MacMost: Patreon Video

A new feature in High Sierra allows you to use Full Screen mode with Mail and then it splits the screen when you compose a new message or reply to one. So you see your mailboxes and messages on the left, and the message you are composing on the right.

A new feature in High Sierra is the ability to see flight tracking info in Spotlight. A small feature, to be sure, but useful to some.

An experiment. I look at the latest questions in Apple Discussion and give you the off-the-top-of-my-head ideas and solutions. So, covering a variety of topics including: wireless charing through iPhone cases, iTunes 12.7 app redirect problems, Numbers SUMIF, how to get iOS app updates unstuck, etc. (I apologize for the audio as I didn't realize I was recording using the wrong mic).

Just me talking about what I think of the iPhone X and why I'll be buying one. Let me know what you think about it!

OBS has to be one of the coolest pieces of free Mac software out there. I'm not using it for anything in particular, but I thought I could show it off here anyway. It allows you to combine media inputs (camera, screen, audio, etc) and stream live or save to a file. Kind of like a TV studio. It is very easy to use. I did use it in the past to do some live Facebook streaming. I could, if I wanted, record the MacMost episodes with it.

Thought I'd show you a Safari extension I've been using to help with some of my web development work.

Playing around with multitasking in iOS 11 on the iPad today as I'm updating my My iPad book. I like this far better than iOS 10 multitasking. Take a look.

A quick look at what's to come in High Sierra. You'll be able to share files directly in iCloud Drive. I mean with another person, not just another Mac you own.

I like trying out new iPhone keyboards. Anything that can give me the potential to type faster on that little screen. Google has a free one called Gboard. It allows you to swipe-type. See the video for a demo. I also like that you can search for emoji. I can never remember which emoji to use, so being able to search for keywords to narrow it down helps. There are some other useful features as well.

Say you want to play your music to your Mac's speakers and also to a set of Bluetooth speakers in the same room at the same time. You can do it using Audio/MIDI Setup, an app that comes with your Mac. This creates a special "output" that you can use to combine both speakers at the same time.

I use SwitchResX to set my display to a pure 1920x1080 size when I make my tutorials. This means when I am showing the full screen in the tutorial, it is pixel-for-pixel the same as the resolution when viewing in YouTube in 1080p. Pixels aren't stretched or blended with each other.This is hardly a big deal, since most people view the videos at less than 1080p, but I think it helps with overall image quality.

I was playing around with the idea of using a YouTube Live video as a screen saver. It wasn't actually that hard to do, thanks to a screen saver module I found.

I thought I'd share with you the exploration process as I start putting together one of my videos. I had an idea to create an episode on customizing shapes in Pages, but I hadn't played around with that feature yet. So I recorded my screen and talked as I was experimenting.

I was recently asked about tips for using ScreenFlow. That's the Mac app I use to record the MacMost episodes. It is a great app for screen capture and tutorial-building. It enables me to capture from my camera and the screen at the same time, even from my iPhone and iPad too. I can then edit right in ScreenFlow, which includes a bunch of tools useful specifically for screen tutorials. So watch me as I go through the editing process on a future episode.

Apple released small updates to Pages, Numbers and Keynote this week. New features include a library of clipart, new preferences, and linked text boxes in Pages. But one notable feature was removed from Numbers.

I found out recently that on one major airline you can use your miles to buy in-flight Wi-Fi.

I've installed the developer beta of iOS 11. The iPad is starting to look a lot more like a Mac than an iPhone. We've now got a Dock, drag-and-drop, a Files app that looks like the Finder, and spaces. Also, look at the new keyboard and Live Photo options.

Through trial-and-error I figured out that you can apply the same title, description and other properties to multiple photos in the Mac Photos app.

If you'd rather keep your photo files in a folder structure of your own, you can still use the photos in the Mac Photos app. Just turn this preference off first, and import with a drag and drop. Could be useful for those that have a need to keep the original files accessible via the Finder.

I've been playing around with Automator Print Plugins and made a simple process that will produce a watermarked PDF. Could be useful for work projects and the like.