Posts By: Gary Rosenzweig

You can use the change tracking feature in pages to pass a document between multiple writers or editors and see suggestions from each. Change tracking will record deletions, changes and notes with the name of the editor. You can review the changes and incorporate them into the final document.

You can use GarageBand on your Mac to create custom ringtones for your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. You can combine your voice, GarageBand loops, instruments and external files to create almost anything you want. Then you can export them to iTunes and use iTunes to sync the ringtones to your iOS device. They can be assigned to ringtones, message tones, alerts or anywhere tones are used.

Learn how to edit audio in iMovie. You can change the volume of the audio in your clips, as well as apply filters. You can add additional audio, such as sound effects and music. You can layer audio by combining several pieces of sound.

Sometimes an app will stop working properly and you need to force it to quit. You can do this one of many ways in Mac OS X. If one of the standard methods does not work, you can always resort to using the Activity Monitor. And if all else fails, you can use the Terminal to force an app to quit.

Numbers lets you create charts that have an extra dimension. You can move through columns of data using a slider or buttons, with the chart changing to reflect the data in each column. This can be useful for showing changes over time.

iPhoto stores your photos inside a library. If you need to use a photo as a separate file, you can export one or more photos. Export options include the ability to shrink the file dimensions and reduce the quality to produce a smaller file. You can also drag and drop out of iPhoto to the Finder for a quick export of the original photo.

You can use GarageBand to create music with its built-in loops. By combining various loops, you can create a unique song to use in videos, presentations and elsewhere. Loops can be carried throughout the song, or appear only at certain times.

You can use semi-transparent images in iMovie as cutaways and picture-in-picture sources. This allows you to bring in almost any graphic element. You can use arrows and circles on your videos, for instance. You'll need to create the image in an editor like Photoshop or Pixelmator, and same it as a 32-bit PNG file. Then you can drag and drop it into iMovie.

You can use the Spotlight Menu to quickly perform searches for files. But search results also turn up applications, messages, your web history and other useful items. You can also access dictionary definitions and perform new web searches using the Spotlight Menu. You can customize what shows up in the list. You can also use the Spotlight Menu to perform simple or complex mathematical calculations.

You can annotate PDF documents using Preview. You can use a variety of tools such as highlighting, notes, adding g arrows, shapes and text. Annotations can then be edited or removed by others using Preview or Adobe Reader. You can also mark up images, though you cannot edit them after saving.

Learn how to wrap text around complex images in Pages. You can make your text wrap around non-square images using a variety of techniques. You can use an alpha-channeled semi-transparent image, use an image with a solid-color background, or set the wrapping of the image manually using a custom shape.

Sometimes you want to be able to count the number of items in a table and get the total. You can do this with the COUNTIF function. It will return the numbers of items that match a certain criteria. You can also use the COUNTIFS function to match multiple criteria in a more complex table.

Learn how to switch between apps on your Mac. You can use the Dock to launch and switch between running apps. You can also click on windows to bring a document window from an app to the front. There are keyboard shortcuts for switching between apps as well. You can also use Mission Control to view which apps are running and choose one to bring to the front.