What You Need to Get Started

To start, you will also need an HDTV with an Apple TV attached, an iPhone 4S and a free Skype account. Why Skype and not FaceTime?  Well there are many more Skype users than FaceTime users. And quite frankly, it is much easier to get all members of the family up and running with a free Skype account than to initialize everyone’s iOS and Mac devices with FaceTime.

Prepare the Car Mount

Most iPhone docks are designed for someone sitting at a desk. What is needed is a better mount that can allow the iPhone to be better positioned for larger settings.  Take any decent smartphone car mount with a suction cup, like this one from Arkon for $15 on Amazon. The suction cup needs a smooth surface to attach to, so try mounting it to any household hand mirror. This set up gives extra stability to the video and the added ability to pass the camera in the mount around easily. The great thing about the car mount from Arkon is that it is just about infinitely adjustable, so no matter how or where you need to place the hand mirror you can angle the iPhone the way you want. And if you happen not to have anywhere to place the hand mirror, just tack up a nail and hang the hand mirror upside down on the wall.  Just don’t lock in the iPhone 4S before you make the video call. (The mount’s quick release allows one to attach and detach the iPhone quickly and easily.) Wait until after the call has been established before you put the iPhone into the car mount attached to the hand mirror.

Initiate the Video Call

Placing a video call on Skype with an iPhone is just as easy as chatting or placing a voice call.  To increase the quality of the video once the call is established, be sure to use the back camera of the iPhone. Then double click the phone’s Home button and swipe left twice to reveal the volume and Airplay buttons. To display the call on the big screen, just click on the Apple TV you want to use and turn on Mirroring. Once you’ve done that, mount the iPhone in the car mount and experience video calls on the big screen. As a side note, I have found that when placing Mac-to-iPhone Skype video calls, it is easier to establish a video connection when the call originates from the Mac.

If this solution works great for you, you can always shop around for a more attractive mounting solution.  You could even invest in a mountable surface that permanently affixes itself to the wall just above your HDTV. For instance, the top shelf of my main entertainment system is made of glass, so I don’t really need a mirror in that room of the house.  There are just as many car mounts on the market as there are solutions on how to mount them on or near an HDTV.

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The new iTunes Match page not only includes a couple of paragraphs describing the service, as did the brief blurb on the iCloud page that used to cover the topic; it also includes a simple four-step procedure for getting started matching your library and a 10-question FAQ featuring most of the things I’ve been asked by confused family and friends about the service. This includes whether or not iTunes Match streams or downloads a track (it can do either on a computer running iTunes; it does both simultaneously on an iOS device; it only streams on Apple TV) and what happens if you don’t renew your subscription. (Downloaded songs on any devices remain yours, cloud access is gone.)

Also included is an iTunes Match walkthrough video, which provides exact instructions for how to find and subscribe to iTunes Match on your Mac, as well as how to turn it on your iOS 5 device and Apple TV. It’s about as straightforward as a screencast gets, and the whole thing is just over a minute long. If relatives are calling about getting iTunes Match set up on their new iPad, this is definitely the direction to point them in.

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Welcome to another installment of Tips and Tricks, the series that aims to teach you something new about your Apple stuff. This time, we’ll be taking a look at Siri on the iPhone 4S and how changing one or two words in your query can produce completely different results.

Dateless reminders

Sometimes, you might want to use iOS 5′s new Reminders app as more of a checklist, rather than being reminded at a certain time for each item. Using the normal Siri query, Remind me to…, you’ll be asked to give a time or place to be reminded. In order to add a ‘dateless’ reminder, you can say one of two things. Either use Add … to my … list, which will add the item to the named list, if you have one set up, or you can use Remember to… to add the reminder to your default list without giving it a date.

Stop Siri tripping over words like Christmas

When setting up reminders, Siri can get a bit confused if your reminder contains words such as ‘Christmas’ or ‘Easter’. Instead of setting the reminder up for the date you say, it’ll ignore that date and set it up for 9 AM on the day you mentioned. However, after a bit of playing around with word order, it turns out that this only happens if you mention the holiday day before the date on which you want to be reminded.

Say Remind me to buy Christmas presents on December fifth, and Siri will create a reminder for Christmas day at 9 AM. However, say Remind me on December fifth to buy Christmas presents, and your reminder will be created exactly as intended. As long as you tell Siri the date for the reminder first, you should have no problems.

Distinguish between a text and an email

When using the syntax Send a message to…, Siri will send either an iMessage or an SMS (depending on whether the recipient has iMessage or not). However, if you start the sentence with Write a message instead of Send a message, then your message will be sent as an email instead.

