Posts By: Gary Rosenzweig

Live Photos are more than just a bit of video attached to your pictures. You can use them to create loops, long exposures and pick a perfect frame when your subject won't stay still.

Apple continues to add new features to the Magnifier app. Now in iOS 16, if you have a sufficiently new iPhone, you can have it tell you how close people or doors are, or describe the objects around you. This is great as an accessibility feature, but also is very interesting technology that could be used in other ways. Plus, it is fun to play with right now. <em>FYI, requirements according to iOS page at Apple's site: Available on iPhone 12 Pro, iPhone 13 Pro, iPhone 14 Pro, iPad Pro 12.9-inch (4th and 5th generation), and iPad Pro 11-inch (2nd and 3rd generation).</em> (Downloadable video below for those having trouble with the Patreon video player.)

A new mode in iOS 16 and macOS Ventura lets you spell out words and other phrases letter by letter.

Learn how to use the built-in iMovie transitions, including lots of tips and tricks.

Iceland was so beautiful that it moved me to finally switch on the ProRes video recording option of my iPhone 13 Pro. ProRes videos are much (much) bigger, high quality 4K video recordings. They are what you are supposed to use when doing professional work. But are they really that much better quality than regular 4K video, compressed as HEVC? Turns out they are. Huge price to pay in terms of file size though. (Downloadable video below for those having trouble with the Patreon video player.)

You can use a personal automation to schedule a text message to be sent at a specific time with your iPhone. There are a few catches, though.

Learn how to set up your Pages documents for title pages, front matter, left and right facing pages, skipped pages and much more.

You can use your iPhone's camera for more than just taking photos. Here are some other useful and interesting things you can do with the camera. Third part apps mentioned: Google, WAM: World Around Me, Star Walk 2, PeakFinder, Seeing The Invisible.

You can autofill cells in Numbers using copy and paste, a special autofill feature, and by simply adding new rows to a well-formed table. With the autofill feature, you can have values increase by 1, or using a pattern.

By default every time you create a new iMovie Project it just adds on to your one and only iMovie Library. This makes it difficult to manage and archive your iMovie projects over the years. Instead, create a new Library each time you want to start a new project.

While in Iceland last week I had one clear night and got to see the northern lights. I used both my iPhone 13 Pro and my Canon T3i to photograph them. I even took some video with the iPhone to get the movement. I learned some things after reviewing the media and wish I had a second chance to get some more. (Downloadable video below for those having trouble with the Patreon video player.)

If you want to trim some time from the beginning or end of an audio file, you can quickly and easily do it with built-in macOS apps or free Apple-made apps you can download from the App Store, or a free third-party app. Each method has its advantages and disadvantages.

Quick Look allows you to preview files in the Finder. But you can also do other things with it like rotating and editing images, trimming videos, scroll through documents and select text to copy, view multiple files as an index sheet or slideshow and more.

You have lots of options today if you would like to dictate text instead of typing on your Mac. Here I'm comparing the built-in macOS dictation, the dictation feature of Microsoft Word, and the dictation feature of Google Docs in a web browser. They all seem to produce similar results. None are perfect though, but they are getting there.

While Photos has a lot of adjustment and cropping tools, you can also use your favorite image editor directly with the Photos app. You can choose to edit the photo in an editor and have the results saved back to your library, or you can use an editing extension for even tighter integration. See examples using Affinity Photo and Pixelmator Pro.

Instead of using the limited title options in iMovie, you can build almost anything you want in Keynote as a presentation. Use text, transitions, builds and animations to make your title sequence. Then export as a video to use in iMovie over a background.

In Mac Mail you can group messages together by conversation. This can make it easier to see your messages, stop quoted text clutter, and allow you to mute active conversations when you don't need to participate.

There are some settings in Google Mail that make it easier for Mac Mail, or any email client, to handle a large Gmail account. Instead of downloading and caching every email in the account you can set it to only cache the most recent messages. Then you can use the web interface for Gmail to search for older messages. (Download the video below if you are having trouble with the Patreon video player above.)

There are many ways to see the battery percentage number on your iPhone with iOS 16. You can put in on your Lock Screen or Home Screen, view it in Settings which includes a detailed chart, get to it in Control Center, or have the percentage always shown in the Status Bar at the top.

Learn how to calculate dates like the first or last day of a month, the first or last day-of-week of a month, or the nth day-of-week of a month.