Do you know your iPhone can serve as your medical ID and call emergency contacts if you’re incapacitated? Lots of folks add “ICE” entries to their contacts. I find this unnecessary and potentially confusing. If you create a contact entry that you name “ICE #1,” for example, the person calling it in an emergency won’t [...]
The application switchers on macOS and iOS enable you to quickly switch to the apps you’ve used recently. Learn what applications show on each device and key shortcuts to interact with this often unknown or underutilized feature. Mac App Switcher On the Mac, hold the Command key and tap Tab. This reveals the [...]
The best way I’ve found to set up a new (to you) iPhone is to use iTunes to manage the transition with an encrypted backup of the previous iPhone. This avoids most of the hassles of having a slow Internet connection or not having enough space in iCloud. Backup First When you plan to [...]
Apple offers but a few live appearances each year when company leaders take the stage to discuss and demo new products and services, and share updates on technological innovation. Tomorrow is one such learning opportunity. New iPhone Apple’s annual late summer event, which usually occurs in the second week of September, is traditionally the introduction of [...]
Did you know you can create your own digital keyboard with exactly the functions you want? Have you ever wanted to use a non-keyboard input device to control your Mac? Apple offers some additional ways to interact. Accessibility Keyboard For many folks, a physical keyboard is the primary feature that distinguishes a MacBook [...]
Apple has been ahead of the game in many areas of Accessibility and has long offered fair dictation and quite good text-to-speech support on its devices. These services are getting a significant improvement in macOS Catalina and iOS 13 coming this fall. Text to Speech In most applications where you can display or enter [...]
How important to you are seeing and hearing? How do these core senses help you understand and make meaning while using technology? Can you imagine your computing experience being better aligned with your expectations because of how your device looks and sounds? Inbox Color & Sound I manage six email accounts across my [...]
Designed well, computers are tools that enable us to succeed with ease. However, sometimes the devices we use to interact with our computers cause pain in our joints and lead to injury or other ailments. Natural Keyboarding A number of vendors over the years have offered “natural” and “ergonomic” keyboard designs. Most offer some [...]
How much do you spend on telecom services at home? Are you thoroughly using them all? Are you anxious about calling your providers or overwhelmed by possible alternatives? There have become myriad choices of television services and more high speed Internet plans to support them. If all you seek is an advocate to help [...]
As Apple continues to optimize the Mac operating system, the company is dropping support for legacy software. This is not the first time such a transition has occurred. Apple offered the Classic Environment in Mac OS X 10.0–10.4 so users could run Mac OS 9 applications and Rosetta in 10.4–10.6 so PowerPC-only applications would work on Intel-based [...]