Change spelling or find alternative interpretations

Perhaps when using Siri or when using the dictation feature, you may have noticed blue dotted lines under select words in the text. This means that either alternative spellings are available, or Siri thinks it’s possible you said something slightly different. Tap the underlined word, and a menu similar to the copy/paste menu will appear, allowing you to select the suggested alternatives.

Do you have any tips of your own for using Siri more effectively? Share them below in the comments.

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To add a new word to the dictionary, tap Settings, then navigate to General > Keyboard. At the bottom of the screen, you should see a Shortcuts heading. Don’t be put off by the name; this is the place to teach iOS new words, but it’s called shortcuts because it’s primarily used to create typing shortcuts, similar to TextExpander.

Next, tap the Add New Shortcut… button. You’ll be taken to a new screen with two text fields, labelled Phrase and Shortcut. The important one is Phrase, at the top. This is where you need to type the word you want to add to your dictionary. The Shortcut field, as it says, is optional. That’s where you’d add a shortcut that expands into the phrase you added (more on that in a minute).

After typing in a word or phrase in the first field, tap Save at the top of the screen and your word will be added to the auto-correct dictionary. Now, when you type that word anywhere on your device, auto-correct should leave it alone, and if you spell it slightly wrong, it should suggest that word, too.

My username for almost everything is jobbogamer, so I added it to my dictionary.

If you’d like to enable TextExpander-like functionality, you can fill in the Shortcut field. For example, you could type “eml” as the shortcut, and set the phrase to your email address. After tapping save, whenever you type “eml”, auto-correct will suggest your email address. It’s very useful for words and phrases you type a lot, and since the feature is baked into iOS, it works in every app, not just those with support for TextExpander Touch, which was the way to get this functionality before iOS 5.

Some useful words to add to the dictionary

I’ve found it incredibly useful to add some words to my iPhone’s and my iPad’s dictionaries. For instance, I’ve added all my email addresses (I have quite a few!) with different shortcuts; my main email address is “eml”, my iCloud email address is “ieml”, and my Gmail address is “geml”.

Other helpful words to add are words you’ve made up yourself – I have a few of those, too – and nicknames for people. That way, you won’t have to battle auto-correct to type words that don’t really exist.

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Do I need iCloud to use iOS 5?

No, you don’t need to have your Apple ID associated with any of Apple’s iCloud services in order to use your iOS 5 devices. Signing up for iCloud is an optional step that you can take after the iOS 5 upgrade process. However, if you don’t sign up, you will limit access to some great iOS 5 features that do require an iCloud account. These features include:

• Reminders sync (you can still use local reminders, you just can’t sync them)
• Bookmarks sync (syncing your Safari bookmarks across iOS 5 devices and Macs running Lion 10.7.2 or higher)
• Photo Stream (you can still take photos and create multiple albums)
• Documents and Data Sync (which may be required by an increasing number of apps to take advantage of key features)
• Find My iPhone, iPod or iPad or Find My Friends
• iOS device backup to iCloud

If you want the above features, you’ll need to associate an Apple ID with the iCloud service. Keep in mind that you don’t need to use the same Apple ID with iCloud that you use to make your iTunes purchases. You can create a new Apple ID just for use with iCloud, if you are sharing a family account for making iTunes purchases, for example.

Also, if you are an existing MobileMe subscriber and aren’t in a hurry to migrate just yet, some of the above services like Bookmarks syncing and Find My iPhone will continue to work through MobileMe on your device running iOS 5, but you will need to consider migrating to iCloud sometime before June 12, 2012.  You don’t have to migrate as part of the iOS 5 upgrade.

Do I need a .me email address for iCloud to work?

The simple answer is no. This may come as a surprise, due to the way Apple has crafted the configuration screens for iCloud. Mail, Contacts, Calendar and Notes are all part of the configuration screen for your iCloud services.  It just so happens that I have an Apple ID that I created some time ago, using a yahoo.com address. I had no problem using this Apple ID to enable iCloud services on an iPhone running iOS 5. This also applies for other third-party email accounts (i.e., Hotmail, Gmail, etc.), as long as they’re associated with an active Apple ID.

On the surface, it appears I’m using my Yahoo account with iCloud. But I’m not. It just so happens that the ‘name’ I decided to use with this particular Apple ID is the  as the name of my Yahoo account.

The only two iCloud services that you can’t turn on with a non-Me.com iCloud account are Mail and Notes. All other iCloud services should work fine.

Every time you try to turn on Mail or Notes, when using a non-Me.com Apple ID, you’ll be prompted to create a Me.com email address. If you want to access Yahoo (or other third-party) mail on your phone, add it as a separate account under Mail, Contacts, Calendars in Settings, as I’ve done above. You can also use your non-Me.com ID for FaceTime and iMessages, too.

