MacMost: Video Podcast

Learn some quick and simple tricks you can use to enhance your next iMovie video project. You can adjust iMovie's backgrounds to make them unique or bring in your own. Add audio narration and adjust the fade in and out of any audio. Use cropping to zoom in and special effects like freeze frame and instant replay.

Your iPhone has some great features that can increase your safety. Three of them need to be set up in advance to be useful, and two of them you need to learn how to use before you need them. Learn about the Emergency SOS feature, Medical ID, two ways to share your location with trusted friends and how to drive safely without seeming unresponsive to people trying to get in touch with you.

The INDIRECT function allows you to look up the value of a cell based on a cell reference. So you can take stings like C2 and find the value of the cell C2. This allows you to construct cells references from other values to create powerful lookups that refer to cells in other tables or even sheets.

Apple will be holding a special event at its headquarters on September 10. They are expected to announce new iPhones, Apple Watches and perhaps some new iPads as well. We'll also hear about the official release dates for iOS 13 and macOS Catalina. Take a look at what the rumors and speculation predict.

A lot of Mac and iOS users don't know that you can search for objects in your photos even if you have never added titles or keywords to your Photos Library. The app will indentify various types of items and scenery in photos. You can combine these category searches with locations and other search terms.

Sidecar is a new feature that we will get when macOS Catalina and iOS 13 are released that lets you use your iPad as a second screen with your Mac. In addition to a basic screen, you also get some sidebar buttons and the Touch Bar along the bottom. You can use the Apple Pencil on the iPad's screen as a substitute for a mouse or trackpad, or to draw with precision into graphics apps.

The default text transitions in Keynote can be boring and look too familiar to those that see a lot of presentations. You can use some of the options and other creative features of Keynote to make your text transitions unique and interesting.

If you need to capture an entire web page as an image, it can be difficult to do so because macOS screenshots don't allow you to capture all of the contents of a scolling window. However, you can use many different techniques to get the entire contents of a web page. Safari has a hidden feature to do this, but sometimes it won't work on certain pages. You can buy third-party pro capture software that will let you take perfect screen grabs of entire pages. You can also use a feature of the free Firefox browser, though it sometimes doesn't work perfectly.

You see your Mac user account picture every time you log in to your Mac. You can customize this image easily in System Preferences with some default images, a photo, or any graphic you want. You can choose a photo and zoom in on one part of the image. You can create your own graphics or download an image to use.

Here are 21 udeful Mac tips for all levels. Incuded are tips for using the Finder, Safari, Mail, Calendar and more. Even expert Mac users may find something they didn't know or had forgotten.

The Apple Card is now available to anyone that wants to apply though the iOS Wallet app. The card has some innovative technology behind it, such as account access, information and support through the Wallet app, a deep connection to Apple Pay and a physical card that doesn't have a number or room for a signature. The Apple Card offers next-day cash back through Apple Pay Cash with the best deal being to use it in Apple Stores.

When macOS Catalina is released in the fall, it will come with a new TV app. This app takes over the movie and TV show purchasing and rental features from the old iTunes app. You will also use it to access your own video you store in your TV app library, such as ripped DVDs. An important aspect of the TV app will be giving Mac users access to the new Apple TV+ service coming later this year, as well as the ability to subscribe to channels such as HBO, Showtime and CBS through a subscription.

Most Mac users never take the time to customize their login screen. But there are several options there you will want to change to increase security or have the login screen better fit your needs. There is one very easy change that every user should make, to include a message on the login screen in case you lose your Mac and want to increase the chances that it will be returned to you.

One of the most powerful tools in Preview is the Smart Lasso. You can use that to quickly cut out part of an image to create a new one with a transparent background, or insert an object from one image into another. While Preview lacks a lot of the image editing tools found in more powerful apps, the Smart Lasso is probably easier to use than similar features in expensive apps.

You should be very careful when installing apps on your Mac and try to stick only to the Mac App Store or sites you fully trust. When you want to uninstall an app, you can usually do it through LaunchPad. However, for some apps you'll need to look for uninstall instructions at the developer's site. If needed, you can uninstall an app manually if you know where to look for its files.

iCloud email allows you to freely add some text to your regular email address to create unqiue addresses that you can use on an as-needed basis. So you can use a slightly different email address when you sign up for a service and easily identify if that service is sending you spam or seling your information. You can also use this to organize legitimate email by filtering into groups that use the same address. However, there are some downsides too.

If you want to trim some video from the beginning or end of a movie file, you don't need to use a video editing app. You can do it right in QuickTime Player. Trimming is lossless and can be done with precision. You can also cut sections out of the middle of your video and export a new copy. You can trim in the Photos app as well, though the original full-length video is always available if you wish to revert.

If you use the Find function in the Finder you can perform file searches that are much more complex than using Spotlight. You can add many pieces of criteria to the search other than a single search term. If you know how, you can use logic to combine search criteria and add very specific options. Then you can save your searches so you don't have to recreate them from scratch later.

A new feature in macOS Catalina will be the ability to share entire folders in iCloud Drive with others. Any files you place in the folder will be available to others that you specify, or anyone with a link of you wish. All with access to the folder can modify, add and delete files. This collaborative feature has been a part of other cloud soltuions for a while, so it is nice to finally have it as part of iCloud. You can also do this with iOS 13.

Many Mac users ignore the Go menu in the Finder, but there are some useful shortcuts there. You can access some of the most most used folders on your drive with this menu and see keyboard shortcuts for them. You can also access your Librray folder and Startup Disk through the Go menu if you know how. The Go to Folder function lets you move around by typing, which is preferred by many pro users.