MacMost: Patreon Video

I really wanted to make a MacMost tutorial about using the Record feature in Automator. But that thing is so frustrating to use! But it can some in handy. So here is me trying -- somewhat successfully -- to use Automator to make it easier to create circular text in Keynote. Lots to learn here.

The Music app on iOS 13 (and iPadOS) does some fun things with lyrics. I love music, and I love lyrics, so I love these features! First, the lyrics are now follow-along style. So you see what is being sung as the song plays. Second, you can scroll through the lyrics and then tap on a line to jump to that part of the song. Third, you can now search by entering in any obscure lyric you can think of and the song pops up. This helps find those songs that have non-obvious titles and ear-worms that you just can't place.

Mac Catalyst is the set of developer tools that makes it easier for developers to create iPad and Mac apps at the same time. With the launch of Catalina, there are already several new apps in the Mac App Store because of this. Nothing too exciting though. Here are some lists compiled by some news sites.  It is great to see this actually happening already. But over the next months and years we'll see a definite boost in available Mac apps due to this new tech.

So you may be noticing how almost every episode of the show looks a little different at the start. Sometimes the video introduction is good. Sometimes it is bad. Most of the time it is somewhere in between. I've become obsessed with getting it right. The video here shows 6 variations. Watch at the end when all 6 are side-by-side in a loop. I'm not done yet. Some of those episodes are yet to go up, as the whole Catalina release date has my whole schedule in chaos. But here is a run-down of these 6 variations and what is working and what is not. First, we have the <strong>Logitech Brio</strong>, a 4K (1080p really) webcam. I've been using this for a long while, but never happy with it. Look how washed out my skin is. The pixels are all mushy. I must do better. Next, I tried to use my trusty DSLR, my <strong>Canon T3i</strong>. It does 1080p and this may be the best of the bunch. The problem is there is no way to stream that into my Mac. I have to record to the SD card, film everything as best I can, then transfer via the card to the Mac. Doing it this way is a pain and while the image quality is great, the content will suffer as production never goes smoothly. Just to try it, I used my <strong>iPhone X</strong>. This was before I got the iPhone 11 Pro Max, but I don't think that would make a difference. The quality is definitely better than the Brio, but not as good as the T3i. And I have to record to the phone and transfer, which is a pain. OK, so I heard about the Elgato Cam Link 4K. It is a little USB device that takes HDMI in one end and outputs USB3 on the other. It turns any HDMI signal into a webcam. Yes! I wanted this for so long. Previous solutions just never worked. But what camera do I get to work with the Cam Link? My T3i can only be convinced to output sub-1080 on HDMI. I'd have to buy something new. I figured out the perfect camera, but stopped short of buying it because of the price. More on that later. Instead I got the <strong>Canon R800</strong>, a little camcorder that outputs 1080p.  It only cost me $159. But my first attempt at using it was very disappointing. It looks almost as bad as the Brio! However, there are lots of YouTubers using the R800 and their video looks good. And Elgato even has a test video where they use it, and that looks good. So I played with the settings and found if I turned off "Auto" and switched to "<strong>Highlights</strong>" it looks much better. It actually looks 1080p, unlike the first try. But the other issue may have been my lighting. I have a lot of little lights. I keep adding more to try to get it better. I decided to spend $60 and get some real studio lights. Big ones. That seems to help. So the last example is the R800 with <strong>better lighting</strong>. I'm still not super happy with it. If I have more lights, why does it kinda look dark? I think the key may be in the settings. I'll keep playing with it. It could also be that "highlights" mode is working with the bright white shirt in the example. Maybe I need to adjust the exposure in some way that I haven't discovered yet. Oh, so I mentioned my ideal camera. I figured out that the <strong>Sony A6400</strong> is probably what I should get . It is a mirrorless camera with a 4K video mode that works well with the Cam Link. Plus I think the reason the T3i works so well, even though it is the oldest piece of equipment here, is just the basics: lens size and sensor size. It simply has a bigger lens and larger sensor = more light + larger sensor pixels. At least that is my theory. So the A6400 would be a modern version of that capable of pumping 4K through the Cam Link and making things look ultra-professional. But at a cost: $1,000. So I'm going to stick with the R800 for now and plan on an A6400 for later. The A6400 is all over YouTube and being hailed by many as the perfect "YouTube camera," which fits with how I want to use it.

Couldn't wait to get outside and test out the 3 cameras and what they can do. Also: night mode.

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.