Tech Tips

The good news: in most cases, you can get a noticeable speed boost without buying a new device. These are some of the best ways to tackle slow performance issues without guesswork. If you’re also running iOS 26’s new visual style, you may want to check out my take on the practical fixes in iOS 26.1 quality-of-life improvements —some UI tweaks (especially around animations and visual effects) can make an older iPhone feel dramatically more usable. A quick mindset shift: speed is usually one of three problems Most slowdowns come from: Not enough free storage (your device can’t “breathe,” especially when you’re near full storage) Too many background tasks (CPU/RAM constantly busy) Aging batteries or buggy software (performance gets capped or unstable—sometimes the root cause is battery-related) Keep those three buckets in mind as you go through the checklist. Part 1: Revving up your iPhone 1) Update smart (and don’t rush major upgrades) Point releases (the smaller “dot” updates) often inc...

Photographer: Jan Kahánek | Source: Unsplash Apple Journal: The Features You’re Probably Ignoring By Greg Doig I’ll be honest with you: when Apple Journal launched with iOS 17.2, I dismissed it. It looked like a polished notes app with a nicer icon. I opened it once, saw the empty journal prompts, and went back to my regular routine. That was a mistake. After spending several weeks actually using it — and digging into how it works under the hood — I’ve changed my mind. This isn’t just a diary app. It’s one of the most privacy-respecting personal data tools Apple has ever built, and most people are using maybe 20% of what it can do. Here’s what I think you’re missing. The Core Experience: Simpler Than You Think Getting Started Open the Journal app. Tap the “+” button. Start typing. That’s genuinely it. Apple’s design philosophy here is low friction above all else. The assumption is that if opening your journal takes more than three seconds, you won’t do it consistently. They’re right. ...

Photographer: Thom Bradley | Source: Unsplash Advanced Data Protection for iCloud Advanced Data Protection for iCloud is an optional setting that offers Apple's highest level of cloud data security. When users turn it on, their trusted devices retain sole access to the encryption keys for most of their iCloud data, thereby protecting it with end-to-end encryption. Enabling Advanced Data Protection - The trusted device will send an alert to all devices that participate in end-to-end encryption. - At this point, the device begins an asynchronous key rotation operation, which creates a new service key for each service whose key was previously available to Apple servers. If the service key rotation fails, it retries the key rotation until it's successful. Advanced Data Protection and iCloud.com web access - iCloud web servers can no longer access the keys required to decrypt and display the user's data. - You must authorize a web sign-in on one of your trusted devices to ac...