15 Tips For New MacBook Neo Users

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com and here are some tips for MacBook Neo users.

Now whether the MacBook Neo is your first Mac or just your most recent here are some tips specific to using the Neo.

One of the things that people notice first with the MacBook Neo is the Desktop wallpaper. The default wallpaper is something created specifically for this model of MacBook. So if you have a MacBook Neo and you go into System Settings and then you look for Wallpaper here on the left you'll see your wallpaper up here at the top left and you'll see its name. It's called Mac Blue. Now this wallpaper isn't available on other Macs but if you scroll down you'll find it here in the special section called Mac. Not only will you find the one you're using but you'll find all four variations. One for each color of the MacBook Neo, and the one you will have by default matches that color. But you can choose any one of these. So you can simply click to select one like that and it will download and allow you to have any of the four as your wallpaper. If you don't like the wallpaper you can, of course, choose any of the other ones that are available here. There are a ton of different ones including Live wallpapers, the default Mac Tahoe wallpaper, or you can use a solid color or your own photos from your Photos App. So really you can use anything. But the wallpaper isn't the only things that is different in System Settings for Neo. 

If you go to Appearance and you look at the color choices you get an additional one with the MacBook Neo. It's the one that matches the color of the aluminum of your case. So you've got here, under Color, the default is usually multicolor and then you have a variety of other colors to choose from. But with a MacBook Neo you'll also get your Mac's color here as the last choice and the default. Now I recommend you switch to multicolor. That allows each app to have its default color. For instance, you'll see yellow in Notes, green in Numbers, and so on. If you choose one of these it's going to be that highlight color for all of your apps. But you certainly can choose your Mac Neo's color if you like that. Then also note under Text Highlight Color you also have that as a choice and you also get it here under Folder Color. You'll see in the list, called Hardware here instead of This Mac, but you get that same color choice. 

Now let's talk about the USB ports that come on your MacBook Neo. You've got two on the left side and they are fundamentally different. You should know which one to use in what situation. The one furthest to the back is USB3 but it also does something else. It can act as a Display Port port to hook into an external screen. The one that is a little closer to the front that's USB2. That one has a much slower speed than the other one. So if you need to hook in a screen you have to do it with the one in the back. But of instead of a screen you want to hookup a fast external drive, for instance, you want to use the one in the back to get much faster speeds. As a matter of fact if you plug in a fast drive in the front port you will get a warning just letting you know that you'll get better performance if you use the back one. 

Either one of these can be used for power. You can plug in the charger that comes with your MacBook Neo or another one into either port. It doesn't matter. So you're going to want to use the front-most port, the slower one, for power since it doesn't matter and save the back one for plugging in things like external drives or displays. If you need to plug in some sort of USB Hub you definitely want to use the back port. So you start off with the fastest speeds coming through that port and then whatever it is you've got connected. Then hopefully your Hub is also fast and then everything can work through that one port in a much faster way than using the front one. 

Also note that you don't need to use the charger that comes with your MacBook Neo. This is a 20 watt charger and it will work fine. It really works with any USB charger. But if you want slightly faster speeds get one that's more than 20 watts. The MacBook Neo doesn't do fast charging and hooking something insanely powerful up to it isn't going to make it charge really fast or anything. But you can beat the speed of this one if you use a third party charger. 

Now let's go back here into Settings and take a look at the Display Settings. So under Displays you can see the default resolution. If you move your pointer over it you can see the display is at 1408 by 881. The actual native resolution is something completely different. You don't really want to use that. To see that what you want to do here is control click on anywhere in this section here and Show List and then turn on Show All Resolutions. You can see the actual native resolution here. It's insanely small. All the user interface elements are too small really for almost anybody to use on this display. So you can use this native resolution here or you can choose other resolutions as well. I'm using a third party app to setup some special resolutions that you won't see just so I can do a nice recording for this tutorial. But you'll see a lot of different options here. Don't let anybody tell you that anyone of these is right or wrong. You should experiment with all of them and find out what is right for you. After all if you're using a resolution and you just can't see the text very well then it's really no good to you. Even if it is like 1% faster for the MacBook. So you want to choose the one that you like. Don't be afraid to change it. You can change it as often as you want. 

Now in addition to that if you still have trouble seeing things on the MacBook Neo's small screen you may want to checkout Accessibility & Display. There are a bunch of different things here that you could use, like Text Size for instance, to make text larger in some apps. So you can play around with those settings. If you have trouble seeing the pointer, the little arrow you control with the trackpad, note that under Pointer here you can change the pointer size as well. Make it a little bigger if it makes it easier for you to see. 

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Also if this is your first MacBook get used to using Mission Control to make it feel like you've got more than one screen. I can bring up Mission Control by using the Control Key and Up Arrow, or three fingers on the trackpad swiping up. You'll see here at the top your Desktop. You can add a second Desktop, like this. Now you can launch apps and have these two available on this Desktop. Then I'm going to switch to the other Desktop by using Mission Control, going here and then now I can launch something else on this Desktop. Like, say, Safari and bring that up here. I can use Control left and Control Right arrows or three fingers and swiping left or right on the trackpad. This makes it feel like I've actually got two displays. I want to look at the one on the right, I can swipe there. Look at the one on the left, I'll use three fingers and swipe there. I like to use the Control left and right arrows. You can add more Desktops if you like as well. 

