iOS – The MacMAD Apple User Group

Artificial Intelligence and You

MacMAD Meeting Topic, Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has meant different things at different times to different people. It is a moving target. In the 1970s, it meant a machine playing chess. Today, no one would call that artificial intelligence. Now it might be a machine generating an essay, drawing or photograph from a short prompt.

This image of an Apple User Group meeting was generated by AI.

Artificial Intelligence has become vastly more powerful, and it will only continue to get better.

Whether you realize it or not, you are already using Artificial Intelligence in several forms:

Facial Recognition – “Face ID”, Photos
Recognition of Objects: cat, dog, building, The Eiffel Tower, vehicles, humans
Voice and Speech Recognition, e.g. Siri commands
Siri Suggestions – AI forecasts what App/Destination/Search you might want now
Sound Recognition, e.g. Siri can recognize smoke detector sounds
Navigation Apps, driver assist, “self-driving”
Language Translation, Apple & Google Translate Apps
Speech Generation – Personal Voice, Live Speech, in Accessibility Settings
Recognition of facial expressions and gestures – Used in Face Time and the Vision Pro

Face ID is an example of very unobtrusive AI, probably the best kind. You are usually unaware of Face ID unlocking your phone except in the rare situation where your face is obstructed for some reason and it doesn’t unlock.

Apple has dedicated about 1/4 of the on-chip real estate in their new processors to the Neural Engine. This shows a commitment to AI going forward at Apple. The Neural Engine does on-device machine learning.

All Your Internet are Belong to AI¹

Much of what you see when you browse the internet is determined by AI.

Search Engine Rankings
YouTube Recommendation Engine
Amazon “Inspired by your Shopping Trends”
Video recommendations for Apple TV, Netflix and Amazon Prime

When you do those captchas (“I am not a robot”, “click all images containing a bus”), you are providing training data for AI algorithms.

Generative AI

The new type of AI getting a lot of attention in 2024 is Generative AI, so called because it generates something, whether text or an image.

When you hear about ChatGPT, GPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer. This is a large language model trained on a large amount of text.

This type of AI tool can be used to generate documents like reports, emails, ad copy, blog posts and computer code. The generated text usually looks very good, but you must check it for accuracy.

How Can I Try Out These AI Tools?

It’s early days in this phase of the AI revolution, and things are changing rapidly. Web sites appear and disappear. Companies are bought and sold. Tools change hands and change names. Here is a list of generative AI tools that work as of March 2024.

Claude.ai – Account required. Free and paid tiers.
The Microsoft Copilot App – May require Microsoft 365 subscription? Includes Designer (for images), Vacation Planner, Cooking Assistant and Fitness Trainer.
Microsoft Bing – Copilot web interface
Google Gemini – Gemini web interface
Typing Mind – accessible via Setapp
Photos Revive App – Photo colorization – accessible via Setapp
MacGPT – Mac App interface to ChatGPT.

Apple is reportedly negotiating with Google and/or OpenAI to incorporate some of their Generative AI tools into the iPhone.

What uses of Artificial Intelligence might people not know about?

1. **Personalized Medicine:** Al is used to analyze complex medical data and create personalized treatment plans for
patients based on their unique genetic makeup and health history.
2. **Fraud Detection:** Al algorithms are employed by financial institutions to detect patterns of fraudulent activities and
protect customers from identity theft and financial fraud.
3. **Precision Agriculture:** Al is used in agriculture to optimize crop yields by analyzing data on weather patterns, soil
quality, and crop health to improve farming practices.
4. **Smart Assistants:** Virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant utilize Al to understand and respond to
user commands, making daily tasks more convenient and efficient.
5. **Autonomous Vehicles:** Al technology powers self-driving cars, enabling them to perceive their environment, make
decisions, and navigate roads safely without human intervention.
6. **Cybersecurity:** Al is used to detect and prevent cyber threats by analyzing vast amounts of data to identify unusual
patterns and potential security breaches in real-time.
7. **Content Creation:** Al can generate content such as articles, music, and artwork, assisting creators in brainstorming
ideas and increasing productivity.
8. **Energy Management:** Al helps in optimizing energy consumption by analyzing data on usage patterns and adjusting
energy distribution to reduce waste and lower costs.
These are just a few examples of the diverse applications of Al that may not be commonly known. — Example of a Prompt and Response from MacGPT

Also worth a look:

Sora – from OpenAI, generates videos from prompts – only pre-recorded demos now

Artificial General Intelligence

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) doesn’t exist yet. Existing AI software is powerful in certain domains, but it is helpless outside those domains. ChatGPT can write a passable paragraph for a PhD thesis, but it’s not as smart about the world as a five year old. True AGI would have intelligence equal to or better than human intelligence in at least all the domains where humans are knowledgeable.

