MakeUseOf

My Apple TV was the one streaming box I never worried about, until now

Brady Snyder — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 23:00:14 GMT

There's no shortage of excellent streaming boxes on the market today, but the Apple TV has two key advantages that put it ahead of the competition: performance and software. Apple uses the same A-series processors you'll find in its smartphones and tablets inside Apple TV boxes, and it shows. On the software side, tvOS feels familiar to iOS, iPadOS, and macOS users. But more importantly, it's lighter on bloat and advertisements than, say, Google's Android TV or Samsung's Tizen OS. These two perks are exactly why I've been a loyal Apple TV user for years — until everything changed with one update.

I never manually check for restocks, price drops, or updates anymore because this Docker container has got my back

Abhijith N Arjunan — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 22:00:15 GMT

Finding the best deals is what makes online shopping special, but it often means manually checking for price drops, discounts, and other updates. The same is true when you're waiting for an item that's been out of stock for a while. By the time you realize it's back in stock, you might already be staring at that dreaded “Out of Stock” message again.

These 6 cheap PC parts can cost more to run than they cost to buy

Gregory Gibson — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 21:45:15 GMT

Once upon a time, my homelab lived in my garage because the servers kept me awake at night. I ran Ethernet through a gap in a window in a rented house and somehow called it ingenuity. At this point, my partner had already threatened to hurl all my gear to the curb if I let it stay inside.

My Google Messages group chats were unreadable until I enabled this view

Brady Snyder — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 21:00:15 GMT

Group chats are fun, but they can also be overwhelming. The bigger the conversation, the more quickly things can get out of hand. The natural response to a rowdy group chat is to snooze it, or flip on Do Not Disturb for your entire phone. But this solution introduces a problem of its own — how long will it take you to catch up on everything you missed? Luckily, there's a hidden feature in Google Messages that could be the best of both worlds.

Everyone worries about overnight charging, but this is much worse for your battery

Digvijay Kumar — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 20:30:17 GMT

The most common battery advice on the internet is to never charge your phone overnight. So you take it seriously, unplugging before bed every night, never letting the phone stay at full capacity for long. And yet, a year later, your battery health still drops into the eighties. Overnight charging, it turns out, has almost nothing to do with that loss. What's actually wearing your battery down is something you do during the day, every day.

Samsung gives you two of every app, and these are the ones I delete on day one

Brady Snyder — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 20:00:16 GMT

Samsung's custom Android skin is packed full of extra features you won't find on Google Pixel phones, but One UI is bloated for the same reason. Buy a Galaxy phone, and you'll notice duplicate apps. You get the Google apps that are pre-installed as part of the Android Open Source Project release, plus any first-party Samsung apps — even if they both have the same functionality. Those that like to keep their phones clean and lean might find it tricky to decide which apps to keep, and which to get rid of.

4 Windows 11 settings I disable on every new PC to stop Microsoft's tracking and ads

Digvijay Kumar — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 19:45:14 GMT

Set up a new Windows 11 PC, and it looks like everything starts from a clean slate. The desktop is minimal, Setting looks straightforward, and the whole experience feels polished and ready to use. But by the time you reach the desktop, several settings you never touched are already working in Microsoft's favor, not yours. They're spread across four separate pages, and they don't exactly advertise what they're doing. I go through every one of them before I open a single app on a new machine.

I tried the Galaxy Z Fold 8 naked, and it clicked the moment I added magnets and a stand

Brady Snyder — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 19:00:16 GMT

Everyone's raving about the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8, and it's not hard to see why. The wider 4:3 aspect ratio of the folding display makes the Galaxy Z Fold 8 a joy to use unfolded, in both portrait and landscape mode. Samsung's One UI software is magnificent on foldables, and this phone can run up to eight apps at once. But the foldable is not without its flaws.

These are the apps that made my Android eReader better than a Kindle

Mahnoor Faisal — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 19:00:16 GMT

You know how once you begin traveling, you can never really go back to viewing the world the same way? Beyond feeling that way about travel itself, I’ve started to feel something similar about eReaders.

Apple Watch finally has the fitness score Galaxy and Pixel users have had for years

Christine Persaud — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 18:00:14 GMT

Apple is a methodical company by nature, capturing loyal fans of its ecosystem. Features, functions, and designs aren't released until the company is confident not only that it can do it right, but also that it's the right time. When it comes to Apple Watch, the design has been largely the same through the years, with minor tweaks and refinements. But new features have been added from one generation of OS to the next. A new feature with the Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 is one that owners have been waiting for. But it's also one that other smartwatch and fitness wearable brands like Samsung Galaxy, Google Pixel, Oura, Garmin, and others, have offered for some time.