posts

#MPU300

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I’ve been subscribed to Mac Power Users for years. I was listening to David and Katie well before I started my own career in podcasting.

The show has been around for almost seven years, and will hit episode 300 in just a couple of weeks. To mark the occasion, Myke Hurley and I will be taking over the show, interviewing David and Katie about their podcasting, workflows and more.

We need your help! Tweet with the hashtag #MPU300 to have your questions or comments considered for the show, but don’t mention David or Katie. We want to them to come in cold!

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Expanding Aerial, the Apple TV’s screensaver

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The Apple TV is TV at our house, and as such, we see its screensaver a good bit. On the old Apple TV, I had it pulling from a photo album of family photos, but when I installed our new one, I opted to use Apple’s “Aerial” screensaver instead.

If you haven’t seen it, Aerial has a collection of downright stunning flyovers from numerous cities and landscapes from around the world.

Most of the options have both day and night scenes, and the Apple TV plays whichever is appropriate based on the time of day.

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Apple patents peer to peer payments over iMessage and other services⇢

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Ian Kar at Quartz:

Evidence that Apple wants to combine payments and iMessage is piling up. And it looks like the tech giant doesn’t plan to stop there.

A patent filing published earlier this month (Dec. 2015) indicates that Apple is not only looking at allowing people to send money over its text messaging service, but other services built into the iOS platform, including phone calls, email, and calendar invites.

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2016 Wishlist: Big Picture

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With 2016 just around the corner, I’m taking some time to think about what Apple could do in the next year that would bring advancements to their products. Today, let’s talk about some things that are bigger than any individual product line.

iCloud Improvements

Let me say this up front: iCloud is a lot better than MobileMe ever was, and with the switch to CloudKit, storing data in it is more reliable than ever, but there are still issues.

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RSS Sponsor: Macminicolo 2016 Promo⇢

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We hosts Mac minis in a data center. They’re powerful dedicated servers that can be used for all sorts of things. You might use it as a personal backup server, as a way to run OS X on an iPad Pro, or a server for running your business. Or, use it for all three.

Right now you can get a heavily upgraded Mac mini, a 4TB external drive, and hosting for a full year for just $2016. (That’s a saving of $623.) So, if you need one last tax write-off for this year, and just want to start 2016 with new possibilities, we’re happy to get you going. Come check out the Macminicolo 2016 Promo.

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2016 Wishlist: Apple Watch and Apple TV

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With 2016 just around the corner, I’m taking some time to think about what Apple could do in the next year that would bring advancements to their products. Today, let’s talk about the Apple Watch and Apple TV.

Apple Watch

While my opinion of the Apple Watch has cooled over the months, I still think the device has great promise, but in many ways, it’s a very 1.0 product.

I think the time to see new hardware has come. The Watch is slow, even running native software. I hope that Watch 2 can be much faster, but with the same battery life Apple ships now. (I think that battery life is probably the most important metric for this device, actually. A dead watch is useless.)

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Kbase Article of the Week: Mac OS X: Terminal window is too small, or doesn‘t appear⇢

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This seems like a weird bug:

Terminal is a utility for executing command line instructions in Mac OS X. If its window is very small and can’t be resized (Mac OS X 10.3, 10.4), or does not appear at all when Terminal is opened (in Mac OS X 10.5) make sure the Monaco font is enabled.

Terminal needs Apple’s Monaco font. If that font is disabled or missing, the Terminal window will be very small and unusable, or may not appear at all.

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2016 Wishlist: iOS

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With 2016 just around the corner, I’m taking some time to think about what Apple could do in the next year that would bring advancements to their products. Today, let’s talk about the iPhone and iPad.

Split View Management

I love Slide Over and Split View on my iPad Pro, but using them can be really frustrating. The drawer that contains all apps that can be used with the new window management is comically bad, only showing a handful of giant icons at a time, making finding the app I want slow and tedious. This could be a lot better.

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