Here’s Copilot Designer’s response to a request for three yellow ducks and a green goose. It totally failed to include a green goose, or any green bird. It’s really not too bright yet. It draws better than a five year old, but lacks understanding.

One theory is that in order to develop AGI, AI will have to be embodied in a robot where it can gain the experience of the world that a child has.

Is AI a Threat to Humanity?

Scary Robot Drawn by Microsoft Designer / DALL-E 3

There have been a number of topical headlines recently suggesting that AI is a serious threat to the human race. Caution is warranted, as with any new technology, but I believe that the threat isn’t Artificial Intelligence itself, but our own lack of wisdom in deploying it.

Most of our fear of alien or artificial intelligences is that they will be too much like us. We know all too well the human capacity for fear, greed and desire for power.

Artificial Intelligence is likely to lack those things unless we are stupid enough to design them in. Without an equivalent to the more primitive parts of the human brain, robots or AI will lack lust, greed and even an instinct for self-preservation.²

We obviously shouldn’t give an AI control of nuclear weapons, but that has more to do with the danger of such weapons than of AI.

A more realistic concern in the near term is that AI may threaten many people’s jobs. If you write ad copy or blog posts for a living, AI is already coming for your job. If you are an illustrator or photographer, AI can already accomplish many of your tasks in a fraction of the time. Lawyers and computer programmers are probably next, and I am sure there are many other job categories at risk.

Like any other tool, AI can be used by bad people to do bad things. Since it is a powerful tool, it can have a big effect. It could be a propaganda tool without precedent, and will no doubt be used to spread misinformation, fear, uncertainty and doubt on a massive scale.

These are serious social problems. We have already experienced social problems from other aspects of technology such as automation and social media. As a society we need to figure out how to fairly distribute the wealth and other benefits derived from AI and similar technologies and how to protect society from misuse of AI.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_your_base_are_belong_to_us ↩︎
Hawkins, Jeff (2021). A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence. Basic Books ↩︎

Procreate Art App for iPad

MacMAD Meeting February 2024

This is a live demonstration meeting covering Procreate for iPad. There is also a version of Procreate for the iPhone.

Our presenter this month is Ann Posner. She says:

The Procreate app is a powerhouse assistant in my career as a professional artist, as well as in my personal life. I recommend the Procreate app for any computer users or artists from beginners to experts!

Ann on the sailboat with some of her art

The video of this meeting is now on-line here. The audio is low, so turn it up. The actual presentation starts about 4 minutes in.

Chat Apps

November 2023 Meeting Topic

Text messaging of various types has become very popular since the beginning of mobile phones. The popularity of chat apps has really taken off with additional features such as group chat, photos, and audio and video chat.

The line between Chat Apps and social media such as Twitter (X), has become blurred as more features are added.

Popular Chat Apps

Messages/FaceTime (Apple)
Signal
WeChat
WhatsApp Messenger
Telegram
Messenger (Meta/Facebook)
Google Chat

Why Choose A Particular App?

Convenience: Messages is built into your Apple products. It’s easy to use. There may be no reason to change, especially if your friends use Apple devices also.

Security and Privacy: Signal is your best choice for absolute security, with end-to-end encryption, a security-focused company, and publicly reviewed code. Apple’s Messages is also very secure, but perhaps less so against governments. The Signal protocol has also been adopted by WhatsApp and Google Messages (on Android).

International Travel: WhatsApp is popular overseas and with travelers. You can use WhatsApp with an international data plan. Since it does not use conventional SMS text messaging, you won’t get charged for the texts. WeChat is nearly universal in China and the far east. It is widely used for checkout and payments as well as messaging. Telegram is popular in India, Asia, Africa and parts of Europe.

