Updated January 20th, 2020.
Great sources of information about Macs and iPhones and iPads. Also some excellent services, which I personally use and recommend.
 | Apple’s System Status page: shows the status of iCloud, the iTunes Store, Find My iPhone, and more. Check it out now, before you need it. When you email me to ask whether iCloud is up or not this page is where I go. |
 | FatCow.com:* web and email hosting at a great price. Click here* to let them know I sent you. Currently they offer hosting, and WordPress, and domain registration, and email, for $3.15 per month for the first year. If you’ve been thinking of making a website Fatcow* is the place to start. |
 | Apple Downloads: the place to go when your automatic Software Updates don’t work, or you want to re-apply an update. |
 | SumoMe.com: essential tools for growing a mailing list, easily added to your web page. Integrates with your mass-mailing service (I use Campaign Monitor but you could use Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, Aweber, Vertical Response, Emma, and others). Besides providing sign-up forms and other list-building things, SumoMe shows me where people are clicking on my web pages. Even the free version is great, but if you decide to “go pro” use this link to earn me a referral credit. Thank you for that! |
 | MacRumors: the biggest and the best Mac and iOS rumor site. Updated multiple times a day, and read by me multiple times a day. |
 | DaringFireball: weekly Apple-related editorials; daily curated Apple-related articles from around the web. |
 | StatCounter.com: I use this to get statistics for my websites. Free for a basic account. |
 | Addthis.com: I use this to put the “Recommended for you” item at the lower right corner of my web site. Free for the basics. |
 | DealNews.com: best deal-finder website. I’ve made DealNews.com my home page. |
  | Raise.com:*discounted gift cards. Examples: $200 Petco gift card for $147. $100 Macy’s gift card for $91. $20 Starbucks gift card for $17. Buy these cards as gifts for others, or buy them for yourself, save a bunch of money, then spend it on a new Mac or iPhone. They’ll buy gift cards from you too. Turn ’em into cash and buy some more stuff. Use discount code RAISE75AF to save $5 on a $75 purchase. |
 | RetailMeNot.com: best site for finding discount codes and coupons. Don’t buy anything online without visiting RetailMeNot.com first to see if they have a discount code for you. |
 | CampaignMonitor.com: I use Campaign Monitor to send out beautiful email notices of new blog posts and to manage my online mailing list. (What? You’re not on the list? Click here and sign up.) If you need to send mass emails this is the service to use. |
 | Backblaze:* the best online backup service. Unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth. Does not slow your machine to a crawl as some online services do. Fully configurable. Free trial via this link. |
 | Beginners Mac Blog: excellent tips website for Mac beginners, by my friend Nancy Gravley. |
 | iAnswerGuy Blog: terrific Mac and iPhone/iPad resource. |
 | The One-Minute Macman blog is my short-and-sweet blog: great Mac stuff you can read in a minute. Give it a try. |
 | Amazon’s Trade-in Program: send Amazon your old stuff and they’ll send you an Amazon gift card. It’s like finding money. |
 | The iPhoneinaminute.com website teaches you something interesting about the iPhone– in a minute. |
 | OpenDNS makes your network faster, blocks porn, and keeps you from accidentally going to phishing sites. And it’s free. See my article to learn more. |