Posts By: Gary Rosenzweig

Here are five great Mac apps for artists that are completely free. No trials or in-app purchases. If you want to edit images, draw vector graphics, edit audio or work with 3D, check out these apps that all have a proven track record and many years of development.

If you find sometimes you accidentally press Command+Q and quit an app, here are three ways to deal with it. First, if you have your settings right, you can recover from accidentaly quitting without losing any work or the windows and tabs you have open. You can also disable Command+Q for any one app. There is also a way to override Command+Q with another keyboard shortcut to prevent yourself from using it anywhere.

These two new privacy features are coming to macOS Monterey. One lets you create as many email aliases as you want, so you can sign up for sites and services and keep your real email address private. The other is very close to a VPN service.

If you are thinking about getting or have recently bought a new MacBook Air or Pro, you may want to know how to make it last as long as possible. Here is some advice on how to keep your MacBook running well for many years to come.

Apple will hold a special even on September 14 at 10 a.m. Pacific, most likely to announce new iPhones. Each year Apple leads off its fall announcements with the new iPhone models and rumors suggest the same will happen this year. The iPhone 13 isn’t expected to be a major departure from the iPhone 12, but should have advanced cameras that can take better star photos at night. There may also be a “mini” model according to some speculators.

Sometimes you may want to store files in iCloud Drive, and sometimes you may want to store files on your local drive. Depending on your settings, you can have both at all times. Or, you could use one of two methods to put some files either on iCloud Drive or only locally.

WHen trying to find images or other files to use, many new Mac users try to use the Preview app to view these files to pick one. Despite its name, Preview is not the ideal app for previewing files. Instead use Quick Look or one of two other methods.

If you need to create a random password outside of Safari or another password manager, you can use a variety of techniques. You can use the Keychain Access app, some Terminal commands, or even make your own Automator action to generate one on demand.

The Mac App Store is probably the best way to get apps for your Mac. Here are 20 tips for finding apps, figuring out if an app is worth downloading, and managing your apps.

What does the Command key symbol mean? Or the Option key symbol? Where is the Backspace key? How is Caps Lock on a Mac different than Windows? Learn a little bit about the keys on your Mac keyboard.

Many Numbers users will try to fit everything into a single Sheet or even a single Table in a single Sheet. But the key to using Numbers effectively is to spead out the functions of your document across multiple sheets and multiple tables inside a sheet in a way that makes the most sense.

Which art tools can you get for the Mac that are truly free, no strings attached? I found some good image editing apps, vector graphics apps, a 3D app and an audio editor. Can you think of any more? Tools: <a href="https://www.gimp.org" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">GIMP</a>, <a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/seashore/id1448648921?mt=12" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Seashore</a>, <a href="http://audacityteam.org" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Audacity</a>, <a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vectornator-design-software/id1219074514" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Vectornator</a>, <a href="https://www.blender.org" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Blender</a>, and <a href="https://www.designer.io/en/pricing/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Gravit Designer</a>. (After recording this video, I'm not so sure about Gravit anymore. Seems to be more of a pay-to-get-the-real-app thing).

Text can wrap easily around rectangular images or well-defined image objects. But if you want to control the text wrapping with precision or to create unusual wraps, you can use shapes.

Learn what makes an image transparent and how image pixels work. If you need to make the background or some portion of an image transparent to use it in a document, presentation or as a video overlay, here's how to do it in Pixelmator Pro or Affinity Photo.

Many people confuse backing up with archiving. These are two very different things that both involve external drives and your files. But it is important to understand the difference and have both a backup and an archive for your Mac.

Here's a simple method for creating random passwords using Numbers. I have a video coming up on how to generate random passwords outside of Safari or a password manager. This method didn't make the cut as it is kinda, well, silly? But maybe not. After all, if you live in Numbers all day it would make sense to do this in Numbers instead of another tool, maybe. I'll attach the document too.

Beyond the menu bar keyboard shortcuts and the ones you can add in System Preferences, there are a set of keyboard shortcuts called KeyBindings that you can use when writing. These customizable keyboard commands can be used to move around in text, manipuate selections and even insert frequently-used words and phrases.

The Preview app can be used to view both image files and PDFs. You can also do quite a bit of editing on image files, such as color adjustments, cropping, copy and pasting selections, resizing, markup and exporting into another format.

The Calendar app lets you use as many calendars as you like, dividing up your events and appointments into groups that make sense to you. With multiple calendars, you can turn them on or off to more easily see what you have coming up and share only the events that you need to share.

After updating macOS you may find a folder on your Desktop named "Relocated Items." Learn what it is, why it is there, and whether you can delete it. Short answer: yes, delete it.