One Apple ID for iCloud, another for iTunes

You aren’t forced to use the same Apple ID for iCloud and the iTunes Store on the same device. Not having to do this is a good thing, since Apple does not offer any means of consolidating or merging two Apple IDs into one, so you could lose past purchases if you were forced to use only one identity.

Another benefit of this is that you can manage all of your family’s iTunes purchases from one iTunes account.  You can configure several Apple products to all share and use the same iTunes account for the App, iBook and iTunes Stores. In the past, you were allowed an unlimited number of iOS devices, and only five Macs. Now, you’re allowed up to 10 Apple products total for each iTunes account, and that can be any mix of iOS and Mac devices. At the same time, you can use a different Apple ID for iCloud on each family member’s device; plus the head of the family can still use that iTunes Store Apple ID for iCloud, too, if they’d rather keep things simple on their own private device.

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What you’ll need

• A Mac with at least 2 GB of RAM and at least 20 GB of free hard drive space.
• A disc burned using the ISO of the Windows 8 preview, available to download here, with a burning program such as Toast.
• A hard drive backup, in case everything goes pear-shaped.

Method

1. First, open the Boot Camp Assistant, which can be found at Applications > Utilities > Boot Camp. Once opened, you’ll see a screen explaining what Boot Camp does, and warning you to make a backup.
2. After clicking Continue, you’ll be asked whether you want to download Windows support software or if you have it on a CD or DVD. Make sure to select the second option; you won’t actually be installing the support software, since it won’t work with the Windows 8 preview. Then click Continue again.
3. The next step is to choose how large to make the Window partition on your hard drive. A Boot Camp operating system must be installed on a partition of your internal drive; it can’t be used on an external drive. The partition you create should be at least 25 GB in size, so there’s enough room for the OS and anything extra that might end up there, like files or applications. Next, click Partition.
4. Once your drive is partitioned, it’s time to install Windows. Again, the Windows 8 preview needs to be burned to a disc in order to install. Boot Camp should detect the disc once it’s inserted and allow you to continue installing. Click Start Installation. Your computer will now restart and boot from the Windows disc.
5. Follow the instructions on screen. When the installer asks you where to install Windows, select “Disk 0 Partition 3 BOOTCAMP” and then click Drive options (advanced). Choose Format from the options that appear to format the partition to NTFS, the file system Windows requires.
6. Follow the onscreen instructions again. Once Windows has installed, your Mac will automatically restart into Windows.

Since the Boot Camp support software for Windows won’t work with the developer preview, you won’t be able to install the Boot Camp tools on Windows. That means that to boot back into your OS X partition, you’ll need to restart your Mac with the Option key on the keyboard held down. You’ll be shown a list of available startup drives, from which you can choose your main partition where OS X is housed.

Remember this is a developer preview version of Windows 8. That is, it’s essentially alpha software, so things could go very wrong when you use it. Just as Apple suggests when using developer previews of OS X, you might not want to install Windows 8 on your main computer, and make sure to back up before you do any installations.

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Welcome to another instalment of Tips and Tricks, the series which aims to teach you something useful about one of your Apple products. This time, we’ll be focusing on Mail 5, the new version that ships with OS X Lion. There a few new tips that apply specifically to Mail 5, and also some existing tricks that should come in handy no matter which version you’re using.

Show your own messages in Conversation View

The new Conversation View (View > Organize by Conversation) in Mail 5 is great for keeping up with, well, a conversation. However, by default, it doesn’t show messages you’ve sent in reply during the conversation, which makes it harder to follow exactly what is being said and why.

To show your own messages in the thread along with those you receive from others, open Mail’s preferences, either under the Mail menu in the menu bar, or by pressing Command-comma. Then go to the Viewing tab, and under the ‘View conversations’ header, check the Include related messages option. Your sent messages will now show up in Conversation view.

Use Rules to color emails from certain people

If you’d like to highlight emails which came from someone important, like your boss, perhaps, Mail has a perfect way to do so. Using Rules, you can set the background color of an email in the list.

To do this, open up Mail’s preferences again, and this time open the Rules tab. Click the Add Rule button on the right, and a sheet will slide down with some options. Set the condition to From is [the person's email address]. Then underneath, set the action to Set color of background to [the color you want to use]. Click OK, and your rule will be added. From now on, whenever an email arrives from the address you specified, the message will be colored.

