MacMost: Archives

iOS 6 should be launching this month for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users. We know for sure that it will include a new Maps app with turn-by-turn spoken directions, Facebook posting directly from the Camera app and others, shared Photo Streams, Passbook, Facetime over cellular networks, Mail VIPs, and Do Not Disturb mode. Which new feature are you most looking forward to?

Here are three key techniques that everyone who surfs the web on their Mac should know. But using tabs, browsing history and page search you can move around quickly and find what you want.

Most Mac users use the Dock many times per day. So it would be worth the time to optimize your Dock. Add your most commonly used apps and remove others. Arrange your apps to make them easy to find. Add folders and files to the right side and set them to appear the way you want. Change your Dock settings to get the most from it.

We thought that instead of writing a book on Mountain Lion, why not do what we do best and create videos! So we’ve created The Video Guide To Mountain Lion. We put together 20+ videos with more than 2 hours of instruction, and made it super-easy to get by putting it in the Mac App Store.

This is a great way for beginners to get to know Mac OS X Mountain Lion, and for casual users to dig deeper into the features. The videos are unique, not something that can be found anywhere else. The app lets you jump easily from video to video and you can resize the window for better viewing, even going full screen.

Even if you are proficient in using OS X, you may want to consider recommending this to friends as a good way to jump in and learn more.

“Let’s check my news feed. Civil wars, presidential election, Mars rover. What do you have?”
“The dock connector on the next iPhone might be a little smaller.”

Lion and now Mountain Lion have changed the way commands in the File menu work. While many people are having difficulty adjusting, the new commands actually offer more functionality and make it easier to rename, move and duplicate files while working with the document inside an app.

While iMovie only lets you include one picture-in-picture at a time, you can use Keynote to merge multiple videos. The technique involves putting many videos on one slide, and then exporting the presentation as a new video. You can use this to create a variety of effects.

The new Notes app in Mountain Lion lets you create and view small notes. These are also synced across devices using either iCloud or another cloud-based service that supports notes.

38% still had trouble telling the twins apart, even after one started carrying an iPhone and the other started carrying a Samsung phone.

You can grab a small portion of a web page and use that to create a Dashboard widget. This gives you easy access to information from often-updated web sites. You can view the widget on your Dashboard screen or mixed in with your desktop.

A collection of miscellaneous tips on using Mac OS X Mountain Lion. Learn how to Save As, how to move files while working on them, how to set up multiple Time Machine drives, how to tweet from the Notifications Center, how to reorder the Finder sidebar, how to easily encrypt an external drive, how to email a web pages as a PDF and how to use LaunchPad to search for and launch apps. Also, find out the truth about pinning Notes.

With Safari 6 and Mountain Lion, users can get system notifications from web pages. Some simple JavaScript can be used for web developers to enable and use these notifications. You must first ask for permission to send notifications to the user, and then can trigger notifications. You can react to the user clicking on them as well. However, they only work while the web page is present.

Yes, you can find old-school RPG games on iOS. Avadon: The Black Fortress is a fine example. Top-down 2D graphics, huge maps, inventory system, turn-based combat, and a long story told by countless NPCs that you encounter are all there. With so many point-and-click games masquerading as RPGs in the app store, it is nice to find something that has real depth to it.

“I love my new iPad. It is so tiny and light! I’ll never go back to a laptop again. Now I just need to get a cover, a case, a keyboard and a stand for it.”

Mountain Lion adds the ability to recognize senders of email as VIPs. Once you indicate that someone is a VIP, their email will also appear in a special inbox just for them. You can view all VIP email at once, or just one VIP, or your regular inbox as before. You can also customize Mail so it only notifies you when you get a new email from a VIP, not just everyone.

You can represent specific times and time durations in cells in iWork Numbers. You can format the cells to display the times and dates in a variety of ways. You can perform calculations on both and get intelligent results, such as the difference between two times.

A few simple techniques can help you secure your iCloud account and prevent someone else from gaining access to it. Use secure passwords, set up better security questions and answers, make sure your linked accounts are also secure, and be sure to back up your Mac!

Apple news this week was dominated by a Wired reporter’s story of how his iCloud, Amazon, Twitter and Gmail account were all compromised because of the way he had the four tied together. Key to this situation were the fact that Amazon shows the last four digits of your credit card, and Apple allowed those digits to be used for over-the-phone account recovery. Both of those holes have now been plugged by those companies.
The compromise highlighted other issues, such as the importance of backing up your Mac. Look for a MacMost video tomorrow on how to avoid problems like this by using several simple security measures.

“Hello dear. I’m working late today. Don’t know when I’ll be home.”
“I don’t think you understand what FaceTime is.”

The new Reminders app lets you create quick little notifications to remind you to do things at specific times, locations, or just to add to your to-do list. The reminders sync with iCloud to your other Macs and iOS devices.