pop-up menu.

Camera & Microphone

Apart from Web conferencing services, you’re unlikely to run across many sites that want to access your Mac’s camera and microphone. That’s why the Camera and Microphone settings default to asking you whenever a site wants permission to record you. If you find it irritating to be asked constantly by a site you use often, choose Allow from the pop-up menu for that site. And if a site asks repeatedly but you never want to allow it, choose Deny to stop the prompts.

Location

Most Web sites that ask for your location want to determine how close you are to particular stores. If that’s information you’re interested in sharing, let them see where you are, by all means. And if you’re using a mapping service that wants your location, it’s entirely reasonable to set its pop-up menu to Allow. But if a site keeps asking and it feels creepy, set it to Deny.

Notifications

Are there sites whose new posts you’d like to know about right away? If they support Web notifications and you give them permission, they can post push notifications that appear on-screen and in Notification Center, just your other notifications.

The Notifications preferences look different from the others because they show only sites that have asked for permission in the past. Safari remembers your choice, and if the site gets annoying later, you can always take back permission by changing the Allow pop-up menu to Deny. And if you never want to be prompted for push notifications—they can be distracting—uncheck the “Allow websites to ask for permission to send push notifications” checkbox at the bottom of the pane.

Plug-ins

It’s impossible to know what plug-ins you’ve installed, but Safari is configured to make sites ask for permission to use a plug-in each time you visit. That’s the safest setting, but for any given site and plug-in, you can use the pop-up menu to give the site access (choose On) or not (choose Off). And if you can’t even remember what a plug-in does, you can deselect its checkbox to disable it.

That’s it! Some of Safari’s site-specific settings work without any interaction from you, such as your page zoom and notification preferences. Others require a tiny bit of configuration, but that’s a small price to pay for the Web working more the way you want.

Social Media: Tired of Web sites with auto-playing videos, too-small text, and intrusive ads? Safari’s new site-specific settings let you customize how you browse individual sites—learn how here:

You’re out to lunch with tech-savvy friends, one of whom picks up the check and says, “Just send me your share via Apple Pay Cash.” Say what?

Apple Pay Cash is Apple’s new person-to-person payment service, designed to make it easy for individuals to send and receive money. It’s perfect for repaying a friend who buys concert tickets or a relative who picks up some groceries for you. Or rather, it’s perfect if your friends and relatives use iPhones with iOS 11.2 or later—for green-bubble Android acquaintances, you can instead rely on cross-platform services like Venmo, Circle, and Square Cash. Here’s how to start using Apple Pay Cash.

First, if you haven’t yet enabled Apple Pay, go to Settings > Wallet & Apple Pay > Add Credit or Debit Card, and follow the prompts to add at least a debit card. You’ll also need two-factor authentication turned on in Settings > Your Name > Password & Security—regardless of Apple Pay, two-factor authentication is essential for security. With Apple Pay enabled, tap Settings > Wallet & Apple Pay > Apple Pay Cash and run through the setup process. You might also be asked to verify your identity after setup—it’s necessary to send or receive more than $500 in total.

When you’re done, you’ll end up with a new Apple Pay Cash card in the Wallet app. It’s a virtual card that stores money you receive and works like any other debit card for payments. If it doesn’t have enough money on it to cover a payment, you can choose any other debit or credit card you’ve added to Apple Pay. You can also add money to it or withdraw money to a linked bank account. You’ll want to use a debit card when adding money or paying beyond your balance with Apple Pay Cash, since then there is no transaction fee. A credit card incurs a 3% fee.

To send or request money via Apple Pay Cash, you use its Messages app, which is installed automatically. While in an iMessage thread (blue bubbles) with the person with whom you want to exchange money, make sure the app drawer is showing (tap the app button if necessary) and then tap the Apple Pay button in the drawer.

A panel appears with a dollar amount, + and – buttons, and buttons for Request and Pay. Use the + and – buttons to set the amount, or tap the dollar amount to show a keypad where you can enter an exact amount, with cents if necessary. Then tap Request or Pay to insert the transaction into the message. It won’t be sent until you tap the black send button, so if you change your mind, you can tap the little x to delete. Lastly, you’ll be prompted to verify the transaction in the usual Apple Pay fashion, which means authenticating with Face ID on the iPhone X or Touch ID on all other iPhones.

