Posts By: Gary Rosenzweig

After updating to macOS Catalina, old 32-bit apps will not longer work. If you have an old 32-bit app, then before updating, you should update your app or switch to a new one. Most apps have newer versions that professionals should consider buying. If you are using the app for casual purposes, then consider getting a modern alternative to apps like Microsoft Word or Adobe Photoshop. These will be cheaper or free, and will probably be much better than using an old outdated pro app. You can also keep an old Mac around to run 32-bit apps. Experts can partition their drive, use an external drive, or a virtual machine to run Mojave or earlier in some situations.

You can use more than one microphone or input device with GarageBand on your Mac. Instead of buying more hardware, you can configure your Audio MIDI Setup utility to create an aggregate device that treats each mic like a track in a single input. Then you can set up multiple tracks in GarageBand to use those tracks so each mic records to a different track.

When you use a Finder window to search for files, you won’t get results in the System or top-level Library folder. But you can add these by adding the criteria “System files” and “are included.” You will most likely have to choose “Other” as the criteria and then search for “System files” to add it.

You can add captions to your photos right in the Photos app if you use the built-in Markup extension. You can add text and provide contrast between the text and the image. You can also add speech bubbles, lines and other elements. You can also do this to image files using Preview.

Apple just dropped new versions of the three iWork apps, both for Mac and iOS. Here's a quick video to go through the major new stuff. Nothing Earth-shattering, but some things we may find useful. Here are handy links to the new features pages: <a href="https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207243" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Pages</a>, <a href="https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207244" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Numbers</a>, <a href="https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207247" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Keynote</a>.

Apple updated Pages, Numbers and Keynote to dot-one versions with new features for macOS and iOS. The updates are available for free in the app stores.

Here are 50 shortcuts that will make it quicker and easier to navigate around web pages and tabs. Learn how to use your keyboard to move around on a page, find information, and jump to different pages and tabs. Also find out about ways to click on links with modifier keys to open them in different ways and how to drag tabs and downloads.

In the market for new speakers for your Mac mini, Mac Pro, or maybe even for something better for your MacBook or iMac? I needed to replace my aging speakers and did a bunch of research before going for the Logitech Z625. I'm really happy with them so far. These are my first speakers that allow me to use the optical connection on my Mac pro. I almost bought way more expensive ones, but I'm happy I went this route as they are definitely an upgrade over my old speakers. 

Apple released public beta versions of their two main operating systems today. The developer betas have been available since the Worldwide Developers Conference earlier in the month.

Mail rules in the Mail app on your Mac are robust and powerful but they no longer work well in a world where we get email on multiple devices. Instead, use iCloud email rules, or filters you can set on your email server. These rules will be applied on the server before the messages get to yoru devices, so they will work properly and consistently.

The new iPod Touch is a modest update, but it does mean continued support from Apple for the foreseeable future. In a world with more capable iPhones, what are some good reasons to desire an iPod Touch? It could be a nice complement to a work-provided phone, a pre-phone gadget for a child, or a dedicated streaming music device. It can even be a decent alternative to a point-and-shoot camera, though many will disagree.

You can see Recent Items in the Apple menu, when you Control+click on an app in the Dock, and in File, Open Recent in most apps. If you want to increase the number of items listed for a longer history, you can se it in System Preferences, General, Recent items. The lists won’t grow beyond their current size right away, but will expand as you open more items.

It is fairly easy to use a SUMIF function to find a total for rows that meet a condition. But there is no easy way to get the total for rows inside a range of dates. By using extra hidden columns, you can easily mark rows depending on whether they are in a date range, and then use SUMIF to get the total. Getting the maximum value in that range is a little trickier, but can be done with an additional column and the MAX function.

A lot of videos on YouTube use text-to-speech for narration, instead of a human voice. If you want to create that without any special software, it is easy to have your Mac speak something and then save that to a text file. Then you can drag and drop it into iMovie or another app for use. Oh, and BTW, you can type "say -v ?" in Terminal to see a list of all of the voices you have.

When macOS Mojave included the News, Home, Stock and Voice Memos apps for the first time, a lot of people rejoiced that these standard iOS apps could finally be used on a Mac. But the results were a little disappointing as the apps lacked the look, feel and often features of standard Mac apps. But Craig Federighi, the head of software at Apple, admits that they know about these shortcoming and are planning on fixing them.

If you want to set a custom chime on your Mac you can do so by setting a crontab with the Terminal. You can set it to chime any any interval you wish. It can play a system sound, custom sound, or speak the time in a number of voices. You can even have it only work between certain hours of the day.

Here are some useful tips for getting even more from your iCloud service. You can backup and sync photos from cameras using just your iPhone, create family Calendars and shared Notes, you can even add funds to your Apple account so you don't have to pay a few dollars every month.

A new feature added to Dropbox is the ability to set files or folders to be Online-only. The ideal use for this would seem to be archiving your old files to Dropbox instead of vulnerable local hard drives. While it works for that, the process is rather clunkly, forcing you to set and reset an archive folder to be Online-only and also minding your settings on all of your devices as you add files to Dropbox.

It can be difficult to get text to look good in iMovie since you can only choose from a limited number of title options. But you can use a graphics app or Keynote to create any text you want, and then overlay that text on your video. By copying a frame of your video, you can adjust the text to look good in Keynote, and then export just the text as a transparent image. This text can fit the video perfectly, or be used as a resizable and moveable element to position in iMovie.

The Dashboard, a feature that showed widgets of information over the Desktop or on a deparate space, will no longer be part of macOS start with Catalina later this year. The feature has been around since OS X Tiger in 2005, but was depreciated in Yosemite where it was turned off by default. Some of the same widgets are now available in Notifications Center in recent versions of macOS.