MacMost: Archives

Live Loops is a new feature of GarageBand for iOS that makes it easy and fun to create music. You can use one of the provided set of loops, or full in cells in a grid with recordings or loops to create your own. Then you can play Live Loops in real time and record. When you are done, you can go into the normal GarageBand interface to add more or fine tune.

Find and replace is useful tool for writers, editors and anyone who works with large word processing documents. You can use a variety of special find features in TextEdit to refine your searches. If you know the right techniques, you can swap words and search for patterns. In Pages searching isn't as powerful, but Microsoft Word has even more advanced features.

Perhaps one of the most useful things you can add to your app is a clipboard history manager. Take a look at two free apps that allow you to recall multiple clipboard items, not just the current text in the clipboard buffer. Any Mac user should find Jumpcut or ClipMenu useful additions to their computer.

Apple released a new free app for iPhone and iPad this week that allows music creators to easily capture new ideas. You can sign or play an instrument and record it. You can add backing bass and drums and play around with the song. You can then export to Garageband or upload to a number of different places.

Deleting a file from iCloud Drive means that it is deleted across all of your devices. A copy will remain in the trash of the Mac you are using. But even if you empty the trash there is a way to recover the files using iCloud.com.

If an app isn't in your Dock, you can easily find it and launch it one of several common ways. You can look for it in the Applications folder, use LaunchPad or search with Spotlight. If you use an app often, add it to the Dock to easier access.

Learn how to create custom icons using on the Finder and Preview. You can make a folder or file stand out in a few simple steps with a custom icon.

Both Google and Microsoft offer voice assistant apps that you can download for your iPhone or iPad for free. Google's app offers some advantages over Siri, but neither app can match Siri because of Siri's connection to your built-in iPhone apps.

The Print function in the El Capital Mac Calendar app offers a ton of options. Some options provide nice printed versions of your calendars or event lists. But you can also print to a PDF and use the text in those PDFs to do things like get a list of your upcoming events.

Is it time for a new Mac, iPhone or iPad? The answer depends on what you use your device for and your budget. But Apple does give us some clues as to which devices it thinks are too old on a few web pages. Ultimately, you've got to decide when to get a new Mac. How old do you think is too old?

Pages, Word and some other apps allow you to see what would otherwise be invisible characters like spaces, tabs and paragraph breaks. You can use these visual symbols to edit your documents with more precision.

In addition to sending email 'to' someone, you can also include additional email addresses in the CD and BCC fields. CC is a way to send copies of your messages to people that need to know the information, but don't need to respond. BCC is a good way to send messages to people without sharing their email address with others.

If a menu item in an app doesn't have a keyboard shortcut, you can always add one through System Preferences. You can also change keyboard shortcuts for menu items that already have one. This is a built-in system function so it works with almost any app.

You can create recurring calendar events on your Mac and the latest version of iOS. For instance, you can create an event that will automatically recur on the second Tuesday of every month.

The Photos app makes it easy to crop your pictures. Cropping is non-destructive, so you can always revert to the original. You can create a custom crop or select from specific ratios. You can then export the photo at a specific pixel size if needed.

You can use various websites and apps to test your home broadband speed. Compare that to the speed you are supposed to be receiving from your provider and call them if you see a problem. You may be able to get better speeds without spending anything extra.