Are you getting that carrier settings notification on your phone? We know you are. So here’s former Recode staffer Bonnie Cha’s explanation of this peculiar missive.

Oh God, what is this?

That’s the first thought you might have when a notification appears on your iPhone or iPad prompting you to download a “Carrier Settings Update.”

If you’re like me, you’ll shrug and tap the Update button (YOLO!). But others might be a little more wary, and want to know what the update is for and whether it’s safe to download before taking any action.

Unfortunately, getting answers to these questions is much harder than it should be.

Unlike major operating system updates, there isn’t a lot of information or messaging about what carrier settings updates do, where they come from or how they impact your device. In fact, this whole story was borne out of a colleague’s own frustration about the topic.

So I talked with Apple and all four major carriers — AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon — to get more information. One thing to note is that, according to the carriers, these updates are specific to Apple devices, namely the iPhone and cellular-connected iPads. Google and Microsoft also make carrier-related changes to their Android and Windows Phone devices, respectively, but they’re folded into a more general software or maintenance update.

What is a carrier settings update?

As Apple describes it on its support site, “Carrier settings updates are small files that can include updates from Apple and your carrier to carrier-related settings, such as network, calling, cellular data, messaging, personal hotspot, and voicemail settings.”

In other words, they handle anything related to how your device connects and communicates to your carrier’s network and any related services.

The updates are largely used to add new features or enhance the performance. This can include adding support for upgrades made to a carrier’s network or the rollout of new functionality like voice-over-LTE, which promises to deliver better-sounding voice calls.

Updates can also be used to fix a problem. For example, a carrier update was issued after a bug was found on the Verizon iPhone 5s that was causing the phone to use cellular data while connected to a Wi-Fi network.

Another instance where a carrier settings update may occur is when you swap out SIM cards. Let’s say you’ve been using an unlocked iPhone on AT&T’s network and decide to switch over to T-Mobile. Your iPhone will need to update its carrier settings so the device can work with the new provider. The same is true if you travel overseas and want to use a local SIM card to save money.

The update may happen automatically once you insert the new SIM card. But if not, you can go to Settings > General > About to start the process manually.

Since these updates tend to be smaller in size than major system upgrades, the update process should be faster, so you don’t have to be offline for very long.

Who puts out the updates, and how are they delivered?

The updates can include changes from Apple or any of its official carrier partners, like AT&T or Verizon, or it can be a combination of both. (A couple of the wireless carriers I asked basically said, “It’s an Apple thing — ask them.”)

When one is available, you may receive a push notification on your iPhone or iPad, which you can download and install wirelessly. You may also get a message in iTunes the next time you connect your device to your computer via USB.

If you notice any network issues or problems using such features as voicemail, it’s a good idea to check that you haven’t missed a carrier settings update using the steps outlined above before contacting your provider.

Is there any way to see what the update is changing or fixing?

It’s reasonable — smart, even — to want to know what’s included in an update before downloading it to your iPhone or iPad.

Unfortunately, the companies don’t make it easy to find out, if at all. It’s not like a third-party app update, which often offers a change log to show you what’s been added or fixed. In some cases, a provider might share details directly to the customer. Other times, the carrier might provide information on its website, though this usually involves digging through a myriad of support pages.

If all else fails, a Google search might lead to more specifics from an Apple or carrier-related user forum or site. But really, it would be nice if the parties involved spelled out the changes from the get-go, regardless of how big or small the update might be.

Are the updates safe to download? Is there any potential that the update might do more harm than good?

In general, the answer is, yes, they are safe to download. Apple’s iOS mobile operating system is less prone (though not immune) to malware and viruses, compared with other platforms, like Android. Still, it’s always good to keep an eye out for anything that seems fishy, like misspellings in the update message.

There is certainly the potential that an update might end up breaking something or negatively affecting your device’s performance. We’ve seen this happen a few times with iOS updates. But this hasn’t been a huge issue with carrier settings updates. If there is a problem, Apple and the carriers would assuredly issue a fix.

Do I have the option to skip an update or postpone it?

It varies. Some updates are mandatory, and the only option you’ll see when the prompt comes up on the screen is “OK.” Other times, you’ll have the choice to proceed with the update or delay it by tapping the “Not Now” button.

What are the benefits of doing the update? Are there any downsides to waiting if possible?

Waiting to install an update, or just ignoring the alerts, probably won’t cause any major problems.

But depending on what’s being released with the update, the benefits could include more functionality, better data speeds or improved call quality. So you might be missing out on some features and a supposedly improved user experience.