Show an unread counter in the Menu Bar

This tip will be useful to those of you who keep the Dock hidden, or have turned off the Dock unread count for Mail. This does involve downloading an extra piece of software, since Mail doesn’t support a menu bar item natively. The software is called Mail Unread Menu, and can be downloaded from MacUpdate. Once downloaded, all you have to do is run it, and you’ll have an unread count in the menu bar. There are also quite a few customization options available, such as the ability to choose the icon displayed in the menu bar for Mail, by clicking the menu item and choosing Preferences.

Change the names of Mail’s flags

In Mail 5, you can assign a colored flag to each message. There are seven colors to choose from, and they can be used for organising messages, since Mail automatically creates Smart Mailboxes for each flag you use. By default, the flags are named after the color of the flag, which isn’t very useful. There is a way, however, to change the names of the flags.

To change a flag’s name, first select a message and add the flag to it. Without adding the flag to at least one message, you can’t change its name. Once you have done so with all the flags you want to rename, you’ll see a new Flagged section in the Reminders area of the sidebar.

To rename a flag once it shows up there, right click it and choose Rename Mailbox from the menu. Then type the new name for your flag and press Enter.

Once you’ve pressed Enter, the flag’s name will change not only in the sidebar, but also in the drop down list of flags in the tool bar. This makes it much easier to remember what each of the colors means.

Flags also remember their names even if there are no messages with that flag applied to them.

Got any other tips and tricks regarding Apple’s default Mail app to share? Let us know in the comments.

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Free menu extras

There are a few icons that are in the menu bar by default, such as the Wi-Fi menu, the date and time display and the volume menu. There are also a lot of built-in system menus available, but not shown by default. To find them, navigate to System > Library > CoreServices > Menu Extras in the Finder. Here you’ll find even more menu items, such as an Eject item, which lets you eject CDs and DVDs from your optical drive, and Universal Access menu. To add one to the menu bar, simply double-click it in the Finder.

Another way to find additional menus for the menu bar is in the Mac App Store. There are hundreds available, but here are a couple which really stand out.

• MenuWeather Lite. This lets you put a weather forecast in your menu bar. You can choose for the icon to display either a temperature (in either celsius or fahrenheit), an icon to show the forecast, or both. The functionality doesn’t stop there, though; if you click on the icon, you can see details about the current conditions, a five-day forecast and access the preferences. MenuWeather Lite is free, and although there is a paid version with a few more features, the Lite version is good enough for my needs. It can be downloaded from the Mac App Store.
• Brightness menu bar. Similar to the built-in volume menu item, this adds a slider which allows you to control the brightness of your Mac’s screen. This is really good if you don’t have an Apple keyboard which has the brightness control keys on F1 and F2. The only downside is, like the keyboard keys, this only controls the brightness of your Mac’s built-in display, not any external displays you may have connected. Brightness menu bar is also free, and again, available in the Mac App Store. If you’re looking for a way to control external display brightness from the menu bard, check out Shades.

Tips and tricks

Here are a few tricks to get more from the menus you already have, without downloading new ones:

• Hold the option key. Nearly all of the built-in menu items have some hidden extras that reveal themselves if you hold “option” before clicking them. For example, if you hold option and click the Wi-Fi menu, you’ll see some extra information about your current Wi-Fi connection, such as the channel the router is set to and the type of security used. Even more useful: Holding option and clicking the volume button will let you quick choose from your available audio input and output options. Some other menu items with extras include the Bluetooth menu, which allows you to see extra information, and the battery menu which tells you the condition of your battery if you hold option.
• Hold the command key. If you hold the command key and drag a menu icon, you can change the order of the icons in the men bar. This only works with the built-in ones for some reason, and excludes Spotlight (which has to stay on the far right). You can also hold command and drag an icon off the menu bar to remove it altogether.
• Make the menu bar opaque. If you don’t like being able to see the desktop through the menu bar, you can set it to be opaque. Open System Preferences and open the Dock & Screensaver pane. Under the Desktop tab is a checkbox called Translucent menu bar; uncheck that to set the menu bar to opaque.

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Skip the click-and-hold

Mac App Store apps that are in your Launchpad can be moved by clicking and holding their icons, and deleted then clicking the ‘x’ that appears in the corner of each icon. It’s possible to delete and move them without waiting for that delay, though. Instead of clicking and holding an icon, simply hold the Option key on the keyboard. The icons will start to wiggle instantly, and you’ll be able to delete and move the apps.

You can also move the icons without them being in the ‘editing mode’. You can move them around simply by clicking or tapping and dragging; the icons don’t have to be wiggling to be moved.