Features

Group Chat
Audio/Video Chat
Broadcast to large group
Stickers, emojis, reactions
File Transfer
Document Sharing/Team Collaboration
Send money

Under the Hood

The original text messaging protocol was SMS (Simple Messaging System). You’re probably still using SMS if you exchange messages with non-iPhone users (probably Android). SMS has a 160 character limit for each message. MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) is an extension of SMS which allows “texting” of photos and videos (Low-resolution). SMS and MMS messages count as “text messaging” on your cellular plan, and do not use your data plan.

RCS (Rich Communication Services) is a more modern protocol widely used on Android phones. Apple has announced that its Messages App will be compatible with RCS beginning sometime in 2024. RCS messages use cellular data (or WiFi) (not “texts”). However, none of the chat App protocols will probably make a significant dent in your cellular data usage. When RCS is available in Messages, Apple users and their Android friends will see an improvement in the quality of photos and videos sent and received.

The other Chat Apps are each using their own protocols to exchange messages using Internet data over cellular or WiFi. The quantity of data used is probably insignificant.

Send Your Location via Satellite with Find My

I had a chance to try out the new feature of the Find My app that lets you send your location via Satellite. This is perhaps not so easy to demonstrate, since it requires you to be at a location without WiFi or cell service. I was traveling in some areas of North Carolina without cell coverage, so I took advantage of that to try out this new feature.

Prerequisites

iPhone 14 or 14 Pro (or later, presumably)
iOS 16.1 or later
Friend(s) previously added to “Share my Location” in Find My
Be away from cell and WiFi coverage
Be outdoors with a clear view of the sky

Sharing your location via Satellite in Find My doesn’t send your location to anyone in particular. It just makes your location available so that friends who already have access to your location can access it. It never asked me who I wanted to send it to. Sending your location is a one-way transmission. You do not receive anyone else’s location, or any other data, except a confirmation that your location was sent.

You start off by pressing Me at the bottom of the Find My app.

You will then see an option to Send My Location under My Location via Satellite.

In Progress. Note Satellite tracking icon at top.

Note the little green satellite tracking icon at the top.

Tapping the tracking icon brought up this screen. You turn to face left and right to keep the white dot centered in the green arc. The iPhone acquired the satellite and sent my location quickly and easily. It seemed like it would have worked without me doing anything special to aim my phone.

I hope this little preview gives you some idea of what to expect if you ever need to send your location via satellite. The most important thing is that you must set up sharing your location with friend(s) in the Find My app before leaving on your trip to a remote location.

Brevard County Sites and Apps

MacMAD Meeting Topic, April, 2023

For our April meeting, we’re covering sites and apps that might be especially useful to those living in Brevard County, Florida.

Printing at the Library

The Brevard County Libraries allow you to print on their printers for a small fee. (10 cents per page for black and white, 50 cents for color). If you have a printer at home, you might not need this. But, if, like me, you have a monochrome printer, and only occasionally need a color print, this is a great option. Also, if you are away from home when you realize you need to print something, you can pick it up at the nearest library, which may be much closer than your house.

Printing at your library is accomplished through services known as printeron.net and printspots.com. You must know the unique web address or email address for your desired library branch. They are different for each of 17 branch libraries. If in doubt, contact your local library. Here are a few sample links.

Location (print link)	Printing email addresses
Suntree/Viera	[email protected], [email protected]
Eau Gallie	[email protected] [email protected]
Melbourne	[email protected] [email protected]

If you print via email, give your email a descriptive subject line so that you can recognize which print job(s) you want to pay for and print. When you go to pick up your print job, look for the coin operated machine like this.

This should be next to a computer that you can use to select the job to be printed.

To begin, enter your email address. I did not have to enter a library card number to print. You can pay for your print either using coins and bills in the machine, or you can pay the reference librarian. If you are already at the library when you send the print job, just be aware that it does take a few minutes for the print job to be ready.

Libby and Hoopla Media Apps

Our libraries also offer two nice services that allow you free access to ebooks, audiobooks, movies and TV shows for free on your device. You can use these from your computer, iPad, iPhone or Apple TV. Hoopla is better for TV, Libby is for books. These are connected to your Brevard County Library account, so you need a (free) library card.