After reading this, hopefully you’ll feel better prepared to make a decision the next time a carrier settings update message pops up on your screen.

Updated with more information from Apple about the purpose of the carrier settings updates.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Apple today introduced the next version of its Mac operating system, OS X El Capitan, focusing on two key areas of improvement: Experience and performance.

Apple Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Craig Federighi took the stage at the 26th annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, and highlighted some of the new features of El Capitan.

The Spotlight search function has been enhanced so you can perform searches using natural language queries. To demo the change, Federighi entered “Mail I ignored from Phil” into Spotlight, which returned a list of unread email from Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller.

In Safari, you can now pin your favorite sites to your browser, and a new audio icon in the address bar will allow you to quickly identify which tab is playing audio, so you can mute it.

OS X El Capitan also has a new Split View, which will let you work in two apps side by side — a feature that has been available on Windows for some time now.

Other improvements include new gesture controls, such as swiping on the trackpad to delete messages in the Mail app and shaking your cursor to enlarge it.

On the performance front, Federighi said that El Capitan is up to 1.4 times faster at launching apps compared to Yosemite, up to two times faster for app switching and displaying Mail messages and up to four times faster opening PDFs in Preview. He added that some users may see up to 40 percent better battery life.

The company is also bringing its Metal graphics technology, which was first introduced on iOS 8, to Macs. Apple said Metal offers 10 times improvement in game performance, and brought on Epic Games to demo its Fortnite game running on El Capitan. Aside from gaming, Metal can also help speed up graphics-intensive apps. Adobe, for example, said it will use the technology for its OS X apps.

Mac OS X El Capitan is available to developers today and will be released to the public in the fall as a free download.

Federighi said that over 55 percent of active Mac users are running the current version of OS X, Yosemite, which Apple claims is the the fastest adoption rate of any PC operating system ever.

For more on Apple’s announcements, check out our WWDC live blog here.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

I’ve been thinking about canceling my cable subscription for years, but one thing keeps preventing me from cutting the cord: Sports.

I’m an unapologetic sports fan. Football, basketball, baseball, soccer, hockey — I watch them all, and a lot of the time, the events are broadcast on cable networks like ESPN, TNT or TBS. That’s why I continue to grudgingly fork over a good chunk of money to Comcast*. (I currently pay about $150 per month, which includes premium channels like HBO and Cinemax, HD/DVR, Internet and phone services.)

So I was stoked when I heard about Dish Network’s Sling TV service.

Sling TV is one of several new Web TV services that provide an alternative to premium cable packages. In March, Sony launched a similar service called Vue that costs $50 per month. Apple is said to be working on a TV service. HBO and Showtime are also offering Web subscriptions.

For $20 per month for the base package, Sling TV lets you stream live TV over the Internet from 22 channels, including CNN, TBS, the Food Network and, yes, ESPN. You can add other channels, too, for a fee.

For example, you can get HBO for an additional $15 per month. And there’s a Kids Extra package that includes Disney Junior, Boomerang and Baby TV, and the Lifestyle Extra bundle adds the Cooking Channel, DIY Network, WE TV and others. Each costs $5 a month.

Sling TV doesn’t require a contract, and you can use the service on various gadgets, including set-top boxes like Roku and Amazon Fire TV, Xbox One, Mac and PC computers, and iOS and Android phones and tablets, as long as you have a stable Internet connection. Wi-Fi and cellular are both supported.

“Huzzah!” I thought. “My prayers have been answered!”

Except … not.

After using the service for the past month, I’m sticking with my cable subscription. Sling TV requires a few too many trade-offs for me to make the switch, such as the lack of the major broadcast networks (NBC*, ABC, CBS and Fox) and DVR capabilities.

That said, I do think Sling TV and others are going to make it easier than ever to cut the cord in the near future.

Before I get into my Sling TV experience, I thought it might be helpful to explain how I watch TV. Usually when I get home in the evenings, I’ll turn on the TV and channel-surf until I find something interesting to watch while eating dinner. I’d say I only use about 30 percent of the channels offered by my cable package.

I have a lineup of shows that I watch regularly, like “Scandal,” “Louie” and “Silicon Valley.” But it’s rare that I watch a show at its scheduled time. Instead, I usually record it on my DVR and view it later. Sports are the exception to this.

I suspect a lot of people have similar TV habits.

With that said, I did my best to forgo cable altogether and just use Sling TV for the month of May. Dish granted me access to its full lineup of 68 channels, which will cost consumers about $70 per month. I watched on my Samsung HDTV via Roku 3, and I used the Sling TV app on my iPad, iPhone 6 and Nexus 5.

