MacMost: Video Podcast

With the Books app taking over audiobooks in macOS Catalina, a lot of Mac users are upset that it doesn't handle large collections very well. You have no option to store your audiobooks on an external drive. However, you can still keep a large audiobook collection by managing the files yourself outside of Books, and only brining in the books you wish to listen to at the moment. Audible users may find it better to simply use the Auible iPhone app instead.

iPadOS (iOS 13) refines multitasking so it works better than ever. You can bring up two apps at the same time with Split View, or float a window over a full screen all with Slide Over. You can pile up Slide Over windows and flip through them too. Apps can interact with each other through dragging and dropping. There is a lot of different ways to use multitasking so it is best to practice a little before you need it.

While working on your Mac, you can use your iPhone or iPad to take photos, scan documents and draw sketches. The result will end up as files on your Mac, being saved directly from the iOS device to your Mac. You can also insert these images directly into documents in some apps. You can also use this to create signatures in Preview.

If you like to switch between light and dark mode frequently, you can create a keyboard shortcut or Dock icon to do it with one fast action. By using a very simple workflow in Automator, with no scripting required, you can create either a Quick Action or a application for your Dock. The Quick Action can then be assigned to a keyboard shortcut.

Often those in technical or linguistic professions need to enter specific Unicode characters while typing. You can type characters using their specific 4- or 8-digit codes by using a special keyboard built into your Mac. For other users, it is often easier to search using the character viewer or create shortcuts for commonly-used symbols.

There are some changes to the Photos app in Catalina, most notably how you browse your photos. Gone are the confusing Years, Collections and Moments views, replaced by the more understandable Years, Months and Days views. You can also see square thumbnails in the All Photos view, plus a few other improvements.

A new feature in macOS Catalina is the ability to track and restrict your app usage. You can use Screen Time for yourself, to attempt to limit your use, or as parent controls on a standard account on your Mac. You can also limit individual websites.

The Notes app gets a bunch of new features with Catalina, bringing it up-to-speed with Notes in iOS 13. You can do a lot more with Checklists now, share folders of Notes, and view your notes in a gallery. You can also search your Notes for objects in photos and words in scanned documents.

Improved security is a big new feature of macOS Catalina. Some features, like a read-only system volume, extra checks by Gatekeeper and the deprecation of kernal extensions will barely even be visible to the typical Mac user. Other features like new permission settings for apps and websites and Sign In With Apple will give us new security techniques that we can practice.

The iTunes app is gone. So how do you sync your iPhone, iPad or iPod? If you are still using a cable or Wi-Fi to sync your devices and not iCloud, you can still do it in macOS Catalina. That functionality has simply mostly moved to the Finder. You can sync music, movies, photos, books and other things this way. Ringtones is tricky, but you can still put custom ringtones on your iPhone. Even older iPods are supported by Catalina.

The new Reminders app adds a lot of new useful features. You can now set an icon and color for each list, place lists inside of folder, and view all of your lists in one long screen. You can also see which reminders items from all lists are due today or in the upcoming days. When creating a new reminder, you can easily add a due date, location, photo or URL.

While major new changes get all of the attention, here are 10 minor things that you may not have heard about, but could become your favorite new features in macOS Catalina. You can put Dark Mode on automatic, block email senders, use picture-in-picture with QuickTime Player, tint the color of your screen, and much more.

A new feature in iOS 13 and iPadOS is the ability to have Shortcuts trigger automatically, at a certain time of day, when you launch an app, change a setting or move to a new location. You can use this to make Shortcuts much more useful. Take a look at two quick examples. The first simply forces the Calendar to jump to the current day every time you open it. The second will display a special Reminders list when you turn on Do Not Disturb, but only if there is at least one item in that list.

When you buy a new Apple device, you can also purchase an extended warranty called AppleCare+. This not only covers the Mac, iPhone, iPad or other device for an extra year or two, but also adds accident protection and other benefits. With AppleCare+ you can replace a broken screen or other accident damage for a fee much less than the cost of an actual repair. You can also get additional theft or loss protection for iPhones. But is AppleCare+ worth the price?

With iOS 13 and iPadOS you can now swipe-type using the default standard keyboard. Apple calls it QuickPath and it can significantly speed up your typing on the tiny iPhone touch screen. You can also use it on the iPad, but you have to switch to the floating keyboard first.

A new release of Pages, version 8.2, includes a much-requested feature where you can set the default font for basic templates. This allows you to continue to use the Blank template in Pages, but with a font face and size set in preferences. The Body style will match your font and size, and other styles will use the font and a size of the appropriate scale to Body. Another new feature is a new View, Go To menu which is also in Keynote as Slide, Go To.

The new Markup tools in iPadOS look and work better than ever. You can use them to add lines, arrows, highlights, shapes, text and other things to your PDFs, images, screenshots and more. Learn how to access and use the new tools.

It can be annoying to have notifications appear at the top right corner of your screen while you are typing. Normally, you have to move the cursor to click on the Close button to dismiss those. However, you can build a simple JavaScript service in Automator to do it, and then use a keyboard shortut to trigger that service.

A new feature of the iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro is the ability to take better photos at night and in low light using a combination of techniques. Multiple cameras and used and many images are taken over a period of time, and then pieced together to create a brighter image with much more detail than can be done with a regular photo. Moving objects are handled without trails or streaking.

The new version of Safari in iPadOS (iOS 13) is now a desktop browser rather than a mobile browser. This means sites should look and work like they do on a Mac, not an iPhone. With this comes new features such as a download manager, zoom buttons, per-site settings, and one new feature that even Safari for Mac is missing.