Libby	eBooks, Audio Books	Libby iOS App
Hoopla	TV shows, movies, ebooks, Audiobooks, Magazines	Hoopla iOS App

Space News – Local Launches

Keep up with the ever changing launch schedule with the Next Spaceflight iOS App.

The app shows 3 upcoming launches from Cape Canaveral & the Kennedy Space Center, with dates, times, and descriptions and photos of the rocket type to be used.

I highly recommend the Next Spaceflight app. Because it lists upcoming launches from all over the world, you should probably set your favorite launch location(s) to Florida, and whatever else interests you in order not to be overwhelmed by distant launches.

The Space Flight Now web site has good general coverage of space topics, as well as a good launch schedule page.

Local News

Spectrum News 13 has a Brevard County page. That’s useful to everyone. If you are a Spectrum TV subscriber, you may find the Spectrum News App useful. There are iPhone, iPad and Apple TV versions.

Florida Today is our only major local newspaper. There is a Florida Today iOS and iPad App. The print edition is available as a separate App. The web page and app feature both public and subscriber-only content.

The Brevard edition of Hometown News is a small, but nice local paper. Their “E-Editions” show an image of the print version of the paper. From their homepage you can sign up for daily news emails.

Weather, Traffic & Emergencies

The National Weather Service has a Melbourne office web page with forecast information.

Text Alerts from the Brevard County Emergency Operations Center – You can sign up for alerts which you can opt to receive by email, text or phone. These alerts include severe weather, fires, rocket launches, boil water notices, law enforcement alerts, etc.

The Florida 511 page might be useful to people who drive a lot. This site has more to it than you might expect from a state agency. You can create a free account, and set up alerts for various specific traffic situations. For instance, you can ask for notifications when traffic is unusually slow on particular routes, on particular days of the week and at specific times. If there is an incident, construction zone, road closure or unusual congestion affecting your route you will be notified by text or email. The site only handles routes involving Interstates or major highways.

Nixle Public Safety Alerts – Nixle.com handles public safety alerts for many cities and counties in the US. You don’t need to create an account. To sign up for alerts, text your zip code to 888777.

Maps and Photographic Views

The Brevard County Property Appraiser’s Office has a lot of information which might be interesting to homeowners, home buyers and sellers. I was very impressed with their Map View page, especially Eagle View. You can take a look at any property in Brevard County from various angles, and going back in time as far as 2007. The image resolution is much better than you would get from satellite coverage from Google Maps, for instance.

It’s worth spending a little time learning to navigate the map. Some nice instructions are provided in this PDF.

The same location in 2018 was a parking lot.

WiFi Hotspots

Publix, Home Depot, McDonalds, Brevard Public Libraries and many other businesses have free WiFi hotspots. Quality and convenience varies. Publix and Home Depot are public guest networks, with no password required. Once you have connected your phone to one of these, it will automatically be used next time you are in range. The Brevard Libraries use a captive portal design, where you must visit a sign-in page each time you connect. Even though no password is required, this creates a lot of friction and makes the network less useful.

If you are a Spectrum Internet or Mobile customer, you can use their network of thousands of WiFi hotspots around the country. They have plenty in popular locations here in Brevard. You can check Spectrum’s WiFi map here.

Spectrum’s network includes WiFi networks named Spectrum, Spectrum Free Trial and Spectrum Mobile.

You can connect automatically to Spectrum hotspots if you use the My Spectrum App to install the Spectrum Config Profile. The profile gives your phone a list of WiFi networks to connect to automatically, and provides your credentials automatically, so you don’t need to log in each time.

You can also log in to the WiFi access points each time, which is obviously less convenient. The trick to logging into the App, or logging into the Spectrum access points is to use the correct username and password. You may have more than one. You want to use your account password — the one you use for billing purposes. This might be identified as a Spectrum or Brighthouse “My Services” account, or “Account Partner”. Your Spectrum email account and password is probably not the right one. Once logged into the App, you can turn on Face ID or Touch ID, so you can easily log in again.

The profile that the App installs contains certificate information which expires every six months or so. You will need to occasionally delete the old profile and install a new one from the App. They are not automatically updated.

Digitizing Old Photographs

MacMAD Meeting Topic February, 2023

If you have photographs taken before you started using a digital camera, probably before about 2005, those photos may never have been digitized and are not available for viewing and sharing in your on-line digital world.

