I have been using the Macintosh computer off and on since 1989. On Friday, I'll share some tips and tricks using the computer and various accessories. All reviews and tips are my own.
I have been using the Macintosh computer off and on since 1989. On Friday, I'll share some tips and tricks using the computer and various accessories. All reviews and tips are my own.
A list of all the Blog Posts in this category.
This is my annual Black Friday watch posting. Every year I post on things that I am looking for on Black Friday. In addition, I let you know what resources I am using to find the best deals.
Here's the deals that I'll be looking for on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
I don't need any software this year. However, I'll be checking the Apple iOS Store for some good deals.
I have heard about imazing software for a few years - and didn't think much of it.
For those that don't know, iMazing allows you to manage your iOS devices without the need for iTunes. It's a great single-source application that lets you manage your Music, Ringtones, Books, Photos, Messages and more.
I recently purchased it in the October BundleHunt deal. It was a good deal for $6.
This use to be called DiskAid, but was changed to iMazing in 2014 to better reflect the value of the application.
I like that I am able to move over Music and Movies onto the iPhone from my MacBook Pro and iMac.
Now that Apple split Music and Movies to different Apps, it is no longer fun to manage my device. iMazing makes it easy to manage the device in one application.
I can sort the Photos/Video listing by size. Now I can remove the larger files that are taking up too much space on my phone. A really good way to manage the iPhone.
I can now better manage files in the Books section. I can finally get rid of outdated books and add important PDF manuals. That I can read when I have no internet - such as BBEdit and the Affinity Photo Manual.
Backing up messages is cool! But backing up Voicemail is awesome. Now I can completely clear out all those old voice messages. I can also save the transcript to a CSV file - something that isn't possible in any Apple application.
Get iMazing if you want more control with your iOS device. It really gives you a lot more control on backing up your device.
You can download iMazing 2 for Mac and PC on iMazing website.
A single license cost $44.99 - however, you can usually find the software bundle with other apps for a much cheaper price.
Last month when I was setting up my new iMac, I was thinking if it was time to move on from using Panic Transmit. So I spent time looking for alternative FTP client software.
One of the applications that I encountered was Viper FTP. This was interesting because I hadn't seen it before and thought it would be worth checking out.
I played around with Viper FTP for a couple of days, and here are my observations:
There is a free version of Viper FTP which has limited capabilities. This is a perfect solution if you only have one FTP connection and need basic functionality.
There is a setting in Viper FTP that preserves the system date of downloaded files. This is neat. When I want to back up a production file, I want to keep the date of the last modification. In Transmit, this was possible with Transmit Disk mode was enabled - that feature has been discontinued in Transmit 5.6.0.
In Viper the connection favorites are kept on the left side of the window. This makes it easy to jump around on the server. In Transmit, it's in a small bookmark-type bar on the top of the listing.
In Transmit, you can assign custom icons to servers, making it really easy to see the AWS servers from the DropBox servers. You can't do that in Viper.
In Viper, you can put servers in the Toolbar. Which makes it really quick to access critical servers.
Transmit has the ability to connect to a lot more different server types. You are limited using Viper. Viper FTP Lite doesn't have access to Google Drive or DropBox.
Viper FTP Lite, the free version, only allows you to save 3 servers at once.
Panic Transmit costs $24.99 via subscription price or a one-time price for $45 per user for all your Macs. Viper FTP costs $18.99 for one user on one computer. To install it on multiple computers it cost $79.99.
Panic "Create New Connection" Dialog. This shows all available options.
Viper FTP "Quick Connection" dialog. Pretty cool that you can upload videos to YouTube!
While Viper FTP looks cool and has a few bells and whistles that isn't available in Transmit, I'll be sticking with Transmit. I think Transmit is a cool
Last month I upgraded my iMac (21.5-inch, Mid 2011) to the 2019 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K display.
I spent a lot of time investigating the perfect computer, spent time researching different configurations and machines. Is the Mac Mini a better computer to get? How about a MacBook Pro?
After much research and talking with friends, I selected this configuration:
3.7GHz 6-core 9th-generation Intel Core i5 processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.6GHz
8GB 2666MHz DDR4 memory
Radeon Pro 580X with 8GB of GDDR5 memory
512GB SSD storage
Magic Mouse 2
Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad - US English
Accessory Kit
I am actively updating my 27-inch iMac 2019 page on the ins and outs of using this computer. (Think of it as a mini-blog)
My goal is to update the site on my experiences using the new computer.
I have been a Macintosh user for a long time, and I have a lot of old gadgets and software - such as FireWire, and SCSI disks.
This this the first computer that I owned that doesn't have a built in CD/DVD drive. I already have an external USB DVD drive. (It supports both Firewire and USB2)
Luminar 2018 is a cool application that makes it super easy to stylize and image to the way you want it to look.
Sample Screenshot:
There's a Sky Enhancer which allows you to get a better sky via artificial intelligence.
Out of the box, there are 60 one-click presets to quickly touch up the photos. You can always purchase more on seklum.com website - there are some free presets while others cost between $10 - $20.
