Posts By: Gary Rosenzweig

The Notes app in El Capitan adds all sorts of new features such as checklists, styles and attachments. You can import photos, documents and other files into a note. You can even add web and map links. A new media browser in Notes allows you to view all of the items attached to all of your notes.

A new feature in Safari for El Capitan is the ability to save web pages you frequently visit as a pinned tab. Pinned tabs will always appear to the left side of the Safari tab bar as small icons. You can access them like other tabs, but they will automatically appear on any new Safari window you create. If you click on an external link in a pinned tab, the other site will open in a new tab. Plus, pinned tabs are persistent across all windows, matching the same page and page position.

If you ever lose the cursor on your screen, El Capitan makes it easy to find. Just move rapidly back and forth using your mouse or trackpad and the cursor will increase in size allowing you to spot it.

We thought that instead of writing a beginners book on El Capitan, why not do what we do best and create videos! So we’ve created The Video Guide For El Capitan. We put together 21 videos with more than 3 hours of instruction, and made it super-easy to get by putting it in the Mac App Store.

This is a great way for beginners to get to know Mac OS X, and for casual users to dig deeper into the features. The videos are unique, not something that can be found anywhere else. The app lets you jump easily from video to video and you can resize the window for better viewing, even going full screen.

A new feature of Photos in El Capitan allows third-party developers to build extensions. These extensions can add more features to the Photos editing tools and other parts of the Photos app. It is early, so only a few extensions exist, but developer will undoubtedly be adding more soon.

El Capitan adds several new features to Spotlight searches, including the ability to search for weather, sports information and stock prices. You can also search your own files using natural language such as 'documents I modified yesterday.' You can customize what shows up in Spotlight searches in System Preferences.

OS X El Capitan allows you to move the Spotlight window, unlike Yosemite which kept it locked in the center of the screen. Use Command+space to bring up spotlight. Then You can drag the very top of the window, or the Spotlight icon at the top left corner to move the window. This is handy for getting it out of the way when you are trying to refer to something else on the screen. You can also drag the top or bottom of the window to make it larger or smaller.

Mission Control gets a makeover with El Capitan. It is now easier than ever to use multiple desktops and full screen apps. A new feature of El Capitan is the ability to split a screen between two apps. Learn how to use Mission Control to become more productive.

The News app is a new app from Apple for the iPad and iPhone that comes with iOS 9. It aggregates news articles from channels and topics that you choose and shows them in a format that is generally more readable than the web. You can customize your sources, save favorites and view your history.

With iOS 9 you can save a copy of a web page to iBooks as a PDF document. While viewing a page in Safari, tap the share/actions button at the top of the screen. Then look for the Save PDF to iBooks button. This could be a handy way to save a long article or Wikipedia page for offline viewing.

There are hundreds of keyboard shortcuts for Mac users. There are Mission Control shortcuts, Finder shortcuts, system shortcuts, application shortcuts and more. Many you can find by just looking through the menu bar for that application. You can find system ones by looking in the System Preferences under Keyboard.

A new app in iOS 9 called iCloud Drive gives you the ability to access all of the files in your iCloud Drive. Even files for apps such as Preview which has no equivalent in iOS can be accessed. The iCloud Drive app acts as a simple viewer for images and PDFs, and can show previews of other document types. You can then share those documents with other apps on your iPhone or iPad.

The right side of the Dock can be used for easy access to files and folders. By putting aliases to folders on the right side, you can have access to the files in them without needing to open a Finder window. You can set these folders to appear in three different formats. It is important to understand that these are shortcuts to the files, and not the files themselves.

A new feature in iOS 9 for the iPad is the ability to use the onscreen keyboard as a trackpad. If you tap the keyboard with two fingers you can drag the cursor around the screen to easily place it in text. You can also tap, wait, and then drag to select text. Other similar gestures allow you to select a word, sentence or paragraph. Using this feature is tricky and can take some practice.

If you want to see how many photos are in your library in the new Photos app, start by bringing up the left sidebar if you don’t already see it (View, Show Sidebar). Then select Photos, the top item. Then use Window, Info (or Command+I) to see the total number of photos and the space used by your entire library.

A new feature in iOS 9 is the ability to add sketches to notes in the Notes app. Apple includes a variety of simple drawing tools such as three types of pens, colors, an eraser and a versatile ruler for drawing straight lines. You can export the sketches from your notes and even send them in messages and save them to your Camera Roll. Note: It seems this only works on more recent iPads and iPhones.

Apple announced a new iPad Pro with a 12.9-inch screen and a companion keyboard and stylus. A new Apple TV will include a touch-capable remote and also Siri voice commands. Developers will be able to make apps for the new Apple TV. New iPhone models will include better cameras and force-sensitive touch screens.

A new feature for iPad users with iOS 9 is the ability to view two apps at once on the screen. You can use the Slide Over feature to bring an app up on the right side of the screen while pausing the main app. You can use the Split View feature to have two apps take up half of the screen each and interact with both. You can use the Picture In Picture feature to keep video on the screen while switching to other apps. These new features only work on the latest iPad models.

This is one of those tips where if you are 20 or younger it is probably obvious, but if you are older it may have never occurred to you. You can use Emoji symbols in folder names on both OS X and iOS. With iOS it is easy to switch keyboards while typing an app folder name. With OS X you need to use the Character Viewer or copy and paste an emoji from a document. Either way, it can help your folders stand out and make them easier to find.

You can insert a simple table of contents into your Pages documents. It will pick up the headings of your document and automatically update the table as you change the text in the headings or add new text which shifts the page numbers. You can style the table of contents in different ways.