Clear Launchpad and start again

If your Launchpad is anything like mine, it has all sorts of applications listed that you’d rather not see, such as Adobe help apps, or uninstallers. If you’d like to only have Launchpad show the apps you actually use, you can clear Launchpad completely and add the apps manually. It may be time consuming to add all the apps again, but it should stop Launchpad feeling so bloated.

1. First off, make a backup of the current Launchpad database. That way, if something goes wrong, you can restore Launchpad back to how it was. To do this, open [Your username] > Library > Application Support > Dock and make a copy of the file that’s in there. In order to get to the Library folder, you may have to use the Finder’s Go menu with the option key held down, since Lion hides it by default.
2. Now open up Terminal from Applications > Utilities. Once it’s open, paste the following command:

   sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock/*.db "DELETE from apps; \
     DELETE from groups WHERE title<>''; DELETE from items WHERE rowid>2;" \
     && killall Dock

3. Launchpad should now be empty. You can add apps back in by dragging them from the Applications folder onto the Launchpad icon.

If you’d like to restore Launchpad to how it was when you first installed Lion, simply delete the file you made a copy of from the Application Support > Dock folder. Next time you launch Launchpad, it should be back to normal.

Hide certain apps

If you’d rather not delete everything from Launchpad, or you aren’t comfortable using the Terminal, there is a preference pane you can download which allows you to select certain apps to hide from Launchpad. It’s called Launchpad-Control, and can be downloaded from this website.

Once you’ve downloaded and installed the preference pane, you can find it under “Other” in System Preferences. In the Launchpad-Control pane, you’ll find a list of apps that are currently in Launchpad. You can uncheck the box next to an app’s name to hide it from Launchpad. Click apply, and you’ll briefly see the Dock disappear. Once it returns, open Launchpad and the apps you unchecked will no longer appear there.

Set up a Launchpad keyboard shortcut

Unless you bought a Mac after Lion was released, your keyboard probably doesn’t have a shortcut key for opening Launchpad. It’s very easy to set one up using System Preferences.

1. Open System Preferences and open the Keyboard preference pane. In there, select the Keyboard Shortcuts tab.
2. From the source list on the left, select Launchpad & Dock. Now find Show Launchpad from the list on the right.
3. Double-click on the right hand side of the entry for Show Launchpad. A small text field should appear. Now type the shortcut you’d like to use for showing Launchpad. You can now use that shortcut to show and hide Launchpad using your keyboard.

Especially f you don’t like having Launchpad in the Dock, this makes it much easier to open it. You could even remap the Dashboard key to open Launchpad, if you wish.

Do you know of any other time-saving or organizational tips for Launchpad? Tell us below in the comments.

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Note that for Screen Sharing to work, you either need to be on the same network as the Mac you’re trying to access, use Back to My Mac with MobileMe, or use a VPN client like Hamachi.

Per-user and Apple ID login

You can now log into other Macs on your network not only with an authorized user account on that machine, but also with an Apple ID. Plus, you can also specify individuals manually, or add them from your Address Book, who are also allowed to login remotely on a per-user basis, and provide each with a unique password of your choosing. That eliminates the need to create a separate user account just for remote access, since you can just add your son or daughter from your Address Book and send them a password, allowing them to gain remote access if you need tech support, for example.

To add users, go to the Sharing pane in System Preferences, make sure Screen Sharing is turned on, and hit the “+” button to select people from your Address Book contacts. Hit the “New Person” button to authorize people manually.

Observe mode

In previous incarnations of Screen Sharing, you could take over control of another computer, but if you wanted to step back and watch what was happening on said computer, it was fairly tricky. Basically, you had to make another window active and just not touch anything. Now, you can switch to Observe mode, which is perfect for those times when you want to watch what a user is doing in order to provide them with accurate tech support help.

To switch to Observe mode, you can add an icon to the toolbar (pictures, via View > Customize Toolbar…), or go to View > Switch to Observe Mode in the menu bar.

Virtual Display mode

If you want to just change a setting or start a download without interrupting someone else currently using the computer you’re accessing via Screen Sharing, there’s a new Virtual Display mode designed to do just that. It will provide you with your own desktop that doesn’t interfere with what’s currently being shown on the Mac’s actual connected display. This is perfect for running application updates on your parents’ computer while they browse uninterrupted, for instance.

Virtual Display option greyed out here because Screen Sharing is in Observe mode.

If you’re logging into another Mac with per-user permissions, as described above, you’ll be asked whether you want to view the hardware or a virtual display. You can also access Virtual Display mode by going to View > Switch to Virtual Display in the menu bar, and change back to the hardware display by going to View > Switch to Hardware Display.

I find I’m already using these new features quite a bit. How are you finding Screen Sharing in OS X Lion?

