Posts By: Gary Rosenzweig

Even if you don't have the bucks to buy someone a new MacBook Pro or iPhone, there are still plenty of greate gifts for Apple fans that are much cheaper. You may want to consider an Apple Battery Case, an Apple Pencil or a Series 3 Apple Watch, all which run under $200. You can also get gifts that aren't directly related to Apple but will run Apple services, such as an Amazon Echo to play Apple Music or a Roku TV box that plays Apple TV+. Other ideas include game controllers for Apple Arcade and two different types of Apple gift cards.

If you find yourself always changing the font and other styles in Pages after starting a new document, you may want to set up your own custom template to use as the default for new documents. This will save you time as every new document will begin with things set just as you like them. You can also set things like paragraph spacing and even headers and footers. While there is a new default font setting in Pages, creating your own blank template gives you far more control.

If you want to convert a group of JPG image files to a single PDF, you can use a variety of methods. Most people will tell you to use Preview. But there are other ways that are either simpler or more versatile. You can use a Quick Action to do it without even opening up an app. You can also use Pages and Keynote to create richer PDFs with border, text and other features. The best way may be to use Photos which offers a variety of printing options that can be used to create PDFs.

So I'm thinking about doing a video soon about alternate methods of organizing your photos in the Photos app. So many people are stuck just using plain albums. But you can use titles, descriptions and keywords and then build Smart Albums instead. Or use no albums at all and just keywords and searches. Let me show you these methods and I'd love your feedback and other suggestions.

Version 13.2 of audioOS for the HomePod included two new features that could be useful if your HomePod is in the bedroom. You can now ask Siri to play a collection of endlessly looping ambient sounds, such as Forest, Stream, Fireplace, Night, Ocean, Rain and White Noise. This effectively makes your HomePod a white noise machine, one with amazing speakers. You can also ask Siri to set a sleep timer for these sounds, or any music you are playing.

Conditional highlighting in Numbers is simply a way to change the style of a cell based on the contents of that same cell. However, by using a trick you can have conditional highlighting affect other cells or an entire row.

There is a place on your Mac and on your iOS device where you can view almost all of your subscriptions, including Apple TV+, Apple News+, Apple Music and subscriptions from any third-party apps you may have. You'll find your iCloud storage subscription in a different location. You can view, modify or cancel any of these subscriptions.

If you prefer to type instead of using the mouse and cursor you can manage your files and folders with the Terminal. You can use commands to list, open, rename, move and delete files. You can do nearly everything that you can do in the Finder, and some commands are even more powerful.

Been a while since I showed what equipment I'm using. Here are some details: <ul> <li>Neewer Ring Light Kit:18"/48cm Outer 55W 5500K Dimmable LED Ring Light</li> <li>Canon VIXIA HF R800</li> <li>Elgato Cam Link 4K</li> <li>AT2020 USB Cardioid Condenser Microphone</li></ul>

You can't copy and paste or print Reminders in macOS Catalina. However, with the help of a script you can get a Reminders list as text to be pasted into any app, printed, or sent as email. Learn how to create a Mac script in JavaScript (JXA) using Script Editor or Automator to get this important function back and have it available as an easy-access menu command.

With iOS 13 it is easy to use your iPhone as a scanner and scan single or multi-page documents. You can scan directly to iCloud Drive and then your documentd would be on your Mac without any additional steps. You can even scan while away from your home or office and they documents will end up in the same place with no extra effort. Your iPhone will flatten the pages and make adjustments automatically.

If you need to open, edit, create, save or collaborate using Microsoft Word .doc or .docx files, there are several ways to do it on your Mac. The best way, but one that will cost some money, is to simply get Word for Mac from the Mac App Store and pay for a Microsoft subscription. But many Mac users simply using Pages instead. You can also get a couple of good third-party free office apps that will handle Word. There are even more options that don't require downloading anythng at all.

Watch as I go through the specs of the new MacBook Pro and comment on what I like and don't like (but I like everything).

Apple announced the new 16-Inch MacBook Pro today. This replaces the 15-Inch model. You can now choose between the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro 13-Inch and MacBook Pro 16-Inch. For most people the choice will be clear with the MacBook Air being the cheapest and lightest, the 16-inch MacBook Pro being large and expensive but much more powerful, and the 13-inch MacBook Pro filling lots of needs in between. Watch as I break down the differences between these models.

Instead of using music from a collection or jingles from iMovie you can easily create your own video soundtrack in GarageBand. It only takes a few minutes to combine a drum track with other loops and then export some music that you can drag and drop into iMovie or Final Cut Pro. Then your video will have unique royalty-free music that fits the content.