Podcast/Blog/Screencasts
Shortcuts Origin
Gallery
Important Settings
Automations
Some of my favorite Shortcuts
Menus
Calculate Tip
Searching within websites like YouTube, Wikipedia, Rotten Tomatoes, etc.
Appending a note for Books I want to Read
Finding Good Shortcuts
Federico Viticci Macstories.net
Matthew Cassinelli MatthewCassinelli.com
Reddit /Shortcuts
Learning About Shortcuts
David Sparks’ Shortcuts Field Guide
Organizing
App of the Week: Reeder $4.99 (iOS); $9.99 (Mac)
Apple Arcade ($5.99 a month or included in the Apple One plans)
About 150 games and growing
Support for game controllers
My Blog Post from November 2019
Some favorites
Possessions In the podcast I said the game was A Fold Apart. Looking at the screenshots, it is not the game I thought it was.
Played on Mac, Apple TV, iPad, iPhone
App of the Week: New York Times Crossword
I want to create a video component of the App of the Week on my YouTube channel. YouTube.com/NathanLott
Not Apple Arcade
Full Crosswords, Mini Crosswords, Midi Crosswords
Bumblebee
Apple One Plans
Individual - $14.95 a month
Family (Shared with 5 people) - $19.95 a month
Premier (Shared with 5 people) - $29.95 a month
2. Apple Music
3. TV+
2TB iCloud Storage
Apple Arcade
News+
Fitness+
App of the Week - Controlly $3.99 for full app
Control your Mac with a game controller
Belkin WeMo Smart Plug
Connection
Siri
Shortcuts
2. HomePod Mini
Updates
2. Control the WeMo
3. Intercom
3. App of the Week: Overcast - Free, Premium is $9.99 a year to get rid of ads
Chapters
2. Voice Boost
3. Smart Speed
Podcasting
AppADay
Why apps?
Goal for Podcast
What the show will be about
2. About Me
My Apple Gear
3. App of the Week: Tweetbot for Mac and iOS
Did you know that San Antonio hosts two separate public library systems? There is the San Antonio Public Library, of course, with its central library plus 29 branches, but there is also Bexar Bibliotech which is an entirely digital library that has three physical locations in San Antonio. Bibliotech South is located on
Bibliotech South
Pleasanton Rd off of SW Military drive. Bibliotech West is on Zarzamora just north of 151. The newest location
Bibliotech West
is on the East Side on the corner of Walters and Burnet. If you ever have to serve jury duty, there is also a
Bibliotech East
Bibliotech booth in the jury waiting room to loan out e-readers. Current residents of Bexar County are eligible
Bibliotech Jury Booth
to get a library card either online or in person at any of the branches.
The mission of Bexar Bibliotech is to provide all Bexar County residents technology access to enhance education and literacy, promote reading as recreation, and equip all members of our community with necessary tools to thrive as citizens of the digital age. The experience of stepping in to a Bibliotech branch is
that first you are met with rows of iMac computers. Users can use the computers or check out laptops or tablets for two 60 minute sessions a day. There are also meeting rooms available as well as children's rooms where kids can play console video games. Laptops and tablets are only available for in-library use. Another service Bibliotech renders is that they will loan out e-readers for adults and children. For adults there is the Kindle Fire and the Nook Glowlight. Only the Kindle Fire will let you check out books from home. The Nook Glowlight can have books added on by Bibliotech staff. The Nook HD, Playaway Launchpad, and Samsung Galaxy Tab are on loan for kids and already come pre-loaded with content. All lending periods are for 2 weeks.
Bibliotech has plenty to offer even if you never step in to one of their locations. If you already have a device running Apple iOS or Android as well as a browser on your PC, you can check out ebooks, audiobooks and more from home without having to go to one of the Bibliotech locations. Let's quickly run through some of the apps Bibliotech supports. Cloud Library lets you download ebooks and audiobooks. Hoopla let you download ebooks, audiobooks, movies, and music. RBDigital lets you check out magazines, classic books, and even gets you access to Qello which is a service to let you watch concert recordings. BiblioBoard is an app where independent authors can submit books and graphic novels for the public to check out. One of the bigger services Bibliotech offers is free access to Lynda.com for online tutorials about a wide variety of subjects, but mainly computer science and software tutorials. Finally you can also learn languages with Mango Language.