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After only a few days use, Syncomatic has already become one of my most-used apps, since it lets me keep my iPhone’s camera roll clear and uncluttered, while also making sure I don’t lose a worthwhile clip or snapshot in the process. It works by monitoring your iPhone’s on-device photo and video library, and automatically grabbing new photos and videos when you’re near your Mac, putting them in either a folder of your choosing, or your iPhoto or Aperture library. Photo Stream in iOS 5 will do something similar, but Syncomatic is available now, is only limited by the size of your hard drive, and also offers multiple destination syncing options instead of just one. Here’s how to get it up and running yourself:

1. Install the Syncomatic iOS app to your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad.
2. Download and install the Syncomatic Mac companion client (direct link to download file).
3. Click on the Syncomatic icon in the Menu bar on your Mac and go to “Preferences.”
4. Choose whether you want Syncomatic to launch automatically, and pick a destination for your synced iPhone photos and videos. You can choose a folder, sync to either iPhoto or Aperture, or choose a combination of all three.
5. In the iOS app on your iPhone (or other iOS device), click the gear icon in the top right corner to enter the Settings menu.
6. Choose your destination Mac from the “Mac to Sync With” menu. If you have the Mac client installed correctly and are on the same Wi-Fi network, it should automatically appear.
7. Your Mac will display a four digit PIN. Enter that PIN into the iOS app when prompted.
8. Turn Sync on.

Now, whenever you’re within range of your Mac and connected to the same local Wi-Fi network, photos and videos will automatically be transferred to your Mac from your device. Syncomatic will also display a badge number with a count of how many photos or videos remain to be synced since it last connected, so that you know when everything’s been moved over to your Mac.

If you’re looking for a similar option, but would rather save the $2, PhotoSync offers similar functionality, albeit without automatic background syncing. For me, the set-it-and-forget-it aspect of Syncomatic justifies the extra expense.

My iPhone camera roll has always been a mess, but thanks to Syncomatic, I have little excuse not to get in there and clean it up once in a while. This is a must-have for mobile photo geeks, especially until iOS 5 arrives this fall, and likely beyond because of its customization options.

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Let’s go over how to import your iPhone photos to the two programs that come with the Mac, Image Capture and iPhoto. I’ll be covering using your iPhone with Aperture and Adobe Lightroom in a later post.

Determining what program, if any, opens when you connect your iPhone

Some people like having an application open when you connect your iPhone; others hate it. Regardless of which camp you fall into, it’s easy to set what program (if any) launches when you connect your iPhone.

1. With your iPhone connected, open Image Capture (it should be pre-installed in your Applications folder by default).
2. You will see your iPhone under devices. Click the iPhone icon.
3. Down at the bottom, you will see “Connecting this iPhone opens…” with a pull-down menu under it.
   
4. Select what application you want to open. Choosing “No Application” will naturally open no applications.

Image Capture

Image Capture is a hidden gem. For iPhone users, Image Capture lets you do two things very easily: mass-delete unwanted photos, or import them to a folder of your choosing. This eliminates the need to store them in a program like iPhoto.

Connect your iPhone to your Mac and open up Image Capture. You’ll see a screen similar to the one below:

From here, simply select the photos you want to do something with. If you want to delete them, select them and choose the delete icon; it’s the red circular icon on the bottom to the left of “Import To.” If you want to import them, select the pull-down to the right of “Import To” and choose a location. Also, if you want to both delete images and import them to a program like iPhoto or Aperture, you can do that here.

Image Capture is my preferred way of deciding which iPhoto images I get rid of. In the end, I keep very few. They could either be shots that totally failed, or a reference photo from a store, or a photo that was a one-time “wish you were here” photo. The ability to delete unwanted photos, and send ones you do like to iPhoto or Aperture is great. Unfortunately, if you use Lightroom it won’t show up in the import list.

iPhoto

Since iPhoto comes with every Mac sold by Apple, it’s a logical favorite for sorting and storing photos. Even though Lightroom is my post-processing tool of choice, I still use iPhoto to sync images to my iOS devices as well as store general images — all my desktop wallpapers, images used in presentations, and images grabbed off the web.

To import photos into iPhoto, connect your iPhone and open iPhoto. You will be greeted with a screen similar to this one:

Select the photos you want to import and click on Import, or Import All if you want to just take everything. Fair Warning about iPhoto: if you keep “Split Events” checked, it will auto-create Events based on the preference you set in iPhoto. If you have a lot of pictures spread over a long period of time, make sure you uncheck that, since it will split your photos into a huge number of separate events Naturally, if you do have an Event’s worth of photos (two weddings, for example), feel free to split the events. Based on my usage, I take one or two photos at a time and forget to import them, so it isn’t useful to have iPhoto automatically divide them based on dates.

