Welcome to the final entry in our podcasting basics series of posts. In the previous tutorial, you learned how to record a high quality sounding podcast. In this series finale, I’ll show you how to put all of the pieces together to finalize your podcast masterpiece. Read More
A few days ago, we posted our Mac jailbreak tutorial for iOS 8.2 beta 1 and 2. That tutorial used the PP Jailbreak tool for the Mac. For Windows users, things are slightly different. Windows users get to use the TaiG tool. At the end of the day, both tools are geared towards the same goal—allowing you to easily jailbreak iOS 8.2 beta 1 and 2. Read More
If you’ve been trying to jailbreak iOS 8.2 beta 1 or 2 with TaiG 1.3.0 over the last couple of days, you may have encountered an issue. An error that says: “Can’t find Apple driver, please download and install iTunes” has been causing all sorts of problems for would be jailbreakers.
iTunes may indeed already be installed, but it’s the latest version of iTunes for 64-bit Windows machines that’s causing the error to begin with. Perhaps you’ve tried to downgrade your copy of iTunes unsuccessfully. Or maybe you’ve just given up on trying to jailbreak your iPhone on a Windows machine. Well, don’t give up just yet, because we have a solution inside. Read More
Although I’ve long admired the iPad-centric work ethic of individuals like MacStories’ Federico Viticci, I could never fully commit to working from my iPad due to the perceived amount of steps needed to get things done. Yes, it’s possible, but I’ve always thought it was easier to work from my MacBook Pro.
With that said, I certainly admire anyone who can successfully pull it off, as Viticci has obviously done. There’s even a slight bit of jealousy there because he’s figured out well in advance how not to be ball-and-chained to a traditional desktop.
With iOS 8, a lot of that has changed. iOS is now more open than ever and users can do some powerful things with said openness. Case and point: Workflow—the automation app that opens up the door to automation newbs like myself. Yes, much automation could be done prior to Workflow—apps like Pythonista and Editorial proved as much—but Workflow is venturing into brand new territory. Not only is it arguably the most powerful automation tool available for iOS, it makes implementing automation accessible to mere mortals.
In this post, I’d like to show off one of the workflows that I’m extremely proud of. To be honest, this post is sort of a stealth-brag, but that’s okay. When you see this workflow in action, you’ll understand why. Read More
This is the second to last entry into my podcasting basics series. In part I, I talked about some of the preliminary steps needed before starting a podcast. In part II, I discussed the hardware that we use to record shows like Let’s Talk iOS and Let’s Talk Jailbreak. In part III, I broke down the software used. Now that you have a good idea of what hardware and software that we use, along with the basic overall methodology, let’s talk about starting the actual recording.
We’ve all been there: you want to take a photo in landscape mode, but before your iPhone accelerometer has registered it should rotate from portrait to landscape, you’ve already taken the shot. The result is a nice photo, but one that looks funny on your screen. Try to rotate the screen, and the photo rotates with it. It’s annoying, but of course, as you may already know, there is an easy way to rotate that photo so it looks good on your screen. Read More
This is the third entry into my podcasting basics series. In part I, I discussed some of the preliminary steps needed before starting a podcast. In part II, I talked about the hardware that I personally use to record shows like Let’s Talk iOS and Let’s Talk Jailbreak.
After going through the preliminary conceptualizing and picking out the hardware that works for your particular scenario, it’s time to mate the hardware with the right software. Software choices for producing podcasts can vary significantly, but I’ve come up with a formula that works for me.
Of course, your decision to use a piece of software may boil down to your particular needs. For example, if you’re not a Mac user, then many, if not all of your software will differ. That being said, the basic recording techniques that I employ will more or less be the same, and can be used regardless of the software you decide on using. In this post, I break down the software that I use for recording and producing our podcasts. Read More
The idea of auto hiding the dock has always seemed appealing, because it give back the real estate normally lost by an always-present dock. The downside to auto hide, however, is the slight delay that occurs whenever the dock shows and hides. For me, the delay totally kills the idea of using auto hide. But what if you could remove the delay?
In this tutorial, I will show you how to have the best of both worlds: a dock that is hidden, yet at the same time immediately accessible due to the omission of the annoying delay. Read More
Looking to better organize the dock in OS X? Perhaps adding a few spacers would do the trick. Adding spacers to your Mac’s dock is super simple and easy with just a couple of Terminal commands. It’s a great way to organize your dock’s applications and provides it with a custom look and feel. Read More
After Mission Control debuted on the Mac, it seems like Hot Corners became more obscure. Perhaps that’s all in my mind, but I never seem to find anyone who actually uses these things anymore. That’s a shame, because the Hot Corner, in my opinion, is one of the most useful tools for using a Mac more efficiently. It speeds up my workflow significantly, and I could never imagine using OS X without them.
