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Take Control Books

April 2, 2023 by Peter Tatikian
Take Control Books - Expert Advice from Leading Tech Authors

If you’re like me, you enjoy being the Apple tech answer person. Maybe it’s for your family and friends, maybe it’s part of your job. Either way, trying to find clear, accurate info isn’t so easy to find. You can spend endless hours going down various online rabbit holes, reading posts by unknown authors with questionable advice, or watching YouTube videos that skip over that essential step you’re trying to troubleshoot. It’s all very piecemeal, often inaccurate or out of date, and often poorly written. Worst of all is that you probably didn’t genuinely learn anything; at best you found out how to do one particular thing in a monkey-say, monkey-do, kind of fashion.

Some Take Control Books from the catalog including iCloud, Apple Watch, Shortcuts, and Apple Mail.

If I want to actually learn something from start to finish, I skip the online search. My first stop is to look at the Take Control ebook catalog. These are electronic books written by established authors in the Apple community. They’re clear, accurate, edited, and are kept current with regular updates. The subject can be a deep dive into a single app (1Password, Photos, Apple Mail, etc.), a holistic overview of a topic (Mac backups, iOS security, Wi-Fi networking, etc.), an overview of all the features of a service (iCloud, Apple ID), or a review of all the updates in a recent operating system (iOS 16, Ventura).

They are available as PDF files and ePub documents. They’re designed as a blend of a traditional book (chapters, table of contents) and a hyperlinked electronic document. The PDF files are formatted for printing, although I’ve found the best way to dig in is to load them up on an iPad and read them using Readdle’s free Documents app. I like to highlight and bookmark them as I read them. They’re also fully searchable if you just want to quickly solve one thing. I’m a big fan of this series and started by buying their first titles (Take Control of Panther) back in 2003.

Most titles are around $15, which is a bargain when compared to other high-quality Apple-focused instruction that does this in depth; (ScreenCastsONLINE, Learn MacSparky, The Sweet Setup). Most titles receive regular minor updates for free, with significant discounts when a new version of a title is released (usually tied to a new version of the software that’s being converted). There are free sample chapters (and a few free titles) so you can see if this style of instruction works for you. Joe Kissel, the co-owner and frequent author of the Take Control series, is also a big fan of Mac user groups, so there is a 30% discount available to you, the Mini’app’les member. (Look for the code in the Slack.)

Category: Apple Watch, iOS, iOS Apps, Learning, Mac, Mac OS Apps, Software

Meerkat

March 21, 2015 by Joel Gerdeen

A new social app, Meerkat, was introduced at the SXSW (South by South West) conference in Austin TX last week.  I discovered it through a tweet by Mashable who was using it at the conference to give a virtual tour.  Since then, I have checked in occasionally and experienced a live bike tour through the San Francisco water front and  a walk through New York in the recent snow storm.  It is essentially a moving webcam with sound.  It only runs on iOS devices and is one-way video.  That is, the person hosting the video can show what they want, but viewers only participate through text messages that appear on the screen for other viewers to see.

It is works with Twitter for users to post the link to the Meerkat session and uses Twitter account for the viewers to login.  Viewers’ Twitter icons appear in a scrollable horizontal stream at the top of the screen.  Touching an icon shows the Twitter user’s account name and short description that you normally see in Twitter.

Each Meerkat broadcaster has a score which appears to be related to the number of users that follow them in Twitter multiplied by the time they broadcast plus some factor of the number of real-time viewers.  They are displayed on a Leaderboard screen by this score.  At the present moment, the Leaderboard shows Mashable with the lead with jsneedles in hot pursuit, both with scores over 60,000.  Jeff Needles who is a producer at TWIT.tv is on a 24 hour Meerathon to try and become #1.  Notable other high scorers are Jimmy Fallon who shows his daily rehearsal and Guy Kawasaki who is promoting his new book. Jimmy, with his millions of users, does not need to be on very long for a high score, but Jeff with about 800 users needs the time accumulation.  KARE11 was also Meerkatting some of their news broadcasts the last few days but I haven’t seen anything today.  You could see the studio and off-air talk during commercials.