What’s your best strategy for getting those digitized and into your computer or phone?

This Could Take a While

Even the small pile of pictures above contains over a hundred photographs. You should expect that digitizing them all will take a while, even in the best case.

Service, Camera or Flatbed Scanner?

There are three basic strategies:

1.) Send them out to a service to be digitized
2.) Digitize them with a flatbed scanner
3.) Digitize them using your iPhone camera or another digital camera

Digitizing services can be expensive but are worthy of serious consideration. They can save you a lot of time and frustration. Because they charge by the photo, you should be selective as to which photos you send them. This is by far the fastest method. If you have a lot of photos and don’t want to spend years working on them, just get your wallet out.

A flatbed scanner gives high-quality results and you are in charge of the quality, the cropping and everything else. You’ll get the best results that your originals, your equipment and your abilities allow.

A scanner with a transparency feature allows you to also scan slides and negatives.

Using your phone or a camera to “scan” or take a photograph of the original can produce reasonably high quality copies. This method has some advantages you should consider:

It’s faster than a scanner
Can digitize large or awkward photos that don’t fit on the scanner
- Can digitize photos in a frame
You can digitize while traveling without a flatbed scanner
Can produce better results for originals printed on matte paper
Works if you don’t own a computer

Using a phone or camera can also produce poor results unless you take the time to get proper lighting.

Organize – Before and After

As you take your originals out of the albums or envelopes to be digitized, look for context. Who’s in the photos? Where were they taken? What was the date? You should write on the back of the originals for future reference. Don’t just write “grandmother”. That’s not very helpful. Maybe “Mrs. Mary Jane (Doe) Smith” would be better. Use a non-smearing ink pen that doesn’t require too much pressure to write. I like Bic Round Stic ball-point pens for this.

After digitizing a photo, write something on the back of the photo saying so, like “digitized in 2023”. This will keep you from wasting time or money scanning the same photo again.

Assign long meaningful file names to your photo files. If you give them meaningful names, you and your descendants might be able to find them later. VueScan will create files with a serial number like 2023-02-17-0007. This would be the seventh photo scanned on February 17, 2023. I keep those serial numbers as a suffix to my file names to avoid having multiple photos all with the same name. Suppose I have a bunch of photos of John Doe, all taken in 1999. If I name them “John Doe, 1999”, they would all have the same name which will cause problems when I try to put them into a folder together. But if they have a unique suffix, no problem.

Long file names are allowed, so take advantage of it.

The Best Way to Restore an Old Photograph is to Find a Better Original

Prioritize and Select

Take some time to find the best existing versions of your photos to digitize. That version may be a print, or a negative, or a slide. In the 2000s, some film development services included a CD-ROM with your photos on it. If you find one of those, you can save yourself a lot of time and trouble, although the CD images may not be high-resolution by today’s standards.

Prioritize slides. Slides are often photographic gold. Usually whoever was shooting slides had a nice camera and was a better-than-average photographer. Slides often haven’t been seen since the slide projector broke decades ago. So, there could be some nice surprises. And, if they have been stored in a closed box, they might be cleaner and in better shape than prints which might be torn, faded and dirty. Slide film often captures and preserves color better than print film.

Sort your photos so you are digitizing a batch of similar photos at once. It is easier if you don’t have to change your settings between photos. So, separate the black and white photos from the color photos, and the 3x5s from the 4x6s.

Be selective. Many of your photos are losers. Skip them. Digitize the best versions of each series.

Sample Workflow

Scan with VueScan to TIF files in Downloads Folder
Add descriptive filenames
Crop, adjust and clean-up in Affinity Photo
Export final photos as JPG into Download Folder
Copy final JPGs to preferred storage folder(s)
Delete temporary TIFs and JPGs from Downloads
(you do have a backup plan, right?)

VueScan’s Complex “Professional” Options Scanning Negatives

The Infrared clean option is good on negatives and slides. It largely eliminates dust. It does require an extra scan step, so takes twice as long to scan. I think it’s worth it for almost all slides and negatives. A similar option is available in other software.

Restore colors and Restore fading can be amazing for old prints. You have to try these to see if they help your specific photos or not. The Restore colors option does a better job than I have been able to do with photo editing software.