If you feel constrained by the small screen of the MacBook Neo get to now Mission Control and using multiple Desktop spaces.

Now another thing about the MacBook Neo is it has a smaller battery than other MacBooks. So there are things that you can do to extend battery life. If you go into System Settings and then you go to Battery note that you have Low Power Mode available. Now you can set this up to be only on Battery. So when you're plugged in everything will run at full speed. But on Battery it's going to enter Low Power Mode and do a few things to help prolong the battery life. But you also have a lot of other things that you can do here to preserve battery life. For instance under Battery Health you can turn on Optimize Battery Charging. That means it won't charge to fill the entire battery up all the time but stop short of that. This will make the battery last longer. Not longer as in today. But longer as in how many years before you need a replacement. You can also go down to the Options here and you can turn On a few things, like dim the display slightly or Optimize Video Streaming to help you go further in the day with your battery.

In general if you've got power available where you are and you've got your charger with you, plug it in and use it while it is plugged in. So in that way not only will you have maximum battery charge when you need it but it won't cycle the battery so much. The battery only lasts so many cycles. If you just simply use it until it runs out of battery and then plug it in to charge it, that goes through a whole cycle. After about a thousand cycles you're going to need a new battery. But if you happen to have power at your desk, plug it in and then you're not using the battery. The battery will last that much longer. 

Now let's talk about the Webcam. I'm going to run FaceTime here and the webcam works perfectly well for video conferencing and a lot of other uses. But it is a 1080p webcam. It's not quite as good as the webcam for other MacBooks. But there are a few things that you can do to make it look better. When using FaceTime and Zoom you probably don't need this. But if you're creating content, say by using Quick Time Player, you can do File, New Movie Recording, and it will use the camera. You can make the quality a bit better. If I record here and then stop I can check here and see that it is 1280 by 720. But I can do better than that. Let's go and do a New Movie Recording again in Quick Time Player, but I'm going to click on this little option arrow to the right of the Record Button and I'm going to switch to Maximum Quality. Then I'm going to record. When I do that the results here will be a 1920 by 1080 video. So keep that in mind if you're using the webcam to make content. If you're using another app to record look for similar options there. Also, for whatever App you're using look for the Webcam Option up here. For instance I can click there and I've got things like Portrait Mode. I've got Studio Lighting and I have the ability to remove the background. So a few options that will make recording better including Mic Mode. You can turn on Voice Isolation which may be better especially for video conferencing. 

But you've got another option. Your iPhone. Plug in your iPhone into your MacBook Neo. You can do this wirelessly as well but for best results plug it in. Then let's go, for instance, to Quick Time Player here and do a new movie recording. Instead of choosing the MacBook Neo's camera I can choose the iPhone Camera. Now it will switch to that and the iPhone's camera is much higher quality than the Neo's. So, use this if you're doing content creation and you've got your iPhone with you. Also just consider maybe using your iPhone to capture the video. That way you can get full 4K video using your iPhone's cameras. 

Now let's finish up by talking about the Trackpad and Keyboard. The trackpad is a mechanical keyboard but it's still very similar to the regular Magic Keyboard with haptic feedback. But a lot of people don't realize that even the most mechanical keyboard you can still go into System Settings and then you can go down to Trackpad. There's an option for Tap to Click. You turn that option On. You don't actually even need to press down on the trackpad. You just tap it and it counts as a click. A lot of Mac users have their MacBooks or desktop Mac setup this way anyway. When you do this it doesn't matter any longer that it's a mechanical trackpad because you're just tapping anyway.

Now as far as the keyboard is concerned hopefully you've got the nicer MacBook Neo that has Touch ID. If this is your first Mac with Touch ID you may want to note that you're not restricted to having simply one finger that is being used for Touch ID. You can add additional fingerprints. So, you may want to have your index finger. You may want to have your thumb. Maybe your other index finger. You can add a whole bunch. In addition you can add the same finger multiple times. So if you find you've added your index finger but sometimes it doesn't work, add your index finger again. Having it there twice will make it more likely to work 100% of the time. 

While we're talking about security go to Lock Screen. The settings I want you to look at here is Require Password After Screensaver Begins or Display is Turned Off. Now you may be tempted to have that set to, say, 5 minutes or 15 minutes or longer. But the thing about MacBooks is you often have them with you in public. They are easy targets for being stolen so you want to make sure that if somebody gets your MacBook they don't have an amount of time where they can actually access your stuff. Having set to Immediately means that as soon as you close your MacBook or have the Display go to sleep or the screensaver goes on you're going to need to use Touch ID again to authenticate. Somebody stealing your MacBook is going to be very unlikely to ever access anything on it. I usually have mine set to 5 seconds. There's really not much difference between Immediately and 5 seconds but if you're working with your MacBook and your Display goes to sleep or screensaver goes on the 5 seconds gives you a short amount of time where you can press the spacebar or move the trackpad so that you don't have to authenticate again. 

I hope you found these tips useful. Thanks for watching.