I installed iOS 27 on my iPhone today, and I’m ticked off. What makes me mad is that Cupertino is hiding the Apple Intelligence ball. Read the specs on Apple’s iPhone 17e page, and you will see Apple Intelligence listed as a feature, albeit with a footnote. Here’s footnote 15 (out of 18): Available on […]

EDITORIAL By Will Fastie There is a wealth of information at AskWoody. Unfortunately, it is not always easy to find. If you have a long memory, you know I have mentioned a “forthcoming” search capability. Budget constraints and other priorities have delayed implementation, and we’re not quite sure when conditions will ease. In this brief […]

COMMENTARY By Will Fastie Join me for a few excursions into my life. I was checking my contract the other day, and I realized it has no clause specifying exactly what I must write about for this newsletter. In fact, it doesn’t say anything at all about me writing! Editing? Yes. Writing? No. Freedom! Free […]

Apple surprised me this time. It’s not that its new M5 Ultra and M6 chips weren’t expected. It’s just that I thought they’d come with a bigger splash, perhaps an “event” video with newly minted CEO John Ternus. After all, this is hardware. The chips were not introduced in a vacuum. They power the new […]

ISSUE 23.33 • 2026-08-17 SOFTWARE By Will Fastie In October, Microsoft will throw the kill switch for Publisher 365, which will prevent Publisher from opening — and thereby orphan Publisher files. In previous articles (see References below), we have discussed what this means and how to deal with it. In this article, I’ll explain in […]

ISSUE 23.31 • 2026-08-03 ACCESSBILITY By Will Fastie Tesla’s Full Self-driving (FSD) capability affects more than everyday convenience. It’s a little jolting to realize that the then-called Tesla Motors was founded in 2003, 23 years ago. You don’t need me to tell you about the success of the company, which I consider unmarred by recent […]

COMMENTARY By Will Fastie I don’t have a problem embracing change, except for grocery prices. In most cases, my complaints are usually centered on things made worse by changes or on things that should be changed but aren’t. I want stuff to advance, to become better and more helpful. My complaints seem to be rising. […]

COMMENTARY By Will Fastie AI could ruin YouTube, not only for viewers but also for creators. YouTube has been a tremendously useful resource over the years, for both entertainment and education. Want to learn how to hammer a nail into a board? Tens of thousands of videos. Want to learn how to use Blackmagic Design’s […]

FROM THE FORUMS I recently wrote the article Older software to the rescue, which included a note about my having replaced Adobe Acrobat DC with the ten-year-old program PDF Fusion. The forum topic associated with the article received a lot of traffic. Although I mentioned other old software in the article, forum participants homed in […]

SOFTWARE By Will Fastie Adobe continues to be very annoying, to the extent that I reverted to older software to duck the problem. In the past three weeks, two of my “clients” (of the friends-and-family variety) came to me asking for help. In each case, the problem was Adobe software. Then I finally got fed […]

I was talking to a friend who probably needs a new PC for creative work on a budget, so I suggested that she think about a Mac mini. Just to check that my thinking about the price was correct, I visited the Apple site. I got the pricing right, but then noticed that delivery would […]

ISSUE 23.25 • 2026-06-22 COMMENTARY By Will Fastie The past few years have witnessed a surge of Arm processors. Of course, the Arm architecture has been around in phones for a long time. But even though phones have cohesive ecosystems built around Arm, we tend to think of phones as nothing more than appliances, not […]

EDITORIAL By Will Fastie I’ve greatly enjoyed my forays into the wilds of computing over the four decades I’ve been engaging with the public and with vendors. I miss it, so I’m offering to do it again — virtually. And, exclusively for our valued AskWoody Plus members. Here’s how it will work. Read the full […]