A popular question that comes up during the Lake Villa District Library events is ‘How do I use Siri?’. Which is then followed up by another question that comes up right afterward ‘What can Siri do?’. So this month I break them both down. How do I use Siri?To start Siri (no matter the device) you press…
Your Mac has the ability to turn your spoken word into text. To use your Mac for dictation you’ll first need to enable it. Click the Apple menu, then System Preferences, Keyboard then click the Dictation tab. The Dictation tab will allow you to turn the dictation feature on and off. Enhanced dictation will allow…
You’ve no doubt seen them on packaging, on the web and a lot of other places. Now learn how to create a registered trademark symbol ®, the trademark symbol ™, copyright symbol © and more. First you’ll need to learn a key on your keyboard that you may never use, or have never noticed, the…
Depending on your setup (desktop or laptop) you may want to take a good look at the Security and Privacy preference pane. Click the Apple menu then System Preferences. When you open it, you’ll see you’re unable to make changes. In order to make changes, you’ll need to click the lock icon then enter an…
This month we delve deep into Message settings (touch Settings, then Messages) to see what they mean and why you’re getting text messages on your Mac or iPad too. At the top you’ll see iMessage (a.). This is Apple’s implementation of text messaging. If this is on and you send a text message to another…
Applescript is the powerful, easy-to-learn, easy-to-use automation for Mac systems. Even without learning Applescript you can take advantage of scripts already loaded on your Mac, you just have to know where to look. Go to your Applications folder (from the Finder select the Go menu then Applications) and open the Applescript folder. Inside that folder is…
Backing up is one of the most important tasks that all of us (including me) has or may have neglected to do. Backing up can be simple or complex as your needs facilitate. Simple would be getting an external hard drive and using Time Machine in Mac OS X 10.5 or later. Simply connect an external hard drive…
You may know how to get special characters on your Mac, but what about your iPhone or iPad? Turns out, finding the letter with special characters are easy, specialized symbols require a bit more work. Let’s start with the easy. If the letter you need to type is on the keyboard, but you need a special…
Adding and editing calendar events on and iPad and iPhone is easy. But there is no need to add events by touching the plus sign. Learn other ways of working with events.
A neat new feature in iOS 8 is Audio Messages, or texting with sound. What may not be too obvious is by default the messages will auto delete after 2 minutes. So gone will be the “I Love You” from your spouse or kids but there is a way to keep them. First, let’s send an…