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 [...]
Since its release in 2007, Numbers has been the more colorful, designer-friendly spreadsheet application. I have long recommended it for producing beautiful tables and appreciated its support for multiple tables on one page, something Excel has never figured out. This week, I outline one of the newest features for arranging and more easily understanding data: Categories. Smart [...]
Microsoft Word has generally offered a special tool for printing on envelopes, however the design of this tool and its facility with printing has changed across various versions of the application. Therefore, it’s important to understand the basic functions of setting paper size and orientation. Width x Height Suppose you’re planning to print on a #16 [...]
Like going on retreat in the woods to nourish body and soul, restarting an iPhone can resolve weird, systemic issues. This is called a soft reset. Unlike Shutdown A soft reset does not necessarily have the same effect has shutting down an iPhone or iPad and starting it again. This may seem unusual [...]
Among the myriad new features of macOS Catalina and iOS 13 (and iPadOS), there were a two that seemed especially cool and one that will force me to adapt and change. Text Editing Shortcuts In iOS 13 on both iPhone and iPad, there will be six new shortcuts and gestures to make editing [...]
