Top password tips

If you get frustrated every time your Mac asks you to create or enter a password, welcome to the club. The concept of using a secret string of characters to identify a person—and, in many cases, encrypt information to keep other people from seeing it—pervades the world of computing. While passwords may have been a good idea decades ago, today they rank right up there with spam as a major source of annoyance for computer users. Fortunately, you can eliminate a great deal of this password pain with a combination of common sense and technology. Here's how to create, manage, and remember all your passwords.