You can even use Siri to initiate transfers—“Send my mother $15.” or “Ask my sister for $4.99.” And if you have an Apple Watch with watchOS 4.2 or later, you can also send money from the Messages app, or send or request money via Siri. On the watch, double-press the side button to confirm the transaction.

Frankly, the only downside to Apple Pay Cash is that it works only within the Apple world. But as long as you want to exchange money with Apple-using friends and relatives, it’s fast, easy, reliable, and one less reason to visit the ATM.

Social Media: Need to pay a friend back for lunch, or get reimbursed for picking up groceries for a relative? As long as you both use an iPhone with iOS 11.2, the new Apple Pay Cash is the fastest and easiest way for individuals to exchange money.

Move over, Amazon Echo and Google Home, there’s a new smart speaker coming soon. First announced back in June of 2017, Apple’s long-awaited HomePod will ship in the US, UK, and Australia on February 9th for $349. You can get it in space gray or white.

Where Amazon and Google focus mostly on how you can interact with their smart speakers, Apple is emphasizing the audio quality that HomePod users can enjoy. In a cylindrical package just under 7 inches tall, the HomePod boasts seven beam-forming tweeters for high-frequency acoustics, coupled with a large woofer for deep, clean bass.

What makes the HomePod smarter than regular speakers is its A8 chip, which provides it with processing power equivalent to an iPhone 6. Software running on the HomePod gives it spatial awareness, so it can sense its location in the room and adjust the audio automatically for the best listening experience.

With a free software update due later this year, you’ll be able to control multiple HomePods throughout your home, controlling each one independently or playing the same music on all of them, perfectly in sync. Plus, if you put two HomePods in the same room, you’ll be able to set them up as a stereo pair.

But the HomePod can do more than play music. It uses Apple’s Siri voice assistant to listen for your commands with an array of six microphones, so you can ask Siri to send messages, set timers, play podcasts, read the news, get the weather, check sports scores, and more—Apple has even expanded Siri’s knowledge of music for the HomePod. You can also transfer a phone call from your iPhone to your HomePod for a hands-free conversation.

What if you don’t want to talk to your HomePod? You can tap its top to play/pause (single tap), move to the next track (double tap), or go back to the previous track (triple tap). Touching and holding invokes Siri without saying “Hey Siri,” and you can tap or hold the + and – buttons to adjust volume.

Home automation buffs will be excited to know that they can control HomeKit accessories via Siri on the HomePod as well. What’s more, the HomePod can act as a HomeKit hub that can trigger automations and let you control HomeKit accessories while you’re away from home.

But what most people will use the HomePod for, most of the time, is music. For full music functionality, the HomePod requires an Apple Music subscription. Those who don’t subscribe to the $9.99 per month Apple Music will still be able to play music purchased from iTunes, stream Beats 1 Radio, and listen to podcasts.

Setting up a HomePod is simple—just plug it in, and your iPhone or iPad will detect it automatically, just like a pair of AirPods. Like the AirPods, a HomePod requires an iOS device. It must be relatively recent (iPhone 5s or later, iPad Air or later, iPad mini 2 or later, or sixth-generation iPod touch), and it must be running at least iOS 11.2.5—you’ll want to install the latest available version to keep up with tweaks as Apple rolls them out.

It will be a few weeks before the HomePod can be tested against the various Amazon Echo and Google Home smart speakers. Our bet is that the HomePod will sound better but understand fewer commands than the more-established products from Amazon and Google. Nevertheless, along with adding multi-room audio and stereo capabilities, Apple will undoubtedly improve Siri’s capabilities on the HomePod over time.

Social Media: Apple is getting into the smart speaker game with the HomePod on February 9th. Learn more at:

Since the iPhone X lacks a Home button to press twice for the app switcher, you’ll need to switch apps in a new way. To bring up the app switcher, swipe up from the bottom of the screen to about halfway, and then pause until the app thumbnails appear. Then you can scroll through your launched apps by swiping horizontally and switch to an app by tapping its thumbnail. While in the app switcher, you can also force-quit a frozen app: press a thumbnail to get a red minus button and tap that button. Alternatively, you can skip the app switcher entirely. Instead, swipe right on the very bottom of the screen to switch to the previous app—swiping left switches to the next app.

