Category Archives: Mac

Apple Mac computers

MobileViews Podcast 340:MobileViews Podcast 340: Apple Silicon M1 Mac mini & MacBook Air first impressions – guest Sven Johannsen

M1 MacBook Air 2020

Jon Westfall and I are joined by guest panelist Sven Johannsen for this podcast. We discuss:

  1. Sven: 5G on iPhone 12 Pro MAX
  2. Happy 25th birthday to The GIMP
  3. M1 Mac Mini
  4. M1 MacBook Air
  5. More MacOS 11 Big Sur
    Preventing Big Sur update on my MacBook Pro so I can continue podcasting
  6. M1 compatibility and M1 apps for MacOS & iOS
    Rogue Amoeba not ready for M1 yet. So, continuing to record podcasts using an Intel-based Mac
  7. Google Chrome for M1 twice as fast as x86 binary in Rosetta 2. And, Chrome x86 worked fine, IMO, using Rosetta 2.
  8. Is Apple Silicon ready?
  9. Infinite Painter iPadOS app for MacOS M1: Use Sidecar to provide touch interface for an M1 enabled iOS app

Available via Google Music Podcasts and Apple iTunes.

MobileViews Podcast 308: Raspberry Pi as an iPad accessory; MacBook Pro thoughts, and more

In this podcast, Jon Westfall and I discuss:

  1. 2019 MacBook Pro 13 & MacOS Catalina comments
  2. Raspberry Pi as your Favorite iPad Pro accessory – Reference
  3. Cordless drill battery pack as a USB battery charger
  4. Survey of employer tech skills interests

Available via Google Music Podcasts and Apple iTunes.

TIL: Amazon Echo’s Bluetooth can pair with Apple OS/X computers but not Microsoft Windows 10 PCs

echo_osx_bt_20151213

Amazon tells us that is Echo intelligent speaker can pair with mobile devices? But, I wondered what about desktop PCs and notebooks? It turns out that it pairs and works fine with Macs running Apple’s OS/X (I tested it with the current El Capitan release). However, Microsoft’s Windows 10 Bluetooth stack couldn’t even detect the Echo let alone pair with it.

So, if you have a Windows PC and want to use the Echo as a wireless speaker, you are out of luck. However, if you run OS/X on a Mac, it works fine.

MobileViews Podcast 99: New iPad/Mac speculation, connected devices, tips

Recorded: October 11, 2014

News
– Apple Oct. 16 announcements. New iPads – sure. iMacs – maybe. Mac mini – ? What happens to the iPod touch?
– Connected health devices. Ref: Mobile Health News & NPD
– Background content for Google Chromecast Ref: Google Chrome Blog
– AAA hands-free voice cognitive distraction ratings. Ref: AAA

Tips & Product Picks
– LEGO mini-figs to hold Apple lightning and other thin cables
– MMS support added to Google Voice. Enables support for, for example, Fandango movie tickets and other image based text messages. Ref: Google
– Diaries – the kind you might actually keep up with. Or for the young crowd: a social network of 1
Day One (Mac OS / iOS; ). Reminds you to write entries, gives you prompts to get you thinking (i.e. “What was your favorite game in childhood”)
— Evernote (Especially emailed with tags – shorthand: @notebook #tag in email subject to auto categorize
— Automating your life: Hazel & Keyboard Maestro for Mac OS X, IFTTT, Dropbox as a go-between

Konspiracy Korner
Ref: Wall Street Journal – IRobot Introduces System to Help Machines Think for Themselves

Garageband for OS X needs 180MB compatibility update for Garageband for iPad

I’m reviewing Griffin’s Guitar Connect Pro this weekend. One of the things I wanted to test was copying a multi-track recording from the iPad to a Mac by downloading the tracks via iTunes to try to clean up my sloppy playing by quantizing the guitar tracks. Having never done this previously, I learned that the already up-to-date Garageband for OS X needs a compatibility update in order to import the tracks from its iPad counterpart. Note that the informational screen that popped up on my Mac specifically mentions Garageband for iPad. I have not tried this with Garageband running on an iPhone (which is a Universal app).