Jamie Cox – The MacMAD Apple User Group

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)

Find Duplicate Photos with Gemini 2

A question came up at last month’s MacMAD meeting on how to save space by finding and removing duplicate photos on the Mac.

One way to do this is with Gemini 2 from MacPaw software.

You tell Gemini which folder or folders you want it to scan, including your Photo library. It scans them pretty darn fast.

It finds duplicate files of all kinds, not just photos.

Gemini’s Main Screen with List of Duplicates

You can sort and search these in various ways. You can then select groups of the duplicates for deletion.

You should be very cautious about deleting duplicates en masse. The duplicates may be in folders belonging to specific applications which expect to find them in those locations. Or, you may want to have duplicates in specific locations for your own organizational purposes.

It probably isn’t worthwhile trying to remove all duplicates. If you can find a few large files that can be deleted, or find entire folders that you no longer need, you may recover a lot of space with a minimum of effort and risk.

Gemini 2 is available on a subscription basis starting at $19.95 per year, or an outright purchase starting at $44.95. It is also available through a subscription to SetApp (also from MacPaw).

Cables Galore: Charging and More

“90% of all Problems are Cables”

MacMAD Meeting Topic Oct. 18, 2022

Cables are the unwanted stepchildren of our digital lives. More things are becoming wireless, but, we can’t get away from cables entirely. There are a bewildering variety of cable types, which are ever-changing. I’m sure many of you have a box of obsolete Apple cables like this one:

USB – Universal Serial Bus

USB (Universal Serial Bus) is probably the most-used cable and interface type you will come across. The secret to understanding USB naming is that, generally, USB numbers have to do with speed, but USB letters tell you the connector type. So, USB 3 is faster than USB 2, which is faster than USB 1.

The ABCs of USB

The Familiar USB A Plugs and Jacks – Blue Indicates USB 3 Compatibility

If you bought an iPhone in the last 10 years, it came with a lightning connector, and a lightning-to-USB cable. These were USB A cables for older iPhones, and USB C since (about iPhone 11?).

USB B was mostly for Printers – Rarely Used Now

USB C is the Most Common Connector for New Devices

USB C has two popular features: The connector is very compact, and the connector is symmetrical, meaning that it will connect in either orientation. The USB C connector also carries the high-speed Thunderbolt hardware interface which used to require a separate cable and connector. Thunderbolt is used primarily for display devices and high-speed mass storage. The complex USB and Thunderbolt standards appear to be merging such that USB 4 is the same protocol as Thunderbolt 3.

The 1,2,3s of USB Speed

USB Speeds Increase Dramatically with Recent Versions

Choose Your Power

Recent iPhones and iPads may not have come with a power adapter, so it is up to you to make sure you have an appropriate one. Apple currently sells a bewildering variety of power adapters. Considering only the USB power adapters, there are are adapters with power ratings of 5W, 12W, 20W, 30W, 35W (dual), 67W, 96W, and 140 Watts. These are all USB-C, except for the older 5 and 12 Watt models. These are all for household plug-in use and do not include adapters for use in the car. A similar range of compatible adapters are also available from other companies.

Your device will not be harmed by a higher-wattage adapter. It will only draw the amount of current it actually needs. If you connect your device to a lower powered adapter, it may charge slowly, or not at all. If you connect your device to a higher powered adapter, it will charge faster, up to the device’s maximum charge rate.

USB is a complex standard which includes multiple data and multiple power standards within the one USB name.

You may “know” that USB provides 5 volt power. However, for adapters providing more than 15 Watts, USB adjusts to 20 Volts. For power above 100 Watts, USB uses 48 Volts. This is all while maintaining compatibility with older 5 Volt devices.

If you still have the power adapter from a phone you got 10 years ago, even if it is “perfectly good”, it is probably not sufficient for your newer devices.

Recommended Power Estimates

Use an Adapter Appropriate to Your Device

Apple Brand USB Chargers 5 Watts, 18 Watts and 30 Watts

Which MagSafe Do You Mean?

Incompatible MagSafe 3 and MagSafe 2 Power Connectors (MagSafe 1 not shown)

Apple has had five different, incompatible things all called MagSafe: three cable types and two wireless chargers.

MagSafe and Qi Wireless Charging Pucks (Notice they all have wires)

Don’t Let Junky Power Damage Your Device

Choose reputable cables and power adapters. Apple offers the “MFi” (Made for iPhone/iPad) certification to other vendors. These products have been tested and are up to standards.

Not all cables that look alike work alike. Older or cheaper cables may work with low power devices, but may perform poorly or not at all for higher power modern devices.

Reputable brands include, in alphabetical order: Ainope, Anker, Amazon Basics, Apple, Belkin and MonoPrice. Look for emphasis on safety and clean power. Look for “MFi”. Look for USB C and USB 3.x compatibility. Beware cheap deals that come in a six-pack.

Having Problems? Clean Your Lightning Port

Clean Dust Bunnies Out of the Lightning Port With a Toothpick

Beware of Heat

Your device may get hot when charging. Keep it out of the direct sun, especially on your car dashboard. In the car, positioning your phone in front of an air conditioning vent can keep it cool. A hot battery may charge more slowly, if at all.

Fire Safety

Don’t charge your device on the bed or upholstery, especially overnight.

Throw away old, frayed, melted or intermittent cords.

Throw away power adapters that have overheated.

