migformac news
Tips, tricks and recommendations: October 2019
In this issue:
- In Focus: What to Know about Catalina, the new Mac OS
- App of the Month: Keynote
- Mac Tech Tip: Using COMMAND and SHIFT keys for selecting multiple items
- iPhone/iPad Tech Tip: The Awesome "Control Center"
- About migformac
Catalina was released this week. But you might want to wait to install it....
Catalina, the newest Mac OS, was released this week, and it includes some impressive new features and upgrades to favorite applications, like
Photos and
Notes. The long-standing iTunes has been replaced by three separate apps:
Apple Music, Apple TV, and
Apple Podcasts.
Apple TV Plus is a video-subscription service coming out this fall. As for other applications,
Photos gets a facelift, with photo browsing and viewing improvements.
Notes (one of my favorite Mac apps!) has a new "gallery" layout, and you can now share folders with others.
To get an overview of all of Catalina's new features, go to https://www.apple.com/macos/catalina/.
ALERT FOR MICROSOFT OFFICE 2011 USERS! Office for Mac 2011 is a 32-bit application and this suite of apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook) will NOT work with Catalina. You will either need to use Mac's Pages for word processing or purchase a new version of Office for Mac. No 32-bit apps will run on Catalina.
In Mojave, you can check to see if your applications are 32-bit or 64-bit: Go to Apple icon (top left corner of Desktop)--About This Mac--System Report--Applications (under Software category). Then look under the 64-bit column. If a "no" appears, then it's a no-go on Catalina.
Keynote is Apple's version of
PowerPoint; both applications allow you to create simple or sophisticated presentations. But
Keynote is much more than presentation software. Want to make a slideshow of photos with titles and music? Keynote is a great tool for this. I also use
Keynote to create title slides for
iMovie videos. You can animate text, text boxes and images, save the title slide as a jpeg, and import it into
iMovie. In addition, I have used it with clients to create a directory or catalog of images and text and then saved the whole project as a pdf document which can be viewed by Mac or PC users.
You can include text, tables, charts, shapes, photos, movies and audio files.
Best part: it is free on all Apple products: computers and mobile devices!
Here's more on Keynote: https://www.apple.com/keynote/
I'm often asked how to select a group of consecutive or non-consecutive items on a Mac, so that you can move or delete them, like a group of documents or photos. Here's how:
To select a group of CONSECUTIVE items (like images in your Photo Library):
1) Select the first item in a series of items
2) Hold down the SHIFT KEY
3) Select the last item in the series
4) Delete/move the selected group
With photos, there will be a blue outline around all of the selected images. Once selected, you can delete/move the entire group.
To select a group of NON-CONSECUTIVE items:
1) Select one item (a photo or document) that you want to delete/move
2) Hold down the COMMAND KEY
3) Select the other items by "cherry picking" in any order
4) Delete/move the selected group
Here's an Apple Support page on this topic: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/select-items-mchlp1378/10.14/mac/10.14
Ahhh, my friend, the
Control Center on my iPhone. It immediately connects me with my most frequently used apps and tasks on my mobile device.
To access Control Center, swipe up from the bottom of your screen (with iPhone X and later, swipe down from the top-right edge).
I always use Control Center for taking photos....unlock the phone, swipe to pull up Control Center and hit the camera icon!
Other frequent actions:
- Set my wake alarm
- Turn on the flashlight
- View current time around the world with World Clock
- Set a timer
- Do a math calculation
- Turn on and off Airplane Mode, Wifi and Bluetooth
- Mute and unmute music playing
- Lock or unlock screen orientation
- Set Do Not Disturb preferences
- Mirror the iPhone screen to my Apple TV
The other neat thing about Control Center is that many controls have multiple actions. For example, when you touch and hold the camera icon, it give you 4 action options: Take Selfie, Record Video, Take Portrait, Take Portrait Selfie. If you touch and hold the Flashlight, it gives you 4 levels of brightness!
How cool is that? Check it out: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/use-and-customize-control-center-iph59095ec58/ios
About migformac
I typically come to clients' homes and offices to help with anything Mac related: iMacs, Mac laptops, iPhones, iPads, iPods, iCloud syncing, Photos organization, as well as Mac, Microsoft and Google applications. I also assist with wireless printers and other peripherals. I teach Apple technology classes to small and large groups and make Apple-related presentations to even larger groups.
Feel free to call or email me if you have questions: mig@migformac.com.
