MacMost: Archives

While Siri has brought speech commands to the iPhone 4S, Mac users have long had the ability to speak commands to your computers. Learn how to enable Speakable Items on your Mac, find out which commands work and how. You can also add custom commands and have your Mac speak to you.

iOS 5 for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad has a great set of accessibility features that can be useful for just about anyone. You can zoom in on the screen, change the font size for some apps, have your iPhone speak text on web pages and in documents, use multi-touch gestures with just one finger, and even set custom vibration sequences.

The launch of the iPhone 4S mirrored previous iPhone launches with long lines, sell-outs and broken sales records at AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. A reported 4 million units were sold over the weekend. The downside was slow and problematic activation for the new phones, with some people having to wait hours before they could use them.
In Apple’s quarterly report it showed new highs for Mac sales with almost 5 million Macs being sold in the last quarter. This is despite the sale of more than 11 million iPads, some of which may have been purchased instead of a new Mac.
Wall Street wasn’t impressed with Apple’s numbers. Even though they passed Apple’s own estimates, they missed the estimates of Wall Street analysts. This was mostly because of lower iPhone sales due to the fact that a new iPhone model wasn’t released until after the end of the quarter.

A classroom in West Chatham Elementary School in Pooler, GA needs two Mac minis. The students will use them to make podcasts, web sites and ebooks. Join MacMost in supporting this project.

“Our new Mac mini doesn’t have an optical drive. I can’t make the fun sing-along CDs for our road trips anymore!”
“Oh too bad.”

Reminders are calendar events that can be used as to-do items or alerts. They sync between your Macs and iOS devices. They can also be set as location-based alerts on the iPhone. You can use Siri to create new reminders on the iPhone 4S.

See how you can use iCloud to view the same contacts, calendars and bookmarks across you Macs and iOS devices. You can also work on Pages, Numbers and Keynote documents across iOS devices and access them on your Mac as well.

Siri is the new voice-controlled personal assistant in the iPhone 4S. Sir has a sense of humor. You can ask Siri some things and get some funny, weird or even bizarre answers. Watch to see 50+ examples of the funny things that Siri says.

Take a look at the new iPhone 4S. It has a faster processor, new antenna design, and new camera. It also allows you to mirror the screen through a cable or AirPlay to Apple TV 2. The biggest new feature may be Siri, the voice activated assistant. It even has a sense of humor.

A teacher in Clarksville, Tennessee wants to get an iPad for her second grade classroom. She has already identified several apps and other uses for the iPad that will enhance learning for her students in this high poverty area. And it looks like she is close to her goal. So join me in helping her get that iPad for her class. Join MacMost in supporting this project.

This week Apple pushed out more major updates than it has ever done before at a single time. On Wednesday, iCloud went live, and to support it Mac OS X 10.7.2 was released along with iOS 5 for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Then users were asked to switch their MobileMe accounts to iCloud, or establish a new free iCloud account. New versions of iTunes and iPhoto were sent yesterday as well to support iCloud and iOS 5. There were also new versions of Aperture and Xcode. A new update to Lion’s restore feature was also there, seemingly to support the new “Find My Mac” feature.
iOS 5 included much more than just iCloud support, of course. New features and standard apps were introduced for recent models of iOS devices. The new Reminders and Newsstand apps were added, as well as updates for the Music app (formerly the iPod app), Messages, Maps and Safari. In addition, Apple added more optional apps that you can download from the app store: Cards, Find My Friends and Airport Utility.

“I’ve hacked Time Machine to show files in the future as well as the past. According to our iPhoto collection we go to Hawaii next year.”

Take a look at the new features in iOS 5. New apps like Reminders and Messages add new functionality. Notifications now have a wider set of options. Twitter is built in to many apps. You can move and split the on-screen keyboard. You can sync with iCloud and use an iOS device independent of any computer.

A common troubleshooting technique is to reset your PRAM. This will occasionally clear up problems with your Mac. Learn about PRAM, what it is and how to reset it. Also learn about SMC.

Reflecting back on Steve Jobs' life, here are seven things that I admired about this self-made man. He was an innovator, improver, showman, and and enthusiast. We was also imperfect and uncompromising.

Here’s a school in a high poverty area of Chicago that has 30 old MacBooks. They use them every day. The problem is that a few of them are out of commission because the batteries are getting too old. Lets help them get new batteries so they can once again get full use out of these MacBooks. Join MacMost in supporting this project.

Apple Co-Founder, Chairman and former CEO Steven P. Jobs died yesterday at the age of 56. He was recognized as the driving force behind Apple’s first and latest decades of success.
High school friend Stephen Wozniak and Jobs founded Apple in 1976 producing the world’s first successful personal computer. Jobs went on to oversee the development of the Macintosh computer before leaving Apple in the 80s. During his absence he turned Pixar into the leading animated movie studio, later purchased by Disney. He returned to Apple in the 90s to push Apple to new heights with a string of popular products: the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad. Apple also changed the music and retail industries during that time with iTunes and Apple Stores.

Apple announced the new iPhone 4s. The new phone will include a faster processor, better camera and come with the ability to listen and respond to voice commands and take dictation. The new phone comes out on October 14. It will also be available on Sprint for the first time. iOS 5 and iCloud will come out on October 12 for some older iOS devices.

There are some odd and unusual things on your Mac that you can do with the Terminal. You can create banners, use your screen saver as your desktop background, look at interesting, daily calendars, and play hidden games.

If you want to view a folder full of photos in the Finder, you can do it using one of several Finder window views. You can also enlarge the icons, use Quick Look or Preview.