Using your iPhone for geotagging

One nice benefit of taking photos with your iPhone is by default, it tags all photos with your location. My DSLR does not have a GPS, but I’ve gotten in the habit of taking one or two photos my iPhone during a shoot. After I import both the DSLR and iPhoto images and merge the Events, it’s a simple two-step process to copy the GPS tag to all of the photos.

1. Select the photo with the GPS info, right-click and choose Copy.
2. select all the photos you want the GPS tag applied to, go to the Edit menu and choose “Paste Location.”

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Welcome to another instalment of Tips and Tricks, the series of articles aiming to teach you something you didn’t know about your Apple products. Let’s continue by looking at iPhoto, and some ways of speeding up your workflow.

Quickly Change the Thumbnail for Events and Faces

When you first open either the Events view or the Faces view, you are presented with a series of thumbnails, called the Key Photo, for each event or person. You can change which photo is the Key Photo by viewing the Event or the photo series for a person, right-clicking the photo you want to use and choosing Make Key Photo. There is also a quicker way; without clicking, move your mouse over the current thumbnail in the Events or Faces view. As you move around, you’ll see all the photos in the event. When you see the one you want to use as the Key Photo, just hit the spacebar. When you move your mouse away, you’ll see that photo has been set as the Key Photo.

Rotate a Photo in the Opposite Direction

In the Edit view, there is a button which rotates a photo and does so in a counterclockwise direction by default. There is a setting in iPhoto’s preferences to make the icon rotate a photo clockwise instead, but you can also swap the direction on the fly. To temporarily switch the direction of the rotation, hold the Option key before you click Rotate. The icon of the button will change to let you know what’s happening, and your photo will be rotated the opposite way.

Unmount a Connected Device

Since iPhoto can import photos directly from a device, there is a list in the iPhoto sidebar of all the devices you have connected. It’s possible to unmount these devices from within iPhoto, rather than ejecting them from the Finder. To do so, right-click the device’s name and choose Unmount. This has the same effect as unmounting from Finder. You can also drag the device’s name to the Trash item in the Recent list of iPhoto’s sidebar. As you drag the name, the Trash icon will change into an eject symbol with the label Unmount. Just drop the device’s name onto the Unmount item and it’ll be ejected for you.

Confirm or Reject Multiple Faces Matches at Once

Often, iPhoto will recognize faces in newly imported photos and ask you to confirm that it guessed the identify of those faces correctly. When you open the ‘Confirm Faces’ view, it can get tedious clicking each one in turn. If there are a lot of photos which are all correct (or all incorrect), you can, instead of clicking the photos individually, drag a selection over all of them. This will mark all the photos you selected as confirmed, and if you do the same again, they’ll all be marked as rejected.

Assign Keywords Without Typing

Keywords are iPhoto’s equivalent to tags, and are useful when searching for specific photos in your library. Normally to add keywords, you select one or more photos, then type the keywords into the Keywords section of the Info panel. However, it’s possible to add keywords using just the mouse and keyboard shortcuts. Under the Window menu is an option to Manage My Keywords. If you choose this option, a window will open with a list of all the keywords you have used in your library. If you now select some photos, you can then click on a keyword in this list to add it to the photos without typing.

If you have a keyword you use a lot, you can also assign it a keyboard shortcut. In the Manage My Keywords window, click Edit Keywords. You can now select a word from the list and click Shortcut. You can’t use shortcut modifiers such as Command or Option, but you can use single letters or short sequences of characters. Now you can apply this keyword to photos by selecting them and typing the shortcut. You don’t even need to have the Info panel open.

I hope you’ve learned something new, and as always, leave your own additional tips in the comments!

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Here’s what you need to do to get it working:

1. Open the Keynote app on the iOS device you want to use to display your presentation.
2. From the Tools menu, select Settings.
3. Tap on the Remote setting and turn Enable Remotes on.
4. Open the Keynote Remote app on the iOS device you want to use to control your presentation.
5. Tap on New Keynote Link to display a passcode.
6. From the Keynote app on the other iOS device, choose the device name running your Keynote Remote app under the Remote setting, and enter the passcode.

Since you can connect your iPad 2 or iPhone 4 directly to a projector or monitor via SVGA or HDMI, carrying around a laptop computer in order to conduct presentations is no longer necessary if you have a couple of iOS devices. It’d be nice if Apple built Keynote Remote functionality into the Keynote iOS app itself, but a dollar is a small price to pay to go completely mobile and (mostly) wireless with your presentations.

