Transparent effects have had a prominent place in the user interface of Mac OS X ever since the Mac got a face lift with recent versions of MacOS Mojave, High Sierra, Sierra, OS X El Capitan and Yosemite. Many users like the transparency found throughout the window title bars and sidebars, but some users may … Read More
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 … Read More
One of the new feature additions in newer Mac OS releases is the ability to quickly locate a mouse cursor on screen by shaking the mouse or trackpad cursor around, which causes the cursor to enlarge briefly, making it very easy to find on single or multiple display setups. This is a useful feature particularly … Read More
Apple makes heavy usage of eye candy zooming and zipping around animation effects on Apple Watch, iOS, and OS X, which can look nice in some situations, but can also cause nausea and vertigo to some users who are particularly sensitive to the unpleasant sensation of motion sickness. If you’ve ever been using the Apple … Read More
The latest versions of iOS support an optional display mode that turns everything shown on the screen of an iPhone or iPad to black and white. Called Grayscale mode, the setting is mostly intended as an accessibility option, but it has other uses beyond that as well. This tutorial will show you how to turn … Read More
By default, all calls on the iPhone will play audio through the standard earpiece at the top of the phone, and if someone wishes to use speakerphone they enable it manually by tapping on the “Speaker” button during an active call. While that may be the desired effect for most users, in various situations some … Read More
iTunes 12 brought about some fairly significant user interface changes to the media player app, one of which is the size of the font shown in playlist and music views. The new default iTunes font is smaller with tighter padding between list items, and accordingly it can be difficult to read for some users. But … Read More
The revised interface in modern MacOS versions including macOS Monterey, macOS Big Sur, MacOS Catalina, macOS Mojave, High Sierra, Sierra, OS X El Capitan, and OS X Yosemite makes heavy use of transparencies, flatness, white space, smaller and narrow fonts, and a dramatic lack of contrast with neutral shades of grey used for most text … Read More
If you use iBooks and your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to read, you can improve your evening reading experience by switching the theme to Sepia or the “Night” color scheme. Up until now though, you’ve had to perform that theme change yourself, and if you get caught up in a good book, you know … Read More
The larger screen displays of new iPhone models make them beautiful to view apps, text, and images on, but some users find that using the devices with a single hand is a bit more challenging. But one-handed usage of the larger screen iPhone models is made considerably easier thanks to the help of a feature … Read More
Much has been said about the iPhone 6 Plus already, and there are plenty of thorough reviews describing the hardware, the design, camera, and every other little improvement and detail of the device. After using one for a week, two things in particular really stand out to me which differentiate the iPhone 6 Plus over … Read More
One of the major changes that came along with the iOS visual overhaul was the removal of obvious buttons across the operating system and apps found on the iPhone and iPad. While the result is a cleaner, flatter, and more streamlined appearance in iOS, many users have found the removal of obvious buttons to be … Read More
Earlier versions of iOS used to make it very obvious when a Settings toggle was enabled or disabled by showing “ON” and “OFF” text within the button switch itself. While new versions of iOS have removed those word based cues in favor of color indicators (green for on, white for off), there remains an option … Read More
The iOS interface is easily identifiable by it’s ubiquitous usage of whites and bright colors, which can be both pleasing to the eye but also excessively harsh when an iPhone or iPad is used in darker ambient lighting situations. New versions of iOS offer an ability to adjust that bright whiteness with a setting called … Read More
One of the bigger complaints stemming from the iOS redesign is that the stark white interface with thin fonts can be difficult to read. Setting text to Bold makes an enormous difference, but some of the color choices in iOS still lack enough contrast to make things easy on the eyes, particularly for those with … Read More
The default subtitle text size for video playback can be fairly small in Mac OS X, and while it may be tolerable on a smaller screened device, once you send the Macs display it to a larger screen like a TV, it can be difficult to read. Fortunately, Mac OS X provides a lot of … Read More
Assistive Devices and Assistive Apps are applications and accessories which can control parts of the Mac and MacOS beyond the normal scope of app limits. While it’s primarily thought of as an Accessibility feature, it’s also commonly uses for general apps too, ranging from screen sharing functions, to apps that require microphone access, to even … Read More
Just about every iPhone and iPad owner knows that you can navigate between pages of icons on the iOS Home Screen by using a left or right swipe gesture (if you don’t know this, well, now you do). But if gestures aren’t your thing, there is another lesser known option to flip home screens, and … Read More
