In these music lessons on video with Bill Macpherson, learn what equipment you need to sound like a blues guitar hero. Get tips on what amplifiers to play through, and what electric guitars work best for that smooth, warm signature blues guitar tone. Find out what amp settings work well for drive and reverb, and learn what an effects pedal might offer you for a grittier, more distorted sound. Watch these videos and learn how to continue one of the richest living musical traditions we have today.
There are a lot of great features for your iPhone with iOS 18, released Sept. 16, but one of the coolest features is also one of the simplest and most satisfying — one that you'll notice every day you use your iPhone. And for now, it's an iPhone exclusive, so you won't get the same gratifying experience on an iPad with iPadOS 18.
You no longer have to worry about repair technicians accessing the personal information on your iPhone when you send it in for repairs. With Apple's new security feature, you'll no longer have to erase your iPhone to ensure your photos, messages, accounts, and other private data remain for your eyes only.
There's a lot you can customize on your iPhone's Lock Screen — wallpapers and photos, widgets, the display mode, notifications, and even the time's font and color. But there's another feature that lets you add custom text for whatever you want, whether it's an inspiring quote, a reminder, a warning to anyone who dares touch your iPhone, or even just your name.
You're probably sharing a ton of information on your iPhone with other people, apps, and services without really realizing it. Now there's a new tool to show you just how much, and it can be an eye-opener as well as a fast way to manage sharing permissions and review your account security.
When you expect to take photos of landmarks, buildings, landscapes, and other outdoor scenery with clear blue skies in the background, you may end up with nothing but overcast weather, resulting in a completely different mood in your pictures. Instead of forgetting about all your images with dreary gray skies, try turning those grays to blues for happier, more shareable photos.
You may not realize it, but most of your apps include third-party tracking services that monitor your activity in other apps and websites to serve highly-targeted ads to you. But now you can stop the creepy behavior on an iPhone and Android phone.
The last time the English language for Siri received new voices was in iOS 14.5, and there was one new male and one new female selection, bringing the total to four available options. In the iOS 15.4 update, there's a fifth one, and it may work better as a gender-neutral middle ground between the low-pitched male voices and high-pitched female ones.
The augmented reality passthrough abilities of Facebook's Oculus Quest were only fully opened to independent developers recently.
Over the past week, practically every major tech company working on augmented reality has held their quarterly earnings calls with investors, and each addressed or at least mentioned the role of AR during their prepared remarks. However, Facebook's earnings call had some of the spicier commentary on the technology.
It's already been a banner year for mergers and acquisitions in the augmented reality industry, with WaveOptics and Ubiquity6 among the notable companies acquired. Two of the more active M&A players, Snap and Epic Games, continued their respective buying sprees this week with major deals supporting their AR strategies.
Already among the leaders in AR development tools via its Unreal Engine, Epic Games has added another tanky weapon to its arsenal.
Your privacy is important, especially online. Almost anywhere you go on the internet, you leave a trail of data that companies can use without your permission. VPNs are the easiest way to keep your browsing private and your information safe. Ivacy VPN is one such service, and it's one of the best deals you can get on a VPN because it will cover 5 of your devices for a lifetime, and this is a two-account bundle, so you'll be able to cover 10 total devices for $49.99.
Over the past few weeks, Google, Snap, and Facebook have all taken their turns to show off their new augmented reality technologies. This week, it was Apple's turn, with new AR features for iOS 15 along with new capabilities for developers.
We're still basking in the afterglow of the HUGE Snap Partner Summit last week, where Snap made Snapchat a much stronger augmented reality platform while also unveiling the AR smartglasses version of Spectacles. This week, we got a peek at how Spectacles AR started and got our hands on Lenses from Lego and Disney featured during the keynote.
There's no default keyboard on the Apple Watch, but watchOS has another way to let you type text out for emails, messages, music searches, and more on the small display, and that's Scribble. With it, you simply draw letters and other characters on the screen with your finger, then your watch converts that into plain text. However, it's not perfect, and getting the nuances of regular typing can be tough.
One fight for augmented reality branding that we thought had been settled has suddenly turned into a full-fledged legal battle—again.
Sure, Microsoft has mostly marketed its HoloLens headsets towards enterprises and developers, but we learned this week that, like every other tech giant, the company is working on a consumer-grade AR wearable. Speaking of consumer smartglasses, Apple made another strategic investment this week that has implications for Apple's AR future.
Apple's iMessage is one of the main reasons to use an iPhone, and there's a lot you can do in chats without being overly complicated. But there's one issue that continues to drive people nuts, and that's the blue typing bubble indicator with the moving ellipsis (•••). Can you stop it? Not officially, but there are workarounds.
One of the hardest parts of entering the IT and computer science field — other than the difficult material and intense competition — is the time and financial cost of learning everything you'll need. Learning to code isn't just learning one language; you have to learn a variety of languages used for different purposes, and then you have to get experience using them.
