Posts By: Gary Rosenzweig

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.