Next Generation Portal Hi-tech, android, iOS, Mac OS, linux, windows, games, security

macOS Catalina is now available to all users with a supported Mac. This is the official stable version of the OS that most people will upgrade to. If you’re one of the many users who joined the Catalina beta, you will still continue to receive beta builds unless you switch …

Passwords are often compromised because they’re weak. Many services will go to great lengths to make sure their users use a good, strong password but users still manage to set weak passwords. A weak password is one that is too short, is a predictable phrase e.g., password123, or that’s used …

Toucpads are no longer in their infancy. The hardware has improved exponentially over the years and is an excellent alternative to a mouse. It may not be the best if you’re playing a game and it’s unlikely to beat out a good touch-screen laptop but it’s nevertheless a good input …

The Task Manager has a useful tab called Startup. It’s a super easy way to manage which apps are allowed to run when your system starts up. Some apps add themselves to the Startup tab automatically (if you allow them to), while other apps are added to the Startup folder …

On macOS, users aren’t restricted to the Mac App store and its library of apps. Plenty of great apps are distributed from outside the Mac App store and installing them is a simple process. Apps that are from the Mac App store are subject to review and scanned for malicious …

File Explorer has a fairly decent search feature. You can use it to search for a file or folder by name. It also supports quite a few search modifiers and if you know how to use them, you can refine the search criteria and get better results. If you often …

macOS has some impressive audio controls such as the built-in ability to output audio to multiple devices. If you were to attempt the same on a Windows system, you’d likely need to install a third-party app, and it wouldn’t be very reliable. That sad, macOS also falls short in some …

Installing a font on Windows 10 is easy; open the file to preview the fonts, and inside you’ll fine an Install button. You can also right-click a font, and select the install option in the context menu. In some cases, you may need admin rights to install a font but …

Pairing and connecting a Bluetooth device on macOS is simple. In fact, you’ll find that the whole process is pretty straight forward and the OS is able to easily pair with a variety of devices. Rarely does it have trouble trying to find the device you want to connect to. …

Windows 10 icons are part of its system files. You can browse them when you want to change the icon for a certain type of file but, if you want to simply use an icon, you’ll find that getting the actual file is a bit tedious. To make things simpler, …

Web browsers have a feature for pinning tabs. A pinned tab doesn’t have a close button that can be clicked accidentally and it’s an easy way to prevent accidentally closing something important. Unfortunately, something like this isn’t available on an OS level to prevent you from accidentally closing an app. …

Items in folders in Finder can be sorted and grouped in all sorts of ways. You have the usual date sorting options, the type sort, the size sorting option, sorting by tags, and much more. You may notice though that when you set the default folder group in Finder for …

Color plays a major role in how good anything looks on your screen and how useable it is. Think of an app that you use everyday, and picture how it would look if it were monochrome. Color helps highlight different buttons, controls, and even text fields. The color may be …

Using a Bluetooth device is a two step process; first you have to pair it with your PC, and then you have to connect it. The pairing is really what takes more time, while connecting requires clicking a button (or tapping a keyboard shortcut) and nothing more. Pairing is really …

Commodore 64 was one of the best-selling home computer systems of its time. Sadly, that time is long passed, and the machine isn’t in production anymore. The only way to enjoy it in modern times is with emulation. On Linux, you can play Commodore 64 games through the Vice emulator. …

VirtualBox virtual machines are slow, thanks to the default VM configuration. If you use VirtualBox to run Linux, you may notice that performance isn’t great, and are looking for ways to improve it. It is possible to improve your Linux VM’s performance by tweaking settings in VirtualBox. Follow along in …

No Man’s Sky is an expansive survival game set in a massive universe, filled with different planets and star systems to explore. The object of the game is to explore the vast universe in your spaceship, colonize various planets you discover, and build things. The game never had a Linux …

We covered a few different tutorials on customizing Minecraft UWP. This version of the app is a bit different from its Java counterpart, and so installing shaders or skins is different as well. That said, the UWP version tries to keep up with the Java version in terms of features. …

The function keys, or the Fn keys are standard on any laptop. MacBooks have them, and laptops have them. On MacBooks, the symbols on function keys mean the same thing regardless of model. Rarely is the symbol on a key ever changed. For laptops, it’s different. Laptops are manufactured by …

Users can edit the path environment variables on Windows 10. It’s really easy to do though you need admin rights to make the changes. The path environment variables aren’t all populated by users. There are a few default paths that are part of it. Users can always add or remove …