Posts By: Gary Rosenzweig

When you view movie trailers on YouTube or other sites, you often have to sit through advertisements to see the trailer. This means you are watching an ad before you get to the trailer, which is essentially an ad itself. Apple gives you a site where you can watch high-definition trailers without ads. In addition, you can use Siri or Spotlight to go right to a trailer. On iOS, there is even an official Apple Movie Trailers app.

Over the last 24 hours Apple has released minor new versions of all of its major operating systems: macOS 10.14.3, iOS 12.1.3, watchOS 5.1.3, and tvOS 12.1.2. All updates will show up automatically as regular software updates on each device over the next day or so.

A common problem people have been reporting is the inability to reformat an APFS drive as something other than APFS. It appears in Disk Utility that you can only erase a disk and keep it as APFS. However, a simple switch in Disk Utility is preventing you from selecting the device rather than the volume. Once you select the volume, you can reformat however you like.

A tech news site is reporting that suppliers are still producing parts for Apple’s AirPower, despite Apple being quiet about its release. Apple first announced it in 2017 as a 2018 product, but pulled all information about it from their site a few months back. However, it looks like the charging mat may be here later this year.

An industry news site is claiming that touch panel suppliers are shipping new screens for a set of new entry-level iPads for release in the first half of this year. These could be a new iPad mini and basic iPad model.

You can use Dictation Commands to trigger a keyboard shortcut, menu item, or to even insert some text. You can do this while typing, or while dictating. You can set the spoken phrase to precede a dictation command to make sure the command only executes when you want it to.

GIF is an image file format that is commonly used to post images to the web, social media or messages. They are not ideal for photos, but are often used for graphics. Animated GIFs are commonly used to convey emotion on social media and messages. You can find free animated GIF images online and from tools right inside social media apps and messaging apps.

If you are typing one of those hard-to-spell words on your Mac, you can start typing the beginning of the word and then use fn+F5 (or just F5 depending on your keyboard settings) to see a list of words that start with those letters and choose one. For instance, type “maint” and then fn+F5 and then you can select maintenance.

When you save a file you get to assign a name and pick a location. The standard save dialog provides a lot of power user techniques that most people don't know about. You can harness the power of Finder windows to choose a location, you can use keyboard shortcuts to jump to locations and cancel. You can click on existing files to inherit the same name.

Apple released new iPhone battery cases for the XS, XS Mac and XR models. These cases feature a sizable battery as part of the back of the case, giving you extra hours of battery life for those that need it. They cost $129. (more...)

Many apps will give you alerts that appear in the upper right corner of your Mac screen. You can set whether these alerts need you to click on them to dismiss, or they dismiss themselves automatically, or they don't appear at all. The settings for this are in System Preferences, under Notifications.

The DuckDuckGo search engine started using Apple Maps in its search results today. Previously it used OpenStreetMap, Google, Bing and other solution to display locations. DuckDuckGo cited privacy as the primary reason they chose to go with Apple’s solution. The search engine’s main feature is a commitment to user privacy. (more...)

You can switch a text selection to use all uppercase letters, or just capitalize the beginnings of words, by using a style change rather than retyping the words. This makes it easy to try different capitalization options and always be able to switch back to your original text. You can also display text as Small Caps, which uses uppercase letters of different sizes to show which letters are really uppercase. This also works in Numbers and Keynote.

A Japanese rumor site reported today that suppliers are mentioning Apple may be looking at developing a new iPod Touch. The current model is from 2015 and at $199 is the cheapest way to get an iOS device. However, while it supports iOS 12, it may be getting too old to support future versions of iOS. (more...)

If you are an artist or photographer you may be asked to submit a PDF to schools or galleries. You can create a nice PDF portfolio using Pages and simply placing images on layout pages along with borders and text boxes. You can even include an information or bio page. Then just export as a PDF. The result is much better than just converting image files to PDFs.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the high-end 2019 iPhone could feature three cameras on the back to match some of the high-end Android phones already on the market. The current iPhone models already have two cameras on the front, a standard camera and an infrared one for Face ID and Portrait mode photos. The back has high resolution and telephoto cameras. The new camera could potentially be a wide-angle lens. (more...)

Here is a cheat sheet to help you master the gestures you need to know on the home screen and when inside an app.

Email signatures are easy to set up so that you can have your name and other information automatically displayed at the bottom of any email you compose. You can also add multiple email signatures and assign them to different email accounts. You can set a signature to use as your default, or change your signature each time you compose a new message.

When you try to open a file from inside an app, you can single-click and select files just like in the Finder. You can also press the spacebar to view the file contents in a Quick Look window. This can help you figure out which file you want when the file name isn’t enough.

FileVault is a feature of macOS that offers full-disk encryption for your Mac. This protects your files if someone were to steal your Mac. Without FileVault, someone with possession of your Mac's hard drive could view the data in your files. With FileVault, that data is encrypted and can't be read. It is unlikely that you will need FileVault, but it is still recommended if you are using a portable MacBook that could easily be stolen. Some companies also have policies that force employees to use disk encryption.