It's no secret that Apple and Spotify haven't exactly gotten along in the past, but things are looking better than ever in iOS 14.5.
The Metaverse, or AR cloud, has been a sci-fi dream for decades, but only recently have companies begun to actually develop the technology to build it. With its latest funding round, Epic Games is suddenly a front-runner in this pursuit.
You can't hand over your iPhone to a kid and expect everything to be OK. Not only will they drop your iPhone (and they will), they could also do something much worse than a cracked screen — in-app purchases.
I'm always looking for solutions to problems people are having with their smartphones. This means I spend a lot of time browsing forums and release sites looking for new apps. In doing so, I find a lot of apps that don't quite solve a major problem, but are nonetheless pretty cool. I came across four of those this week.
During this week's unveiling of the new Samsung A Series of smartphones, much of the focus was on the high-end features at a more affordable price as the South Korean tech giant looks to regain its status as the world's top smartphone maker versus Apple's iPhone.
Python is one of the most commonly used programming languages in the world. From data science to game design, Python appears in almost every industry that requires coding of some kind. If you're looking to get into or get promoted to a higher level in one of those industries, then your next step is to learn this versatile programming language.
After weeks of reports about their first augmented reality device, Apple actually shipped a real AR product this week in the form of a TV tie-in AR app.
A new feature in iOS 14.5 lets you change your preferred music player for Siri requests. So if you primarily use YouTube Music over Apple Music and other services, Siri will learn so that you never have to tell the virtual assistant to play a song, artist, or album "on YouTube Music" again.
Pushing music from your iPhone to your HomePod or HomePod mini by just moving the devices close to each other is certainly a great party trick. But if Handoff is too easily triggered, you might not think it's worth the wow factor. Thankfully, there's an easy way to stop your iPhone from sharing audio to your HomePod or HomePod mini (and vice versa) if you're finding it happens way too often.
Since iOS 11, your iPhone has been capable of offloading hardly used apps to free up storage space for more useful data. But offloading only gets rid of the app's binary, meaning its documents and data are stored on your device in case you reinstall the app. That can take up a lot of space itself, so it's good to periodically review files for offloaded apps and purge the content you no longer need.
Do Not Disturb is the best way to block out all interruptions on your iPhone without having to power down. All notifications and alerts are silenced, but the same can't be said for phone calls. By default, repeat calls will bypass Do Not Disturb, which can be quite frustrating when you're in a movie, classroom, or board meeting. It's good for emergencies, but not for people who can't take the hint.
The team over at Spatial isn't done innovating its way through augmented reality in 2020. Just days after adding a mobile option to its groundbreaking Spatial virtual collaboration product, the company is releasing Tele, a new app geared toward more casual, AR-powered video chats.
If you have information technology or computer science aspirations — even white hat hacking — then Python is a programming language you absolutely have to be familiar with. According to a recent survey of industry experts, Python is the fastest-growing language in the developer field. It's also one of the most sought-after skill sets among employers and is responsible for some of the best hacking tools.
Always wanted to learn Python but don't know where to start with the high-level programming language? The Basics for Python Development is perfect for beginners — and right now, it's on sale for just $14.99, which is an impressive 92% off its usual price of $199.
Using a virtual private network (VPN) is one of the safest ways to ensure your identity and data remain secure. Choosing one from the hundreds of services that now exist is another story. How do you tell which VPN truly provides the best protection at a great price?
One of the most significant changes in iOS 14 is something we've wanted for a very long time, and it will change the way you use your iPhone. Since the very first iPhone OS 1 (yes, before it was even "iOS"), we've been stuck with Apple Mail as the default emailing app. That all changes now.
Between sending iMessages, jotting down notes, and crafting emails, you do a lot of typing on your iPhone. No doubt, you've been in the middle of an important task when everything comes to a screeching, obtrusive halt, where a rogue "Undo Typing" pop-up forces you to close it before continuing with your typing. Don't put up with the BS anymore — here's how to stop it.
VPNs add a protective layer between your data and your internet service provider (ISP) or bad actors (hackers), so it makes sense they've become so popular lately. Probably the most common one of these is NordVPN, so we explored its mobile app to find all the options worth checking out.
The web development landscape has changed dramatically over the past ten years. Both aspiring and seasoned developers now need to know a wide range of programming languages and platforms to create truly pro-level sites from scratch, and continuing education is vital if you want to stay ahead of the curve and be competitive in this increasingly popular and lucrative field.
Let's say you're using your iPhone's Calculator app, and you're knee-deep into a complicated calculation with many steps. You type in a large number, for example, "123,466,789," but mess up. You meant to type "5" midway through but accidentally typed "6" instead. The only thing to do now is start over, no matter how far along you are, right? Wrong.