In this week’s Chit Chat Across the Pond, Adam Engst of TidBITS fame and fortune joins me to talk about recent changes to AppleCare. While the big story of the day is AppleCare One, there have been changes over the past few years (and even this year) to what AppleCare covers and how it’s charged. […]
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Clean Pet Water with PETLIBRO Capsule Fountain
Last week, I told you about our cool new PETLIBRO One RFID automated cat feeders that are helping us keep our cats on the right diets. I left out one part when I explained that you could buy them individually or in bundles. When we received the order confirmation on the pair as a bundle, […]
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It Could Have Been Worse — Tesla Sentry Mode is My Witness
Before I tell this story, I want to say up front that I find Elon Musk’s ideas and actions abhorrent. With that out of the way, I want to talk about an awesome feature of Tesla cars and how it helped me last week. To refresh your memory (or bring you up to speed if […]
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Security Bits — 17 August 2025
Feedback & Followups Listener and community feedback, developments in recently covered stories, and developments in long-running stories we’re tracking over time. 🎧 More details on the Tea leak discussed last time, with reporting of how many women are continuing to use the app, and including new sigunups 🤯: kill switch: why are women still signing […]
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What’s Better Than an Automated Cat Feeder from PETLIBRO?
Two years ago, I penned an article entitled, “Will the PETLIBRO Smart Cat Feeder Keep My Cat from Overeating?” I’m back with a report and a big update. For the past two years, our two cats, Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper, have been happily fed by our PETLIBRO dual-cat feeder. We travel a lot, and […]
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Apple Watch Cellular for a Child – Not as Easy as You Would Hope
Our grandson Forbes is a delightful child, but he’s been doing this annoying thing called “growing up”. He just had a birthday, and his parents agreed that we could buy him his first Apple Watch. They felt that he was mature enough to handle the responsibility, and they liked the idea of being able to […]
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Automating Folder Structure for New Projects with Shell Scripting Embedded in Keyboard Maestro
At Macstock this year, we had a brand-new attendee who was also a first-time speaker at the conference. His name is Mike Burke, and as I explained in my Macstock coverage, he took a very big swing in his workshop. He had us download 4 apps and a plugin, and taught us just enough to […]
Continue readingSecurity Bits — 1 August 2025
Feedback & Followups Listener and community feedback, developments in recently covered stories, and developments in long-running stories we’re tracking over time. 🇬🇧 It looks like the UK is trying to find a face-saving way to back down from it’s secretive attempt to back-door Apple’s iCloud Advanced Data Protection feature — appleinsider.com/… (Nothing official because everything […]
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MagGo 3-in-1 Charger + Sharge Retro 67 = Magic for Travel
A few weeks ago, the delightful Sandy Foster gave us a review of the Anker MagGo 3-in-1 travel charger. I was intrigued, so I picked one up for myself. I have to agree with Sandy — three enthusiastic thumbs up. What surprised me the most was how small and compact it is. It fits in […]
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PSA — Your Brother Printer’s Password May Have Been Reset
I have a quick but important public service announcement brought to you by listener Jane. A few weeks ago on Security Bits, Bart Busschots explained how a vast number of printer models (mostly from Brother but also from Fujifilm, Toshiba, and Konica Minolta) had default admin passwords that were easily generated by hackers. The problem […]
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