To me, Hot Corners are like the oil to my workflow. Yes you can get things done without them, but there’s a lot more friction when you don’t. Here’s how to use them, and here’s why you should be using them, too. Read More
In my line of work, I constantly need pictures on my desktop or laptop that I’ve taken on my iPhone. I personally use iCloud on iPhoto because the images immediately appear on my synced computers. However, there are a number of different ways to transfer pictures to your desktop or laptop, which also makes it much easier to delete them off of your iPhone, freeing up space.
We’ve got a basic how-to guide for transferring photos from your iPhone or iPad Photos app to your Mac using a few different options. Read More
If you launch an app from Launchpad or from the Applications folder in OS X, and that app isn’t already located in your dock, the app will disappear from the dock upon closing it. That’s the desirable result for apps that you run occasionally, but for apps that you launch and run all of the time, it may be best to keep that app as a permanent fixture in the dock. Read More
One of the things that I appreciate about Windows is the ability to view previews of running apps by hovering your mouse cursor over an app in the Taskbar. OS X doesn’t natively allow you to do such a thing, but it’s nothing that HyperDock—a $9.99 purchase from the Mac App Store—can’t handle. Read More
In the previous podcast basics post, we talked about some of the preliminary steps that need to be taken before proceeding with creating a podcast. Those steps involved finding the right subject, format, hosts, etc.
Now that you have a good idea about the subject you’d like to podcast about, the show format, the co-hosts, and the scheduling, it’s time to start thinking about your podcast hardware. I like to include location as a part of the hardware, because the location where you record your podcasts can play a huge role in how the end product sounds.
In this post, I’ll talk about what hardware I use for podcasting, along with other general recommendations on hardware. If you’re still mulling about the subject, or co-hosts, then I urge you to read part I of this series; it covers the stuff you should consider before even getting started. Read More
Our previous how-tos shared tips on saving storage space on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad by removing photos, videos, songs and apps. And last week, we shared an excellent tip on clearing ‘Other’ storage occupied by Safari’s Reading List, app caches and temporary data.
With that in mind, you’d be surprised to learn that electronic books can take significant amount of storage space.
While a typical book found on the iBooks Store is about two megabytes in size, a textbook with enhanced features like audio and video will typically require anywhere between a few hundred megabytes to up to two gigabytes of storage, per textbook.
Now, if you’re anything like me, your devices are stuffed to the gills with multimedia-rich smart reads. In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to identify the amount of on-device storage consumed by iBooks content, teach you how to reclaim storage space by removing books and PDFs you’ve read and share a few useful tips along the way that I bet you didn’t know about. Read More
The Windows 10 Technical Preview is now available for free download and trial, but just because you’re on a Mac doesn’t mean you have to be left out of the fun. Windows 10 brings new features to the table like Cortana voice assistant integration, improved multitasking, and more.
In this full tutorial, I’ll show you how to install Windows 10 Technical Preview on your Mac using VMware Fusion. In the video walkthrough, I show you how to install Windows 10 on your Mac in less than 15 minutes. Read More
Last week, we recorded episode 92 of Let’s Talk Jailbreak and episode 66 of Let’s Talk iOS. That’s 158 episodes under our belts, or over three years of shows if each show was spread out on week-to-week basis. While I wouldn’t dare claim to be the supreme podcast expert, I can say that I have learned a lot as both shows have grown from humble beginnings.
Podcasting isn’t exactly rocket science, but it does take some effort to make a show sound decent. My goal has always been to simply create the best sounding show that I possibly can within reason. That reason includes, of course, money, equipment, environment, and the podcast participants.
At the end of the day, a podcast will only sound as good as your worst piece of equipment, software, mixing technique, or participant. The goal should be to make everything sound good enough to where you’ll derive satisfaction from the end result.
In this first part of my podcasting basics series, I’ll talk about what it takes to get your podcast off the ground. In subsequent entries, I’ll discuss the equipment we use, the software we use, the techniques we employ, and other tidbits along the way.
We’ve already seen several options to export contacts as there are many ways to do just that. Sometimes, apps can help, and sometimes, you can do so directly from your Mac. But what if you don’t have your Mac handy and want to export your contacts? Assuming you use iCloud to store all your contacts, there is an easy way to export them from there. Read More
It is now possible to jailbreak iOS 8.1.2 using a Mac, and this has been confirmed by iDownloadBlog. Up until this point, no Mac option existed for jailbreaking iOS 8.1.2, but that is no longer the case. A new tool entitled PP jailbreak for Mac has surfaced, allowing Mac users to enjoy what Windows users have been enjoying for some time now. Inside, we have a tutorial that shows how to jailbreak iOS 8.1.2 using OS X with the PP jailbreak for Mac. Read More
There are several ways to transfer iPhone contacts to a computer, but the quickest and easiest way to do that might just be with an app. The concept is simple: use an app to export contacts, then email that list of contacts to yourself, or to whoever you want to share the contacts with. In this post we’ll show you how to use an app called Easy Backup to transfer contacts from an iPhone to a computer. Read More
