How-To - page 52

During he hangover-fogged morning of January 1st, you scrawled a hasty list of things you thought you should quit or commit to in 2018. More yoga, more walking, less driving, fewer cakes, maybe start meditating. Probably this list is similar to the one you wrote at the beginning of 2018.

How’s it going? Bad, right? You’ve probably spent the last week feeling alternatively guilty, and useless. And that’s not because you can’t pick up a habit — god knows you’ve already got enough bad habits that you’re adept at maintaining. No, you’re just approaching it wrong. And you’re probably a little bit lazy. Let’s fix that, and learn how to create winning streaks

The Portrait Mode in the iPhone XR and XS is hands-down amazing. In the time it take to snap a photo, the camera scans the depth of the image in front of it, and uses that data to blur the background, and make the subject pop out, sharp. But it doesn’t always work. The depth detection gets confused by glass, for example, ruining what could have been an amazing image.

Today we’re going to use and app called Focos to fix these depth glitches. Focos is an all-round focusing powerhouse of an app, recently updated to support the iPad, including the new iPads Pro. The area we’ll focus on today (sorry) is the ability to edit the depth map, and paint back in the glass or hair that the iPhone missed.

Apple is set to make 5 billion dollars less this quarter than it previously expected. That’s a pretty big deal, and it’s down to two major things. One was an “economic weakness in some emerging markets.” The other was that Apple said it sold “fewer iPhone upgrades than we had anticipated.”

That second one is very interesting. Why aren’t people upgrading? There are two possibilities. One is that they’re switching to Android. The other is that people are holding onto their old iPhones for much longer. Why’s that?

In parts one and two of this series, I talked about how I record podcasts on the iPad. In today’s third and final episode, we’ll learn about editing. For this, I use the awesome Ferrite Recording Studio, and Apple Pencil, and a pair of headphones. Let’s get started.

If your New Year’s resolution is to get fit with Apple Watch in 2019, maybe I can help. I know from personal experience that it’s never too late to get in shape.

I’m a middle-aged guy, and up until a few years ago, I lived a very unhealthy lifestyle. I never exercised, I only ate junk food, and I was seriously overweight. Today, I have a six-pack, I run seven miles a day, and I even write about fitness for Cult of Mac.

The secret to my transformation is something I call “The Ratchet.” It’s a way of running that makes it so easy to get started that pretty much anyone who can walk can do it. All you need is your Apple Watch and a pair of running shoes.

So if you’re thinking about New Year’s resolutions for 2019, why not give The Ratchet a try? Here’s how.

You know what the New Year means? New devices, and the need for new apps to fill them. Only you’re all spent out, and instead of buying you an iTunes voucher, Auntie and Uncle got you yet another country-themed doll like you used to collect when you were a kid¹.

The answer is an App Store Wish List. And in order to save you money that you don;t have, were going to make our own with the Shortcuts app.

Today we’ll make two shortcuts. One will add any app to a list in Reminders. The second will take that list, and show you a beautiful list of links and prices, right there in the Today view. Just tap on an app to see it in the App Store, and maybe even buy it.

After trying out the millionth notes/scrapbooking app for the iPad, I realized that I should ditch apps altogether and just use the built-in Files app. It might be severely limited as an actual file browser, but Files has some big advantages over scrapbooking apps. It makes everything available to Spotlight searches, for one, and it doesn’t create duplicates of your files, because you’re always working with the originals.

Another huge advantage is that marking up PDFs with the Apple Pencil is instant. With all other PDF editors I’ve tried, you have to tap to enter a markup mode. In Files, you just start writing on the PDF. And that’s just the beginning.

Let’s see how it all works.

The iPad’s home screen is a waste of space. The 4X5 grid of icons looks absurd on the 13-inch iPad Pro. In fact, the fact that you’re limited to a grid of app icons is itself absurd. Where are the live readouts from your weather app or stock ticker? Where are the actions to send a message direct to your spouse/boss without opening an app first?

Worse, because the iPad doesn’t have 3D Touch, you can’t do anything useful with those icons other than launch the app¹.

Today we’ll fix that. Using a combination of shortcuts, you can add actions to your home screen, instead of apps. For instance, you can create a grid of custom icons which can email a contact, create a new blank file in your text app of choice, create a quick reminder, and so on. Check it out.

Did you get a new iPhone or iPad for Christmas? Maybe you got all excited and signed up for a few subscriptions? And now, perhaps, you’re worried that when the free trial periods end, you’ll be stuck paying for them, and that they’ll be as impossible to cancel as an unused gym membership. No problem! Canceling subscriptions on iOS is almost as easy as signing up to them.

In recent years, the iPhone setup process has changed as dramatically as the iPhones themselves. Apple just keeps making it easier to do. So easy, in fact, that there are just a few things you need to do to move from your old iPhone to a new one. And setting up a new iPhone XR from scratch isn’t much harder — gone are the days of manually copying passwords just to get to the home screen.

There are still a few tricks, though, that will help things run smoothly. Here’s how to set up your new iPhone XR the right way.

In recent years, the iPhone setup process has changed as dramatically as the iPhones themselves. Apple just keeps making it easier to do. So easy, in fact, that there are just a few things you need to do to move from your old iPhone to a new one. And setting up a new iPhone XS from scratch isn’t much harder — gone are the days of manually copying passwords just to get to the home screen.

There are still a few tricks, though, that will help things to run smoothly. Let’s see how to upgrade to the iPhone XS.

“This is going to be the best Christmas video ever!” you tell yourself. You have an iPhone XS, it’s set to 4K at 24 frames per second, and you’re framing your shots like a pro. Smart HDR will illuminate the smiles on the faces of your nieces and nephews, and stabilization will take care of your hangover jitters.