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Set a Passcode

If a thief can’t unlock your device, they can’t access your data, so setting a passcode lock is a good idea. Once set, the passcode will need to be entered each time in order to unlock the device. To set one, tap Settings, General, then Passcode Lock. At the top is a button labeled Turn Passcode On.

Tap that, and you’ll be prompted to enter a four-digit passcode. Type the passcode in twice, and some additional settings will become available.

You can change how long the device has to be inactive before the passcode is required again. By default, this is set to require the code immediately, but you can set it to a range of durations such as after 1 minute, 5 minutes or 15 minutes. Shorter times are more secure, since it gives someone else less time to pick up your device before they’ll need to enter the passcode.

If you don’t think a four-digit code is secure enough, you can also use a more complex password with numbers, letters and symbols. To do so, turn off the setting called Simple Passcode. After turning that off, you’ll be asked to enter your current passcode, if you have one set, then your new password twice. Once you have done that, in order to unlock your device, the password you set will be required, which is more secure than a four-digit number.

One final security measure you can add is the option to erase all the data on the device if the passcode is entered incorrectly 10 times. This ensures someone can’t methodically try every number until they hit upon the correct code, since chances are the data will be wiped before they get there.

Be Sensible With Your Data

Obviously you can’t just rely on passcodes to keep information secure. You have to make sure you aren’t careless; leaving addresses or phone numbers in the Notes app means they’re available for anyone using your iPhone to see. Similarly, don’t store important information such as credit card numbers or pin numbers on the device at all, unless you are 100 percent sure the data is encrypted and secured using a password. The best way of storing extremely sensitive data like that is in your memory, rather than keeping it stored somewhere accessible.

Also be wary of using password managers designed for iOS. Some of them don’t encrypt your data at all, and only hide it behind an insecure passcode. Other services store your information on their own server rather than on your device, which means it’s susceptible to data theft if the service gets hacked, which is what just happened to LastPass, for example.

Wipe the Data Remotely

If your iOS device does happen to fall into the wrong hands, you can use Apple’s free Find My iPhone service to locate the device and wipe any data on it. Find My iPhone is available to all MobileMe subscribers, and is also available to non-subscribers with an iPhone 4 or an iPad. To set up Find My iPhone on your device, go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars and choose Add Account. Then enter either your MobileMe credentials or your Apple ID (the same one you use for the iTunes store) and choose to turn on Find My iPhone.

Now if your device gets lost or stolen, you can find where it is, and if necessary, wipe everything on it. To do so, open the MobileMe website, me.com, in your browser, log in and go to the Find My iPhone tab. You’ll see a list of the devices that you have set up with Find My iPhone, and you can click on a device’s name to show its location on a map.

You can then click the blue triangle icon next to the name on the map to see more options. To completely wipe the selected device, choose Wipe. Everything on the device will be erased, and it’ll be as if it were new — nothing is left behind. Don’t worry, if you then get your device back, you can restore from a backup using iTunes.

Got any other tips for securing data on your iOS devices? Share them in the comments.

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Why You Should Encrypt

Encrypting your backups means that you’re taking security of your personal information such as email account passwords or contact information one step further. It won’t be enough for someone to simply get hold of your computer and look through your iPhone or iPad backups, since they’ll need a password to use them.

Encrypting your backup also protects other people from accessing the location data which is stored on your iPhone. The log of location info is backed up along with everything else, so encrypting your backup is a way to stop anyone from looking at the data. Of course, the location data probably isn’t going to help anyone much, but if you’re worried about it, this will help.

There are other, non-security related reasons to encrypt your backups, too. If you restore a new iOS device from a backup of an old one, usually passwords such as mail account passwords aren’t stored, and you’ll have to enter them again on the new device. However, if your backup was encrypted, the passwords will be kept, making the transition to a new device that much easier.

How to Encrypt Your Backups

It’s incredibly simple to start encrypting your iOS backups. Connect your device to iTunes, then click its name in the sidebar. Navigate to the Summary tab and at the bottom find the section called Options.

The last checkbox in this section is labelled Encrypt iPhone (or iPad) Backup. Check that box, and a dialog will appear asking for a password for the backup. Enter a password and click Set Password. I don’t suggest ticking “Remember this password in my keychain”, since that defeats the purpose of setting a password in the first place. (Saving the password in the keychain means that it is saved on your Mac and will be entered automatically). Of course, you may wish to tick this anyway, since to access the keychain, you have to enter your computer’s password.

Now if you try to restore a device from the backup, iTunes will ask for the password, meaning only you can use the backup for anything useful. Plus, the data in the backup is encrypted too, meaning it won’t make any sense if someone somehow opens it without using iTunes.

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