Bibliotech is a great service and they are located in communities where they are needed most. It is also nice to have additional options. If San Antonio Public Library doesn't have an ebook available that you are looking for, you can try Bibliotech's various offerings. To find out more visit them at bexarbibliotech.org and drop by one of their locations sometime. The librarians are friendly and want to help.
MacUpdater is a small utility for Mac which tracks all of your non-Mac App Store and tells you whether you need to update them. I think it can track your Mac App Store updates, but I don’t know why you would need to since Apple does that anyway.
When I first heard about this app, I was a little hesitant mainly because of the name. Before app stores, MacUpdate was a website aggregating shareware and freeware apps for the Mac. Then I started to hear horror stories about these aggregation sites like Download.com and MacUpdate.com that more malware was being bundled in with these downloads. As far as I know, MacUpdater isn’t affiliated with any of these types of sites.
How it works is that it scans all of your apps and will put a number in your menu bar of how many apps need updating. If no apps need to be updated, you will see a check mark. The apps that do need to be updated have a button next to them that you click on and it begins to update the app in place.
One of the downsides of the app is that you don’t get to see the developer notes about what is in the update. You can click on an “i” next to the app which is supposed to show you the information, but in my experience, that doesn’t always work.
Most apps have no problem downloading and installing the update right within MacUpdater which makes the utility nice and convenient to use especially if you have a lot of third party apps. If there is an app that has a major point release that requires additional payment, it will let you know. You will have to do that manually, however. It is really nice to see at a glance which apps need updating and I would highly recommend checking it out.
MacUpdater can be found at https://www.corecode.io/macupdater/. You can update 10 apps for free and then after that it costs $11. 07 or 9.99 Euros.
Apple Arcade launched in September 2019 with iOS 13. It is $5.99 a month for unlimited play. There are now 100 games available on the service. I’m not an avid gamer, but I like to play games here and there. Time will tell if this service is for me. I have downloaded a handful of games on the iPhone, iPad and some on the Apple TV. Even though it is available on the Mac, I haven’t really tried any on that platform.
There are also a lot of games that make use of my Nimbus SteelSeries game controller which I initially bought for the Apple TV and didn’t end up using all that. It is nice to play some of these games on the iPad with a game controller though.
Some titles that I’ve played and liked include Word Laces, What the Golf, Pilgims, Spek, and Card of Darkness. Word Laces is made by MiniMega, the company behind my favorite non-Arcade game Bonza. You are shown a picture and then have to attach letter fragments to make words that describe that picture. You connect the letters with shoe laces.
Word Laces
What the Golf is a crazy golf game. It starts off normally where you pull back with your finger to the velocity you want for the ball and then move your finger right or left to aim it. Then you start to launch other things toward the hole besides golf balls such as golf clubs, a human, a lamp, a rolling office chair, and even the hole itself. Each item is accompanied by its own pun when you finally make it.
What the Golf
Next is Pilgrims which is an adventure /puzzle game. The artwork is really humorous. You play this cowboy-like prospector man who goes to different points on a map. You flick his card on to the scene to begin playing. First you run into an old lady on a boat, you ask her to row you across the lake, but she tells this story about a bird who she got mad at and it flew away and now she’s sad. There is no actual dialog though, it is all shown in animations and pictures. I assume that I have to find the bird to get the lady to row me across the lake. You pick up items which are represented as cards also. You flick those cards and each one has a different effect. If it is not useful, it just goes back in your pile.
Pilgrims
Another game, Spek, is a puzzle game that kind of reminds me of an old arcade game called Qix. Instead of drawing rectangles inside a bigger rectangle to trap a ball, you are traveling on the border of different shapes. By adjusting the angle on the shape you can bring two separate shapes together or change the look of the shape you are traveling around. The object of the game is to capture two small boxes that appear on the border. Some times you have to move the shape around for the boxes to finally appear.
Three angles of Spek
The last game I want to talk about in today’s post is Card of Darkness. This is a Role Playing Game where you start off with 20 hit points. In front of you is a grid of different cards. Some have rocks, some have swords, some have potions, some have birds, etc. Each item has an object underneath it. For example a Rock with 10 will take 10 hit points from you unless you have a sword. For 10 points, because that number is even you have to hit it with an even number sword. If you hit it with an odd number sword, the sword will break and vice versa if you hit an odd with an even. The potions have numbers too and those will give you points back. The object is for you to clear the grid or at least get to the other side.
