Posts By: Gary Rosenzweig

When you buy a USB Flash Drive, also called a Jump Drive, Thumb Drive, USB Stick or one of many other names, it usually comes formatted for Windows computers. If you plan to use the drive only for your Mac, then you can easily reformat it in Mac OS Extended format using Disk Utility. Flash Drives also sometimes come with specialized Windows software that Mac users don't need. Formatting cleans off these files to get it ready for you to use.

You can see a preview of the select file when you are using Column view in the Finder. In Yosemite, you can also bring up the preview pane in List and Icon view. Just select View, Show Preview.

If you want music to automatically stop playing after a period of time, there is a sleep timer on the iPhone. But you won't find it in the Music app or in the Settings. Instead, you'll need to know where to look in the Clock app.

When you plug in your iPhone, iPad or digital camera, the Photos app and iTunes may launch automatically. If you would prefer to stop this behavior, you can easily turn off these options with selections in these apps. But you need to connect the device first and know where to look.

Want to see where a link really leads before clicking? In Safari, choose View, Show Status Bar. Then you’ll see a thin bar at the very bottom of your Safari window. When you move your cursor over a link, you’ll see the URL there so you know before you click.

There are many ways you can organize your apps on your iPhone or iPad. You can move apps from page to page and set their positions inside each page. You can create and modify app folders and move apps around in those folders to different pages. You can also bring apps down to the bottom row of your home screen and even put app folders there. You can search for apps to launch them, instead of remember exactly where you put the app icon.

It is easier than ever before to add special characters like emoji or symbols to anything you type on your Mac. But just using a simple keyboard shortcut, you can browse and search through different types of characters and add them to your text. Recently, Apple added the ability to set the skin color for many emojis.

iCloud Photo Sharing is a quick and easy way to share photos with friends. You can create a share album that others can add to, or just view. You can also make the album available on the Web where people without the Photos app or even Macs can view the photos. It is easy to add or remove photos. However, the options are limited so you may need to use another service if you want more.

If you find that it is taking a while to fetch your email, or send it out, go to Window, Activity to bring up window that shows you what the Mail app is doing at the moment. You’ll see a list of tasks that it is currently performing that may give you a clue what is going on. It will provide you with a way to see the progress of Mail activities.

You can search for files using the Raw Query function in the Finder. This gives you the ability to use wildcards to search for files with specific file names. You can also use other file attributes and combine them for even more complex searches. Raw Query is also very fast and can search your entire drive in seconds.

If you want to add some text to a photo, you can do it with the Preview app that comes with your Mac. You can add some large text to create a funny or inspirational image to post to social media. Or, you can add a watermark to protect your images before uploading them to the web.

While viewing a folder in the Finder in List mode, you can see the sizes of each file. If not, use Command+J and turn on “Size” there and it will appear as a column. In addition, you can check “Calculate All Sizes” and then you’ll see the total file size of each subfolder.

If you take a lot of HD video, you may end up with massive video files that you can't keep, but don't want to delete forever. You can compromise by compressing them. This will trade quality for file size, but in many cases this trade-off is the best way to keep your old video footage around. You can use Apple's Compressor app to do this quickly and easily.

MacBook keyboards and wireless keyboards no longer have Page Up, Page Down, Home and End keys. However, this functionary is still there if you know the correct keys to use to trigger these actions. In addition, you can also forward delete and find the location of the cursor with keyboard shortcuts.

Instead of seeing the time with digits in your menu bar, you can switch to a little analog clock which takes up less space. Go to System Preferences, Date & Time, Clock. Then switch from Digital to Analog. Or, simply click on the time in the menu bar and select one or the other.

Learn how to create smart albums in the new Photos app for Mac. Smart albums allow you to specify criteria like title, camera model, date and other things to build an album automatically. Smart Albums will automatically update as you add new photos to your library that match the criteria. You can combine Smart Albums and keywords to organize your photos.

On your iOS 8 device, you can have Siri respond to you without even touching your iPhone or iPad. Just turn on Allow Hey Siri in Settings, General, Siri. Then say “Hey Siri” and ask away. This only works when your device is plugged in to power, since it will drain the battery for it to be listening for your voice all the time. But it could come in handy while sitting at your desk or doing work that involves both hands.

I love and hate radio. Mostly hate. But I’m really excited about Apple’s new Beats 1 live worldwide streaming radio station.

We won’t really know what Beats 1 will be like until it launches on June 30. Until then, I can hope that I will find more of what I love about radio, and less of what I hate about it.

There are many different ways you can listen to music online. You can purchase music through services like iTunes. You can listen to customized streaming radio stations like Pandora or iTunes Radio. You can subscribe to an online music service like Spotify or the new Apple Music. You can also listen to Internet radio stations like the new Beats 1 station from Apple.

Today's Worldwide Developers Conference keynote address announced Mac OS X 10.11, called El Capitan, iOS 9 and WatchOS 2. Apple also announced many exciting new features for developers. The Apple Music product was introduced, which will combine iTunes Music, Beats Music, a live radio station and a new way to connect with artists.