The service itself is easy enough to navigate. Pressing the “*” button on Roku’s remote brings up a strip across the bottom of your TV screen where you can scroll through the different channels. Each channel provides a brief description of what’s currently on, and a preview of what’s to come in the next hour or two.

Press the button again, and you can look for channels by genre or access other content like movies, settings and more. The mobile experience is a bit different, but I was able to figure it out pretty quickly.

The streaming experience was generally good. Most of the time, I used my home’s Comcast broadband connection (with average download speeds of 20 megabits per second), and picture and video quality was sharp and smooth.

That said, there were a few times where the stream paused to buffer, though the interruption only lasted a couple of seconds. I also experienced a few instances where the stream stopped for a significant period of time, so I had to return to Roku’s main menu and reselect Sling TV to get it going again.

When I streamed Sling TV over AT&T’s and T-Mobile’s LTE network, I found that the video looked jagged and stuttered more often.

Like regular TV, Sling TV includes commercials, and for a majority of the channels, you can’t pause, fast-forward or rewind a program due to rights issues.

You also can’t record any shows, though Sling TV does have a three-day “replay” feature where you can view some programs that aired in the previous three days. The company also hasn’t totally nixed the idea of adding DVR capabilities in the future. But for now, you’re basically forced to watch whatever is on at the time.

On the upside, I was able to watch a majority of the NBA Eastern and Western Conference playoffs on Sling TV. But there was one exception: Game 4 of the Cleveland Cavaliers-Chicago Bulls semifinal series was broadcast on ABC. I went to the gym to watch it there, while sweating on the elliptical machine.

I never realized how many shows I watched on the basic cable channels until I didn’t have access to them. I missed the “Scandal” season finale and David Letterman’s final show (the sting of missing them was lessened knowing that had I set my DVR to record them, so I could watch after my experiment).

Dish says that at some point it would like to add a tier for broadcast networks, but they won’t be part of the base package. The company added that it doesn’t want to force customers to pay for channels they can get for free using an over-the-air antenna.

Fair point, but I was too busy to pick up an antenna, so instead I spent a lot of time channel-surfing on Sling TV, trying to find something to watch. More often than not, I didn’t find anything of interest, and would switch over to Netflix to catch up on other shows and movies.

Another restriction of Sling TV is that you can only watch it on one device at a time (the sole exception is HBO, which you can view on up to three devices). I live by myself, so this wasn’t a huge deal, but it’s going to be an issue in a multi-person household.

While Sling TV didn’t convince me to cut the cord, it certainly appealed to my brother Frank. He’s part of Sling TV’s target audience, called “cord-nevers” — those who have never paid for a cable subscription (read: Millennials).

My brother isn’t a millennial, but he is an extremely frugal guy, so he refuses to pay for a cable subscription when he only wants a few channels. Instead, he uses an antenna to get the basic network channels on TV, and then watches shows on Netflix or Hulu.

But I also know that he’d like to get the Food Network, HBO, ESPN and certain other cable channels. So when I asked him if Sling TV would appeal to him, he said, without hesitation, “Yes!”

He explained that cost was a huge part of it, but he also liked that he could add channels a la carte, without paying for a bunch of other channels he didn’t want. And he wasn’t bothered by the lack of DVR capabilities, because he’s never had the luxury of it in the first place.

For people like Frank who can live with its limitations, Sling TV offers a simple, affordable and flexible alternative to the pricey cable subscriptions. But it comes with a number of trade-offs that might not win over all would-be cord cutters yet.

* Comcast’s NBCUniversal is a minority investor in Revere Digital, Re/code’s parent company.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Apple Watch, Apple Watch, Apple Waaaatch!

Perhaps Google was feeling a touch of Jan Brady Syndrome when Apple made its recent debut into the smartwatch stakes with an attention-hogging launch that seemed to suck all the competition out of the category.

Whatever its motivation, Google recently announced an update to Android Wear that takes aim at its new competitor and adds a handful (wristful?) of improvements to its own smartwatch platform. It’s the biggest update since the first Android Wear watch launched in June of last year.

The software update is called Android Wear 5.1, and it includes such new features as Wi-Fi support, a simplified interface and always-on apps. It’s currently only available on the $350 LG Watch Urbane, but Google says it will roll out the update to all Android Wear watches, including the Moto 360 and Samsung Gear Live, in the coming weeks.