Card of Darkness
There are an overwhelming number of games included in Apple Arcade and I’ve only tried a fraction of them. A couple I’ve tried I didn’t like. Outland, for example, is a little too stressful and scary for me. So far I think it is a great service and well worth 5 bucks a month.
One of the neat new features of Shortcuts in iOS 13 and the newest series of iPhones is the use of NFC stickers. NFC stands for Near Field Communication and it used to be only available for Apple Pay. It allows you to tap your phone near a NFC chip to create an action.
With the new Automations tab in Shortcuts plus some NFC stickers (I got 10 for $6.99 on Amazon.com) you can do some pretty cool things. I have a sticker on my car dashboard where I can tap my phone and it finds all the music I’ve downloaded to the phone, starts playing the music on Shuffle, and then opens up the Music app. I put another sticker on my tripod which opens up the Scanner Pro app where I scan song books for playing piano using an iPad app called ForScore.
One caveat I have found with the stickers is that it doesn’t seem to work well when the sticker is placed on metal. I tried placing a sticker on my metal music stand and the phone couldn’t read it. I put it on my plastic tripod and it could.
It will be interesting and fun to see where else and what other applications I can use these stickers for.
For the most part I’ve gotten used to a phone without a Home button. I still have to get used to pressing the Side button and the Volume Up button to turn it off though. I’ve finally realized that you can just touch anywhere on the screen to wake it into the lock screen. Face ID works for the most part, but I’ve found that it doesn’t work very well when the phone is on the tripod in Landscape mode. I have to unlock it before I put it on the tripod. Swiping up to get to the app switcher is problematic also. It seems like I have to swipe really far up to even get to it.
The camera of course is really impressing me about the iPhone 11 Pro. Taking pictures of the stars and subjects in near darkness without a flash have been amazing. The digital zoom, while there are some artifacts in the picture when viewing it on the computer, looks a lot better than it used to. I’ve noticed that with Night Mode, the subject has to be still or noticeable blur will occur. It also helps to have a tripod for the best shots, but it is still possible to get pretty good results hand held. Even day photos are blowing me away. The camera is the best part of the new iPhone.
One thing that I will talk more about in another post is the ability to read NFC (near field communication) stickers and trigger Shortcuts. I have one in my car that I just touch my iPhone to and it starts playing all my music.
Overall, I’m really enjoying the new phone.
Apple released their Apple Cards to the general public on August 21, 2019. I applied that day. The process was very easy. You open the Wallet app and press the plus sign in the upper right corner. You are taken to an Apple Pay screen and you tap the blue continue button. There you will see a link to sign up for the Apple Card. You enter in some information about your annual income and other personal info and then it presents you with an offer for an APR interest rate based on your credit score. Mine was 17.99%. Here you can either accept or deny the card. I accepted and it took a few minutes to process and then the card was in my virtual wallet. I also ordered the physical titanium card (we now know it 90% titanium and 10% aluminum) which arrived a week or two later. The card arrived in a nice cardboard thin box which must have had a NFC chip in it because to activate the card, all you do is tap a section of the box.
Using the card has been pretty painless. I am now using this card for Amazon purchases and you find the card number, expiration date, and 3 digit code by tapping the three dots next to the card and then Card Information. It then prompts you for Touch ID or Face ID before showing you the card numbers. I also use the card for iTunes and will when I buy a new iPhone in October. For Apple purchases you get 3% cash back, Apple Pay purchases are 2% cash back, and everything else is 1% cash back. I have used the physical card in a couple locations like HEB (still no Apple Pay in San Antonio) and Pizza Hut.
In order to pay off the credit card, you enter you bank routing and account numbers in the Wallet app. The card in the app changes colors when you buy stuff and then turns white when you pay it off. There is a wheel that you can turn to adjust how much you would like to pay off. You also get a list of all your transactions and notifications for how much cash back you get every day. The cash back is applied to your Apple Pay Cash which you can then transfer to your bank or use toward iTunes purchases.