Charging in the Car

Modern cars probably have USB ports for charging and for Car Play or for playing audio. Cars tend to lag behind in technology. Many still have USB A ports. It pays to check your owner’s manual to find out which USB ports in your car will charge more quickly. My Honda has low-powered ports in the front, and higher-powered (12.5 Watt) ports behind the center console. Devices can charge twice as fast plugged into those ports.

Most cars have a 12 V accessory outlet somewhere (aka, the old cigarette lighter outlet). These can supply plenty of power. You can find modern adapters to get the USB power you need from these. They are much cheaper than a new car!

The World is Moving Toward USB C

But, USB A will be around for a long while. You should get yourself some USB A to C adapters ( both directions) to make the transition easier. They are cheap.

Web Browsing With Safari

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

Web Browsers: Chrome, Edge, Safari, Firefox

I Want to be Notified

This post is part of the presentation for MacMAD’s meeting for Tuesday, March 15, 2022.

There are a number of Apps, web sites and cloud services that provide useful notifications. Of course, there are many, many Apps dying to notify you about trivial things. In this post, I’ll give you a few ways to be notified about interesting things in the real world that may be useful to you.

Heart Health Notifications

This is first, because it could be very important. If you have an Apple Watch, be sure to turn on the notifications for irregular rhythm in the Apple Watch App->Heart on your iPhone. These notifications have probably saved lives by prompting people to get prompt medical attention. You might want notifications for unusually high or low heart rates also.

Financial Institutions

Your bank, credit union or brokerage may support various notifications. These can range from conveniences to important security notifications. For example the Bank of America (BofA) App has notifications for various security alerts. Make sure the alerts you want are turned on in the App, and also check that your Settings allow notifications from that App. In this case, under Settings->Notifications->BofA.

BofA App Security Alerts Configuration Screen

Local Emergency Alerts

The web site Nixle.com is used by local governments to broadcast emergency and other information of local interest. You don’t need to sign in or anything. If you send your zip code by text message to 888777, that will subscribe you to text notifications for your local area. What that means depends on where you are. Not all locations in the U.S. use the Nixle service, but many do. Here in Brevard County, you’ll get texts notifying you of things like road closures, brush fires, hurricane information, and Rocket Launches. (The Brevard Emergency Operations Center (EOC) activates for each launch in case of a launch accident.)

Nixle Text Alerts for Controlled Burn and Atlas Launch

Roads and Traffic

Your local governments may provide notifications of traffic problems in your area.

Here in Florida, the site FL511.com provides very specific customizable alerts for traffic problems on Interstates. It is only for the Interstates and other major roads. Here in Brevard it applies to I-95, US-1, A1A, and maybe the major causeway roads. You have to create an account, and sign in, but then you can create favorite routes and set up alerts for those routes in case there are any “incidents”, etc. You can specify to be alerted only within certain hours, and certain days of the week or month. You can also specify to be alerted only when travel times are expected to exceed a certain percentage of normal. Notifications can be by text or email.

On the City of Melbourne’s web site you can subscribe to email notifications for traffic advisories, etc.

Rocket Launches

The Next Spaceflight App is great for those of us on the Space Coast who like to follow local rocket launches. Because the App covers rocket launches world wide, you will probably want to specify your favorite launch sites so that you are not bombarded with launch notifications from distant continents.

You can specify to be notified a day before each launch, an hour before the launch, or 10 minutes before the launch, or any combination of those.

Custom Searches

You can save a specific search on eBay. This can be helpful if you are looking for something that rarely comes up for sale. When your search term is matched, you will get an email. If you save a search for a common item, you will get eBay notification messages every day. The usefulness of this may depend on how carefully you choose your search terms. Remember, you can include a minus sign to exclude certain words from your search.

Of course, you must have an eBay account and be signed in to create saved searches. I use this to search for items that may be relevant to my family genealogy. I have found several interesting items by this method.

You can also use Google Alerts to perform similar searches on any web site or on the web in general. You can focus your search more exactly using hints from Google Advanced Search. Again, it might be helpful to exclude common but undesired words with the minus sign. You can limit your search to a particular site with the site: keyword. For example, searching for:

iPhone site:macmad.org

Will find the word iPhone, but only on macmad.org.

Other Notifications

Weather – The Dark Sky app, now owned by Apple, has timely, local notifications
Package Delivery – Amazon, and UPS can notify you of package deliveries
Mail – USPS Informed Delivery sends you a daily preview of your mail
Utilities – FPL can notify you of power outages and power restoration estimates
Security – Burglar Alarms, Security Cameras, Motion Sensors, your car, etc.

Customize your Notifications

You can customize notifications to your preference for iOS and iPadOS in:

Settings->Notifications

In the Notifications settings, you can adjust the settings individually for each app, specifying whether it is allowed to send you notifications, and what type (badges, alerts, sounds and or banners). For notifications sent by email, you can prioritize them by adding the sender to your contacts list and marking them as a VIP (with the star). Add contacts to your VIP list using:

Mail App->Mailboxes->VIP->ⓘ

Then you can allow VIP-sent emails to give you different notifications than your other routine emails:

Settings->Notifications->Mail->Customize Notifications->VIP

This can make important notification emails pop up an alert right away.

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

Which iPhone Should I Buy?

Variations of this question are some of the most common questions we get here at MacMAD. “What Mac should I buy?”, “Which iPad is the best?”, etc.

There is a great new site for this called Apple Buying Advice. It’s one of those sites that does one thing and does it well. I hope it withstands the test of time and avoids the temptations of click-bait headlines and over-complicated analysis. Right now, it is very simple and straight forward. Try it!

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.