Above is the Image Capture software included with MacOS. It is easy to use, and automatically identifies multiple images to be scanned.

Tips for Digitizing with your phone or camera

Find good lighting. Indirect sky light is best, but avoid direct sun. A shady porch where lots of sky is visible is ideal.

If you are setting up your own lights try to position them off to each side of the photo shining at a 45° angle. If you only have one, that’s okay, but one on each side is better.

Don’t use flash unless:

You have an off-camera flash
You are using the PhotoScan App or similar with anti-glare feature

Flatbed Scanner Example

Epson Perfection V600 $276 at Amazon – Scans Photos, Negatives and Slides

Epson makes good scanners, but their software support for MacOS is pretty terrible. You should plan on using 3rd party scanning software (below) eventually. The Epson scanning software is pretty nice, but whether or not it will work on any given version of MacOS is a gamble.

Scanning Software for Mac

VueScan Software Versions $24.95 to $99.95

VueScan works with almost any scanner model and is kept up to date.

Image Capture (User Guide) – (Image Capture is included with MacOS)

Affinity Photo 2 Photo Editor $69.99 (Not for scanning, just for editing afterwards.) A powerful image editing program.

Mail-In Digitizing Services

Kodak Mail-In Digitizing Box

Memories Renewed – Well Reviewed by Consumer Reports and Wirecutter

Scanning Software for iPhone

PhotoScan Icon PhotoScan – (Google) Free in App Store. Removes glare from scan.

Camera App (built-in, comes with iPhone)

Web Browsing With Safari

Here are the slides from the May, 2022 MacMAD meeting on browsing with Safari.

Web Browsers: Chrome, Edge, Safari, Firefox

The Best of the App Store

This post is part of the MacMAD presentation meeting for Tuesday, March 15, 2022. See also iPhone Super Powers.

The Best of the App Store for iOS

Many iOS/iPadOS Apps are free. Most Apps that are not free are less than $3.00. Some are more expensive, or have in-App purchases or subscriptions.

Many people consider that one of the best decisions made by Apple was to allow 3rd party apps on the iPhone. It’s hard to believe that when the iPhone was introduced in 2007, Apple wasn’t initially sure Apps would be supported. The App Store was only introduced in 2008.

There are now about 2 million Apps in the iOS App store. Because it is so easy to buy and install Apps, even the most technophobic of iPhone users have typically installed several favorite Apps. Many iPhone users have so many Apps installed that they have trouble keeping track of them all.

You Must Setup a Credit Card

Because it is a store, and you might buy things, you need to setup a credit card under

Settings ->Apple ID

Once you have done this, you are ready to shop for Apps.

There are three categories of Apps with different information in the “Price” button.

Apps can have a price, or the word “GET”, or a cloud download symbol.

In the App Store, you will see some apps with the word GET instead of a price. Those apps are free. If you see In-App Purchases, then there are aspects of the App you will be asked to pay for later, while using the App.

If you see the cloud download symbol, that means that you already own that App, but it is not currently installed on your device. Maybe you bought or downloaded it on a different device, or maybe you previously had it installed but deleted it. In any case, you can click the icon to download it now for free.

In the figure above, you will see how to spot a reputable app. An App with the Editor’s Choice notation is highly recommended. An App that has hundreds of thousands or millions of downloads and four or five stars is also a very reputable App. Be a bit suspicious if an App only has a small number of downloads, or is “Too new to rate”, or has a low star rating.

Check the Developer/Seller’s Name

If you are expecting the App to be something specific, make sure that the Seller and Copyright fields are what you are expecting. Some Apps have similar names or icons to other, more popular Apps.

Popular App Categories

Social Media
Games
Shopping
Audio, Video and Books
Travel and Navigation
Office Apps – Microsoft ‘s Office, Apple’s Apps

Consider Getting Apps for…

Favorite Stores & Restaurants
Local News, Weather and Information
Your Car and Home

Some car brands have their own apps. For your home, some devices such as locks, cameras and energy monitors have their own Apps. Of course, there is also Apple’s own Home App for all your HomeKit devices.

