The Dictation feature of OS X has let Mac users speak to their computers and have the speech converted accurately into text for quite some time, and now with the newest versions of OS X you can improve Dictation even further by starting the speech to text conversion with a voice command.

You can think of this as a Mac specific speech to text version of “Hey Siri” on the iPhone, except that you issue a voice command to start the Dictation speech translations rather than making requests through a virtual assistant. It works quite well, we’ll show you how to enable the feature, and how to activate it by voice.

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Apple is running a new iPhone 6s advertisement featuring actor Bill Hader with an amusing focus on the “Hey Siri” feature and the type of whacky junkmail you usually find in your email spam folder.

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Apple has released the first beta version of OS X El Capitan 10.11.2 for Mac users participating in the developer and public beta software testing programs. The first pre-release build of OS X 10.11.2 arrives as 15C27e and appears to focus primarily on improvements and bug fixes to OS X El Capitan.

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Apple has released the first beta build of iOS 9.2 to users participating in the developer beta and public beta testing program. iOS 9.2 beta 1 arrives as build number 13C5055d and is available for all iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices that are compatible with iOS 9.

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Spotlight is the lightning fast search engine built into the Mac, but some users may have noticed that once Spotlight has been summoned and a file search query is beginning to be typed, OS X freezes up, stalls, and beachballs for anywhere from 10-30 seconds for seemingly no apparent reason. If you’re in a quiet room, you may even hear a little spin up sound as this happens as well.

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New versions of Safari on the Mac allow users to instantly mute any tab or inactive window which is playing sound. This will instantly hush audio coming from a video, an audio file opened in the browser, ads, or any noisy multimedia element, but only for the Safari browser, making it preferable to muting everything on the Mac with the Mute option.

This is a really easy trick but it’s not necessarily the most obvious thing in the world until it’s pointed out to you in Safari for Mac OS X.

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Apple has released the new 4th generation Apple TV, an all new Apple TV that includes more powerful hardware, a touch controller, and Siri voice interaction. Content arrives to the devices from the App Store, iTunes Store, and apps that serve as everything from playable games to channels from Netflix, HBO, ESPN, PBS, YouTube, Hulu, and the like.

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While Apple routinely picks great wallpapers for iOS and OS X, so does Google with Android, and the wallpapers bundled with the Android Marshmallow release look really great on Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Windows too.

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Apple is running a new series of iPhone 6s advertisements on TV, each in the same general theme of prior iPhone 6s ads with a handclapping soundtrack. The new spots focus on the devices camera, as well as the Hey Siri feature.

Two of the new ads are a bit different however and focus on actor Jamie Foxx talking to Siri on a pink gold iPhone 6s to demonstrate the Hey Siri feature, the bits seem to extend from a prior iPhone 6s commercial where Jamie Fox made a cameo.

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You can easily connect any iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to a TV screen or even many projectors with the help of a wired connector adapter and HDMI cable. As long as the recipient TV, display, or projector has an HDMI input port, you can mirror the iPhone or iPad display directly to that screen. This is great for presentations, demonstrations, watching videos or movies, and so much more. The output video can be a maximum of 1080p HDTV resolution, and yes both video and audio are transmitted, mirrored from iOS to the TV screen.

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This week we’re sharing the Mac setup of Brandon R., which is a great standing desk workstation in New York City. Let’s jump in to learn more:

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iOS 9.1 is a worthwhile update with bug fixes and new emoji for most iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users who are running iOS 9, but some users who have updated from iOS 9.0.2 to iOS 9.1 may decide they’d like to go back to the earlier version. Maybe it’s because iOS 9.0.2 has a jailbreak, maybe it’s because of some newfound issue experienced with iOS 9.1 which wasn’t there before, whatever the reason, we’ll show you how to quickly downgrade from iOS 9.1 to iOS 9.0.2.

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Though many preferences and settings in Mac OS are easy to find, some aren’t always located in the most obvious locations within System Preferences, and it’s also just easy to forget which panel is going to adjust what you’re looking for on the Mac. Fortunately, the Mac System Preference control panel has a universal search engine built into the application, and so the next time you can’t find a specific system setting in Mac OS X, just turn to this search feature.

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If you want to play a web based video while you work or multitask on the Mac, you’ll typically resize a small browser window and stuff it into the corner of your screen, right? Rather than do that, you can use a neat little free app called Helium, which creates a floating overlay of videos and multimedia that you can hover over anything on the OS X desktop. The floating video is actually quite similar to the great Picture-In-Picture (PIP) feature that is available for iPad with iOS 9, except of course, the PIP video in this case runs atop whatever is on your Mac and OS X desktop.

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Apple is airing a large variety of Apple Watch commercials, all sharing a similar theme of some sort of activity taking place while someone is wearing an Apple Watch to complete various tasks or actions.

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Apple has released Security Update 2015-007 for Macs running OS X Yosemite and OS X Mavericks, Safari 9.0.1 for OS X Mavericks and Yosemite, alongside a Mac EFI Security Update for some specific Macs. The security updates are recommended for Mac users to install, particularly if they’re not yet updating to OS X El Capitan.

OS X El Capitan users will find the OS X 10.11.1 update contains the same security fixes, and thus does not require a separate security update.

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Apple has released the final version of OS X El Capitan 10.11.1 to Mac users. The update includes a variety of important bug fixes, including resolutions to issues found with the original El Capitan installer, compatibility with Microsoft Office 2016, resolutions to various Mail issues, and the inclusion of over 150 new Emoji character icons, like a burrito, a taco, a middle finger gesture, and a unicorn head.

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The final build of iOS 9.1 is now available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users. The update arrives as build 13b143 and includes various bug fixes and improvements to the software, along with over a hundred new Emoji character icons.

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