MacMost: Patreon Video

In addition to all of the other new features in the Photos app, we can now do some level of perspective adjustment. It is nice to not have to switch to another app for this. Plus, it is so easy to use that I think a lot more people will try it. (Downloadable video below for those having trouble with the Patreon video player.)

This is a tiny new feature of macOS Ventura that I think will have a big impact for a lot of people, myself included. (Downloadable video below for those having trouble with the Patreon video player.)

Apple had a non-event today where they announced a brand new 10th-generation iPad, updates to the iPad Pro line, a new Apple TV, and release dates for macOS Ventura and iPadOS 16. (Downloadable video below for those having trouble with the Patreon video player.)

I took a cheap "toy" drone with me to Iceland and almost didn't get to even fly it. But thanks to the drone I got a beautiful photo, taken with my iPhone. And a lot of laughs. (Video download below for those having trouble with the Patreon video player).

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.)

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.)

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.)

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.

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.)

Take a look at how you can send out invitations to events in your Calendar, and then the invitee can respond and have that event added to their calendar. Very handy even if you aren't in a corporate environment. (Downloadable video below for those having trouble with the Patreon video player.)

I'm sometimes asked about why it takes a few seconds for your Mac to recognize a wrongly-typed password. But a correctly-typed password is recognized instantly. There's a good reason for that. (Downloadable alternative below if you have trouble playing the video.)

Here's early access to a video I'll be posting next week showing some of the smaller new features of iOS 16 that haven't gotten much attention. I know a lot of people are excited about iOS 16 and I didn't want to keep my patrons waiting for this one. (Video file download below for those having any trouble viewing it here.)

A new feature of iOS 16 and watchOS 9 is that you can mirror the Apple Watch's screen to the iPhone. This is meant to be an accessibility feature, but watch how I can use that to maybe do Apple Watch tutorials in the future with some clever cropping and overlays. (Having trouble playing the video? You can also download it below.)

Apple announced new products today: Apple Watch Series 8, Apple Watch SE 3, Apple Watch Ultra, AirPods Pro 2, iPhone 14, 14 Plus, 14 Pro and 14 Pro Plus. I'll run down the new features and give you my thoughts.

XProtect is your Mac's built-in quiet anti-malware tool. Recent changes to XProtect in macOS means that it occasionally scans for some malware throughout the day. You can actually see the entries in your system logs using a Terminal command if you are curious. Also, looks like there is a cosmetic mistake that now makes XProtect show up in a list in System Preferences. So if you see it there it isn't just you. There's nothing to do or worry about though. Here's the Terminal command I used: <blockquote><strong>log show --style syslog --predicate 'subsystem == "com.apple.XProtectFramework.PluginAPI" &amp;&amp; eventMessage contains "status_message"' --last 24h</strong></blockquote>Note I'm using macOS 12.5.1. Not sure if it works in 12.5.0 or 12.4.0.

This is the video that I plan on posting on Wednesday, the same day as the Apple event where I expect they will announce the release date for iOS 16. Or maybe even release it that day. What do you think of the idea of me posting regular MacMost videos like this a week early here? Is it something you find interesting? Or is it no big deal since the video will be public to everyone eventually anyway?

Apple extended its self-service repair program to some Macs this week. This means you can get access to tools and parts to repair your own Macs. While you probably aren't interested in doing that (I'm not) it is fun to look at the PDF repair manuals you can download. They include lots of useful or just interesting information, diagrams and pictures. <a href="https://www.selfservicerepair.com/manuals" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.selfservicerepair.com/manuals</a> 

Perhaps a crazy thing to even want to do. But I've always wanted to be able to force the Pages/Keynote shape drawing tool to use data points to draw shapes I can then save for later use. I finally achieved my weird dream using Keyboard Maestro 🤪

For those of us using our own vaults with 1Password, this is no longer possible with 1Password 8. Time to switch to their system, I guess, but I'm curious what others are thinking.

(Trying again as the video didn't work the first time) Came across this interesting free screen capture app that has some useful markup tools and a scrolling capture that could come in handy.