MacMost: Patreon Video

I tried using an Akai MPK3 mini to trigger keyboard shortcuts and more. I used two apps: <a href="https://commandpost.io" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://commandpost.io</a>  <a href="https://hautetechnique.com/midi/midishortcut/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://hautetechnique.com/midi/midishortcut/</a>  Neither of these apps worked that well. Not sure if I will actually use one to do things, but at least I'm learning something new. Maybe a future MacMost video.

I'm looking at ways to use game controllers, MIDI devices, and other hardware as a control surface (group of shortcut buttons) to control my Mac and make it easier to edit video. So far not much luck in finding a good option, except in turning my iPad into a customizable control surface using Touch Portal. Link: <a href="https://www.touch-portal.com" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.touch-portal.com</a> 

I wish I had a better way to produce a demo of this. But it is too neat to overlook completely.

Check out this promo video I'm building. Also, check out the new Calculator function I built into the app. A calculator, but in a way I haven't seen before. To check out the documentation page with all of the details, see: <a href="https://macmost.com/macmost-toolbox-app" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://macmost.com/macmost-toolbox-app</a>  And to sign up for the beta test, go to <a href="https://forms.gle/6kjoe6d9C2udqGSL7" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://forms.gle/6kjoe6d9C2udqGSL7</a>  I'll be reaching out the first beta test group later this week.

Was thrilled to find this. Someone has taken the time to make web browser emulators for two old versions of macOS. Better still, these are packed with tons of old apps and games. So you can draw in MacPaint, write in ClarisWorks, and play games like Maelstrom! Links: <a href="https://system7.app" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">System7.app</a> and <a href="https://macos8.app" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">MacOS8.app</a> 

Apple released version 12.0 of all three apps and I really wish they just would have called it 11.3. There's not much that has changed. You can now have font sizes like 12.57 pt. Numbers has a new Snapshot Copy feature. Keynote can zoom to 400%. Also all three apps have more VoiceOver support. The biggest change is modest support for the Shortcuts app. But we already could do everything before using AppleScript and JavaScript. Still, I'll probably do a regular video on using Numbers with Shortcuts soon. One thing I forgot here is this: "Pages: Publish directly to Apple Books with larger file sizes up to 2 GB." So maybe useful for some who use Pages to publish to Apple Books. I assume "directly" means that you could have done this before, just not directly from Pages? I've never tried to publish something to Apple Books. At least not since iBooks Author.

Been using the new Mac Studio for two days now, and so far so good, with one big exception: ScreenFlow exports.

I've been using the new Apple Studio Display for a few days. It is a great screen, but expensive. It is probably good for some people, but perhaps not for me.

Been working on this for a while now and I'm a bit nervous revealing it to anyone after all of these months. The MacMost Toolbox. hopefully eventually become a free status menu app you can get from the Mac App Store. Maybe before that, as part of a beta test. Sorry for the long video. I was shocked to see it was 18 minutes. Felt like 4 minutes when I recorded it.

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 &amp; 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.