Mac 911

PURGE YOUR CALENDAR OF ACQUAINTANCES’ BIRTHDAYS

Social media has devalued the birthday by flooding our timelines with the felicitous anniversaries of people far beyond our close friends, family, and colleagues. This is nowhere clearer than in your calendar, which you might find unexpectedly clogged with birthdays every day of people you might not even remember.

How does this happen? It’s a combination of legacy and modern synchronization and import, for most of us. In the past, Apple provided closer integration between Facebook and its operating systems. You may also have imported or synced contacts between Google and your Mac, iPhone, or iPad, or have active sync still in place.

If you’re like me, you may also have the detritus of contacts exported across many pieces of software across many computers and mobiles and jobs and the like. I can hardly believe I ever knew as many people as are in my contacts list.

All of that can lead to many unneeded entries in the Birthday field in your