Posts By: Gary Rosenzweig

The new version of Keynote allows for expanded use of the canvas workspace, the area outside of the visible slide. You can use this area to store items that you don't want people to see, but may want to add back to the slide later. You can also use the canvas to better orient and set up your animations that start or end outside of the slide.

In iTunes on your Mac you have a powerful equalizer that you can customize for music playback. You can choose from presets or create your own and save them. You can also set the equalizer for specific songs or groups of songs. You can use pre-defined equalizer presets on your iPhone or iPad.

Users who are new to Mac often don't know about Spotlight, or think it is just a way to search for files by name. You can use spotlight to search for files by name and content and preview the contents before you open the file. You can also go to the file instead of opening it. Spotlight will also find other items like dictionary definitions, email messages, images and more. You can use Spotlight to do mathematical calculations, unit and currency conversions. One thing that many people use Spotlight for is a quick and easy app launcher.

If you have a large table with some duplicate rows in a spreadsheet, you can find them by sorting and using a formula to identify duplicate rows. If you need to merge the data in duplicate rows, you can use a formula for that too. You can then sort and delete those rows easily, saving hours of manual work.

If you are using iCloud Drive Documents & Desktop, then all of the files you put in those folders are uploaded to iCloud. If you have projects that you would like to only be stored locally, you can create your own folders in your Home folder for these projects. It is a good idea to create one Local Documents folder and arrange those files in there. This can come in handy for those that use large files where uploading to iCloud for those files is an issue.

If you need to see invisible files in a folder in the Finder, you don’t need to do anything except use a simple keyboard shortcut. Just type Shift+Command+. (period) and the invisible files in all Finder windows will be revealed. You can do it again to return to normal and hide them.

The menu bar icons on the right side of your screen are added there by System Preferences, system extensions and apps. You control what is there by looking at those various sources and switching them on or off in the preference screen or app that owns the icon. You can move them around by dragging with the Command key held down. Order can be important as the leftmost icons may not be visible when running some apps.

If you look on the back of your iPhone, iPad or Mac, you will see some tiny text and some symbols. There are usually just a statement of where the device was made, government regulatory numbers, and symbols from different regulatory agencies. See what can be found on a 2016 iPhone, iPad and MacBook Pro. You can use the FCC numbers to look up interesting public information about your device.

In January 2005, Apple introduced a product that was notable not for what it had, but for what it didn’t have. It didn’t have a screen.

The way you access most commands in apps on your Mac is to use the Menu Bar. Unlike on Windows, the menu bar stays at the top of the screen at all times, but changes depending on which app you are using. The menus and commands change to reflect the capabilities of the app. You can access these commands with clicks, find them with the Help menu, and learn the keyboard shortcuts as you use them. Sometimes menu bar items are inactive because they can't be used at the moment.

You can connect a variety of standard wireless Bluetooth devices to your Mac, like headphones, speaker systems, keyboards, mice and trackpads. Setting up a new Bluetooth device requires that you look at the documentation that came with the device. Every device has a slightly different way to start the pairing process. On the Mac side, you use System Preferences to recognize and connect to the device.

LaunchPad is a great app launcher, allowing you to type a few characters and hit Return to launch any app on your Mac. But it is hampered by the fact that you need to use the mouse or trackpad to start it from the Dock. To add a keyboard shortcut, go to System Preferences, Keyboard, Shortcuts, Launchpad & Dock.

You can rename a file many different ways on a Mac. In the Finder, you can click the file name after a file is selected, press the Return key, or choose File, Rename. You can also rename files in the app that you are using to view or edit it. You can click on the name in the title bar or choose File, Rename. You can rename files in the Finder or an app and the other will understand the change and follow along without a problem.

I thought I'd share with you the exploration process as I start putting together one of my videos. I had an idea to create an episode on customizing shapes in Pages, but I hadn't played around with that feature yet. So I recorded my screen and talked as I was experimenting.

Apple has an official way to sell your old Mac and get an Apple gift card or cash. You can start at the Apple site and use their official buy-back partner to sell your Mac. You get a price estimate based on your Mac model and condition. If a model is too old or not working, you can also send it in for recycling.

You can use the address bar in Safari to search with your default search engine. In Safari Preferences you can set this to Google, Yahoo, Bing or DuckDuckGo. But you can browser to any search engine you want and use it outside of the address bar. You can also set your default search engine to almost any other site using Safari extensions.

One person, one Apple ID. That’s a simple rule that leads to harmony in the Apple ecosystem. All too often I see people breaking this rule. They will share an Apple ID with another person, or have multiple IDs themselves.

The Dock is one of the primary elements of the macOS user interface. You can use it to launch apps. You can customize which apps appear in the Dock and in what order the appear. You can also play files and folders on the right side of the Dock. You've got several preferences you can set to change the Dock's appearance.

A new feature in Pages, Numbers and Keynote is the Preferences screen for Auto-Correct settings. You can customize things like automatic smart quotes and spell correction on a per-app basis. You can also add to a list of automatic text replacements and ignored spelling words for each app.

When you have a lot of tabs open in Safari, it is handy to be able to move through them using Control+Tab and Shift+Control+Tab.