The last thing to mention is to opt out of arbitration. You might want to opt out of arbitration in order to keep your right to sue or participate in a class action if something goes wrong. More information can be found here. Everything has been really easy on this card from applying to using to paying off. It is also nice only having my name and nothing else on the physical card for security purposes.
WWDC 2019 happened at the beginning of the month. I watched the keynote from home over a few days because it was over two hours long and packed with stuff. They started by announcing a few things with Watch OS and tvOS. On the watch there will be noise detection which will alert you that you might need ear protection if you are in a loud environment. There will also be a way for females to track menstrual cycles on the watch and on the iPhone if they don’t own a watch. Apps will be native to the watch meaning they won’t be dependent on having an iPhone and there will even be an App Store on the watch. On Apple TV there will be support for Xbox and Playstation game controllers, new screensavers, and support for multiple user logins.
iPadOS has now been separated from iOS so iOS now reflects the iPhone. This is mainly for marketing purposes, but it also means that the iPad can grow and get features separate from the iPhone which it already has been doing. So on iPad there are improvements in Slide Over where you can change between multiple apps in Slide Over. There are pinch gestures for copy, cut, and paste which may take some time getting used to.
Marzipan, the project I referred to in my last post on WWDC, has gotten an official name, Catalyst. Catalyst lets third party developers bring their iPad apps to the Mac with a click of the button and some tweaking. One of the most amazing demos on stage was an accessibility feature which lets someone with no control over their hands control every aspect of the computer solely by using their voice. The implementation of this was pretty genius.
This is just a small sampling of what was announced on stage at WWDC. I can’’t wait until September so that I can download the final releases of all of these OSes. I don’t have any extra gear to install betas on and I wouldn’t trust it until the final release. It will be exciting though.
I’m not very good at it, but I’m fascinated by the idea of automating tasks on the Mac, iPhone, and iPad. On iOS I’ve played with Shortcuts (formerly Workflow). It is great to answer some questions and have my substitute teaching jobs automatically ready to go into my Fantastical calendar. Another one I like is launching an app from my iPhone, choosing the playlist I want, the iPhone starts playing the playlist, and then opens the Music app so I can see what is playing. Other people have made some amazingly complex shortcuts that you can download on to your device. One creates a PDF outlining the top songs you listened to last year. Another one even creates a Name That Tune-style game that you can play with your music library.
There are more options on the Mac. Built-in to every Mac is Automator where you can create apps and services. This one is more limited and a little harder to use though. Third party options bring a lot more power in apps like Keyboard Maestro, Hazel, Text Expander, and Better Touch Tool. Keyboard Maestro is great at assigning keyboard shortcuts to different actions or groups of actions on the Mac. For instance, when I create a Screencast, I can quit every app, hide the Dock, and hide everything on my desktop by pressing Command+Control+Option Q and then restore everything by pressing Command+Control+Option Up Arrow. Hazel will organize your folders for you by moving files into correct categories. Text Expander is great for the words and phrases you type all the time to come up in just a few keystrokes. Better Touch Tool gives more power to your Mouse and Trackpad by enabling more actions to get done by tap or a mouse click.
The downside to working with some of these tools is that often you need to think like a programmer which is hard to do if you don’t have the training. If you study what other people have created, you can get better and of course there are a lot of tutorials online. One nice thing is that most of these apps let you share your creations with everyone on the Internet.
WWDC or Apple’s World Wide Developer’s Conference is coming up on June 3, 2019. The keynote usually will feature what will be in the next version of macOS, iOS, tvOS, and watchOS. It looks like it will be a good year for the Mac and iPad. First is Marzipan. Marzipan is a project Apple talked about last year when it brought its iOS versions of Stocks, Voice Memo, News, and Home to the Mac in Mojave. This year Apple will be opening up this project to third party developers to bring their iOS apps to the Mac. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out. Other things that may come to the Mac include Shortcuts, Screentime, a way to extend your Mac screen to your iPad as an extra monitor and some things they announced a month ago like Apple Arcade and the TV app.
This is supposed to be a big year for the iPad as well. One very interesting development might be mouse and trackpad support for the iPad. There may also be a larger selection of fonts available with Fontkit. What ever is announced, I’m sure it will be interesting. I can’t wait to watch the keynote and as always it will be a summer of anticipation as it all gets released in the fall.