When you select a preset, you can change all the options - to one that works best for your image.
Luminar 2018 gives you a bit more power than what's in Photolemur 3. For example, with Luminar I can alter a photo to look.
Batch Processing is pretty cool. This is where you can apply Presets, Format and resize all that the same time. For example, you can apply the Sky Enhancer to a set of common images. For example, you can make a bunch of Black and White thumbnail version of images as previews.
Batch processing is great for those RAW images that you have. You can use the technology in Luminar to render the images and then back up to various cloud services such as Google Photos.
The Luminar 2018 document is 155 pages long. There is a lot of information about all the various configurations. The nice thing is that the PDF document is searchable. If reading manuals isn't your thing there's a large collection of video tutorials available.
Luminar 2018 doesn't replace the need for Photolemur 3 - it just another image enhancing tool in the toolbox. Photolemur is great when I want a quick touch up, but when I want to be fancy or have more control, I'll use Luminar 2018.
Photolemur and Luminar 2018 are both created by Skylum.
The best way to get Luminar 2018 is via the BundleHunt collection. You can get it for about $4 - about a $60 savings. This is a good price for the value that you get using the software.
I am not sure if this is unique to MacOS 10.15, but I noticed something cool about the Spotlight search. You can put in holidays and it will find files that were created on that day.
Here's an example of Halloween:
Here's an example of Christmas:
Easter 2018:
None of the files found have the "Halloween, Christmas or Easter" text in them. So Spotlight had to have matched the event with the date.
I tried other dates such as my Birthday - to see if Spotlight would interpret contact data as part of the Spotlight search. That didn't work.
What do you think? What other "Easter Eggs" are being used by Sportlight?
One of the features that Apple changed in macOS Catalina is the Recent Applications in the Dock. You can no longer see a grid of Recent Applications. In Catalina, you can only a select number of recent applications appear in the dock.
It's really easy to bring back the "old" look.
Here are the simple steps:
The nice thing about this tip is that now you know you can put any Smart folder in the dock.
So for example, one thing you can do is tag certain applications that you use - for example, applications use to modify Images. Then create a Smart Folder that searches for that Tag. Then place the Smart Folder in the Dock for easy access.
Light Pillar's Mosaic is a window's management utility. It makes it easy to organize various windows that you may have open. For example, you can easily layout Chrome Window and Evernote, so they layout evenly on the screen.
If you're looking for a quick way to create simple diagrams, Shapes might be the right tool for you. It's a good application that makes it easy to create diagrams and flow charts.
Description from the shapesapp.com website:
Shapes is an elegant Diagramming app for Mac OS X, that is both simple and powerful. Shapes give you all of the most important features you need in a Diagramming tool without all the extra cruft, at an affordable price.
Shapes is great for Programmers and Web Designers looking for a simple tool for quickly designing Charts, laying out wireframes, or visualizing Model Relationships.
OmniGraffle has a lot more capabilities and certainly in't fair to compare the two apps. If your just creating basic chart diagrams and don't need a lot of flexibility, then Shapes is your tool.
Some differences between OmniGraffle and Shapes that I found while exploring:
Shapes is available on the Apple Store for $9.99.
You down download a fully functional version of Shapes from their website and try it out. During the trial you can not import or save changes.
Type Styler is an application that makes it easy to create logos and text graphics.
I learned about this application from a post in the Affinity Photo Forum and thought to check it out. I was curious to see how this compares to Art Text 3 -(Which I already Own).
Some of the options with TypeStyler.
There are 95 Text Styles in the library. (That's the colorful A's above.) Simply select some text then choose your text style. You can then configure the style afterward.
There are 45 distortions that can be made.
There are different document presets available such as Page, Poster, Banner, CD, Bag, Box, 3D Model, and Video. (The Video seems very interesting to explore.)
The Glyph Tool allows you easy access to all 4,613 glyphs. I didn't realize that there were that many in the Apple Symbols.
The Body text tool allows you to create new text body. There are 45 different text body types.
The Style Workshop is a creative way to play around with different effects for the text, such as Full, Shadow, and all sorts of effect.
Objects can be clip to the clipboard and paste into OmniGraffle, Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo and other apps. The final results
You can export to Photoshop, PDF, Illustrator, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, EPS, PICT, GIF.
When you export as Photoshop, all the objects are on their own layer as Pixel format. You have the option to set the resolution, the default is 261 dpi.
Type Styler Type Settings dialog box shows some of the options you have.
The big difference I can see between the two apps is that Type Styler allows you to format a lot of text.
Art Text 3 is great if you need a logo or text style design. It's a very powerful application with a lot of capabilities. Great when you want to create eye-catching text.
Type Styler is great if you're designing a brochure or a bag and want to apply creativity all over the document. So if you're looking to create an eye-catching brochure - Type Styler would be your best option.
Type Styler on the Apple Store hasn't been updated in a few years. Its last update was to support Mac OS 10.11 (El Capitan) - nearly 3 years ago. Their website has the latest version 10.6 - certainly the best place to get the latest version that works.
If you want to try the application you can from the Strider Software website.