“Oh man, I can’t wait until these morons see this in their iMessages, using iOS 12’s great Share Back feature,” you think somewhat uncharitably, while squeezing a handy link into your thoughts.

Then reality grabs you. That 5-minute 4K clip of the angels ripping their way through a forest’s worth of wrapping paper is over 1.5GB. There’s no way you can share that on your parents’ crappy internet connection. Why oh why didn’t you shoot at 720p? Luckily, Shortcuts is here to save the day. Again.

Christmas time means packing up your daily troubles, forgetting work for a week, and heading home to … troubleshoot your parents’ broken computers and gadgets? Oh man, is it that time of year again already?

That’s the problem with being the family’s only geek — you get handed all the geek jobs. However, you can turn this to your advantage, and make it a lot easier, by going in prepared. Check out our Holiday Troubleshooting Guide right here.

“Hey Siri, 30-minute timer!” you shout across the kitchen, elbows deep in turkey gizzards. Only Siri isn’t interested. It’s already running that one-hour timer for the roast potatoes. Why would anybody want to run multiple timers at the same time? Silly human.

Thankfully, Shortcuts is here to save your bacon (and your Brussel’s sprouts, sage-and-onion stuffing, and so on). If you’re feeling fancy, you could even set this up to use with Siri, but today we’ll keep it simple. So, no matter how complex your Christmas Day cooking arrangement, Shortcuts will let you know when your goose is cooked.

Got a new Apple Pencil? Then you should change these two settings as soon as you’ve snapped it onto the side of your iPad Pro and experienced its satisfyingly solid magnetic click.

It’s Christmas season, and you know what that means: Extra-long queues at airport check-in and “security;” once-a-year travelers who won’t just get out of the plane’s aisle and just sit the hell down; and of course parents/kids/friends who insist that you never emailed them the details of your flight.

We can’t fix the queues, the morons who mill in the aisles, or your lying friends and family, but I can show you how to quickly track a flight right from the Messages app, or anywhere else you see a flight number written down on your iPhone. Let’s take a look.

In part one of this series, we saw how to record remote podcasts using only iOS. It requires using your iPhone to place the FaceTime or Skype call, but you end up with a great result. That post covered the setup. Today, we’ll see how the recording and editing parts work, using AUM and Ferrite on the iPad.

Amazon’s Alexa speakers can finally connect to your Apple Music account.

Support for Apple Music on the Amazon Echo was rolled out today, giving iPhone and iPad owners the option to pump out their favorite jams without signing up for an Apple Music competitor like Spotify Premium.

Getting the new Apple Music integration up and running is ridiculously easy, but we’ll walk you through the entire process.

The iPad Pro is pro enough for almost anything, but one thing it still can’t manage is making a Skype (or FaceTime) call and recording it at the same time. This is actually the fault of Skype (and FaceTime), but is nonetheless a pain for anyone who travels and podcasts.

There’s a workaround, however. It requires that you use an iPhone and an iPad together. But seeing as how the alternative is carrying a MacBook, too, it’s a pretty good option. It’s also easy, once you get your head around the setup. And you don’t need to travel to use this setup. After some experimentation, this is now my default podcasting method.

Even the most committed iPad user still needs a Mac occasionally. You might need to add music to your iTunes music library, or get files off an SD card, or use BitTorrent, or keep local backups of your photo library. Or you might just like using a Mac, but you don’t want a huge iMac, and what’s the point in buying a MacBook if you have an iPad already?

The obvious choice is a Mac mini. And with this tip, you can use your iPad Pro as a display for the Mac. That means you won’t need an extra monitor, but it also means that you can quickly turn your iPad into a Mac when you need to.

Your iPhone apps can track your location. You already know that, but maybe you tell yourself that that weather app just uses your current location to give you an accurate forecast, or that your bike-routing and tracking app is just keeping a count of miles and calories.

In reality, any one of these apps may be taking that location data and selling it. One way to handle this is to keep up to date with the privacy policies of any location-aware apps you use, but that’s too much work for most of us. Instead, why not just deny them access to your location? On iOS, that’s easy, and it works.

The iPad’s best simple drawing app just got a fantastic update for the new 2018 iPad Pro. Linea Sketch is a crowd favorite thanks to its clean design, its advanced-yet-simple-to-use features, and its great drawing and ink engine. And now it has been brushed up to take advantage of the new 2018 iPadPro and second-gen Apple Pencil.

The iPad’s main trick is that it disappears when you launch an app. Fire up a piano app, and your iPad becomes a piano. Launch YouTube and it turns into a TV for pacifying children. This is part of the magic of the iPad, but it’s not quite perfect. Kids can easily leave YouTube and start reading your sexts instead. And a musician might accidentally trigger a gesture while playing on those virtual piano keys, finding themselves back at the home screen in the middle of a performance.

What you need is kiosk mode, aka Guided Access. This locks the iPad into a single app, and disables the hardware buttons. And it’s equally good for keeping you in one app, or keeping people out of all the others.

If you bought the new iPad Pro for making music, then you probably already discovered that it’s almost useless for the purpose. I just hope you didn’t sell your old iPad yet. The problem, which is so widespread that it probably affects all of the new 2018 iPad Pro models, causes the CPU to spike, and sound to crackle whenever you use more than a couple of music apps together.

Fortunately, a fix is apparently on the way.

The only concrete advantage of USB-C over Lightning in the new iPad — so far — is that you can pick up pretty much any USB-C hub and use it with the iPad. Previously, you had one choice if you wanted to plug USB devices into your iPad — Apple’s Lightning-to-USBC camera connector.

The choice is way wider for 2018 iPad Pro owners. And while plugging in a USB-C hub is easy, there are a few things to watch out for. Let’s take a look at those, and see what you can use the hub for.