Using Activity Monitor you can see how much the software you are running is actually using the multiple cores in your Mac. When I tried exporting 6 videos simultaneously from ScreenFlow, I was happy to see it was making good use of all 12 cores of my Intel Mac Pro.
This is a tiny new feature just for the iPad. But I love it. You can go into Settings, Notes, and set a drag-from-the-corner option to either Quick Note or Screenshot. Either is good, but this makes it so easy to grab the screen and mark it up and share it. Better yet, you can use Live Text to grab text from just about anything.
The new macOS 12.3 and iPadOS 15.4 finally gives us Universal Control. Watch me test it with my Mac Pro, iPad mini and MacBook Pro. Works great! (FYI -- this is also a test of Patreon's new video hosting system. So this video isn't hosted by Vimeo, YouTube or even MacMost. It is hosted directly on Patreon.)
I made this chart that I think reveals some things about how Apple sees its Mac product line and what it could be planning (or not) in the near future. I've attached the Numbers spreadsheet if anyone wants to see the data I generated this from.
This is the first new Mac in years! And a feature-rich display that is well-priced! Very exciting day in the Mac world. Here's what I think about these two new products. And you can watch me agonize over whether to buy them when my Mac Pro isn't that old yet.
Cloud-based games are the future. And You can play on a Mac just as easily as you can play on a PC. Basically, you are just streaming gameplay like you stream Netflix. I tried out Nvidia's service and played some games. Works great, as you can see. There will be a lot more gaming in my future.
I worked on something to help me with a daily task, and I thought I would share it. I know regular expressions are pretty technical, but I hope some of you find this interesting anyway. Here's the JavaScript for the Shortcut, and the website is: <a href="https://regex101.com" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://regex101.com</a> <blockquote><strong>function run(input, parameters) {</strong></blockquote><blockquote><strong> var str = String(input[0]);</strong></blockquote><blockquote><strong> str = str.replace( /(.*) ((dd)s)/gm , `00:$2 $1`);</strong></blockquote><blockquote><strong> str = str.replace( /(.*) ((d)m (dd)s)/gm , `0$2:$3 $1`);</strong></blockquote><blockquote><strong> str = str.replace( /(.*) ((d)m (d)s)/gm , `0$2:0$3 $1`);</strong></blockquote><blockquote><strong> return "00:00 Intron"+str;</strong></blockquote><blockquote><strong>}</strong></blockquote>
I recently needed to generate some random time values in Numbers that included both a random date, and a random time of day. It isn't immediately obvious how to do this, so I thought I'd share what I came up with. Here's the function: =DATE(RANDBETWEEN(2000,2021),RANDBETWEEN(1,12),RANDBETWEEN(1,28))+DURATION(0,0,RANDBETWEEN(8,20),RANDBETWEEN(0,59),0,0)
The story of a lost (stolen?) iPhone and how the AppleCare+ Theft & Loss protection works. Also, about some weird things that happened after the iPhone disappeared.
So here's a long rambling video on the subject. I want to find a way to present this material better (and in under 10 minutes). But the basics are: <ul> <li>Apple cables seem better than cheap cables, but that's only worth it some of the time.</li> <li>Apple adapters also seem better, but it is rarely worth it to spend the extra money.</li> <li>Apple power adapters are good, but too expensive and you should get cheaper third-party ones that are also smaller and have more features.</li> <li>Apple Keyboards and Mice are more expensive by far, but worth it.</li> <li>Trackpad is better than a mouse and nothing compares to Apple's Trackpad.</li></ul>What do you think? Let me know if you disagree and why.
Had someone ask me about Gantt charts and it sent me down a rabbit hole, playing with ideas in Numbers. Here's what I came up with.
I did a video recently showing 3 ways to center a window. I missed one! Turns out that there is a hidden menu item Window, Arrange in Front. You have to hold down Option to see it. That can be used to center a single window or group windows in a neat way and center the group. <strong>Note:</strong> Only seems to work in apps where a window = a document. So in Reminders and Notes it doesn't work (actually does on a floating-window Note, just not the main window). Have to investigate more as to which apps do it and which don't.
It is annoying that there is no way to jump from the Photos app to the Maps app. You can see a little map for each photo, but if you want to jump to the Maps app to explore more or get directions and such, you can't do it. So here are two ways to get around that. The first is to use Edit With and choose Preview. Then in Preview you have a button to jump to Maps. The second is to build a Shortcut in macOS Monterey. But the Photos app doesn't seem to want to send photos to Shortcuts via the Services menu. However, you can copy to clipboard to do it.
This free vector graphics tool can come in handy when you need a shape for Pages or Keynote, but don't have anything like Adobe Illustrator to create it. By exporting as a PDF, you can bring a vector graphic into Pages or Keynote so it looks great.
Did you know you can use Swift as code in the Mac Shortcuts app? You can do other languages as well: Perl, Python and Ruby. AppleScript and JavaScript too, of course. Here's an example of using a bit of Swift in a Shortcut to sort lines of text. And here's the Shortcut if you want it. <a href="https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/8ef27a8d83334ece808e699ce086de67" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/8ef27a8d83334ece808e699ce086de67</a>
Recently I've been trying to use LaunchPad instead of Spotlight, because it seems a little more reliably fast.
I was thinking that I could take today's video about 20 places to look to clean up your Mac and turn it into a Shortcut. Then you can just run that Shortcut and it will tell you how much space is being used by these things. Here is where I'm at so far, with three of those items in the Shortcut. Here's some of that code. You can use it in the Terminal as well as in Shortcuts. I'm hoping this works out and I can turn this into a tutorial and share the final Shortcut. du -sh '~/Movies/TV/Media.localized/Home Videos' | cut -f1 du -sch '~/Movies/TV/Media.localized/Movies' '~/Movies/TV/Media.localized/Downloads-TV' | tail -n1 | cut -f1 du -sch '/Library/Application Support/GarageBand' '/Library/Application Support/Logic' '/Library/Audio/Apple Loops' '/Library/Audio/Apple Loops Index' | tail -n1 | cut -f1
It is probably a good idea to go to <a href="https://www.facebook.com/adpreferences/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/adpreferences/</a> every once in a while to check on things. In particular, I don't like how they will put your name next to ads for companies when showing them to your friends.
So impressed by how well these AI features work in the latest version of Pixelmator Pro. Check them out.
