Posts By: Gary Rosenzweig

For those of you curious about the new Advanced Data Protection feature for iCloud in macOS 13.1 and iOS 16.2, here are my thoughts on it. TL;DR - For those waiting for better data protection for their iCloud stuff, it is here. For others, no immediate action is needed. But if you are curious you can read up on it and use it if you want. Not important for most users to worry about too much.

A new feature of Apple Music and the latest Apple devices is the ability to be able to lower the volume of vocals in real-time and sing along with the lyrics shown on the screen.

With the latest version of macOS, iOS and iPadOS we get a new tool from Apple to combine text, images, shapes and more. You can use this as a collaboration tool, but it is hard to say where this fits in with other existing tool like Note and Pages.

Dictation on the Mac is pretty powerful as long as you are using Voice Control Dictation instead of standard Dictation and you know some of the commands you can use to perfect your text.

ChatGPT is this free AI chatbot that can give you answers to things and even write code. Turns out you can use it to write Regular Expressions. Then you can use those Regular Expressions in Numbers! <a href="https://chat.openai.com/chat" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://chat.openai.com/chat</a>  (Downloadable video below for those having trouble with the Patreon video player.)

While watching YouTube videos on your Mac (or PC) you can use a variety of onscreen and keyboard controls. Learn how to navigate by chapter, speed up or slow down playback, use picture-in-picture, view transcripts and more.

If you still aren't using a password manager, here are 5 reasons to start today. Password managers will keep your online accounts safe by using strong unique passwords and warning you of potential problems.

Pixelmator Pro on the Mac just added some new features that let you work with video. What can you do with video in an image editing app? Turns out, lots of useful things. (Downloadable video below for those having trouble with the Patreon video player.)

If you want to have a lot of images in your Pages document and they all need to be the same size and other attributes, you can use a variety of techniques to reuse attributes over tens or hundreds of images. This same technique works for Keynote as well.

If you are switching from Windows to Mac here are some of the ways in which these two operating systems are different and some tips on making the transition easier.

A new feature in macOS Ventura is the ability to copy the subject from an image or remove the background. You can use this in many different apps in a variety of ways. Learn how to make clean Contacts and social media pictures, replace the background of an image, create folder icons, and much more.

It is interesting that Pages has two formats: the old packages format and the current single-file format. There's almost no reason to use the old package format, but it could be somewhat useful in two situations. This is true for Numbers and Keynote as well. NOTE: You may notice something different about this video. I'm testing out some new video graphic elements. Let me know what you think! (Downloadable video below for those having trouble with the Patreon video player.)

Go beyond basic custom keyboard shortcuts on your Mac with these tricks. See how you can use a single key as a shortcut, launch apps, prevent yourself from accidentally quitting an app, reveal hidden menu commands and more.

Learn how to create a custom keyboard shortcut for any Menu Bar command in any app. You can also override existing keyboard shortcuts.

This is neat on the iPhone, but I think it was built to be a killer app for Apple Glasses, whenever we get those. (Downloadable video below for those having trouble with the Patreon video player.)

If you have names, product IDs or some other words and need to translate those to number values you can do it with the IF, IFS, SWITCH or LOOKUP functions in Numbers. While the first functions are good for small limited lists of values, only the LOOKUP function works well with a large list that changes often.

Learn how to set and add languages to your Mac so you can see different apps with different Language settings. Find out how to change things like number separators and date formats using the Region settings. Use Input Sources to change how your keyboard works.

Text replacements are the ultimate typing productivity tool. You can add to a list of short special words that will then expand into longer phrases as you type. Learn how to add, edit and delete Text Replacements and lots of tips and tricks like how to import and export them.

One of the many things you can use the Lift Subject feature in macOS Ventura for is to create easy custom folder icons. And fun too. (Downloadable video below for those having trouble with the Patreon video player.)

While the Mac Finder handles zipping and unzipping files just fine, it fails to give you any way to see the contents of a ZIP file. You can use some Terminal commands to do this. Better still, you can use those Terminal commands in a Shortcut to make it easy.