Posts By: Gary Rosenzweig

While major new changes get all of the attention, here are 10 minor things that you may not have heard about, but could become your favorite new features in macOS Catalina. You can put Dark Mode on automatic, block email senders, use picture-in-picture with QuickTime Player, tint the color of your screen, and much more.

A new feature in iOS 13 and iPadOS is the ability to have Shortcuts trigger automatically, at a certain time of day, when you launch an app, change a setting or move to a new location. You can use this to make Shortcuts much more useful. Take a look at two quick examples. The first simply forces the Calendar to jump to the current day every time you open it. The second will display a special Reminders list when you turn on Do Not Disturb, but only if there is at least one item in that list.

When you buy a new Apple device, you can also purchase an extended warranty called AppleCare+. This not only covers the Mac, iPhone, iPad or other device for an extra year or two, but also adds accident protection and other benefits. With AppleCare+ you can replace a broken screen or other accident damage for a fee much less than the cost of an actual repair. You can also get additional theft or loss protection for iPhones. But is AppleCare+ worth the price?

With iOS 13 and iPadOS you can now swipe-type using the default standard keyboard. Apple calls it QuickPath and it can significantly speed up your typing on the tiny iPhone touch screen. You can also use it on the iPad, but you have to switch to the floating keyboard first.

A new release of Pages, version 8.2, includes a much-requested feature where you can set the default font for basic templates. This allows you to continue to use the Blank template in Pages, but with a font face and size set in preferences. The Body style will match your font and size, and other styles will use the font and a size of the appropriate scale to Body. Another new feature is a new View, Go To menu which is also in Keynote as Slide, Go To.

The new Markup tools in iPadOS look and work better than ever. You can use them to add lines, arrows, highlights, shapes, text and other things to your PDFs, images, screenshots and more. Learn how to access and use the new tools.

It can be annoying to have notifications appear at the top right corner of your screen while you are typing. Normally, you have to move the cursor to click on the Close button to dismiss those. However, you can build a simple JavaScript service in Automator to do it, and then use a keyboard shortut to trigger that service.

A new feature of the iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro is the ability to take better photos at night and in low light using a combination of techniques. Multiple cameras and used and many images are taken over a period of time, and then pieced together to create a brighter image with much more detail than can be done with a regular photo. Moving objects are handled without trails or streaking.

The new version of Safar in iPadOS (iOS 13) is now a desktop browser rather than a mobile browser. This means sites should look and work like they do on a Mac, not an iPhone. With this comes new features such as a download manager, zoom buttons, per-site settings, and one new feature that even Safari for Mac is missing.

So you may be noticing how almost every episode of the show looks a little different at the start. Sometimes the video introduction is good. Sometimes it is bad. Most of the time it is somewhere in between. I've become obsessed with getting it right. The video here shows 6 variations. Watch at the end when all 6 are side-by-side in a loop. I'm not done yet. Some of those episodes are yet to go up, as the whole Catalina release date has my whole schedule in chaos. But here is a run-down of these 6 variations and what is working and what is not. First, we have the <strong>Logitech Brio</strong>, a 4K (1080p really) webcam. I've been using this for a long while, but never happy with it. Look how washed out my skin is. The pixels are all mushy. I must do better. Next, I tried to use my trusty DSLR, my <strong>Canon T3i</strong>. It does 1080p and this may be the best of the bunch. The problem is there is no way to stream that into my Mac. I have to record to the SD card, film everything as best I can, then transfer via the card to the Mac. Doing it this way is a pain and while the image quality is great, the content will suffer as production never goes smoothly. Just to try it, I used my <strong>iPhone X</strong>. This was before I got the iPhone 11 Pro Max, but I don't think that would make a difference. The quality is definitely better than the Brio, but not as good as the T3i. And I have to record to the phone and transfer, which is a pain. OK, so I heard about the Elgato Cam Link 4K. It is a little USB device that takes HDMI in one end and outputs USB3 on the other. It turns any HDMI signal into a webcam. Yes! I wanted this for so long. Previous solutions just never worked. But what camera do I get to work with the Cam Link? My T3i can only be convinced to output sub-1080 on HDMI. I'd have to buy something new. I figured out the perfect camera, but stopped short of buying it because of the price. More on that later. Instead I got the <strong>Canon R800</strong>, a little camcorder that outputs 1080p.  It only cost me $159. But my first attempt at using it was very disappointing. It looks almost as bad as the Brio! However, there are lots of YouTubers using the R800 and their video looks good. And Elgato even has a test video where they use it, and that looks good. So I played with the settings and found if I turned off "Auto" and switched to "<strong>Highlights</strong>" it looks much better. It actually looks 1080p, unlike the first try. But the other issue may have been my lighting. I have a lot of little lights. I keep adding more to try to get it better. I decided to spend $60 and get some real studio lights. Big ones. That seems to help. So the last example is the R800 with <strong>better lighting</strong>. I'm still not super happy with it. If I have more lights, why does it kinda look dark? I think the key may be in the settings. I'll keep playing with it. It could also be that "highlights" mode is working with the bright white shirt in the example. Maybe I need to adjust the exposure in some way that I haven't discovered yet. Oh, so I mentioned my ideal camera. I figured out that the <strong>Sony A6400</strong> is probably what I should get . It is a mirrorless camera with a 4K video mode that works well with the Cam Link. Plus I think the reason the T3i works so well, even though it is the oldest piece of equipment here, is just the basics: lens size and sensor size. It simply has a bigger lens and larger sensor = more light + larger sensor pixels. At least that is my theory. So the A6400 would be a modern version of that capable of pumping 4K through the Cam Link and making things look ultra-professional. But at a cost: $1,000. So I'm going to stick with the R800 for now and plan on an A6400 for later. The A6400 is all over YouTube and being hailed by many as the perfect "YouTube camera," which fits with how I want to use it.

A new feature of iPadOS is the ability to control your iPad using a Bluetooth mouse. You can add a mouse as an assistive touch device in the accessibility settings and then you get a round cursor on the screen that you can mose with the mouse. You can click to simulate a tap at that location. You also get a menu that you can bring up to access things like Home and volume. There are a variety of ways to customize this feature.

iPadOS (AKA iOS 13) brings a ton of new features to your iPad and makes it behave more like a Mac. You can now switch between multiple slideover windows and have windows from the same app in a slideover. You can select, copy, paste and undo more easily when typing text. The Home screen can include both app icons and the Today widgets at the same time. You can swipe-type in a floating single-finger keyboard, add fonts, and use a column view and other new functions in the Files app.

A little-mentioned feature of iOS 13 and iPadOS is the ability to apply the same effects to videos as you can to photos. You can easily adjust light, colors, cropping, rotation and apply filters to entire videos, right in the Camera and Photos apps.

Couldn't wait to get outside and test out the 3 cameras and what they can do. Also: night mode.