I’ve been using the Urbane watch for more than a week, and overall I found the Android Wear smartwatch experience to be better than before. In some cases, the implementation of software features is smarter than Apple’s, while others still need some work.

The first thing I noticed is that it’s now a lot easier to find and launch apps. Previously, when I used the LG G Watch, I had to dig through multiple menus or use voice commands to call up apps, which isn’t ideal if you’re in a meeting. My colleague Katie Boehret also shared some of the same frustrations when she reviewed the Moto 360.

With Android Wear 5.1, you can just tap on the screen (or press and hold the side button on the Urbane) to bring up a list of your watch apps. Your most-recently-used app is always on top, and you can scroll down to view the rest of the list.

A swipe to the left will bring up favorite contacts that you’ve designated on your phone. Another swipe to the left shows examples of voice commands you can use with the watch. As before, you can say, “OK Google,” from any screen and dictate a command.

All these improvements make Android Wear easier to use, but compared to the Apple Watch, I felt like I was doing a lot more swiping.

Google has added more hands-free options, including wrist gestures. Now, if you want to view notifications or other cards of information, you can flick your wrist outward or inward to cycle through the watch’s various screens.

It works, but I found that you have to snap your wrist quite hard to bring up the first card. Plus, it feels (and looks) awkward to twist your arm like that.

Other than for testing purposes, I didn’t use this feature at all. I could maybe see myself using wrist gestures if my other hand was full because I was carrying a grocery bag or something. But in general, it’s easier to just swipe up and down on the watch’s touchscreen.

More useful is the always-on apps. This means that apps will remain visible -– in a battery-saving black-and-white mode — even when your watch’s color display has dimmed or turned off. Text and images are displayed in black-and-white until you activate the screen again, at which point they’ll return to full color.

It was handy being able to see my grocery list at a glance while shopping, without having to activate the watch, navigate to the right app and open it.

For now, the always-on feature is limited to Google’s note-taking app, Keep. But it will be coming to Google Maps soon, and third-party developers will also be able to write apps that support the feature.

One of the real values of smartwatches is going to come when they can work independently of your smartphone, and Google has taken a step in that direction with Wi-Fi support.

At this point, you might be thinking, “Wait, the Apple Watch has Wi-Fi support, too,” and you’re right. But Google’s implementation is a little different.

The advantage of Google’s Wi-Fi feature over Apple’s is that your watch and smartphone don’t have to be on the same Wi-Fi network in order to communicate with each other. All that is required is that your watch be connected to a Wi-Fi network, and that your smartphone has a Wi-Fi or cellular connection.

I left my Nexus 5 at the office a couple of times over the past week, and I was still able to get email, Facebook and other notifications on the Urbane at my house. I was even able to respond to text messages.

But this feature didn’t work in other scenarios.

In theory, your watch is supposed to remember all of the networks that you’ve saved on your phone, including password-protected networks. But that wasn’t always the case.

During one lunch break, I left my phone at my desk and just took my watch and Verizon Mi-Fi hotspot with me. I’ve logged on to the Mi-Fi from my phone before, and had it saved, but the watch wasn’t able to connect to it. When I went into the Urbane’s Wi-Fi settings menu, it asked me to open my phone and enter the password.

You’d also run into this problem anytime you were trying to access a new secure network from just your watch. So, while Wi-Fi support affords you a little more freedom, you’re still largely tethered to your phone.

Last but not least, you can now draw emojis on Android Wear to reply to texts and other messages. The feature is powered by a handwriting-recognition technology Google developed for Android, and it converts your drawings into actual emojis.

So for example, if you get a text saying, “Where are you?” you can draw a house, and it should bring up a house emoji, which you can tap and send. Or, if you get a message about dinner plans, you can draw a pizza, and it should bring up a pizza emoji.

This is different from the Apple Watch, which has a drawing feature that allows you to send freehand doodles to other Apple Watch users, in addition to the professionally drawn emojis available from the Messages app.

Initially, I was skeptical of Android Wear’s drawing feature. But I was pleasantly surprised at how well it worked, and how useful I found it to be. I drew different items like animals, flowers and smiley faces, and Google mostly got it right — and it was often faster then selecting from a list of emojis. (You can draw emojis in any messaging app that supports voice replies.)

Of course, it’s not perfect. I tried to draw a thumbs-up, and I got everything from the devil to shrimp tempura to poop. Weirdly, it got thumbs-down right.

Google’s latest update to Android Wear makes some nice steps in the right direction, but there is still a long road ahead in making smartwatches more than niche devices.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.