Apple’s new iMac Pro has started shipping, and it’s an astonishing machine. Put simply, it’s the most powerful Mac ever, a title it will likely retain until Apple releases a new version of the Mac Pro, promised for sometime in 2018. But for now, what’s special about the iMac Pro, and should you buy one?

The main thing to know about the space gray iMac Pro is that it’s aimed at high-end professionals, and as a result, it gets pricey fast. The base configuration starts at $4999, and if you max out all its options, you’ll spend over $13,000. That’s a lot of money, but you get a lot of bang for your buck.

The power starts with the processor, an 8-core Intel Xeon W. If that’s not enough performance for you, there are also 10-core, 14-core, and 18-core options. Apple didn’t skimp on RAM either—32 GB comes standard, and you can bump it to either 64 GB or 128 GB. The default storage is a 1 TB solid-state drive, but you can increase that to 2 TB or 4 TB. You can’t upgrade the iMac Pro in any way yourself, but you can take it to an Apple Store or Apple Authorized Service Provider to have more RAM installed after the fact.

The screen is a stunning 27-inch Retina 5K 5120-by-2880 P3 display, and the iMac Pro drives all those pixels with a Radeon Pro Vega 56 graphics card with 8 GB of memory, though you can get even more graphics processing power from an optional Radeon Pro Vega 64 card with 16 GB.

Most of the iMac Pro’s other specs are similar to the existing 27-inch iMac with Retina display—a 1080p FaceTime camera, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2, an SDXC card slot, four USB 3 ports, and a headphone jack—but it also boasts four Thunderbolt 3 ports for driving external displays and large storage arrays, along with 10 Gb Ethernet for lightning-fast network access.

It comes with a space gray Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad and a space gray Magic Mouse 2. You can switch to a space gray Magic Trackpad for $50 or buy both input devices for $149, which you might want to do because the space gray peripherals aren’t sold separately.

Many of the iMac Pro’s options come with eye-watering price tags—$2400 for the 18-core processor and another $2400 for 128 GB of RAM—but those stratospheric costs make the purchasing decision fairly easy. If you’re in a line of work where increased performance translates directly to increased productivity, you’ll want an iMac Pro as soon as you can get one. It’s ideal for video editors who need to work with 8K video, engineers using complex modeling software, and developers suffering through long compile times. Put simply, if time is money for you, you’ll want an iMac Pro.

And if you’re a professional whose needs aren’t nearly so rarefied, you can rest easy knowing that the regular 27-inch iMac can give you more than enough performance for a lot less money.

Social Media: Is Apple’s new space gray iMac for you? It has power to burn, making it ideal for video editors, audio professionals, engineers, and developers. But that power comes at a high price—read on to see if it’s worth it for you.

Passwords are the bane of our modern existence. Nearly anything you want to do, it seems, calls for a password. As the Internet’s reach extends beyond computers and into phones, TVs, appliances, and even toys, we have to enter passwords with increasing frequency and in ever more annoying ways.

To make dealing with passwords easier and more secure, everyone should use a password manager like 1Password or LastPass. Such apps generate random long passwords like kD*SSDcCl7^6FN*F, store those passwords securely, and automatically enter them for you when you need to log in to a Web site. They are essential in today’s world.

You’ll still need a few passwords you can remember and type manually—for instance, the master password for your password manager and your Apple ID password. Make sure those passwords are at least 12 characters, and we recommend going to at least 16 characters.

If you’re unsure of the best way to create a strong password, try taking the first letter of each word in a sentence you can remember, and also change a few words to digits. Then “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party!” becomes a password along the lines of Nitt4agm2c2ta0tp!. So that no eavesdroppers learn your password, avoid saying your sentence out loud whenever you enter it! Or, combine four or five unrelated dictionary words, like correct-horse-battery-staple, that add up to at least 28 characters. (Don’t use the examples in this paragraph!)

When possible, take advantage of two-factor authentication on sites like Apple, Google, Dropbox, Facebook, Twitter, and more. Accounts protected by two-factor authentication essentially require that you enter a second, time-expiring password as part of the login process. You’ll get that second password via text message, authenticator app, or other notification method when you log in.

But what we really want to talk about today is what you should not do with passwords. Follow these tips to avoid making mistakes that can undermine even the security provided by a password manager.

