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Good advice. May I add my pet hate: And when you hit problems, don't make posts claiming that you're "running macOS Mojave" because you're not. That post will still be there when people really are unning macOS Mojave and will cause all manner of confusion.

I almost wish that Apple didn't issue public betas: the days when they went only to developers with half a clue about what they were getting were a lot safer.

I thought it was us Brits who were supposed to see the black cloud around every silver lining!

There is a world-wide malware threat to WiFi routers so the FBI puts out a warning and some easily understood, easily actioned advice to US citizens. Isn't that their job? Isn't that a good thing?

If you follow the Symantec link in the article, you'll find that the FBI's advice is effective; not 100% effective but nonetheless helpful. Part of the issue here is that people never changed their routers' passwords, with that audience the FBI needed to keep it simple. The bigger fix involves firmware updates and basic security hygiene and the FBI notice goes on to describe this; it may be simple to the audience here but not so much to the world at large.

mbenz1962 said:

bigpics said:

So Apple Insider is tacitly saying (by not mentioning let alone asking for) that the MBP's "semi-vaunted" Touchbar is a gimmick going no place on the Mac platform as a whole (meaning developers won't be supporting it for long, even the minority who do now)....??

I also wonder about the possibility of the Touchbar feature making it's way over to the iMac.  I was pretty interested in it and held off on replacing my keyboard for like 3 months because I was sure that there would be a stand alone magic keyboard with Touchbar for like $249-$299 announced in the Fall last year.  When the iMac pro was released in late November and no such keyboard was offered or even hinted at, I went on ahead and got the magic keyboard with Numeric keypad to replace my "regular" magic keyboard.  It seems like an oddity that Apple hasn't given us users who need a desktop (or don't need a laptop actually) a way to take advantage of this technology.

I bought a Touch Bar MBP when they were first released in late 2016. It's a fancy piece of technology and having TouchID on a Mac is very useful.

But the rest of it: I don't find it very useful at all. The Touch buttons have some distinct disadvantages compared to a row of physical keys that I think outweigh their benefits (they time out so need a touch just to bring them to life, they move around so you have to think about what you press, you have to look harder because you can't feel them...). The Mac/mouse interface has been sufficiently refined over many years (and apps still have to work well on the majority of Macs without a TB) that I don't find the TB brings any benefit.

I assumed (in 2016) that there were some 'killer' uses of the TB coming that would reveal some new, deep UI thinking from Apple. Those uses have yet to arrive and I've slowly moved into the 'it's a gimmick' school of thought. But TouchID is good!

I keep meaning to comment:
Thanks for including transcripts of the videos in these articles. In this case, I didn't have the time to watch the video and really appreciated being able to skim the main points by looking at the text. I know you've been doing it for a little while now but it is much appreciated - well done AI.

I don't see changing the default search engine as a problem but removing Google from the list of available search engines (in Safari) would be a big move. I think the latter would be unreasonable of Apple because, love it or loathe it, Google is the biggest player in search.