Recent content on UKmac.net - Apple news, tech views
Not directly Apple related but when I saw this excellent @CassetteBoy video cut to the music of the Police and Every Breath You Take I couldn’t resist sharing !
Enjoy
This article from Mashable is a few days old so apologies if you have already seen it. Definitely worth a scan !
Sam Haysom covers some of the spoof letters of Seamus O’Reilly that have been published in the Metro free paper here in the UK. Seamus has made an art out of sending up the anonymous letters posted in the Metro magazine by creating what I assume are accounts of fictitious events ( though I guess they could be prompted by real life ) experienced by the authors.
Maybe my sense of humour but I thought these were hilarious.
The Pixo is an interesting looking Kickstarter project to create a magnetic mounting for iPads/tablets to attach to the side or top of your desktop screen/iMac.
Currently they are quite a way off reaching their target of £60,000 but it still has some time to go and may still be able to get funded. I wish them well as this does look like a nice solution.
Checkout their site for more details.
I recently bought the excellent Logitech K380 Multi-Device Bluetooth Keyboard to share between my iPad, Work laptop and iPhone. It’s a great little keyboard, light enough to carry around with a decent layout and spacing that suits my typing style well ( your mileage may vary ). There are however times that I need to switch to the on screen iOS keyboard, typing emojis for example, and I recently discovered this quick tip to bring up the iOS keyboard.
All you need to do is double tap on a text field and the on screen keyboard will pop smoothly into view. Once you have completed using it just hit any key on your Bluetooth keyboard and the hardware device will take control again and the on screen keyboard will slide out of the way.
Markdown is the plain text markup syntax developed by John Gruber of Daring Fireball over 10 years ago to help bloggers write in a readable format that could be easily converted to HTML. Since then it has grown in popularity and spawned a whole ecosystem of applications and tools for the easy management and production of Markdown formatted documents.
The syntax is simple to learn but if you want a nice concise set of quick video tutorials then Wes Bos has put together a set of 11 short ( between 1 and 6 mins long ) guides that take you quickly through the basics of Markdown to get you up and running with minimal effort.
link : Mastering Markdown
Macworld writer Christopher Phin takes a fond look back at what is probably one of the most iconic Macs ever made, the iMac G4.
This was, and still is, Apple at its best: Producing something daring, novel, and utterly desirable. Nobody at the time could fail to be impressed almost to the point of shock by the sheer chutzpah of Apple’s vision for a modern computer, and even today it strikes you as a fresh and exciting design.
The G4 was a stunning piece of industrial design and despite all the innovations of ever thinner and more powerful iMacs since it will almost certainly never be bettered.
Interesting rumour from MacRumors.com
Not at all surprising to hear reports coming through that there are buckets of iPhones being held by US authorities in readiness for the potential flood gates opening if Apple are forced to back down and provide the FBI with access to the contents of the San Bernadino case iPhone….
I imagine this is exactly what Tim Cook was hoping to pre-empt by taking the stand that he has against the FBI. It will certainly be interesting to see how this all pans out.
FreshBackMac is a small utility written by Arkanath Pathak, a Computer Science student from eastern India, that refreshes your Mac desktop wallpaper at regular intervals using images from some of the best photo sites on the Internet.
You can choose from a range of categories such as Animals, Nature, Technology, Paintings and more and can set the refresh rate from as little as 2 minutes to 12 hours.
If you would like a fresh look to your Mac without the effort of searching for new images and setting up as desktop backgrounds this is the app for you.
Itsycal is a tiny menu bar application for OS X that gives rapid access to a pop up view of the current month of the calendar.
Just click the menu bar icon (the current date by default) and a compact view of the current month is displayed. This is really handy when you want to work out what day a particular date falls on for example. In addition you can configure it to show events from the next few days of your calendar rather than launching the Mac calendar app.
One of my favourite little time saver apps.
Ars technica has this interesting article about a planned new keyboard from Microsoft that will potentially make one handed typing on larger iPhones more practical.
Looks promising and seems to be yet another sign that the Microsoft of old is long gone and has been replaced by a very different animal…
One of the big missing features of the new Apple TV was the inability to play music from Apple Music using Siri. Clearly Apple held this back for good reason when the new device launched a few weeks ago but thankfully they have plugged the gap today with a new tvOS update that allows you to search for music by Siri.
The new update also fixes the other glaring omission of the iPhone Remote App not working with the new Apple TV.
The team in the marketing department at Quartsoft have produced this lovely animated video timeline of Steve Jobs life. Click on this link to go to the Quartsoft page to read the rest of the teams tribute to Steves life. There is also a nice infographic version of the video that is worth a look.
Twelve South are a brand well known to Mac users for their laptop and iPhone/iPad stands amongst other products.
While browsing their site tonight I came across this page of wallpapers specifically designed for dual screen setups. There are wallpapers in resolutions from 11" MacBook right up to 5K Retina iMacs. There are 8 different sets, 4 of Scottish landscapes and 4 of San Francisco skylines.
Worth taking a peek if you are looking for high quality wallpapers to show off your dual screen setup ( or even just for a single screen setup… )
The new Apple TV announced at last months iPhone and iPad Pro event is due to start shipping next week. UK pricing is still not available on the Apple site so this may mean that availability is going to be limited to the US at first.
Price in the US will be $149 for the 32GB version and $199 for the 64GB version.
Try elsewhere on UKMac.net
According to many popular sites it is being reported that Apple Music has already reached 10 million subscribers ( Appleinsider ). This is of course an artificial number as none of those customers have yet to pay a penny for the service as it is free for the first three months of use.
The question I guess then is how many people will pay to use it beyond the trial period. My own experience so far is that I will continue to use it as I am finding the new music recommendations far superior to Spotify and the fact that the whole family can use it at the same time ( for a small increase in cost ) just seals the deal.
