MacMost: Patreon Video

I wanted to do a video on how Shazam is now available in Control Center on the iPhone. But that feature isn't nearly as cool as the Auto Listen feature I discovered in the process. You can just let your iPhone listen as you drive/party/relax and it will build a playlist from what it hears. You can even replay it all using Apple Music. Oh, and after I made this video, as I was uploading it, I tried the <strong>Mac App and it works there too</strong>! That even makes more sense, to have your Mac listen if you work with a radio on or at a coffee shop. Less of a battery issue.

I briefly showed iOS apps running on the new MacBook Pro with the M1 processor in my <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fS9dayphjIs" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">current video</a>. But here's a deeper look at how to get them, how they look, some observations, and some good news and bad.

Apple surprised everyone with four amazing illustrated and dynamic backgrounds in the latest beta of Big Sur. I think these are going to be a hit.

In today's video, I show some keyboard overlays to illustrate where the keys I'm talking about are located. I think this is helpful instead of making people hunt for them. I've been using Affinity Designer for this. I have a template I created and though it seems like it would be a lot of work to make a new keyboard image for every shortcut I mention, it really only takes seconds to set up and export. I've really gotten to like Affinity Designer. It reminds me a bit of Adobe Fireworks. I used Fireworks for a majority of my graphics needs for years. I tried to move to Photoshop afterwards, but Pixelmator made more sense. Now I think AD is best for this sort of thing. I fact I'm using it to generate graphics for a new version of my Mah Jongg game too.

A new feature in Big Sur, and also iOS 14, is the ability to assign Reminders items to a person in a shared list. So if you share a list with people on your team at work, you can then add items and assign them to individuals that are sharing that list. Or, the people on the list can assign them to themselves, so people can "take on" a task.

Going to try live-streaming today for an hour. Starting at 11:00 my time (in 15 minutes). Link: <a href="https://youtu.be/ny9z1zpSXpA" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/ny9z1zpSXpA</a>  Ask questions in the chat and I'll be screen sharing to demo stuff.

A new feature in Photos 6.0 in macOS Big Sur is that the Retouch tool uses machine learning to remove things like blemishes. So I tried it out, comparing virtually the same retouch actions in Photos 5.0 in Catalina with Photos 6.0 in Big Sur.

I'm excited about this. In Big Sur you'll be able to apply lighting effects, filters, crop and rotate VIDEOS in the Photos app. Basically, the same things you can do with Photos, you can do to an entire video. This means a lot of what people do with videos in iMovie and other tools can now be done right in Photos if you already have your videos stored there. This was added to Photos in iOS 13, but for some reason macOS was left out.

I think one of the weirdest things I do is to occasionally browse the Web with just the Terminal window. No images, not cursor, just plain HTML like it was 1990. I like to consume information like Wikipedia pages this way. Just sometimes. To do this, you've got to install Brew on your Mac (<a href="https://brew.sh" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://brew.sh</a>)  and then W3M is the browser (<a href="http://w3m.sourceforge.net" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://w3m.sourceforge.net</a>).

Take a look at how I use the YouTuber tool TubeBuddy to come up with the titles for my videos.

I tried two methods for creating my own dynamic wallpaper. One didn't work. The other is a little expensive. There is a way to make your own without any additional software, but it doesn't give you very many options.

So I checked out this interesting system extension called PopClip. You can get it in the Mac App Store, or there is a trial at <a href="https://pilotmoon.com/popclip/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><u>the website</u></a>. Seems to work well, and could be a game-changer for some people.

Glance is a free Mac App Store app you can easily install that gives you some extra Quick Look abilities. You can view various code files with coloring. You can also view the contents of a ZIP file when you view it with Quick Look or the Finder Preview pane. <a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/glance-quick-look-plugin/id1513574319?mt=12" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://apps.apple.com/us/app/glance-quick-look-plugin/id1513574319?mt=12</a> 

Take a look at this app that lets you control each sound output and input level and do all sorts of things with sound on your Mac. You can get it <a href="https://rogueamoeba.com/soundsource/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">here</a>, plus there is a free trial. Anyone use something like this or this one in particular? I could see this being necessary software for some people. But I've gotten along fine without it for this long.

I've been trying out iPhone-to-Mac webcam "solutions" for years. They always fall short. But this one has promise. Seems to work great now, and would be perfect if it could do audio too. But since we can always use the build-in mics in most Macs, maybe that isn't a problem. Works with everything, even Zoom and Screenflow.  Playing with it now. Here is the link:<a href="https://reincubate.com/camo/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"> https://reincubate.com/camo/</a> 

Looks like the iPad has finally caught up with the Newton MessagePad! LOL.

One of the new features in macOS Big Sur is a whole new set of Alert sounds in System Preferences. They are actually the same alert sounds, but re-imagined. Apple says: <em>System sounds are all-new and even more pleasing to the ear. The new system alerts were created using snippets of the originals, so they sound familiar.</em> I created a video comparing them. But it was quite a task to pair them up since they have new names. The names match up in a fun, playful way too! Ping is now Pong, Frog is Jump, Hero is Heroine. Some are more subtle, like Bottle to Glass. Only one has the same name: Sosumi. Apple didn't want to let go of that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sosumi" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">little joke</a>. I'm not 100% sure I got Purr -&gt; Sonar and Tink -&gt; Pluck matched right. What do you think? I was making this just for Club MacMost. But I kinda like the result. Should I make it a regular MacMost video too? Maybe with some more explanation at the beginning and end?

Big news today as Apple updated its three iWork apps. They all get these neat title/caption features for images. Numbers gets a powerful new set of functions. Keynote gets the ability to present in the window. That and much more. Watch and I'll watch through most of it.

There are a few interesting new things in Safari that are worth knowing about. Here's a quick preview in Big Sur developer beta 2.

The old standard for evening out the sound in podcasts and other recordings returns with a <a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-levelator/id1493326487?mt=12" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Mac App Store</a> app. Free!