Posts By: Gary Rosenzweig

When you download an app from the iOS or Mac App Stores, you have the ability to then go back to the store and leave a review. Here is how to get to the review form. There are also some general guidelines you may want to follow when writing a review. Make sure you review the app, not the App Store system. If the app isn't the one you wanted, don't review the app based on your misconception. Also take price into consideration and don't use the review process as a way to get support from the developer.

Creating useful spreadsheets is usually a matter of combining several techniques. In this tutorial, you'll learn how to create a table to hold a small database of information. Then, you'll create a second table to count the number of records that have certain criteria. Finally, you'll use the second table to create a pie chart. Each element updates automatically as new records are added or changed.

Every year Apple makes special offers during the summer for the college-bound. Students already get a discount on purchases, but for the next few months, they can also get a $50 or $100 iTunes gift card with their purchase. This makes it easy for a student to buy a Mac or iPad and load it up with iWork apps for free.
It looks more and more likely that Apple’s next new product will be a wearable wrist device. Trademark applications have been filed by Apple in several countries for the name “iWatch.”

Ever wanted to be Captain Kirk? In Star Command you play the captain of a starship. You build it out, hire crew, run missions, and fight battles. The retro-style graphics work well, and you use simple controls in battle rather than confusing 3D simulations. The story is fairly straight-forward, but it is well worth the price.

The Year 2113
“So? What’s inside the capsule from 2013?”
“Looks like a 3GB hard drive and some networking equipment.”

The latest version of Pixelmator introduces a handy new way to select part of an image. You can paint with a brush to add to or remove from a selection and cut out a person or object. You can then apply filters to that selection, or invert the selection to apply filters everywhere else.

You can pop a Reminders list out of the main window by double-clicking on the list in the left sidebar. Then you can do this for multiple lists to view them at at the same time. You can even select more than one list, then double-click one of the selected ones to create a window that combines the items from those lists.

Ruby is a popular programming language that comes installed on your Mac and can be accessed in the Terminal. You can use the Rub command line interpreter to run simple programs in a single line. You can also write more complex programs in a text file and run them. This gives you similar functionality to using BASIC on the Apple II.

Every computer uses DNS servers to translate domain names to numerical addresses that can be used to find web pages. You can use the default DNS provided by your ISP, or you can choose your own. Sometimes you will see speed and quality improvements by using a public DNS instead of the default. Learn how to set your DNS in System Preferences and learn a potential pitfall of doing so.

Apple has been moving forward this week on software plans announced at its developers conference. There are reports that the second beta of iOS 7 has been released, with support for both the iPad and iPhone. They have also started testing iWork for iCloud by inviting all Apple employees to try the new web-based versions of the apps.
American Airlines completed its transformation to using iPads in place of flight bags across its entire fleet. Following them will be Jet Blue which announced similar plans just yesterday. Using iPads instead of heavy flight bags will save space, paper and fuel.
In other news, Apple extended the online Apple Store to cover Russia this week. There is no official retail store in the country, and up until now anyone wanting Apple products would have to buy them from third parties.

If you don’t like using iPhoto’s built-in email client, you can stick with using Mail to send photos. There are many ways to do this, but the easiest may be to simply select some photos, copy, and then paste into a message you are composing in Mail. You can also drag and drop from iPhoto into Mail.

Things that would not be better with a “flat” design.

The Simpsons: Tapped Out is a variation on the long-term city-building game. But it is made especially for Simpsons fans with lots of sarcasm and references to characters and places. You are building your own Springfield, starting with the Simpsons’ house and street. Like other games of this genre, building takes time so you have to either play a bit each day or buy in-app purchases to speed things up.

The Chrome browser is a good free alternative to Safari for Mac that is very similar in many respects. But it does offer some interesting features such as the incognito window, task manager, site information menu and Flash encapsulation. It is a good idea to have multiple browsers on your Mac and familiarize yourself with the features of each.

Google Maps has been around for a while and there are many advanced techniques that users may no know about. For instance, you can adjust routes to include more locations by simply dragging. You can show someone a map location by sending them a short URL. You can also get directions for public transportation, walking and biking.

You can create a chart in Numbers and then copy and paste it into a Pages or Keynote document. When you do so, the chart is linked and changes to the chart data in Numbers can be synced to your Pages or Keynote document. However, only data can be updated. Labels and the table itself cannot sync between apps, though copy and paste is a decent work-around.

It has been a quiet news week following the Worldwide Developers Conference. Both Adobe and Microsoft have moved their cloud apps forward with new developments. Adobe has released the next versions of some of its major applications, now calling them CC (Creative Cloud) rather than CS (Creative Suite). Subscribers to Adobe’s Creative Cloud can simply download and install the applications as part of the service, but they are not available otherwise.
Microsoft has released a light iPhone version of Office, only available to Office 365 subscribers, the first major advantage of the subscription over owning the pre-cloud version of Office. It looks like Microsoft will limit these apps to only small screen devices, not wishing to compete with its own tablet devices by releasing them for the iPad.

In 2019, Mac Pros will make nice planters.

Sometime you are typing in an app or web field and pressing Return will signal “done” and send the post. This happens on Facebook, Twitter and other places. If these situations, you can usually force the field to add a new line anyway by pressing Option+Return instead of just Return.

The iPhone and iPad are wonderful devices for using maps. But almost all map apps require a constant and strong data connection. What if you are using your wi-fi iPad out of range, or traveling away from your data provider, or simply sitting on a plane or in an area without coverage? ForeverMap is a simple map app that has one great feature: you can download and store street-level maps and access them offline. The downloads do take up a bit of space on your device, but that’s to be expected.