If you have an Xbox One gaming console in the household, you may be pleased to discover that it’s really quite easy to stream video and audio from a local Mac or Windows PC to play directly on the Xbox One. This offers a nice wireless method to play movies from any Mac or PC onto a TV without having to use an HDMI connection, and the Xbox One Media Player app supports a huge range of popular file types, so you’ll be able to play just about any mp4, mov, avi, divx, mkv, wmv, mp4, m4a, or nearly any other popular movie or audio file. Yes, you can stream your iTunes Library to the Xbox this way. Setup is easy and there’s very little configuration required, we’ll run through the whole process from start to finish and you’ll be ready to go in just a few minutes.

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This weeks featured Mac workstation is the snazzy custom setup of Axel D., who has a swivel-arm mounted iMac and some great audio gear to round out a beautiful and clean desk. Let’s jump right in to learn more:

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iCloud Drive supports direct file transfers from the Mac, meaning you can take just about any file, folder, document, or item stored in Mac OS X, and copy it over to iCloud Drive, where it will be stored and accessible by your other Macs and iOS devices using the same Apple ID. Using iCloud Drive this way is kind of similar to how many users store files on other services like DropBox, OneDrive, and Google Drive, except it has the distinct advantage of being built directly into modern versions of Mac OS X and not requiring any third party downloads or logins.

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The iPhone language is set during the initial setup of the device, defaulting to wherever region it was sold. But if you would like to change the language used on iPhone, you can do so at any time without resetting the device back to factory defaults, instead you’ll just need to turn to the settings in iOS.

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The Apple Watch allows users to take a screen shot of what they see on the face of the device by using a similar mechanism to capture screen shots on an iPhone or iPad; you press two buttons at the same time.

For the Apple Watch, the buttons to press to take a screenshot are the two side buttons, the rotating digital crown, and the power button underneath it.

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The Photos app for Mac allows users to quickly see EXIF metadata of any image contained within the applications library. For those who aren’t familiar, EXIF data is raw information about the picture file, containing details about the camera and settings used to take the picture, the aperture, ISO, shutter speed, and you’ll also find the date and time the picture was taken, as well as being able to see the file name, file type, file size, and resolution of a chosen image. For pictures taken with iPhone, you’ll even be able to tell if the image was taken with the iPhones front or back camera. And with pictures that have GPS location access from an iPhone or Android, you may even find the location a photo was taken as well.

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Most new Mac keyboards are fairly simplified when compared to their PC counterparts, and you’ll find that some of the extraneous keys like “Home” and “End” are nowhere to be found on the Mac wireless keyboard or any keyboard included with a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air. Longtime Mac users appreciate this simplicity, but newcomers to the Mac platform can be a bit confused or frustrated as they’ve come to rely on the instant-action buttons on PC keyboards, sometimes making the incorrect assumption that similar actions are impossible in Mac OS X.

But even without the dedicated buttons on a Mac keyboard, this does not mean you can’t perform the exact same function in Mac OS as what the Home and End buttons offer in Windows and Linux. Instead of pressing a single key though, on the Mac keyboard you press keyboard shortcut to achieve the same desired effect.

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All modern releases of Mac OS X include a powerful built-in version control system that allows a user to revert to any previously saved version of a file or document, assuming the app supports the version revision feature. This ability is often overlooked by Mac users, but it can be a real lifesaver when you’ve caught yourself having modified a file inadvertently, or discovered that recent changes to a document should be undone. In some sense, you can think of this feature like a file-level “Undo” feature included in OS X, and it works fairly similar to the Time Machine backup browser on the Mac.

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Following up the original seven movies, Apple has picked four new gorgeous videos for their “Shot on iPhone” video campaign, each of which shows off the cameras rather impressive video capture abilities.

A global batch, the videos are shot in Norway, Australia, Netherlands, and the USA, and demonstrate to great effect the fancier effects possible on iPhone camera, ranging from slow-motion to time-lapse, while some are just simply shot in the standard video capture mode. Each is beautiful as usual, with a few being particularly artsy, all dedicating half the screen time to the impressive video and ending with the “Shot on iPhone 6” text and an  Apple logo.

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Apple has released the sixth beta of OS X Yosemite 10.10.4 to Mac users who are participating in the developer and public beta programs.

The new build arrives versioned as 14E36b and is downloadable from the Mac App Store Updates function as usual, assuming the user is opted-in to receive beta software, or is currently running a prior beta version. Developers can also access the download through the Apple Developer Center.

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Mac users who choose to dabble in early releases of OS X El Capitan will find that dual booting the release alongside OS X Yosemite or OS X Mavericks is a better solution than simply updating their primary OS X installation. One easy way to do this is to partition the Macs hard drive and install OS X El Capitan onto that new separate partition, this will insure that OS X El Capitan 10.11 remains away from the stable build of OS X 10.10 or 10.9, and allows the user to boot between the Mac OS releases as they see fit.

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The Mac Calculator app may appear somewhat limited at first glance, but there are actually two other calculator modes contained within the app; a full featured scientific calculator, and a programmer calculator too.

Accessing the alternate calculators in OS X is really easy, but like many of the other interesting Calculator app features, it’s pretty easy to overlook or just not imagine to be there.

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Group messaging is a great feature that makes conversations with multiple people much easier, but what if you want to add someone else to an existing group chat from iOS? No sweat, you can quickly add a new contact (or several) to a group message conversation from your iPhone or iPad with a few easy steps.

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This featured Mac setup John L., a professional panographer who has a great workstation complete with a furry visitor / assistant to keep the desk cozy. Let’s learn a bit more about the hardware and software that gets put to use:

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iOS 9 may be exciting with new features and refinements, but running beta software on a primary iPhone or iPad is rarely recommended, as the experience is less than optimal at the moment. For
those who installed iOS 9 beta only to discover it’s current state is a bit of a buggy battery drain, the best solution is to downgrade back to a stable iOS 8 release. Reverting from iOS 9 is fairly easy to do, though it’s a bit more technical than your average iOS restore process, if you follow along you’ll be back on 8 in a few minutes.

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Many Mac users interested in running OS X El Capitan may wish to have a bootable install drive of the new operating system. We’re going to demonstrate how to do this with a USB flash drive, but technically you can create a boot installer out of just about any USB device which has sufficient space. The process of creating the boot installer for OS X 10.11 is easy enough, though users should have some experience and comfort with the command line before attempting to do so.

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Though Apple typically only allows iOS beta software to be installed on devices with a UDID registered with the developer program, iOS 9 beta can technically be installed on any compatible iPhone or iPad right now. But, despite all the excitement for new features and changes with iOS 9, you should wait before jumping in, at least until the iOS Public Beta program launches in the coming weeks, if not for the final version in the fall. The reason for waiting is quite simple; the current beta release of iOS 9 is intended for developers, meaning it’s buggy, performance is not up to bar, and the whole experience is a bit rough around the edges, in other words, it’s typical early beta software.

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Apple is aiming to further improve and refine the iPhone and iPad experience with the release of iOS 9, and with many new features and enhancements, it’s sure to be a worthwhile system update for most users. Anytime a new version of system software is released though, users inevitably wonder if their devices will be able to run the next version, and that’s no different with iOS 9, but to answer answer that question we’re providing the full list of compatible devices.

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