Any Twitter user can setup a Meerkat session which is suggested to be scheduled with a tweet to their followers.  If you fire up the Meerkat app, you will see some of the sessions in progress on the main screen. This seems like a little random or maybe being modified.  When I first connected to Mashable, I saw a list of about 6 more. Recently, I see primarily the ones that I follow.

Meerkat has its own Like list which you select from the Leaderboard and then can edit from your own profile.  When they first started about a month ago, they were using the Twitter “social graph”and were growing very fast.  Twitter recently bought a similar company/product named Periscope and cut Meerkat off.  Meerkat can still use Twitter for login credentials and promotion through tweets and probably will expand their services in future updates.  Expect Twitter to bring Periscope online to compete.

I discovered that when you click on a link like mrk.tv/1FR7w5K  in Twitter or Tweetbot which I use on my iPhone. you go to a web page showing the Meerkat session.  The screen shows the session apparently without adding you to the list of viewers.  You don’t have to download the Meerkat app.  I am not sure if you have to register through this mode since I found this after I had already registered through my Twitter account.  Meerkat appears in the iOS Settings for Twitter access.  You can also find sessions by searching for #meerkat in Twitter.

There is also a web site http://meerkatroulette.com that will show you a random Meerkat session from which you can switch to other sessions.  This best done on an iPhone since Meerkat is formatted for a portrait display.

Note that Meerkat sessions are not saved on their web site but are saved on the broadcasters device and could be posted somewhere later.  I haven’t tried broadcasting myself but it may have some use for our user group.

jsneedles is closing in on Mashable and may be #1 when you read this.

Please comment if you learn anything more or if I got anything wrong.

Category: iOS Apps, Software

Calculators

February 19, 2015 by Pete Bockenhauer
calcbot
Calcbot

Today Tapbots finally released an update to Calcbot on iOS.  I used Calcbot for many years as an alternative to the stock iOS calculator mainly for the expression view and history tape.  Calcbot is also available as a Mac app and can sync your history through iCloud.

When Calcbot wasn’t updated for the iPhone 5/5S, I ditched it in favor of Kalky.  Kalky is gesture-based for the delete, clear, use result and save functions.  It definitely doesn’t look as nice as Calcbot, but it has the features I want and works fast.

kalky
Kalky

Most have agreed that the best calculator on iOS is PCalc, however it is way more than I need on a normal basis.  For now I’ll stick with Kalky but Calcbot certainly is a great alternative.

Category: iOS Apps, Software

ViewExif to view exif metadata of photos on iOS

February 16, 2015 by Pete Bockenhauer

viewexif

ViewExif is an iOS extension which allows you to view exif metadata of photos.  Exif metadata is data about the photo like dimensions, taken date, ISO speed, F number, exposure time, focal length and more.  It will add a button to your share sheet in not only the Photos app but any app that displays photos.  Since Apple does not give up this information directly in the Photos app, this is a handy extension to have.

Download ViewExif for free

Category: iOS, iOS Apps, Photography, Software

View current playing iTunes track in the menu bar

February 13, 2015 by Pete Bockenhauer

quicktunesI typically play music while I’m working on my Mac.  I have the ability to keep iTunes open all the time and in the foreground (I have 3 monitors), however it still seems to always get covered up by another window.  I can use the MiniPlayer, but I don’t like it sitting on top of any of my windows and I can never seem to find a good spot for it to sit on my screen.  There are a bunch of iTunes menu bar apps that allow you to see the current playing track, but they require you to first click on the menu bar icon.  I wanted to be able to quickly just glance up to the menu bar without clicking on anything and see the current playing track.

After a bit of searching, I came across an old app called QuickTunes.  It lives in your menu bar and simply displays the current playing track and artist.  If you click on the menu, you can control iTunes functions like Play, Pause, Next, etc.  From the menu you can also select “Play Another By This Artist”, “Play Another In This CD”, and “Play Another In This Genre”.  The app also has a floating window similar to the MiniPlayer, but not as useful or good looking (remember how old this app is).

After a couple weeks of use, it hasn’t crashed on my Yosemite Mac and does exactly what I wanted it to do.  System requirements listed on the site say iTunes 4.7+ and Mac OS 10.3+.  So who knows if it will continue to work with new versions of OS X, but it’s lasted this long so I’m hopeful.

Download QuickTunes for free

Category: iTunes, Mac OS Apps, Music, Software
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