Rich's Tongfamily (Richtong.net add-on)

So it looks like there are going to be some big changes coming to Apple and this could signal that the relatively slow updates to the Mac line are ending (and don’t get me started on the dog breakfast that is the iPad). But at the top level, the way…

Well, there are some discounts that seem to be coming on and off. With all these price increases from NetFlix to Apple One to Disney, it’s nice to be able to save some money. As a reminder, there are historically low prices for SSDs and hard drives right now, so…

OK, there is this new idea of a passkey that is rolling out and you can look here to see if a site supports it, but the big ones are amazon.com, Best Buy, Google, GitHub, eBay, Instacart, PayPal, Shopify, Tailscale, Synology, Uber. The idea is pretty simple, just as you…

Wow, Gestures are the coolest and most hidden feature in MacOS Sonoma, but basically, if you are in any kind of video call (Zoom, Meets, etc.), there is an application-independent way to get gesture recognition. Enabling it is nearly impossible when you start your video camera, there is a green…

Uh, I thought I had been pretty careful keeping Cruft off of my Mac, but I started getting these scam notifications saying “You have been infected”. WTF! Basic Hygiene: Look for SYSTEMALERT in Safari > Settings > Websites I know exactly what happened, to get a great deal, I had…

Well, I can’t quite believe it, but it feels like it is 1999. Temu has the most incredible triple-stacked deals, here is how it works: Net, net, just with the credit card stuff, you are 36% off and then you add another $20 off with the $20+$60 or 25% off,…

OK, a final followup to the move from Google Workspace to iCloud, I finally got this to work after figuring out the CNAME problem, but what happened is that the Netlify changes to the DNS would not take. I discovered that when you are making lots of changes, Netlify does…

OK, now that Google has been raising prices, I’m in the middle of moving accounts from the $6/month for 30GB of storage and email or $18/month for 2TB to iCloud Custom Domains. iCloud allows each family to have up to five custom email domains and you get 2TB of storage…

If you don’t want to spend a lot on these, I think the current best solution is based on Aqara and then smoke alarms by Life. We’ve been testing this for the past few months at our house and to make an alarm system, you can build an Apple Home…

Well, I’ve been trying different ways to take notes for a while. The traditional way is really disruptive, typing into your laptop is really hard to hide and not notice. A traditional pad and paper can work if you use a cool fountain pen, then you can take photos of…