Posts By: Gary Rosenzweig

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.

With the new version of Pages you can now create linked text boxes to make complex page layout documents. The linking system works differently than in older versions of Pages, using colors and numbers to denote which boxes link and in which order. You can flow text across multiple boxes, and also on multiple pages. This feature is also in the iOS version of Pages, but with a slightly different interface.

The new versions of Pages, Numbers and Keynote introduce hundreds of new shapes that you can use in your projects. You can change the color of the shapes, resize them and even edit their lines and break them apart. They could be useful in a variety of documents, presentations and spreadsheets. This feature is also in the iOS version of Pages, Numbers and Keynote.

I was recently asked about tips for using ScreenFlow. That's the Mac app I use to record the MacMost episodes. It is a great app for screen capture and tutorial-building. It enables me to capture from my camera and the screen at the same time, even from my iPhone and iPad too. I can then edit right in ScreenFlow, which includes a bunch of tools useful specifically for screen tutorials. So watch me as I go through the editing process on a future episode.

Apple's new file system is a big part of the new macOS High Sierra and iOS 11. What is a file system and how is APFS different than the old Apple file system? What advantages will APFS bring to our Apple devices? Which devices will this affect and when? How will we upgrade our Macs, iPhones and iPads to APFS?

So want a new Mac, but are unsure if now is the right time to buy. Will Apple release a new model next week that makes your purchase obsolete? There are ways to check to see if it is likely that a new Mac is around the corner, and there are ways to protect yourself. But ultimately, it is always a risk as with any product on the market.

You can subscribe to Apple services like Apple Music as well as in-app services from various third-parties. You can see all of your reoccurring subscriptions in either iTunes on your Mac or in Settings on your iPhone or iPad. From there you can change the subscriptions to other plans offered, or cancel them. In many cases you can cancel a subscription but still use it until the next renewal date.

Apple released small updates to Pages, Numbers and Keynote this week. New features include a library of clipart, new preferences, and linked text boxes in Pages. But one notable feature was removed from Numbers.

You can customize the toolbar in the Finder and many apps. You can add buttons, spaces and other controls. Some apps have a large selection of buttons you can add. You can also revert to the default set easily. See what is available in the Finder, Mail, Pages and other apps.

Ever want to use your Mac’s desktop background in a project? You don’t have to dig around in system files to find it. Just go to System Preferences, Desktop & Screen Saver, Desktop and you’ll see the drop zone at the top left with the current desktop background, AKA wallpaper. You can drag any image into that to make it your Desktop background, but you can also drag the current background out to the Finder to get that image as a file. Choose any Apple Desktop image and whatever is in that drop zone can be dragged out to the Finder.

One formatting option missing in Mac mail is the ability to highlight text by adding a background color to a text selection. This is useful when you want to point out a passage in a response and is commonly using in Windows email clients. While there is no way to do it with standard text styling in Mail, you can create a custom style by copying and pasting an example from Pages, creating a style, and then applying that style later on in other messages.

Mission Control in macOS Sierra allows you to create multiple desktops with different windows on each. You can easily create these desktops and move between them with keyboard shortcuts. This allows you to go between apps and workspaces easily, saving you time and effort. You can also use full-screen apps as a desktop. This is handy for MacBook users in particular as screen space is limited.

I found out recently that on one major airline you can use your miles to buy in-flight Wi-Fi.

A free way to convert scanned images to text documents on your Mac is to use Google Drive and Google Docs. With any Google/Gmail account you can upload a PDF or image file to Google Drive, then request to open it in Google Docs. The result will be a OCR (optical character recognition) conversion from image to editable text. Then you can export the text back to your Mac.

So you are thinking of buying a new Mac and you are wondering how much memory to get. It is a tough decision to make, and really comes down to a matter of money. Lets look at factors that will help you decide if you should spend the extra money to get more RAM.

For writers, a good thesaurus can be more useful than a dictionary. Fortunately, your Mac has both. You can easily access the thesaurus while writing in Pages, Mail or almost any app. You can even have it appear above the dictionary.

The Slow Keys option will cause your Mac to wait for purposeful key presses before accepting input. This can help some users who have difficulty using keyboard. The option applies to modifier keys too, so each key needs to be pressed one at a time and held. You can also use this feature to give you audible feedback when you press a key.

You can drag the Spotlight window around the screen and put it anywhere you like. But if you want it back in its original upper-center position, it can be hard to get it just right. Click and hold the magnifying glass icon at the top right corner of the menu bar and the Spotlight window will pop back into its default location. You need to hold for almost 2 full seconds.

If something is wrong with your Mac, either you or the tech repairing your Mac will need to access the special diagnostics mode. You can do this by restarting your Mac and holding the D key. The results could give you some insight into the problem. See https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202731 for details.