MacMost: Archives

For almost three decades Photoshop has been the king of image editing apps on the Mac. But it is clearly a professional tool, with a professional price and learning curve. The Photos app that comes with your Mac has a great set of image adjustment functions that meets the needs of most users. And Preview has some image editing tools too. But what if you need more? Here is a list of apps you can get directly from developers or the Mac App Store that won’t break the bank. These developers come out with new versions all the time, so be sure to check the sites for the latest prices, features and options.

Amazon has announced that Apple Music will be available through their Echo home devices starting the week of December 17. (more...)

HTML, Hypertext Markup Language, is the primary code behind most web pages. Hypertext is the idea that set can contain links to other documents. A markup language is one that includes instructions for styling, links and media along with text. HTML was created by scientist Tim Berners-Lee and has grown quite a bit more complicated over the years.

It can be tricky to get Flash content on a webpage to work in Safari. If you need Flash, make sure you get it only from the official Adobe site. Then only update Flash from System Preferences, never follow a link to update or install Flash. To use Flash, sometimes you get a button to activate the content, and other times you need to turn on Flash for a website in Safari's preferences.

A company is offering a service to the public that unlocks the iPhone if you forgot your password or the owner is deceased. This expensive ($3,900) service may use the hardware box talked about earlier this year that is available to law enforcement to break into iPhones. (more...)

You can bring video into GarageBand as a track and then use that video to sync your music, recording or sound effects to the action in the video. The preview window lets you operate with precision. You can then export the result as audio to bring into your video editing software, or export both the video and audio as a finished product.

Pages, Numbers and Keynote for Mac share a common code base and can support many of the same elements, like text boxes, shapes, images, tables and more. You can copy and paste elements from one into the other. This can be handy when you wish to include tables or charts from Numbers in a presentation of word processing document. Or, when you want to take a slide from Keynote and use it in a spreadsheet or Pages document.

A class-action suit that started in 2011 may be moving forward in the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether Apple’s App Store is a monopoly. Developers and publishers can only distribute paid apps through Apple, and usually charge 30 percent to do so. (more...)

You can use the Shortcuts app on your iPhone or iPad to create scripts that calculate the results of complex formulas. In this example, we'll ask for the inputs needed for the simple physics position formula: time, initial position, initial velocity and acceleration. We'll then calculate the position of the object at that time. Unfortunately, there is no simple way to process a formula in Shortcuts yet, but we can use a series calculator functions to do it.

Here are some suggestions for gifts for Apple fans. You can buy some pricey accessories like AirPods, an Apple TV or Apple Pencil. You can also find Appel Watch bands at almost any price, as well as battery and charging accessories at a variety of prices too.

You can send a control signal through your AirPods by double-tapping them. These signals can pause your audio, advance to the next track, or activate Siri. You can customizing what tapping each AirPod does in your Bluetooth settings on your iPhone.

If your Dock gets cluttered with minimized windows on the right side, then you may want to switch to let windows minimize into the application icon instead. You can always find minimized windows in the Dock or the Window menu. You can also start using Tabs to reduce the number of windows on the screen.

Apple stock has dropped almost 25 percent over the last few weeks due to news that suppliers of iPhone parts have cut production, leading analysts to think that iPhone demand is slowing. In addition, Apple announced that they will no longer be breaking out numbers for product sales categories in their quarterly reports, a move not received well on Wall Street. (more...)

You can search a specific website using Safari's address field and Quick Website Search. Make sure this feature is enabled and then you can check the list of sites already added. You can add most other sites by performing a native search at that site. Once added, when you type the domain name of that site and a search term you then have the option to search that site directly instead of through a search engine. This works on Mac and iOS.

Apple sent out a mass email today promoting a “four-day shopping event” starting this Friday, traditionally known as “Black Friday” in the U.S., when retailers have special sales to begin the holiday shopping season. (more...)

The Control Center on iOS is very useful, yet many people don't use it to quickly access common functions. There are many buttons that you can add to Control Center that add even more. If you have an iPhone or iPad you should take the time to look at all of the buttons to get the most from your device.

Apple updated Final Cut Pro to 10.4.4 and Motion and Compressor as well. The biggest new feature is allowing third-party services like Frame.io and Shutterstock hook directly into FCP to add new features. For instance, Frame.io comments can appear directly in the timeline and Shutterstock media can be searched right inside the app. (more...)

The term Bandwidth is used to describe data transferred over time. However, it is often misused to define a limit on total data transfer. Bandwidth is measured in bits per second, usually using kilo or mega-bits to make the numbers more reasonable. Marketing departments often distort bandwidth to only show maximum or one-sided numbers.

Some Siri functions could be available offline in the future. Apple Insider discovered a patent filing that suggests Apple is working on this. Currently, you need an Internet connection to use Siri on your iPhone, iPad, Mac or HomePod. (more...)

The Open With command makes it possible to open a file with something other than the default app. But if you commonly need to do this with a specific app there are three ways to make it much easier to open the file with that app instead of the default. You could just drag it to the Dock icon for the app, add the app icon to the Finder toolbar, or create a keyboard shortcut.