1. Don’t use the same password twice. This is key, because if the bad guys get your password—no matter how strong—for one site, they’ll try it on other sites.
2. Don’t share passwords with anyone you don’t trust completely. That’s especially true of passwords to accounts that contain sensitive information or that can be used to impersonate you, like email and social media. However, sometimes you have to share a password, such as to a club blog with multiple authors. In that case…
3. Don’t send passwords to shared sites via email or text message. If someone hacks into your recipient’s email or steals their phone, the password could be compromised. Instead, use a site like One-Time Secret to share a link that shows the password only once, after which the recipient should put the password into their password manager.
4. Don’t write your passwords on sticky notes. Yeah, it’s a cliché, but people still do it. Similarly, don’t put all your passwords in a text file on your computer. That’s what password managers are for—if someone steals your computer, they can’t break into your password manager, whereas they could open that text file easily.
5. Don’t change passwords regularly if you don’t have to. As long as every site has a strong, unique password, changing a password is a waste of time, especially if doing so makes you write down the password or communicate it insecurely. If you do have to update a password regularly, a password manager makes the task much easier.

We realize that it’s tempting to take the easy road and share a password with a friend via email or write a particularly gnarly one on a sticky note. But today’s easy road leads directly to identity theft and is paved with insecure password habits. You might think no one would pay attention to little old you, but times have changed, and organized crime is interested in any Internet account that can be cracked.

Social Media: Want to avoid online identity theft? Use a password manager, strong passwords, and two-factor authentication. But there are also some insecure password habits that can undermine your security—read on to learn what NOT to do.

A $99-per-year Amazon Prime membership provides various perks, including free 2-day shipping from the Amazon online store and streaming access to Amazon’s media libraries. But for Apple TV users, accessing Prime Video content has been frustrating, because there was no Amazon app for the Apple TV. That has all changed now, and if you have an Amazon Prime membership and an Apple TV, it’s time to download the new Amazon Prime Video app. It gives you a boatload of additional video content, including Amazon’s original programming (like The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which is hilarious). Find it on your fourth-generation Apple TV or Apple TV 4K in the App Store app. If you are still using a third-generation Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video should appear automatically on your Apple TV Home screen.

Apple’s Calendar apps in both macOS and iOS let you manage multiple calendars, some of which may be private and others may be shared with family or colleagues. That’s great, but if you create a new event on the wrong calendar, you may end up oversharing with colleagues (who don’t need to know about your colonoscopy) or undersharing with your spouse (who does need to know about the soccer carpool). To reduce the chances of this happening, set the most appropriate calendar as your default. In macOS, you do this in the Calendar app, in Calendar > Preferences > General > Default Calendar. In iOS, set it in Settings > Calendar > Default Calendar.

When you’re unboxing a new iPhone, it’s time to think about how you’ll move your digital life from your old iPhone to the new one. If your old iPhone is running iOS 11, you can use Quick Start, a new iOS 11 feature that makes the transfer easy. Just turn on the new iPhone, set it next to the old one, and tap Continue when asked whether you want to use your Apple ID to set up your new iPhone. An animation appears on the new iPhone for you to scan with the old iPhone—once you’ve done that, follow the rest of the instructions to enable Touch ID or Face ID and then restore your data and settings from your most recent iCloud backup (you can update the backup first if necessary). Leave the two iPhones next to each other while data is being transferred, and if possible, keep the new one plugged in and on Wi-Fi after setup so it can download your apps, photos, and music from Apple’s cloud-based services.

All iPhones pick up fingerprints, and it’s all too easy to get your iPhone dirty with ink, lotion, makeup, dirt, food, and oil. If you’re faced with an iPhone that needs cleaning, resist the urge to spray it with window cleaner, rubbing alcohol, or ammonia, or, even worse, to scrub it with baking soda or Borax. That’s because all iPhones have oleophobic—oil repellent—coatings on their glass surfaces that make it easy to wipe off fingerprints. You don’t want to remove that coating any faster than it will wear off normally, and cleaning products will strip it quickly. Instead, Apple recommends a soft, lint-free cloth such as you would use for glasses or camera lenses. By the way, even though the iPhone 7 and later have some level of dust and water resistance, it’s important to avoid getting moisture in the openings—most of the time, a lens cloth should be all you need.