Some Favorite Apps

Next Spaceflight – Always know the next rocket launch
Mactracker – Guide to the many versions of Apple hardware
AnyList – Handy Family Shopping Lists and Checklists. iOS and Mac

Password Managers

I recommend you use some sort of password manager. Apple’s built-in Keychain feature is improving, but if that isn’t good enough for you, try these. No particular order:

Books and Reading

Apple Books – Apple’s own, pre-installed Book reader and Store
Libby, by Overdrive – Free eBooks from Brevard Libraries
Audible – Purchased and Subscription Audio Books, High Quality

iPhone Super Powers

A day of acquaintance,
And then the longer span of custom.
But first —
The hour of astonishment.

– Bill Atkinson, c. 1987

This post is from MacMAD’s presentation meeting for Tuesday, March 15, 2022. See also The Best of the App Store.

These are some capabilities of the iPhone that typically make people’s jaw drop in amazement and say “It does what?” the first time they hear of them.

Your iPhone Receives Signals from Russian Satellites

It also receives signals from US military satellites, and those of the European Space Agency, and Japanese and Chinese governments. These are all part of the navigation features usually lumped together as “GPS”.

GPS – United States Global Positioning System, originally military only
GLONASS – Russian Navigation Satellites
Galileo – European Space Agency Global Navigation System
QZSS – Japanese Satellite Positioning System
BeiDou – Chinese Navigation Satellite System

iPhone uses all these systems as required to determine your position as quickly and precisely as possible.

What is that thing?

Your iPhone / iPad can often answer questions of the “What is that thing?” variety. Sometimes an App is required, and sometimes you already have what you need.

What is that Airplane?

“Hey Siri, What Airplanes are overhead?”

The response comes back in tabular form from Wolfram Alpha, listing nearby flights and their positions in the sky.

Siri automatically invoked Wolfram Alpha in this instance, but Wolfram Alpha is a website which can answer many types of questions. It is primarily oriented towards mathematics and engineering, but can respond to a fantastic variety of queries about factual information. There is also the Wolfram Alpha App ($2.99 + extras), and the free Wolfram Alpha Viewer App.

What is that Song?

“Hey, Siri, What Song is Playing?”

Siri can identify a song playing on your device, or a song playing nearby from another source. For music in the room, Siri invokes Shazam. Or, you can Shazam a song from the control center. Or, you can use the dedicated Shazam App.

Song identified as “You’re Still on My Mind” by The Byrds

What is That Plant or Animal?

You can identify plants and animals with the free Seek App. Seek is from iNaturalist. There is also an iNaturalist web site and iNaturalist App, where you can submit your observations to a crowd-sourced body of observations, where the species will be confirmed or identified by other human observers.

Seek uses artificial intelligence to quickly identify a plant or animal through your camera. You don’t even need to take a photo to get the ID — just viewing the specimen through Seek will produce a likely identification.

Seek App identifying Indian Hawthorne Shrub

What Bird is Making that Sound?

The free Merlin Bird ID app from Cornell Labs can identify many bird species from their songs or calls. You can record the bird call from right within the app. You can then select a part of the recording that is the bird you want, free of background sounds. The App will then suggest a species. This is basically Shazam for birds.

Merlin Bird ID identifying Yellow-Throated Warbler

Use iPhone as Web Cam with Detail

I have a MacMini which has no built-in camera. During the pandemic, I have been doing more on-line teleconferencing (mostly Zoom and Facetime meetings). I have used various cameras and various software to connect them to my computer.

I recently came across Detail, from Detail.co . This application allows you to use your iPhone or iPad as a web camera for your Mac. This is the best solution I have seen yet, and the iPhone has a good-quality camera, so my video looks good.

The Mac application does much more than that, which is both an advantage and disadvantage. It is a disadvantage in that it makes it harder to learn to use. There is a video tutorial on the site. The quick summary is to download the Detail app from the iOS or iPad OS App store on your iPhone or iPad, and also download the app for Macintosh from the web site. The app can work wirelessly, or via a USB cable (recommended).

You may want a tripod adapter for your phone. I bought this one and it seems like a good one. You might want to use that with a small desktop tripod like this, if you don’t have one.

Detail is not free, and they are kind of cagey about the price. I actually don’t know how much or how often they charge. There is a 14 day free trial period. I discovered and got access to Detail through my Setapp subscription, which is excellent for just-in-time discovery of useful, curated apps.

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