So today is iOS 13 day. The update should be available within hours. One new feature of iOS 13 is Look Around. This is Apple's answer to Google Maps Street View, which is the only reason I use Google Maps sometimes. So it will be nice to have it in Apple Maps. To start, it is only available in San Francisco, Las Vegas and Honolulu. But more cities should roll out rapidly over the next few months. Perhaps Apple already has the data ready to go, but wants to see what happens with real iOS 13 users in those three locations for a few weeks. It is easy to jump to those cities and use the feature. Take a look and see how well it works.
You know how you can take a photo and apply filters, lighting and color adjustments, cropping and do other things? Well, in iOS 13 you can do that with <strong>video</strong>. This seems like the sort of feature that we shouldn't even have until 2024 or something. It is right there in the Photos app and it just works. We don't even have this on the Mac in the Photos app. Super cool! I love it.
What if you needed a Mac Pro, but didn't have $6K? You could grab an older Mac Pro while they still last. But you can also configure a Mac mini to be pretty powerful. You can add memory, upgrade the processor, and get a big SSD in it. You'd still be missing a decent GPU, but there is a solution for that.
So today's regular video is about how to get an image of an entire web page on your Mac. I show how to do it in Safari, using a third-party app, and Firefox's great feature. But what about on an iPad? Well, it turns out that iPad OS (AKA iOS 13 for iPad) has a brilliant new feature that does exactly this. Check it out. iPadOS should be out for everyone next month.
The biggest change in Catalina is something that many Mac user's won't even notice. The dedicated system volume will put macOS on a read-only partition of your hard drive that will make it very difficult for malware and other annoyances to cause harm. It will even help prevent misbehaving poorly-written software from messing things up.
In the thumbnails to my videos now, I'm including an icon for the app or part of macOS that I'm talking about. I get those app icon graphics using a technique that I'm sure most Mac users don't know about. Take a look.
Sometimes I just get these ideas for no reason. Today at lunch I thought about how you could use the cells in a spreadsheet to generate a dynamic calendar, including the blank spaces at the end and beginning of the month. After a little work, I got it going. Here's what it looks like. I'll attach the file too!
There are a few new tricks in iPadOS (AKA iOS 13, coming this fall) when it comes to multitasking. I like that the slide-over window for apps now feels like a little iPhone on your iPad's screen. So it looks like my "My iPad" books are dead. My publisher is moving on from print books. The market has been shrinking anyway so it isn't unexpected. But maybe that means I should come out with an iPadOS course this fall? What do you think?
A new feature os iPadOS (AKA iOS 13 for iPad) is the ability to use a regular bluetooth mouse as a pointing device. You can set this up through the Accessibility settings. With assistive touch, you can not use a mouse or trackpad and there are even ways to access things like the home button. While this is meant for those with disabilities, I'm sure others who particularly dislike using a touch screen all the time will get some use out of it.
I really like Voice Control in Catalina. I don't need it, but I think it could still be useful. It definitely takes dictation to a new level. I've tried it a few times by putting my hands behind my back and I browsed the Wed and read some things, even answered an email or two, all using my voice.
Sidecar is the new feature of Catalina that allows you to use your iOS 13 (iPadOS) iPad as a secondary screen. But it is more than just a monitor as you can use touch and the Apple Pencil along with it.
Apple just dropped new versions of the three iWork apps, both for Mac and iOS. Here's a quick video to go through the major new stuff. Nothing Earth-shattering, but some things we may find useful. Here are handy links to the new features pages: <a href="https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207243" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Pages</a>, <a href="https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207244" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Numbers</a>, <a href="https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207247" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Keynote</a>.
In the market for new speakers for your Mac mini, Mac Pro, or maybe even for something better for your MacBook or iMac? I needed to replace my aging speakers and did a bunch of research before going for the Logitech Z625. I'm really happy with them so far. These are my first speakers that allow me to use the optical connection on my Mac pro. I almost bought way more expensive ones, but I'm happy I went this route as they are definitely an upgrade over my old speakers.
A lot of videos on YouTube use text-to-speech for narration, instead of a human voice. If you want to create that without any special software, it is easy to have your Mac speak something and then save that to a text file. Then you can drag and drop it into iMovie or another app for use. Oh, and BTW, you can type "say -v ?" in Terminal to see a list of all of the voices you have.
What happens when you drag and drop a reminder from the Reminders app to the Finder? You get a useful little Reminders files that you can use to re-create a reminder later on.
I use stock images for MacMost, my other sites, and my game apps too. I've used a few different source over the years, and never use images just from random image searches because of copyright. Here are the places I've used, the main site I use now, and some good places for free images too. What sources do you use?
So as I'm working to improve the MacMost tutorials, I finding a lot of good YouTube channels use background music. I'm wondering if I should as well. Now I know a lot of you are going to say: "Doesn't matter to me, I'm watching for the info!" But think for a minute about someone watching a MacMost video for the first time. Perhaps a little background music may make it seem more professional? I definitely want to raise the profile of MacMost (the site, podcast and YouTube channel) so I'm thinking that music may be one thing I need to do. What I'm talking about is very subtle and quiet. It is barely noticeable, in fact. You may have already watched some online video tutorials with background music and not even noticed. Check out this sample. It is the beginning of an upcoming video, first without music, and then with music. It comes in right after the opening titles. So you can watch the start, and then jump to 1:30 to hear it with music. I really value everyone's opinion on this, so I'm looking forward to hearing what you think. Thanks!
Here's an update on my search for perfect audio in the videos. Remember I got that Zoom mic and returned it? I tried a bunch of others and eventually got the AT2020USB mic, which is recommended by so many of my friends. And it does seem to be the best. Disappointingly, I am still getting some echo. But I'm going to start using it very close to my mouth and it seems that gets rid of most of it.
So here is a little bit about a great microphone, that I had to return. It is probably too good as it picks up too much besides me, including echos. I'm sure this would be a great mic in a larger space or to record multiple people or musicians. But for getting my voice it isn't as good as a simple lavalier or shotgun mic. It is a super-cool gadget and the gadget-lover in me found it really hard to return it.
So in looking to improve the audio in the show, I bought a bunch fo stuff. The most interesting is a $22 item. It is a simple lavelier mic that plugs into the iPhone. You need to use the Lightning audio adapter with it, which is probably a good thing since the official Apple adapter is the only one that seems to work well anyway. And then it works great, better than any other mic I could find. Here is the product link: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01AG56HYQ" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01AG56HYQ</a> And here is the app I mentioned: <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/promovie-recorder/id1076481548?mt=8" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">ProMovie Recorder</a>
