MacMost: Archives

While macOS Mojave brings lots of great new features, it also retires some. The Mail stationery templates are gone. Cover Flow view has been replaced with Gallery View in the Finder. Integration with Facebook and other social networks is gone, most likely for privacy reasons. Back to My Mac has been retired, but all sharing functions like Screen Sharing and File Sharing remain. Warnings that 32-bit apps will soon no longer work with macOS are just warnings, however. Those old apps still work in Mojave.

Version 5.2 of Numbers brings a new/old feature, Smart Categories. This is similar to the old Categories feature in Numbers prior to 2013, and similar to Pivot Tables in Excel. Using Smart Categories is relatively simple, however, as you simply group together similar rows and allows you to see totals, averages, counts and other data pertaining to those groups.

The new Voice Memos app in macOS Mojave allows you to quickly and easily record voice memos and any audio from your Mac's microphone. It keeps a small library of voice memos and lets you go back and append to them, trim them, and edit them. They sync over iCloud with the Voice Memos app on your iPhone and iPad so it is easy to record on one and edit and listen on the other. You can also export the memos as standard audio files.

A new article from CNBC may answer the question of what Apple is going to change for their new TV network content next year. It could simply be free, an added incentive to purchase an Apple TV, iPad or iPhone instead of the competition. (more...)

Learn how to use Siri Shortcuts to create a simple shortcut that allows you to ask a question, and then presents a random answer. The answer is spoken and both the question and the answer are then recorded into a text file on your iCloud Drive. You can use the pieces of this shortcut to build all sorts of useful things based on your needs.

A powerful new feature of macOS Mojave and iOS 12 is the ability to use your iPhone or iPad as a camera and capture images directly to your Mac. You can grab images right in apps like Preview, Pages, Mail and others. You can also scan multipage documents. Images skip being stored on your iPhone and go directly into the app on your Mac. However, using this feature requires the latest operating systems, recent hardware, and the right settings including two-factor authentication for your Apple ID.

Apple released the first minor update to iOS 12 today, fixing two bugs. The new version is available as part of the software updates on iPhones and iPads with iOS 12. You can wait for the notification, or go to Settings, General, Software Update. (more...)

The iOS Stocks app is now also available on the Mac with Mojave. You can track your stocks or search for them by symbol or name. You can view charts and news for each stock.

The companies that make up the Wi-Fi Alliance have revised the naming scheme that we all use to describe our Wi-Fi gadgets. The current top level, previously called 802.11ac will now simply be referred to as Wi-Fi 5. 802.11n is now Wi-Fi 4. Next year we will get a new standard with higher speeds called Wi-Fi 6, which was previously set to be called 802.11ax. (more...)

The Guide to macOS Mojave is a complete course with more than 60 video tutorials, more than 7 hours of video instruction. It begins by showing you the basics of managing your files and using the system, and then goes into detail about using Safari, Mail, TextEdit, Preview and other basic apps. This course includes lots of tips, tricks and techniques. 

In iOS 12 you can now turn on Do Not Disturb and have it automatically turn off using a variety of criteria. This solves the problem of turning on Do No Disturb and then forgetting to turn it off. You can choose to have it turn off automatically after an hour, later in the day, when you leave your current location, or at the end of a scheduled event in your calendar.

A new feature in macOS Mojave is the ability to edit and manipulate files directly in the Finder using Quick Actions. You can rotate and mark up images, mark up PDFs, trim video and audio, and even convert images to PDF files. In the future you will be able to do more with third-party extensions. You can currently build your own Quick Actions in Automator too.

New to macOS Mojave is the News app, a port of the iOS app that has been around for a few years. You can now access news articles from thousands of sources in an aggregated news feed, and read the articles in a distraction-free environment. You can also go directly to sources and topics, and search for specific articles. You can save articles for later reading or look through your history and share articles with others.

Three major universities today started allowing students to use their iPhone or Apple Watch as a student ID instead of a physical card. Students add the ID to their Apple wallet on their iPhone and can then access things like the dorms, library, lunch plans, and so on. (more...)

Learn how to build an iOS Siri Shortcut for taking a series of photos, combining them into a vertical strip, previewing the result, and sharing the resulting image. To accomplish this, we'll use the Take Photo action and the Combine Images action. We'll wrap Take Photo inside a simple Repeat look. Then we'll use the Quick Look action to see the result and share it. You can also use other actions to instantly send the image via Messages, Email or save to your Photos Library.

A new feature of macOS Mojave is Dark Mode. This favors light text on a dark background instead of dark text on a light background in the system and standard apps. You can see the change in the menu bar, app toolbars and sidebars, and even the backgrounds of apps like Contacts, Calendar, Reminders, Notes, Mail and Maps. Not all apps will change, especially third-party apps. Document content and images will not change either, as they keep using the true color specified in the document. You can also change the accent color used in standard interface elements throughout macOS.

Apple has released new operating systems and new versions of major apps in the last few weeks, and today they also gave some love to users of their pro audio apps Logic Pro and MainStage. Logic gets Smart Tempo, multi-track stems and numerical editing for Alchemy parameter. MainStage gets text notes, new MIDI input functions and a better metronome. (more...)

A new feature in macOS Mojave is the ability to temporarily group files on your Desktop into Stacks. These Stacks can contain files of a similar kind, or groups organized by date or tags. You can expand and collapse any Stack to see what is inside, and use the file icons inside the Stack like regular icons. Desktop Stacks can help if your Desktop gets messy and you need to find files right now, but don't have time to organize your Desktop files at the moment.

There are hundreds of keyboard shortcuts for Mac users. There are Mission Control shortcuts, Finder shortcuts, system shortcuts, application shortcuts and more. Many you can find by just looking through the menu bar for that application. You can find system ones by looking in the System Preferences under Keyboard.

The new Gallery View replaces Cover Flow View in macOS Mojave. It is useful for flipping though a folder full of images, PDFs or other document types when you need to find one using a large preview image. There are some customization options for Gallery View.